ISSN 1847-2397 godište 5. broj 1. 2012. | volume 5 number 1 2012

ISSN 1847-2397
godište 5. ▪ broj 1. ▪ 2012. | volume 5 ▪ number 1 ▪ 2012
Nakladnik/Publisher
Centar za politološka istraživanja/Political Science Research Centre
Gupčeva 14a, Zagreb
Tel./Phone: +385 (0)1 3863 113; URL: www.cpi.hr; e-mail: [email protected]
Glavni i odgovorni urednik/Editor-in-chief
Davor Pauković, Sveučilište u Dubrovniku; Centar za politološka istraživanja, Zagreb/University of Dubrovnik; Political Science Research Centre,
Zagreb
Izvršni urednici/Executive Editors
Višeslav Raos, Centar za politološka istraživanja, Zagreb/Political Science Research Centre, Zagreb
Davorka Vidović, Centar za politološka istraživanja, Zagreb/Political Science Research Centre, Zagreb
Urednički odbor/Editorial Board
Krisztina Arató, Institut političkih znanosti, Pravni fakultet, ELTE, Budimpešta/Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Law, ELTE, Budapest
Roland Axtmann, Sveučilište Swansea/Swansea University
Vlatko Cvrtila, Fakultet političkih znanosti, Zagreb/Faculty of Political Science, Zagreb
Vladimíra Dvořáková, Odsjek političkih znanosti, Ekonomski fakultet, Prag/Department of Political Science, Prague School of Economics, Prague
Gábor Halmai, Sveučilište Széchenyi, Győr; ELTE, Budimpešta/University of Széchenyi, Győr; ELTE, Budapest
Dražen Lalić, Fakultet političkih znanosti, Sveučilište u Zagrebu/Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb
Jan-Erik Lane, Sveučilište u Ženevi/University of Geneva
Pero Maldini, Sveučilište u Dubrovniku/University of Dubrovnik
Rafaelle Marchetti, LUISS, Rim; Sveučilište Napoli-Orientale, Napulj/LUISS, Rome; University of Napoli-Orientale, Naples
Ivan Markešić, Institut društvenih znanosti „Ivo Pilar“, Zagreb/Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Anđelko Milardović, Institut za migracije i narodnosti; Centar za politološka istraživanja, Zagreb/Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies; Political
Science Research Centre, Zagreb
Vjeran Pavlaković, Sveučilište u Rijeci/University of Rijeka
Mladen Puškarić, Hrvatski studiji, Sveučilište u Zagrebu/Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb
Philippe Schmitter, European University Institute, Firenca/European University Institute, Florence
Máté Szabó, Institut političkih znanosti, Pravni fakultet, ELTE, Budimpešta/Faculty of Law, ELTE, Budapest
Goran Škvarč, CARNet - Hrvatska akademska istraživačka mreža, Zagreb/CARNet - Croatian Academic Research Network, Zagreb
Luk Van Langenhove, Sveučilište Ujedinjenih naroda (UNU-CRIS), Brugge/United Nations University (UNU-CRIS), Bruges
Pierre Vercauteren, Katoličko sveučilište u Monsu/Catholic University of Mons
Tajnica/Secretary
Nikolina Jožanc
Likovna urednica/Graphic Design
Erna Matanović
Grafička priprema/Layout
Višeslav Raos
Suvremene teme jednom godišnje objavljuje članke na hrvatskom i engleskom jeziku.
Contemporary Issues annually publishes articles in Croatian and English language.
Upute autorima i ostale informacije pogledajte na
http://contemporary-issues.cpi.hr ili pišite uredništvu na [email protected].
For submission instructions and all other information visit
http://contemporary-issues.cpi.hr or contact the Editorial Board at [email protected].
Copyright © 2012 Suvremene teme ISSN 1847-239
Sadržaj/Contents
Urednička riječ/Editorial ......................................................................................................................4
Nationalism in Croatian Transition to Democracy:
Between Structural Conditionality and the Impact of Legacy of History and Political Culture/
Nacionalizam u hrvatskoj demokratskoj tranziciji: između strukturne uvjetovanosti i utjecaja naslijeđa
politike i političke kulture
Pero Maldini .......................................................................................................................................... 6
Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types/Genocid: namjera, motivi i tipovi
Vahram Ayvazyan ................................................................................................................................ 21
Perspektive jačanja suradnje NATO-a i Europske unije u kontekstu regionalne i globalne sigurnosti/
Perspectives of strengthening cooperation between NATO and the European Union in the
context of regional and global security
Lada Glavaš Kovačić ........................................................................................................................... 37
Davutoğlu: Thinking Depth and Global Political Activism as New Grand Strategy/Davutoğlu:
misaona dubina i globalni politički aktivizam kao nova velika strategija
Ali Pajaziti ............................................................................................................................................ 45
Transmission of traumatic experiences in the families of war survivors from Bosnia and
Herzegovina/Prenošenje traumatičnih iskustava u obiteljima preživjelih u ratu u Bosni i Hercegovini
Kalina Jordanova ................................................................................................................................. 52
Prikazi knjiga/Book Reviews
Gergana Noutcheva: European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession:
Conditionality, Legitimacy and Compliance
(Ivo Križić) ............................................................................................................................................ 61
Ksenija Cvetković-Sander: Sprachpolitik und nationale Identität im sozialistischen Jugoslawien
(1945-1991): Serbokroatisch, Albanisch, Makedonisch und Slowenisch
(Višeslav Raos) ................................................................................................................................... 66
suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Urednička riječ
Urednička riječ
I u svojoj petoj godini izlaženja, časopis Suvremene teme nastavlja svoju multidisciplinarnu
i interdisciplinarnu orijentaciju te stoga donosi
znanstvene radove koji pokrivaju širok spektar
tema i istraživačkih interesa. Ovaj broj predstavlja
prekretnicu u uređivačkoj politici jer će od sljedećeg
broja časopis pokrivati samo suvremene teme koje
se odnose na jugoistočnu Europu. Uz to, časopis će
primate radove samo iz područja politologije, sociologije i suvremene povijesti. Ova promjena proizlazi
iz potrebe za boljom prepoznatljivošću časopisa
na međunarodnom planu, kao i uređivačkog cilja
fokusiranja na jugoistočnu Europu.
U ovom broju donosimo raspravu o naravi
nacionalizma u vrijeme demokratske tranzicije
u Hrvatskoj, analizu vrsta genocida, s posebnim
osvrtom na genocid nad Armencima kao prvom
suvremenom genocidu. Slijedi članak o najnovijem razvoju suradnje NATO-a i Europske unije,
rad o diplomatskom i teorijskom profilu turskog
ministra vanjskih poslova Ahmeta Davutoğlua te
izvješće o istraživanju o prenošenju ratnih sjećanja
roditelja na djecu u Bosni i Hercegovini. Ovaj broj
također donosi i prikaze knjiga o politici Europske
unije prema Balkanu te o jezičnoj politici u Drugoj
Jugoslaviji.
Uredništvo
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political science research centre
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CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Editorial
Editorial
In its fifth year of publication, the Contemporary
Issues journal continues its multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary orientation and therefore includes
papers which cover a wide range of topics and research interests. This issue represents a turning
point in our editorial policy. Starting with the next
issue, the journal will only cover contemporary
issues related to Southeastern Europe. Additionally, we will only accept papers in political science,
sociology and contemporary history. This change
derives from the need for better international visibility of the journal, as well as the editorial goal of
focusing on Southeastern Europe.
This issue includes a treatise on the nature of nationalism during democratic transition in Croatia,
an analysis of different kinds of genocide, with a
special focus on the Armenian Genocide as a first
modern genocide. Further, the issue brings a paper
on recent development of NATO-EU cooperation,
an article on the diplomatic and theoretic profile of
the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, as
well as a research report on the transmission of
war memories from parents to children in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. This issue also includes book
reviews on EU Balkans policy and language policy
in the Second Yugoslavia.
Editorial Board
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Pero Maldini: Nationalism in Croatian Transition to Democracy
UDK: 321.728(497.5)”199/200”
316.356.4(497.5)”199/200”
Izvorni znanstveni rad
Primljeno: 1. rujna 2012.
Nationalism in Croatian Transition to Democracy:
Between Structural Conditionality and the Impact of Legacy of
History and Political Culture
PERO MALDINI
University of Dubrovnik
Nationalism has marked the democratic transition of many post-communist
societies, including Croatia. It showed its liberal character by fostering democratic change and achieving national independence, but it also manifested itself
as exclusive ethnocentrism, which considerably slowed down the democratization process and imposed itself as its main characteristic. The author challenges the view that ethnocentrism as inherent characteristic of the so-called
Eastern (ethnic) nations, which are consequently undemocratic and prone to
ethnic conflicts, while the liberal character is attributed as inherent to nationalism of Western (civic) nations. Besides the explanation of various aspects of
nationalism in Croatia, the author draws attention to its primary structural and
contextual conditionality, particularly highlighting the framework of political unfreedom and limited modernization during the communist period and specific
conditions of democratic transition characterized by process of nation-state
establishment and the war of independence. Here nationalism appears as an
expression of patriotism and political identification, but also as a response to
social, political and value discontinuity and particularly as reaction to external
aggression. The author denies its inherency, since it is not some “innate” cultural trait, but a social phenomenon that is dominantly caused by the social and
political context. Nationalism in the period of democratic transition in Croatia,
despite its undoubtedly ethnocentric manifestations, in essence still was liberal.
After the war and renewed processes of democratization there was a significant
decline of ethnocentrism and strengthening of liberal features of nationalism.
Key words: nationalism ethnocentrism, democratic transition, nation-state,
post-communist societies, Croatia
1. Introduction
The collapse of communism sparked a wave
of democratization that was characterized by distinctive development of democracy in post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe.
Democratization processes in those societies
have generated specific problems, including uncertainty regarding the establishment of democracy, its sustainability, and development. Among
the others, a characteristic phenomenon that has
characterized many transitional societies is strong
nationalism. Moreover, it is often manifested as
ethnocentrism (closed, exclusive and intolerant ethnic nationalism), and as such contributed
to the deceleration of democratization. On the
other hand, nationalism was the driving force of
the democratic change, especially in those postcommunist countries which for the first time in their
history, parallel with the establishment of democracy, gained state independence. Among them was
the Croatian society. With many common features
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it shares with other post-communist societies, its
democratization was marked by some very specific
conditions. Those are, primarily, secession from
a multinational federation and the establishment
of independent and sovereign nation-state, and a
defensive war against the Greater Serbian aggression in order to protect newly acquired freedom
and independence. These two key factors have
essentially determined the dynamics and direction
of democratization but also the emergence and
manifestations of nationalism, which essentially
marked the transition period.
Over the past two decades in many Western
political and academic circles, nationalism in
Croatia has often been declared as a retrograde
phenomenon and a serious obstacle to democratization processes, with a usual emphasis of
its ethnocentric features. There it was regularly
placed in the so-called Eastern type nationalism,
characteristic for unmodernized societies with
postponed process of a nation forming, to which
the ethnic conflicts are inherent.1 Although such
claims could find a foothold, particularly based on
the level of public manifestations of nationalism,
basically they do not hold. In fact, nationalism is
too complex a phenomenon that it could be unambiguously defined, and even less understood
outside a particular social and political context.
Just because of that, modernization and democratization processes that characterized the history of established democracies are not entirely
comparable with those in transitional societies.
Hence, the conclusions about particular phenomena (including nationalism and nation-state
building) resulting from such comparisons are
often inappropriate.
Therefore, the intention of this paper is to explain the historical and political-cultural aspects
of nationalism in Croatia and its recent manifesta1 It is a cultural stereotype that one group of (Western) nations should be considered intrinsically democratic, inclined
to freedom, and prone to cosmopolitanism, while the other
group (Eastern) should be considered s non-democratic,
prone to autocracy, xenophobia and ethnocentrism, which
apparently stems from ressentiments that arise from suppressed feelings of dependence and the inability to overcome them during their history. This stereotype, without any
factual foundation and valid argument, is equated with the
division in civic and ethnic nations, which has resulted in
a highly simplified and inaccurate image in public opinion
in Western societies, but also among some scholars. This
image had a great influence on many politicians, especially
on their (distorted) perception and (mis)understanding of
the process of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the wars
conducted in the region (characterized as “ancient ethnic
hatreds” that cannot be stopped in a rational manner), that
significantly influenced the incompetence and inefficiency
of the international community in crisis mediation and conflict resolution in this region (cf. Matić, 2006: 261-266).
tions, but primarily to point to its structural conditionality, in which it is almost not different to other
nationalisms (including those in most developed
Western societies). Also, the intention of the paper
is to show that Croatian nationalism in the period
of democratic transition, despite uncontested ethnocentric manifestations, essentially was liberal
nationalism, seeking to realize statehood ideas
that have marked modern national history.
2. Theoretical framework
Considering the phenomenon of nationalism in
the context of democratic transition of the Croatian
society, it is necessary, at least at a basic level, to
analyze the meaning of the term, as well as key
concepts that are directly related to it (people,
nation, nation-state, liberal democracy). Since
there are many controversies among theorists
of nationalism about its definition, we will not go
further into these disputes. Its meaning will be determined in terms which are largely undisputed,
and will serve as a starting point in the discussion
in this context.
In that sense, one could argue that people
means a community of people which arises under
common territorial, economic and cultural factors
that have enabled it to connect to people as an
ethnic group. It appears in the period when tribal
society grows into a broader territorial community, bound by ethnic, linguistic and cultural affinity of its members, different in comparison to
other communities. The nation is a people which
are constituted as a political community. It grows
from the freedom of civil societies (political and
civil freedom, free market) which were established
after the 18th and 19th century (civil and national)
revolutions, shaping the modern civil society and
state. In other words, a nation is established as a
sovereign political community, i.e. political society
(demos) based on the people’s community (ethnos)
formed on common history, culture, language and
territory.2 The nation-state in turn means the realization of the sovereignty of the nation, politically,
legally and territorially (including international recognition). The modern nation-state is inseparably
linked with (liberal) democracy as a political order.
Popular sovereignty implies, on the one hand, the
right to self-determination, namely the political, territorial and economic independence of the people,
2 “What civil society, as the historical founder of modern
society has created, is the political community of free
citizens who, at the same time, are free to establish their
historically shaped people’s community as a national
community. People are free to set their internalized ethnic community as a political community, i.e., to establish
it as its own nation” (Lerotić, 1984: 9).
