Vitomir Miles Raguæ

Vitomir Miles Raguæ

DA NIJE BILO OLUJE

i drugi eseji
DA NIJE BILO OLUJE
WHO SAVED BOSNIA
i drugi eseji

and Other Essays

WHO SAVED BOSNIA
and Other Essays

STIH

Zagreb,
STIH2005.

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Zagreb 2020
Zagreb, 2005.

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 Vitomir Miles Raguž
WHO SAVED BOSNIA
and Other Essays

Cover Photo
AP

Cover Design
Darko Badelj

Graphic Production
Marijan Boršić jr.

Printed by
Irma & Irma
Zagreb

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 svoju djecu, izabrali SAD umjesto bivπe Jugoslavije i Australije;
tetki s. Alverniji koja je potakla ideju boljeg æivota u Americi; te,
strini i stricu, Marici i Kazimiru, koji su obavili
najveÊi dio posla pri doseljenju u Cleveland, dræava Ohio.

To mom
To mom and Ivka
and dad, dad, and
IvkaNikola,
and Nikola, who
who 30 in 1974,
years ago, thinking of
their children, chose USA over former Yugoslavia and Australia;
aunt sr. Alvernija who initiated the idea of better life in USA; and,
aunt and uncle, Marica and Kazimir,
who did the hard work to settle us in Cleveland, Ohio.

V. M. Raguž is very grateful to Ante Kostelić, skiing world’s highly

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respected coach, who supported the original publication of this book
through his label Stih, which brings Western classic literature to
Croatian readers, as well as his series “Hrvatska i svijet”, which
offers sometimes forgotten works on the history of Croatia and BiH.

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WHO SAVED BOSNIA
and Other Essays

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 Table of Contents

Introduction 11
Foreword 13
189
Introduction by Author 17
193
Technical Notes 23
199

1. TRUTH IS THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR

If There Were No Storm, or Who Saved Bosnia 27
203
Washington With Strong Croatia 46
222
Why Did the Croatian Army Withdraw from
Posavina 50
226
Mystery of the Muslim-Croat Conflict 56
232
Role of Iran in the World and Bosnia 63
239
Why Herzeg-Bosnia 66
242

2. EXPERIMENTAL INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

AS HISTORY
75
A Crucial Moment for International Criminal Law 251
International-Brand Justice Earns Bad Marks in
Zagreb 79
255
Nothing to Gain by Sanctioning Croatia 83
259
Gotovina is Innocent 87
263
Injustice of International Criminal Law: How
Did It Go Wrong 91
267
Gotovina Should Get Lawsuit Protection From
Washington 95
271

3. CROATIA, CROATS, SELF-HATING CROATS AND

THE WORLD
Croatia Should Say Yes to U.S. on Iraq 101
277
Dispute With U.S. on Article 98 104
280
108
Israel and Croatia: Victims of Similar Intolerance 284
Look Neither to Washington nor to Brussels but
to Berlin 111
287

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A Useful Balkan Flip-Flop 115
291
EU Membership Comes With Costs 119
295
Croats Nothing Like the Austrians on Image 122
298
Recognition and Other Gains Came by Default 125
301

4. ONE CHINA POLICY FOR BOSNIA AND

HERZEGOVINA AND THE REGION
Time for Europe to Start Pulling Its Weight in
Balkan Backyard 133
309
A New Era Calls for New Thinking on Dayton 137
313
What About Collective Rights 141
317
New Ideas from Fischer and Solana 145
321
Balkans in NATO: Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and Yugoslavia 149
325
A New Monarch in the Balkans 160
336
One China Policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Benefits No One 164
340
Let’s Just Sell Kosovo 167
343

5. ECONOMIC ISSUES AND THE REGION

Trade Before Aid for the Balkans 173
349
Benefits From Foreign Banks: Lessons for Russia 178
354
Tax Competition in Europe 182
358

Biographies
Biography 187/189
187
363

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 FOREWORD

For over thirty years, Walter Cronkite, celebrated former an-

chor of CBS Evening News, calmly, clearly, and with author-
ity ended his news reports with the sign-off line, “And that’s
the way it is.” As a news anchor, he was voted by Americans
among the top 10 “most influential decision-makers in
America” in the 1970s. His audience accepted his word that
the world was the way he presented it. This willingness to
accept the world as others portray it is not unusual. People
around the world accept reality “the way it is” instead of mak-
ing an effort to see it in all its complexity.
It is much simpler, easier, and quite often safer to ac-
cept the assumptions that various Cronkites and would-be
Cronkites of the world select, package, and present to us,
rather than to accept Kant’s invitation to “dare to know” the
perplexing realities of our world. By Kant’s standard, those
in the mass media, social sciences, and public life are doing a
great disservice to humanity by claiming to possess the final
word because by doing so they forestall our efforts to seek a
better grasp of the world, that should, in turn, contribute to
helping us to change it for the better.
This collection of essays by Vitomir Miles Raguz does
not reflect the mainstream thinking among those who claim
to be expert interpreters of the events that accompanied the
collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia. But one does not have to
agree with the author to realize that this collection is a sig-
nificant contribution to understanding recent events in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and the region. He challenges
the conventional wisdom regarding the tragic events of the
period and he questions those that have repeatedly told us
“that’s the way it is.” Mr. Raguz bases his discourse on facts,
not on politically correct assumptions and popular myths.
But he also distinguishes “visible” facts (who did what
for various reasons on the local level) from beyond the scene
policy-making processes and particulars, and he urges the
experts to do the same if they wish to grasp the full meaning

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of events. He is optimistic that future historians will probe
more deeply, and by getting to the “bottom of things” contrib-
ute to regional reconciliation more than the ICTY or the “com-
mitted” experts of today.
Ambassador Raguz served in several Bosnian-
Herzegovene and Croatian diplomatic posts (1992 to 2000),
where he had a front-row seat to the historic drama that un-
folded during that decade. He was able to observe the pro-
tagonists of this drama and sometimes was on stage with
them. His close proximity to the participants who shaped
events gave him significant insights regarding, for example,
the role of Western powers in the withdrawal of Croatian mili-
tary forces from Posavina (1992), the meeting between Alija
Izetbegovic and Croatian diplomats in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
(1992), the intentions and the role of the United States in the
Croatian military operation “Storm” (1995), and the various
efforts to end the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The details Mr. Raguz reveals and the events he dis-
cusses were not state secrets nor were they unknown to for-
eign observers of the region at the time. But many of these
“details” were not made public and discussed because the
standard paradigms then in use excluded them. In other
words, they would have forced radical changes in the reali-
ties constructed by experts on the region.
Probably the most popular paradigm was that of moral
equivalence, which attributed equal blame for Yugoslavia’s
violent dissolution to Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman.
But based on the policy-making processes that he witnessed,
Raguz argues that “Croatia was not the problem but the so-
lution” to the conflict caused by Serbian expansionism. This
was nowhere more evident than in the case of Bosnia-
Herzegovina.
He does not lay the blame for the popularity of dis-
torted images of Croatia and Croats on foreign image-mak-
ers, but places it with local and international politicos who
bend the reality for short term policy gains, as well as with
some intellectuals in Croatia. The latter had a need to prove
themselves to be on a par with what they believed to be the

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intellectually progressive elements in Europe. At times this
was also the case because of their ideological activism, and
for some with non-democratic pasts, a way to personal reha-
bilitation through an external imprimatur.
This was not so for Ambassador Raguz, who was not
trapped within idealistic nor ideological models. When he ac-
cepted his first posting as a diplomat Mr. Raguz was a young
banker, not a diplomat. Nevertheless, he quickly grasped the
basic rules of international politics that interest and realism
prevail over idealism, internationalism, and humanitarian-
ism. He therefore writes about what happened, not what
should have happened had the world been an ideal place.
A number of articles in this collection appeared in in-
fluential publications in the West, including the largest cir-
culation English language policy daily The Wall Street Jour-
nal, The Jerusalem Post, European Voice, and The Harvard
International Review, as well as in Croatian newspapers and
magazines. In each of these essays, Ambassador Raguz gives
not only valuable eyewitness testimonies, but he also proves
himself to be a first-rate analyst of events in the region. He
also offers suggestions for resolving what seem to be complex
issues that continue to threaten peace and stability in south-
eastern Europe.
Although Mr. Raguz is a realist, he is also an optimist.
He believes that well-intentioned people in that troubled part
of Europe outnumber those with evil intentions “by a wide
margin”. But he concludes that before the region can em-
bark on its road to a better future, we must have a “balanced
picture” of its recent wars. For that reason he has repeatedly
urged all those who were involved, both within and outside of
the region, to question existing accounts which are popular
but often inaccurate assessments of events, and to seek the
truth in its full complexity— for the sake of a better future.

Ante Cuvalo - Professor of History

Chicago, Illinois
May, 2005

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192
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 INTRODUCTION BY AUTHOR

If it is true that media reports are the first draft of history,

then when it comes to the events in the former Yugoslavia in
the 1990s, we may need a major re-drafting effort. So much
was written in print and recorded on tape at the time. Most of
it, however, came with strong emotional and ideological un-
dercurrents that only the passage of time can contextualize.
The war, at least in the newspapers and on television,
was always about good versus evil, black against white. I do
not recall many serious analytical works at the time. Only
appeals for action or arguments for inaction. There were only
bad or very bad nationalists, and good multi-nationalists. Who
was who, depended on who was asked and who wrote about
them.
This was a time when not only the proverbial politician
lied to the press one day, and then believed what he read in
the newspapers the next day. Many diplomats, scholars, hu-
manitarian workers, NGO officials, religious leaders, and
people from all walks of life did the same. The mental frame-
works would only produce views that promoted western in-
tervention or the keeping of the status quo. In a horrifying
situation as it was, the ends justified the means. But this
should surprise no one. Truth indeed was the first casualty
of this war, as in any other.
I often recall a letter from a young history student at a
top U.S. university, writing to a New York group that did a
critical analysis of the early 1990s reporting from the Balkans
in The New York Times. The student urged the group not to
refer to the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the Muslim
army, because, even if true, it would hurt the chances of Mus-
lims and Croats receiving assistance from the West. It should
be presented as a multi-ethnic institution, the letter said.
The Bosnian Croat militia, the HVO, was probably the
most multi-ethnic army in the region. Thirteen percent of its
members were non-Croats, mostly Muslim, until the Mus-

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lim-Croat conflict begun. But no one wanted to know that at
the time. It was relevant neither to the interventionist camp
nor the status quo side.
Yet, white lies or “spin” as this student advocated were
not a major problem in understanding the conflict and craft-
ing solutions. This was a time, when, as Christiane Amanpour
of CNN said later, you had to pick a side and act on its behalf.
Partisanship was not even the right word. It went beyond it.
Again, given the nature of the conflict, understandably so.
As someone who during this period worked for both
the Bosnian-Herzegovene and Croatian governments, mostly
at the United Nations in New York, and at the peace confer-
ences in Geneva, New York, and Washington, I took part in
events that the media often presented in a completely differ-
ent light. I witnessed many actors doing and saying things
that the newspapers and television presented in other ways.
Needless to say, my “take” on some of these events is
different from the mainstream. Through this compilation of
old, updated, and new essays I wanted to share my thoughts
and experiences with historians, researchers, policy experts
and avid readers about the events of the past decade. The
intention is to shed new light on some important events and
policy elements of that period, in hope of channeling addi-
tional research to these areas.
The first set of essays is entitled “Truth is the First
Casualty of War.” They deal with key issues that have been
largely ignored by historians and policy people.
The genesis and consequences of Operation Storm have
been largely overlooked, even among Croatian and Bosnian-
Herzegovene researchers, who would have so much to con-
tribute here. It is interesting also that neither Croatian nor
U.S. researchers have dwelled on the relations between Zagreb
and Washington, which were most intensive in the period lead-
ing up to the Storm.
The Croatian Army’s withdrawal from Posavina, viewed
by many as a major point of departure in the Bosnian-
Herzegovene conflict, still rests on colored newspaper articles

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of that time. The same remains true about the reasons for
the founding and development of the Herzeg-Bosnia entity.
Virtually nothing is known about the wartime relations be-
tween Sarajevo and Belgrade, nor Sarajevo and the Islamic
countries, such as Iran and Turkey. Some new work has been
done on the Muslim-Croat conflict, but not enough by any
means. I have addressed these issues, sometimes tied to more
recent events, in six essays in the first chapter.
One institution that appears to have unsaid ambitions
of writing the final draft of history of the past decade is the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) at The Hague. Chapter 2 presents essays that point
out why this should not and is unlikely to happen.
Unfortunately the Tribunal has not lived up to its noble
intentions and expectations. The reasons are several. Fore-
most is the reality that it never developed to the level where
the judges have the final say, but where the prosecution dic-
tates events, based not on hard evidence, but on a first draft
of history. The judges have simply played along out of inexpe-
rience or professional shortness-of-breath, or perhaps out of
policy to accept innovations in international criminal law, no
matter what they are. This again in the spirit that the ends
justify the means.
Whatever the reasons, the ICTY has lost the respect of
a judicial institution just about everywhere in the region. Even
its supporters often acknowledge that they go along largely
because of the threat of international sanctions or fear of be-
ing personally ostracized in international policy circles.
The original intention of the Tribunal was to prosecute
individuals responsible for their crimes and to expose them
to public scrutiny in order to achieve closure and thereby
promote speedy reconciliation. This is now largely
unachievable given the image of the ICTY and the reality that
reconciliation can seldom be speedy. Historians, rather than
the Tribunal, will certainly make a much more important con-
tribution to the cause of regional reconciliation once they make
inroads with new research that comes with time and distance.

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 The remaining essays address recent and present policy
questions in Southeast Europe, offering background views
and/or outlining alternatives. Chapter 3 essays deal with
policy issues specific to Croatia and Croats. Chapter 4 fo-
cuses on Bosnia and Herzegovina and the other fragile states
in the region. The last chapter brings up the subjects of
economy, trade and banking.
One issue that is raised in regard to Croatia concerns
its almost teenager-like desire to become a member of the
E.U. and NATO — yesterday, despite unique obstacles. This
question has intrigued me enormously. Croatia is already a
de facto member of both institutions since all of its neighbors
are, or will be. Whether it is technically a member now, later,
or ever, is not as important as its ability to reform so it can
compete and take advantages of its new neighborhood, or
better said the new market. To me, the debate in Croatia has
been focused on the form rather than on the substance of
this issue.
The chapter on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the
region begins with a series of essays that argue in favor of
standardization of western policy toward those countries and
the ethnic groups within them. The present approach is a
Balkan version of the “One China” policy: one region — dif-
ferent systems and solutions. In fact, BiH is a prime example
of that policy, where three constituent communities have
unequal stakes in a common state.
This chapter concludes with a new essay that presents
a logical framework for BiH if Dayton will indeed be updated
with a European formula after its 10th anniversary is marked
at the end of 2005, and an old essay that proposes a novel
solution for Kosovo, if different groups will continue to be
afforded different solutions.
The final chapter brings up regional issues of economic
nature that seldom get a full hearing, given the policymakers’
preoccupation with unresolved issues of stability, human
rights and state-building. The question of a free trade area
among the states in the region, with trade benefits from the

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common market is addressed. Extensive foreign ownership
of banks in Central and Eastern Europe is discussed in the
context of aiding Russia’s development. In the last essay the
issue of tax competition in New Europe states is seen as a
positive example of economic policy that should be copied by
Old Europe.
Over the years I have heard from readers asking me to
write more about what I saw in the 1990s, as well as to com-
pile what I had already written in one book. There is never
enough time to write, and on issues such as this, the task
can be a costly one. But recalling some of the letters from
readers makes it all worthwhile.
For instance, a reader of the essay on withdrawal from
Posavina wrote to thank me for finally allowing him to make
sense of what happened there. He said that the essay brought
tears to his eyes, because over the years he heard and read
so much about the issue, but never believed any of it. His
own experience told him that the newspaper articles and later
popular wisdom had it all wrong, but without the informa-
tion he now had, he could not understand why they could
have been so wrong.
Another reader, this one from far way Hong Kong, wrote
that he enjoys my musings even if he is not an expert on
Balkan issues, as there is always something positive and hope-
ful in their conclusions. My wish is that this compilation of
old and new essays will give the same to old and new readers,
wherever they are.

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 TECHNICAL NOTES

Already published essays retain their original Copy-

right. Quotes from these essays should cite the relevant source
and original title, as they are noted alongside each of such
pieces.
Titles of a few of the already published essays were
changed for this book, usually to make them shorter. At times
they were recast to focus on the substance of the articles
when original titles were centred on then current events.
All essays were writen in English. English language
articles are reproduced exactly, with the exception of some of
the titles, as well as of some minor technical changes, such
as paragraph breaks.
Due to limited intervention, some usage of words, such
as Muslim and Bosniak, some acronyms, such as USA, U.S.,
and US, as well as spelling of names, such as Tudjman and
Tuman, and similar, will vary from essay to essay.
In this context, we also decided not to standardize the
various variations for short names of international judicial
institutions ∑ ICTY, ICC, and ICJ. We believe the context will
make them easily distinguishable.
Translations of essays that ran in Zagreb media may
differ slightly from articles that appeared: in titles, in length,
and in some finesse in translation.
New and updated essays are Copyright of Naklada Stih.

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 1.
Truth is the First Casualty of War

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202
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 IF THERE WERE NO STORM, OR WHO SAVED BOSNIA

Much has been said about Croatia’s policy toward

Bosnia-Herzegovina during the past decade, but very little
has been documented and even less examined absent ideo-
logical leanings and wartime emotions. Croatia’s role in sav-
ing Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, however, has been overlooked
in public discourse, let alone in academic pursuits. This
achievement, praised as such on the editorial pages of the
New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post at
the time, deserves closer scrutiny.
Croatia’s early policy that argued for the division of
Bosnia-Herzegovina has captured the imaginations of histo-
rians, policy pundits, and café society alike, and almost all
discourse since then has tended to sound like a broken record
about Franjo Tuman’s obsession with the CvetkoviÊ-MaËek
agreement, and the perceived conspiracies that were to fol-
low, and in the end to achieve the 1939 borders of the Croatian
Banovina.1
Zagreb’s policy, however, was never as clear-cut and
steady as conventional opinion has it. From this writer’s ex-
perience, working for both the Bosnian-Herzegovene and
Croatian governments during 1992-2000, Zagreb’s policy

1
This simplistic view of Croatia’s policy, for instance, forms the
bedrock argument accepted by the International Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in BlaπkiÊ and other cases that Tuman
had territorial designs against Bosnia-Herzegovina based on the
pre-World War II Banovina borders and that in collusion with
MiloπeviÊ, he carried this out by ethnic cleansing of the Muslims in
central Bosnia and Mostar using Bosnia-Herzegovina Croat prox-
ies. This school of thought usually points to the issue of the Croatian
Army’s withdrawal from the Posavina Corridor as the first manifes-
tation of this conspiracy. See V.M. Raguæ, “PovlaËenje iz Posavine,”
Vjesnik, 31 July 2002, p. 12, and “Predrasude iz rata,” Vjesnik, 1
August 2002, p. 12.

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appeared to be more a series of policy accommodations, based
on the wavering interests of the international community,
Croatia’s own security interests, and to some extent, the de-
sires of the Croat community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, rather
than a policy of recreating the borders drawn by the leading
Serb and Croat politicians at the outset of World War II.
Accordingly, Zagreb’s policy in the 1990s can be di-
vided into five periods: (i) promotion of the idea of a division
of Bosnia-Herzegovina prior to its independence in 1992; (ii)
from 1992-95, acceptance of the internationally-brokered
peace plans for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the establishment
and financing of the Herceg-Bosna entity as a military proxy
to defend Dalmatia, and the period that included the Mus-
lim-Croat conflict2 ; (iii) saving Bosnia-Herzegovina by the 1995
Operation Storm; (iv) following the signing of the Dayton-Paris
Accords (DPA) in December 1995, working to maintain the
military element of Herceg-Bosna autonomous in order to
protect the stability of Croatia in the event of an IFOR pullout
within two years as envisioned by the agreement; and, (v)
following 1997, entering into a dispute with the international
community about the implementation of the DPA, which went
against Tuman’s understanding at the time he negotiated
and signed the agreement that Zagreb would have dominion
over the Muslim-Croat entity.
After the elections of January 2000, the new RaËan
government accepted that the international community would
remain in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a long time to come, and
that its administration of the state, now in the steady hands
of NATO, would leave Zagreb no room to maneuver. As such,
the risks of the country’s disintegration and consequent se-
curity threats to Croatia were virtually eliminated, allowing
RaËan to downscale relations with Bosnia-Herzegovina to eco-
nomic matters.
2
Probably the first detailed study of the Muslim-Croat conflict in
any language was recently published by the Texas A&M University
Press: Charles R. Shrader, The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central
Bosnia: A Military History, 1992-94, College Station, TX, 2003.

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 Each of these periods deserves a closer look. The in-
tent here, however, is to present details regarding the 1995
period and to encourage more research on this very positive
phase of Croatia-Bosnia-Herzegovina relations, no matter what
the thinking may be about the time before or after.

Balance of Power

Croatia usually gets credit for altering the balance of

power in the region as a result of Operation Storm, although
the latter’s importance for Bosnia-Herzegovina has waned over
time, for various reasons. However, in 1995 observers en
masse gave all of the credit to Zagreb. The August operation
came less then a month after the Srebrenica massacre and
on the eve of what appeared to be an imminent attack on the
UN safe area of BihaÊ, a Bosnian town less than a two-hour
drive from Zagreb. On everyone’s mind was a repeat of
Srebrenica, but with even more casualties. Moreover, the fall
of BihaÊ would have cemented the extremist Serb hold on 70
percent of Bosnia, which the West would have had to accept.
By then, it was common wisdom that neither Washington nor
anyone outside the region was willing to use ground troops to
stop the Serb extremists, nor, for that matter, air power on its
own.3

3
Zagreb was told explicitly in November 1994 that Washington would
not defend BihaÊ. At the outset of that first BihaÊ crisis, Deputy
Defense Minister Kreπimir ΔosiÊ was sent to Washington to gauge
the possible US response. After telling Tuman, who was in Chile,
of the U.S. lack of plans, Tuman apparently harped back: “tell
them I am going in with or without their support.” In order to avert
a massive offensive, Washington urged Zagreb not to do anything
more than send the Croatian Army into Livanjsko Polje to apply
pressure on the Serb troops surrounding BihaÊ. That operation was
known as Zima 94. The U.S. also promised to bomb the Udbina
airfield, from which the Croatian Serbs were attacking BihaÊ, and
accelerated the signing of a defense cooperation agreement with
Croatia.

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 The turnaround in Bosnia-Herzegovina was 75 per-
cent the work of the Croatian Army, 15 percent of the Bosnian
Croat militia (the HVO), and 10 percent of the Army of Bosnia-
Herzegovina.4 These numbers summed up the sentiments at
the time, and, for a brief moment, Zagreb was held up as the
champion of western interests in the region. However, since
then, all of the laurels for saving Bosnia-Herzegovina have
gone to the United States, due, in part, to the prolonged NATO
intervention that followed several weeks later, and because of
the State Department’s lead role in forging the DPA peace
agreement in November 1995.
This writer’s experience suggests otherwise. It was
Croatia’s role that was decisive, and “everything that followed,
from the first exercise of NATO air power to the Dayton-Paris
peace agreement, was simply filling in of a diplomatic puzzle.”5
In fact, the puzzle was set in stone on 9 August 1995 at the
White House principals’ meeting, based largely on the logic
that existed before Operation Storm, but with the benefit of
the completely new situation on the ground. The pre-Storm
US policy was altered in only two aspects: the future status
of the Serb entity, and the territorial allotment between the
two entities.
A recent book by White House senior policy aide for
the Balkans Ivo Daalder details Washington’s policy machi-
nations towards Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Clinton Ad-
ministration and sheds some light on this point.6 To be sure,
Daalder gives all of the credit for the changes in Bosnia-
Herzegovina to Washington, or more precisely to his princi-
pal, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. And, for the most
part, he overlooks the Croatian military actions. Daalder seems

4
Julian Borger, “Muslims ‘Ride Tiger’ to Victory,” Guardian, 16
September 1995.
5
V.M. Raguæ, “Balkans in the NATO,” Harvard International Review,
Fall 2001
6
Ivo H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia
Policy, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000).

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30
to assume that the policy review toward Bosnia-Herzegovina
that was being undertaken in June 1995, and completed in
August 1995, would have succeeded in keeping Bosnia-
Herzegovina together even without the Croatian military of-
fensive. On the contrary, had there been no Operation Storm,
there may well have been further Srebrenica-like massacres,
and the Bosnia-Herzegovina of today, based on the US role
that was re-emerging, would in all likelihood have been quite
different. In fact, it appears that without Zagreb’s interven-
tion, US policy during that period would have allowed the
creation of a Greater Serbia at the expense of Bosnia-
Herzegovina as early as 1997.

Croatia as Washington’s Proxy

In largely passing over Zagreb’s role, Daalder also leads

one to believe that there was no relationship between Zagreb
and Washington in the crucial months of the summer of 1995,
which contradicts the editorial page writing of the leading US
dailies at the time, among others, and the often-heard views
that Zagreb and Washington were in this project together.
Three days before Operation Storm was launched, the
Washington Post ran a prescient editorial: “All along the United
States and its allies have been looking for a force—other than
themselves—that could check Serbian and Bosnian Serb
adventurism and produce a military balance on which a real-
istic settlement could be built. Maybe such a force is now
emerging: Croatia.”7
One week later, when the operation was over, the Wash-
ington Post added: “The Croatians argue they are not the prob-
lem but the solution: they claim to have created a new re-
gional ‘balance’ on which ‘proper’ peace talks with the Serbs
can begin. This line has been enthusiastically adopted by the
American government, which is under pressure to show that

7
Editorial, “The Croatian Alternative,” Washington Post, 1 August
1995.

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31
the quiet political support it extended to Croatia had a legiti-
mate purpose of promoting a negotiation in Bosnia.”8
After the DPA was inked, the New York Times editors
concurred: “Washington’s Croatian strategy used Croatian
forces as a substitute for military power that no Western coun-
try was willing to apply on the ground in Bosnia.”9 The Wall
Street Journal, too, praised Zagreb’s advances for creating a
“fundamentally new situation” in the region by an “offensive
[that] may bring an end to the war more quickly than talk-
ing,” and argued that Croatian troops should be used to go
further into Bosnia-Herzegovina to push back the Bosnian
Serbs. 10

The April 1995 Memo

The idea that Washington would entertain a policy that

relied on Croatia as its proxy surprised many in 1995, and to
this day the issue remains shrouded in mystery. Croatia’s
often clumsy and supercilious president, Franjo Tuman,
would have been the last man anyone in the State Depart-
ment wanted to take on as a partner, but for Croatia’s diplo-
mats, however, the partnership was anything but a surprise.
In fact, such a solution had been floated and pursued with

8
Editorial, “Croatia’s Weekend Blitz,” Washington Post, 8 August
1995. The Post may have been referring to the statement made by
Croatian UN diplomat Vladimir Drobnjak at the onset of Operation
Storm. Reuters quoted him on 5 August 1995 as saying: “Croatia is
not the problem. Croatia is a solution.” This media strategy was
drafted on 3 August 1995, based on the policy logic from the 13
April 1995 Croatian Mission memo. The full text of Drobnjak’s state-
ment is available in Croatia at the United Nations, a publication of
the Croatian Mission to the UN, February 1998, p. 148.
9
Editorial, “Croatia’s Responsibility in Bosnia,” New York Times, 28
December 1995, p. A20.
10
Editorial, “Not the Time to Talk,” Wall Street Journal, 8 August
1995, p. A12, and Mark Almond, “Croatia Proves the West Wrong,”
Wall Street Journal, 10 August 1995, p. A8.

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32
both US diplomats and President Tuman a number of times.
As early as June 1993, such an alternative was presented to
the US diplomat responsible for the former Yugoslavia at the
UN in New York, Stuart Seldowitz, by this writer, and again in
autumn by the deputy chief of the Croatian UN Mission,
Vladimir Drobnjak, and this writer. Croatia’s permanent rep-
resentative to the UN, Mario Nobilo, later broached the same
idea with Richard Holbrooke on 10 December 1994, and with
Madeleine Albright several times, for instance on 11 May 1995.
The first of these meetings was in New York, at the
United Nations Plaza Hotel, with Holbrooke and foreign min-
ister Mate GraniÊ11 as the principals. This meeting followed
the first crisis in BihaÊ in late November 1994. After GraniÊ
explained the danger of the fall of BihaÊ for the regional bal-
ance, and informed Holbrooke that Zagreb had sent Croatian
Army troops from Split across the border into Livanjsko Polje
to take pressure off BihaÊ, Holbrooke seemed more than
pleased. He said: “this is excellent news. You should keep on
pushing toward BihaÊ. How far will you go?” At that point
Nobilo intervened, saying that Croatia could save Bosnia and
that Washington should work to strengthen Croatia, to which
Holbrooke and the United States’ UN Mission diplomat Stuart
Seldowitz seemed to respond approvingly.
After positive responses like this, the Croatian Mis-
sion would inform Zagreb about the possibilities of coopera-
tion with the US, and urged Zagreb to present such a plan on
a higher level. However, there was no feedback from Zagreb
until April of the following year. On 13 April 1995 the Mission

11
The diplomats present remember this meeting as the “does any-
one have a quarter” meeting. Mate GraniÊ had come with a map of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, with the Serb-controlled territo-
ries colored in red, and then, to emphasize how the strategic bal-
ance would shift if BihaÊ fell, he planned to place a coin over the
green BihaÊ enclave. When he reached into his pocket, the coin was
nowhere to be found. After fumbling around his pocket for what
seemed like an eternity, an aide saved the moment by producing a
twenty-five cent coin.

209
33
sent one more policy dispatch in this direction, and was sur-
prised to receive a phone call from Gordan Radin, Tuman’s
head of cabinet, who informed Drobnjak that the president
had read the memo, and asked that it be published. The Zagreb
weekly Obzor published a shortened version of the memo on
1 May 1995.12 Given that the president of Croatia requested
the publication of a paper that called for saving Bosnia by
using Croatian military resources, the Mission could only
conclude that this would be the new Croatian policy or, for
that matter, that it already was.

