“Waging the peace in Kosovo may prove to be much more difficult than waging
the war.”
Waging Peace in Kosovo
By _Barry Ryland-Holmes_
(http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_13/ryland_kosovo.html#Anchor)
Among issues raised by NATO’s intervention in Kosovo is the complex question
of self-determination. Mr. Ryland-Holmes, an attorney, analyzes state
sovereignty in the context of international law. Further, he asks if the search for
reconciliation following intervention is realistic. Read on for his
prescription on how the Global Democracy Project might play a useful role. ~ Ed.
In the decades following World War II, there has been continuing debate
among scholars of international law as to whether the concept of the sovereign
nation-state is sustainable in a modern world which places increasing emphasis
on human rights and the right of peoples to collective self-determination.
The conflict in Kosovo has intensified this debate.
It was the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, bringing to an end the Thirty Years
War in Europe, which laid the foundations of the nation state with its
attendant supremacy over internal affairs. Prior to the Reformation, Europe had
been regarded—and regarded itself—as a cultural whole, united in Christendom
by its Holy Catholic faith. Whilst this did not stop rivalry between competing
princes, it did weaken the concept of national identity. This was accentuated
because the educated were united by the common language of Latin; national
identity as defined by language therefore was almost irrelevant.
The Reformation permanently destroyed the cohesion of Europe. Competing
communities, owing to a variety of religious allegiances, ultimately formed
themselves into what we recognize as sovereign nation-states. The Treaty of
Westphalia formalized the fragmentation of Europe into a multiplicity of petty
states that conducted their internal affairs free from interference by other
nation-states. This autonomy of action came to be enshrined in international law
and applied to nation-states beyond the borders of Europe. Given this
background, there can be no question that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo marks a
defining moment in international law.
Kosovo could signal the beginning of a return to an almost pre-Westphalian
world order where state sovereignty cedes authority to the will of an
international community in which it is not religious belief that unites the countries
of the developed West, but rather shared beliefs about the universal
applicability of human rights. Intervention may appear to be the most appropriate
course of action for any country that considers itself civilized. This policy,
however, runs the risk of replacing the economic imperialism of the
nineteenth century with a cultural imperialism as we enter the twenty-first.
That such action is fraught with problems and is potentially damaging to
international relations was immediately demonstrated by the reaction of Russia
and China. The G8 summit of June 20 seems to have gone some way to repairing
the rift between the United States and Russia. This is not the case with
China, however. Equally worrying is the position adopted by Greece which, while
maintaining its membership of the NATO alliance, refused to participate in any
initiative in Kosovo until the bombing had ceased.
NATO’s action in Kosovo raises two fundamental issues:
* Is the peace keeping and reconciliation project a legitimate policy
goal?
* and even if it is, is reconciliation realistic?
Is peace keeping legitimate?
Most scholars of international affairs would draw a clear distinction between
the intervention of the UN in Bosnia and the intervention of NATO in Kosovo.
Whilst the UN is a truly international body, made up of countries from every
region of the world, NATO is an entirely Western organization. This is an
important distinction and one that is likely to gain in significance, given
that there seems to be no question that both President Clinton and Prime
Minister Blair see an increasing role for NATO in the future.
This could prove to be both a disturbing international trend and a
destabilizing force in Kosovo insofar as, at least in the eyes of the Serbians, NATO
lacks the legitimacy of the UN. It may well hasten the approach of a future
for international relations characterized by Samuel Huntington as “the West
versus the rest.” Huntington has pointed out that the future fundamental source
of conflict in the world is unlikely to be either ideological or economic.
Rather, the great divisions among mankind and the dominant source of conflict
will be cultural. Such cultural differences are much less susceptible to
resolution than either political or economic ones.
Whilst many see an international military presence in Kosovo as essential,
experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere demonstrates that troops
interposed between two ethnic or religious groupings opposed to each other soon
become the whipping boys for both groups’ hostilities. Moreover, of the 50,000
troops planned for the Kosovo peace keeping force, 7,000 will be U.S. service
personnel. Given the need to rotate troops periodically, the reality is that
this could tie up an entire US Army division for a generation.