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and, on the other hand, political power elected by
the citizens which represents the general political
will of the people and thus derives its legitimacy.
The first aspect is a precondition of the nationstate, while the second one is a precondition of
a democratic political regime. That way, modern
nations, as political communities, establish nationstates as an expression of national and political
sovereignty.3 A sense of collective identity and
solidarity sprang from the principles of national
democracy were shaped, while liberal principles
constructed the institutional foundations for free
development of individuals.
Nationalism as a term is so often used (in different contexts), yet its meaning is by no means
unambiguous, quite the opposite. Therefore, nationalism has at least several defining meanings.
First, it is political awareness of ethnic cohesion
and affiliation (political identity) and of common
(national) interests. Second, it is a political ideology that assumes the nation as the most important
and fundamental determinant of society (it is the
basis of political movements for national liberation, national equality and the establishment and
protection of the nation-state). Third, it means preference and protection of interests (of members)
of their own nation to the interests (of members)
of other nation(s). Fourth, it means highlighting of
own nation’s characteristics and underestimation of
those of another nation (which causes intolerance
towards members of other nations, and in the extreme case ethnic conflicts). Because of all these
meanings, nationalism has a very strong value,
political and socio-psychological character, both at
the individual and social level. Therefrom derives
its predominantly (and often ultimately) positive or
negative evaluation among various political actors
and citizens in various social environments, and
different political ideologies and theories.
Following the above mentioned, it could be
said that nationalism is generally manifested in
two specific ways: first – liberal (civic, inclusive)
nationalism, and second – ethnocentric (ethnic,
exclusive) nationalism. Liberal nationalism reflects
itself in the emancipatory role when nationalism
serves national liberation, achievement of independence, equality, freedom and the rights of the
people. Such an expression of nationalism denotes
openness, striving toward the realization of ethical
values and includes the rights of others. In modern societies, this form of nationalism has strong
cohesive and integrative functions. Specifically,
3 Cf. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of
1789, Articles 3 and 6; Lerotić, 1984: 9-10; Prpić, Puhovski
and Uzelac, 1990: 85-86; Rousseau, 1978: 101-102; Tadić,
1988: 202.
the nation means the collective political identity;
it provides a sense of belonging, both to the nation as a political community (sovereign nationstate) and to the nation as a people. In fact, most
modern states were established as nation-states.
In this context, the nation is the expression of
political identity (the common sense of belonging
among the various social groups in society) and it
is the basic precondition for a democratic regime.
It is a political framework that provides basic social consensus in a society of diverse and mutually opposed social interests regarding issues of
government, shape and choice of political power
and definition of national interest. Although civil
society (as a set of equal citizens united by the
social contract) is a precondition for effective democracy, it does not have sufficient basis for the
realization of social consensus, and cannot establish an effective and stable state without political
identity. That identity in turn ensures the nation
(a feeling of national belonging that integrates a
certain society into a political community).
Nationalism has been an expression of libertarian aspirations for many peoples in their struggle
for national independence, freedom and sovereignty since 18th and 19th century revolutions,
through the anti-colonial movements, until recent
exoduses from multinational federations after the
collapse of communism. Realization of a sovereign nation-state was their main goal, regardless
of the historic period and social-political context. It
is evident in examples of post-communist societies
that have emerged from the former multinational
states (USSR, Yugoslavia) which authoritarian
regimes have been restricting political freedom
of the people(s) trying to integrate them into a
unified political community from above, on ideological basis. Likewise, it is also visible in recent
examples of small nations and/or ethnic minorities in the developed democratic countries of the
West where civic consensus and democratic political system are not sufficient factors of integration
(and consequently the stability) of those political
communities (such as Spain, Belgium, UK, Italy,
France, Canada). It should be noted also that, despite globalization processes and their tendency
to create a global democracy – which, among the
others, significantly reduce the sovereignty of the
nation states – still remained an open question
of political identity (formation of political community) and the problem of legitimacy (making
of collectively binding decisions and subjecting
to them) which are still dominant at the level of
nation states. Consequently, nationalism is not
some aberration of democracy, retrograde and
anti-modern phenomenon, but rather the opposite.
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Originally, it is in the basis of the modern nationstate as a political community, an expression of
people’s sovereignty and political subjectivity of
the nation. Its characteristic outward expression,
essentially, is patriotism.
Unlike liberal nationalism, ethnocentric nationalism is usually expressed through closed, autarchic and xenophobic attitudes towards (members
of) other nations. National affiliation is above all, it
is a central social and political value and a main
criterion of social evaluation. In its ultimate form,
it is based on (implicit or explicit) attitude of superiority of own nation over other nations, on lack
of respect for them, and on denial of equal rights
to others.4 Hence, the inequality, exclusion and
uncooperativeness are in the very foundation of
ethnocentrism. The nation is perceived as closed
and homogenous group opposed to other nations
(or their members). At the same time, members
of one’s own nation are expected to be subjective
to collective (national) values, and through their
adoption individuals are primarily valued. Individualism and any form of expressing different values,
political attitudes and behavior are not accepted,
and if it is more pronounced, it is considered as
hostile.5 In this sense, ethnocentrism is opposed
to democracy, which has individualism and political pluralism at its very core.
Socio-psychological factors have substantial
prevalence in ethnocentrism. Namely, authoritarianism, conformity and emotions are much stronger
than cognitive and rational elements. It is this type
of nationalism that is predominantly a phenomenon
of individual psychology, which refers more to a set
of different ethnocentric attitudes and traditional
value orientations rather than political ideology (cf.
Šram, 2008: 50-53). Thus ethnocentrism is usually expressed as a set of attitudes ranging from
isolation and self-sufficiency, across intolerance
and exclusion to intolerance and blaming of other
4 Such nationalism is unfair because of the exclusivity
and imposing of own interests to others, putting them in
an unfair or unequal position (cf. Šiber, 1998a: 72-73).
Also, it restricts freedom and obeys the members of their
own nation by imposing the proper forms of manifesting
(national) identity and expression of loyalty (to political
power). Understood in the context of negative sign, nationalism means the loss of own identity and submitting
to collective identity. Also, it is marked by suppression
of rational deliberation and emotional dominance (which
is why the prejudices and stereotypes are integral part
of nationalism), closure and collectively oppose to other
groups (cf. Šiber, 1984: 7-11).
5 “Nationalism shows up as the most powerful ‘secular religion’ in the twentieth century, especially in nations with
a dominant pre-modern mentality. In such communities,
the individual can function as a member of the tribe, in
which any attempt of individualization is seen as heresy
and is severely punishable (Blažević, 1995: 56)”.
nations’ members for specific problems of their
own (individual) and social (national) life. Social
crises, social turmoil causing anxiety, uncertainty
and frustration are an extremely favorable social
and political environment for the development
of ethnocentrism, while the widespread authoritarianism is its characteristic socio-psychological
background. Prevalence of authoritarianism as a
socio-psychological disposition exceptionally favors collectivistic homogenization (cf. Šiber, 1989;
Šiber, 1998b; Županov, 1993; Bulat and Štrelov,
1995b; Katunarić, 1995). Periods of social crisis
are characterized by fear, uncertainty and emphasized need for security and belonging. This need
is usually met by identification with a social group
(family, nation, class, race, religious group), and
with this group’s sociocultural characteristics and
collective psychological symbols. That is why authoritarian individuals (because of their vulnerability,
passivity and conformism) are suitable objects of
national homogenization, because of immersion
into masses where personal identity is lost and
being guided by the nation as a symbol of collective identity. Therefore, ethnocentrism is usually
associated with populist political mobilization led
by political authorities or populist movements.
Such a dual nature of nationalism is also reflected through the distinction between liberal (or
civic) and ethnic nationalism and between the notions of a civic and an ethnic nation, respectively.
Thus, the civic nation, basically, means community
of citizens which are entitled to citizenship based
on their birth in the state (or naturalization), i.e.
they are full citizens of a certain state. By creating
a civic nation, members of ethnic groups (the majority, but also minority) are legally and politically
equal. This means that they have equal civil and
political rights and obligations, regardless of all
their secondary features and affiliation (such as
ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, social, economic,
etc.) which are retained and freely expressed.
Consent to the same or similar political values,
principles and social norms, and consensus on
basic political institutions and procedures – are the
basis of constitution of the nation. Hence, a civic
nation establishes itself on the political awareness
of its members, which is the origin of collective
(national) identity and basis of unity. National solidarity is based primarily on civil status and social
communication. Belonging to a nation is eminently
politically determined and liberal nationalism is not
exclusive to other nations (or ethnic groups). Liberal (or civic) nationalism is based on the ideals of
political liberalism, which are reflected in aspirations for freedom, civil rights, establishment of a
national economy, limiting of the state and overall
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progress (much more than preservation of tradition, therefore it is more tolerant to individual differences). Therefore, it is usually directed towards
establishing and/or protecting national sovereignty
and political community (nation-state). Throughout history, this type of nationalism was the basis
of political programs of almost all movements for
national liberation.
The concept of an ethnic nation in turn means
a community of people affiliated by common origin, language, religion and history. Ethnic origin,
traditional values, habits and social norms, in a
word – authentic culture, are the primary sources
of social cohesion and basis of national awareness. Ethnic nationalism therefore lies on a nation
based on ethnicity. It is focused on members of
their own people (inside and outside the political
community) and it is exclusive because it promotes
the welfare of their members while excluding the
others. In multiethnic political communities it acts
toward disintegration, promoting intolerance and
inequality, and reduces the possibility of consensus. In ethnically homogeneous political communities, it is often immersed in pre-modern ethnic
symbolism and forms of social organization, and
acts autarchic and xenophobic. Ethnic nationalism
reflects its anti-liberal dimension in insistence on
ethnic identity rather than on universal citizenship
as well as in emphasizing (imposing) of collective
values and the nation over the interests of the individual and society as a whole.6
These two aspects of a modern nation are
difficult to separate in real life because they are
always mixed (no modern nation is exclusively
civic or ethnic). Nevertheless, significant differences between them are evident. So, the first
one is determined eminently politically, while the
second one has very sociocultural attributes. This
distinction in turn reflects two general and mutually
opposed theoretical approaches where the first,
in explaining these phenomena, understood the
nation as a social form created at a certain point
of the historical development of a society or as a
product (and prerequisite) of social modernization,
while the second one assumes the nation as natural
and primordial property of a given community and
its members. It is a well-known division between
so-called Western and Eastern nationalism(s).
The first one emphasizes the nation as the
political constitution of the demos on liberal principles and therefore it is inherently pro-demo6 Cf. Smith, 1987: 135-138, 149-152; Smith, 2003: 21-24,
127-130, 214-217; Ipperciel, 2007: 396-397; Hobsbawm,
1993: 184-185; Massey, Hodson and Sekulić, 2004: 227229, 237; Kymlicka, 2001: 243; Matić, 2006: 274; Ramet,
2006: 11-19; Calhoun, 1993: 394-396, 404-408; Vujčić,
1998: 29-30.
cratic (a model of a “state” nation, built on the
French Revolution legacy). The second one is
anti-democratic; because it highlights the ethnos
as an integrative and constitutional principle that
excludes the liberal principle of formation of the
nation as a political community (the model of a
“cultural” nation emerged as a product of Romanticism and national revivals of Central and Eastern
Europe, which had postulated unity of culture and
language).7 However, the analysis and qualification of nationalism(s) on this basis cannot give a
valid insight into its nature since the elements of
the Eastern type of nationalism are clearly evident
in present Western societies and vice versa. Political and ethnic identification must be analyzed
within a certain political context and historical
circumstances.
3. Historical, political and structural aspects
of Croatian nationalism
In order to properly understand recent nationalism in the Croatian society, its main causes and
manifestations, we have to at least give a brief
overview of particular periods of modern political
history. Different social and political conditions in
certain periods of Croatian nation and state development have significantly influenced its contemporary main characteristics and manifestations.
Croatian statehood and national independence
have been an unattainable goal for a long period.
7 Thus Kohn (1955) argues that Western nationalism is
result of a process in which state precedes the creation
of the nation. By creating a state, there were created the
social, economic and political conditions for the transformation of people into a nation. This process is based on
the ideas of liberal democracy (citizens, equal rights, individual choice, sovereignty, the rule of law, institutionalized
power, general political will, and shared values), which
shaped the civic, liberal type of nationalism. Eastern nationalism in turn derives from the conditions where there
is no state and it usually appears as a resistance against
the existing state in which certain nation is often in a subordinate position. Eastern nationalism is based on ethnicity (cultural identity, origin) and has integrative tendencies
(trying to create a nation-state as a political community
of its own members). In this context, it is necessary to
mention the influential representatives of the modernist
conception of nation. So, the authors such as E. Gellner,
E. Kedourie and E. Hobsbawm consider the nation as a
social construct, a product of modernity, modern artifact
without natural foundation, the doctrine of the early 19th
century created on the tradition of the Enlightenment and
cultural populism, an imaginary community with elements
of social engineering, stressing the nation primarily as a
political community, while denying its cultural foundation
(cf. Gellner, 1991; Kedourie, 1993; Hobsbawm, 1993).
Their views, though not always consistent, and therefore
disputed, in many ways has influenced the consolidation
of stereotype which on such basis qualifying nationalism
in certain societies as a pro-democratic or anti-democratic.
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The historical Croatian kingdom (as the point of origin of Croatian statehood) had been long reflected
in the minds of the Croatian elite and citizens only
as a myth, and had no actual political meaning.
At the same time, the political reality of creation
of the Croatian nation and state was arduous and
long-term. Throughout the history and during the
period of shaping of modern European nations,
the Croatian people were a part of various state
arrangements, under foreign government, with
limited political rights and without the possibility of
realization of national sovereignty. Despite such
unfavorable conditions, Croats have still managed
to obtain and preserve the recognition of national
identity, i.e. the Croatian name and certain political privileges (the so-called municipal rights). It
was the manifestation of the continuity of Croatian sovereign rights according to which they, as
an individual political entity, had the right to political autonomy, and as such were a constitutive
element of state unities they were in. That way,
Croats were politically shaped, which provided the
basis to creation of the modern Croatian nation.
It should be noted that the Croatian national
movement in the development of the national
idea, ever since the beginning of the 19th century,
was pronouncedly liberal. For Croatian nationalism of the 19th and early 20th century, the nation
was primarily a political and only secondarily an
ethnical concept. Ethnic characteristics were not
regarded as sufficient for a nation. Ever since the
first concepts of the Croatian nation as the bearer
of sovereignty in the area of the kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, formed upon a basis
of tradition of historical municipal rights (as they
were represented by Narodna stranka and Stranka
prava, the main Croatian political parties of that
time), continuing with the stands represented by
the leading political and cultural representatives
of the Croatian national resurgence (Lj. Gaj, J.