The Ministry of Defense’s Activities

By this time, Croatia’s Ministry of Defense may have

already been working with the Pentagon in a similar direc-
tion, either by default or by design. But if by design, it was
unclear whether this cooperation had developed from earlier
suggestions by the diplomats or whether this was at the ini-
tiative of Gojko ©uπak’s ministry or, for that matter, from Sec-
retary of Defense William Perry’s Pentagon.13
In any case, there could be no mistake about US in-
tentions toward Croatia after Washington offered to provide
military assistance in 1994, with the Memorandum of Coop-
eration on Defense and Military Relations that was signed on
29 November 1994. But the agreement may have been set in
motion already in July of that year, as was learned later, when
William Perry invited ©uπak to a meeting in the US Embassy

12
V.M. Raguæ, “Washington s jakom Hrvatskom, Obzor, 1 May 1995,
p. 42.
13
Nor was there a way for us to check, since the Foreign and De-
fense ministries hardly communicated, due to the personal compe-
tition between GraniÊ and ©uπak. Of course, defense departments
in all countries tend to be secretive in their ways. Croatian ambas-
sador to the US, Miomir Æuæul, who was reputed to be very close to
©uπak, told this writer recently that ©uπak always behaved as if he
had something with Washington, but was not willing to share.

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34
in Zagreb, and told him that Washington “would like to have
a strategic alliance” with Zagreb. At first, the alliance would
mean that the Pentagon would not object to the Washington-
based MPRI firm of military consultants assisting Croatia in
upgrading its armed forces, and that Zagreb would allow
Washington to set up an intelligence-gathering post on the
island of BraË.14

The Role of Croatian-Americans

Croatian officials were not alone in promoting Croatia

as Washington’s only possible partner. Various Croatian-
American organizations were doing the same. For instance,
in June 1993, the President of the Croatian Democracy Project,
Max Primorac, presented such a concept at the American Bar
Association’s annual National Security Conference in Wash-
ington, DC.15 The Croatian American Association, a lobby or-
ganization, was also involved. Its then executive director, Luka
MiπetiÊ, was very energetic in advocating the idea in the halls
of the Capitol, as well as to the visiting Gojko ©uπak. The
Croatian Anti-Calumny Project has documented some of these
efforts in a recent publication.16

14
A number of Croatian officers who coordinated the MPRI activi-
ties told this writer that MPRI provided nothing more than publicly
available information and training, from manuals that any good
researcher could locate without much trouble in the US. However,
the sight of four-star generals lecturing and hobnobbing with young
Croatian officers must have provided a deep morale boost to the
Croatian side. As for the BraË facility, it closed down in Spring 1995
after discovery by and objections from the Europeans.
15
ABA National Security Report, Conference Supplement, February
1994.
16
Commemorative Booklet, Croatian Anti-Calumny Project publica-
tion, April 2002.

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35
US Policy

According to Daalder, US policy was in a tailspin ever

since the first BihaÊ crisis in November 1994. The four prin-
cipal actors—the State Department, National Security Coun-
cil, Pentagon and US Mission to the UN—presented and ar-
gued about various possible solutions, but the outcomes were
closer to policy paralysis than to policy initiative. The prob-
lems on the ground, caused by Bosnian Serb intentions to
take control of UN safe areas, and end the conflict on their
terms, were compounded by the European plans to pull
UNPROFOR out altogether and to leave the parties to settle
the conflict among themselves. A policy “with many points of
view, but with no point,” as once described by Richard
Holbrooke, continued well into July 1995, at the time of the
Srebrenica massacre, and Zagreb’s decision to lift the block-
ade of BihaÊ.17
In June 1995, the White House decided to give Bosnia-
Herzegovina one last try. Concerns were building up, includ-
ing the issue of the upcoming presidential race, where it looked
as if Clinton’s opponent Bob Dole would focus on the
Administration’s Bosnia-Herzegovina policy failures. A policy
review was initiated, and the four principals presented pa-
pers with options ranging from accepting the fait accompli
division by pressuring the Serbs to end the fighting while
allowing them to secede a short time thereafter, to a more
activist approach of allowing the Europeans to withdraw, while
arming Sarajevo and giving it protection and support using
US air resources stationed in Europe.
Thus, by mid-July, after Zagreb had already mapped
out its Operation Storm strategy, and had once again begun
its preparations to move troops into Livanjsko Polje, Bosnia-

17
Regarding the policy disarray in the Western capitals before Op-
eration Storm, see, for instance, M.M. Nelson, “Vicious Circle,” Wall
Street Journal, 28 July 1995, p. A1.

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36
Herzegovina, Washington was still thinking in terms of a major
diplomatic initiative focused on the Bosnian Serbs. “The key
to success would be to gain leverage over the Bosnian Serbs
by wielding real carrots and real sticks,” writes Daalder about
the prevailing logic in the 17 July meeting of the principals.18
The principals, including Madeleine Albright, supported
the proposal by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake in
which “the Contact Group map could be modified in realistic
ways, such as trading the smaller eastern enclaves and the
widening of the Posavina corridor linking Bosnian Serb-held
territory to the East and the West in return for the Federation’s
control of Sarajevo and additional territory in central Bosnia.
Constitutional provisions for a unified Bosnia could stress
some degree of autonomy for the Bosnian Serbs—possibly
including a referendum on secession within two to three years
as the Bosnians had agreed in 1993.”19

War Termination

Daalder goes on to add that even though the princi-

pals seemed to be on board “it soon became clear that Chris-
topher, Perry, and Shalikashvili showed minimal interest in
the ideas Lake had laid before them, preferring instead to
return to the immediate issues at hand.” Maybe this was due
to a lack of conviction. But, perhaps, it was due to the knowl-

18
Daalder, p. 99.
19
Daalder, p. 100. Washington was now compelled to go along with
the referendum alternative because of the lack of better options. In
addition, the fact that the last holdout among the Muslim leader-
ship, Haris SilajdæiÊ, was now open to this option helped. SilajdæiÊ
discussed the effective division as a fait accompli with Bosnia-
Herzegovina and Croatian diplomats at the Hotel Richmond meet-
ing in Geneva in early Summer 1995. IzetbegoviÊ accepted the ref-
erendum solution in Autumn 1993, in an agreement with MomËilo
Krajiπnik that was brokered by Lord David Owen.

213
37
edge some of them by now had about the initiative from Zagreb
to lift the blockade of BihaÊ, an objective that would change
the strategic landscape.
It is unclear exactly when Tuman decided to take
matters into his own hands, as he apparently suggested he
would do in November 1994. Some say the decision was made
in June when he replaced General Janko Bobetko with Gen-
eral Zvonimir »ervenko as Head of the Military Headquar-
ters. Others believe that it came immediately after the suc-
cessful Operation Bljesak in early May 1995, when the UNPA
West sector was reintegrated without much resistance. But,
it could have been decided earlier, judging from Tuman’s
reaction to the Croatian Mission dispatch of 13 April 1995.
In any case, Tuman had no qualms about launching
a military action immediately after the Srebrenica fiasco, when
his special envoy for peace negotiations, Miomir Æuæul, and
GraniÊ came to see him with a proposal to take advantage of
the political moment to lift the blockade of BihaÊ. Æuæul was
given instructions to immediately sound out Bob Frasure,
the key operations official for the region in the U.S. Depart-
ment of State, and Æuæul was joined on his trip to Washing-
ton by Croatia’s intelligence chief, Miroslav Tuman.
In the meetings with Frasure, Holbrooke and US
Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff, some of which were
also attended by Petar ©arËeviÊ, Croatia’s Ambassador in
Washington, Æuæul spoke using the same logic he had first
advanced in Washington in April, saying that Croatia could
do what the West could not—turn the clock back on the Serb
gains: “Give us support, and supervise our actions.” Frasure
was immediately supportive, but Holbrooke hesitated. He had
many questions. “If you go in, who will you install in the local
government, AbdiÊ’s or IzetbegoviÊ’s people? If you take BihaÊ,
you will surely take the Krajina as well?” The verbal game
went on for some time, according to Æuæul. In a second meet-
ing, Holbrooke was more open. Frasure told Æuæul that he
had a long discussion with Holbrooke, and that the two had

214
38
come to an understanding that the Croatian proposal just
might work.20
As Washington now seemed to be on board, Zagreb
started working on Sarajevo, and the widely covered summit
between Tuman and Alija IzetbegoviÊ was held in Split on
19 July 1995. Æuæul and GraniÊ also invited to Split the US
ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, in the event that
IzetbegoviÊ was to be indecisive since, by now, hesitancy had
become his hallmark. However, IzetbegoviÊ needed no prod-
ding this time. Instead, he gave Tuman the go-ahead to en-
ter Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Tuman assured him that his
people, and not AbdiÊ’s, would have power in BihaÊ.
The next day, GraniÊ sent a letter to the President of
the UN Security Council, which was drafted by the Mission,
in which he warned the Security Council that “the displace-
ment of the population from the BihaÊ safe area, numbering
about 200,000, would be considered a serious threat to the
security and stability of Croatia,” and thus, “if the status of
the BihaÊ safe area becomes threatened, Croatia may be com-
pelled to undertake necessary measures to secure its status
and security.”21
By that time, General Ante Gotovina, Croatia’s south-
ern theater commander, had already drafted the Operation

20
For public consumption Croatia was given a red light. One day
before Operation Storm, US Ambassador in Zagreb, Peter Galbraith,
told Tuman to desist. Washington’s intention with this widely re-
ported demarche was to have “plausible denial” in the event Opera-
tion Storm failed. Governments often undertake steps that would
provide plausible denial for sensitive or covert operations in case
they backfire, leave legal ambiguities, or offend relevant parties.
Tuman reportedly chuckled and told Galbraith that he is not well
informed, probably referring to contemporaneous stories that
Holbrooke, the Pentagon and the CIA did not like some of Galbraith’s
policy recommendations, and kept him in the dark.
21
Shortly thereafter, GraniÊ left for a diplomatic tour of the South-
ern Cone African states, in order to divert possible international
speculation and pressure regarding Zagreb’s plans.

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39
Storm plan,22 as well as that for the preparatory operation
called Ljeto 95. The latter operation, carried out in Livanjsko
Polje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, was a larger version of Operation
Zima 94, and commenced on 21 July. The intent was to re-
lieve BihaÊ by forcing General Ratko MladiÊ’s troops to re-
group towards its southern flanks. The Croatian Army
achieved its goals by the next day, taking the Bosnian towns
of GlamoË and Grahovo, as well as the Dinara mountain tops
east of the Croatian Serb stronghold of Knin.23

22
They were presented to Tuman at Briuni on 16 July 1995 with
all senior officers present. The meeting was publicly billed as a fare-
well dinner for the retired head of the military headquarters, Gen-
eral Bobetko. The original Gotovina plan called for a ten-day opera-
tion, but Tuman later asked that this be scaled down to five days,
possibly due to suggestions from friendly Western officials. Ger-
many apparently informed Zagreb that Bonn could stall a possible
negative European response for up to five business days. This may
also be why the operation started on a Friday morning, at the be-
ginning of the weekend, instead of Tuesday, as originally planned.
23
As the Serb troops were massing to take BihaÊ, the Security Coun-
cil was meeting on a regular basis to monitor the situation. After
one such meeting, the United Kingdom’s permanent representative
was asked a provoking question by a jubilant New York-based Serb
reporter, Teresa Gould, the former Miss Yugoslavia: “After wins in
eastern Bosnia, and moves toward BihaÊ, despite Security Council
warnings, what message does the Council have for the Serbs now,
Sir David?” Sir David Hanney, responded with an uncharacteristic
zeal: “Tell them to be aware of the Croatian guns on the Dinara
Mountains.” For the moment, and unofficially, many in the Secu-
rity Council were cheering for Zagreb. United States UN Ambassa-
dor Madeleine Albright was another. On the eve of Operation Storm,
the UN Security Council was meeting to issue a statement calling
on Croatia to desist. An early draft was not overly kind to Zagreb,
and Croatian diplomats lobbied to soften the language. As Ambas-
sador Albright was approaching the Council chambers, a senior
Croatian diplomat Vladimir Drobnjak, who planned to propose
changes to the language, approached her. Albright quickly inter-
rupted his presentation, grabbed him by the hand, and said: “Ok,
we shall see what can be done, and, by the way, good luck tomor-
row.”

216
40
 On the day Gotovina’s troops entered Bosnia-
Herzegovina, US intelligence services set up camp in ©epurina,
near Zadar, with about forty to fifty US staffers working there
during and after Operation Storm. A real time monitoring sta-
tion was set up using Predator unmanned drones. By the
time Operation Storm started in the dawn hours of 4 August,
the ©epurina base had two real time feeds set up, one going
to the Pentagon, and the other to Gotovina’s headquarters.24

Banja Luka

BihaÊ and the Krajina region were secured in less than

four days. However, Croatian military operations continued
further into Bosnia-Herzegovina, and actions were carried out
well into October 1995, sometimes with NATO air support.25
One such operation in early October required that
Croatian troops enter Bosnia-Herzegovina west of Banja Luka
to take over from the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina which was
losing ground to the Bosnian Serb Army after the latter had
regrouped in Banja Luka, and had begun to successfully re-
gain some of the lost territory. The Croatian Army, however,
had to give up on Banja Luka earlier, at the insistence of
Richard Holbrooke, by then Washington’s point man in the

24
It appears that the US also provided direct military assistance to
the Croatian Army on the first day of Operation Storm by destroy-
ing the Serb communications network in the Croatian and Bosnian
Krajinas. That day, NATO decided to send two Prowler aircraft to
monitor the UN no-fly zone in the region. Prowlers are designed to
interfere with and destroy communications systems and are not
envisioned for routine monitoring missions. When the Serb anti-air
defenses locked-on, an offensive act, the Prowlers moved to carry
out their mission, firing high speed anti-radiation HARM missiles
probably for the first time in combat.
25
Maestral, Juæni Potez, Skok 1, and Skok 2.

217
41
new peace initiative. He was operating under new instruc-
tions set forth by President Bill Clinton in the 9 August 1995
meeting with his four principals at the White House, follow-
ing discussions that had commenced on 7 August.26
The question of Banja Luka could also be a case study
in itself regarding overall US policy interests in the region.
The Croatian Army was no doubt in a position to take the
town without much resistance, and Krajina-type evacuation
plans were apparently already in place. But, Washington was
quite divided about the possibility of the fall of Banja Luka.
At the time, Washington pundits divided decision-makers into
two groups, the so-called Saigon and Re-election groups.
The first group argued that, as in Vietnam, when the
Northern Offensive resulted in the fall of Saigon, and brought
an end to the war, the fall of Banja Luka would do the same
for the former Yugoslavia. There would be a winner and a
loser, and an easily achievable peace deal.
The second group, however, fearing how reactions to
the fall of Banja Luka would play out in the upcoming US
presidential campaign, would hear none of it. The expecta-
tions were that relations with Russia would be substantially
affected if the Serbs came out of the conflict as losers, and
that some European powers would be displeased if their prin-
ciple of “no winners—no losers” in the Balkans were violated.
The Europeans also had a strong case with respect to likely
new population movements, which would have to be allevi-
ated mostly from their pocketbooks.
The US military and intelligence services were largely
in the Saigon group, while politicians and senior diplomats

26
Daalder, pp. 102-114.
27
This early division of opinion regarding Banja Luka in Washing-
ton was also played out in Zagreb. ©uπak, who was mainly in con-
tact with the Pentagon, was relaying to Tuman that Washington
wanted Banja Luka taken, while Æuæul, who was mainly in contact
with the State Department and the National Security Council, was
reporting the opposite. According to Æuæul, the two were then called

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42
were largely in the Re-election group.27 Ultimately, the elec-
tion-sensitive politicians and Europe-sensitive diplomats in
Washington decided that they had too much to lose and the 9
August 1995 White House decision on Bosnia-Herzegovina
remained unchanged. Holbrooke had no room to maneuver.

If There Had Been No Operation Storm

In any event, the 9 August 1995 policy did not repre-

sent a significant change from the 17 July 1995 version ei-
ther. On paper, everything remained pretty much the same,
with the exception of two items. Reading Daalder, one can
conclude that by the time the preparations for Dayton had
begun, there was no longer an option of a Serb entity’s refer-
endum for secession in two to three years. Moreover, the ter-
ritorial split of 51-49 in favor of the Muslim-Croat entity was
no longer in question, as it had appeared to be on 17 July.
Quite to the contrary, by the time the Croatian and Bosnia-
Herzegovina actions had ended, the Federation controlled more
than its share of its envisioned territory, and at Dayton it
returned about 5 per cent of the land to the Serb entity. In-
terestingly, based on the 17 July policy, the Serbs, who had
controlled about 70 per cent of Bosnia-Herzegovina, would
have retained most of it.
When Daalder concludes that Washington was respon-
sible for saving Bosnia-Herzegovina, he probably relies on the
air campaign component of the 17 July and 9 August plans.
In both cases, before and after Operation Storm, the US ap-
peared to be ready to use substantial airpower to subdue the
Serbs. Even so, two issues remain. First, if there had been no
Operation Storm, the 17 July policy would have been the or-
der of the day. In the best case scenario, the US would have
bombed the Serb extremists, but only until they accepted the

in by a furious Tuman to explain the conflicting messages.

Holbrooke apparently settled the dispute by a personal visit to
Tuman.

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43
plan on the table. However, not much bombing would have
been necessary if the secession option were available, as it
was in that plan.
Further, once Operation Storm started and succeeded,
the US used Croatian ground troops to supplement the NATO
bombings in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as pointed out by the edi-
tors of the New York Times and others. Daalder seems to as-
sume that the bombings would have worked even without
the Croatian ground troops, but he would certainly face sub-
stantial disagreement if his conclusion were framed in that
way.28 The Pentagon was never eager to intervene in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, especially without ground support, and its case
against intervention would have been much easier to make
in an election cycle. The thought of US casualties or the pos-
sibility of a deadlocked air campaign might well have stymied
any military action by the US. However, the ease and swift-
ness of Operation Storm, combined with Zagreb’s willingness
to do the “dirty job” on the ground as far as Banja Luka,
made the decision in Washington to send in NATO planes in
late August much easier.

Common Bond

There exists a plethora of writings about the wars on

the territory of the former Yugoslavia. However, much of it is
based on heated wartime reporting and on secondary sources.
In addition, opinions have been colored by horrific pictures of
suffering and the loss of life, as well as by many unique per-
sonal experiences. But, as the old adage says, the first casu-
alty of war is truth, and the wars in the Balkans were no
exception. The time has now come to revisit at least the key
events of the past ten years.
The Summer of 1995 was one such key event, if not
the most crucial point of departure after the conflict began,

See for instance: Robert Pape, “Wars Can’t Be Won Only From
28

Above,” New York Times, 21 March 2003, opinion page.

220
44
because it finally brought us peace. Understanding it can also
bring us reconciliation, which is bound to help relations be-
tween Sarajevo and Zagreb, which have not moved much be-
yond words all these years. The same is true for relations
between the Muslim and Croat communities in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, which remain entrenched in numerous falla-
cies about the past. The two communities have yet to find a
single post-conflict common bond. Hopefully, historians and
policy analysts in the region and elsewhere can find this study
as one small contribution towards this effort.

Written in 2003 for the Journal of Croatian Studies. To be pub-

lished in Volume 43.

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45
 WASHINGTON WITH STRONG CROATIA

Obzor, May 1, 1995.

If one were to apply the recent views of David Gergen

on the fundamentals of American foreign policy to the case of
Croatia, one would come to a conclusion that the United States
would be more willing to assist Croatia if Zagreb were to
present concrete ideas, plans and resources to resolve prob-
lems of common interests, and if Croatia presents itself in
the US, not as a victim of war, but as a substantial economic
partner.
All of this must also be considered in the context of
what Gergen sees as new isolationist tendencies in the US.
These may result into an even lesser degree of present mini-
mal US involvement in the region for the benefit of Croatia
and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Gergen would also disappoint
many in Zagreb and Sarajevo with his position that a change
in leadership in the White House would not significantly af-
fect US foreign policy.
David Gergen is a professor of political science at Duke
University in Durham, North Carolina. Until recently he was
director of communications at the White House. Gergen is
considered a guru in the field of political analysis and public
relations. He was chief speech writer for President Richard
Nixon, advisor to President Gerald Ford, and communications
director to President Ronald Reagan. He left the Clinton Ad-
ministration after reorganizing its communication team, as
was envisaged at the time of being engaged.
At the Foreign Policy Association seminar in New York
on April 10, 1995 on the issue of “new internal pressures on
foreign policy,” Gergen spoke about the foundation of Ameri-
can foreign policy by recalling the famous “ask not” speech
by John F. Kennedy. On the issue of foreign policy, President
Kennedy said: “do not ask what American can do for you, but
find what we can do together for the betterment of human
kind.”

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46
 The US, therefore, is prepared to assist a state in achiev-
ing a common interest, but is not willing to aid a state in
realizing specific needs of its own. By this logic, the US would
offer greater support to Croatia if Zagreb would present itself
as a party that would be able to resolve the problems in the
region consistent with Western interests; that is, as a party
that would be able to secure the existence of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, or at the minimum, the existence of the Mus-
lim-Croat federation.
The Clinton Administration would increase its support
for Croatia if Zagreb would offer assistance in respect of
Sarajevo. American public opinion and international political
circumstances do not allow the White House to involve itself
in a more concrete way for the benefit of the Muslim-Croat
federation, even though the so-called “moral group” in Wash-
ington insists on this.
A group around Vice President Albert Gore, National
Security Advisor Anthony Lake, Ambassador to the United
Nations Madeleine Albright, and high-ranking State Depart-
ment official Richard Holbrook would be pleased to have some-
one do that for the US. This group is primarily motivated to
save the Bosnian Muslim community from Serbian genocide,
and at the same time, to prevent a situation where the perpe-
trator of genocide is also rewarded in terms of territory.
A strong Croatia would be able to realize this, and per-
haps only Croatia.
Given that a lobby such as the “moral group” already
exists in Washington, it would not be difficult to persuade the
US that a strong Croatia is the only solution for resolving the
crisis in the region. The group may be willing to do the per-
suading for Croatia.
Gergen considers economic interests as the main and
growing element of US foreign policy. He emphasizes that
public opinion in the US demands that “foreign policy is in
the service of domestic needs.”
If the US were to assist Croatia in resolving the conse-
quences of Serbian aggression, it appears that Zagreb would

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47
need to present itself in the US as a solid economic partner,
and not as a victim of aggression. In his remarks Gergen re-
ferred extensively to the recent study by the Chicago Council
on Foreign Relations, entitled “American Public Opinion and
US Foreign Policy 1995.” The study found that US public
support for “protection of human rights in other countries,”
and for “defending small states from aggression,” fell signifi-
cantly, not only among the general public, but also among
political leaders.
Consequently, if assistance to Croatia were to be pre-
sented in terms of increasing the number of jobs in the US,
Washington would be more likely to support Zagreb. This is
possible. At the minimum, Croatia can engage American firms
in the areas of public relations, banking, privatization, mar-
keting and other similar services. However, achieving this ob-
jective requires Croatia in the first place to open its doors to
American exports and capital.
Gergen claims that the decline in US concern about
problems around the world is closely correlated with the de-
cline of communism, which was a very strong motivator for
American engagement around the world in the past. He also
notes that US attention has fallen because the general public
believes that the US has shouldered the burdens of the world
for over 40 years, and that it cannot continue to do so any
more.
In regard to the former, it follows that if the conflict in
the region were to be presented as expansion of Russian in-
fluence, the US response may be somewhat stronger, but still
not that significant because Boris Yeltsin does not represent
communism. The possibility of an extremist government in
Russia would strengthen the value of this presentation ap-
proach. Nevertheless, Gergen does not envision any new de-
velopments that would motivate the US as much as commu-
nism did.
On the contrary, Gergen sees the US becoming more
and more isolationist. He cites the Chicago institute’s declin-

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48
ing results on watching and listening to international news
as an affirmation of a new wave of isolationism.
Gergen thinks that the decline in public desire for stron-
ger US engagement in world affairs will be an obstacle for the
next White House administration, even if the new president
is the senior Republican Senator Robert Dole. He believes
that the foreign policy of Dole and Newt Gingrich, the major-
ity leader in Congress, would not differ significantly from
Clinton’s. Gergen speaks of Dole and Gingrich as persons
with whom he communicates often and does not have many
differences on foreign policy. He feels that a Republican ad-
ministration in the White House would differ from the present
one only to the extent the Republicans would reduce the
amount of American foreign aid.
What may also be interesting for Croatia, as part of
former Eastern Europe, is that the American public opinion
seeks a reduction in aid to all regions except Latin America
and Eastern Europe. Curiously, US public opinion would like
Washington to reduce aid to Russia, which was treated as a
separate region in the Chicago survey.

Shorter version of April 13, 1995 memo from the Croatian Mis-
sion to the UN. Recast and published upon the request of Presi-
dent Tuman.

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49
 WHY DID THE CROATIAN ARMY WITHDRAW
FROM POSAVINA

Vjesnik, July 31 and August 1, 2002

"Go see the Germans and the Americans right away.

Ask our friends to make demarches to Tudjman to withdraw
the Croatian Army from Posavina." Haris Silajdzic, then the
foreign minister of BiH, was speaking, if I recall correctly,
from the United Arab Emirates, to his ambassador to the UN,
Muhamed Sacirbey, on one line, and me, on the other. "I
discussed this with Izetbegovic, and he is on board," Silajdzic
added.
We quickly made calls to the US and German perma-
nent missions, and scheduled a meeting for the same day
with the German ambassador, Count Detlaf zu Ranzau.
American ambassador Edward Perkins could not see us be-
cause of earlier travel plans, but referred us to his deputy,
Alexander Watson, later ambassador to Brazil. Watson pro-
posed to see us the following day.
To be sure, this was just one of a series of events that
commenced ten years ago in late June, involving many more
diplomats in Europe and the US, all with one objective in
mind: to persuade Franjo Tudjman to withdraw the Croatian
Army (HV) from the strategic corridor of Posavina.
As the 10th anniversary of the fall of Posavina will be
marked during this summer and fall, it will be done with the
firm conviction that the events that culminated in the losses
of Derventa, Modrica and Odzak by mid-July, when the HV
3rd Brigade was recalled to its barracks in Osijek, only to be
sent back too late to assist Bosanski Brod in early October,
was nothing more but a calculated land deal between Tudjman
and Milosevic.
But convictions arising from traumatic wartime events
like this one are often wrong. My experience tells that such
convictions about Posavina are in fact wholly misplaced, and

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that the withdrawal was nothing more than a result of the
contemporaneous policy logic of the western powers. People
like Tudjman, and for that matter, Silajdzic and Izetbegovic,
acted according to the mainstream thinking of the time that
appeared both reasonable and promising.
The logic went something like this: You Croats and
Muslims work with us, while we put pressure on Belgrade,
and you can be sure that we will have a peace deal to your
liking. Posavina is now an area of major fighting, and the
Serbs are simply too strong. To add, they are moving in spe-
cial JNA units. Do not do anything to provoke them, because
thousands of civilians will suffer. The HV should retreat, and
we will make sure the Serbs exercise restraint as well. A peace
deal, fair to you, will be ready by the time London Conference
convenes in August. Reasonable?
To be fair to the West, if we are to recall the Vance-
Owen map, the Posavina region was delivered as promised,
even if only on paper.
But at the time, who was to doubt the ability of the big
powers to implement what they proposed. The mighty UK
was taking over the Presidency of the European Community
from exhausted Portugal that July. The Americans were there
as well, with Cyrus Vance and his deputy Herbert Okun, as
representatives of the UN Secretary-General Butros Butros-
Ghali. They were focusing their energies on setting up the
UNPROFOR mission in Croatia, and also counting on stabil-
ity in BiH.
Count zu Ranzau received us that afternoon is his mod-
ernistic office on the 22nd floor of a rather typical Manhattan
building on the Third Avenue and 40th Street. Sacirbey first
apologized for not paying a courtesy call to his German coun-
terpart, a diplomatic custom for a new ambassador. He was
representing BiH in New York for more than a month by then,
and Germany was a crucial supporter of BiH's recognition.
Ranzau seemed unbothered by the oversight, and made the
transition to the subject matter very easy: "I am very pleased

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that you came. Tell me how can we help you."
"We came to see you upon instructions from my for-
eign minister," began Sacirbey, as diplomatic representations
often begin, and then went into the specifics. "We know that
you have more influence with Zagreb than anyone else, and
we ask you to approach them on an issue important to us,"
began the request. Ranzau's first secretary, Boris Ruge, sit-
ting to his left, was busy taking notes for the cable he would
later write to Bonn. I was doing the same, with the exception
that I did not have to write a cable. Our communications with
Sarajevo early on were virtually nonexistent. If we had a con-
nection once a week, we were lucky. Thus every call during
the first months remains with me as though it happened yes-
terday.
Ranzau listened, sometimes nodding in agreement to
Sacirbey's reasons for the pullout and his understanding of
the policy plans for the region. At the end, he simply asked:
"What does President Izetbegovic think of this?" As instructed,
Sacirbey answered that he is supportive. The meeting ended
with another common but operative diplomatic phrase. "I will
inform my government immediately." I spoke to Ranzau in
1999, retired in his native Baden-Baden. He remembered the
meeting vividly.
The US deputy Watson received us late Friday after-
noon without a note taker. This meeting was less formal, given
that the two had already met, and it was Watson's last ap-
pointment of the day. Nevertheless, Watson listened atten-
tively, and promised to inform Washington, but noted, in light
of the weekend, BiH should not expect a response from the
State Department until the following week. The US was not
yet fully engrossed in the events in the region as the Europe-
ans were.
Herbert Okun is of the same opinion. He told me re-
cently that he and Cyrus Vance were not the key policy people
in the region during the Posavina crisis. The EC Presidency
had the primacy, during the first six months of 1992 via Por-
tugal, and the second six months via the UK. London, and its

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52
foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, Okun thought, was poised
to make a difference in the Balkans. Intermediation of Lord
Carrington was not enough. The UK wanted to hold a major
conference in London at the outset of their Presidency, stop
the fighting at all costs, and establish principles for a future
regional peace settlement.
In order to stop the fighting, London had to have agree-
ment from the two sides. No doubt they went to both Belgrade
and Zagreb, to urge restraint, and to make promises and
threats. But given that Zagreb was the weaker side at the
time, London had more leverage over Tudjman than Milosevic.
One additional lever was Sarajevo. Certainly it was neither
Silajdzic or Izetbegovic's idea to force out the HV. One reason
being, in the summer of 1992, the Army of BiH was not op-
erative.
One might wonder why Sarajevo was asked to become
involved in the first place. Unlike the diplomatic novels, or
spy movies, the wishes of big powers are seldom transmitted
in one single demarche, but almost always as a lobbying ef-
fort involving many relevant parties. And Sarajevo was rel-
evant indeed. As Silajdzic noted, it had powerful friends.
Some months later, at the meeting with the editors of
the New York Times, Izetbegovic was asked whether the
Posavina scenario, and the earlier Boban-Karadzic meeting
in Graz, was evidence of the Tudjman-Milosevic deal to carve
up BiH. Despite insistence from Abe Rosenthal, well known
for his anti-Croat commentaries, Izetbegovic repeatedly stuck
to his cord saying that while there is a lot of talk in this direc-
tion, there is no evidence. In fact, Izetbegovic knew that the
evidence points to the contrary.
The importance of understanding the events that led
to the HV withdrawal from Posavina goes beyond the events
themselves, because of the Rosenthalian logic that later be-
came institutionalized about all developments that followed
the loss of the corridor. From then on, Belgrade and Zagreb
became responsible for just about everything. Equally. And

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the big carve-up was on. At the ICTY, for instance, this is
undisputed modus operendi.
But as these series of events show, as well as my later
experiences in the Security Council, peace negotiations in
Geneva, New York and Washington, and a later assignment
in Brussels, the events in the region were dictated primarily
by the interests of the western powers, and after that, in the
following order: by the Serb side, as the militarily strongest
player and a client of Russia; by the Muslim side as the pri-
mary victim enjoying the sympathies of the Islamic East and
the secular West; and, only then, by the interests of the
bumbling and seemingly irrelevant Croats.
Interestingly, the Croats did impose themselves as a
relevant party for a short period of time in 1995. The clan-
destine US support for Operation Storm did not come be-
cause it would benefit Croatia, however. Different issues were
at play.
Firstly, a moralist faction in the US State Department
wanted the Muslim community in BiH saved and satisfied at
all cost, and Croats were to be their proxies, or the "junk yard
dogs," as dubbed in Richard Holbrooke's To End a War. Sec-
ondly, as noted by the White House staffer Ivo Daalder in
Getting to Dayton, the pragmatist National Security Council
saw the BiH crisis as an election year obstacle for Bill Clinton
that needed to be resolved before the campaign picked up in
1996. There was probably a third reason: the Pentagon wanted
to minimize the standby resources it was committing to an
area of minor strategic importance, comparing to the Middle
East and Asia theaters. Consequently, it could have used a
partial disengagement from the Balkans via balance of power
that only the Croatian Army could establish.
The results of the Dayton peace agreement, and the
way it has been implemented since then also shows that the
four principal parties retained the original pecking order.
While no one would dispute the principle that Wash-
ington and the European capitals would tend to have most
influence on the events in the region, given the resources

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they committed there, most still prefer to use the perennial, if
nonexistent, Milosevic-Tudjman deal to explain everything that
occurred there in the last decade. The Milosevic-Tudjman
paradigm is certainly easier to apply intellectually, then the
complicated matrix of interests involving four key parties,
spanning over four years of armed conflict. To others it serves
as a vehicle to shift the blame, or to score domestic “armchair
quarterback” or “told you so” political points.
This convenient paradigm has certainly captured the
imaginations of the café society, policy pundits and histori-
ans alike. Thus our recent history sounds more like a bro-
ken record about monsterous Milosevic, that he was, and de-
vious Tudjman, that he was not, than a serious attempt to
understand our past, and reconcile with its excesses and
mistakes. But we would be much better off by discarding the
charged convictions of the Rosenthals of the world, and start
wondering about the evidence, as Izetbegovic did in that meet-
ing in New York. The evidence is all around us. We should
only care to look, and place our wartime biases where they
belong, not into history, but into the past. It should start
with the Posavina debacle, even if ten years later.