It is nevertheless the case that many scholars of international law are
moving away from a traditionalist, positivist position, where international law
is seen as no more or less than the rules to which states have agreed through
treaties, custom or other forms of consent. Absent direct evidence of the
will of states, positivists assume that states remain at liberty to undertake
whatever actions they choose. For many, this represents an old fashioned,
continental European view. Indeed, some would say that state sovereignty has
become the last refuge of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes the world over.
Such scholars recognize alternative paradigms and seek a transformation of the
concept of state sovereignty which will make a connection between the role
of international law and the theory and practice of international relations.
This multidisciplinary approach, they hold, reflects more truthfully the
increasingly complex international environment.
Is reconciliation realistic?
Turning to the second issue raised, even if intervention and the search for
reconciliation is a legitimate policy goal, is it a realistic one? Given the
immense task of rebuilding the physical infrastructure, it is clear that
Kosovo cannot afford to wait for that rebuilding to be completed before embarking
upon the establishment of a civil society. Bearing in mind what has been said
about the role of NATO, using direct government agencies to try to
facilitate the establishment of a civil society in Kosovo is likely to lead to adverse
effects on international relations. Thus, waging the peace in Kosovo may
prove to be much more difficult than waging the war.
Project Bosnia, part of the Global Democracy Project, suitably expanded, may
well provide an exemplar of the way to proceed in the reconstruction of a
civil society in Kosovo. The Global Democracy Project, conceived and
administered by Villanova University School of Law in Pennsylvania and its partners,
established in Bosnia a temporary “virtual” legal infrastructure based on the
use of computers which provided access to the world wide web.
Building a stable and lasting civil society based on the rule of law begins
with a free flow of information. In Bosnia, as in Kosovo, the physical
infrastructure had been destroyed by war. Rebuilding such physical resources would
take years but the information infrastructure needed to establish and
maintain the rule of law was required immediately. Unlike a conventional
infrastructure, the internet-based system in Bosnia utilized the international network
of computers linked to the internet to provide access to information by
connecting the legal, political, social, economic, educational, and media
communities to the outside world and to each other. Thus, Project Bosnia clearly
demonstrated the potential of modern technologies to replace a physical
infrastructure with a virtual one, providing the kind of information exchange essential
to the day-to-day operations of legal, economic, and educational
institutions.
Of course, technology alone is not enough to foster, let alone create, a
civil society in a country such as Kosovo, torn by ethnic and religious hatreds.
Nor can military force impose the democratic processes that are inherent in
a civil society. Only a planned and comprehensive program of reconciliation,
undertaken over a long period of time and displaying infinite patience with
the hostile and competing parties, can ever hope to effect the kind of changes
necessary to make people, of their own volition, choose to adopt the
democratic processes of a civil society and to live in harmony with their former
enemies. Reconciliation is not a hopeless task, but it is certainly a long-term
one.
In order for the United States and the UK to maintain good international
relations with other nation-states in the light of the Kosovo intervention, it
is essential that the initiative for establishing a civil society in Kosovo
and any programs of reconciliation should be undertaken by private institutions
and nongovernmental organizations. These may be funded by individual
countries’ government departments and draw from time to time on their professional
expertise. But one of the reasons the Bosnian initiative was effective was
precisely because it lacked U.S. (or any other) government involvement; it was
thus perceived as maintaining its neutrality throughout.
Previously Kosovo was part of a larger state. It now faces the onerous task
of creating a state system of its own. The Global Democracy Project, suitably
expanded to encompass the economic and educational spheres, as well as the
legal and providing a basis for the implementation of a comprehensive
reconciliation program, all part of a Joint Regeneration Program for Kosovo, could
point the way to a brighter future for that country and the enhancement of U.S.
foreign relations simultaneously.
____________________________________
The writer, based in Sheffield, England, is a senior legal counsel
specializing in emerging economies. He holds an LL.M. degree from London University.
He has lectured at at the Center for International Legal Studies, Salzburg,
Austria, and the Sheffield Business School and has been special advisor on
institutional planning and chairman of the Foundation for International
Commercial Arbitration, the Hague.
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