J. Strossmayer, P. Preradović, I. Mažuranić, Lj.
Vukotinović, I. K. Sakcinski and others), and then
M. Pavlinović and A. Starčević – the nation was
comprehended as a political association consisting
of various ethnical and social groups which are in
political sense constitutive and equal elements of
the Croatian nation (which, among others, is visible even in the Illyrian name, which was taken for
everyone speaking the Croatian language in the
area of the Triune Kingdom because the Croatian
name at the time referred only to northern Croatia),
and in the early 20th century S. Radić, the leader
of HSS, who in his political program connected the
ideas of liberalism and social justice, and thought
of liberal democratic institutions as a prerequisite
to development of the Croatian nation and state.
The autocratic regime in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Serbian repression over the other
nations generated resistance and strengthened
nationalism and anti-Serbian spirit. Those relations yielded the Ustashe, an extreme nationalist
group which established a Nazi puppet-regime
during World War II in Croatia which, however,
did not enjoy a wide support of the people. Due
to the crimes committed by that regime, it is arguably the darkest part of Croatian history. At the
same time, it marked a radical deviation from the
course set by the leading ideologists of the Croatian national movement.8
After the defeat of Fascism and Nazism and
end of World War II, the regime established by
the communists was based on war victory and
antifascism, and subsequently on politics of independence and equidistance, which supported
its internal and international legitimacy, in spite
of its pronounced anti-democratic character (cf.
Bilandžić, 1985: 158-178; Sekulić, 2004: 27-31). The
communists then completely suppressed political
parties which were supporting a civil democratic
option of the Croatian national question solution
(dominant in the pre-war period) and offered a
federal organization of the new Yugoslavia (six
republics and two autonomous provinces) which
was supposed to enable national equality and
sovereignty to its constitutive nations, including
Croatia. However, they abolished the multiparty
system and introduced an authoritarian undemocratic regime based on the ideology of Marxist
socialism, with a power monopoly by their party.
That meant a substantial reduction of civil rights
and political freedoms (including the national ones)
and open confrontation with political opponents.
Emphasis of national interests outside the official
ideological and political discourse gained a quite
negative connotation, and nationalists were persecuted as enemies of the regime. Moreover, the
sole stressing of ethnicity was systematically suppressed due to the pressure of an ideologically
promoted socialistic internationalism and under
the excuse of maintaining balance and prevention
of ethnical conflicts in the multiethnic federation.
At the same time, there was a strong encouragement of national unity9 as a form of ideological integration from above, instead of accepting
the national individuality and differences as facts
and basis upon which a multinational community
8 Cf. Matić, 2006: 275-281; Horvat, 1989: 50-73; Gross and
Szabo, 1992: 529-531, 565-573; Milardović, Cipek and
Šišak, 1995: 67-73, 102-190.
9 It was about the concept of “brotherhood and unity”,
under which tendencies of Yugoslavian unitarism were
often hidden.
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may integrate organically, from below, on a civil
base. In that context, many (especially in Croatia)
reckoned that the former Serbian hegemony and
the king’s dictatorship at the time of the Kingdom
of Yugoslavia had been replaced by Yugoslavian
unitarism and communist dictatorship.
Although the equality of all peoples and the
federal organization of the Yugoslav state were
one of the foundations upon which the communist
government’s legitimacy stood, the authoritarian
communist regime generated nationalism, mostly
by repression and/or suppression the freedom of
national expression whenever it crossed certain
boundaries. Those boundaries were in turn defined
by the limits set by the authoritarian government,
primarily by the postulates of the ruling communist
ideology and the imperative of maintaining the
multinational federation, and the power monopoly
of the communist party (the only one retaining the
right to interpret national interests).
In such conditions, nationalism in Croatian society was latent, but in some crisis periods even
very open. It was similar in other parts of the former multinational state, although in Croatia, given
its relatively greater economic development (and
thus more funding to the federal budget) and the
population size, it was slightly more pronounced.
Since the late 1960s, the efforts of Croatian communist leadership were directed towards liberalization of the political system, i.e. towards economic
reform and greater economic and political independence of Croatia within the federation. Especially
emphasized were the demands for reduction of
control of federal authorities, particularly over the
redistribution of material goods by which Croatia was systematically economically exploited in
favor of other, less developed republics, including
Serbia (demand for “clean bills”). They were also
associated with demands for the freedom of expression and autonomous articulation of national
interests (political, economic, and cultural). Those
demands were backed by a significant portion of
Croatian public, and they culminated in mass protests 1971 when numerous citizens have publicly
displayed dissatisfaction with the status quo. They
gave strong and open support to Croatian prodemocratic political leadership and emphasized
demands for greater independence of Croatia (a
movement known as “Croatian spring”). However,
the Croatian national-democratic movement was
declared nationalistic and contra-revolutionary,
brutally quelled, and its leadership and numerous participants were politically stigmatized and
subjected to repression. Although those events
directly influenced the Yugoslav Constitution of
1974, in which the republics gained a considerably
higher level of autonomy and a formal statehood,
and despite the proclamation of national equality
and solidarity as basic values (“brotherhood and
unity”) – the fact of substantially limited freedom
of national expression (and political freedoms in
general) remained. The communist regime could
not effectively articulate them without democratization, which would in turn bring into question the
monopoly of the Communist Party, and hence its
survival on power.
After the death of J. B. Tito, there was no more
such an authority to be the arbiter between the federal and the republics’ party leaders and guarantee
the preservation of the state unity, so the political
processes of decentralization in Yugoslavia grew
stronger. However, they did not take place in a
democratic manner, but instead bureaucratically
and on a political level – by deals and agreements
between leaders of republic branches of the Communist Party (known as “negotiable” economy and
policy). Meanwhile, the urgently needed reforms
(economic reform on free market basis, liberalization and democratization of the political system)
which had the potential to organically reconnect
the republics on brand new foundations, while
keeping (even strengthening) their political and
economic independence – failed to occur. This in
turn led to increasingly larger conflicts between
the advocates of federalism, decentralization and
greater republic rights, and their opponents – supporters of a tighter federation, larger degree of
centralization and strengthening the authority of
the federal state.10 Those processes did not lead
to stabilization, but instead to increasingly bigger
inner instability (amplified by the deepening economic crisis) and, finally, the disintegration of the
Yugoslav federation.
At the end of that period, at a time when communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe
begin to collapse, and nationalism(s) in the country
are getting stronger, it was clear that Yugoslavia
could not survive in the existing form. In such a
situation political authority in Croatia (then already reformed communists) leaves the federal
Communist Party (at its famous 14th Congress
in 1990), liberalizes political space and organizes
free multiparty democratic elections. Although
they were significantly fostered by the pressure
10 Political power of the once unified Communist Party in
leading political and social development of the state rapidly declined by its increasingly intense disintegration in
republic branches of the Communist Party. It happened
because of shifting the emphasis from “working-class”
to “national”, which republics as federal entities has established as states. It in turn undermined collectiveness
of Yugoslavia and unity of the Party (cf. Bilandžić, 1985:
512-534, 1986: 165-167).
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of threatening nationalism and hegemonism from
Serbia, and by growing inner pressures for democratization and national independence (accusation
for “Croatian silence”, i.e. for their long hesitation
to react) – it was genuinely democratic act. Even
more, their strategies, as well as the strategies of
the new democratically elected government, were
directed towards association of Croatia with the
united Europe.11 The other republic governments
(except the Slovenian one) were indecisive about
it, wanting to (each for its own reasons) keep the
Yugoslav federation alive. The motivation of the
Serbian government was its instrumentalization
for its own political and economic interests (the
concept of unitary and centralized Yugoslavia as
an expanded Serbia).
It was obviously that Yugoslav federation, as
a state, and communist internationalism as ideology have failed to provide national equality and
freedom. Although the regime significantly based
its legitimacy on overcoming national conflicts, it
did not succeed because of its authoritarianism
and ideologically based integration of the political
community. Ultimately, it delegitimized the regime
along with the underlying ideology, and opened
the questions of justifiability and purpose of further
existence of the Yugoslav multinational community. On the other hand, the long lasting suppression of national feelings produced a certain collective frustration. Besides that, authoritarianism
and conformism as dominant socio-psychological
characteristics has also contributed to permanent
existence of interethnic tensions during the communist regime, although mostly latent. All of this
were the reasons why the nationalism erupted
with such force into the public area, right after the
collapse of the regime.
One of the key structural factors explaining the
emergence of nationalism and its manifestations
is the limited social modernization during the communist rule. Modernization has made considerable
progress in the industrialization, technological development and education. An adequate social standard was achieved, primarily in the social sphere,
and over the time a matching social structure was
formed (working class, bureaucracy, professionals, middle class). However, such modernization
11 The goal of Croatian and Slovenian political leaders was
not to escape, but to join Europe. Their action was blocked
by the Serbian integralist strategy of uniting Yugoslavia
on a pro-Russian and anti-European basis. However, with
the collapse of communism and the disappearance of the
Soviet threat, and the European integration policy of Germany, Austria and Italy (which is why they were no longer
a threat as it once was, but rather the opposite) – were
gone those (earlier very important) reasons for preservation of Yugoslavia, as well as the inner legitimacy of its
regime (cf. Sekulić, 2004: 31-32).
was not organic and endogenous as it was in the
West, i.e. based on free market and free society
in which various social actors had an initiative.
Instead, it was imposed and carried out as state
policy led by the Communist Party according to
an ideological basis. Despite the development of
industrial production, the requirements for creation of civil society as a main realm of sociability with intermediate civil organizations, diversity
of public discourses and political pluralism – the
indispensable prerequisites of democracy – were
entirely absent in such conditions. There occurred
a process of modernization without modernity (cf.
Dahrendorf, 1990), industrial development without civic development, an ideological instead of
societal integration.
The communist state had taken over the space
of civil society by political mobilization of the citizens through the artificial quasi-social associations,
while traditional norms gave way to ideological
ones (which, nota bene, were in many ways just
adapted traditional egalitarian and collectivistic
norms). Thus society was atomized in a large
number of unconnected individuals; while on the
other side was the state, i.e. “the organized people” in ideologically based and Communist Partycontrolled political organizations.12 There was no
sufficiently independent and autonomous social
segment (interest, class, gender, occupational,
age, and similar groups) that could develop other
public discourses and collective identities than
those allowed by regime, and to be at least a
substitute to civil society and alternative to Communist Party leaders.13 The absence of that key
segment and authoritarianism and repressiveness
of the regime blocked political action outside of
the allowed framework. Therefore the nation and
nationalism, in the moment of crisis and the collapse of the system, were the dominant (if not
only) political content with the potential to fill in
12 Integration of societal community there is not based on
organic elements, from the “bottom”, by the interestspolitically connections within the democratically regulated
pluralistic space of civil society, but instead political power
integrates the society “from above” by political-ideological
compression of different social groups in a single political
system. The purpose of such integration is a dulling of the
natural social antagonisms by restricting, eliminating or
neutralizing social conflicts (cf. Tadić, 1988: 140).
13 To consider communist social organizations (such as the
Socialist Alliance of Working People, youth organizations,
trade unions etc.) as segments of civil society is not possible because they were actually part of the state apparatus. Through them, the social life was monitored, instead
of being free and opposed to the state and government.
“The consequence was mass alienation and distrust of
the Communist regime and a lingering cynicism toward
both political and civil institutions (Mishler and Rose, 1997,
420)”.
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the empty space between the atomized individual
and the state, and articulate society as a political
community.
4. Nationalism during the democratic transition
and establishment of the nation state
The deepening of the political and economic
crisis of the Yugoslavian federation and increasingly pronounced threats of growing Greater Serbian nationalism and hegemonist policy of Serbia
had an effect on the increase in discontent and
fear of uncertainty which would be brought by further staying in Yugoslavia. At the same time, they
affected the increase of nationalism as reaction
to those threats and, even more, they fostered
an articulation of general will of the vast majority of Croatian citizens toward final realization of
national freedom and sovereignty. Therefore the
separation from the Yugoslav federation and the
establishment of an independent and sovereign
nation-state were a true expression of a historical aspiration of the Croatian people for achievement of its political identity and autonomy in all
aspects. Besides, that act had double democratic
legitimacy because in the atmosphere of general
collapse of communism and collapse of the multinational Yugoslav community, as an expression
of the general will of the people, it proclaimed the
establishment of democracy (as a political commitment) and the establishment of an independent
national state (as a realization of democratic right
to self-determination). That was precisely the most
distinguished manifestation of the liberal and civil
dimension of Croatian nationalism, which was in
the foundation of the independent, sovereign and
democratic Croatian state.
However, under the influence of specific conditions in which the processes of establishing of
nation state and democratic system took place,
nationalism was increasingly acquired the characteristics of ethnocentrism. There were multiple
causes for that. Foremost, the absence of a sovereign nation-state and the long lasting status of
political, economic and cultural submission during
the modern history remained/became a burden to
Croatian nation. Besides the strong commitment to
national independence and sovereignty as a legitimate liberal aspiration, it also produced a certain
collective frustration, particularly in conditions of
crisis and dissolution of the Yugoslav federation
and threatening Greater Serbian hegemonism.
In that situation, leading political elites, but also
a substantial part of the citizens, have increasingly manifested their national feelings through
the national exclusivism. On the other hand,
authoritarianism and political exclusiveness as
undemocratic legacy of Yugoslavian communist
regime have significantly influenced the formation
of same or similar characteristics of nationalism
(not only in Croatia). Because of limitations of
political freedoms, especially the freedom of expression of national feelings and articulation of
national interests, that regime was perceived as a
framework of unfreedom for the Croatian people.
Therefore nationalism has simultaneously manifested as revanchism towards the regime (anticommunism) and as exclusiveness towards other
nations (ethnocentrism).
To those primarily political causes we should
add the economic ones. Namely, the economic crisis culminated at the end of the 1980s and, along
with the political crisis, significantly contributed to
the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation. At
the same time, it also contributed to the development of ethnocentrism not only in the Croatian
society, but in other republics as well. Uncertainty,
increasing economic problems (indebtedness, inflation, unemployment, goods shortages, energy
reductions, decline of living standard), political
disputes and growing political instability – affected
the spreading of apathy and pessimism, but also
the increase of discontent and frustration, anger
and national intolerance.