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 MYSTERY OF THE MUSLIM-CROAT CONFLICT

When fighting between Muslims and Croats broke out

in Mostar in mid-April 1993, I recall talk among foreign re-
porters in the region that the US diplomatic mission in Zagreb,
fully convinced that the fighting was instigated by the Army
of Bosnia-Herzegovina (ABiH), asked four Zagreb-based west-
ern reporters to go down and take a closer look. Over the
years I have never had a chance to research this story fur-
ther, even though I always wanted to look up the New York
Times reporter Chuck Sudetic, reportedly one of the four
scribes summoned.
Whatever the initial thoughts of US diplomats, the pic-
ture about the origins of the Muslim-Croat fighting developed
in a different direction. The dominant perspective became that
fighting in Mostar and further north in central Bosnia was a
simple land grab by the Croatian Defense Council (HVO), act-
ing as an extended arm of Zagreb to establish Greater Croatia.
The Washington Post was a rare English language newspaper
with some reports that suggested it was the ABiH that was on
an offensive. But this did not leave a lasting impression.
This view predominated until 2003, when a US mili-
tary historian, Charles R. Shrader, published his book “The
Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History,
1992-1994.” The book did not address the issue of Mostar,
but its overall analysis of the ABiH’s ambitions and plans
implied that the initial call by US diplomats about Mostar
may have been correct.
Shrader’s book was published in Zagreb the following
year, and sold out in record time. It was not surprising given
that the subject matter intrigued many and given the recol-
lections of people in central Bosnia, whose real life memories
are closer to Shrader’s findings than to hardened mainstream
thinking.
The book also drew attention because it raised issues
that had wider international implications. It appeared at the

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time of US led intervention in Iraq, during which questions of
“sexed-up reports” and Paris advocacy for the Islamic world
became commonplace concepts. Even though he wrote the
book much before the Iraq crisis, Shrader’s conclusions sug-
gested that both notions, even if apparently new, were appli-
cable in explaining this highly controversial war-within-a-war
that took place a decade ago in Europe’s own backyard.
Shrader worked mainly from the International Crimi-
nal Tribunal trial transcripts in the Blaskic, Kordic, and other
central Bosnia cases, and concluded quite explicitly that any-
one who knew anything about military issues and evidence
could never surmise that Croats initiated the conflict in cen-
tral Bosnia. Moreover, he found no grand scheme to ethni-
cally cleanse the Muslims from the area, as the ICTY incor-
rectly found. Quite the contrary, said Shrader.
He presented the case that Sarajevo made an early stra-
tegic decision, in Fall 1992 to fight the Croats because they
were weaker than the Serbs, because it wanted to resettle the
Muslim refugees from eastern Bosnia and Posavina into the
Lasva Valley, and because it wanted to seize military produc-
tion facilities under Croat control in Busovaca, Vitez and Novi
Travnik.
Indeed, Gen. Sefer Halilovic, the first chief operations
officer of ABiH, admitted as much in his book Cunning Strat-
egy. (“Lukava Strategija,” S. Halilovic, Marsal, Sarajevo, 1997.)
The key element of that strategy was to seize military plants
in Gorazde, Konjic, Bugojno, and Novi Travnik. The last three
were under the control of the HVO.
What is striking in Halilovic’s book is the underlining
theme that the Croats, from the outset, represented as much
danger to the future of the BiH state as the Serbs, making
them an equal target. Tellingly, as a Belgrade-trained officer,
he often referred to the Croats with the derogatory term
Ustashe. Halilovic also wrote about close relations between
Izetbegovic associates and Milosevic envoys throughout 1992-
93, including discussions about territorial swaps and the di-
vision of BiH between the two. In later interviews Halilovic

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often referred to discussions among the Muslim leadership
about resettlement of displaced Muslims to the Croat-major-
ity areas, the so-called ethnic stacking, a policy which he and
the majority of the leadership supported.
Similarly, a senior Muslim official told this writer in
spring 1993 that the Muslims would not seek negotiations
with the Croats because the thinking in Sarajevo was that
they can be defeated. The prevailing logic among the Muslim
leaders was, he said, that the Croats were much weaker than
the Serbs, that Croatia would not help them much because it
had its own problems, that BiH Croats inhabited the most
economically viable parts of the country, in the Lasva and
Neretva valleys, that they control access to the sea, and that
eventually a larger war would erupt between Serbia and
Croatia, where the HVO would be forced to retreat southward
and to the flanks to help the Croatian Army around Dubrovnik
in the east and Knin in the west, making it even easier for the
Muslims to push to the south.
This policy approach seems to have had international
dimensions as well. Intelligence analyst, Cees Wiebes, wrote
in Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, that early on
in the conflict Iran supported a Muslim-Orthodox alliance
against the Roman Catholics through a high-ranking Muslim
official Hasan Cengic.
Back in December 1992, at the Extraordinary Session
of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, I participated in a meeting between Croatian foreign
minister Zdenko Skrabalo and Alija Izetbegovic, where
Skrabalo appealed to Izetbegovic to accept Franjo Tudjman’s
offer to form joint military headquarters, either in Zagreb or
Bugojno and take on the Serb extremists together. “Presi-
dent Tudjman believes that Belgrade will not stop, and that
the West will never help you, or us. Thus, he thinks we must
turn to each other and defend ourselves jointly,” Skrabalo
said.
Skrabalo brought with him his top diplomats, Hido
Biscevic and Mario Nobilo, as well as the Zagreb Mufti Sefko

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Omerbasic. Omerbasic also lobbied hard, arguing that
Tudjman’s offer was genuine, and consistent with Zagreb’s
assistance in arming the ABiH. But Izetbegovic refused, say-
ing that such an alliance would further antagonize the Serbs.
More likely, however, Izetbegovic said no because the Halilovic
strategy was already well in place.
The Skrabalo-Izetbegovic meeting was cut short be-
cause of the early arrival of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the later as-
sassinated Chechen leader. He was to meet with Izetbegovic
next. Skrabalo wanted Dudayev to wait, in hope that he could
persuade Izetbegovic, but eventually recognized that he was
getting nowhere. He left the room as quietly as if he had never
come. He did not even get a parting let’s discuss this again.
As it turned out, the thought of a Muslim-Croat alliance at
this point was as evasive as Chechen independence.
Shrader wrote that in January 1993, the ABiH carried
out what he called in military jargon a probing attack, to gauge
the HVO defenses, and in April 1993, it launched its first
major attack. The probing attack largely surprised the Croats,
but they were prepared for the main attack. After January
1993 they began gathering intelligence on the ABiH, and
rightly anticipated that the main attack would come on April
15. Shrader told this writer that the fact that Croats did not
spy on ABiH before this, represents key evidence from a mili-
tary perspective that the Croats had no ill intentions toward
the Muslims.
Central Bosnia HVO commander Tihomir Blaskic pre-
pared and practiced what Shrader called “active defense,” a
common NATO pre-emptive tactic. This first ABiH operation
to fragment the Lasva Valley into isolated pockets failed, but
was repeated two more times in the fall. He added that the
Lasva Valley would have been overtaken if it were not for the
early 1994 Washington Accords, as the Croats were substan-
tially under-manned, under-gunned, and completely en-
circled.
The situation of the Croat community in central Bosnia
was likened to the misfortune of the French Union camp at

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Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Like the French troops that sat in a
great tactical and numerical disadvantage in the Nam Yum
valley against Vietminh soldiers on the surrounding hills, the
Croat community was squeezed into an even smaller area in
the lowlands of Lasva Valley against Muslim forces on the
mountainsides. Unlike the Union troops, the Croats man-
aged to survive until the Washington Accords due to Blaskic’s
active defense strategy.
Shrader found no evidence that HV troops or advisers
operated in central Bosnia. He did add in a footnote that there
was evidence of HV troops in the Gornji Vakuf area, to the
south, in January 1994, but that they were not active in the
fighting in central Bosnia. In February 1994, the Security
Council used the reports about these troop movements as
evidence of Croatia’s interference in BiH.
The massing of HV troops in Gornji Vakuf is consis-
tent with what one Tudjman aide told me some years later.
He said that troops were moved there in December 1993 be-
cause Zagreb feared that the Lasva Valley would be overrun,
and Zagreb wanted to manage the resultant refugee flows
that would have destabilized Dalmatia, and to prevent fur-
ther ABiH advances to the south that could have isolated
Dubrovnik once again.
Shrader relied extensively on UNPROFOR and the Eu-
ropean Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM) reports on
the events in Lasva Valley, and concluded that UNPROFOR
was largely balanced in its reporting. It became better after
being initially surprised by the developments. But he went on
and said that ECMM monitors consistently misinterpreted
events to the detriment of Croats and downplayed atrocities
against them, which appear to have been more numerous
and widespread.
In the “Sources” section at the end of the book he
pointed a finger at the French head of the ECMM, Jean-Pierre
Thebault, as the reason for such ECMM reporting. Shrader
speculated that Thebault acted under national instructions,
consistent with the Paris policy to advocate Arab interests in

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the West. To add to this point of view, Shrader noted that
ECMM reporting improved once Sir Martin Garrod took over
the mission in October 1993.
Thebault’s reporting may have also been skewed by
the mainstream thinking at the time that a Milosevic-Tudjman
agreement was in place to divide BiH between the two. Within
this school of thought, the HV withdrawal from the Posavina
corridor in Bosnia in 1992 represented the first manifesta-
tion of this collusion, and the fighting in central Bosnia the
second. However, Thebault must have known that despite
discussions in this direction, there was no Milosevic-Tudjman
agreement. Moreover, as an EU official, he must have known
that the HV withdrew from Posavina due to pressure on Zagreb
from the European powers in summer 1992. Alija Izetbegovic
and Haris Silajdzic also demanded withdrawal at the time.
Yet another reason for Thebault’s biased reporting may
have been the EC plan for BiH at the time, which looked to
assign 33% of BiH territory to the Muslim-majority republic.
The EC lead negotiator Lord Owen wanted to achieve this
percentage by assigning the largest part of the Lasva Valley
to the Muslim-majority republic. As a Brussels civil servant,
Thebault would have understood his role as needing to craft
reports to advance the policy goals of the negotiators, i.e., to
support the ABiH offensive. In turn, Sir Martin would have
been motivated to change the direction of ECMM’s reports
when Brussels and Lord Owen began pressuring the Muslim
side to accept the three-republic Owen-Stoltenberg plan in
fall 1993 after the Croats accepted it in the summer.
Thebault may have also been motivated by the think-
ing popular at the time with Milosevic apologists and often
repeated by non-interventionists, such as the French presi-
dent, which sought to paint Tudjman and the Croats in the
same light as the Serbs, thus lessening the support for inter-
vention against Belgrade.
Taking cue from the Iraq crisis, one simply cannot over-
look the concept of sexing up. But Thebault clearly went to
the extreme. In fact, he was not sexing up, but turning things

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upside down. As a result, the mainstream view of this con-
flict remains so convoluted and yet, as such, embedded in
stone.
Thus, for instance, such a view compelled the Blaskic
defense in later stages of the trial to change its tack and ef-
fectively accept the main premise of the ICTY prosecution
about a Croat grand scheme to ethnically cleanse the Mus-
lims, and argue that Blaskic, despite being the chief military
officer in the area, was innocent because he personally did
not partake in such a (non-existent) campaign.
In the end Blaskic’s defense strategy seems to have
worked. However, his sentence was lessened probably not so
much because of defense evidence, but because Blaskic was
not a formal member of the HDZ. The party eventually be-
came viewed by the ICTY as a criminal enterprise, and its
members guilty by commission or association, and non-mem-
bers only by commission.
One decade later after the events in central Bosnia,
Shrader’s book appears to have come out too late for the cen-
tral Bosnia cases at the Tribunal. But its outstanding research
and new concepts in international relations, might make it a
powerful document in the future. It is the first work on this
conflict in any language. Some may be able to use its findings
to access new evidence that could be used in national courts
in the countries where they are serving their unjust sentences.

Based on earlier review of Charles Shrader book for the “Asso-

ciation for Croatian Studies Bulliten”, Fall 2003, and the fore-
word to the Croatian language edition of the book.

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 ROLE OF IRAN IN THE WORLD AND BOSNIA

Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2004

The 9/11 Commission findings that Iran may have fa-

cilitated the passage of ten hijackers across its territory sur-
prised no one. Coupled with earlier acknowledgement that
Iraq did not have WMDs or ties to the plotters, the findings
raise new questions about President George W. Bush’s choice
in attacking Iraq, while allowing a more culpable Iran to get
away.
Yet Bush critics now pointing a finger at Iran as a lead-
ing destabilizing factor in both the pre- and post-9/11 Middle
East shy away from proposing vigorous prescriptions against
Teheran’s mullahs. Some even argue that the best way to
pacify Iran is through behind-the-scenes dialogue and coop-
eration; a modern-day detente with a new Evil Empire.
So why are the Bush critics so reticent? For the same
reason the White House passed over Iran and invaded Iraq in
the first place. Iran is simply too populous, its society too
radicalized, its economy cash-rich from energy exports, and
its military might unpredictably dangerous because of its own
WMD.
As such, there were no reasonable guarantees that an
invasion would have been remotely successful, nor that it
could work in the future. The administration bypassed Saudi
Arabia and Syria for somewhat similar reasons, despite their
much more detailed ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Saudi Arabia would have been the prime candidate,
but its ruling family is mostly pro-Western, and was side-
stepped. Syria, meanwhile, is too close to Israel and the Pal-
estinian Authority, and came with an image as a Western
partner; an image that would have been difficult to turn over-
night.
Once Washington decided that it needed to send a
message to the heart of the Islamic world because of 9/11,

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Iran and others were spared. Iraq ended up being the target
due to simple mathematics. It was by far the weakest dicta-
torship of the four, and, to boot, had the rogue image that
could be exploited right away.
But the message the US wanted to send appears not to
have reached Iran.
Most recently, among other serious transgressions,
Teheran has resumed its nuclear program, abruptly ended
the trial of persons accused of murdering Canadian journal-
ist Zahra Kazemi, and forced British patrol boats into Iranian
waters only to arrest the sailors and have them make humili-
ating television apologies.
Iran clearly continues to be a menace, but is it also a
society bent on suicidal means? Take Iran’s policy on Bosnia
in the early Nineties, the last global security problem prior to
9/11.
At the time when there was almost universal support
for a Muslim-Croat alliance in Bosnia to fight the genocidal
Belgrade machine of Slobodan Milosevic, Iran urged the
Bosnian Muslims to ditch the Catholic Croats and form an
alliance with the Orthodox Serbs, to create an Eastern front
against the West.
What could have been a suicidal policy for Bosnian
Muslims was put an end to by Washington in early 1994,
when it realized that Croatia was moving troops into Bosnia
to stem the Muslim advances against the minority Croats.
The point man in this Iran endeavor, according to a
recent book by Cees Wiebes on Western intelligences activi-
ties in Bosnia, was Hasan Cengic, a close aide and moneybag
of Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic. Not surprisingly, shortly
after the US-brokered truce between the Muslims and Croats,
Washington made sure Cengic was removed from power in
Sarajevo.
Iran of course later changed its policy, and instead of
supplying the Muslims through Serbia and Montenegro, be-
gan supplying them via Croatia. But clearly, its early foray
into the Balkans could have been disastrous for the Muslims

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there and costly for East-West relations; this only due to
Teheran’s knee-jerk anti-Western ideology.
With Iran so ideological in its goals and so unpredict-
able in its policy, it is a dangerous foe indeed. And in some
ways, it has now been emboldened.
Teheran realizes that the US, bogged down in Iraq,
cannot afford to venture further. It feels free. Moreover, it has
assumed the role of undisputed leader of the Muslim world,
with Syria and Saudi Arabia weakened, and Egypt and Paki-
stan having lost credibility with ordinary Muslims. How to
respond to this resurging Iran is the key question for the
Middle East? Israel is clear ∑ assertive containment ∑ but the
West is not.
The US keeps Iran in diplomatic isolation, quietly sup-
ports Israel’s hard line on nuclear weapons, and at the same
time remains silent on Europe’s open dialogue with the
mullahs.
Interestingly, were it not for its weapons program,
Washington would be tempted to establish a modus vivendi
with Iran just like Europe, but because of it, it will continue
to look to strengthen Israel in any way possible. Israel will
remain a strategic proxy for the US, as first-strike deterrent
and primary source of intelligence. And Iran’s new-found bold-
ness will be kept within bounds.

Original title: “Iran, emboldened and suicidal”

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 WHY HERZEG-BOSNIA

One of the most controversial developments in the

Bosnian-Herzegovene conflict was the founding of the Croat
Community of Herzeg-Bosnia, which was later reconstituted
into the Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia under the Owen-
Stoltenberg plan. From the outset, outsiders saw it as a car-
bon copy of the breakaway Serb statelets in BiH and Croatia.
For this reason it was quickly condemned by the pub-
lic opinion in the region and abroad. Yet, it was tolerated by
the policy makers for some time. There were good reasons for
this. Western diplomats saw the early Herzeg-Bosnia as an
expected development driven by natural desire for self-de-
fense, especially in view of Sarajevo’s inaction. Others viewed
it as a counterweight to complete domination of the Serb army
in the country.
Some diplomats, such as the early US special envoy,
Reginald Bartholomew, were heard on number of occasions
praising the foresight of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He often noted their desire to stay within BiH as an autono-
mous community and their insistence on retaining Herzeg-
Bosnia to be able to run their own defense affairs and to have
a bargaining chip at international negotiations to achieve that
autonomy. He and other peace negotiators also understood
Zagreb’s desire to keep Herzeg-Bosnia as a proxy to protect
the narrow, and largely indefensible, Dalmatian coast.
Western policy support for Herzeg-Bosnia eventually
waned after Sarajevo decided to use its meager military re-
sources to gain territory from the weaker Croats, rather than
the much stronger Serbs, and especially after Sarajevo be-
came successful at it. Herzeg-Bosnia became sidelined not
only on account of its military weakness, but also in large
part because it showed itself to be ungovernable by western
standards. Its inability to deal with corruption, to prosecute
war crimes and to promote ethnic co-existence made it easy
for the Western powers to write it off completely.

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 I recall a foreboding conversation with a Security Coun-
cil member at that time, Ambassador Colin Keating of New
Zealand, who confided on the sidelines of a Security Council
meeting after the Ahmici massacre in April 1993 that this
would be the end of Herzeg-Bosnia unless the Croat leader-
ship took steps to identify and punish the perpetrators. As it
turned out no local institution has had the strength and vi-
sion to deal with this issue head on to this day. Consequently,
the ICTY has dealt with it largely in a superficial way.
The rogue image of Herzeg-Bosnia remains and usu-
ally overwhelms the actual reasons for its founding. It was
created with Zagreb’s initiative and support. Zagreb had nu-
merous interests to do this.
First, after losing control of one-third of its territory in
Slavonia and Krajina, and fearing that the Serb forces would
continue by taking Dalmatian towns from Dubrovnik to
Karlobag, Zagreb wanted to establish defense lines in the
neighboring country.
Even a cursory look at the map makes this consider-
ation reasonable. Without the buffer zone in Herzegovina, cities
and towns in Dalmatia could not be defended other than from
the sea or from the air. One needs not to be a military person
to know that this could not be a viable defense strategy. This
becomes doubly true when a party at risk lacks any substan-
tial sea and air assets.
Any resident of Split will tell you that their city is de-
fended at Kupres, a southernmost town in Bosnia, not on the
Riva, they add for emphasis. Similarly, any resident of
Dubrovnik will tell you that their city is defended at Popovo
Polje valley in Herzegovina, and not on the Stradun, the main
street of the Old Town. The northwestern-most defense point
of Dubrovnik, for instance, was in the village of Bacnik, south
of Herzegovene town of Stolac. A large bunker built and
manned by the Croatian Army still stands there. It is an im-
posing sight from the nearby village of Core, where I was born.
When I visited the area in August 1995, I recall meet-
ing Croatian soldiers from Varazdin in the neighboring village

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of Ober. They had been rotating there for years, not to invade
and carve out a piece of Bosnia, as commonly believed, but to
secure Dubrovnik.
Due to such military considerations Zagreb was com-
pelled to spend substantial amounts of money in Herzeg-
Bosnia to finance in effect a proxy army, and to subsidize the
social needs of the population in the buffer zone. In some
ways, Herzegovina became to Croatia, what historical Krajina
had been to the Austro-Hungarian Empire ∑ the first line of
defense from a major source of instability.
Second, and aside from the interest of self-defense,
Zagreb supported Herzeg-Bosnia to satisfy local Croat de-
mands for assistance in view of Sarajevo’s dereliction. An as-
sociated interest was to have the Croats stay in their homes
and not to turn into costly refugees in Croatia.
Third, Zagreb saw the Herzeg-Bosnia entity as a ve-
hicle to protect the constituent status of the Croat commu-
nity in response to Sarajevo’s opposition to this arrangement
after the independence referendum. At that time the Croat
community was fragmented about the proper solution for it-
self, and the state as a whole. For Zagreb, Herzeg-Bosnia was
a happy medium between strong secessionist elements in
Herzegovina, and various autonomy arrangements coming
from Croat leaders in Bosnia.
Fourth, both Zagreb and Croats in Bosnia and
Herzegovina saw Herzeg-Bosnia as a calling card for a seat at
the peace conferences on BiH. Both sides always acknowl-
edged that Herzeg-Bosnia would be dissolved once a final ar-
rangement for BiH had been reached.
Fifth, and in a worst case scenario, both sides saw
Herzeg-Bosnia as a vehicle to retain territory if BiH were to be
divided.
Zagreb saw Herzeg-Bosnia in this progression, as did
Croat leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Needless to say, all
local opposition to Tudjman and almost all observers from
abroad, saw Herzeg-Bosnia almost exclusively within the last
scenario. This no doubt occurred because of the intellectual

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simplicity of such an explanation and perhaps even more so
out of policy convenience.
Franjo Tudjman’s early view that BiH should be sev-
ered along the lines of the Cvetkovic-Macek agreement also
played a role. Tudjman’s position at the time was based on
several factors. His preoccupation with history as a basis for
understanding and solving conflicts was certainly one of them.
But the more important reason was Sarajevo’s opposition to
Zagreb’s and Ljubljana’s decentralization plan for the former
Yugoslavia and its tendency to look to Belgrade for a final
say. Thus, Sarajevo was seen either as a disinterested party
or a satellite of Belgrade. Another key reason that was often
overlooked was Tudjman’s preference to reach a negotiated
settlement with Belgrade, given its early overwhelming ad-
vantage in military, financial and diplomatic terms. As mili-
tary people like to say, generals, knowing the horrors of war,
work to avoid war at all cost, and politicians, who know noth-
ing about its human dimension, like to pursue it.
Once Alija Izetbegovic changed his policy and opted
for independence of BiH, Franjo Tudjman changed his views
as well. He no longer argued for a division, but for a united
BiH that would give BiH Croats a substantial amount of au-
tonomy. Tudjman then became involved with the BiH Croat
leadership in order to pacify the various factions, some of
which wanted division, and others that wanted different forms
of autonomy. How various factions ran Herzeg-Bosnia and
its institutions at different times and in different areas re-
mains an open issue. This, however, should not be reflective
on Zagreb policy or its motivations in BiH.
From my experience, once BiH became recognized,
Zagreb had little appetite for discussions about its division.
For me, one event in particular stands out, and attests to this
policy evolution.
At an informal lunch break during the Owen-
Stoltenberg negotiations in Geneva in summer 1993, I found
myself sharing a table with Izetbegovic and Tudjman.
Izetbegovic and I were already sitting at the table, when

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Tudjman joined us. This surprised me as Tudjman was very
clannish and would always sit with his closest aides. More-
over, the two men in all these years could never find a real
comfort level for sincere conversation.
But that morning at the negotiating table Momcilo
Krajisnik, in a very eerily moment, screamed at Izetbegovic:
“Son of a bitch, Alija, I will cut your throat and the throats of
all your Muslims,” after Izetbegovic objected to an issue. So
my first thought was that perhaps Tudjman felt a human
need to somehow comfort Izetbegovic. This, in any case, was
the reason I sat down with him, even though I came there to
assist Mate Boban. It did not seem right that he was so alone
after Krajisnik’s violent outburst.
This was probably not the reason why Tudjman came,
however. As it turned out later, Krajisnik was notorious for
gangster-like interventions. They were usually shrugged off
as doing business. After such outbursts, the co-chairmen often
acted as if they did not hear him. So did everyone else. The
silence in this case was prompted also by the fact that the
interpreter, a young blind woman, went blank after Krajisnik
uttered his threat, and the co-chairmen quickly called for a
lunch break. They had sensed something unusual had hap-
pened.
Tudjman wanted to talk about the delineation of the
internal border between the Muslim-majority republic and
the Croat-majority republic in central Bosnia (Owen-
Stoltenburg plan was to patch the country together with three
highly autonomous republics within the Union of Bosnia and
Herzegovina). But Izetbegovic wanted nothing of it. He did
not want to talk about central Bosnia, he said, and Tudjman
should not bother him with it. They should just discuss
Herzegovina, Izetbegovic turned quickly. “Take your western
Herzegovina, annex it tomorrow and we shall go on.”
My first thought was that Izetbegovic was tired of the
negotiations given the morning session, and was simply bluff-
ing Tudjman. Testing to see how far he can take him for a
moment. But Tudjman appeared to take him seriously, and

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went on point by point how he cannot do that. First, he said,
this would be a kiss-of-death precedent for the occupied ter-
ritories in Croatia. Then he went on, saying that Croatian
public opinion would not tolerate it; the majority of Croats in
BiH would feel betrayed; and, the Roman Catholic Church
leadership, both in Sarajevo and Zagreb would be outraged.
Tudjman, I believe, felt the need to say all of this be-
cause the thinking among policy people both in the region
and abroad was that Sarajevo was always ready to give away
western Herzegovina, as well as eastern Bosnia if that would
leave them a larger centralized Muslim-majority state. He may
have even thought that Izetbegovic, whose forces were win-
ning in central Bosnia at the time, may have wanted to play a
strong hand against the Croats, and he wanted no part of it.
In this meeting Tudjman was thinking and saying ev-
erything that his opponents were saying in arguments against
his perceived policy of wanting, and secretly working, to sever
Bosnia. His policy had changed long before, but as noted ear-
lier, the intellectual simplicity of the grand design between
Milosevic and Tudjman was always so much more appealing,
and certainly politically opportune.

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 2.
Experimental International Criminal Law
as History

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250
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 A CRUCIAL MOMENT FOR
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 9, 2001

The importance of the handover of Slobodan Milosevic

to the authorities at the Hague is overstated. The credibility
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugo-
slavia (ICTY) amongst the people in the region has been terri-
bly tarnished over the years. So instead of hailing the pend-
ing trial as a panacea, the Western powers would be wise to
treat it as nothing more than a crucial first step in reorganiz-
ing the ICTY and rebranding its image.
The ICTY’s purpose was to prosecute individuals re-
sponsible for the crimes of war, and if carried out with fair-
ness and equity, to serve as the driving force in the reconcili-
ation process necessary to bring stability to the region.
Unfortunately, the ICTY has not gained the level of cred-
ibility required to assure that it can effect these noble goals.
Note the recent remarks by former Yugoslav defense minister
Dragoljub Ostojic, who said that he would rather go to the
Hague and become a national hero than be tried at home and
be remembered as a criminal or traitor. His statement at-
tests to the real problems with international justice gone un-
checked.
The observers in the region say that the gap developed
due to the ICTY’s many staged actions, often timed to major
political events; its non-chronological approach to prosecu-
tions; and the eight years of impotence with respect to arrest-
ing the real culprits in the war.
The legal community points to the ICTY’s legal innova-
tions in substantive law, flawed rules of evidence, inequality
of legal weapons between the prosecution and the defense,
and dogmatic rather than fair prosecutors. The standards for
prosecutorial behavior established in Berger v. United States
escape many an ICTY prosecutor.

