Europe’s SOS

Religious and ethnic toleration did not emerge in the West simply out of the good intentions of wise rulers. In the 16th and 17th centuries, European Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other with abandon. The Wars of Religion in France, the 30 Years’ War in Germany, the English Civil Wars all killed millions. Religious toleration in Western Europe was the result of the lessons learned from these bloody conflicts, conflicts so politically destabilizing and destructive that most European rulers came to realize that religious repression was too politically dangerous--at least if a large number of defectors from the official religion were involved. No one saved the Europeans from their own follies. They eventually learned to save themselves.

Why have the Balkans not embraced these lessons on toleration? Not because ethnic divisions have been any more intense there than in other parts of the world. One thing that distinguishes the Balkans from Western Europe is the extent of intervention by outside actors.

The Balkan states have never been left to settle their own ethnic divisions. From the 1830s, when Greece became independent, through the 1990s, when Yugoslavia fell apart, the major powers have always intervened to try to establish more tolerant political regimes. The major European powers refused to recognize Greece in 1832, Romania, Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria in 1878, and Albania in 1912 until the would-be rulers of these new states agreed to establish civic and political equality. In the cases of Greece and Albania, the major powers chose the form of government, a monarchy, and selected the monarch.

In 1919, after World War I, Yugoslavia, like the other new states of central and eastern Europe, had to recognize minority rights. In 1991, the European Union conditioned recognition of Slovenia and Croatia on comprehensive protections and guarantees for minorities, including acceptance of a number of international human-rights conventions. Similar conditions were written into the Dayton accords for Bosnia in 1995, including the creation of an international court, most of whose judges were to be appointed by the countries of Western Europe. Bosnia is at peace, but it is also occupied by 40,000 troops of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The major powers--first the Europeans, then the United States--had good reasons for intervening. They have always been concerned that instability in the Balkans could lead to instability throughout Europe, and sometimes it has.

They have also worried about human rights. Lord Byron, the English poet, and more than a thousand men from all over Europe fought for Greek independence in the 1820s. An extensive regime for minority rights was established in the League of Nations after World War I. President Bill Clinton’s appeals last week to humanitarian concerns and national security could have been pulled from the speeches of any of a number of Western leaders over the last 150 years.

Yet, external intervention has never worked in the Balkans. The fundamental problem with external intervention is that it reduces any incentives that the antagonists have to find their own solutions and obscures the actual power the two sides possess. Protestants and Catholics stopped killing each other in Europe, in part, because each side realized it could not win.

Ethnic groups in the Balkans have always had the option of fighting their opponents and of seeking aid from far more powerful external allies that could decisively affect the local balance of power. Because it has often been unclear exactly how much support more powerful states might provide, one side or the other has been usually tempted to prolong or provoke a conflict.

Greece secured its independence only because the combined British, French and Russian fleet defeated the Turkish Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Russian intervention helped to secure autonomy for Romania after the Crimean War and independence for a number of Balkan states after the Russo-Turkish Wars in the 1870s. Serbian nationalists looked to external help before World War I.

In the same way, Bosnians could hope to free themselves from a larger Serbia because they had the possibility of aid from the West. The Kosovo Albanians can hope that their struggle against Serbia will lead to independence because of cruise missiles and B-2 bombers.

As long as there is a powerful state that can intervene on one side or the other in a struggle in the Balkans, or elsewhere for that matter, the weaker party may always find it attractive to fight on. Losers never really lose. The distribution of power on the ground is never clearly revealed. Refugees are never resettled. Why give up when there is always the uncertain hope of future victory because of external intervention?

The United States and its NATO allies confront a dilemma in Kosovo. If they stand by and do nothing, many Albanians will be killed and the ensuing conflict could destabilize the entire region. In the longer run, however, if the Balkan states were left to their own devices, the contending parties would arrive at some resolution of their differences based on the balance of forces in the region, just as the Western Europeans did some 300 years earlier.

External intervention can work, but only if it supports domestic groups favoring a peaceful settlement and provides these groups with enough continuing assistance to defeat appeals by would-be nationalist leaders. Without a new governing class in Serbia, intervention may save people and provide some short-term stability, but it will cost lives and increase instability in the future.*