One of the key causes that affect increase in
ethnocentrism was the sociocultural discontinuity.
It was a direct consequence of transitional process
which consists of complete transformation in which
the society abandons the old social and political
system whose values and norms are no longer
valid, and builds a new system whose values and
norms are not yet established, therefore not yet
internalized among the citizens. In that situation,
occurring an anomie as a values and norms system crisis. In that interregnum, the renewed and
the strengthened values of the traditional complex
prevailed. They had the function of a socio-psychological support and a source of security. Lack
of democratic experience (hence an insufficient
presence of democratic values) and deepening
of political and economic crisis was considerably
contributed to it. Consequently, such situation
significantly favored the strengthening of ethnocentric characteristics of nationalism.14
14 The results of research of sociocultural aspects of the transition in Croatia (Štulhofer and Karajić, 1996/1997: 23) indicate
a very prominent dimension of ethnocentrism among respondents. Directly or indirectly, many other studies of nationalism
confirm its pronounced presence as a constant in the Croatian
society, especially in the first decade of transition (cf. Šiber,
1984b; Radin, 1991; Blažević, 1995; Bulat and Štrelov, 1995a,
1995b; Mirić, 1996; Šiber, 1998a; Zakošek, 1998; Ilišin, 1998;
Caratan, 1998; Pusić, 1999; Karajić, 2000; Galić, 2000).
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However, the greatest generator of ethnocentrism undoubtedly was the Greater Serbian nationalism which gradually grew in strength with the
crisis of Yugoslav federation. Rightfully perceived
as a threat (regarding to its hegemonist character
evident from the very beginning in politics of redefining the basic provisions of the Constitution of 1974
and pretensions toward limiting the independence
of the republics) the Greater Serbian nationalism
directly influenced the strengthening of nationalism among all non-Serbian nations in Yugoslavia.
The Greater Serbian war aggression that followed
it up, has directly jeopardized the survival of the
newly established Croatian state and people, and
extremely contributed to the strengthening and
spreading of ethnocentrism. Particularly important is the fact that the aggression was initiated
and helped by armed rebellion of a large part of
Serbian citizens in Croatia in areas where they
were the majority. Instrumentalized and conducted
by the nationalist government of Serbia and the
Yugoslav army (which completely took the side
of the Greater Serbian hegemonist interests) the
rebels were direct actors of the military aggression
and occupation. Among the Croatian citizenry it
was perceived as a betrayal and an unprovoked
attack. This in turn strongly affected the increase
of intolerance and national exclusiveness towards
Serbs and the Serbian minority in Croatia due to
the identification of Serbs and Yugoslavia with the
Greater Serbian aggressive politics. The enormous
human suffering and material damage brought
by the war aggression additionally petrified the
pronounced ethnocentrism and anticommunism.
Nationalism had a key role in dismantling the
communist regime and in process of achieving
state independence. However, the contribution of
nationalism to the creation of a nation-state does
not mean it contributed to the establishment of a
democratic state. Quite the opposite – within the
space of undeveloped institutions of the rule-oflaw and welfare state, and in the wartime conditions, extremely unfavorable for democratic development – so formed nationalism contributed
to authoritarian tendencies and even to blocking
of democratization process. New, democratically
elected government replaced the former authoritarian communist rule. However, manifesting itself
far more as a nationalist and populist movement
than as a modern democratic party, the new government kept the political style of its predecessors in many ways. Above all, it was manifested
in the symbiosis of the ruling party and the (nation-) state, and in the (undemocratic) political
practice coming out of it.
In that period, the government used the nationalist homogenization in order to neutralize the differences of interest in the society (mainly socioeconomic) and their political articulation. Significantly
assisting was the underdevelopment of political
parties and democratic institutions, allowing for
an arbitrary function of the government. In such
context, marked by disintegration of old forms of
sociability, nationalism becomes a substitute for
organic integration factors absent in undeveloped
society. However, when identification and social
solidarity based on rational foundations are being
suppressed by ideological and collectivist factors
(such as nationalism) – which are thereby established as a basis for individual and collective
identity – the foundations of democracy slip away.
Despite the normative constitution and formal
proclamations, the political system was not founded on liberal democratic values and the right(s) of
the citizen as a political subject, but on a collective right of the people and the state, which were
superordinate to individual rights, freedom, and
autonomy. Consequently, the establishment of democracy upon individualism, equality, and respect
of civil rights and political freedoms remained in
shadow of achieving national sovereignty and independence. In other words, the idea of national
liberation was hypertrophied at the expense of
the democratization.
The enthusiasm of the people about the Croatian state as a finally realized national dream, on
the one side, and the situation of objectively endangered nation on the other – has conditioned
the absence of objectivity and criticism towards
many undemocratic characteristics of the new
state. Equally so, the absence of democratic
(civic) culture and the traumatic war experiences
of a substantial part of population – additionally
strengthened the acceptance and justification
of the government’s authoritarian populism, but
also the ethnocentrism as normal and intelligible.
Among the many citizens in that period there was
a thin line between ethnocentrism and patriotism,
either in its understanding, expressing or accepting (justifying).
By the end of the war the external pressures
– often used by the government as a pretext for
justification of difficult social and political circumstances – were disappeared. Already established,
liberated and internationally recognized nation
state has diminished possibilities of further anathematization of the political opposition and all other
opponents as insufficiently national aware. It resulted in a political agenda which favoring increasingly more socioeconomic than political (national)
issues. That was a clear indicator of democratic
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maturing of Croatian society and shifting the weight
from traditional, collectivist and affective behavior to a more modern, rational and interest-based
one. The period of opening the Croatian society
to the world, following the change of the political
government in 2000, influenced the changes in
the collective perception of their own nation, especially in the context of new political relationships
and the position of Croatia in the international
surroundings (the processes of joining the EU
and NATO). In that period, increasingly so during
the second decade of transition, a large ebb of
ethnocentrism is evident, as well as its reduction
to the level and manifestations usual in Western
democratic societies.
The constantly present nationalism in many
West European societies, especially the open
ethnic conflicts breaking out occasionally, and
the increase of nationalism, ethnic, racial, and
religious intolerance and exclusiveness – which
in particular showed in the recent global crisis –
show that even the most developed democracies
haven’t overcome the problems causing them, nor
have they found adequate ways to solve them.15
At the same time, it should be noted that the reasons generating ethnocentrism in the Croatian
society were much more serious than the reasons causing such occurrences in contemporary
developed democratic societies. That serves as
another indicator that the claims of ethnocentrism
as an “inherent” characteristic of Croatian society
– often coming from certain political and scientific
circles of the West during the past two decades
– are not valid, in spite of insufficient presence of
democratic values among the citizens.
5. Conclusion
Nationalism significantly marked the processes
of democratic transition of many post-communist
countries; especially those emerged from disintegration of multinational federations, such as Croatia. The pronounced Croatian nationalism prior to
the onset of democratic changes, and even more
after them, was an expression of legitimate aspirations of a vast majority of the Croatian people
for national liberation and state independence.
15 It is about political conflicts in the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland), France (Corsica), Spain (Basque Country,
Catalonia), Italy (South Tyrol), Belgium (Flanders and
Wallonia), Canada (Quebec), and about strengthening of
(right) political radicalism, nationalist exclusion and racism directed against immigrants and ethnic minorities in
the most developed countries in Europe (Netherlands,
France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland). The recent economic crisis has been just the catalyst of apparently latent
ethnocentrism which exists in those societies under the
surface.
That nationalism was led by liberal ideas of realization of freedom and equality, establishment
of democracy and market economy, and by the
feelings of affiliation to West European cultural
circle. It necessarily meant the secession from
Yugoslavia, which political framework did not
allow it. On the other side, first the crisis of the
communist regime and the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation, and then the Greater Serbian
aggression – which directly jeopardized the independence and existence of the newly established
Croatian state – were the causes of substantial
increase of intolerance and national exclusiveness,
i.e. pronounced ethnocentrism which significantly
marked the political and social life during the first
decade of democratic transition.
Besides its liberal and patriotic character, nationalism, on the one side, was the instrument of
the government, firstly in political mobilization of
citizens in processes of secession and creation
of the nation state, and then as a basis of legitimacy of post-communist regime and their stays
on power. On the other side, nationalism was a
mode of unleashing suppressed dissatisfaction
and many interests which under the communist
regime didn’t have the space for articulation and
organization due to political unfreedom and undeveloped civil society. Liberalization and democratic changes opened up that space, but in the
conditions of structural underdevelopment (due to
limited modernization in the communist period),
non-existence of civic culture and democratic experience – it didn’t function as free and autonomous public space. Instead, it still remained under
the strong influence of political actors, particularly
government. That structural deficiency resulted
that the nationalism became the main (political)
content that fulfilled that space. In other words,
(underdeveloped) civil society was incorporated
into a (nation-) state.
The disappearance of the old, ideologically
based system, upon which identity, loyalty and
social hierarchy were based, conditioned a strong
need for new identification. However, the formation of new identity happened in the conditions
of non-existing social base of political pluralism
and disintegration of norms and values (anomy)
caused by the collapse of one and underdevelopment of new system, restoration of traditional
value patterns, and undemocratic aberrations of
government. In such circumstances, on the individual level, appear uncertainty and insecurity.
Individualism weakens, and collective identities
(functioning as a socio-psychological “refuge”)
and traditional patterns (as a socio-psychological
defense from the new and unknown) strengthen,
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Pero Maldini: Nationalism in Croatian Transition to Democracy
and conformism towards the government appears.
In that context, nationalism grows stronger and
has distinct identificational meaning (on the level
of the individual and his/her need to belong to a
community) and cohesive strength (on a societal
level).
Finally, under conditions of an immediate threat
to personal and collective existence caused by
Greater Serbian aggression and the war for liberation, it is understandable for nationalism to grow
into a general political discourse expressing patriotism, but also political alignment towards the
nation state and the government, even in spite of
their serious democratic deficit. Those extreme
conditions directly generated ethnocentric manifestations of nationalism which, on individual (sociopsychological) inasmuch on collective (societal,
political) level functioned both as identificational
and defensive mechanisms.
Therefore, ethnocentrism cannot be comprehended as an inherent characteristic of Croatian
(or any other) society, despite insufficient presence
of democratic values. Although sociocultural and
political heritage in many respects favors authoritarian and illiberal characteristics, ethnocentric
manifestations are primarily caused by structural
factors, both the endogenous and exogenous.
Thus the nationalism, which marked the period
of democratic transition of the Croatian society,
isn’t an “innate” cultural trait, but a social phenomenon directly caused by certain social and political
context. Nationalism, in considered period, occurs
primarily as a consequence of political unfreedom
and limited modernization during the period of
communism, then as response to specific conditions of democratic transition (which consists of
simultaneous processes of democratization and
nation state establishment, political and social
discontinuity, anomie and lack of adaptedness to
the new system – all caused by deep transitional
changes), and as reaction to external pressures
(particularly war aggression). Manifestations of
nationalism, including the ethnocentrism as the
most pronounced, was directly induced and shaped
by them. With consolidation of the new social
and political system and weakening of the outer
pressure(s), nationalism wanes. Normalization of
social and political life after the war and the period
of post-war recovery, and the renewed processes
of democratization during the second decade of
the transition – contributed to a considerable decline of ethnocentrism and strengthening of liberal
characteristics of nationalism.
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Nacionalizam u hrvatskoj demokratskoj tranziciji: između strukturne
uvjetovanosti i utjecaja naslijeđa povijesti i političke kulture
PERO MALDINI
Sveučilište u Dubrovniku
Nacionalizam je obilježio demokratsku tranziciju mnogih postkomunističkih
društava, među njima i hrvatskog. S jedne strane, on je pokazao svoj liberalni
karakter potaknuvši demokratske promjene i ostvarenje državne samostalnosti.
S druge strane, manifestirao se kao isključivi etnocentrizam koji je znatno usporio demokratizacijski proces i koji se nametnuo kao njegovo glavno obilježje. U
članku se pokazuje neutemeljenost stava koji etnocentrizam smatra inherentnim
svojstvom tzv. istočnih (etničkih) nacija, držeći ih zbog toga nedemokratičnima i
sklonima etničkim konfliktima, dok istovremeno nacionalizmu zapadnih (civilnih)
nacija pripisuje imanentno liberalni karakter. Uz objašnjenje povijesnih, političkokulturnih i sociopsiholoških aspekta nacionalizma u Hrvatskoj, upućuje se na
njegovu primarno strukturnu i kontekstualnu uvjetovanost, pri čemu se posebno
ističu okvir političke neslobode i ograničena modernizacija u razdoblju komunizma, te specifični uvjeti demokratske tranzicije obilježene stvaranjem nacionalne
države i Domovinskim ratom. Nacionalizam se tu pojavljuje kao izraz domoljublja i političke identifikacije, ali i kao odgovor na društveni, politički i vrijednosni
diskontinuitet (kriza i dezintegracija starog i neprilagođenost novom sustavu) i
poglavito kao reakcija na vanjski pritisak (rat). Osporava se njegova inherentnost budući da on nije neka urođena kulturna crta, već društveni fenomen koji je
izravno uvjetovan društvenim i političkim kontekstom. Zaključuje se da je nacionalizam u razdoblju demokratske tranzicije u Hrvatskoj, usprkos neprijepornim
etnocentrističkim manifestacijama, u svojoj osnovi ipak liberalan, na tragu ostvarenja državotvorne ideje i uspostave demokratskog poretka. Normalizacija
društvenog i političkog života nakon rata i obnovljeni procesi demokratizacije
tijekom drugoga tranzicijskog desetljeća, pridonijeli su znatnom opadanju etnocentrizma i jačanju liberalnih obilježja nacionalizma.
Ključne riječi: nacionalizam, etnocentrizam, demokratska tranzicija,
nacionalna država, postkomunistička društva, Hrvatska
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Vahram Ayvazyan: Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types
UDK: 323.12:1
Pregledni rad
Primljeno: 5. prosinca 2012.
Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types
VAHRAM AYVAZYAN
International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Toronto
Genocide is a complicated social, political and psychological phenomenon.
Findings by a number of scholars show that all types of genocides are interdependent and cannot appear in pure types alone. This paper argues that the
loser psychology is one major factor for developing a genocidal intent in society.