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 The ICTY’s credibility problem extends beyond the re-
gion and the legal profession. Russia, China and some non-
aligned states such as Mexico, would like to end its mandate.
However, the ICTY should not be folded. Rather, it should be
overhauled, from a legal and policy perspective. The Milosevic
handover is thus a great opportunity to recast the ICTY. Other
steps should follow immediately.
First and foremost, the western powers should call an
international conference to review the work of the ICTY. De-
spite the Milosevic handover, the ICTY is at the crossroads.
Faced with numerous problems, but effectively operating in a
vacuum, it is unlikely to be able to reorganize on its own.
International bodies that should have policy jurisdiction over
it, as well as governments and legal experts in the region
must urgently become engaged in its reform.
In addition to the credibility gap, the ICTY faces other
problems. The Bosnian Serb entity is not cooperative. There
exists a tendency of selective cooperation by other parties.
The finances for the prosecution are limited, and even more
so for the defense. The ICTY is creating law that cannot be
found in any national jurisdiction, and thus is unlikely to
stand in the future permanent International Criminal Court.
Then there are demands from the permanent members of the
Security Council to end its mandate.
If the ICTY is to survive and with beneficial results, it
clearly needs a new mandate. The law it practices should be
harmonized with pre-1990 international criminal law stan-
dards and practice, as well as the national laws of the coun-
tries in the region. The latter is especially important since
these countries will continue to try cases after the ICTY ends
its work later in the decade. The former represents the guid-
ance of the United Nations Secretary-General and the Secu-
rity Council at the ICTY’s inception.
Additional improvements should be considered. The
International Court of Justice should be engaged to rule on
such “collective” issues as the question of international con-
flict and the nature of conflict, because the ICTY is mandated

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to decide only on the crimes of “individuals”. An independent
appeals process must be crafted, perhaps involving the na-
tional courts, thus creating a natural mechanism to bring
international criminal law closer to national law practices.
The trials should be moved to home courts as soon as pos-
sible, and serving of sentences to home country prisons.
Secondly, the indictment against Milosevic should be
expanded to include war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Croatia. The common wisdom in the region says that
Milosevic would have never been indicted by the ICTY had
there been no Kosovo. If his earlier campaigns, in many ways
much more devastating, were to be condoned, the Prosecu-
tion would add a final nail to the coffin of the ICTY credibility.
Thirdly, the western powers should use its forces as
well as influence with Banja Luka and Belgrade to arrest Ratko
Mladic and Radovan Kardzic. New “big fish” indictments and
arrests in respect of decimation of Vukovar and the shelling
of Dubrovnik and Zagreb should follow. Moreover, indict-
ments and arrests in respect to crimes against Croats in the
Lasva and Neretva river valleys in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(BiH) should finally commence after years of promises.
Fourthly, the ICTY should muster enough strength on
its own to recast itself as a judicial institution. Up to now, by
walking step-in-step with the western visitors to the region, it
has been seen primarily as a convenient tool of western policy
makers. This could be done by emphasizing the role of the
president of the ICTY before that of the Prosecutor and by re-
considering its position that all sides in the Balkans are equally
guilty. This thinking was popular in the early nineties as an
excuse for western inaction. Policy fictions that served as
mere fig leaves should now be discarded. The ICTY media
service should also work to temper its dispatches consistent
with the principle that indictees are innocent until proven
guilty.
All of this is important because the region still has
many credible politicians that are very skeptical about the
ICTY. Yugoslavia’s popular president Vojislav Kostunica has

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in fact belittled the ICTY as an outdated political tool, not
worth a serious thought, and opposed the handover of
Milosevic. But he is not the only leader in the region that
thinks this way.
Late last year Croatia’s influential deputy premier
Goran Granic did not mince words either, calling the ICTY a
politically-driven institution, bent on re-writing history of the
recent wars. His superior, premier Ivica Racan added that
unless the ICTY retracted, he would ask his parliament to
reconsider Croatia’s open door policy towards the ICTY.
Given the credibility gap and recurring balks by fair-
minded Balkan leaders, a legitimate question arises whether
things at the ICTY have indeed gone astray. Instead of seeing
moderate leaders such as Kostunica and Ivica Racan of Croatia
as problems, the West should take their legitimate concerns
as a cue to review and upgrade the work of ICTY. This must
be done for the benefit of the institution itself, for the peace
and stability in the region, and also for the benefit of the
developing field of international criminal law. The Milosevic
handover is nothing more but an opportunity. It says change
is possible. The momentum it has created ought not be squan-
dered.

Co-authored with Barbara Novosel, who worked on the de-

fense side in the Kordic case for close to three years.

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 INTERNATIONAL-BRAND JUSTICE
EARNS BAD MARKS IN ZAGREB

The Wall Street Journal Europe, July 13, 2001

When members of the Israeli Knesset discuss the PLO

and a peace settlement behind closed doors, questions of bor-
ders and Jerusalem take a backseat to another important
issue: Will the final documents conclude that the Palestin-
ians left Israel on their own after 1947, or that they were
expelled? For many, this crucial bit of history remains a key
stumbling block to a settlement. To forward-looking Israelis,
this question goes beyond historical responsibility. They fear
that a negative formulation may result into a plethora of indi-
vidual lawsuits, demanding financial remedies that will for-
ever hamper Israeli citizens. Worse yet, it may provoke a Pal-
estinian moral cause for the return of territories at some point
in the future.
On Sunday, the Croatian parliament will debate an
almost identical issue: Did the Serbs leave the Krajina region
of Croatia in 1995 or were they expelled? The extraordinary
session of the Sabor was triggered by last week’s visit of the
International Criminal Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Carla del
Ponte to Zagreb with two sealed indictments of senior Croatian
military figures. There’s speculation that two generals will be
charged — not for individual crimes, but for command re-
sponsibility — for condoning a systematic campaign of ethnic
cleansing of Serb civilians by troops under their watch.
As ethnic cleansing is generally viewed as a form of
genocide, Croatia’s opposition and its leading independent
intellectuals have cried foul. In a letter to Ms. del Ponte last
month, Prime Minister Ivica Racan warned that Croatia could
not accept politically laden charges nor indictments based on
command responsibility. But that’s just what he has gotten.
In Zagreb, they say that the charges are so whimsical that
Ms. del Ponte could have inserted any two names in the enve-
lopes.

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 The Tribunal’s policy-driven charges against Croatia
stem from a school of thought popular in the early 1990s,
which held that all sides in the former Yugoslavia conflict
were equally responsible. It was a policy fiction that served as
a fig leaf for Western inaction: “They are all guilty; we cannot
make out who are ones who deserve protection.” Such think-
ing is so discredited today, it should have cleared the way for
fact-based decision making. Yet it has not. Instead, we now
hear that spreading the blame encourages the Serb side to be
more cooperative with prosecutors. Others clearly believe that
justice for the Balkans is not as important as creating far-
reaching case law that may be applicable in the future Inter-
national Criminal Court.
The Serbs in Croatia were victims indeed, but not be-
cause of guns from Zagreb. The chief blame rests with the
folly of their own leaders. When Serb leaders in Belgrade and
Knin failed in their unrealistic demands, and realized that
Zagreb was about to commence its 1995 operation to subdue
the rebels and take control of the occupied territories, these
leaders called on the entire Serb population to pack up and
leave.
The exodus of 100,000 people was a sad moment in
the history of Europe, but it was not of Croatia’s making.
United Nations Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali re-
ported to the Security Council on Aug. 23, 1995 that the is-
sue at hand was a mass exodus, and that there was no evi-
dence of systematic and widespread humanitarian law viola-
tions arising from the Croatian offensive. The U.S. govern-
ment may also have something to explain here. It’s an open
question whether Washington gave Zagreb the green light and
provided military intelligence.
The controversy in Sabor and the streets of Croatia
today is about whether Zagreb will extradite the two accused
to The Hague, or not. The government maintains that even
with extradition, Croatia’s case can be argued and won be-
fore the Tribunal. The opposition insists that a small state
like Croatia can never get a fair hearing in any Western fo-

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rum. They point out that the same court earlier found that
Croatia had committed aggression against Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH), based on shaky evidence, and all the more
troubling because in fact the Croatian Army saved BiH by
that same 1995 operation.
The suspicion of anti-Croatian prejudice is also fueled
by the way many outsiders choose to view the role of Croatians
in WWII. The revisited history of the Balkans now shows that
Croats initiated the antifascist Partisan movement in the
former Yugoslavia, and accounted for a disproportionate num-
ber of its soldiers. However, in the West, all Croats were stig-
matized as Nazi sympathizers. Many Croats today feel deter-
mined to resist the newest fallacies about Croat conduct dur-
ing the recent war. Like the Israelis, they worry about what
yet another false case of historical responsibility may cost
them.
Given the passions that the Hague Tribunal provokes
in Croatia, parliament’s extraordinary session will be closed
to the cameras. Unusual, but not surprising. The government
fears a repeat of January 2001, when close to 5% of its popu-
lation, an EU equivalent of 15 million people, took to the streets
countrywide to protest the arrest of General Mirko Norac, and
what appeared to be his imminent transfer to The Hague.
Faced with the possibility of real instability, the Tribunal al-
lowed Croatia to bring the general to justice in his home coun-
try, where his trial is now under way. It should do the same
regarding the newest indictees.
The case for sovereignty is no less compelling now. The
potential for social unrest in Croatia remains very high. While
the government is likely to win Sunday’s confidence vote, its
majority may become very thin, eroding its ability to imple-
ment necessary economic and judicial reforms. These, along
with the avoidance of political polarization, are much more
crucial for the country and the region at this time than the
prosecution of war crimes.
The Tribunal’s demand for trials of Croatians on for-
eign soil not only compels the government to surrender sov-

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ereignty at a time when it was pursing war crimes on its own.
For the Western powers, it adds costs for something that could
be done much more cheaply and efficiently in national courts.
The Hague’s docket is grossly overbooked, and the latest
indictees could wait years for their trials to begin.
While international courts are absolutely necessary to
bring to justice international tyrants, like Milosevic and
Saddam, they do harm in circumstances where there is no
evidence that any “collective crimes” have been committed.
Persons charged with committing individual crimes should
be tried and judged before their own people, especially — as
in the case of Croatia — there is a legally constituted govern-
ment in place finally willing to pursue and prosecute them.

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 NOTHING TO GAIN BY SANCTIONING CROATIA

The Wall Street Journal Europe, October 4, 2002

The usually compliant Croatia, seemingly eager to be-

come a member of the EU and NATO at all cost, surprised
everyone last week by refusing to act on the international
arrest warrant for its early 1990s chief military commander
Janko Bobetko. It told the International Criminal Tribunal at
The Hague that the indictment drafted by chief prosecutor
Carla Del Ponte falls outside her mandate, lacks legal basis
and goes against common sense, in that the incident cited
was in effect an isolated police action, having nothing to do
with a grand scheme of ethnic cleansing that the suit alleges.
Therefore, the popular WWII anti-fascist commander and later
general, with a physique closer to Santa Claus’ than to
Slobodan Milosevic’s, is to remain at home.
The international and local media were quick to raise
the specter of sanctions of one sort or another. This week,
both the EU and NATO suggested that failure to comply with
the ICTY’s demand for Gen. Bobetko could jeopardize Croatia’s
ambitions to join both organizations. The Western capitals,
however, even though calling for full cooperation, have been
tepid regarding possible consequences of non-compliance, and
understandably so. On one hand, Zagreb does have a legal
case for resisting extradition under commonly accepted in-
ternational law that is thought and practiced outside the
Hague circles. On the other hand, even if it did not, punish-
ment for Zagreb at this point — by diplomatic or economic
isolation, for instance — would be a losing proposition for
many actors in the region and elsewhere. In many ways,
Washington’s and Brussels’ hands are tied.
Croatia’s Prime Minister Ivica Racan, often labeled in
the West as a poster boy for democracy in southeast Europe,
could do nothing else but support Gen. Bobetko. Ever since
his coalition government decided to cooperate with Ms. Del

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Ponte on the extradition of generals Ante Gotovina and Rahim
Ademi last summer, the popularity of Mr. Racan’s Social Demo-
crats has been in steady decline.
Moreover, the country that was initially slightly in fa-
vor of the Tribunal has turned strongly against it. Opinion
polls indicate that more than two-thirds of Croats are now
willing to face sanctions or other consequences rather than
see Gen. Bobetko extradited. By now many say they feel hu-
miliated by the Tribunal’s repeated attempts to rewrite their
history.
While Mr. Racan has decided to read the writing on
the wall regarding his re-election chances, the Western gov-
ernments have much more to worry about than Croatia if he
is pressed and loses.
Unlike Zagreb, which has fulfilled its obligations to the
Tribunal in large degree, Belgrade has been hardly coopera-
tive other than on the Milosevic handover. In addition, the
Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has not cooper-
ated at all—although this week a plea agreement was entered
on behalf of former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic by
her lawyer. If the West were to take measures against Croatia,
it would then have to do the same or more against the other
two in cases of non-cooperation. But if it did so, it would
generate local public backlashes that would place at risk gov-
ernments considered pro-Western. Simply put, it would open
doors for parties that the West worked so hard to sideline
over the past four years.
But the question of Croatia also comes with issues
beyond the ballot box that make it quite different from Yugo-
slavia and BiH. Relative to its neighbors, Croatia is economi-
cally quite independent. It receives hardly any grant assis-
tance. In fact, Croatia may be the only European state in
modern history that received no substantial reconstruction
aid from the West after suffering from war. All in all, over the
past decade, given its spending for Bosnian refugees and costs
to establish the balance of power in BiH, Croatia may have
been a net provider of aid. The threat of ending financial as-

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sistance has been the stick the West has used before against
Belgrade and Banja Luka. In the case of Zagreb, it would not
be meaningful. Mr. Racan, like Franjo Tudjman in the past,
gets little if anything in any event. Similarly, Zagreb’s invest-
ment-grade credit rating allows it to tap the international
capital markets whenever necessary. It is not dependent on
the IMF for liquidity or on the other IFIs for development funds
as are the other two countries.
To add, Croatia by now has welcomed a substantial
amount of foreign investment, especially in the banking, tele-
communications and tourism sectors. So if Mr. Racan is to
look for solidarity he will find it first in Italian, German and
Austrian banks that manage 94% of the country’s financial
assets — in value almost equal to the country’s gross domes-
tic product. The same may be true for the European develop-
ment bank, the EBRD, which has invested more in Croatia
per capita than in any other Central and East European coun-
try. If Croatia were to sneeze, these foreign investors might
not get a cold, but they would certainly get cold feet in re-
spect to the region in general.
Therefore, Brussels and Washington may be left with
only one stick — the threat of delayed EU and NATO mem-
bership, as suggested by the European Council statement on
Monday and the NATO Secretary General on Wednesday.
But in effect Croatia is already under such sanctions.
Economically, it is ahead of some 2003 EU candidates. Yet, it
is not even slated for membership in the next group of less
developed states. As for military preparedness, NATO mili-
tary experts will tell you that Croatia and Slovenia are the
only two states that ought to get a Prague nod on strictly
technical terms of military preparedness. They are on par
with Spain when it joined in 1982.
In short, Zagreb’s membership in both organizations
will continue to be on ice no matter what it does. Some EU
members believe that early integration would strengthen
Croatia too much at a time when it still has many outstand-
ing issues to settle with its neighbors BiH and Yugoslavia.

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Both of these countries are of greater importance to the West,
the former for ideological reasons and the latter for strategic
ones, than is Croatia. Many in Zagreb are now becoming cog-
nizant of its position and, on the issue of Gen. Bobetko, feel
they have nothing to lose, but perhaps something to gain —
if, for instance Mr. Racan’s stance helps him stay in political
power. Or because they believe that compliance in Gen.
Bobetko’s case would only feed a Tribunal appetite for end-
less indictments, including some of popular people.
Washington and Brussels can also benefit if they are
finally ready to hear out reasonable people like Mr. Racan on
the issue of the Tribunal and some of its actions. No doubt
the Tribunal has done many things well. But for years it has
been left accountable to no one. Thus, it has also taken on a
life of its own, at times far removed from legal and regional
realities. In this vacuum some of its decisions have come to
the detriment of the developing field of international criminal
law, and even more so, to the detriment of its credibility and
the well-being of the region it was envisioned to serve and
heal.
The West has been hesitant to intervene, arguing the
point of judicial independence, overlooking the point of checks
and balances. No court in the West, however, is so indepen-
dent to the point of being infallible. A court whose decisions
cannot be challenged through an independent appeals pro-
cess is not really a court, and a court whose rules of proce-
dure and laws are said to be permanent and immune to peri-
odic legislative review is not really a court.
All Mr. Racan and others want is to be heard, and for
the first time in nine years, to know which international in-
stitution is responsible to resolve complaints about the work
of the Tribunal. Can such a plea be a cause for sanctions or
other punishment? Clearly, it is but a call for reason.

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 GOTOVINA IS INNOCENT

The Wall Street Journal Europe, January 24, 2003

Washington’s envoy for war crime issues, Pierre Rich-

ard Prosper, is ending his visit to the Balkans today, after a
trip meant to reinforce the U.S. commitment to the Interna-
tional Criminal Tribunal at The Hague. Mr. Prosper also
pressed Belgrade, Podogorica, Sarajevo and Banja Luka to
fulfill their key obligations quickly so that the international
community can focus on winding down the Tribunal with some
semblance of success. The Tribunal is to close its investiga-
tions by the end of next year, and complete its trials by 2008.
Surprisingly, the envoy bypassed Zagreb at the last moment.
In Belgrade, Mr. Prosper praised the surrender of Milan
Milutinovic, a top Milosevic era diplomat, but cautioned his
hosts that the Bush administration is under a congressional
obligation to end assistance to Serbia after March 31, unless
the Djindjic government moves forward on handing over other
big-fish indictees, such as Gen. Ratko Mladic and the remain-
ing two of the Vukovar Three: Maj. Veselin Sljivancanin and
Col. Miroslav Radic. After that, Mr. Prosper said, Serbia can
try the majority of other cases in its own courts.
In Sarajevo, the American envoy was received by the
new government of Prime Minister Adnan Terzic, still viewed
with suspicion in the West. He stressed the importance of
establishing a national ad hoc court that would take over for
the Tribunal as it phases out its caseload. The onus falls on
the new-old Serb entity leaders, though.
High representative Paddy Ashdown has called for un-
specified “smart” sanctions against the Serb entity due to its
history of complete non-cooperation. This may involve travel
bans and financial sanctions against Radovan Karadzic cro-
nies in politics and commerce. Given the complexity of the
situation, however, aid carrots also are on the table if the
entity can deliver on Karadzic, seemingly the least most-

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wanted man in the world. He has been hiding in an area the
size of Luxembourg, yet it appears no one is really willing to
nab him.
As for Zagreb, it was dreading Mr. Prosper’s scheduled
visit. Only a month before Croatia submits its EU member-
ship application, it was expecting to hear hard words about
its slight EU and NATO prospects unless it delivers on gener-
als Janko Bobetko and Ante Gotovina. Media reports say the
Prosper visit was postponed for technical reasons; awaiting
the outcome of the medical exam performed on Gen. Bobetko
last week by Tribunal doctors.
Yet it’s possible Mr. Prosper also wanted to segregate
Zagreb from the previous group because Croatia has been
largely cooperative with the Tribunal — and so help the be-
leaguered Prime Minister Ivica Racan. He is faced with dip-
ping poll numbers due to now-unpopular cooperation with
the Tribunal; and a threat of widespread labor strikes against
his much needed social and economic reforms. Yet neither
the threat of strikes nor Gen. Bobetko is Mr. Racan’s chief
worry. Strike plans seem to be fizzling out and Bobetko’s health
has worsened to the point where Tribunal doctors may let
Mr. Racan off the hook on this one.
Gen. Gotovina is another issue. The prime minister is
faced with serious societal division there, and many specu-
late about civil upheaval if he is arrested. A delicate situation
for Mr. Racan, especially in an election year.
Ambassador Prosper can help both Mr. Racan and The
Hague if Washington is truly committed to its stated goal that
the Tribunal is to be one of truth, justice and reconciliation.
Gen. Gotovina is innocent. Ambassador Prosper may not know
it personally, but Washington certainly does. Further, Wash-
ington has ample evidence to submit to the Tribunal to re-
verse the present indictment.
Gen. Gotovina is charged with planning and carrying
out a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing of some 100,000
Serbs from Croatia via Operation Storm in August 1995. Yes,
Serbs did suffer as a result of that operation, but not because

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of Gen. Gotovina nor for that matter of Zagreb. They were
victims of their own leaders’ folly, Milosevic’s promises to make
them part of a larger Serbia, and Belgrade’s later orders to
evacuate its forces, as testified recently in the Milosevic trial
by Milan Babic, his former confidant-turned-prosecution wit-
ness, among others.
Operation Storm was motivated by completely differ-
ent reasons, unrelated to ethnic cleansing. Its first objective
was to de-blockade the U.N. safe area of Bihac in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH), after it became threatened in July 1995
by Gen. Ratko Mladic, days after he overran Srebrenica. Vi-
sions of another Srebrenica-like massacre, with an even higher
number of fatalities, were on everyone’s mind, including
Washington’s.
When Zagreb special envoy Miomir Zuzul came to
Washington with the Operation Storm plan in mid-July, the
Clinton administration hesitated only for a moment. The green
light on Bihac as well as the occupied Krajina territories in
Croatia came from Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff,
Assistant Secretary Richard Holbrooke and the late senior
Balkan negotiator Robert Frasure.
After Washington saw that Zagreb was serious about
carrying out the operation, and the West helpless, it moved to
make sure the Croats would succeed. Washington jumped in
and provided crucial intelligence-gathering facilities. It set up
a 40-person Predator drone base in Sepurina, near Zadar,
with two real time feeds: one to the Pentagon, and one to
Gen. Gotovina’s headquarters. Further, on the day the Storm
started, the U.S. sent two specialized Prowler planes to the
region to disable the rebel Serb communication systems.
After the Storm ended, Washington used Gen.
Gotovina’s ground troops to supplement NATO air bombings
in western Bosnia. The joint operations altered the territorial
control close to the 51-49 two-entity split envisioned for the
eventual Dayton peace deal.
Despite using Croatia as its proxy in 1995 to achieve
its objectives in BiH, Washington has in the past leaned to

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accept fallacious charges regarding the goals of Storm be-
cause Zagreb failed to protect the remaining Serbs and their
property in the occupied territories after the operation ended.
More importantly, the charges were seen as a necessary fic-
tion to pressure Franjo Tudjman in respect of possible Serb
returnees and the fragile BiH, and later as a vehicle to re-
move him for power.
But there is a new leadership in Zagreb, one that has
been cooperative on issues that Tudjman once balked at, and
there seems to be no reason for the Bush administration to
play Clinton to Tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte any-
more.
Moreover, it would behoove the administration — one
that is notably skeptical about international tribunals in gen-
eral because they are prone to political adventurism — to
grasp the opportunity to imprint its persuasions, and provide
exculpatory evidence where it clearly exists. (Then, there is
something to be said about Gen. Gotovina in effect acting as
a U.S. agent, where Washington would be obligated to at least
morally assist his case.) The practical side for Washington is
that providing evidence on the real goals of the Storm will
stem this and similar cases in the future, and substantially
limit the expenditures of an already very costly operation at
the Hague.
Unless the Bush administration has withdrawn from
serious policy discussions on the Balkans and decided to
operate on the autopilot set by the Clinton administration,
Ambassador Prosper has the clout in Washington to pursue
changes on such issues. This would make his work much
more productive. It would allow him to concentrate his ener-
gies on the real war criminals in the Balkans — Karadzic and
Mladic. Knocking on doors in Zagreb is unnecessary now or
later. Croatia already is pursuing potential war criminals in
its own courts.

Original title: “Amb. Prosper and Wanted Man”

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 INJUSTICE OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW:
HOW DID IT GO WRONG

Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2003

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was inaugu-

rated March 11th with the swearing in of its eighteen judges.
Israel does not recognize the ICC, and rightfully so.
In fact, given the latest developments in international
criminal law and practice, all responsible states, even if they
are signatories of the ICC, will follow the Israeli lead if found
in similar situations.
The precedents at the precursor to the ICC, the Inter-
national Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the ICTY,
will need to be substantially altered before international crimi-
nal law and courts can be viewed as credible institutions.
The majority of supporters of international tribunals
are universal justice enthusiasts probably like the writers* of
this article a decade ago, when they were helping the Organi-
zation of Islamic Conference draft the first paper submitted
to the United Nations on the establishment of the ICTY.
Enthusiasm often gives away to reality. Having closely
followed the work of the ICTY or practiced before it, our en-
thusiasm has given way not only to reality, but also to deep
disappointment.
The ICTY has established law and procedure, employed
witnesses and evidence, and designed an appeals process of
a type and in ways not seen in any national jurisdiction of the
democratic world. Much of the blame lies not with the ICTY,
but with its founder, the United Nations Security Council,
that has refused to seriously review its work since its incep-
tion nine years ago.
The ICTY has thus operated in a vacuum, serving the
interests of its prosecutors, disregarding the interests of uni-
versal justice.
*
Co-authored by Barbara Novosel

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 The peoples in the Balkans have also been
shortchanged, because the ICTY was to have been the pri-
mary vehicle for reconciliation. Because of its actions and
decisions, the ICTY’s credibility has been reduced to the low-
est levels.
War criminals like Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav
Seselj now see it as a stage where they can become heroes,
immortalized by large segments of their countrymen. Others,
like fugitive Ante Gotovina, see it as a hanging court that
shackles innocent lives.
Policy failures notwithstanding, the ICTY is actually
weakest on the issues of substantive law it created. At its
founding in May 1993, the ICTY officials and future judges
were instructed by the UN secretary-general and members of
the Security Council to carry out their duties within existing
international law.
So much for a court taking cue from its legislature.
The ICTY has created law that is practiced nowhere else.
For example, at the time the crimes in the Balkans
were committed and the ICTY was founded, the standing law
said that crimes against humanity involved attacks against
civilian population that must be both systematic and wide-
spread. The Hague prosecution insisted that “and” should be
“or,” so that in proving this serious charge it would need to
prove only one element.
Moreover, the court refused to design a legal test on
either notion. Thus, in an extreme case, this could result in
someone being convicted of a crime against humanity if there
was a plan to kill one civilian during an attack, or if a number
of civilians were killed but no premeditated plan existed.
This drastic change in international criminal law was
effected by changing a three-letter connector.
One may be surprised, but just about any action by
the Israeli army that results in civilian deaths would qualify
as a crime against humanity. Neither will this reality escape
the NGOs and other international humanitarian law enthu-
siasts, who will pursue lawsuits against the premiers of the

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UK and Spain in particular for their leading roles in the in-
tervention against Iraq.
The ICTY made it possible for anyone with superior
status, civilian or military, to be convicted under command
responsibility for any crime if he knew or had reason to know
that a subordinate had committed crimes, or if he failed to
take measures to prevent such acts, or punish the perpetra-
tors.
For example, a civilian defendant’s conviction of crimes
against humanity in a particular area was based solely on an
order from a military commander to take a village. The com-
mander claimed in the order that the civilian leaders had been
informed about “everything.” The court found this sufficient
proof that the defendant had necessary knowledge.
It is difficult to imagine a case where the ICTY would
not find necessary knowledge. And it is almost certain that
based on this precedent, the Belgian high court or any other
could convict Ariel Sharon or any other senior Israeli official
for crimes against humanity related to the Sabra and Shatilla
massacres.
Another drastic development in the law on crimes
against humanity is the ICTY’s definition of “civilian popula-
tion.” It has adopted a wide definition, so if the target is pre-
dominantly civilian, to attack is not permissible, which in
itself appears acceptable.
However, in practice, the ICTY has in effect ruled that
if there is shelling coming from a 50-resident building be-
cause of the presence of a mortar and a 40-person armed
unit, it cannot be attacked.
Similarly, if these 40 soldiers are alone in the building
and they abandon arms, even unbeknownst to the attacker,
they are considered civilian. One can just imagine the range
of abuses in modern wars, such as the one on the streets of
Israel, which such law promotes.
As to the procedure, it is an accepted fact now that
there is no guarantee of speedy proceedings at the ICTY. De-
fendants wait for years to have their trials commence. The
trials and appeals take a few more years.

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 One middle-ranking officer, Tihomir Blaskic, has been
imprisoned over six years already, and his appeal is yet to
begin. Once on trial the defendant is at a huge disadvantage,
unless he is wealthy like Milosevic, since the ICTY allocates
almost all of its funds to the prosecution.
Many trials have turned into secret proceedings, be-
cause key witnesses are often heard in camera. The oral tes-
timonies are full of hearsay evidence, acceptable at the ICTY.
Another injustice to the rules of evidence used by to-
day’s democracies is the practice at the tribunal that allows
newspaper articles, unsigned documents and copied docu-
ments as evidence. The obligation to provide exculpatory evi-
dence seems not even to be a theoretical issue with the pros-
ecutors.
Finally, there is the fundamental issue of the appeals
process. Both the trial and appellate judges are judges of one
institution, contrary to the practice in modern democracies,
where the trial court is separate from the appeal instances.
The trial judges regularly appear as appellate judges in closely
related or effectively the same cases.
The ICC has crafted an improved appeals process. It
has separate trial and appeal chambers, and the judges can-
not serve in both. But this is just one small step in improving
the international criminal law, and restoring its credibility.
That credibility will be crucial for the Arab world in particu-
lar, when Saddam Hussein and his immediate subordinates
are eventually tried there.

Original title: “International Lawyers court Injustice”.

