Abstract
This chapter investigates the role of post-1945 norms, rules, and practices pertaining to state recognition of territorial claims in the Balkan wars of the last decade. These moral and legal norms—Robert Jackson and Mark Zacher call them “the territorial covenant”—stipulate that territorial change attained through the use of military force cannot be accepted by the society of states as valid.1 They outlaw conquest and permit only territorial modifications attained by way of consent of all parties involved. The same applies to non-sovereign jurisdictions that become sovereign: unless their governments decide otherwise, their former administrative borders must remain intact. I suggest that territorial norms had a significant presence in external attitudes toward the Yugoslav wars and that the actual international decisions with respect to the Balkans were by and large consistent with these norms.
A longer version of this chapter was published in Global Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2002, pp. 145–74. I am grateful for the permission of the publisher to modify the original version.
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Notes
Robert Jackson and Mark Zacher, “The Territorial Covenant: International Society and the Stabilization of Boundaries,” Working Paper No. 15, Vancouver: Institute of International Relations, 1997. Zacher called them more recently “the territorial integrity norm.”
See Mark Zacher, “The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force,” International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001, pp. 215–50.
For examples see Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995;
Susan Woodward, “Redrawing Borders in a Period of Systemic Transition,” in Milton Esman and Shibley Telhami, eds., International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995;
Steven Burg, “The International Community and the Yugoslav Crisis,” in Milton Esman and Shibley Telhami, eds., International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995;
and James Steinberg, “International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict,” in Lori Damrosch, ed., Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993.
See, for instance, Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, rev. ed., New York: The Modern Library, 1999;
and John Major, The Autobiography, London: Harper Collins, 1999, pp. 532–49.
Michael Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law, 6th ed., London: Routledge, 1992, p. 152.
Robert Jackson, “Boundaries and International Society,” in B. A. Roberson, ed., International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory, London: Pinter, 1998, p. 159.
Malcolm Shaw, “The Heritage of States: The Principle of Uti Possidetis Juris Today,” British Year Book of International Law 1996, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 111.
Martin Rady, “Self-determination and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1996, pp. 379–89.
James Crawford, “State Practice and International Law in Relation to Secession,” British Year Book of International Law 1998, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999, pp. 114–15.
James Baker, III with Thomas DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989–1992, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995, p. 482.
Peter Radan, “The Badinter Arbitration Commission and the Partition of Yugoslavia,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, p. 543.
Snezana Trifunovska, ed., Yugoslavia Through Documents: From Its Creation to Its Dissolution, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994, p. 333.
See paragraphs 21 and 31, UN Document S/23169; The secretary-general makes clear in his memoirs that the UN did not consider the SFRY presidency legitimate after what he says had been its hijacking by Serbia and Montenegro. One practical consequence of this “de-recognition” he mentions was that the letter of vice president of the Presidency Milan Vereus was not allowed to circulate as an official document in the Security Council. See Javier Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace: A Secretary-General’s Memoir, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 482, 487–8.
Paul Szasz, “Remarks,” Proceedings of the 88th Annual Meeting, April 6–9, 1994, Washington, DC: American Society of International Law, 1994, p. 47.
Matthew Craven, “The European Community Arbitration Commission on Yugoslavia,” British Year Book of International Law 1995, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, p. 367.
Quoted in Laura Silber and Alan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, rev. ed., London: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 192.
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Building a House Divided: A Memoir by the Architect of Germany’s Reunification, trans. Thomas Thornton, New York: Broadway Books, 1998, p. 489.
Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a Catastrophe, New York: Times Books, 1999, p. 177.
Most EC states were very uneasy about recognition, but, following Germany’s notification that, if necessary, it would recognize Croatia unilaterally, they concurred to demonstrate the EC’s unity in foreign relations. In the wake of the Maastricht Treaty, the EC members did not want to be publicly seen as marring the prospects of the newly instituted “Common Foreign and Security Policy.” But privately grave doubts remained. François Mitterrand, the French president, asked in an early December newspaper interview whether states that were pressing for immediate recognition planned to dispatch troops to support the fact of Croat and Slovene statehood. Roland Dumas, his foreign minister, later said that by recognizing Croatia German diplomacy fueled the war in Bosnia. See, respectively, Thomas Grant, The Recognition of States: Law and Practice in Debate and Evolution, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999, p. 175;
and Michael Thumann, “Between Ambition and Paralysis—Germany’s Policy Toward Yugoslavia 1991–93,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, p. 581.
The Bosnian Croats participated in the referendum and voted for an independent Bosnia, but for tactical reasons. Croatia and those Bosnian Croats who wanted to amalgamate with Croatia thought that this goal would be easier to accomplish in a Bosnia that had already been separated from Yugoslavia. See Steven Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, p. 107.
Quoted in Emil Nagengast, “German and U.S. Intervention Against Yugoslav Sovereignty,” in Andrew Valls, ed., Ethics in International Affairs, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, p. 160.
Roland Rich, “Recognition of States: The Collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union,” European Journal of International Law, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1993, pp. 61–2.
Quoted in Marc Weller, “The Rambouillet Conference on Kosovo,” International Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 2, 1999, p. 225.
Ruth Wedgwood, “NATO’s Campaign in Yugoslavia,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 93, No. 4, 1999, p. 831.
David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, updated ed., San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997, p. 34; Owen discusses (pp. 32–5) what in retrospect was a very unique proposal of the Dutch government—at the time in charge of the EC presidency—that the option of boundary changes should be looked at. The Netherlands suggested in this 13 July 1991 document “a voluntary redrawing of internal borders as a possible solution” and pointed out that “if the aim is to reduce the number of national minorities in every republic, better borders than the present ones could be devised.” If the republics were to become independent, the proposal stressed, “the first principle of Helsinki should be applied, which means that the frontiers of Yugoslavia’s constituent republics can only be changed ‘in accordance with international law, by peaceful means and by agreement.’” One can only speculate what course the events would have taken had the Dutch proposition, introduced less than three weeks after the first shots in Slovenia, not been so promptly rejected by the other EC members on 29 July 1991.
Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 364.
James Lyon, “Will Bosnia Survive Dayton?” Current History, Vol. 99, No. 3, 2000, pp. 111 and 113.
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Fabry, M. (2004). International Norms of Territorial Integrity and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. In: Morton, J.S., Nation, R.C., Forage, P., Bianchini, S. (eds) Reflections on the Balkan Wars: Ten Years After the Break Up of Yugoslavia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980205_7
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