This year, July 11 marks the 30th anniversary of the massacre by bloody Serbian militias against 8500 innocent civilians, the elderly, women and children in Srebrenica. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has considered it genocide, convicting many of the perpetrators, including the former President of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadzic, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the infamous General Ratko Mladic.
This tragic anniversary has been somewhat overshadowed by the war following the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. However, especially in our region it is being commemorated with numerous activities, culminating in the traditional annual 110 km long march of thousands of people and their families on the path that the innocent victims and others took to escape that unprecedented genocide, and with many other commemorative ceremonies.
The Srebrenica massacre occurred just 5 years after the overthrow of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the former Yugoslav Federation; at a time when it seemed that peace would reign everywhere, while conflict, war and such massacres would belong to the past.
But Srebrenica did not explode suddenly and without warning, nor overnight or in a month. Rather, it has a political, diplomatic and military lineage that leads inevitably to the ultra-nationalist Serbian forces in Yugoslavia and especially in the Republika Srpska of Bosnia.
Meanwhile, that massacre and in general the acts of fratricide that occurred there and later have a gray diplomatic background, which, as shown below, ended as a tragic failure of the so-called "appeasement diplomacy".
At the beginning of the 90s, under the extraordinary pressure of their peoples and the collapse of the infamous Berlin Wall, the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe began to fall one by one; in that context, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with 6 republics, with peoples from 20 different ethnicities and nationalities, also disintegrated. However, very soon a new phenomenon emerged with much more savage brutality, totally contrary to the hopes and peace-making aspirations of the peoples in the region. The former Federal Yugoslavia was plunged into a spiral of violence, mass extermination and 4 bloody wars. During the bloody conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone during the years 1992-1995, over 100.000 people were brutally killed. And yet, the international community stood by; it intervened only when the Srebrenica Massacre on July 11, 1995, shocked international opinion.
Then NATO bombed Serbian combat positions and on November 1 of that same year, the parties to the conflict were forced to sit at the negotiating table at the Dayton Air Force Base in the State of Ohio, USA.
After difficult negotiations, competently led by the emblematic mediator, the late Ambassador Richard Holbrook, "the white smoke came out" and on December 14, 1995, the historic Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris.
However, many aspects of that Agreement were left “frozen” or off the agenda due to incompatibilities between the parties. Consequently, Dayton was not a complete agreement, but with shortcomings and defects, which continue to be criticized to this day; but in the end, that deal was the only and best possible alternative. To date, despite numerous claims and efforts, a better agreement has not been reached and there is no chance that there will be in the future. Therefore, everyone has agreed with Dayton.
As mentioned above, after the armed violence that erupted in Bosnia, the US and the EU were forced to react with their diplomacy. They appointed two elite mediators to draft and implement the “Peace Plan” for Bosnia, namely former Secretary of State Syrus Vance and the British Lord David Owen. Their appointment had wide international resonance. Lord David Owen, now 86 years old, was Foreign Minister in the government of Prime Minister Callaghan in 1977-1980; while the EU had appointed him as Vice-President of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia during the years 1992-1995. He continues to be active in British politics and a known partisan of BREXIT. While Syrus Vance (1917-2002), served as Secretary of State in the Administration of President Carter in 1977-1979; just like Owen, and he was a staunch pacifist and a fetishizer of diplomacy.
Both were chosen specifically as brilliant former Chief Diplomats of two extremely powerful states, already in an explosive region, but when the Serbian aggressors were wreaking "destruction" and did not want to be bothered by anyone or anything, except military force. They announced with wide resonance the "Peace Plan" for Bosnia on January 2, 1993.
However, after browsing the documents, statements and subsequent actions of these two mediators and their assistants, it is clear that despite their name, fame and sensational diplomatic experience, the peacemaking process in Bosnia had failed before it even began and that it was only in name.
Unfortunately for the region and for themselves, Vance and Owen could not demonstrate diplomatic skill in a region that was "boiling" and because of their own pacifist profile, which exaggerated appeasement/calming diplomacy, at a time when the Serbian aggressors were wreaking "destruction" without anyone knowing about it, except for military force. They aimed very naively and outside of any political logic to implement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 55 years later, the "appeasement diplomacy" of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain before World War II.
The essence of this diplomacy is to "take the best" of the enemy, the aggressor, the dictators, in order to soften and de-escalate the situation, to prevent the escalation of military actions by the latter. As mentioned above, former British Prime Minister Chamberlain was the first to implement this policy in relations with Hitler; it culminated in the signing of the infamous Munich Agreement in September 1938, which, in addition to the annexation of the Sudetenland region in the Czech Republic, not only did not quench Hitler's expansionist appetite, but also increased it even more, invading Poland, bombing Great Britain and even invading France, Belgium, etc. Disappointed and without any allies, Chamberlain resigned in May 1940, giving way to the emblematic Winston Churchill, the "legendary War Prime Minister". The latter proved to be a proverbial political prophet when he told Chamberlain upon his return from Munich that "you had two choices in Munich, war and shame; you chose shame, but you will have war."
More specifically, the essence of the "Vance/Owen Plan" was the division of Bosnia into 10 semi-autonomous regions, with half of the territory promised to Serbia, with the idea that it would remain satisfied, without demanding more, a little less with violence.
Meanwhile, the legitimate government in Sarajevo was forced to accept the dictated peace. And yet, in May of that year, this extremely generous plan for Serbia was rejected by Milosevic, because his criminal appetite was insatiable. Although, as their aides claim, and if he had accepted that Plan, Milosevic would later return to the negotiating table to demand more, with the help of Karadzic and Mladic. As a result, in June 1993, Vance and Owen resigned, admitting the failure of their peace project in Bosnia.