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 GOTOVINA SHOULD GET LAWSUIT PROTECTION
FROM WASHINGTON

Los Angeles Daily Journal, May 30, 2003

The Bush administration has determined how it will

protect U.S. citizens from potential politically charged law-
suits filed at the International Criminal Court and similar
courts: nonrecognition.
It also is signing the so-called Article 98 agreements
with friendly states that prevent the transfer of US citizens
and select noncitizens serving abroad to such institutions.
So far, it has signed on 35 countries.
However, Washington has yet to formulate a policy to
protect all of its worldwide employees from similar hazards,
let alone its foreign agents and allies.
At a time when Washington will need foreign proxies
to help fight its war on terrorism and will rely on friendly
governments, such as Poland, to support U.S.-led solutions
in Iraq and elsewhere, this policy gap must be filled quickly.
An opportunity to move in this direction exists with
the case of Croatian General Ante Gotovina, who is under
indictment at the International Criminal Tribunal at The
Hague.
Gotovina was an operational U.S. agent on the ground
in 1995, when his troops were used to break the siege of the
U.N. safe area of Bihac by Serb General Ratko Mladic. He was
used later as a ground advance component to supplement
the U.S.-led NATO bombings of Serb troops in western Bosnia.
This joint action altered territorial control in Bosnia
between the Serbs and the Muslim-Croat coalition close to a
49-51 split, as envisioned in the peace plan on the table at
that time, which was later concluded in Dayton.
Western policy on Bosnia was in disarray in 1995, and
inaction at Srebrenica, where 6,000 mostly noncombatant
men were massacred, reinforced its haplessness. The Euro-

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peans were gearing up for complete withdrawal from Bosnia.
The United States was preparing a peace plan that would
have severed the country in two. Then, in July 1995, the gov-
ernment in Zagreb proposed a plan to deblockade Bihac and
offer Bosnia a chance for survival.
A Washington Post editorial from Aug. 1, 1995, three
days before Croatia commenced Operation Storm, stated: ”All
along, the United States and its allies have been looking for a
force - other than themselves - that could check Serbian and
Bosnian Serb adventurism and produce a military balance
on which a realistic settlement could be built. Maybe such a
force is now emerging: Croatia.”
Washington gave Zagreb a clandestine green light - in
order not to anger the other permanent members of the Se-
curity Council - and jumped in with assistance to ensure that
Operation Storm would succeed. It provided the Croats with
Predator drone intelligence-gathering facilities two weeks be-
fore the operation began and neutralized the Serb communi-
cation systems with single-purpose Prowler aircraft on the
day it started.
The Hague Tribunal indicted Gotovina on the grounds
that Operation Storm was carried out with the intention of
expelling Serbs from Croatia. Serbs did suffer because of the
operation, but not because of Gotovina’s campaign. They were
victims of the unrealistic plans of their leaders and, on the
day that the operation began, of orders by those leaders to
withdraw. Operation Storm had completely different objec-
tives (one was to save the Muslim community in Bosnia) which
the United States aided. In that respect, Gotovina is inno-
cent. Washington has ample evidence that would overturn
the indictment.
In the past, the Clinton administration hesitantly ac-
cepted the fallacious charges of the Tribunal for a number of
reasons. They included the convenient “all sides are equally
guilty” policy objectives in the region, the administration’s
unconditional support for the Tribunal which it saw as a fore-
runner to the International Criminal Court, and the tradi-

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tional U.S. firmness in not sharing intelligence in order to
protect its sources and methods.
However, the Clinton policy objectives regarding the
Balkans and the International Criminal Court are no longer
relevant. Moreover, because overcoming obstacles that would
make potential agents and allies diffident at a crucial time is
becoming more important, the Bush administration needs to
find ways to improve its credibility. Gotovina’s case, if not
handled properly, could end up being a negative precedent
and hurting U.S. efforts worldwide.
Washington should relax its intelligence safeguarding
rules where necessary, which would solve the problem for
Gotovina. Other steps should be considered, such as
refocusing State Department consistency on the subject and
extending Article 98 protection to all U.S. employees and rel-
evant foreign nationals.

Original title: “Those Who Serve US Should Get Same Lawsuit

Protection”

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274
98
 3.
Croatia, Croats, Self-Hating Croats
and the World

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276
100
 CROATIA SHOULD SAY YES TO U.S. ON IRAQ

VeËernji list, March 2, 2003

When deciding on the difficult issue of whether or not

to give outright support to the US regarding Iraq, Croatia
should consider its own experience with the right to self-de-
fense and unilateralism.
Operation Storm was carried out in 1995 despite op-
position from the UN Security Council, and, we should not
forget, only the clandestine support of one state ∑ the US. In
the end, the controversial Storm reintegrated the bulk of the
occupied territories, saved Bihac, and offered BiH a chance
for survival. As pointed out by a Washington Post editorial
when the Storm ended: Croatia was not the problem, but the
solution.
Croatia’s experience suggests that on the issue of self-
defense, a state must be allowed to say on its own when
enough is enough. Zagreb waited four years for the Security
Council to act: to restore Croatia‘s territorial integrity and
establish security. The UN employed UNPROFOR and UNCRO
and had at its disposal numerous Security Council resolu-
tions, but failed repeatedly.
In fact, in early July 1995, after the Srebrenica mas-
sacre, it appeared as if the UN policy in the region was about
to collapse completely. The Europeans were preparing to with-
draw from BiH, and the Americans were readying a plan that
would have divided BiH in two, and allowed the Republika
Srpska a referendum on independence as early as 1997.
The US has been waiting for the UN to do its home-
work in disarming Iraq for a much longer period of time. Zagreb
remembers all of the Security Council resolutions that re-
mained un-implemented. Washington has a litany of similar
resolutions that also exist only on paper. In fact, the Bush
Administration has challenged the Security Council to imple-
ment its resolutions, or lose relevance. Did we not hear the

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same appeals in the early 1990s, when the radical Serbs were
disobedient day-after-day.
Now the US has said enough is enough. Its national
security, and that of much of the Western world’s, is being
threatened by the radical regime in Iraq, its weapons of mass
destruction, and its history of supporting international ter-
rorism. As a victim of such terrorism that seems to have no
bounds, the US is compelled to exercise its right to self-de-
fense when it appears the Security Council will come up short.
The US faces strong worldwide popular opposition to
its likely invasion, but when has there been popular support
for war? What is important is that the US has substantial
support from allied governments in Europe and elsewhere.
They will provide support in various ways, including combat.
Croatia will also be in position to help, but that help
will likely be limited to intelligence sharing and use of its air-
space and territorial waters for transport of materiel and per-
sonnel. What limited support, given the assistance the US
provided Croatia in 1995, to liberate itself from terrorism and
secure its statehood.
The US help in 1995 was substantial indeed. When
the Zagreb plan to deblockade Bihac and reintegrate Krajina
was presented in Washington by special envoy Miomir Zuzul
in mid-July, the US jumped in and provided intelligence and
direct military assistance to ensure it would be successful.
By the time the Storm started, Washington had set up
a 40-person intelligence-gathering base in Sepurina that moni-
tored the Serb troop movements using Predator drones. On
the day the Storm commenced, under the guise of enforcing
the UN no-fly zone, the US sent in two special-purpose Prowler
aircraft to disable the Serb communication systems.
To be sure, the US did not do this to help Croatia, but
to help the Muslims in BiH. To that end, after the Storm, it
used the Croatian Army ground troops in western Bosnia to
supplement the first NATO air intervention since WWII. Nev-
ertheless, Croatia substantially benefited from the US role.
So when it has to make those difficult decisions today, it just
may recall that relationship from 1995.

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 On the eve of the Storm, the Security Council was pre-
paring a Presidential Statement calling on Croatia to desist.
As usual, the Croatian diplomats were working the halls and
lobbying the members of the Council to change some of the
tough wording in the draft that was being circulated. Croatian
charge d’affaires Vladimir Drobnjak approached the US am-
bassador Madeleine Albright as well, with the same request.
She was brief, took him by the hand, and said: “We shall see
what can be done, and by the way, good luck tomorrow.”
Thinking back to 1995, about the only thing Croatia
can do to American ambassador Larry Rossin’s requests these
days, is to take him by the hand, and say clearly, we shall see
what can be done, and certainly, good luck later in the month.
Not much to ask.

Published version was slightly shorter.

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 DISPUTE WITH U.S. ON ARTICLE 98

Globus, June 13, 2003

It should come as no surprise that Washington is send-

ing an impressive delegation to Zagreb on Thursday, June
12th to argue its case on Article 98 and to hear out Croatia’s
position. Tiny little Croatia has begun to confuse the U.S. of
late.
Last year Zagreb raised a lot of noise about the indict-
ment of Gen. Janko Bobetko, until then an unprecedented
step for the cooperative Racan government. It appears to have
been an omen of things to come.
Later, it was the only “New Europe” state to challenge
the legitimacy of the Iraq intervention. Initially it agreed to
provide assistance by granting overflight rights. However, on
the eve of the invasion, president Stipe Mesic delivered a
primetime address to the nation with emotion and wordage
straight from Jacque Chirac’s book of drama. Now, Croatia
has decided to play a rare David to the US Goliath on the
issue of Article 98 exclusions.
Washington wants Zagreb to sign on to the list of 35
states that have committed themselves not to extradite US
citizens and select groups of non-citizens serving abroad to
the ICC and similar courts that claim universal jurisdiction.
The US fears many legally groundless and politically moti-
vated lawsuits in the future. This is an understandable con-
tingency given America’s expanding role as world policeman,
and substantial, if short, history of such courts being prone
to judicial and political activism packaged for CNN sound-
bite reporting, rather than jurisprudence and justice. But
Croatia says no, despite the threat of US aid sanctions effec-
tive July 1.
While its flip-flop on Iraq was unnecessary and short-
sighted, Croatia’s position on Article 98 is justified. More-
over, its high ground just may compel Washington to rethink

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its universal jurisdiction policy that is full of legal and moral
inconsistencies, and thereby eliminate a key criticism, next
to the Kyto Protocol issue, that the rest of the world has against
the US.
Washington is inconsistent in several ways.
Firstly, the US is exercising its sovereign right to pro-
tect its citizens from frivolous and colored lawsuits at univer-
sal jurisdiction courts, yet it denies that same right to some
other states, one being Croatia. As was Gen. Janko Bobetko
earlier, a number of Croatian citizens are still subject to
groundless and policy motivated lawsuits at the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague,
the precursor to the ICC. The policy being “all sides are equally
guilty.”
The US has insisted that they and Croatia should co-
operate with the Prosecution at the Tribunal, no questions
asked, despite strong legal and factual objections in some
cases. At times, suggestions come that the innocents should
go to The Hague and prove their cases, a curious position
when in the West it is illegal to try innocent persons. Further-
more, the Prosecution is just one partial side at the Tribunal,
and it should not have the conclusive word and unqualified
support, as it seems to have on the policy level.
Secondly, Washington does not recognize the ICC pri-
marily because of the trendy concept in international crimi-
nal law ∑ command responsibility ∑ used in its widest form at
the Tribunal. Under this principle any and every senior leader
is liable for just about anything. Such lawsuits filed in Bel-
gium and elsewhere against Colin Powell for the first inter-
vention in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks for the recent interven-
tion, and Henry Kissinger for his alleged role in Chile are not
taken seriously in Washington. Yet, Croatia is asked to abide
by the same principle in the Gotovina indictment, and others
yet to come.
Thirdly, the US has sidestepped its obligation to pro-
vide exculpatory evidence in many cases at the Tribunal even
though all states are mandated by the Security Council to do

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so. Washington possesses ample evidence that would nullify
a number of indictments. For instance, if the US were to yield
evidence about the objectives of the Storm, and how it was
carried out, the case of Gen. Gotovina would be thrown out.
Similarly, the Tribunal’s decisions in Blaskic, Kordic and simi-
lar cases, as they concern Croatia’s role in BiH in 1992-93,
would be revised.
Croatia’s role in BiH was substantial indeed, but sta-
bilizing rather than aggressive. Zagreb’s policy in BiH should
not be judged by the actions of some local sheriffs that were
all too often motivated by personal gain. Washington knew
this at the time, and could provide evidence in this direction.
Fourthly, Washington is inconsistent on who exactly it
protects through Article 98 agreements. In some agreements,
it protects all US citizens and residents, as well as employees
of US interest operations that it calls “contractors.” In other
instances, such as in the May agreement with BiH, the
protection is extended only to the US citizens and military
personnel. Third-country citizens working for American non-
military institutions are left out.
Finally, the US has just about forgotten about its tra-
dition of protecting front line allies and nameless foreign agents
in the same way it protects its citizens. At a time when Wash-
ington will need numerous foreign proxies to help fight its
war on terrorism, and will rely on many friendly governments
such as Poland to support US-led solutions in Iraq and else-
where, this gray policy area must be colored over quickly.
In 1995, Croatia was such an ally, and Gen. Gotovina
was a lead operational agent on the ground. The troops un-
der his command were used to break the siege of the UN safe
area of Bihac, a key interest of the US at the time, and later
as ground advance component that supplemented the US-
led NATO bombings of Serb troops in western Bosnia. This
joint action altered the territorial control in Bosnia between
the Serbs and the Muslim-Croat coalition close to the territo-
rial split envisioned in the US peace plan on the table at that
time, and later concluded in Dayton. Interestingly, in this

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context, Gen. Gotovina would be entitled to US protection as
“contractor” in the language of some Article 98 agreements.
The current dispute should not overlook that crucial
partnership, but rather serve as an occasion for reflection in
regard to the inconsistent policy that is hurting the US inter-
ests worldwide, and alienating Croatia.
Zagreb’s position is that due to its EU aspirations, it
should take into account policy directives from Brussels, which
is strongly opposed to giving preferences to Americans on uni-
versal jurisdiction issues. This may be a key reason, but not
the overwhelming one. The fact of the matter is that Croatia
is losing confidence in the possibilities of a partnership with
the US.
While it did the “dirty work” for the US in 1995 in BiH,
and the Racan government proved to be extremely cooperative
in respect of key US interests in the Southeast Europe, its
management of BiH, it has received almost nothing in return.
Not even a timely NATO membership, which Croatia deserves,
and where the US has a sole vote. Instead, just headaches:
from ever new US demands at the OSCE, to being left out in
the cold at the Tribunal. The public outrage by Goran Granic
directed at some diplomats in Zagreb, that mentioned the US
Embassy, can be instructive.
How to get out of this impasse? As of now Washington
has proposed a win-lose solution: it gains a safety net for its
citizens, but Croatia continues to receive nothing. Zagreb has
tabled a solution that in the West would be labeled typically
Balkan; lose-lose: it appears we cannot gain, so neither should
you.
But somewhere there must be that win-win solution
as well. Its elements are obvious: the US should gain on the
ICC, and Croatia should gain at the Tribunal. But given the
developments between the two, the question remains whether
either of the two sides will have the strength to even address
it on Thursday.

Published version was slightly shorter.

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 ISRAEL AND CROATIA:
VICTIMS OF SIMILAR INTOLERANCE

Jerusalem Post, July 13, 2003

President Moshe Katsav’s weekend stopover in Croatia

makes him the first senior Israeli leader to visit the country
since it gained independence twelve years ago. The wait is
not surprising given Croatia’s World War Two record as well
as the controversial writings about the Holocaust by Croatia’s
founder Franjo Tudjman.
But Zagreb has a new leadership now, and its wartime
history is being deconstructed in a new light.
Katsav and his counterpart, President Stipe Mesic, are
scheduled to spend three days together, with the itinerary
that includes a visit to the Jasenovac memorial and a tour of
the ancient city of Dubrovnik, home to the second-oldest syna-
gogue in Europe.
One has to wonder whether in their talks the two lead-
ers will have moved from the troubled past to a present in
which Israel and Croatia share a common predicament.
By now a strong case has been made that the Euro-
pean Left is intolerant of Israel, to some bordering on anti-
Semitic. But Israelis are not the only people to face the wrath
of the internationalist elite in Brussels. Croats remain at a
loss to explain their exclusion from the European mainstream
by Left-led Brussels. Zagreb’s applications for EU and NATO
membership continue to be fobbed off regularly by new con-
ditions.
Croatia certainly deserves candidate status in both or-
ganizations. It has earned entry by managing its economy
admirably during the double transition to privatization and
from war with virtually no international assistance. Moreo-
ver, it should be rewarded for ending the catastrophe in Bosnia
in 1995, and saving the country’s Muslim population when
Brussels was powerless.

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 But at the November 2002 Prague summit NATO hu-
miliated Croatia by placing it on a waiting list for member-
ship, saying that Croatia needed to further democratize and
upgrade its army. Military experts know, however, that Croatia
and Slovenia are the only two transition countries whose ar-
mies meet Western standards of readiness. On the issue of
democracy, Croatia’s top leaders, Stipe Mesic and Prime Min-
ister Ivica Racan, are usually heralded in the West as prime
examples of democracy. Yet this reality evaporates at invita-
tion time.
Why is the European Left so cold toward Croatia? To
the big powers it is a strategically irrelevant country. And,
like Israel, Croatia has no allies in today’s Europe.
Ideological issues come into play as well. Israel is de-
spised for rejecting its socialist Kibbutz paradise roots. Simi-
larly, Croatia is viewed as having betrayed the utopian ideal
of Yugoslavia, once revered by the Left as the epitome of mod-
ern socialism and worker self-management.
Internal criticism also plays a role. Israel’s left-leaning
elite indulges in extensive self-criticism that serves to provide
fodder to anti-Israel partisans abroad. Croatia has a similar
problem. Zagreb’s elite has taken the concept of the prover-
bial self-hating Jew to unseen heights. Trashing the young
state abroad has become a badge of honor in high society.
Then there is the issue of guilt. The Left’s uneasy feel-
ing that its early support for Israel allowed it to become too
strong is similar to its uneasiness over seeing Croatia move
quickly ahead of its eastern neighbors. That’s because EU
policy toward the Balkans calls for no winners, no losers. To
the European Left Croatia is a winner; something pointed out
by Greek foreign minister George Papandreou during his Janu-
ary stopover in Zagreb. And since the adjoining states are not
winners, Croatia is expected to wait in line with the slower
bunch.
Friends of Israel point to notoriously Arabist-leaning
foreign offices of certain European governments. In the Bal-
kans the “foreign office” plays a similarly biased role. Since

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1993, it has favored a policy of compensating the Muslim
community in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the expense of the
Croats. This, because the West could not stand up to Serb
radicals.
Such a policy also demands a feeble Croatia, one com-
pelled to control the disillusioned Croats in Bosnia-
Herzegovina in hope of being rewarded. Also keeping Croatia
in check are spurious charges at the International Criminal
Tribunal in The Hague against fugitive general Ante Gotovina
concerning alleged ethnic cleansing, and assertions against
Croatia itself about its policies in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-
93.
One would expect that the West could never be so cyni-
cal. But consider that during the 50-year communist rule in
Yugoslavia, Croat pleas for democracy and human rights were
consistently labeled as dangerous nationalism. Croat griev-
ances were seen as threatening the unity of Yugoslavia, and
its strategic position as a dividing line between East and West.
To weaken the Croat case, the West readily perpetu-
ated the view that during World War Two Croatians sided with
the Nazis to the last man, while the pro-Yugoslavia Serbs
fought with the Allies. A fresh look at history reveals that
both Serbia and Croatia had Nazi puppet regimes, but the
Croats and not the Serbs initiated the Yugoslav antifascist
Partizan movement. Croats were its senior leaders and dis-
proportionately its most numerous foot soldiers.
Regrettably, some Jews too have embraced this fallacy
about Croats for decades.
Clearly, both Israel and Croatia are victims of simi-
larly convoluted European tendencies that are worrisome for
Jews and saddening for Croats. What should come out of the
Katsav-Mesic meetings is a realization that Israel and Croatia
share a common cause vis-a-vis Europe’s leadership.

Original title: “Victims of a Common Intolerance”

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 LOOK NEITHER TO WASHINGTON NOR BRUSSELS,
BUT TO BERLIN

Globus, January 2, 2004

Even though president Stipe Mesic insists that Croatia’s

foreign policy will not change following the election of Ivo
Sanader, disputes between Pantovcak and Banski Dvori, both
of which have mechanisms to influence that policy, should
not be ruled out. The likely source of disagreement is centered
on the way Mesic on one side, and Sanader and his foreign
minister Miomir Zuzul on the other, see the world. Mesic tends
to see it through glasses colored by the internationalist Left,
and the latter duo by glasses colored by the conservative Right.
No doubt the most obvious area of dispute will be
Croatia’s future policy on Iraq, and the associated issue of
whether to send troops to help the US in Baghdad. Croatia
should assist Washington here, at the minimum out of moral
obligation due to the substantial US helping hand in 1995
with Operation Storm.
More importantly, Iraqi debts to Croatian firms are
estimated to be in the range of 200-400 million dollars. In
order to help the private sector reclaim these assets, Zagreb
may be compelled to send troops. Without troops, it will have
no influence at the decision making table on repayment of
debts.
Then there is the issue of Article 98, where Mesic has
been forthright not to give Washington an exclusion on extra-
dition of US subjects to the ICC, while Sanader appears to be
ready to do so. Here, Mesic is right. Indirectly.
Zagreb has a moral obligation to itself not to support
the US on this issue unless Washington is ready to offer simi-
lar assistance in regard to Croatia’s problems with the ICTY.
Washington has ample evidence to support Zagreb in its dis-
putes with Carla Del Ponte on the Gotovina indictment and
associated cases, as well as exculpatory evidence in respect

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of the ICTY’s plainly politicized decisions in Blaskic, Kordic
and other case about Croatia’s quasi-genocidal grand scheme
in Bosnia that did not exist. Thus, Sanader should hold out
for an obvious quid-pro-quo here, instead of hurrying to please
Washington against the wishes of Mesic. This even if Mesic’s
objections to Article 98 are for no obvious national benefit,
but, as it appears, for reasons of cozying up to the interna-
tionalist Left.
The mental frameworks that guide the president and
the new government are no doubt different, and Sabor may
be called on often to settle disputes unless the two agree to
minimize their posturing on global issues where Croatia’s voice
is not really needed, and focus only on issues of crucial im-
portance to the country.
One such issue would be western policy toward the
region, where the two sides would be looking to two different
ideological frameworks for support. Thus, Mesic would gen-
erally find common voice on the Western Balkans with the
US Department of State, Paris, London and the European
Left. Sanader and Zuzul, meanwhile, who are more comfort-
able with the thinking at the White House and the European
Right will be looking empty-handed, as outsiders, because
neither the White House nor the European Right have policy
options that would be different for Croatia than presently of-
fered.
The standing policy in Washington and Brussels is not
especially beneficial to Zagreb, for various reasons, but mostly
because it is based on tired concepts dating to early 1990s.
The region and the country have changed substantially since
then, but the policy logic has not.
Luckily for Croatia and the two institution holders,
there are indications that the outdated policy could change ∑
if Germany would have its way. Certainly, Berlin is not as
powerful as Washington or Brussels, but it is a key policy
actor nonetheless.
For years Croatia has been held back due to the aged
objective that there should be “no winners and no losers” in

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the Balkans, and the associated thinking that Croatia and
Serbia need to be kept in check in order to keep Bosnia and
Herzegovina together.
Thus, in the case of Zagreb, the thinking goes, if granted
membership and other assistance, it would be substantially
strengthened. This would then make Croatia even more at-
tractive than Bosnia and Herzegovina to the secessionist
Bosnian-Herzegovene Croats. Bosnia’s first high representa-
tive, Carl Bildt, was first to speak about this policy; at the US
Institute for Peace in March 1999.
Convoluted logic of this sort was first challenged in
September 2001 by the German foreign minister Joschka
Fisher, who argued in Genval, Belgium that fragile states in
the Balkans, such as Bosnia, are threatened not by their
neighbors, but by the still unhappy ethnic groups in the new
states. Fischer proposed a Helsinki-like process to engage
the groups in a dialogue and standardize their rights. The
support for this only sensible approach is yet to come.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder recently dis-
puted yet another standing policy toward the region: the in-
disputable support given in the West to the Tribunal’s chief
prosecutor Carla del Ponte. During a recent stopover in Zagreb,
Schroeder said that Croatia’s membership aspirations should
not be tied to every single demand of Ms. del Ponte, referring
to the case of fugitive general Ante Gotovina. Del Ponte is just
one of the interested parties at the ICTY, and a partial one
indeed.
Earlier in the year when Croatia was about to apply
for EU membership, almost all states said to wait with the
application except Germany. Berlin was right. Giving Croatia
the membership it deserves due to economic and political
stability, as well as for saving Bosnia in 1995, would send the
right signal to the other countries in the neighborhood, and
improve the region’s security situation.
Clearly, Berlin has shown new thinking consistent with
the changes in the region. Unfortunately, Washington and
the majority of European governments that coordinate policy

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in Brussels have not. But both Mesic and Sanader would have
a natural tendency to seek guidance everywhere but Berlin.
Mesic because he prefers Paris and London, and Sanader
because he is closer to the German Christian Democrats than
the ruling Socialists.
The time has come, however, that two sides in Zagreb
bury their natural preferences and inherent past tendencies,
and turn to Berlin. The logic there is fresh, up to date, and
good for the new Croatia, and the new circumstances in the
region. This obvious and positive logic should outweigh any
ideological inclinations and possible criticisms. Mesic and
Sanader should take advantage of this unique opportunity.
As a result, the differences on other foreign policy issues may
seem less significant.

Published version was slightly shorter.

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 A USEFUL BALKAN FLIP-FLOP

The Wall Street Journal Europe, April 22, 2004

The best thing about policy is that it changes. Some-

times overnight. This is probably what the Croats are think-
ing these days, as they are about to receive EU candidate
status at the European Council in June, following the adop-
tion of a positive avis — or readiness opinion — by the Euro-
pean Commission on Tuesday.
Only 15 months ago, they were told loudly and clearly
that candidate status would be premature. The EU and Ger-
man ambassadors in Zagreb said that Croatia shouldn’t sub-
mit a membership application at all. What has changed so
quickly that Brussels is now about to open the door to its
future 28th member?
Everyone’s favorite democrats in the Balkans, Ivica
Racan’s Socialists, late last year lost power to Ivo Sanader’s
remnants of the much maligned HDZ party of former Presi-
dent Franjo Tudjman. So this can’t be the reason. Perhaps it
is the fact that eight Croats have meanwhile turned them-
selves in voluntarily to the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal at
The Hague. But the EU wouldn’t make this important deci-
sion on one “soft” issue. Moreover, Zagreb hasn’t convinced
them that it has done everything to locate the fugitive general
Ante Gotovina. It’s also impossible to tell a real difference
between the previous and present governments. On key ques-
tions of judicial reform and bloated government, both the
Racan and Sanader governments are wanting.
No, the real change occurred in Brussels. And how-
ever fickle the EU might look, the new approach on Croatia
benefits both Europe and the Balkans.
The EU realized that its options in the Balkans weren’t
good. Croatia’s neighbors to the south have made precious
little progress since the 1995 Dayton peace accord ended the
Bosnian war. In fact, Serbia is again the biggest question mark

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in the region given the resurgence of its nationalist parties.
Bosnia is in the hands of a large neo-colonial administration.
Macedonia continues in limbo, following an air crash that
took the life of its pro-Western president, Boris Trajkovski.
Albania remains Europe’s poorest country.
With so much uncertainty in the region, Croatia can
be used as an example for its neighbors. By recognizing its
political and economic stability, coupled with a willingness to
meet international obligations, Brussels sends a message to
the lagging bunch that progress and cooperation with the
West pays off. Hence this week’s decision effectively to carve
Croatia away from the Balkans, as the EU did with Slovenia
in the early 1990s.
But there is probably more design in the EU’s move
than meets the eye. Zagreb early last year took a calculated
gamble by filing a membership application despite vocal op-
position. Its foresight then became strengthened by the new
thinking about the region, coming mostly from Berlin, and
eagerly picked up by the conservative governments in Aus-
tria and Ireland, the Christian Democrats in the European
Parliament, and the Holy See.
The then-Racan government played this EU card to
reverse its slide in popularity, unsuccessfully in the end. But
Zagreb also rightly concluded that its application could never
be rejected, given the commitment in Brussels to a Europe
that is “whole and free.”
Indeed, imagine the message Brussels would send to
the Balkans if it were to say no to a state that has a stronger
economy than some of the newest 10 members. In the worst
case scenario, Zagreb thought, Brussels would accept the
application, and grant candidate status with conditions.
But the Sanader government would like to avoid con-
ditions, and wants a firm start date for accession negotia-
tions, with a view to join the Union alongside Romania and
Bulgaria in 2007. However, conditional status is still most
likely. Probably not in general terms like Turkey’s, but more
specific, possibly making the surrender of Gen. Gotovina an
issue.

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 The precise conditions will depend on whether the EU’s
policy logic has truly shifted beyond the outdated regional
approach once championed by Carl Bildt, the former Swed-
ish prime minister and the first international viceroy in Bosnia.
This approach held Croatia and Serbia back from the EU and
NATO until Bosnia, theoretically entirely dependent on the
good will of its bigger neighbors, recovers fully. It still has
some supporters in Britain and Scandinavia.
But Berlin, aware of the meager results on the ground,
has promoted a fresher approach, arguing that the future of
Bosnia, and other fragile states in the Balkans, depends pri-
marily on inter-ethnic relations in the countries themselves.
Three years ago, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
called for a Helsinki-like dialogue among the groups in those
countries to standardize their rights and obligations.
Whether the German model trumps the U.K.-Scandi-
navian approach in June isn’t clear. The desire to send a strong
message favors the Fischer model. But London still may hold
out, not least since the EU takes over Bosnia peacekeeping
from the U.S. and NATO in full at the end of the year, with
U.K. leadership. London might view a strong Croatia as an
obstacle, following the logic of Mr. Bildt that it might give
Bosnian Croats an added reason to prefer the dominion of
Zagreb over Sarajevo.
Few people in the Balkans think like the Foreign Of-
fice anymore, and would prefer to have the EU closer to its
borders than anything else. They see Croatia as a deserving
candidate, one that would cost Brussels little, and yet, give a
powerful boost to the progressive forces in their own coun-
tries.
Incidentally, if it were to join in 2007, Croatia would
contribute net 330 million euros to the EC budget, according
to estimates made this year. This transfer would, of course,
be offset by EU structural funds, but probably not by much.
If one were to use Slovakia’s first year financial net benefit as
a proxy, Croatia would receive an overall net of 80 million
euros. Peanuts, even for Zagreb.

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 As it turns out, the only beneficiary of keeping Croatia
on the EU’s sidelines may actually be Croatia. As candidate,
it would enjoy the benefit of structural funds without obliga-
tions to pay into the EU budget, which it must as a member.
The losers would be the EU and the Balkans.

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 EU MEMBERSHIP COMES WITH COSTS

Globus, October 22, 2004

Recent words expressed to Vladimir Seks by his coun-

terpart in Belgium, Herman De Croo, that with EU member-
ship Croatia surrenders some sovereignty but gains security
and prosperity, is also a popular phrase with Euro-enthusi-
asts in Zagreb who argue for quick integration. Unfortunately,
this savory sentence is overly simplistic in explaining an oth-
erwise complex relationship.
Among others, the thought disregards financial costs
that come with this type of association. And to Euro-realists,
to know the costs is crucial, so that negotiations are chan-
neled in a way that Croatia in the end pays an optimal price
for that association, and not any price asked. This is espe-
cially important at this time when the EU integration process
has changed substantially. For instance, in the area of finan-
cial transfers to acceding and new member states.
Early estimates indicate that Croatia, now as candi-
date, should in the foreseeable future be eligible for about
150-180 million euros in annual grants to move some of its
lagging sectors up to EU standards. This figure appears overly
low, and will probably be higher. But even if twice as large, it
is very little compared to what was allocated to countries such
as Greece, Portugal and Ireland early on, as well as Slovakia,
the Baltic states and others some years later. Ireland, for in-
stance, benefited from transfers in amounts close to five per-
cent of its GDP in peak years. This would add up to about 1.2
billion euro equivalent for Croatia.
The early figures are also small compared to what
Croatia is expected to pay the EU if it becomes a member in
2007. According to one study Zagreb would spend up to 330
million euros, net, from its own budget for the needs of Brus-
sels in that year. This outflow comes due to, for instance, the
loss of customs revenue that would then belong to Brussels
instead of Zagreb.