Society, facing harsh realities, feels defeated and abandoned by international
community and begins to look for ways out of psychological morass. Extremist passions and movements become prevalent in such societies which finally
take people to insane beliefs which are based on the need to take revenge on
others, to prove their superiority, to the illusion that they have found the solution for their problems: to kill others, to eliminate them from society. The paper
also shows that the ultimate end of such a genocidal intent is the achievement
of happiness. The capacity of society to provide its members with their wants
(security, food, psychological recovery, etc) will make them happy, the failure
to do so will spread gloomy environment over society. People’s desire to recover from major loses and immediately achieve happiness confuses them and
leads them to false calculations, which, unfortunately, easily nest in the minds
of members of society, sparking an “us-them” split the in society, which would
take them to genocidal intentions.
Key words: genocide, loser psychology, happiness, international community
1. Introduction
The 20th century was an era of gains and losses.
Despite overarching technological advancements,
the world faced horrific world wars and local conflicts, ideological wars and collapses of empires,
ethnic conflicts and economic crises, etc. However,
from my point of view, the 20th century’s gloomy
picture encapsulates the most horrific crime of humanity - genocide. The twentieth century was an
age of murder, but it is; more precisely, an age of
politically sanctioned mass murder, of collective,
premeditated death intended to serve the ends
of the state. It is an age of genocide in which 60
million men, women and children, coming from
many different races, religions, ethnic groups, nationalities and social classes, and living in many
different countries, on most of the continents of
the earth, have had their lives taken because the
state thought this desirable (Smith, 1999: 3).
That is why it is a must to gauge the genocide
phenomenon, its roots and different types. First
I am trying to delineate genocide, give my own
definition of this concept. Then I try to analyze the
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Vahram Ayvazyan: Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types
studies of prominent experts in genocide studies
such as Roger W. Smith’s writings on genocide
and genocidal intent, Scott Straus’s findings on
Rwandan Genocide, Alexander Laban Hinton’s
work on the genocide in Cambodia, etc. I am
trying to contribute to their analyses by my own
proposals and put forward my own terms for the
types of genocides such as anti-pluralism.
Then I posit that the Armenian Genocide (also
called the Great Crime or Medz Yeghern in Armenian) paved the way for other genocides in
the 20th and 21st centuries. Other infamous perpetrators of the 20th century drew excellent lessons from the Armenian Genocide and then applied those against their victims. The ignorance
of Armenian victims and the forgetfulness of the
Armenian Genocide had horrific consequences.
That is why I am trying to convince that the role
of international community is extremely important
in the prevention of such crimes from happening
again. Then I conclude the article in positive tone
by stating that globalizing world will become safe
and secure in the near future and we will never
worry about genocidal hazards.
2. Genocide: Intent and motivation
Genocide is the greatest sin that human beings have committed. It is a horrible decadence
of the human soul. Unfortunately though, we are
witnessing genocides even in our era, the 21st
century (Darfur, Sudan). It is a must to puzzle
out sociopolitical circumstances that cause genocides and label preventive mechanisms against
that havoc. The role of international community in
that endeavor is of great significance because, as
the 20th century proves, the absence of punitive
measures against perpetrators, the ignorance of
victims and forgetfulness of such a crime pave the
way for genocides to happen again. The horrific
history of negligence of the Armenian Genocide is
a rare glimpse into the catastrophe of the Second
World War. Even the greatest perpetrator, Adolf
Hitler, speaks about the ignorance of the Armenians by international community:
“I have issued the command - and I’ll have
anybody who utters but one word of criticism
executed by a firing squad - that our war aim
does not consist in reaching certain lines, but
in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness-for the present only in the
East - with orders to them to send to death
mercilessly and without compassion, men,
women, and children of Polish derivation and
language. Only thus shall we gain the living
space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of
the Armenians? (22 August, 1939)”.1
Hitler’s speech excellently proves the Nazi
leader’s confidence before committing such a crime.
Though there are examples of mass violence
directed against identifiable groups dating back
to antiquity, ‘‘genocide’’ as a term and a concept
has a quite recent origin. Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who fled Poland after the German invasion in 1939, coined the word and introduced
it in 1944 (Lemkin, 1944: 79). He derived it from
the Greek for tribe or nation (geno-) and the Latin
for killing (-cide). By ‘‘genocide,’’ Lemkin meant ‘‘a
coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the
destruction of essential foundations of the life of
national groups, with the aim of annihilating the
groups themselves (Lemkin, 1944: 79)’’. In no small
part due to the efforts of Lemkin himself, his new
word soon gained currency (Power, 2002: 30-85).
It was mentioned in the 1945 Nuremberg indictment as a description of war crimes committed by
the defendants being tried before the International
Military Tribunal.2 In December 1946, the General
Assembly of the newly created United Nations
adopted a resolution that described genocide as
‘‘a denial of the right of existence of entire human
groups’’ that ‘‘shocks the conscience of mankind’’
and ‘‘affirm[ed]’’ that genocide is ‘‘crime under
international law (The Crime of Genocide, UN
General Assembly Resolution 96(I), 11 December
1946: 188–89)’’. That resolution also set in motion the process that resulted in the adoption of
the United Nations Convention on Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG)
on 9 December 1948 (Convention on Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9
December 1948: 78 UNTS 277). Article 2 of that
convention gives a definition to genocide: In the
1 The text above is the English version of the German
document handed to Louis P. Lochner in Berlin. It first appeared in Lochner’s What About Germany? (1942: 1-4).
The Nuremberg Tribunal later identified the document as
L-3 or Exhibit USA-28. Two other versions of the same
document appear in Appendices II and III. For the German
original cf. Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 19181945, Series D, Volume VII, (1956: 171-172). Italics are
mine. For more information, see Kevork B. Bardakjian’s
Hitler and the Armenian Genocide (1985).
2 Indictment: United States of America et al. v. Hermann
Göring et al., The Avalon Project: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol. 1 (International Military Tribunal, 1945),
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/count.htm
(21 April 2006), para. VIII(A). The four counts in the indictment charged the defendants with crimes against peace,
war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to
commit other crimes.
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Vahram Ayvazyan: Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types
present Convention, genocide means any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group
to another group.
The Convention puts forward the importance
of intent as an underpinning factor for the concept
of genocide. Actually, it derives from the Convention that even there is a possibility to commit a
genocidal act without killing anybody: in this case
a perpetrator has an intention to do so but he fails
in his commitment because of the lack of force,
preventive measures and the like. Thus, intent is
a substantive element for genocide phenomenon.
Here we come to the crux of the intent-motivation
dilemma. We should take into account that intent
is not the same as motivation. A perpetrator has
an intention to destroy a group whereas that intention can be motivated by greed, power, revenge,
ideological beliefs, etc. A spread of these motivations in a society develops the very intent. In other
words, intent is constant (to destroy a victim group)
while motivations vary (covetousness, retaliation,
ideology, etc.). Different motivations unite in intent
and give birth to genocide. Motivations are the rationales of intent. I further my discussion on the
genocidal intent and motivations below.
There is a series of different definitions on
genocide concept. Bauman has something unique
on offer: ‘Influenced by modern conceptions of
inferior and superior races or exploited and exploiting classes, coupled with a proclivity for powerful, centralized, bureaucratic states to conceive
of grand projects of social engineering and their
capacity to implement such policies, modern
states have the potential to become genocidal
“gardener states.” For the gardener state, genocide is not a policy of destruction but a grand project of construction. Recalling Arendt’s totalitarian
everything-is-possible thesis, Bauman argues
that the gardener state seeks to construct new
social, economic, demographic, or political orders as a landscaper plants and tends a garden.
Just as gardens inevitably grow weeds that do
not belong in a meticulously designed garden, so
do new racial, national, or revolutionary systems
contain human beings which do not belong in the
new order. As weeds are pulled by a gardener to
maintain the intended design and composition of
the garden, groups of human beings who do not
belong to the new order must be exterminated by
the gardener state (Bauman, 1989: 66-76). For
Alvarez, genocide is a form of ‘‘state criminality’’
that is underpinned by two ‘‘constructs of belief’’,
sovereignty and nationalism (Alvarez, 2001: 57,
59). The vast majority of authors use similar categories for the definition of genocide.
Therefore, I would put forward my own definition on genocide phenomenon. From my point of
view, genocide is the intent to eliminate or is the
elimination of a victimized national, ethnical, racial or religious group within society (or societies)
motivated by perpetrator group’s “highest” insular
sociopolitical goals, planned and labeled by the
perpetrator group’s sociopolitical elite, performed
by special forces (army, militia, police, etc.) that the
perpetrator group’s elite have at their disposal and
by the perpetrator group itself in the form of direct
participation in massacres or in the form of inaction3 during such a calamity. Here the elimination
can mean both physical death of victim group’s
members (i.e. killing members of the group) and
aforementioned acts stated in the 2nd article of the
above-stated UN Convention on Genocide (see
above), that’s to say elimination is the ultimate
end of the action, the means can be different. If
we suppose that the perpetrator group’s (P) goal
is to achieve happiness (H) and the group labels
happiness within the confines of its members
while rejecting any coexistence with the victim
group (V) within the confines of the same society
(S), we can see that P equates to H:
H=S-V,
while P=S-V as well, so is H=S-V=P, => H=P.
This equation (H=S-V=P) is the key driving force
for genocidal intent, as the perpetrator equates its
happiness to the society comprised of perpetrator’s members, excluding victim group.
In other words, we can call this equation (H=SV=P) just genocidal intent. This genocidal intent
develops gradually in society which takes them
[society] to a massive destruction (psychological
and physical). People simply become blind and
construct their ideal society based on the absence
and withdrawal of their own neighbors from their
lives. The reasons for the formation and further
3 Thus, I equate inaction with participation. Inaction in a
genocidal period is an indirect participation in genocidal
acts.
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development of such intent can differ: they may
depend on sociopolitical challenging circumstances,
such as wars, economic crises and the lack of food,
loser psychology (in a war, for instance)4 and the
like. Since circumstances differ and sometimes it
is difficult to gauge the sociopolitical motives and
changes in particular place where a genocidal act
occurred, it is extremely difficult to point out certain
reasons and sort out certain types of genocides.
3. Types of genocide: The Armenian Genocide
as a “good” precedent
It is evident that genocide is a broader concept,
which involves social, political, psychological, economic, and ethnic features in it that is why to give
its typology is a difficult undertaking. Furthermore,
all genocides happen in complicated conditions
which are difficult to gauge, and sometimes take
us to misleading points because of the lack of
information and evidences. Despite of the aforementioned complications, many authors suggest
various types of genocides. I will try to prove that
such types can hardly be distinguished in particular genocides and that all such types or some of
them can be found in all genocides or in some of
them. It is even difficult to differentiate motivations of single individuals for committing genocidal crimes and participating in massacres. For
example, Roger W. Smith, a prominent expert in
the field, posits that the pure types of genocide
are institutional, retributive, utilitarian, monopolistic
and ideological (Smith, 1999: 5). 5
I would argue that most genocides that occurred during the 20th century encompasses all
the above mentioned types except institutional one
(Smith says the same). I would therefore stress
that institutional genocide is a difficult concept to
delineate as it can be truly explained as a horrible
war tactic. As Smith notes there, the massacre of
men, the enslavement of women and children, and,
often, the razing of the countryside, were universal aspects of conquest: genocide was embedded
in the very notion of warfare. As such, no explicit
decision had to be made to commit genocide - it
had become routinized. In part, institutional genocide was motivated by the desire to create terror,
to display one’s power and to remove the possibility of future retaliation. Smith continues that
institutional genocide was also due to a failure of
political imagination: genocide was a substitute
for politics (Smith, 1999: 6). If there was no poli4 Actually, this is an infamous factor for developing a genocidal intent in defeated societies.
5 For other types of classification, see Dadrian, 1975: 21112 and Kuper, 1982: 5-9.
tics, there were no highest insular sociopolitical
goals. There was no genocidal intent. This is the
very confusing point of this puzzle. Moreover, it
derives from Smith’s words that the USA committed genocide in August 1945 when US forces used
nuclear bombs against Japan. But the USA did not
intend to eliminate Japanese people in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki; this was a unique warfare tactic
to defeat Japan and to force Japanese militaristic
elite to capitulate. That is why unlike Smith I would
eschew the term “institutional genocide” instead
preferring the term “devastation”.
Retributive genocide can not occur as a pure
type of genocide, but desire for revenge is found
in any genocide. Smith argues that retribution
may play a role in all genocide, but it does so
mainly as a rationalization: it is a way of blaming
the victim and that as a principal motive in genocide; retribution is rare (Smith, 1999: 5). Smith
and the vast majority of prominent experts in the
field therefore postulate that genocide destroys
persons most often for what they are rather than
for anything they have done (Smith, 1999: 5). Actually, this commonly accepted division between
“what they are” and “what they have done” is difficult to puzzle out. If they exist (they are), then
they do something-they exist, they live. Moreover,
there is no example of any genocide where the
massacre of an ethnical, national, racial or religious group was motivated by only “what they
are” philosophy. The victim (V) must have done
something (must have been in “uneasy” coexistence with perpetrator (P)). Moreover, in order to
dehumanize the victim, perpetrator can propagate
a false image of the victim as an enemy, spreading rumors of betrayals by the victim, mentioning
about the victim’s economic wealth and so forth.
So, if the victim has a wealth, has a good business, he (V) does something (bad), that is why
it is a misleading task to differentiate between
those two philosophies. One thing is obvious: all
these will finally take to dehumanization. As Israel
Charny states, dehumanization is the act of redefining the victims of genocide as ‘‘not being part
of the human species (Charny, 1982: 207)”. For
example, during the World War I Turkish population was blinded by its leaders that Armenians
were rich, educated, were spies of Europe, were
the reason for Ottoman Empire’s sufferings, that
Armenians were helping Russian armies and the
like which finally took Turkish society to the station of moral decadence. Armenian Genocide is
an excellent proof of how “what they have done”
philosophy takes the perpetrator to the stage of
“what they are” and it is a vindication of impracticability of those philosophies as single entities.
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I would argue that utility is one of key driving
forces for ordinary individuals in the perpetrator’s
group. Those ordinary men, who are taking part
in atrocities, can be easily motivated by greed
rather than by ideology/nationalism, retribution
or a takeover of power. This covetousness was
prevalent during the Armenian Genocide, Rwandan
Genocide, etc. The basic proposition contained in
utilitarian genocide is that some must die so that
others can live well (Smith, 1999: 7). Utilitarian
genocide’s roots are found in the sixteenth century and thereafter when colonial domination and
exploitation of indigenous people in the Americas,
Australia, Tasmania, parts of Africa and elsewhere
became pronounced. It has continued in the twentieth century, especially in Latin America, where
Indians have been subjected to genocidal attacks
in the name of progress and development. Apart
from the more sadistic aspects of this kind of destruction, the object has been Indian land - for
the timber it contains, the minerals that can be
extracted and the cattle it can feed - and, at the
turn of the nineteenth century, Indian labor to harvest, under conditions of forced labor, the sap of
the rubber tree (Smith, 1999: 7). There are a lot of
examples of such a motivation for mass killings.