This further escalated the violence and genocide against defenseless and innocent people. During April – December 1993, 40.000 innocent Bosniaks were killed, including the elderly, women and children. The siege of Sarajevo continued for over 1000 days with massive damage and destruction. Hundreds of other massacres occurred, leaving the Serbian Concentration Camp in Prijedor, in Western Bosnia, in oblivion.
What is worse and most outrageous, these monstrous crimes and this demonstration of force by Serbian ultranationalists were committed under the nose of the UN troops. In the presence and shameful silence of the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy in Bosnia, the Japanese Yasushi Akashi, and the Commander of the UN Troops, General Bernard Janvier, Serbian forces occupied the area itself that was under UN administration, including Srebrenica; although in April 1995, the latter had been declared a protected area by a decision of the UN Security Council. Furthermore, nothing prevented the Serbian criminals led by the "butchers" of the Balkans, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, from executing 8500 innocent Bosnian civilians and then throwing them into pits and mass graves.
Regarding this case, Marek Edelman, the former surviving Commander of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, wrote that "Europe learned nothing from the Holocaust. What happened in Bosnia was a "post mortum" victory for Hitler." In the next three years, another 60.000 Bosnians were killed and massacred until the West finally intervened with its military forces. Only under their pressure, in 1995, did Milosevic sit down at the negotiating table and sign the Dayton Peace Agreement, a full 5 months after the Srebrenica massacre and other massacres.
Among other things, this sad anniversary, as a tragic example of the failure of Western diplomacy in the peacemaking process in the Western Balkans, provides some useful lessons on the relationship and sequence of military/diplomacy action and the correct handling of current hot topics, especially after the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the Serbian provocations in Northern Kosovo.
Here we are referring to the German Alexander Rhotert, one of the most reliable experts and political scientists in our region, who served as Special Advisor to the UN, EU and OSCE Special Envoy in Sarajevo from 1999 to 2015. Among other things, Rhotert underlines that the first major lesson is that diplomacy and negotiations cannot and should not be carried out during the fighting process. They are left for the end, after the actions in the theater of fighting have ended, when the aggressor has weakened at the peak, thus sitting at the negotiating table in a much inferior position. Because after diplomacy has failed, only war and the army create the right conditions and circumstances for diplomacy to be “put back into the game” with peace projects, but not before. He emphasizes that only military pressure forces dictators and aggressors to sit down at the table to accept peace, on our terms, not theirs.
This is why, as the failure of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan showed, the premature and ill-considered implementation of diplomacy, especially appeasement, and even worse without military support, leads to greater adventures and tragedies than in Bosnia.
These lessons sound very relevant today, when a ceasefire and peace are being sought between Russia and Ukraine, in order to “give diplomacy a chance”. It is true that everything will end with diplomacy, but when the time comes, neither before nor after. This happened after the two world wars in 1919 and 1945. This was also seen in Dayton, where even the famous Holbrook would have failed, if the international military force had not previously done its part, by “putting a limit to what Milosevic said”.
We recall on this occasion that the former Serbian Prime Minister Milutinović rejected the Rambouillet Agreement of February 23, 1999, although it was extremely favorable for Serbia, since it was satisfied with the previous autonomy of Kosovo; but without independence, as Chris Hill, the American ambassador in Belgrade, one of the “architects” of Rambouillet, publicly confirmed some time ago. A month later, this rejection and Milošević’s dictatorial stubbornness, when no diplomatic demarche “was any more water”, led to the direct military intervention of NATO and the liberation war of the KLA, which were followed by strategic political, diplomatic, economic, peacemaking and Euro-Atlantic integration processes for the Balkans.
Finally, this significant anniversary reminds us of how dangerous and consequential the application of appeasement diplomacy by the EU and especially Germany during the years 2010-2022 towards Russia was, with the naive thought that by strengthening economic and trade cooperation, Putin would be softened and seduced and would give up any aggressive intentions towards Europe. Plus the “huge peace dividend” as a result of low Russian gas and energy tariffs, leading to an almost complete dependence on them, the cost of which Europe is now paying “like a chicken”!
Even though in 2008 with Georgia and in 2014 Moscow with the military annexation of Eastern Ukraine showed the opposite, Germany still continued with the appeasement/appeasement policy until February 24, 2022.
Unfortunately, this overly appeasing, even caressing diplomacy has also been pursued by President Trump during his first 6 months towards Russia. And now he is being forced to take austerity measures, starting with the imposition of economic sanctions, support for Ukraine and other measures; but still with a compromised effectiveness due to the unfounded expectations he created in this mined field.
Unlike the mistaken appeasement stances towards Russia, with the determined policy of force and military imposition, with the powerful attacks and bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities during June, President Trump corrected the "target" of Western appeasement diplomacy towards Iran over the last 15 years according to the motto "pull and don't break", which only helped the regime in Tehran accelerate the production of the nuclear bomb.
Equally wrong has been the EU's appeasement diplomacy towards Serbia in the last 20 years, treating it mainly "with a cake and as if it were its mother's", while Pristina mainly "with a whip and as if it were its stepmother". Not allowing, among other things, the use of the Ibar Bridge, thus violating the very symbolism of the connecting bridges against the dividing walls.
Let us hope that on this tragic anniversary, the new political leaderships in Europe and the US will understand their mistakes, making the necessary corrections and changes, in the interest of peace, stability and democracy everywhere. So that there will be no more Srebrenicas, Rejčaks and Vukovars, neither in the Balkans nor anywhere else.
(BalkanWeb)