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 Further, this sum becomes even less relevant if it were
true that Croatia’s fishing industry would be losing up to 300
million euros annually due to outside fishing in the north-
eastern half of the Adriatic Sea beyond its territorial waters ∑
now the fishing and ecological zone that could be adminis-
tered solely by Croatia under international law. According to
a leader of a fishermen’s union, this is the amount Croatia is
now turning over to Italian and Slovene fishing boats that
freely exploit the would-be Croatian half of the sea. The fig-
ure may be inflated, but no one seems to know for certain.
To be sure, the value of the Adriatic Sea is not only in
fishing, but in its environmental, cultural and archeological
wealth, as well as potential energy resources such as natural
gas.
Whether anyone in Croatia has ever valued the Adriatic
Sea is an open question. If not, someone certainly should.
After all, Norway continues to sidestep EU membership pre-
cisely because of the value of its extended quasi-territorial
waters with their fishing and energy resources. Iceland has
also long delayed its possible integration to protect its fishing
waters. No one is saying that Croatia is Norway or Iceland,
but Zagreb should know the actual value of the assets that it
is bringing into the common EU fund.
These assets should be compensated appropriately,
either by higher structural funds, refunds such as those ne-
gotiated for the UK by Margaret Thatcher, or similar special
arrangements that new members negotiate from time to time.
Perhaps this is what the Sanader government has in mind by
asking Brussels to negotiate the Fisheries Chapter first.
In any case, by adding and subtracting the above in-
flow and two outflows, Croatia comes up short some 450 mil-
lion euros annually by becoming a member.
Of course this sum is calculated with debatable esti-
mates, without finesse for timeframe, and disregard for re-
funds that Brussels gives to new members that are net pro-
viders of funds in the first few years of membership. More-
over, it excludes many other costs and benefits, such as “soft”

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benefits of promoting reform, and hard costs and benefits of
environmental cleanup, as well as hard costs of common ag-
ricultural policy that favors early members.
There is a tendency among Euro-enthusiasts to say
that whatever the hard financial costs are, Croatia should
pay them. It is worth it because it would push the country to
make needed reforms, especially in the judiciary, state ad-
ministration, health care, and rigid labor market. But this
thinking should be avoided, because the value of most soft
benefits can also be estimated. This is true even more so for
the governing elites, who cannot afford to suggest that they
are resigned to surrender sovereignty only to have someone
else bring order to their house. Reforms that come due to
outside pressure and outside frameworks are seldom as suc-
cessful as those that come from within.
With all the imprecision that it carries, the above fig-
ure should, nevertheless, serve as an open issue that needs
clarification before Croatia becomes a member. It suggests
that there is no hurry in exchanging the candidate status,
which brings positive net transfers, for full membership. More-
over, Zagreb may want to hold off at least until the popular
opinion is comfortable with the value of the Adriatic Sea, and
until the EU begins treating all of its members equally in re-
gard to the agricultural policy. After all, this sector accounts
for close to one half of the EU budget.
Back to Mr. De Croo. The fact of the matter is that
Croatia is already substantially secure. NATO, where Croatia
enjoys de facto membership via PfP, sits virtually on all of its
borders. In fact, it gives Zagreb a classical “free rider” oppor-
tunity, as for instance, enjoyed by Austria. Further, one, if
not the most crucial element of the security equation is the
economy ∑ or lack of prosperity. But success here will come
due to reform at home, and not because of immediate EU
membership.

Published version was slightly shorter.

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 CROATS NOTHING LIKE THE AUSTRIANS ON IMAGE

In jest the Austrians are said to be the best public

relations people around. They succeeded, the punch line goes,
in convincing the world that Beethoven was Austrian and
Hitler was German.
Croats, in all seriousness, are probably the worst. As
Leslie Gelb, former editor of The New York Times, pointed out
tongue-in-cheek in the early 90s, “Croatia is known more for
its fascists than its democrats.”
In large part the Croats themselves are responsible for
this Gelbian image. On the subject of WWII, for instance,
Zagreb’s elite has spent the last six decades telling the world
almost exclusively about Ante Pavelic and his NDH, as if Croat
anti-fascists did not exist. This despite the fact that Croats
initiated the anti-fascist movement in the former Yugoslavia,
numbered high among its senior leaders, and made up dis-
proportionately the largest number of its foot soldiers until
1944, when Chetniks and other Serbs began to be drafted in
large numbers by Tito.
Of course, they were doing this to appease Belgrade,
which at first with Tito’s leadership wanted to distribute the
laurels of victory among all the peoples of the former Yugo-
slavia for the benefit of brotherhood and unity. Later, Belgrade
simply hijacked the mantle of the anti-fascist movement to
gain benefits that came along with such leadership. With the
acquiescence of the weak brother Zagreb, it then went even
further by assigning Croatia the singular heritage of Ante
Pavelic, as a mechanism to keep Croats subdued under the
communist system, at home and abroad.
Today, Zagreb’s elite for the most part appears to be
on its way to repeating this mistake of the past, with similar
motivations, and most likely, with similar consequences. At
issue lie the charges at the Hague, where Ms. del Ponte wants
to distribute, not the victory, but the blame, among all sides
in the former Yugoslavia, and mostly among Belgrade and

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Zagreb. As policy logic would have it, such a distribution has
its purpose, first, to speed up regional reconciliation, and
second, to shift some of the responsibility from the West for
its inaction when faced with a quasi-genocidal intent of the
Milosevic regime.
Is it really deja vu all over again for the Croats, as one
would quip, even if not lightheartedly.
At times it seems so. Take the example of a meeting
this former Bosnian-Herzegovene ambassador had with a
group of Croatian MPs visiting Brussels in spring 2000. Even
before he could sit down, one MP went on to apologize to the
ambassador for the aggression Croatia committed against his
country. The ambassador responded that given the specific
legal meaning of aggression, he could not be certain that ag-
gression took place, but he could be certain that Croatia saved
Bosnia through Operation Storm in 1995. Needless to say,
pitch silence ensued.
A lively discussion eventually picked up, and another
MP went on to conclude that both the first MP and the am-
bassador were right. Croatia did save Bosnia, but it also com-
mitted aggression. Then the ambassador challenged the group,
even it that were true, he said, would it not be better then for
Croatia, the Croats in BiH, for BiH itself, and the region in
general for that matter, if Zagreb were to spend some of its
energy on some of the positive developments in the region of
the past decade. Silence again.
Some people may incorrectly presume that giving con-
sideration to positive elements would tend to condone the
negative realities. Every human activity, whether positive or
negative at face value, almost always remains fraught with
both shortfalls and benefits. Shortfalls should certainly be
remedied and crimes should be punished, but successes must
also be recognized for society to maintain a healthy balance.
While unpunished crimes embolden the perpetrators and their
ilk to continue their misdeeds with impunity, mis-assigned
crimes and overlooked achievements tend to breed resent-
ment, at times leading to new cycles of violence.

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 For instance, the rebellion of Serbs in Croatia in 1991
had been primarily enabled and was emboldened using se-
lective events from WWII. Serbs and their supporters quickly
portrayed the Croats as blood-thirsty Ustashe, a charge which
stuck easily at home and abroad largely because no one had
a balanced picture of WWII in Croatia.
A balanced picture of the recent wars has yet to emerge.
For that to happen, more time is required. Then there is the
crucial issue of having the strength to deal with the past not
out of political convenience of the moment, but out of real life
necessity to find truth free of policy color. Despite the numer-
ous crimes committed, the end balance may show that in
Croatia, and elsewhere in the region for that matter,
Beethovens outnumbered the Hitlers by a wide margin. And
that is not a simplistic play on words, but a reality that must
be part of our future.

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RECOGNITION AND OTHER GAINS CAME BY DEFAULT

By now it seems that it happened so long ago, and the

issue of recognition of Croatia and the remaining former
Yugoslav republics is explained largely within the theories
centered on the historical designs of Germany, parochial in-
terests of the Holy See, or, when being more reasonable, within
the logic that the Western powers finally chose to accept the
right of Yugoslav nations to self-determination.
The perceived designs of Germany and the Holy See
were almost all imagination. The right to self-determination,
meanwhile, even if logical, was of secondary importance. The
driving elements that eventually brought recognition were
much simpler and more mundane. Indeed, the parliamen-
tary votes in Slovenia and Croatia, and the referendum in
Bosnia and Herzegovina represented mere formalities required
as a prerequisite for granting recognition.
For the West, a much preferred solution in the region
would have been to keep Yugoslavia together in some new
internal arrangement, based on democratic principles and
practices. The Council of Europe was ready to broker such a
formula and have Yugoslavia join as its first member from
the Communist bloc. But Belgrade rejected this solution be-
cause any Council of Europe arrangement would have meant
multi-party elections, i.e., the end of one party rule.
In order to keep Yugoslavia together in any form pos-
sible, the West went so far as to persuade Slovenia and Croatia
to freeze their June 1991 declarations of independence for
three months in hope that the country could be held together
as a loose confederation. Despite the fact that the Serbs, as
the largest group in the country, would continue to have a
leading role in a new common state, in whatever form it came,
Belgrade chose a militarist option.
Once Milosevic commenced to implement his plan of
Greater Serbia with a minimal number of non-Serbs on its
territory, the West was faced with a dilemma. Clearly, the

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only solution that could have stopped the seemingly invin-
cible Belgrade war machine was decisive force on the ground.
But no Western power ever took such a solution under con-
sideration for various reasons. Foremost was the fact that
after Yugoslavia fell apart and its conflicts were contained,
the region, poor and strategically irrelevant, was simply not
important enough to risk the lives of Western soldiers.
After it became clear that no one in the West would
ever intervene, and that Belgrade’s plans would mean huge
population shifts of non-Serbs from parts of Croatia and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, policy focus shifted to ways to miti-
gate the developing humanitarian disaster. Thus, the driving
policy variable for the West became the control of costly refu-
gee flows into Western Europe.
This allowed Germany to push through the recogni-
tion as it did. As a country that would face the greatest refu-
gee burden, it argued with substantial credibility that inter-
national law, i.e., recognition, would be the only thing that
could slow Belgrade down in the absence of decisive military
force. German ambassador in Washington, Immo Stabreit,
made a convincing case to this effect in a Washington Post
op-ed column on June 29, 1993.
Thus Croatia and others gained recognition, not be-
cause of German imperial design, but by default ∑ as the sec-
ond best option to stopping Milosevic and keeping Yugoslavia
unified. Indeed, in some ways Croatia and the other new states
benefited politically due to both Milosevic’s medieval goals of
ethnic exclusivity that drew quick public condemnation all
over the world, and the West’s unwillingness to intervene.
Another factor played a crucial role in gaining interna-
tional recognition. Public opinion was mobilized in support of
the victims of Milosevic’s policy thanks to a new force in in-
ternational relations: CNN and other almost instant forms of
international communication. The policy makers in the West
could not stand aside when faced with a daily dose of horren-
dous crimes bordering on genocide, and the enormous pub-
lic outrage that resulted. What in the past would have been

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condoned if it did not last for a very long period of time could
not be hidden in the 1990s thanks to what became known as
the CNN Effect.
But the CNN Effect was never strong enough to garner
support for Western military intervention. Thus other solu-
tions had to be pursued. Recognition was an early alternative
that benefited Croatia. In other circumstances such an out-
come would have been quite unlikely no matter what the
Croatian parliament decided.
As the conflict grew and became even more horrific,
Croatia again benefited politically by the fact that no one in
the West wanted to intervene effectively to stop Milosevic and
his proxies.
Croatia became the key player in the region when the
U.S. Department of Defense recognized that strengthening
Croatia militarily would lead to a balance of power in the re-
gion. Such thinking was based on an assumption that a strong
Croatia would deter Milosevic and his satellites in Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Croatia, and bring about a quicker negoti-
ated settlement.
Eventually Croatia transformed this support for creat-
ing a new balance of power into American support for estab-
lishing control of rebel-held Krajina. This was certainly not
the intention of the U.S. In fact, Washington hesitated when
Zagreb first proposed to de-blockade Bihac and retake Krajina.
But it came along only because of a lack of other alternatives,
and the thinking that if Zagreb lost, everyone would lose, and
especially the Muslims in Bihac and elsewhere in Bosnia.
Despite the mainstream views, assisting the Muslims
and Bosnia was an important issue in Zagreb for some time
before 1995. I witnessed it in December 1992 at the Skrabalo-
Izetbegovic meeting that was a subject of an earlier essay.
Other attempts and agreements were made in the same di-
rection, even if most did not actually get implemented. Zagreb
knew that it could help itself by helping the Muslims, despite
mainstream views to the contrary.

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 For instance, one of the Briuni transcripts shows
Tudjman worried that international negotiators Thorvald
Stoltenberg and Yasushi Akashi were sending false informa-
tion to the UN headquarters in New York in July 1995 to the
effect that attacks by Ratko Mladic on Bihac were subsiding.
If such reports were true, Zagreb’s main argument for the
Storm, the need to save Bihac, would have been for naught.
Clearly, the U.S. would have never supported Croatia if it
carried out the Storm solely to subdue its rebels in Krajina.
To be sure, Zagreb would have also preferred to reach
a peace settlement without resorting to force, but the contin-
ued belligerence of Milosevic proxies and their unrealistic
demands compelled Zagreb to act and Washington to give its
support.
Extremism coming from Serbia also played to Croatia’s
benefit in 2004 when it gained EU candidate status. Until
then EU policy had been that the Western Balkan countries
should join the EU at the same time, or to be more precise,
Serbia and Croatia should not join before Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The logic behind this policy had been that a
“European” Serbia and Croatia would be too attractive to the
Serbs and Croats in Bosnia, and thus a destabilizing factor.
The two groups in Bosnia would look even more to Belgrade
and Zagreb, rather than to Sarajevo, the thinking went. More-
over, the promise of EU membership would make Belgrade
and Zagreb more cooperative with the international commu-
nity in regard to influencing Serbs and Croats in Bosnia. The
carrot of membership would thus be used as a stick against
their ethnic kin in Bosnia.
But the resurgence of extremism in Serbia, as seen in
the increasing voter support for Tomislav Nikolic’s Radicals,
compelled Brussels to soften its policy, at least for a moment.
It upgraded Croatia to candidate status in order to send a
message to Serbia and others in the region that cooperation
with the West pays dividends. Whether Croatia will remain
on the fast track of EU membership from there may continue
to depend primarily on events in Serbia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina.

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 Many policy makers in Europe, especially in London
and the Scandinavian capitals still prefer the Carl Bildt line
of thinking that an overly strong Croatia could be a destabi-
lizing factor for BiH and the region. Bildt spoke about this at
the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, DC on March 16,
1999.
“Croatia is economically stronger than the other states
in the region. If we were to support its further development,
i.e., accelerated Euro-Atlantic integration, in view of the stag-
nation in FRY and BiH, Croatia’s influence in parts of BiH,
and not only in neighboring parts but throughout BiH, would
become so strong that it would almost certainly lead to a divi-
sion of BiH. In order to prevent this, the whole region should
be treated in the same way, and its economic development
should be supported in a balanced way so as to retain a bal-
ance of power,” Bildt was reported as saying by a Croatian
Embassy memo of the following day.
Bildt’s fears that wider parts of BiH, beyond
Herzegovina, may gravitate toward Croatia could have
stemmed from popular opinion among Muslims at the time.
The semi-annual studies conducted by U.S.I.A. for a number
of years following the Dayton peace accords, showed that as
many as three-quarters of Muslims supported a confedera-
tion with Croatia that was on the table in mid to late 1990s.
The confederation option was later downscaled to something
called special relations, and eventually eliminated entirely
largely due to this logic.
In the months following the Operation Storm in 1995,
Western newspaper reporters and editors billed Croatia as
the sole winner in the Balkan wars. In some way, this has
been true. Croatia certainly capitalized on opportunities as
they appeared. But such gains, including recognition, would
not have been possible if Belgrade had pursued more realis-
tic and reasonable policies, or if the West had acted as re-
quired by its international obligations and demanded by public
opinion.

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 4.
One China Policy for Bosnia and Herzegovina
and the Region

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308
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 TIME FOR EUROPE TO START PULLING ITS WEIGHT
IN BALKAN BACKYARD

European Voice, March 29, 2001

A decade ago, at the outset of fighting in the former

Yugoslavia, Jacques Poos, then the president of the Euro-
pean Council, declared that “this is the hour of Europe”. Eu-
rope listened to him and took affairs in its proverbial back
yard into its own hands, with subsequent policies alleviating
the humanitarian disaster in the region.
Its lasting achievement, however, was the establish-
ment of the Badinter Commission that drew up the legal frame-
work for the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. The princi-
ples of impermeability of existing borders, as well as the stand-
ardised rights and obligations of the new states remain the
cornerstone of policies in the region today.
After 1995, Europe largely ceded the diplomatic initia-
tive to the US. But now that the viability of the Dayton peace
agreement is again in question in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(BiH), after the controversial national elections and political
rebellion of the Croat community, Brussels would be prudent
to assess the past policies and their consequences. The more
recent armed rebellion in Macedonia may indeed require a
detached look at the fragile states in a now otherwise stable
region.
If these two developments are not enough to necessi-
tate a review, the signals from Washington certainly should.
The Bush administration has strongly hinted that it wants
Europe to take on a larger role in the Balkans, so the US can
focus its resources in the Middle East and Asia, where Eu-
rope benefits, but cannot assist substantially.
The Balkans may not be the only issue to reassess.
Washington’s past top diplomats for Cyprus, Morton
Abramowitz and M.J. Wilkinson, recently wrote that US/UN
policy options in Cyprus have run dry. They called on Europe

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to take over the lead, as Brussels may now have more lever-
age there than Washington because of the many carrots it
offers, and since Cyprus belongs to the European zone of in-
terests in the first place.
Europe’s re-emergence in the Balkans should not be
by default, however. It is only natural that it happens. After
all, if we are to believe the promises made at the Zagreb sum-
mit in November 2000, all Balkan nations are future mem-
bers of the Union.
Certainly not immediately, but once they stabilise po-
litically and regenerate economically. Nevertheless, this proc-
ess of preparation should predominate with European solu-
tions.
In the past, Europe has stayed away from the lead in
the Balkans because it preferred the US leadership that came
with financial and military burden-sharing, and as a way to
gloss over policy differences among the fifteen member states.
Now that Brussels has a common foreign and security policy
(CFSP), and the telephone numbers of Javier Solana to coor-
dinate and External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten to
implement it, the latter obstacle is no longer there.
In fact, the Balkans may be the opportunity for the
new portfolio to establish itself quickly as vanguard of the
new United Europe. Patten and Solana often say, if CFSP
cannot show impact in the Balkans, maybe it ought not be
there at all. As for burden-sharing, there appears to be an
unwritten consensus across the Atlantic already. As Brus-
sels is left with a larger toll, its policy role will increase at
least proportionately.
Europe was also hesitant because it feared that the
solutions in the Balkans are difficult and even impossible to
achieve, given the high expectations of a public assailed daily
by the horrors of war on television. But the war is largely
behind us. Even the conflict in Macedonia is likely to stabi-
lise soon.
Since the region is now largely removed from war, and
mostly led by promising new governments, new solutions
should be much easier to address and achieve.

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 Indeed, Europe can now succeed, provided its policies
are consistent, non-ideological and realistic. The tragedies
and emotions of war made the policies of the past ten years
appear partial, expedient and chimerical; thus, at times im-
possible to implement, often frustrating for all sides, and
unsustainable in the long term.
To be sure, lasting solutions are always crafted years
after the conflict, using the logic of peace, not during the war
or in its aftermath, when the imbalances of war override jus-
tice and fairness.
As a first step, Brussels would be wise to consider re-
convening the Badinter Commission ∑ but this time to stand-
ardise the rights and obligations of the national groups in the
still fragile states in the region, BiH, Yugoslavia, and possi-
bly Macedonia unless it can reach its own solution.
Serbs, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Croats, and Albani-
ans should have the same rights and institutions, while keep-
ing the states unified. Inequality is a powerful and moral
cause, and a major source of instability. Witness the goals of
the Montenegrins and the plight of the Croats in BiH. Such
problems can only be put to rest by standardisation. If Brus-
sels should decide to take the lead in the Balkans, it should
not do so before such a legal foundation is established.
Europe would then certainly be entrusted with fixing
or replacing policy initiatives that have come up short in the
past five years, and reinforcing those that have been effec-
tive.
One mechanism that has been inefficient is the Inter-
national Criminal Tribunal. It has lost all credibility amongst
the public in the region. The recent remarks of former Yugo-
slav Defence Minister Dragoljub Ostojic, who said that he
would rather go to the Hague and become a national hero
than be tried at home and be remembered as a criminal or
traitor, boggles the mind and attests to the real problems with
international justice.
The Tribunal has also become the most contentious
issue between the western powers on one side, and countries

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such as Russia, China and Mexico on the other which want
to end its mandate. The Tribunal should not be folded. Rather
it should be overhauled from a legal and policy perspective,
so it can regain credibility and achieve the goals it set for
itself eight years ago.
Other mechanisms such as the Stability Pact should
be strengthened. This is a forum for the states in the region
to identify problems and propose solutions themselves. In the
past the pact was handicapped by Yugoslavia’s exclusion and
Croatia’s hesitancy to take the lead.
These are the two key countries in the region and their
views should be heard often. With their leadership, the re-
gion should be challenged to propose policies that would be
better than those put forward by outside powers.
Finally, some past policies should be maintained and
expanded. Rebuilding of infrastructure at minimal cost to the
countries should continue, as enlightened investment that
benefits both the EU and the region in the long run. A re-
gional trade area should be established, but only by extend-
ing the existing European Economic Area mechanisms.
At present foreign direct investment is seen as a prior-
ity, but economic theory and practice tells us that foreign
investment follows rather than leads economic recoveries.
Regaining lost intra-regional trade, and preferential access to
the EU markets will achieve economic recovery much sooner.
As the case may be with Cyprus, Brussels clearly has
the mechanisms that can be turned into solutions for the
Balkans. The recent events in BiH and Macedonia, and the
likely moves in Washington, clearly point to Brussels. The
Jacques Poos hour has not passed; it was only put on hold,
to be completed at a new time. That time is now.

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 A NEW ERA CALLS FOR NEW THINKING ON DAYTON

The Wall Street Journal Europe, June 1, 2001

By welcoming a regional debate on how the Dayton

peace agreement could be changed, Wolfgang Petritsch, the
high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, conceded last
month that the 1995 settlement for the country ist kaputt. As
an envoy named by the EU, which has the lead role in the
civil implementation of the agreement, Mr. Petritsch has thus
placed Brussels in the forefront of the debate over revising
Dayton, and perhaps into conflict with Washington — which
has officially considered the subject closed and refused to
hear of any discussions whatsoever.
Mr. Petritsch was responding to the observation by
Croatia’s Premier Ivica Racan that the present constitutional
framework for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the Dayton
agreement is based on asymmetrical entities — for instance,
there are three peoples and two entities; and the entities give
different levels of rights to national groups, and also have not
harmonized commercial and other laws, such as property
ownership. Due to this asymmetry, Mr. Racan said, Dayton
needs reworking if the country is to survive.
Until now, any suggestion of revisiting Dayton was con-
sidered “heresy” and has cost many a BiH officeholder their
job. For an outside politician like Mr. Racan, such “anti-Day-
ton activities,” as they were called, once would have brought
international ostracism. But times change.
Actually, Dayton has already been revised. The modi-
fications began two years ago when NATO, which is respon-
sible for the military end of the agreement, requested that
BiH’s three military components form a unified army. Last
November, the country’s election laws were altered at the elev-
enth hour to effect a desired outcome: to form a government
without the three wartime nationalist parties. Another im-
portant change was a BiH constitutional-court decision in-

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validating the nationality-exclusive laws of the country’s Serb
and Muslim-Croat entities.
Mr. Racan, however, has pushed the debate into a com-
pletely new arena. In effect, he wants BiH to recantonize, or
redraw its internal borders, probably to create smaller and
more autonomous units. This proposal has been heard be-
fore, in Zagreb and Sarajevo, but was rejected everywhere
else as a recipe for alarming the Serb population and causing
almost certain instability. Secondly, the history of earlier gov-
erning parties left the impression that the leaders were too
doctrinaire to make the sort of compromises that would be
necessary to effect successful change, and that talk of revi-
sion would instead only open a Pandora’s box of overlapping
claims.
For the many in BiH, however, the redrawing approach
is becoming a rallying cry, and should be addressed seriously.
Thanks to Messrs. Racan and Petritsch, the BiH political scene
will never be the same again.
Yet their recently articulated views should not come as
a surprise. A Brussels think tank, the European Stability Ini-
tiative, anticipated them in its March 22 report. The report
concluded that many aspects of BiH have changed signifi-
cantly over the past five years, and so the Western powers
that effectively run the state should also change their ap-
proach and logic. The ESI noted that the main protagonists
in the decade-long conflict, Messrs. Milosevic, Tudjman and
Iztebegovic, are now gone, as are their ideas and goals, and
thus a new policy logic is needed.
A new time does call for new thinking. But can the
Dayton peace agreement be revised successfully?
BiH’s former defense minister, Miroslav Prce, makes a
convincing case that it can, in the Winter 2001 edition of the
Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. He points out that popular
support for the Dayton solutions remains high among the
country’s Muslims and is growing among Serbs, but is drop-
ping dramatically among Croats. He concludes that these
sentiments should be used as a guide on how to revise Day-
ton, with the lead coming from Brussels.

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 Mr. Prce points out that Dayton succeeded when it gave
the Serbs and Muslims an institutional stake in a common
state that they can identify with, and are willing to protect via
common institutions in Sarajevo. This was crucial in a situa-
tion where as many as one half of the country’s citizens have
a difficult time identifying with their new state, but rather
associate with neighboring Yugoslavia or Croatia.
Mr. Prce emphasizes the importance of creating a rec-
ognizable institutional stake among all three constituent com-
munities of BiH, not the specific issue of reorganizing inter-
nal borders. Yet Mr. Racan’s call for a new cantonal arrange-
ment would certainly bring such benefits.
The lack of return has plagued BiH development enor-
mously, creating resentment and overcrowding in the Mus-
lim-Croat entity. Smaller, more autonomous cantons would
encourage the return of displaced persons and refugees, who
would feel safer. Autonomy strengthens the collective secu-
rity of the groups in question, and eliminates extremists from
the political scene who survive only by stoking collective fear.
The newly constituted cantons Mr. Racan probably
imagines should then be associated into three federal units,
following Mr. Prce’s observations. The new units would pro-
vide each community with institutions that they consider their
own, and that they will take into a common state, each feel-
ing that it has a part of a whole to defend in Sarajevo. Such
an institutional stake is crucial, because those who can nur-
ture it in Sarajevo will feel less need to look to neighboring
states for identification.
Under such an arrangement recantonization would
actually work, and might even get a fair hearing from the
Serb side and the U.S. Department of State. The latter is op-
posed to any changes of Dayton that the potentially radical
Serb side would not like.
If Brussels were to join the debate on this issue, no
doubt the State Department would not like tinkering with
what it perceives as its own project. This may not be the case
for the whole Bush administration, however. While State is

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motivated to protect the Dayton legacy of Richard Holbrooke,
the new White House would just as soon forget it. And past
statements by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and
more recent remarks by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
about the future U.S. troop presence in Balkans suggest that
many in Washington would prefer that Brussels take the lead
in BiH as soon as possible, even if that means Dayton disap-
pears from the political jargon altogether.

High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch responded with a Let-

ter to the Editor on June 12, 2001.

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 WHAT ABOUT COLLECTIVE RIGHTS

The Wall Street Journal Europe, July 27, 2001

As Macedonia braced this week for the possibility of

an all-out civil war, Brussels and Washington worked des-
perately to re-establish a cease-fire and revive peace talks
between the government in Skopje and ethnic Albanian rebels
fighting for a larger say in state affairs. On the table was the
three-week old Leotard-Pardew plan to give Macedonia’s eth-
nic Albanians cultural autonomy and local self-government.
Yet the Albanians, having recognized weakness in the
West’s toleration for drawn-out negotiations, now wanted to
hold out for more. The Macedonian government, feeling be-
trayed by the Albanians and Westerners that have appeared
intent on imposing a compromise that Skopje would not want
to sell to its Slav majority, now seemed to prefer a military
solution to end the impasse.
Thursday’s announcement of a resumption of talks
between Skopje and the rebels came as a relief to many. But
even if the two sides are willing to negotiate, and eventually
reach a settlement, the likelihood of it sticking for long is very
low. The West may be better off putting the plan on hold until
it fully reconsiders its overall policy in the Balkans.
The current policy is based on the goal of ensuring
that each person in the Balkans enjoys basic rights, as an
individual. In the corridors of Western policy-making, mean-
while, the notion that these people see themselves also as
members of a distinct cultural group has been ignored, and
actually discouraged. Until that changes, and the issue of
collective rights for the region’s national groups is addressed,
Macedonia and other fragile states in the region will remain
perennially unstable and prone to humanitarian and economic
disruptions.
There still are three fragile states in the Balkans:
Macedonia, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

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All are unstable due to festering national-group questions.
Each state grants a different status to what are effectively the
same national groups. Thus, Serbs enjoy a preferred status
in BiH, but have marginal rights as a group in the Yugoslav
province of Kosovo — where, for instance, the formation of
new Serb-majority municipalities is discouraged. Albanians
have great powers in Kosovo, but limited potential in
Macedonia. BiH has three national groups that, while consti-
tutional equals, are unequal in terms of access to state power
structures, with the Croats short-changed.
The West prides itself on a regional policy that treats
all of the countries in the Balkans by the same standards.
But Western powers have effectively created a One China Policy
for the Balkans: one region — different systems and different
standards.
We find such asymmetry largely because solutions
pursued in the region so far have been based almost solely on
legislation to protect individual rights. For instance, the Day-
ton peace agreement lists a plethora of international indi-
vidual rights conventions, but none dealing with a key ele-
ment of the state structure — the rights of “constituent
peoples.” The issues related to interactions among distinct
communities have been overlooked.
Yet these lie at the heart of current tensions. The Serbs
in BiH did not rebel in 1992 because their individual rights
were threatened by Sarajevo. The recent campaign of civil
disobedience by Croats in BiH is not driven primarily by the
hope of enjoying greater human rights through seceding and
joining Croatia. And the Albanians in Macedonia have not
taken up arms because Skopje is undemocratic. Albanians
in Kosovo still aren’t ready to compromise, despite a new demo-
cratic government in Belgrade, but this is not because they
fear their individual rights may be stifled someday.
In all instances, collective rights are in question: ei-
ther the right to associate with a “mother” country in an in-
stitutional way, or to have effective political and economic
power as a distinct ethnic group of citizens of a new country.