A couple of extracts from Straus’s interviews with
some Hutu perpetrators in prisons who explain
why they killed Tutsi people during the genocide
in Rwanda.
a) What was the goal? Exterminate the Tutsis. And then what do people get? lt was said
that if the Tutsis were exterminated, then the
Hutus would occupy their land (Rul-rengeri).
b) How does one explain to oneself the killing
of women and children? If the women and children remained, they could claim the goods that
had been looted (Kigali) (Straus, 2006: 164).
The Armenian Genocide is not an exception.
A vast volume of archives is a rare glimpse into
the key rationale of ordinary Kurdish and Turkish
gangs who killed Armenians and looted their property and belongings. The same applies to the era
of Balkan wars. One source excellently points out
that the gangs participated in public plundering
and the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress,
Ottoman Empire) encouraged it in order to spark
(motivate) the participation of gangs in plundering
and atrocities: “The internal policy that [the CUP]
wanted to put into effect was to plunder the property of the Christians with the aim of enriching the
Muslims. At the same time, two different political
considerations were merged. It was not merely
the seizure and plundering of their property, it
was the policy of thinning out the concentrations
of Greeks-and it was even described as such. In
the name of this policy of thinning out...the first
order was [performed] by volunteer armed gangs
(fedai ceteler) created through the government’s
special connivance in order to throw the Greeks out
of the country. After publicly plundering all of their
property and goods in the villages, on the streets,
they would be sent packing to Greece under the
watchful eye of the police or gendarmes, who did
not prevent this and sometimes even participated.
Afterward they plundered the permanent and immovable property and possessions. Now and for
whatever reason, this annihilation operation began
in Edirne, and, not limiting itself to Edirne, then
started to be implemented in a broader manner”
(MMZC, Devre 3, ıçtima Senesi 5: 287, cited in
Akçam, 2004: 59-157)”.6 It derives from this source
of information that the gangs were not interested in
politics and national values and were motivated by
greed. Hitler also gives a huge significance to the
land issue. Space, in his [Hitler] thinking, always
referred to agriculturally usable land; the word is
regularly employed in connection with the raising
of food for the support of the population living on
it. Hitler had no confidence in the possibility of
increasing food production from available land.
The struggle for existence in which the races of
the world engaged, the basic element of life on
earth, was fundamentally a struggle for space.
In this struggle the stronger won, took the space,
proliferated on that space, and then fought for additional space. Racial vitality and spatial expansion were directly related (Weinberg, 1995: 34).
This interdependence between racial superiority
and land issue also vindicates that all types of
genocides, i.e. ideological and utilitarian in this
particular example, are exercised by perpetrators
to attract different sectors and groups of their own
population to participate in atrocities. One can be
interested in nationalistic values, another one can
be motivated by greed, the third one may want to
take revenge and so forth.
Monopolistic genocides are often characterized as the struggle for power. However, there is
a close connection between monopolistic passion
and anti-pluralism, the perpetrator group’s desire
to get rid of the victim group: H=S-V=P. Here the
perpetrator group struggles not only for the monopolization of power, but also for the “monopolization of the society” as well. All this will finally
take to “us-them” split in plural societies. That is
why monopolistic genocides come to life on the
basis of anti-pluralism. Actually, the 20th century’s
genocides occurred in plural societies. Leo Kuper
6 Please note that Edirne’s original, Greek name is Adrianopolis.
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Vahram Ayvazyan: Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types
labeled “plural societies” as the “structural base
for genocide (Kuper, 1981: 57)”. Plural society
is the very battlefield for the struggle for power
as power can mean security for different ethnical, national, racial and religious groups within
plural society. It is apparent that one must first
seize power and then commit genocide. Smith
even goes further and argues that whatever the
shape of the regime, the most frequent source of
genocide in the twentieth century has been the
struggle for the monopolization of power (Smith,
1999: 7). Rummel argues, according to what he
calls the “power principle,” that the more power
a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily
according to the whims and desires of the elite,
and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more
constrained the power of governments, the less it
will be aggressive towards others (Rummel, 1994:
1-2). Monopolizing power will let the “powerful”
group implement its sociopolitical goals for the
achievement of happiness (H). This axiom applies
to the Armenian Genocide and other genocides
as well. For example, in the summer of 1910, the
disillusioned CUP leaders met and accepted the
fact that the program which they had undertaken
to unite the Empire’s various nationalities was now
bankrupt. What they had learned in this brief period was that “[t]he spread of nationalism among
the subject peoples of the Empire,... ended forever the ‘Ottomanist’ dream of the free, equal and
peaceful association of peoples in a common loyalty to the dynastic sovereign of a multi-national,
multi-denominational empire (Lewis, 218, cited
in Akçam, 2004: 59-157)”. This archival material
vindicates that besides being motivated by the
monopolization of power, CUP leaders accepted
a plan of monopolizing the Ottoman society and
getting rid of victims (V). Moreover, “on July 21,
1910, the second anniversary of the Young Turk
Revolution, the CUP organ Tanin carried a sort
of state of the union address by the CUP to the
nation at large. It gave a general assessment of
the policies of the previous two years and officially
declared their policy of Ottomanism to be bankrupt. Furthermore, the CUP confessed that its
measures to bring about the union of the different
communities had failed, owing to the excessive
zeal it had shown in the first two years of constitutional rule. It now recognized the opposition of
the ethnic communities to Ottomanism and would
therefore leave them alone. The Committee [that
is, the CUP] would continue to pursue the cause
of unity in a different way, namely by concentrating all its energy of the material and educational
development of the Empire, hoping thereby to
unite all the elements through a community of
interests (Ahmad, 84, cited in Akçam, 2004: 59157). CUP elite were convinced that it was impossible to achieve happiness (H) in a plural, multiethnic and multi-religious society, as the insular
nationalistic passions of minorities (Armenians,
Greeks, etc.) were the hindrances to the development of the empire and the latter would finally
collapse. And since it was accepted among the
Muslim population of the empire that Christians
were rich and educated, those (Christians) were
considered as challengers to power and moreover
had close ties with European Christian states, the
empire’s exploiters. This is one of the reasons for
which CUP leaders accepted the horrible plan to
homogenize Anatolia and rejected any idea of coexistence, let alone the possibility to share state
power with Christians. They wanted to get rid of
Armenians, Greeks, etc. The Greek Prime Minister Venizelos claimed at the Paris Peace Conference that 300.000 Greeks had been annihilated
and that another 450.000 had escaped to Greece
(Avcıoğlu, 1986: 1138, cited in Akçam, 2004: 146).
Monopolistic passions and anti-pluralism thus became rampant trends in Ottoman society during
the CUP government.
The desire for power and anti-pluralism were
prevalent in other genocides of the twentieth century as well. As Hinton points out, “an analogous
process of manufacturing difference may be seen
in most modern genocides, including the one that
took place in Cambodia. The “Who are ‘We’?”
speech, for example, was broadcast by Phnom
Penh domestic radio in April 1978, as the Khmer
Rouge purges were in full swing and border tensions with Vietnam were escalating. Like other
Khmer Rouge documents, this speech attempts to
manufacture difference by crystallizing the ‘clear
line” between “us and the enemy.” The broadcast
differentiates “us” and “the enemy” in terms of “political, ideological, organizational, sentimental and
traditional views and politics.” Friends and enemies
are distinguished by political consciousness, or
the degree to which a person is “mindful” of the
party “line” and “standpoint.” Group traits follow
from this premise. “Enemy” groups, ranging from
imperialist lackeys to the “feudal-capitalist/ landowning class,” are those having a strong “private
stand.”(Hinton, 2005: 213). Similar monopolistic
and anti-pluralistic features can be found in the
genocide that took place in former Yugoslavia
both during the Second World War and after the
collapse of the socialist block. Here perpetrators
were simultaneously struggling for the “monopolization of power and monopolization of society.”
Dulić points out that “after the invasion and dis-
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memberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Bosnia
and Herzegovina became part of the Independent
State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska,
NDH). The NDH was headed by the Poglavnik
(Leader) Ante Pavelić and the Fascist Ustasha
organization, but there were several nationally
exclusive political and military organizations that
fought for supremacy within its borders. Besides
the Ustashe and their Ustasha Corps, these were
the regular Croatian Home Guard, the German
Wehrmacht, the Second Army of the Italian occupation forces, and the Yugoslav Army in the
Fatherland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini,
JVUO) under Dragoljub “Draža” Mihajlović (better known as one of several Chetnik organizations).Although there was considerable mistrust
between the Italians and the Ustashe on the one
hand, and between the Germans and the JVUO
on the other, these collective actors eventually
joined forces in order to destroy the People’s
Liberation Movement (Dulić, 2006: 259). All the
combating groups were struggling for controlling
the state power and for getting rid of other groups.
Dulić continues that “the motives for committing
mass killings in Yugoslavia ranged from primarily
military objectives of acquiring control over an occupied territory in order to exploit its resources, to
ideologically motivated killings and deportations
that aimed at ethnically purifying territories exclusively claimed by an ethnic group (Dulić, 2006:
259)”. Ethnically purify territories means to get
rid of other groups, in other words, monopolize
society. Therefore this also shows how difficult it
is to sort out certain types of genocides. The monopolistic passions and anti-pluralistic currents
strengthened after the collapse of the socialist
block. M. A. Hoare gives the gloomy picture of the
former Yugoslavia in 1990s: “The second period
of genocidal crime occurred in the 1990s, as Yugoslavia went through its break-up. The instances
of genocide or related crimes included: the persecution, mass killings and expulsions of Croatian
civilians in Croatia by the reconstituted Yugoslav
People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija,
JNA) and Serb paramilitary forces, during their
assault on Croatia in 1991-1992; the systematic
persecution, mass killings and expulsion of Bosnian civilians (Croats, Muslims and non-nationalist
Serbs), by the JNA, Army of the Serb Republic
and Serb paramilitary forces during their assault
on Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1995 (alone
of all the war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, some of these war crimes
have been ruled by the international courts to have
been genocidal); the persecution, killing and expulsion, involving some large-scale massacres,
of Muslim civilians by Croatian and Bosnian Croat
forces, during their own assault on Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1992-1994; the persecution and
killing of Serb and Croat civilians by Bosnian army
forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, during their
counteroffensives of 1992-1995; the widespread
killings of Serb civilians by Croatian forces in both
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during their
final counteroffensives in the summer and fall of
1995; the systematic mass killing and expulsion
of Albanian civilians by regular Serbian police and
military forces in Kosovo during their campaign
against the Kosovo Liberation Army (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, UÇK) and the Kosovo civilian
population in 1998–1999, which were escalated
following the NATO intervention in 1999; and the
large-scale reprisals against Serb civilians by the
UÇK and Albanian civilians in Kosovo (Hoare,
2010: 1199).7 The former Yugoslavian societal
groups were struggling for power and for societal
purification. They labeled their happiness without
giving place to others in their lives.
Struggle for power and anti-pluralism in plural societies also “visited” Africa. To understand
how important it was for Africans to keep power
and how “difficult” it was for them to leave their
“powerful” posts, just a couple of reminiscences
of African history. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where
one-party and no-party states remained the norm
throughout the 1980s, political liberalization has
been widespread. Although progress has been
less consistent (and usually less deep) than in
much of Latin America, relatively open multiparty
elections are becoming common. In March 1991,
Benin’s Nicéphore Soglo became the first candidate in the history of mainland Africa to defeat
an incumbent president in a democratic election.
Even more dramatic was the November 1991
7 Recent developments in the Balkans and new decisions
by international courts raise a number of questions on the
genocidal acts, war crimes and crimes against humanity
in the Balkans in the 1990s. On 16 November the United
Nations Yugoslav war crimes tribunal acquitted two Croatian generals of war crimes against Serbs. Ante Gotovina
and Mladen Markač were convicted in 2011 but their successful appeal means that no Croats have been convicted
by the UN tribunal of any crimes against Serbs in Croatia
during the war years. The acquittal also means that the
tribunal has judged that there was no “joint criminal enterprise” designed to drive out some 200.000 Serbs from
the Krajina region in 1995. For more information, see The
Economist, http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/11/croatian-serbian-relations?fsrc=scn/
tw_ec/old_wounds_new_grievances (1 December 2012).
For more information, see The New York Times, http://www.
nytimes.com/aponline/2012/11/29/world/europe/ap-eu-warcrimes-kosovo.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 (29 November
2012). However, these recent developments require further
research and open debates on courts’ decisions. These
topics are far beyond my research topic in this article.
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defeat of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s president
for the first twenty-five years of its independence
(Donnelly, 1997: 14). Similar struggle for power,
but with horrible results, occurred in Rwanda,
commonly known as a plural society. However
S. Straus argues that there was no old historical
hatred between tribes in Rwanda. He points out:
“First, tribe is the wrong register for describing
Rwanda’s ethnic categories. Rwanda has three
commonly recognized ethnic groups - Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas. Many debate the exact proportion
of each, but the Hutus comprised 84-90 percent
of Rwanda’s population before the genocide, Tutsis were 9-15 percent/ and Twas were 1 percent
(Straus, 2006: 19)”. “Hutus and Tutsis speak the
same language (Kinyarwanda) they belong to the
same clans; they live in the same regions and, in
most areas, the same neighborhoods; they have
the same cultural practices and myths; and they
have the same religions. Many also intermarry
(Straus, 2006: 20)”. It derives from Straus’s piece
of work that these tribes could hardly fight each
other because of anti-pluralism only. They must
be motivated by greed, monopolistic passions,
retribution, etc. Straus continues: “The principles
of the Hutu Revolution guided official policy, which
meant that Hutus dominated the government and
military, often to the exclusion of Tutsis. Rwanda’s
first president, Grégoire Kayibanda, who ruled from
1962 to 1973, was more discriminatory towards
Tutsis than his successor. Under Kayibanda, there
was a series of anti-Tutsi massacres in the early
1960s and in 1973. Rwanda’s second president,
Juvénal Habyarimana, who ruled from 1973 to
1994, diminished anti-Tutsi discrimination. Even
so, Habyarimana maintained strong limits on Tutsi
advancement through a system of regional and
ethnic quotas (Straus, 2006: 23)”.8 Here we see
the struggle for power and the exclusion of Tutsis
from important posts in the government. Straus’s
interviews with Hutu perpetrators (in prisons, after
the genocide) vindicate that the power was of great
significance for Rwandans and that their leader
(president) was indivisible part of their lives and
beliefs. The president was the symbol of their
security. Some extracts from those interviews:
When Habyarimana was killed, people said,
“It’s over. Since they killed Habyarimana, now
all the Hutus will be killed (Gitarama)”.
