June 18, 2003
By Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic
Monday’s State Department announcement that Serbia and Montenegro has
been re-certified as “cooperating” with the Hague War Crimes Tribunal
is the correct decision. It signals that the Bush Administration is
re-orienting its Balkans policy, combining a continuing concern with the
moral dimensions of international relations more seamlessly with concerns
for international security and stability. The morality of results is
trumping the morality of intentions.
Secretary Powell has acted prudently by furthering the foreign policy
goals of the Bush Administration as well as those of the previous one
which, on this score, are identical: Serbia, the metropolitan power of the
Balkans, is becoming the place of reconciliation between Clinton’s
decade-old vision of a “new map of freedom" and the Bush
Administration’s goal of establishing a "balance of power that
favors freedom." Simply put, it is in the interest of the United
States to prevent a slide back to the dark days of nationalism and
conflict anywhere in the Balkans, and a strong, prosperous Serbia is the
lynchpin of this security strategy.
Powell determined that Serbia had met the criteria of Section 578 of the
foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Act, Division E
of the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003, as well as the
criteria related to the termination of restrictions imposed by Section 576
of the same Act.Serbia’s re-certification means that a significant
potential barrier for the full normalization of close and cooperative ties
between Washington and Belgrade has been removed. The announcement also
means that the Bush Administration considers Serbia to be well on its way
to becoming an integral part of the West—a message that the EU, IMF,
World Bank and UN will hear loud and clear.
The decision was correct for two reasons. First, on its own merits, Serbia
has demonstrated that the country is well on its way to full cooperation
with the Tribunal (as it is obligated to do by treaty and recently enacted
legislation). From last Thursday’s arrest of the Montenegrin Veselin
Sljivancanin—accused of ordering the massacre of 200 civilians near
Vukovar in 1991—to the recent extradition of Jovica Stanisic, the former
head of Milosevic’s secret police, the evidence of cooperation is
palpable.
The second reason concerns the emerging Belgrade-Washington relationship.
Over the last few months, the Bush Administration has made it known to
Belgrade that it seeks warmer relations based on shared security
interests.
If the Balkans are ever to move forward, stability and prosperity must be
entrenched within
the borders of its metropolitan power. Without a healthy Serbia becoming a
solid regional leader helping to strengthen border security, enforce
export controls, cooperate in
the war on terror and promote the rule of law and good governance, much of
the region will turn its back on the future: the specter of Bosnia or
Kosovo once again becoming a European beachhead for Al-Qaeda is of the
highest concern, not just for Serbia but the entire civilized world as
well.
In early April, during his groundbreaking visit to Belgrade, Powell said
that he was departing Serbia with “a very good feeling about [the
government’s] sense of commitment and purpose.” The Powell visit was
followed a little more than a month later by an announcement from the
White House that authorized the resumption of arms sales and military
assistance to Belgrade. President Bush said that closer bilateral military
ties with Serbia and Montenegro “will strengthen the security of the
United States.” Re-certification is the keystone in the new
relationship.
The importance of this new relationship for both sides should not be
underestimated. The burgeoning America-Serbia friendship is allowing
Belgrade to consolidate its democratic victory over the past and maintain
its freedom. And in Serbia, America now has an example of a people to
which it has helped deliver responsible liberty even without the presence
of vital interests in the calculus of U.S. policymaking.
There are some in the NGO community who are upset with Secretary Powell's
decision and argue that Serbia's level of cooperation is still too low.
They mistake the world that ought to be for the world that is. Undeniably,
Serbia is a safer place now than it has been for a long time. Government
officials do indeed retain links to the underworld, but largely with those
who are busily legitimizing their business and political interests. To
expect a Balkan nation to expose all the skeletons in its closet at once
is to demand the application of a ridiculous standard: that Belgrade
become Denmark or Austria in the course of only a few years.
Such a standard is meant to disappoint, for it is clear that no one who
amassed more than a couple of thousand dollars in the Balkans in the last
decade did so through pure and virtuous means. Those deserving
imprisonment are the ones who remain wedded to violence and illegality,
not those belonging to the much broader category of acquirers of privilege
through illegitimate means in illegitimate times.
Further, the United States is right not to press Serbia too hard on
apprehending every war criminal at the same time. With the most formidable
military, intelligence and law enforcement resources the world has ever
seen, the United States is unable to discover the whereabouts of Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Serbia, lacking anything resembling
America’s resources, deserves the benefit of the doubt when it says that
it cannot find Mladic. Belgrade, after all, remains unable to find the man
who orchestrated the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in
March of this year—something it is desperately trying to do.
Re-certification is an integral part of Washington’s recognition that to
give Serbia’s new birth of freedom a real opportunity to succeed, a
change of tactics by Western powers is in order. The
way to affect Serbia’s political culture is though rewards and benefits,
not penalties and threats. Those who would use sticks rather than carrots
mistake today’s Serbia for the Serbia of yesterday, mistake the Serbia
yearning to join the core-institutions of the West such as the EU and NATO
for the Serbia that fought a war against both.
Failure to re-certify would have emboldened the underground support
networks these fugitives rely on. Opponents of re-certification do not
understand that lack of cooperation is not proven by the lack of an arrest
or two, because in cases like this, arrest and apprehension is only the
final and most visible stage of a process of cooperation.
Not re-certifying Serbia would have made it nearly impossible for Belgrade
to sign onto the Article 98 provision of the International Criminal Court
(ICC) Treaty. Signing Article 98 will in turn encourage the military
reforms that are required to fully remove from power precisely those who are protecting some of these fugitives from
justice, such as Ratko Mladic (the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army
during the civil war in Bosnia) by securing bilateral military aid and
assistance. Failure to sign will also make it almost impossible for Serbia
to join the institutions of West such as NATO and the EU.
Re-certification will give strength to those in Belgrade who reject the
violence and destruction of the past. As Secretary Powell said in Belgrade,
“there is no limit to the areas of cooperation that are ahead of us now
that the government has committed itself so firmly […] to make this a
better society.”
Success in Serbia—a recent enemy in war, an emerging partner in
peace—is important for the United States. It reminds the world that
America is magnanimous in victory and signals to Europe that there is real
substance to President Bush’s impressive rhetoric of freedom. And so
with one eye on Serbia’s future and the other on the Middle East and
beyond, the following lesson rises to the mind: To downplay the
particularities of history is to precipitate its repetition.
Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic is the assistant managing editor of The
National Interest.