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For Croats in BiH, the dispute actually involves collective rights
being taken away by international fiat, as in the case of the
November 2000 election law that effectively prevents Croats
from forming electoral majorities.
The new policy in the region, therefore, will need to
address national-group questions — developing a consistent
collective-rights architecture based on autonomy in an insti-
tutional and territorial sense. Unfortunately, the slate of pre-
cedents is pretty blank. As Pope John Paul II pointed out to
the 50th United Nations General Assembly in 1995: “The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948,
spoke eloquently of the rights of persons; but no similar in-
ternational agreement has yet addressed the rights of na-
tions.”
To be sure, creating new nation-states should not be
the aim. Numerous poor mini-states in the Balkans would
not be desirable. Instead, new forms of governance based on
highly autonomous federal units should be pursued. The fed-
eral units will make up wider associations that the interna-
tional community now recognizes as states.
The present policy emphasis on centralization or, in
some cases on asymmetrical collective rights, has a dismal
history. In BiH alone, centralization policy has failed twice in
the last century, and is heading for failure again. The violent
dissolution of the former Yugoslavia is a perfect example of
centralization and ambiguous collective rights gone wrong.
Although talk of group rights causes panic in some
international circles, it shouldn’t. As the Pope emphasized in
1995, the rights of national groups are “nothing more [than]
human rights fostered at the specific level of community life.”
Adequate collective rights have overriding practical ben-
efits. They pacify national groups, mitigate secessionism, and
eliminate extremists as political factors. All of these are key
objectives in the Balkans.
The more complicated the political situation is (vide
the Balkans), the more standardized and nondiscriminatory
international policy should be. If such an approach had been

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uniformly applied in the Balkans, Macedonian Albanians
would know what is the maximum they can expect in the way
of group rights, and the Macedonian government would have
no trouble explaining to its chagrined public what is the mini-
mum it ought to provide.
Such would be the preventive diplomacy that both
Brussels and Washington are searching for in the Balkans
and elsewhere. With the present reactive policy, no one is
happy. And in the case of Macedonia, we are now seeing the
dissolution of years of goodwill built up between Skopje and
the West.

Original title: “Back From the Brink in Macedonia. For How

Long?”

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 NEW IDEAS FROM FISCHER AND SOLANA

The Wall Street Journal Europe, October 12, 2001

This paper’s reporter Paul Hofheinz suggested recently

that the wholesale realignment of U.S. foreign policy follow-
ing the September 11 terror attacks could be described as a
regrouping of the United Nations membership into four con-
centric circles rallied around Washington. Each group of states
would have a specific role to play in the war against terror-
ism, ranging from active military involvement to supplying
logistic and intelligence support, to rallying public support
for the Allied action in Arab states, or at least remaining neu-
tral.
To those four groupings we may add the fifth, to de-
scribe the friendly states that have relied in the past on sub-
stantial U.S. assistance to guarantee their internal stability.
Instead of actively aiding the U.S. campaign, states such the
three still-fragile ones in Southeast Europe: Macedonia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and Yugoslavia may in fact require addi-
tional U.S. resources to bolster them in the current circum-
stances.
The new American ambassador to the Court of St.
James, William Farish, hinted recently that the U.S. policy
review for Southeast Europe may be heading in precisely this
direction. He told The Sunday Times in late September that
the Bush administration has now taken a step back from its
desire to pull out of the region, and is considering instead
how it can reinforce its engagement there.
The U.S. may need to beef up its presence and influ-
ence in Southeast Europe indeed, first as a matter of provid-
ing safety for the large NATO contingent in the three states.
The presence of extremist Islamic elements, mostly outsiders
left over from the Bosnian war, that pose a threat to NATO’s
troops, and a resumption of factional fighting that drains the
U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities, are se-
rious concerns.

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 Washington would also like to change the region’s repu-
tation as a main transit point for migration from the Middle
East and other troubled regions to Europe, and in that way
minimize the threat of new terrorist infiltration. Equally im-
portant, NATO wants to secure its air transport and energy
supply corridors that pass via Southeast Europe to and from
the front line NATO states.
Some urgent new objectives can be met relatively
quickly. Efforts to reduce threats posed from leftover extrem-
ist elements — for instance, NATO operations to track down
possible bin Laden associates — and to check migration are
getting help from local governments. Such cooperation also
means that NATO will be able to count on secure transit cor-
ridors over the region. However, the risk of instability that
would tie up Western diplomatic, intelligence and military
resources at a time when they are needed elsewhere will not
go away unless festering group questions are addressed.
One fresh and promising approach on the latter issue
comes from Berlin. Last month, German Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer proposed to his EU colleagues at Genval,
Belgium that a new mechanism is needed for Southeast Eu-
rope to deal with the still unhappy ethnic groups there; a
Helsinki-like process that would address reasonable demands
of various national groups, while respecting the territorial
integrity of the states in question. Mr. Fischer concluded that
the problems in the region are not between states, but be-
tween different groups within states.
This represents a substantive shift in thinking among
the Western powers. Until now, the idea has been that cen-
trifugal disruptions in Macedonia, Yugoslav province of
Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are exclusively
exported from abroad. But Mr. Fischer believes that nation-
alist ambitions in the three states are driven primarily by
internal factors.
The foreign-policy supremo of the European Council,
Javier Solana, has also added a promising thought to the
policy debate on the same issue. Writing about the EU policy

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in Macedonia on these pages on August 22, he argued that
“all groups should have a stake in the nation.”
While neither of these officials has gone into details, it
is clear what various groups need in their current states to
substitute for what they seek in the idea of independence of
seceding to so-called “mother countries.” The stake should
include institutions through which the groups can exercise
and check political and economic power in the new states.
Democratic processes cannot prosper without political and
civic institutions. The various communities will turn away
from ideas of separation only when there are institutions they
can identify with in new state capitals.
The stake also should include a defined territory for
the purpose of creating a tax base. The territory need not be
contiguous. Rather, the national groups should be able to
finance cultural and other programs and institutions on their
own and not be dependent on mother countries, as they are
now.
Uniformity also is crucial. At present, Serbs, Croats,
Muslims and Albanians have been granted substantially dif-
ferent group rights in the three states. This inequality and
uncertainty is a main source of instability in Southeast Eu-
rope.
The stalemate in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo is
one example. The Kosovo question may take on a new dimen-
sion after the provincial elections on November 17. Kosovo
Albanians will in all likelihood ask for independence as soon
as they form a new government.
How the West reacts to their demands will resonate
strongly in the region. If they receive support for indepen-
dence, we can expect calls for independence referenda from
other groups in neighboring countries. If, on the other hand,
the Kosovo Albanians are given an entity like the Serbs have
in BiH, an absolute minimum for them, the same will be de-
manded by Serbs in Kosovo, and probably by the Croats in
BiH and the Albanians in Macedonia.

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 Standardization is the only workable approach to such
a matrix of groups and rights. The national groups should
know what is the maximum what they can achieve, and the
states they live in should know what is the minimum they
have to provide.
Mr. Fischer’s proposal, and Mr. Solana’s concept of a
“stake,” hold the key to pacifying national groups in South-
east Europe, mitigating secessionism and eliminating extrem-
ists from political life, thus finally stabilizing the region, and
removing it from Washington’s day-to-day crisis management
list. In fact, Berlin may just be the voice with the ideas that
Washington now needs in Southeast Europe.

The original title: “Another Reason to Seek Peace in the

Balkans”.

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 BALKANS IN NATO: CROATIA, BOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA, AND YUGOSLAVIA

Harvard International Review, Fall 2001, Volume 23, Issue 3

Adapted version in The Wall Street Journal Europe,
December 27, 2001

The next round of North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) expansion is due in Fall 2002 at the Prague Summit
of the NATO members’ heads of state. Not surprisingly, the
debate over candidates is already in full swing. However, al-
most all of the debate has focused on the so-called Vilnius
Nine—Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—named after
the Lithuanian capital where their leaders met last year to
begin lobbying their cases.
Three European states—Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH), and Yugoslavia—were not invited to Vilnius.
At the time, they had not met the internal stability require-
ments to participate. Consequently, they are generally over-
looked in the present discussions. Since then, however, all
three have voted into office new Western-leaning governments,
one for the first time, and thus they deserve a closer look
either as candidates for NATO membership or as countries
where NATO can play an enhanced stabilizing role.
Croatia was recently included in the Partnership for
Peace (PfP) program, the antechamber for eventual NATO can-
didacy. This is a significant boost for the region’s basic secu-
rity. The advancement of Western security policy in the re-
gion should not stop there, however. Croatia should move on
to the next stage, not only because it deserves to, but also for
the benefit of regional security.
Only two European states now remain without a for-
mal relationship to NATO: BiH and Yugoslavia. BiH presents
both a challenge and an opportunity to NATO. With more
than 20,000 NATO troops in the country, the Western alli-

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ance should seriously consider how it can use those troops
and its substantial influence to permanently stabilize BiH,
thereby obtaining a long-desired exit for itself. Given the re-
cent political developments in Belgrade, a similar opportu-
nity for advancing Western interests may lie in Yugoslavia as
well, for the first time in a decade.

Croatia

Croatia’s recent inclusion in the PfP program is long

overdue. Since we often speak of NATO membership as a re-
ward, the delay here is curious, as perhaps no new state de-
serves this honor more than Croatia. Since the breakup of
the Warsaw Pact, Croatia has done more to benefit Western
interests than any other new democracy. The smooth trans-
formation of Zagreb politics from one-party monolith to multi-
party government was indeed a welcome harbinger for de-
mocratization in the region, but Croatia’s positive role in the
region predates the January 2000 elections.
To begin, Croatia saved BiH. In the summer of 1995
its military operations, named Operation Storm, ended a car-
nage Europe had not seen since World War II—a humanitar-
ian catastrophe for which the West could not muster an ap-
propriate response. The Western capitals often unfairly take
credit for this turnaround; in fact, the peace in BiH came
only once the Croatian Army (HV) had established a new bal-
ance of power in the region by its summer operations. Every-
thing that followed, from the first exercise of NATO air power
to the Dayton-Paris peace agreement, was a filling-in of a
diplomatic puzzle.
“All along, the United States and its allies have been
looking for a force—other than themselves—that could check
Serbian and Bosnian Serb adventurism and produce a mili-
tary balance on which realistic settlement could be built.
Maybe such a force is now emerging: Croatia,” wrote The
Washington Post three days before Operation Storm com-
menced. At the end of the operation the Post added, “The

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Croatians argue they are not the problem but the solution;
they claim to have created a new regional ‘balance’ on which
‘proper’ peace talks with the Serbs can begin. This line has
been enthusiastically adopted by the American government,
which is under pressure to show that the quiet political sup-
port it extended to Croatia had a legitimate purpose of pro-
moting a negotiation in Bosnia.”
Richard Holbrooke, the main US diplomatic broker in
Dayton, makes a rather unflattering reference to the HV in
his peace negotiations diary as “junkyard dogs,” typical to
his style, but he adds that Zagreb had Washington’s unsaid
support in its endeavors in BiH out of desperation, as the
only alternative to the risk-averse West.
One military analyst at the time noted that the turn-
around in Bosnia was 75 percent the doing of the HV, 15
percent of the Bosnian Croat militia (the HVO), and 10 per-
cent of the Bosnian Muslim militia (the ABiH). Interestingly,
Britain’s leading commentator, Martin Wollacott, later con-
cluded in The Washington Times that the Croatian military
victories in 1995 changed the fortunes for BiH, while the
Western diplomatic initiative that followed only protected the
Serbs.

Controversies

Croatia’s positive role that year has been overshad-

owed by the often confusing and unpopular policies of its
past government, led by Franjo Tudjman. However, the re-
cent political changes in Zagreb allow for a reconsideration of
Croatia’s role without having to refer to its previous leaders’
style of governing and understanding of democracy.
Croatia’s positive role has also been overshadowed by
two recent decisions in the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY): Blaskic and Kordic, in which
Croatia was found to have been involved as an aggressor in
BiH in 1993. These decisions, however, are unlikely to stand
the test of time, and should be reversed. The ICTY judges

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disregarded the case law on this issue, which required “com-
mand and control” of a country’s forces in foreign territory.
The decision also included a spurious argument that, while
Croatia’s own forces were neither present nor involved in fight-
ing in central Bosnia, its forces stationed further south in
Herzegovina—forces that were securing the isolated Croatian
cities of Dubrovnik and Split—relieved the Bosnian Croat
militia from fighting the Bosnian Serb militia, thus allowing
these forces to engage the Bosnian Muslim militia in central
Bosnia.
In fact, the ICTY does not even have the mandate to
decide on the question of international conflict, which is the
domain of the International Court of Justice. The decisions
in the two cases say more about the ICTY than about the
conflict in BiH. The ICTY appears to be more focused on cre-
ating new international criminal law, often far different from
present international and any domestic law, rather than on
dispensing justice and promoting truth and reconciliation in
BiH.
This type of convoluted but policy-driven common wis-
dom about Croatia is not new. For instance, the view that
Croats joined the Axis en masse in World War II, while the
Serbs were the sole members of the Allied Partisan move-
ment in the former Yugoslavia, was promoted for five decades.
The objective was to discredit and discourage Croat self-de-
termination, which threatened the stability of the favored com-
munist regime of Tito and its unitary Yugoslavia. However, a
reconstructed history of World War II shows that the Croats,
and not the Serbs, initiated and provided the top leaders and
disproportionate number of soldiers to the anti-fascist move-
ment.
The politicized description of Croatia’s role in BiH in
1993 will not endure as long. It should take historians much
less time to deconstruct the present fallacy than it took them
to disprove the one from World War II. In addition, the Inter-
national Court of Justice may play a role should Zagreb seek
a ruling there. Similarly, a Truth and Reconciliation Com-

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mission in BiH—which is about to emerge—will bring forth
new evidence removed from emotions and the logic of war.
The truth is that Croatia was indeed involved in BiH,
though not out of altruism or expansion. Like most states
that act across borders, it was pursuing its own security in-
terests. For Croatia this meant limiting the costly refugee
outflow from BiH, and, most importantly, protecting its sliver-
like Dalmatian coast. Zagreb’s control of the coast ran on
average less than 10 miles inland, stretching 250 miles from
Dubrovnik to Zadar. These and other key population and eco-
nomic centers were un-defendable other than from neighbor-
ing Herzegovina.
Zagreb thus supported and financed the Croat-major-
ity entity in BiH, called Herceg-Bosna, as an indispensable
buffer zone. At the outset this zone was the only form of re-
sistance to Belgrade’s gains in BiH. Many point out correctly
that if there had been no Herceg-Bosna in 1992, there would
be no BiH today. Zagreb allocated about 10 percent of its
military budget for the needs of Herceg-Bosna. Moreover, it
allowed its ports, airports, and roads to be used for the ben-
efit of the ABiH. Zagreb even served as a broker, with the
blessings of Washington, in the arming of Sarajevo by the
regime in Tehran.
No less important, Croatia minimized the migration
effects on the stability of Europe by keeping one quarter of all
BiH refugees in Croatia, while at the same time housing an
equal number of its own displaced persons. It spent in excess
of US$1 billion for the care of refugees alone. Only Germany
and perhaps Sweden spent more.
Four years later, during the Kosovo crisis, Croatia
opened its airspace to the NATO alliance no questions asked.
It could have demanded a substantial consideration, given
its strategic importance for over-flights and the hundreds of
millions of dollars in lost tourism and shipping revenues due
to the air raids. One London investment bank estimated the
loss at US$1.5 billion, a sum equal to seven percent of the
country’s GDP. The Western alliance spent hefty amounts to

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stabilize the other countries in the region for hard-currency
losses due to NATO intervention. However, Croatia came cost-
free.
Croatia is BiH’s principal security partner. Two-thirds
of BiH’s border is with Croatia. It is the primary transit coun-
try for international forces and supplies to this landlocked
country, and Croatia’s many ports and roads along the Adriatic
are BiH’s lifelines to the outside world. Bringing NATO to its
borders will enhance BiH’s attractiveness to investors and
stabilize its trade routes. This is true for both of BiH’s enti-
ties, the Federation and the Republika Srpska. The latter’s
capital, Banja Luka, is only a two-hour drive from Zagreb, a
substantial European trade and communication center that
BiH still lacks. From this perspective, the long-term security
of BiH and the region would be best served if NATO leaders
took the next logical step and included Croatia among the
next round of new members.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

While Croatia is now on the road to membership, BiH

remains handicapped even for PfP association, primarily be-
cause it has more than one army: the Serb army and the
Muslim-Croat army. The latter is segregated below the bat-
talion level. For NATO to accept a country with multiple armies
would be a precedent that it is not ready to accept. Recently
NATO has encouraged the three sides in BiH to form a uni-
fied army. The Serb side is not ready to accept this solution,
seeing it as a fundamental revision of the Dayton peace agree-
ment. The recent political rebellion of the Croat community
and the withdrawal of the Croat component from the Mus-
lim-Croat army, only adds to the complexity of the BiH prob-
lem.
The Croat walkout, which was prompted by election-
law changes rather than military matters, points to the prob-
lems caused by back-door revisions of Dayton that are in-
tended to centralize the state. The Western powers now favor

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such a policy in general, although it has proven to be desta-
bilizing in the short term. Moreover, the history of BiH tells
us that centralization also fails in the long term. Contrary to
popular wisdom, decentralization is a much more viable and
stabilizing policy for BiH, a position that was argued convinc-
ingly by BiH’s former defense minister, Miroslav Prce, in the
Winter 2001 issue of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.
Just as Croats turned away from Sarajevo because of
new election laws, the Serbs would also just as quickly turn
away from state institutions if any attempt to centralize the
BiH armed forces materialized. The Bosnian Serb opposition
to this model compels us to look for other solutions.

Alternative Solutions

The formation of three territorial guards with common

command authority, combined with the demobilization of
heavy weapons, may eventually become acceptable for all three
sides. With this solution, a NATO umbrella and sub-regional
non-aggression treaties between BiH and its two neighbors,
Yugoslavia and Croatia, may be necessary to maintain stabil-
ity. This should be the first phase of a substantial decrease in
military spending in the Balkans.
Other solutions are also on the table, including pro-
posals to demobilize BiH altogether; to restructure the
country’s security needs along the Costa Rican model; or, to
reduce the two existing armies into two small professional
armies. The last option is either a unified army, which is un-
acceptable to the Serbs, or two armies, which is unaccept-
able to NATO and the Croats.
Many also point out that complete demilitarization is
more likely in BiH than a unified army. Complete demilitari-
zation would certainly be most beneficial to BiH taxpayers.
They are already overburdened with post-war reconstruction
costs, and the experience of the recent war certainly calls
into question whether spending for arms has any purpose at
all.

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 More importantly, ordinary BiH citizens, unlike the gov-
erning elites, dismiss outright the thought of a unified army.
They argue that if it came to war with either Yugoslavia or
Croatia, local Serbs and Croats would abandon ship either to
fight alongside one of the two, or sit idly by until their own
homesteads became endangered. As pointed out in 1999 by
Jacques Klein, the UN special envoy for BiH to the Council of
Europe, too many BiH citizens still have a problem identify-
ing or associating with BiH. This reality is simply not condu-
cive to crafting ambitious national-defense programs.
As an alternative to a unified or divided army, BiH may
be able to adopt the example set by Costa Rica. The Costa
Rica model would require complete demobilization, a NATO
umbrella, and non-aggression agreements with neighbors. It
would be coupled with an expanded police force, border po-
lice, and state disaster-relief corps. This solution has worked
for Costa Rica for 50 years, and it may offer the best pros-
pects for BiH.
NATO would be wise to consider how it can use its
enormous resources and moral force to move BiH to follow
Costa Rica’s direction. It is difficult to see how BiH can pur-
sue any other model, given the extraordinary amount of re-
sources it currently wastes on military spending. BiH now
spends 40 percent of its budget for defense, compared to
Europe’s average of around two percent. Clearly, there is no
room to maneuver here, nor will the opportunities for inter-
national subsidies continue for much longer.
BiH’s future lies in neutrality similar to that of Costa
Rica. Moreover, future NATO membership is only theoretical,
since the Serb side has the constitutional right of veto on this
issue, and it has not expressed interests beyond the PfP as-
sociation. But NATO can provide BiH with a future, thus en-
hancing the region’s stability by being realistic rather than
chimerical. The latter policy will force NATO to remain sta-
tioned and active in BiH for decades. The former will stabilize
BiH using its own economic resources, free of arms that could
be used to ignite passions, and create an early exit opportu-
nity for NATO.

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Yugoslavia

After facing the might of NATO over Kosovo, it seems

improbable that Yugoslavia would want to join the Western
alliance at all. The new leader of Yugoslavia, Vojislav
Kostunica, has never addressed this issue directly. However,
his public discourse on the subject of NATO intervention sug-
gests that he would want to sue NATO for damages and war
crimes before considering a partnership. Belgrade’s traditional
affiliation with Russia is also a crucial factor. In short, Yugo-
slavia may prefer neutrality. This is consistent with recent
remarks from Kostunica’s cabinet. His aides suggested that
PfP association would be acceptable, but membership would
be out of question.
However, a group of Yugoslav army officers, led by
wartime general Momcilo Perisic, have called not only for
Yugoslavia’s membership in the PfP, but also for early NATO
membership. This may be a window of opportunity for the
West, if it is willing to offer carrots and exercise patience.
However, as Perisic is considered a war criminal in both BiH
and Croatia, a more credible partner in Belgrade will be
needed.
One of the carrots that would be welcomed concerns
the upgrade of the ICTY. Belgrade is not very happy with the
ICTY’s work so far, but neither is anyone else in the region.
This regional discontent may make it easier for the Western
powers to reform the ICTY to the pre-1995 standards of in-
ternational law.
Belgrade will look for other incentives as well, in par-
ticular regarding reconstruction assistance. Further, it will
seek to gain advantages for the Serbs in Kosovo, to continue
special relations with the Serb entity in BiH, and an early EU
candidacy, which is something that Belgrade would treasure
much more than NATO membership.
On the military side, the Belgrade elite will most likely
prefer to keep an open-door policy to Moscow for historical
and religious reasons. The Tito-style strategy of “equidistance”

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was very profitable for the former Yugoslavia, and the new
Yugoslavia is likely to play the same game. But Serbia’s “quasi-
neutrality” (that is, its de facto economic alliance with Brus-
sels coupled with military cooperation with Moscow) need not
raise suspicions in the region, especially if Romania and Bul-
garia are granted early membership.

Vilnius 6+2+4

With the expansion of the European Union and NATO

to Eastern Europe as far as the Baltics and the Black Sea,
the new Balkan states no longer play the strategic role for the
Western powers that the former Yugoslavia enjoyed during
the Cold War. Back then, the former Yugoslavia was a territo-
rial and political dividing line between the East and the West,
an ideological splinter in the Warsaw Pact, and a staging
ground for covert operations. This is no longer the case.
Some argue that the new Yugoslavia will still remain a
strategic point of interest for the West, given its close rela-
tionship to Moscow. Surely Yugoslavia can be grouped with
the “Russia-sensitive” sub-group of the Vilnius Nine, along
with the Baltics, Romania, and Bulgaria. But the new
Yugoslavia’s importance declines as its neighbors to the east,
Romania and Bulgaria, become members.
Croatia belongs in a sub-group with Slovenia. By ad-
mitting either country, NATO gains an ideological surrogate
whose military preparedness is top-notch, even if their stra-
tegic importance is minimal. NATO experts say that relative
preparedness of both countries matches that of Spain when
it joined in 1982.
Croatia also comes with important advantages over
Slovenia. Expanding NATO membership to Croatia aids the
stability of the fragile Balkans. At the minimum, it secures
supply lines to BiH. NATO also gets a winning combat-expe-
rienced army into its ranks. Policy-makers will probably not
overlook the popular support for NATO membership that runs
at 70 percent in Croatia, compared to 50 percent in Slovenia.

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Croatia has done the yeoman’s task for the West for at least a
decade. It should get the recognition that it is due.
Finally, BiH can probably be grouped with Albania,
Macedonia, and Slovakia. All will require costly programs to
rationalize or upgrade their armed forces to Western stan-
dards; all should be pursued with equal vigor. Even if these
countries are of little global strategic value, they are impor-
tant because without NATO leadership they may fall prey to
regressive political and economic forces that are inherently
destabilizing. The situation in BiH offers a historic opportu-
nity to transform the present international administration into
a viable state, allowing the Allies to draw down and redirect
the huge resources they have invested into BiH over the years.

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 A NEW MONARCH IN THE BALKANS

The Wall Street Journal Europe, June 21, 2002

Bosnia has a new monarch. That’s how the Scotsman

newspaper billed the May 27th transfer of authority in the
country from Wolfgang Petritsch to Paddy Ashdown. Over the
years, the chief administrator of Western policy in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH) certainly has evolved from a bureaucrati-
cally dry high-representative, to a colorful colonial-like gov-
ernor with all the trappings — an effective monarch. The in-
creasing powers of the office have done mostly good for the
country and the region as a whole. But in order to succeed,
Mr. Ashdown will need to be more realistic, non-ideological
and iconoclastic than his three predecessors.
In his inaugural speech to the BiH parliament, Mr.
Ashdown hinted that he may indeed be heading in this direc-
tion. He said that the regeneration of BiH’s economy is his
priority, while, among other changes, he will hold back on
interfering in the elections and will work to remake the image
of his omnipotent seat of power.
The economic policy in BiH has been to prepare the
country so it can move away from dependence on donor funds
to reliance on private capital for its development needs. Mr.
Ashdown suggested that this transition might not be pos-
sible so soon, as the state is already heavily indebted.
BiH external debt stands at 2.9 billion euros, and
amounts to 220% of its exports. When a country’s debt-to-
export ratio reaches 160%, banks usually place it on their
watch lists, and when it rises above 200%, the country is
generally considered to be a high default risk. True, the bulk
of BiH’s external debt is priced below market rates, and its
export earnings don’t include grants and transfers, so the
real ratio may be somewhat lower. Yet it would be enough for
international debt markets to say no to BiH.

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 The country’s entities and municipalities have borrowed
domestically, too. Due to the already high level of external
obligations, the IMF has been vigilant in dissuading local
banks from making loans to government institutions. Most
banks followed this advice, but some did not, and this may
also be developing into a problem area.
As the debt markets seem to be fully tapped, BiH may
be left with only the international equity markets to restart
its moribund production capacity. Mr. Ashdown will face dif-
ficulties here as well. BiH is too small a market to attract big
investors. Moreover, corruption in the bureaucracy and a po-
liticized judicial system often turn away smaller regional play-
ers. They don’t have the clout of multinationals to protect
them if problems arise with local authorities or partners, and
must be able to rely on efficient, independent courts.
Mr. Ashdown is right to focus on fixing up the judi-
ciary, and energizing local resources — primarily the small-
to-medium enterprise sector, or SMEs. But here he will need
the banks again, as he wants these “small businesses to bor-
row and expand.” As most SMEs in BiH come to the banks
with little operational history, and with substandard financials
and collateral, banks are rightly hesitant to lend to them.
To enter this sector wholeheartedly, the banks would
need credit guarantees, such as those available to SMEs in
Austria and the Netherlands, for instance. The World Bank
recently pursued the idea of such a program for BiH, in the
form of credit insurance purchased by SMEs and financed by
the banks themselves, but concluded that it would be too
expensive. Hopefully, a new program can be crafted for this
crucial sector, but on a larger scale, and with guarantees of
Western sovereigns.
The only other outside resource that may be available
to Mr. Ashdown would be experienced Western managers. They
could be invited to restructure and jump-start the failing state
enterprises in lieu of foreign direct investment that is un-
likely to ever come to some of the enterprises, many of which
employ thousands.

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 BiH simply cannot move forward without realism fo-
cused on the economy. As former BiH defense minister
Miroslav Prce noted (applying the management theories of
Albert Maslow) in the Winter 2001 issue of the Fletcher Forum
of World Affairs: “A society which cannot satisfy the economic
and security needs of its members nor provide them with a
sense of identity and belongingness will be hard-pressed to
make gains in higher order areas of human rights and de-
mocratization.”
To reintegrate the fragmented BiH society, however,
Mr. Ashdown may also need to practice the idea of “triangula-
tion” made famous during Bill Clinton’s U.S.presidential cam-
paign in 1992. Faced with dipping poll numbers, the Clinton
team decided to sidestep its largely leftist program, and in-
stead adopt the main objectives of the left and the right, sat-
isfying both on the key issues, and thus rising — triangulat-
ing — above both ideologies and to the middle of the political
spectrum.
BiH was torn apart by radical nationalists, who were
hostile to co-existence and multi-ethnic societies, and is now
being stitched together largely by romantic internationalists,
who are generally intolerant toward identity issues and prone
to social experimentation. This pendulum swing from the right
to the left was a natural reaction to the horrific crimes during
the tenure of radicals, primarily on the Serb side, lasting many
years. As BiH is largely a rural society where tradition takes
paramount importance, it will be difficult to build a cosmo-
politan society of the left there. In this respect, BiH is no
different than any other rural part of Europe.
The divide between the internationalist left and the tra-
ditionalist right must be bridged if the society is to find peace
with itself. The country is divided enough already along the
ethnic lines. Beyond that, virtually its entire professional class
is criminal in somebody’s eyes, for different reasons: commu-
nism, nationalism, corruption, and/or war crimes.
Mr. Ashdown is trying to change perceptions of the
office of high representative. He has begun by referring to

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himself as the servant of the Bosnian-Herzegovene people, by
avoiding the use of his royal title of Lord while on duty in BiH,
and by keeping open the imposing iron gates at his office
compound. But this symbolic shattering of images must also
include overtures in the policy area.
BiH has changed substantially from its wartime years,
and new times require new solutions. For instance, address-
ing the smallest community in BiH, the Croats, who have
been systematically disenfranchised by earlier high represen-
tatives, will require discarding trite cliches. How Mr. Ashdown
handles issues like this will be the real test whether he will
pass into history as yet another monarch, or as the first wise
public servant BiH has ever had.