With Habyarimana’s death, I thought that Tutsis
were the enemy…Why? Because, during the
war, when the Inkotanyi attacked, they only
killed Hutus. Before Habyarimana died, did
8 On the treatment of Tutsis under Habyarimana, see Newbury, 1992: 198-99.
you think that Tutsis were the enemy? With
the I990 war, I began to think that Tutsis were
the enemy because during this period I saw
that Hutus were killed. This idea stayed in my
head until the period when Habyarimana died.
Could you have killed a Tutsi before the death
of the president? No. Even if Tutsis were the
enemy? No. Why not? With the war, I’ve heard
that [Fred] Rwigema [the former RPF leader]
wanted to take power and we did not think
all Tutsis were enemies, but with the death
of Habyarimana, we thought that we would
be killed next. Why? With the attack [before
1994], the elders said that they [the RPF]
might bring back the monarchy but when the
Inkotanyi spoke, you saw they wanted to take
power, not bring back monarchy. Because of
this, I had no conflict with my Tutsi neighbors,
but all the same the idea was in my head with
the beginning of the war. But with the death of
Habyarimana, we saw they were the enemy….
We were truly affected. There was even calm.
Nothing was heard on the hills. Everyone was
affected. Describe your mood. I saw that my
parents and my neighbors had no peace.
They asked themselves, “The Tutsis will take
power, where will we go?” (Ruhengeri) (Straus,
2006: 156).
Respondents claim that President Habyarimana
guaranteed their safety as the head of state, and
they describe an affectionate relationship to the
president. Habyarimana was their “father” or “parent”. Perpetrators identified with the president as
their own; he seemed to symbolize Hutus (Straus,
2006: 156). Nearly two-thirds of the respondents
claimed that the president’s assassination was
the most important cause of the genocide. They
gave other reasons, such as elites, “desire for
power” and evil “satanic” forces, but the president’s death is the top reason the respondents
gave for the genocide (Straus, 2006: 157). Both
the interviews and Straus’s conclusions show that
the vast majority of Hutus killed Tutsis for the fear
of losing power and being killed. Habyarimana
was the psychological base for their daily lives.
They felt unsafe after he had been assassinated.
Ideological genocides encompass all the aforementioned types either, but here I would underpin
the idea of loser psychology. The shadow of the
ideological genocide nests in defeated societies
which hitherto were powerful but now are neglected and exploited. The veracity of this argument rests on the experience of history, such as
the German fiasco in the World War I, Ottoman
Empire’s defeats by European states, Russian
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Empire and Balkan states, Cambodia’s invasion
by the Vietnamese, the exploitation by “capitalists,” and the like. In order to cope with difficult
times, people in such societies look for ideologies
and support insane ideas, which sometimes simply lead society to schizophrenia. For example, in
an article Gökalp wrote in 1911 for the Yeni Hayat
journal, he claimed that “the ‘super’ men imagined by the German philosopher Nietzsche are
the Turks. They are the new men [who appear]
every century (asir). Therefore, new life will spring
forth from Turkishness, which is the source of all
of their youthfulness (Ulken, 1992: 310, cited in
Akçam, 2004: 138)”. This is a vindication of degradation of the Ottoman society which felt neglected and was waiting for a messianic change.
Another example of blindness and arrogance of
some members of society who accept things as
they want: “Even though the Turks performed the
earliest and greatest services to world civilization
through their language, science and arts, there
have been efforts - behind which lie a variety of
purposes -to forget all of these civilized contributions and to unjustly show them as idle and insignificant in the view of history”.9 Namık Kemal
argued that “we can reach an understanding if the
Christians desire our domination. It is very natural, because since we have not allowed them into
the government, they could not possess the right
to complain about it (Kuntay, 1949: 186, cited in
Akçam, 2004: 75)”. And Kemal established this
idea on a clearly racial basis: “Because there is
both a swirl of populations and abilities within the
Ottoman collective, the Turks, who possess excellence and virtues and qualities such as ‘breadth
of comprehension’ (vus’at-i havsala), ‘sobriety’
(itidal-i dem), ‘patience and calm-headedness’
(tahammul ve sukunet), take pride of place (Karal,
296, cited in Akçam, 2004: 75)”. This also tries to
prove the superiority of Turks, which is why “their
dominance over Christians is natural”. Or “the
Muslims did not want equality with the Christians
because they felt the latter undeserving of the
highest social positions that had been their private
domain (Akçam, 2004: 81)”. Here Christians are
called undeserving human beings. Yusuf Akçura
wrote that “Muslims, and especially the Ottoman
Turks, did not want to mingle and socialize with
the Christians. Because their 600-year domination
would legally come to an end, and thereby they
would fall to a level of equality with the raya (protected subject peoples), whom they have grown
accustomed to seeing as under their domination.
9 These words were actually spoken at the opening speech
of Turkey’s first History Conference in 1932: Yalçın Küçük,
112, cited in Akçam, 2004: 73.
The earliest and most tangible result of this was
that it would be necessary to take the raya into
the bureaucracy and the army, over which the
Turks had, until then, a monopoly. Expressed differently, it would be necessary to enter into a field
of endeavor which was considered by aristocrats
as comparatively less difficult and honorable, to
embark upon industry and commerce: two areas
to which they were not accustomed and which they
held in contempt (Akçura, 28, cited in Akçam, 2004:
81)”. All these sources try to prove that Turkish
domination over Christians was a natural thing.
That is the splitting mechanism of “us and them,”
and everybody is aware of the hell that this “us
and them” road takes a society to.
Hitler “does not lose the race”:
“According to Hitler’s doctrine, the history of
mankind can be understood in terms of racial
analysis, that is, in terms of the supposed racial components of different societies. The rise
or fall of Rome can thus be understood as the
products of the racial purity of early and the
racial mixture of later Roman society. The political division of France in the age of the French
Revolution reflects the division between the
Romanic, that is, racially ‘Westic’ lower classes,
and the Nordic descendants of the Franks who
had unified and organized the country. The cultural accomplishments of civilizations are the
product of their racial composition - the great
artists of Renaissance times were all Nordics
whose works reflect their own appearance,
while the monstrosities of modern art only mirror the appearance of their creators. Botticelli
must have been as slim as his famous Venus,
Rubens must have been as corpulent as the
figures he painted, and Picasso presumably
had three eyes (Weinberg, 1995: 33)”. 10
Such schizophrenic perceptions finally take
the society to another major calamity.
Similar moral-psychological degradation is visible in the former Yugoslavia during the Second
World War. The Ustashe occasionally referred to
a degenerated “Serbian breed” that was incapable
of productive work (Hrvatski narod, 19 July 1941),
and Serbs were depicted as a mortal threat to
the Croatian nation. Mainly, Ustasha propaganda
emphasized something of a “clash of civilization”
with the Serbian “dregs and garbage of the Balkans” (Hrvatski narod, 7 July 1941), who due to a
10 Anyone who considers this summary an unfair satire can
examine Schulze-Naumburg, 1928, since the illustrations
convey its message to anyone who does not read German.
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cultural tradition embedded in “Byzantinism” and
Orthodox Christianity could never live in a common state with Croats.
Cambodian communists even went further and
tried to change the language of daily communication. In Khmer language, within the family siblings
refer and address one another based on age, with
younger siblings called b’aun and elders bang.
Many Cambodian parents begin to teach their
infants to politely greet visitors and family elders
even before the child can walk (Hinton, 2005: 188).
However, the Khmer Rouge, impressed with communist ideology, intervened in this part of life as
well. Seng, a Kompong Cham civil servant who
was an “old person” during Democratic Kampuchea, recalled:
“The Khmer Rouge created a new order of
life and a new morality that was based on
the peasant class. For example, their style of
dress didn’t have color; it was [modeled after]
the plain black clothes that farmers wore when
working in the fields. They also governed our
speech and created new ways of talking. For
example, city people used to say words like
keng (‘sleep’), nham (‘to eat’), and so forth.
The Khmer Rouge replaced nham with [the
peasant class word] houp and keng with [the
peasant class word] samrak. Everyone slept/
rested (samrak) and ate houp, ‘big people’,
‘little people’ and those having rank (bon sakti).
In addition, we learned that we were expected
to boast about and praise the goodness of the
Revolutionary Organization and Communist
Party of Kampuchea. Angkar did things because it was clairvoyant, was alert and intelligent, had a brilliant party line, and [guided us
with its] correct leadership. Thus the people
had to speak [Angkar’s] language fluently.
This was the way in which they controlled our
consciousness (satiaramma) and minds (Hinton, 2005: 190)”.
Seng’s comments illustrate how the Khmer
Rouge transformed linguistic registers in accordance with their communist ideology and exaltation of the peasant class (Hinton, 2005: 190).
The changes were so visible in Cambodian society that even Pol Pot was sometimes referred
to as “elder brother number one” (bang ti muoy)
(Hinton, 2005: 190). They (Khmer Rouge) tried
to control everything, an abnormal desire which
would eventually lead the society to unbearable
sickness. Another example on how this fake ideology intervenes in the lives of ordinary men and
women in Cambodian society:
“If we stand on collectivism, even if some objective attracts us, we will have the time to consider. Having thought about it, we realize that
we are about to slide into the private; we run
back immediately to the collective… Therefore,
we must hasten to stand on collectivism immediately. And do not stand on the dividing line.
Stand deeply on collectivism. Get ourselves
ready, immediately sit on collectivism’s chair.
Scrutinize each problem. We must scrutinize
ourselves; is there a stand on collectivism yet?
Sometimes we say we are already standing
on collectivism, but the result of solving the
problem affects collectivism. There, this stand
is not yet correct; our line of solving is not yet
valid. We must reevaluate our-stand. Morality
is the same. For example, if we are living with
a woman. As time goes on, the material atmosphere leads to the development of sentiment.
If we stand on the collective, we must manage
the solution immediately. But if we just expand
and strengthen the management, remaining
attached to this woman; this is a strong private stand. A strong private stand by a certain
point will have affected morality… And say that
someone offered the private chair to us to sit
in. No one gave it to us. Because the private
chair is everywhere around us. We must look
for the collective chair and grasp it tightly (Hinton, 2005: 196)”.
That loser psychology rests on reminiscences
of history, good days in the past versus harsh reality of the present. Taner Akçam argues that “Turkish national identity arose as a natural reaction to
continual humiliation (Akçam, 2004: 67)”. Turks,
having vivid memories of the good past, now faced
nasty present, which spurred the establishment of
nationalistic passions as a weapon against own
failures. Another author points out that
“while the Turks possessed a feeling of superiority [i.e. before the 19th century], they did
not know they were Turks...The Turks began
to understand that they were Turks only when
they were totally engulfed with feelings of inferiority...Turkism means helplessness for the
Turks...It is a forlorn and inescapable flight
from a sense of inferiority (Kucuk, 23, cited in
Akçam, 2004: 67)”.
Their dominance over Christian states in Europe was now eliminated, their country hitherto
was being exploited, European states were intervening in the state’s domestic affairs and so forth.
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Turkish society felt ignorance from the European
and American side. In a bulletin dated 10 January 1917, for instance, which was issued with the
goal of encouraging American participation in the
war, the authors describe the Allied war aims thus:
ciation, the guardian of the Hearth (Ocak), the
defender of the Homeland, the raider of Turan!
The iron embrace of the Turk shall surround
the world; the world will again tremble in fear
before this embrace”.11
“The Entente states are conscious that they
have not fought for selfish aims. Above all...
they are fighting in order to preserve truth and
humanity. The war aims of the Entente principally and necessarily include... the rescue of
fallen peoples from the bloody tyranny of the
Turks and the eviction from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, which is totally foreign to European civilization (Avcıoğlu, 1981: 34, cited
in Akçam, 2004: 71-72)”.
This is a call for “wake up”, encouragement for
revenge, “proof” of the superiority of the Turkish
nation. Turkish nationalism ignored and forgot other
nations in the Ottoman Empire and their contribution to the country’s economy. “In those days,
meaning after 1278 (1861), when [the newspaper]
Tasvir-i Efkâr began to be published, the obvious
answer to the question of who constituted of the
Ottoman nation was Turks (Akçura, 29, cited in
Akçam, 2004: 74)”. The others in such a big multinational empire were simply excluded. Turkish
nationalists tried to rationalize their insane actions.
Turkish society, thus, was considered foreign
to European values, so it had to be withdrawn
from the borders of Europe. British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George always mentioned the Turks
in a tone of disdain and loathing. In November l9l4
he characterized them as “a cancer on humanity,
a wound that has worked its way into the flesh of
the earth that it has misruled”. He characterized
a potential Turkish victory as “the torch of pillage,
cruelty and murder... that would be carried from
Asia to Europe.” Toward the end of the war, in a
speech delivered on 29 June 1917, Lloyd George
said that the Turks had turned Mesopotamia, the
ancient cradle of civilization, into a wasteland, and
Armenia into a graveyard, adding that the areas
of this cradle of civilization “shall not be left to the
incendiary and destructive brutality of the Turks
(Avcıoğlu, 1981: 35-36, cited in Akçam, 2004:
72)”. Turks thought that they were ignored, they
were afraid of retaliation. They were now fragile
and would not be able to fight Allies. That is why
they needed a reconstruction of their society. All
these feelings spark the creation of nationalistic
organizations which will implement nationalistic
projects and prove their superiority over other
groups in their society.