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 ONE CHINA POLICY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
BENEFITS NO ONE

As in the previous essays this writer’s ideas about re-

organizing Bosnia and Herzegovina, or as others would have
it evolving Dayton, begin with the concept of a “stake” that
every constituent community should have.
I also assume that the international community will
keep the Serb majority entity largely intact, and continue to
restructure the Federation into a similar majority-rule entity.
Under such a scenario, the option of statewide recantonization
by which power would rest on municipal, cantonal and state
levels (advanced for some time by almost all Croat parties
and some Bosniak parties, and in a modified form proposed
by the European Stability Initiative), would therefore not ex-
ist. As a result, one must look for an alternative.
The only solution left is centered on the formation of
three federal units: the existing Serb majority unit, and sepa-
rate units for Bosniaks and Croats. The latter two units would
consist of an association of non-contiguous municipalities.
Each unit would be made of territorial pockets surrounded
by territory of the other unit. The power of these federal units
would continue to devolve to the level acceptable to Euro-
pean practices and the needs of a single economic and secu-
rity space.
Each community’s stake in such a reorganized state
must rest on five key elements.
Each community should have “institutions” that it rec-
ognizes as mostly its own. The Serbs presently recognize such
institutions in RS, and the Bosniaks see them in the Federa-
tion. An entity or a similar federal unit for the Croats would
form a legal basis for Croat-majority institutions, such as a
countrywide television channel; solve the election and repre-
sentation problems; and, establish a system of “reciprocity”
in terms of equal relations between the three communities.

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 The stake should be “recognizable”, i.e., it should have
such an identity that it will be perceived as a substitute for
the mother countries that the Croats and Serbs would prefer
to join, while for the Bosniaks it should be recognizable enough
as a substitute for a large “civic” state that they want to rule
as a majority.
The stakes should be “uniform”. Each community
should have identical or effectively identical institutions to
exercise and check political power. Any inequality will remain
a rallying cry for future instability and a carte blanche for
extremists to demand division or promote unrealistic objec-
tives.
Each stake should be “territorial,” but mostly in the
context of defining a tax base that would give the each com-
munity a transparent source of funds for public activities.
The present system fosters dependence on mother countries
and the international community. What is more troublesome
in the long run, however, is that the present system promotes
illicit activities as both Bosniak and Croat communities look
to find and hide funds just for themselves.
Each stake should be “civic”. For example federal unit
and municipal administrations as well as state representa-
tives should be elected on the one-man-one-vote principle.
All appointed posts should be distributed among the resi-
dents of respective units proportionate to the ethnic makeup
of the unit. Thus the Serb entity would not appoint only Serb
ambassadors and diplomats, but residents representing all
groups in the entity. This approach would also solve the con-
stitutional question of “others”.
Such a solution would benefit everyone, and especially
the international administration and the Bosniak commu-
nity, because it would pacify and democratize the Croat com-
munity. As noted earlier, public opinion surveys indicate that
the RS entity has made the Serb community more tolerant
and acceptable of BiH as a state, while the existing solution
for the Croat community has made it more intolerant and
dismissive of a common state.

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 A peaceful and satisfied Croat community would allow
the international administration to downscale its activities
and withdraw from BiH sooner. At the time when it is doing
everything to revive BiH’s decapitated economy, its constitu-
tional policy in respect of the Croats is an obstacle.
High Representative Paddy Ashdown often makes a
point that the Croat community is crucial to BiH given its
over-proportionate tendency for entrepreneurship, commerce
and risk-taking. Yet, due to Western policy, this great poten-
tial is compelled to go underground. Indeed, legitimate busi-
ness often sees itself as being threatened by institutions where
it has no access and influence. In such a situation even a
regular tax payer looks to avoid state obligations, and worse,
to weaken the state at every opportunity.
An empowered and re-enfranchised Croat community
would give freedom to the Bosniak community to focus its
energy and resources on itself: on building its culture and
evolving identity and realizing its economic potential. At this
point, and under the current arrangement, its best resources
are used to subdue the Croat community. The inherent nega-
tive logic of the system benefits no one.
One China policy in its BiH version ∑ one state, differ-
ent stakes for its three constituent peoples ∑ keeps BiH de-
pendent on international intervention and largesse, challenges
its viability as a state, and delays its integration into Europe.
In this way everyone is sure to be a loser.
Yet, a winning strategy would be simple to craft, and
even simpler to implement if the international community
would be strong enough to step forward beyond the outdated
shibboleths of the past.

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 LET’S JUST SELL KOSOVO

The Wall Street Journal Europe, October 15, 2003

The Balkans need to catch the spirit of the Louisiana

Purchase. The bicentennial of the best-known peaceful change
of sovereignty, next to the sale of island of New Amsterdam,
is the right occasion to consider new models for resolving the
niggling territorial conflicts of our day that extend from Kosovo
to the Caucuses and further.
The Belgrade government and Kosovo authorities yes-
terday held the first face-to-face negotiations since the 1999
war, which were limited in theory to economic and humani-
tarian cooperation. But the two sides couldn’t avoid exchang-
ing tense words over the real issue on everyone’s mind: the
future status of Kosovo, a majority-Albanian province of Serbia
under United Nations administration since the 1999 NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia.
Not only Serbs and Albanians are deeply divided over
what should happen to Kosovo. The Western powers seem to
favor independence, perhaps after a referendum with a cer-
tain outcome, while Russia and the governments in the re-
gion, backed by the majority of public opinion, oppose that
step.
Independence for Kosovo would challenge the spirit,
and probably the letter, of the Helsinki Final Act adopted by
the CSCE in 1975 that says borders can’t be changed with
violence or without consent. But the bigger concern is what
would be the precedent of independence for Kosovo. Mladen
Ivanic, Bosnia’s foreign minister, says this step would
embolden other disgruntled groups in the region, proving that
militancy works.
But the Louisiana Purchase solution would solve
Serbia’s internal problems, Balkan regional concerns, as well
as the problem of Kosovo’s status. The permanent transfer of

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sovereign territory for compensation is an old idea, too little
used this day.
The U.S., for instance, has been an active buyer of
sovereign lands in recent history, acquiring aside from Loui-
siana and Manhattan, the Gadsden Pass from Mexico (1853),
Alaska from Russia (1867), and the Virgin Islands from Den-
mark (1912). All were sold because of excessive cost of main-
tenance and/or negligible economic value for the former sov-
ereigns.
Kosovo, too, is of little economic or security value to
Belgrade. In fact, given its economic backwardness, Kosovo
would come at substantial net cost to the Serbian state for
many years to come. Some in Belgrade, such as the influen-
tial G17 Institute, believe that with a long-term view to the
EU’s Maastricht criteria for adopting the euro, the necessary
fiscal outlays for Kosovo’s development would also delay
Serbia’s hopes for timely EU integration. They’re urging fel-
low Serbs to let Kosovo go, minus the northern parts popu-
lated by Serbs.
This is an opportunity for the Kosovars. They should
consider how to win majority support in Belgrade to gain in-
dependence quickly. How? By offering a one-time compensa-
tion to Belgrade for a permanent release from their claims of
sovereignty. Along with the offer, they will need to persuade
the West that they would be able to manage Kosovo by Euro-
pean standards easier as an independent entity.
The price should not be high as it may appear. Most
likely it would be in the range of 50 million euros to 1 billion
euros. The lower mark is the estimated value for bare land in
the province, and the higher amount is the maximum amount
of debt Kosovars may want to undertake to purchase the prov-
ince — 500 euros per capita.
Given the post-communist ownership mess in the re-
gion, it’s unclear what the Kosovars actually own and are
liable for to others. But it is certain that in such an offer,
Pristina should table fair compensation for the assets of
Serbian companies in Kosovo based on future foregone prof-

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its, for private property with displacement premiums for the
residents of Kosovo who do not want to live in the new state,
and for substitute value of the nationalized land previously
owned by the Serbian Orthodox Church. According to some
estimates, the Church has legal claims to as much as 40% of
land in Kosovo.
This would be a modern, market response to the com-
plex Kosovo problem that the West should also support. Given
the history of Kosovo, Belgrade cannot mange this territory,
nor will it be able to do so for a long time to come. But the
West cannot simply turn it over to the Kosovars without sub-
stantial risks. So it may end up managing Kosovo for years,
at enormous costs.
Selling Kosovo would assuage public opinion in Serbia
far better than any vague promises of eventual membership
in the EU, an idea put forward by Richard Holbrooke and
Bernard Kouchner in these pages last week. These benefits
are amorphous and distant, while hard cash for territory prom-
ises clearer benefits.
By supporting market solutions in the Balkans, the
West may also create a model for the more numerous territo-
rial disputes all over the Caucuses, such as those involving
Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Southern Ingushetia, to
name a few. Only one element makes these different from
Kosovo — absence of international peacekeepers, which is a
costly endeavor, and best avoided.
Yet another type of a land deal can settle the festering
territorial dispute between Croatia and Slovenia in the Piran
Bay. A Hong Kong-type lease may also work here. Slovenia
has not succeeded in gaining support for a track of territory
it needs in the Bay to have free access to international wa-
ters. But Ljubljana would surely get a hearing in Zagreb if it
were to offer compensation to lease a corridor it covets, until
Croatia becomes an EU member.
While the international community rejects acquisition
of territory by force, it accepts territorial changes by negotia-
tion. Yet it has developed few realistic mechanisms to this

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end, and negotiations alone, without incentives and quid pro
quos, cannot achieve much. As history shows money for land
can bring peace and prosperity. It’s time to revive this model,
starting in the Balkans.

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 5.
Economic Issues and the Region

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 TRADE BEFORE AID FOR THE BALKANS

European Voice, April 13, 2000

At the end of March, finance officials from the four

corners of the world gathered in Brussels for the first Stabil-
ity Pact funding conference for the reconstruction of south-
eastern Europe. They agreed to fund more than 2 billion euros
worth of quick-start reconstruction, democratisation and se-
curity projects, with as much as 20 billion euros foreseen for
the next seven years.
For countries in the region moving from command eco-
nomics to market systems and, in some cases, suffering from
post-conflict economic and social upheaval, this assistance
is important and necessary. But it is not sufficient. To enable
the region’s people to build the economic prosperity which
underpins western democracies, the EU should create a free-
trade regime with south-eastern Europe, using for this pur-
pose the existing European Economic Area (EEA) mechanism
which served as the antechamber for the last round of acces-
sions in the mid-1990s.
The conflict-induced disruption of the region’s tradi-
tional trade routes, which has provoked a profound slump,
has been exacerbated as newly-created states have erected
customs barriers. Intra-regional trade has declined to a third
of its pre-war level. Many of the region’s governments have
grown dependent on customs revenues from the intra-regional
trickle of trade, because this is often their best or only source
of revenue. My own country recently ended a liberal trade
regime with Croatia to safeguard its budget inflows. Interna-
tional financial institutions encouraged this move because
the revenues are used to service obligations to them.
Customs regimes have become so restrictive, or con-
versely so porous for the unscrupulous, that they have be-
come a primary source of corruption in the region. It is a
well-known secret among aspiring entrepreneurs that the fast-

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est means to fabulous riches is not the Internet, but illicit
trade in cigarettes, fuel and electronics. Similarly, the most
promising government job for top graduates might not be in
the capital, but in customs bureaus at the borders.
To compensate, the region’s countries have tried to
redirect trade to Union markets, somewhat quixotically. Trade
accords provided by the EU for the individual countries in
the bloc reduce tariffs on manufactured goods for which Un-
ion member states have competitive advantages. But they do
not allow free access to EU markets in which the region’s
producers could sell competitively, such as agriculture, wood,
leather, iron products and, in particular, textiles.
Tariffs have been eased for some, but quotas estab-
lished for most. Access for most agricultural products remains
very difficult, while quotas generally inhibit or discourage
trade.
EU member states indicated at last month’s Lisbon
summit that they would be willing to open up their markets
further to south-eastern Europe. Proposals from the Union
for solving these problems are, however, viewed with scepti-
cism.
Some in the Union have called for a series of bilateral
free-trade trade agreements between countries in the region,
similar to the Central European Free Trade Agreement
(CEFTA). CEFTA may not be a good example, because it might
have actually reached its peak after only seven years of exist-
ence.
Others, like European Commission President Romano
Prodi, have called for a regional customs union. However, gov-
ernments in the region are concerned about the immediate
loss of customs revenue and fret over the long-term political
implications of such a union.
Some fear that such a new trade regime would be used
to fob off their EU membership bids, with all applications
held back until the slowest meets the Union’s standards. Oth-
ers fear that if they allowed themselves to be pushed into a
customs bloc outside the EU, they might find themselves

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under pressure to merge into a single political entity before
joining the Union.
The way to address these deeply felt political concerns
and bring south-eastern Europe within the EU framework
would be to extend the EEA south-eastward. The EEA was
used to expand the common market to European Free Trade
Area (EFTA) states - Austria, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Liech-
tenstein and Sweden ∑ without granting them the political
rights of full members.
First, the EEA treaty requires acceptance of the EU
“four freedoms” on the movement of goods, services, capital
and persons, and transposition into national law of member-
state legislation listed in the treaty’s annexes ∑ neither the
substantial agricultural nor regional development subsidies
are included.
Second, it creates legislative, executive, and judicial
authorities to expand common market’s effective operation.
In particular, a “surveillance authority”, the analogue of the
Commission, monitors compliance with free-movement rules.
Although Brussels might find it necessary to postpone
unrestricted movement of people, the rest of the EEA could
be extended south-eastward promptly. Also, although it would
be unworkable and unnecessary to impose the full range of
EU laws in the new EEA countries immediately, transition
periods could be included, as was done for EFTA states. The
product-related rules which are important to free trade, for
instance, can be implemented initially. Measures of local sig-
nificance, such as environmental permitting, should be ad-
dressed on EU accession.
As for the south-eastern European governments’ con-
cern over customs revenue losses, that could be solved by
temporary substitute financing. According to the Centre for
European Policy Studies, the revenue shortfall would amount
to no more than 1.5 billion euros annually. The temporary
financing substitute for tariff revenues could be matched by
a requirement that the regions governments find new sources
of revenue, preferably in the form of value added tax, within
say three to five years.

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 Expansion of the EEA, implying eventual membership,
is the only form of institutional association that the coun-
tries in the region will be comfortable with. For many, sur-
rendering some of the sovereign rights gained through hard-
ship in recent wars or extracted with difficulty from the Com-
munist block is difficult, but made easier if it involves suc-
cessful European institutions. Moreover, creating a new Eu-
ropean bureaucracy is neither desirable nor efficient. The fact
that EFTA countries are treated on a case-by-case basis, and
that practice shows the timing and the form of their acces-
sion to the Union is left to them, is also attractive.
Washington has already recognised the importance of
internally-generated growth for the region, although most still
prefer to promote externally-generated growth through for-
eign investment. The latter is important, but external capital
usually follows rather than leads a recovery. The US Con-
gress will soon adopt legislation providing for unilateral, duty-
free access to its market for certain goods from south-east-
ern Europe for five years. In early March, US Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright wrote privately to her fifteen Union
counterparts challenging them to do the same.
It is, of course, much easier for the US to offer this
challenge. After all, south-eastern European exports to the
US are in millions of euro, and to the EU in the billions.
Perhaps the timid would suggest that expanding the
common market by incorporating the region into the Union’s
single market and eliminating tariffs for agricultural and simi-
lar products could provoke protests from EU farmers, labour
unions and some protected industries. While exports of five
non-candidate south-eastern European countries to the Un-
ion my be worth billions of euros, they still account for less
than one half on 1% of total EU imports ∑ hardly an amount
that would raise even a whisper in Europe.
Doubling exports from south-eastern Europe to mem-
ber states would increase regional output by at least 15%.
Such growth cannot be achieved through grants, nor is it
possible through foreign investment. Europe could clearly

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afford to accept the challenge from the US, and should take it
a step further.
South-eastern Europe should be granted full duty-free
access to Union markets indefinitely. After all, the ultimate
objective is to have the region’s countries as members with
these same privileges. Brussels could also up the ante and
ask Washington for assistance in finding a substitute for tar-
iff revenues which are slowing down and corrupting crucial
trade in the region itself. Washington could also be nudged
along in respect of textiles, where it remains rather shy.

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 BENEFITS FROM FOREIGN BANKS:
LESSONS FOR RUSSIA

The Wall Street Journal Europe, August 20, 2004

Ordinary Russians will tell you that since the fall of

communism, they have had little to cheer about. Sure, the
meat lines are gone, but the trappings of a longed-for West-
ern consumer society are still only pictures on television
screens and on pages of glossy magazines inviting readers to
swoon over the lifestyles of local tycoons. Well, things may
finally be looking up a bit for ordinary folk, with the entry of
GE Capital into the Russian banking sector.
General Electric announced last week that it will buy
Delta Bank, a leading Moscow credit-card issuer. This could
be a crucial development for the Russian banking sector, which
has evolved little in terms of competition and products, de-
spite partial privatization in 1990s. The government still con-
trols 40% of bank assets, while international banks manage
less then 10%.
In the past, moreover, the international banks came
primarily to do big corporate finance deals. But GE is looking
at a completely new segment. As it has in other markets, its
consumer finance unit is coming to Russia to do retail bank-
ing: to offer credit card and loan products en masse for such
things as autos, electronics and mortgages. Indeed, an in-
cipient revolution, and the best thing that could happen to
ordinary Russians.
But is this good for Moscow? Well, the government
should look no further than its “New Europe” neighborhood
to the west to dispel any doubts about whether such an in-
ternational solution for its crisis-prone banking sector could
be successful. Just about all of Russia‘s former central Euro-
pean satellites have now completed privatization programs
where international banks played a substantial role.
Governments of these transition states and their pri-
vate sectors benefited enormously, because foreign banks

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introduced new and transparent methods in credit alloca-
tion, process administration and public finance. But the real
beneficiaries of this turn of events have been ordinary citi-
zens, who, for the first time in their lives, have been able to
enjoy great service at a fair price, innovative products and
the trust that comes along with Western business-client rela-
tionships.
Probably the single most important gain has been the
flow of long-term funds into Central Europe, which is still
grossly short of term savings. Most of it is booked for one
year or less. Thus, just about any project with maturity longer
than one year — from a road to a home mortgage — is fi-
nanced with savings from abroad. Foreign-owned banks in
Central Europe often import as much as one half of their
loanable funds. The popular myth about foreign banks si-
phoning off hard-earned local savings is thus simply upside
down.
Another myth is that foreign banks are paying low in-
terest rates for deposits, while charging substantially higher
interest rates on loans. The average deposit rates do in fact
seem to be low, but that is because deposits there are largely
short term, where there is excess supply. For instance, when
adjusted for term structure, deposit rates in Zagreb are not
significantly different from those in Amsterdam.
On the lending side, the margins are on average 1%
higher in Central Europe than in the traditional West, reflect-
ing the still-higher level of risk in the region, and an over-
weight of smaller companies in the loan portfolios. The SMEs
here, just like those in the West, pay larger margins than
their bigger counterparts with track records — due to risk,
and due to the fact that processing a small loan often costs
the same as processing a large loan.
Indeed, margins for a few larger blue-chip companies
in Central Europe are already quite similar to those in the
West, as are mortgage rates. And actually, loan rates in some
markets, such as Slovakia, are lower than in Old Europe.
As it turns out, the highest loan margins are in
Slovenia, where the level of outside ownership is the lowest.

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According to a recent study, Slovenes pay on average 2.2%
more than Old Europeans, 2.7% more than Slovaks and 1.6%
more than Hungarians for their loans.
The Old Europe banks now own close to three-quar-
ters of the banking assets in New Europe. The region’s bank-
ing sectors have been completely transformed, with every-
thing from trendy commercials to flashy credit cards, as well
as domestic and international investment funds. In many
instances it is difficult to distinguish a bank in Budapest from
one in Vienna.
The Western banks have not done this all alone. The
role of international financial institutions, such as the EBRD
and EIB, has been crucial. These continue to provide long-
term funding and risk-sharing. They have also pioneered
projects in the municipal sector with the objective of improv-
ing the quality of life in the region, in areas such as water
purification, transport infrastructure, energy efficiency and
environmental awareness.
And everyone has been happy with the changed land-
scape. Except for a dogmatic nationalist here and there who
rants against the “excessive foreign ownership” of the sector
— and yet also demands foreign investment to support capi-
tal and job formation; and manipulates with untruths about
deposit flight and excessively high lending rates. To be sure,
GE should expect to hear from Vladimir Zhirinovsky very soon.
Some others have singled out the foreign banks for
criticism, arguing that they are financing a consumer boom
in the region which is negatively affecting the national trade
balances. This happens as a result of huge pent-up demand
for quality Western products, mainly autos and electronics,
but also sundries and foodstuffs. As local companies experi-
ence Western competition, however, their products will also
improve and the trade imbalances will be phased out over
time. And in any case, Russia has been experiencing huge
trade surpluses.
Actually, the banks came to Central Europe initially
looking for corporate clients, as they also did in Russia, and

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they are eagerly looking to find new creditworthy companies
to finance. Unfortunately, however, many companies are not
willing or ready to compete, due to outdated management
skills and a lack of confidence in their ability to successfully
export and innovate. They fear that restructuring may pro-
duce a labor backlash. Moreover, the slow development of the
Western type of market institutions, such as investment, in-
surance and export schemes to aid the growth-generating SME
sector is an obstacle. The building of new market institutions
and the reform of existing ones is crucial in Southeast Eu-
rope in particular, as pointed out in a June study by the EBRD
and World Bank.
Russia could also use this boost if it is to achieve Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin’s goal of doubling its GDP over the next
decade. Its reliance on the exploitation of natural resources
has its limits. Sustainable growth can only be achieved by
promoting an entrepreneurship culture via SMEs — that are
then supported by a competitive banking system.
The recent crisis with Alpha Bank and others showed
that Russia is not quite there yet. It will get there only when
retail or corporate customers in Moscow can feel as confident
and secure as they would if they were in a bank in Vienna . .
. or Warsaw, for that matter. Did we mention Bucharest and
Sofia?
GE’s entry will move Russia in this direction. But Mos-
cow should encourage other entrants as well to help make its
economic transformation complete. New Europe should not
be that far away.

Original title: “A ‘New Europe’ Recipe for Russian Banks”

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 TAX COMPETITION IN EUROPE

The Wall Street Journal Europe, February 2, 2005

Poor cousins from the East they may be, yet the politi-
cians from New Europe can be quite rich in policy ideas. So
enticing in fact that Brussels may be about to take up one of
their recipes as a way to revive the lackluster economies of
Old Europe. And this may happen quickly if the new Com-
mission president has his way.
Today in Strasbourg, Jose Manuel Barroso is expected
to tell the 732 lawmakers in the European Parliament that
the way to economic rejuvenation and job-creation in Europe
lies primarily with intra-border competition, technological in-
novation, less rigid labor regulations and more stringent wel-
fare programs. As a way to promote competition within the
borders of the Union, Mr. Barroso is also expected to step
away from a strict interpretation of single market principles.
He will likely oppose calls for tax harmonization, including
the controversial issue of minimum corporate tax rates.
What may be music to the ears of leaders in new mem-
bers states out East will be a sour note to Gerhard Schroeder,
Nicolas Sarkozy and others. The German chancellor recently
called moves to cut corporate tax rates in New Europe dan-
gerous “tax-dumping”. Mr. Sarkozy said this was unfair com-
petition and suggested cutting EU transfers to states practic-
ing it.
While the issue of lower tax rates is accepted wisdom
in the U.S., made famous in the 1970s by Arthur Laffer, it’s
still counter-intuitive in Europe. Mr. Laffer argued convinc-
ingly that lower tax rates, at some optimum level, will pro-
mote risk-taking and investment, thereby increasing produc-
tion and government revenue.
Apart from Ireland, newcomers Slovakia and Lithuania
are the Union’s only real-life laboratories for Mr. Laffer’s ideas.
Their overall tax burdens on corporate profits are below 15%,

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compared to tax rates in Old Europe states that can be twice
as high. Despite lower rates, these countries collect more cor-
porate tax receipts than those with higher rates. Ireland’s
inflows are at 3.3% of GDP, Slovakia’s at 2.2%, while
Germany’s, for instance, linger at 0.7%.
Slovakia reduced tax rates last year, and went a step
further by making them flat. It now has the same 19% rate
on corporate profits, personal income and sales tax. The fact
that the government was able to bring in two new major car
production lines has made the country the Detroit of Eastern
Europe — and a bellwether state for economic policy. U.S.
President George W. Bush will stop over in Bratislava later
this month, due in no small part to this development.
Meanwhile, Poland’s leading opposition party, the con-
servative Civic Platform, has suggested that Warsaw should
introduce a flat tax four points below Slovakia’s. Similarly,
Romania just this year reduced its corporate and personal
income taxes from 25% to a flat 16% rate, while keeping the
VAT at 19%. Serbia seems to want to outdo them all with its
recent corporate rate cut to 10%, to be followed by additional
tax reductions in June. Even the spend-happy Czech Repub-
lic has now commenced a process to reduce its corporate rate
to the low-20s from the high-20s over a period of a few years.
To be fair, New Europe states are not doing this only
because they believe Mr. Laffer. Rather, they fret that they’re
becoming less attractive to foreign investors due to rising
wages. Not only are the wages in the region now relatively
higher, but payroll taxes supporting the Communist-era so-
cial programs remain extravagant. Thus, to lower the burden
of doing business in their countries, they look to lower corpo-
rate taxes. Hungary, for instance, has seen close to ten for-
eign investors, such as IBM and Philips, move some or all of
their Hungarian operations to cheaper pastures further east
and south.
But New Europe is no policy nirvana. While a number
of Central Eastern European states are now in the vanguard
on tax policy, many are still laggards on fiscal policy. They

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can use the advice of Mr. Barroso in this respect. His support
for lower taxes should also be seen as a de facto petition for
smaller governments, especially in the East, where they are
particularly bloated, slow and nontransparent. They’re the
major obstacles to a new phase of robust economic expan-
sion needed to catch up quickly with Western levels of pros-
perity.
Countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary and
Croatia have been most profligate in recent years, running
budget deficits in the 5-13% range, compared to the 0-3%
levels elsewhere in Europe. This is largely due to a lack of
political will to break away from Socialist-era welfare comfort
and vote-buying dependency.
As a consequence, Prague, for instance, may have more
single mothers than any other city in the world. Of course,
almost all wear matrimonial bands but are officially single to
be able to collect hefty handouts. Croatia, meanwhile, has
yet to grasp what economic policy means beyond IMF stabil-
ity packages. It muddles along only thanks to its resilient
private sector, tourism earnings and emigre transfers. And
Hungary, once a favorite among international investors, is
now seen as a weakling in the region due to its long-running
twin deficits, which put constant pressure on inflation and
the exchange rate.
The health care, judiciary, pensions, subsidies and en-
titlement schemes need a major overhaul in the East. The
last three are also a problem in the West. Health sector re-
form can begin with cost-participations, which is anyway al-
ready part of the system in the form of routine bribes of doc-
tors and key personnel. The judiciary can be improved by
transferring commercial disputes to special arbitration courts.
But most of all, public sector wages in the East ought to be
brought in line with Western standards. They cannot be higher
than the private sector earnings as is now often the case.
Lower taxes in new member states prevent capital flight
to cheaper Asian markets. If combined with reforms, that’ll
increase the wealth and buying power there. After all, the

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region still accounts for only 5% of the Union’s output or
demand. It isn’t a threat to Western Europe. As new Roma-
nian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu pointed out
during a visit to Brussels last week, the region can produce
more consumers with deeper pockets for the EU.
While Europe’s backyard has taken the lead on taxes,
Brussels should embrace these benefits for the front yard as
well. Moreover, it should insist on fiscal responsibility across
the Continent, all the more so because the old leaders of eco-
nomic policy in Europe, Berlin and Paris, have lost credibility
on both taxes and fiscal policy.
Thankfully, Mr. Barroso seems to have the courage to
lead. He doesn’t sound worried about offending the old guard.
He’s confident enough to side with the upstarts out East when
they’re right. Now if only everyone, whether New or Old Eu-
rope, followed his advice.

Original title: “Laffingly Serious”

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 BIOGRAPHY BIOGRAPHY
- VITOMIR MILES RAGUŽ

Vitomir Miles Raguæ was adviser to the Bosnian-

Herzegovene Ambassador to the UN, Muhamed Sacirbey in
1992-93, to BiH Croat political leader Mate Boban in 1993,
and to the Croatian Ambassadors to the UN, Mario Nobilo
and Ivan ©imonoviÊ, in 1993-1998. He provided policy analy-
sis and wrote speeches and other documents on UN matters
for senior officials and diplomats. He was an expert-level mem-
ber of the BiH Croat delegation at Vance-Owen, Owen-
Stoltenberg, and Federation/Confederation peace talks in
Geneva, New York, and Washington. In 1998, at age 35, he
was named Bosnian-Herzegovene Ambassador to the EU and
NATO, and served during the Kosovo crisis. He resigned the
post in 2000 to return to banking. He now lives and works in
Vienna. Prior to the war he was sovereign risk analyst with
the Bank of New York. Born in Stolac, BiH in 1962, he later
lived in Virovitica, Croatia and Cleveland, Ohio. He gradu-
ated from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green,
Ohio in 1986, and received an MBA from New York University
in 1991.

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Ambassador Raguž challenges the mainstream thinking about what
Washington was preparing for BiH immediately prior to operation
Storm in 1995, and why and how it aided the Storm. As a participant
in many behind the scenes events, he provides details that shed new
light on common wisdom regarding the Croatian Army withdrew from
Posavina, source of the Muslim-Croat conflict, Tudjman’s role in Herze-
govina, Croatia’s recognition and later early EU candidate status, and
on other key developments from the past decade. The essays are a must
read for those who would like to know what is hidden behind the super-
ficial and overly simplified versions of events in recent past.
Višnja Starešina, author, former Deputy Editor of Zagreb daily Večernji
List

The essays on the interplay between international politics and inter-

national law are among the most thought-provoking to be found any-
where. In these essays, we find not only a persuasive critique of such
dubious institutions as the ICTY and the ICC, but also the clearest
articulation of the problems they pose. At times we mistakenly believe
we are beyond their reach, often overlooking their indirect effects on
society. This is indispensable reading for those who wish to protect
the decent norms of civilized and humane life against the onslaught of
a postmodern and undemocratic version of justice. The essays on the
shortfalls of western policy in the Balkans written over past four years
are especially relevant today when the debate on the issue is picking up
in advance of the 10th anniversary of the Dayton accords at year end.
Bret Stephens, former Editor-in-Chief, The Jerusalem Post, currently
Editorial Board Member, The Wall Street Journal

Step away Euro-enthusiasts and Euro-sceptics. Enter Euro-realists,

like the author, who argues that Croatia is already a de facto member
of the EU and NATO by the virtue of its geography. Thus it is need-
lessly preoccupied with the issue of when, if ever, it will become a full
member. Instead, it should focus its energies on market reforms and on
finding ways to minimize the costs of these associations. Ambassador
Raguž’s columns always offer a unique perspective, the type of insight
every editor wants to publish. Whether he is writing about people or
issues, his words always make complicated issues clearer and easy to
understand.
Igor Alborghetti, Editor-in-Chief, Zagreb weekly Globus