“The Turkish Strength [Society] is the straight
and strong stream which springs forth and
flows outward from Karakurum, and floods the
whole world with its raging torrents. It is the
unbroken sword. It will resurrect and reinvigorate the power of the Turk, which in its time
left no stronghold standing, but which is today
fallen and dispersed. It will cause the Turk to
proudly raise his broad and pure countenance
anew. It will cause his sharp, undaunted eye to
shine again, his broad chest to thrust outward
in pride. It shall be the custodian of the Asso-
“The question of the deportations was, as you
know, an event which set the world in an uproar, and which caused us all to be perceived
as murderers. Even before this was done, we
knew that the Christian world would not stomach
this, and would turn all their wrath and anger
upon us because of it. [But] why have we attached the title of murderer to ourselves? Why
have we gotten involved in such an immense
and problematic cause (dava)? These things
were done for the sole purpose of ensuring
the future of our homeland, which we know is
more beloved and sacred than our own lives”.12
This fake patriotism for them is the rationale
for deportations and atrocities. The loser psychology played an enormous role in the emotional
upheaval of the German society.
“More important, perhaps, was the psychological disorganization produced by defeat.
Unaware of the real situation, the German
people had seen their hopes tumble from the
vision of victory to the reality of collapse in a
few months of 1918. After the glory of a powerful state, after the immense sacrifices of war,
their world had crashed down around them
(Weinberg, 1995: 51)”.
German people were disappointed with the harsh
realities of their lives and started to look for the
11 Words spoken by the Responsible Delegate (Murahhas-r
Mes’ut) of the Turkish Strength Society, Kuzcuoğlu Tahsin
Bey, and quoted in Zafer Toprak, 1985: 531, 533, cited in
Akçam, 2004: 74.
12 From a speech made by Hasan Fehmi Bey at a secret
session of the Grand National Assembly on 11 October
1920, TBMM Gizli Celse Zabilalari, vol. I, 1985: 177, cited
in Akçam, 2004: 150.
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messiah. The messiah came and constructed an
“us-them” philosophy. “The most infamous instance
of this lethal process of manufacturing difference
occurred in Nazi Germany. Drawing on everything
from archaeological evidence to theories of race,
the Nazis divided the population into a hierarchy
of bio-social types with the Aryan race at the top.
Jews, in contrast, were placed at the bottom of the
hierarchy and viewed as a dangerous source of
contamination. The Nazis propagated a number of
discriminatory policies against the Jews and other
devalued groups. Concentration camps became
the ultimate institution for manufacturing difference, as Jews were stripped of the last vestiges
of their humanity (clothing, hair, names, free will),
treated like animals (beaten, verbally abused, and
made to perform dehumanizing acts), and forced
to live in horrendous conditions that led to starvation, disease, stealing to survive, and death. By
subjecting Jews to such circumstances’ the Nazis
attempted to turn them into beings who were as
Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda proclaimed, like
“disease”, “bacilli”, “thieves”, “lice”, “sub-humans”,
“parasites”, and “alien bodies” (Vann Nath, 1998:
107, cited in Hinton, 2005: 212). “And once such
difference had been manufactured, genocide was
made to seem like a justifiable ‘purification’ process necessary for the protection of the health of
the German national body (Hinton, 2005: 212)”.
This “us-them” philosophy took the German society to the stage of genocidal intent: H=S-V=P.
All the aforementioned examples illustrate
the complicated nature of genocide. All types of
genocides are interdependent and sometimes
concomitant and genocide studies must be dealt
with on case to case basis. I would argue here
that the Armenian Genocide has all the abovementioned genocidal characteristics. Turkish
nationalism wanted to take revenge on the Armenians because from their point of view the Ottoman Empire was bedeviled by Armenians, by
their ties with the Christian world, by their wealth
and educated elite. Turkish gangs were motivated
by greed and looted Armenian houses, churches
and schools. Turkish elite (CUP) had monopolistic
passions and did their best to get rid of Armenian
presence. They could homogenize Anatolia; they
could “solve” the Armenian Question. If we use the
data on the Armenian population before the World
War, we can find vindications of anti-pluralism and
desire to get rid of Armenians. Turkish nationalism
could deal with 2.100.000 Armenians in a “right
way”, by sending them to the ”hell.”
The 2.100.000 Armenians in 1912 were distributed as follows:
Six provinces of Turkish Armenia
1.018.000
Peripheral areas of the six provinces
145.000
Cilicia
407.000
Western Anatolia and European
Turkey
530.000
Source: Armenian Delegation, 1919: 4446, cited in Hovannisian, 1997: 235
The patriarchal statistics showed that in the
core region, Armenians formed 38.9 percent of
the population, with Turks 25.4 percent, and Kurds
16.3 percent. The Christian element, which also
included Nestorians and Greeks, formed a plurality
of 45.2 percent (Hovannisian, 1997: 235). Turks
were also motivated by the superiority of Turkish
nation and considered their power and dominance
over Armenians (and Christians) natural. Those
characteristics were then used by other perpetrators in the crimes of the 20th century, including
Holocaust, genocides in the former Yugoslavia,
Cambodia, Rwanda, Nigeria and the like. The Armenian Genocide was the “good” precedent for
other horrors of the 20th century. The ignorance of
the Armenian victims was the clue for other perpetrators to commit genocidal acts without being
afraid of punitive measures.
4. Conclusion
I tried to give an explanation to genocide phenomenon in this short article. Historical evidences
are useful to deepen knowledge on genocide phenomenon, to delineate its reasons and gauge the
various types of that crime. I proposed my own
definition of genocide concept, and tried to prove
that all motivations for genocide (greed, retaliation, struggle for power, anti-pluralism, ideological constructions) are “motivated by happiness”
as the ultimate end for their actions. CUP leaders
constructed their happiness excluding Armenians
and Christians from society, Nazi leaders labeled
the German society without Jews, Cambodians
envisaged their happy future in communist ideology and tried to get rid of “capitalists and foreign
enemies”, people in former Yugoslavia thought
of a happy society of their own excluding their
neighbors, Rwandan Hutus “realized” that they
would be happy and safe without Tutsis, etc. I
tried to prove that the Armenian Genocide had
all the above mentioned characteristics for genocidal types and thus became a precedent for other
genocides of the 20th century. Last but not least,
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punitive measures and the presence of the international community were given a great importance
as the main hindrances to genocides. But today we
are again facing similar problems, unfortunately.
Today’s conflicts in the Sudans, Syria and other
hot regions of the world must be signals for the
international community to take action and define
preventive mechanisms and punitive measures
in order to find ways out of political morass and
prevent horrific havocs from happening again.
Any perpetrator must be afraid of punishments
by international community. International community should act as a unified body to make the
perpetrator surrender and put a halt to crimes
against humanity. This also applies to recognition
of genocides, particularly the Armenian Genocide.
Denial is the continuation of the genocide on psychological basis. Up until now Turkish government
denies the fact of genocide, which itself is already
a vindication of the absence of unity among the
members of international community. The international relations sometimes are equated to anarchy. Some believed that Armenians cannot obtain justice so long as they lack a nation that can
exert political pressure at an international level.
This belief can apply to the life of savannah. Are
we, the human-beings, living in a huge savannah
either? Why do we witness genocide in Sudan in
the 21st century? It is because of a lack of will. “The
ghosts of Rwanda”, Eric Reeves concludes, “are
stirring ominously in Darfur (Reeves, 13 November 2005)”.13 What should the victims in Sudan
do? Surrender? As Helen Fein points out, “the
surrender of victims in genocidal situations does
not avoid their mass murder but expedites it (Fein,
21, cited in Dulić, 2006: 259)”. That is why it is
of great importance to act seriously, throw away
insular passions and prevent horrific crimes. As
Samantha Power has argued, politicians will act
to stop mass killing when the political cost of inaction outweighs the risk of acting (Power, 2002:
510-511). But our world is so interdependent now
that inaction truly costs more than false political
calculus. Unpunished killings can be contagious
and harm the very international community. I am
happy that huge progress is being made now. On
2 July, UN member states began intense negotiations (though currently unsuccessful, but with
hope) towards the world’s first Arms Trade Treaty,
which will seek to establish the highest possible
common international standards for the transfer
of conventional weapons. Achieving a comprehensive, robust and effective treaty will require a
delicate balancing act (Chatham House, 28 June
2012). This treaty will hinder perpetrators from
buying weapons and will decrease the possibilities of genocides, war crimes and crimes against
humanity. Though it is extremely difficult to bring
this treaty into life, I do believe the states will take
into account, under the pressures of globalizing
world, the fact that the cost of peace and security
outweighs the cost of profits from selling weapons.
The 21st century will be the era of great changes,
the way to a safer planet.
Further researches and proposals are necessary to enrich genocide studies and make them
available to broader sectors of international society,
i.e. students, academics, just interested people
who want to make a step forward in prevention of
genocides and who want a secure planet.
13 Unlike Rwanda (26.000 km2 and 8 million people), Darfur
covers a huge territory (450.000 km2 and 3.5 to 4 million
people).
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New York: Metropolitan Books
Akçam, T. (2004): From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, London:
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Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Bauman, Z. (1989): Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Charny, I. W. (1982): How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide: The Human Cancer, Boulder,
CO: Westview Press
Dadrian, V. N. (1975): A Typology of Genocide, International Review of Modern Sociology, 5 (2): 201-212
Donnelly, J. (1997): International Human Rights, 2nd ed., Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Dulić, T. (2006): Mass Killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945: A Case for Comparative
Research, Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (3): 255-281
Hinton, A. L. (2005): Why Did They Kill: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide, Berkeley: University of
California Press
Hoare, M. A. (2010): Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia before and after Communism, Europe-Asia
Studies, 62 (7): 1193-1214
Hovannisian, R. G. (1997): The Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1914, in: Hovannisian,
R. G. (ed.): The Armenian People, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 203-238
Kuper, L. (1982): International Action against Genocide, Minority Rights Group Report, 53
Kuper, L. (1981): Genocide, New Haven: Yale University Press
Lemkin, R. (1944): Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation: Analysis of Government; Proposals for Redress, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Power, S. (2002): ‘‘A Problem from Hell’’: America and the Age of Genocide, New York: Basic Books
Rummel, R. J. (1994): Death by Government, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers
Smith, R. W. (1999): State Power and Genocidal Intent: On the Uses of Genocide in the Twentieth Century, in: Chorbajian, L. and Shirinian, G. (eds.): Studies in Comparative Genocide, Basingstoke
and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press
Straus, S. (2006): The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
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Web sources
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Hrvatski narod, 31 July 1941
Hrvatski narod, 7 July 1941
Indictment: United States of America et al. v. Hermann Göring et al., The Avalon Project: Nuremberg Trial
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Further readings
Anderson, M. B. (1998): You Save My Life Today, But for What Tomorrow? Some Moral Dilemmas of
Humanitarian Aid, in: Jonathan Moore, J. (ed.): Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian
Intervention, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Askin, K. D. (2006): Holding Leaders Accountable, Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1 (1): 13-28
Atkinson, T. (2000): The German, the Turk and the Devil Made a Triple Alliance: Harpoot Diaries, 19081917, Princeton: Gomidas Institute
Browning, C. R. (1993): Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,
New York: Harper Collins
Chandler, D. (2000): A History of Cambodia, Boulder, CO: Westview
Clark, I. (2003): Legitimacy in a Global Order, Review of International Studies, 29: 75-95
Craig, C. (2008): The Imperative To Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the Field
of Humanitarian Action, in: Barnett, M. and Weiss, T. G. (eds.): Humanitarianism In Question:
Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Dadrian, V. N. (2004): The History of the Armenian Genocide, New York: Berghahn Books
Dallaire, R. (2003): Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Toronto: Random
House
Fein, H. (2001): Denying Genocide from Armenia to Bosnia: A Lecture Delivered at the London School
of Economics and Political Science on 22 January 2001, Occasional Papers in Comparative and
International Politics
Fein, H. (1993): Accounting for Genocide after 1945: Theories and Some Findings, International Journal
of Group Rights, 1: 79-106
Fowler, J. (2006): A New Chapter of Irony: The Legal Implications of the Darfur Genocide Determination,
Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1 (1): 29-39
Griffiths, M. (ed.) (2007): International Relations: Theory for the Twenty-First Century, London and New
York: Routledge
Hiebert, M. (2008): Theorizing Destruction: Reflections on the State of Comparative Genocide Theory,
Genocide Studies and Prevention, 3 (3): 309-340
Hall, R. B. (1997): Moral Authority as a Power Resource, International Organization, 51 (4): 591-622
Hoss, A.(1992): The Trial of Perpetrators by the Turkish Military Tribunals: The Case of Yozgat, in: Hovannisian, R. G. (ed.): The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, New York: St. Martin’s Press
Lemarchand, R. (2006): Unsimplifying Darfur, Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1 (1): 1-12
Martin, I. (1998): Hard Choices after Genocide: Human Rights and Political Failures in Rwanda, in: Moore,
J. (ed.): Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention, Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers
Melson, R. F. (1996): The Armenian Genocide as Precursor and Prototype of Twentieth-Century Genocide, in: Rosenbaum, A. S. (ed.): Is the Holocaust Unique?, Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Melson, R. F. (1992): Revolution and Genocide: On the Causes of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, Hovannisian, R. G. (ed.): The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 80-102
Miller D. E. and Miller, L. T. (1999): Survivors, Berkeley: University of California Press
Newbury, C. (1992): Rwanda: Recent Debates over Governance and Rural Development, in: Hyden, G.
and Bratton, M. (eds.): Governance and Politics in Africa, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 198-99
Nomberg-Przytyk, S. (1985): Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press
Schulze-Naumburg, P. (1928): Kunst und Rasse, Munich: Lehmann
Staub, E. (1992): Origins of Genocide and Mass Killing: Core Concepts, in: Staub. E. (ed.): The Roots of
Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Toynbee, A. (1990): The Deportations of 1915: Antecedents; The Deportations of 1915: The Procedure,
in: Viscount Bryce: The Treatment of The Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, New York: J. C. &
A. L. Fawcett, Inc.
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Vahram Ayvazyan: Genocide: Intent, Motivation and Types
suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Genocid: namjera, motivi i tipovi
VAHRAM AYVAZYAN
International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Toronto
Genocid je komplicirani društveni, politički i psihološki fenomen. Niz istraživača
je pokazao kako su tipovi genocida međusobno isprepleteni te se ne pojavljuju u
čistim oblicima. Ovaj članak tvrdi kako je psihologija gubitnika jedan od glavnih
faktora za razvoj genocidne namjere u društvu. Pritisnuto grubom stvarnošću,
društvo se osjeća poraženim i odbačenim u međunarodnoj zajednici te traži
načina za izaći iz psihološke kaljuže. Ekstremističke strasti i pokreti počinju prevladavati u takvim društvima što naposljetku ljudi dovodi do suludih uvjerenja
koja se temelje na potrebi osvete nad drugima kako bi se potvrdila vlastita superiornost te na iluziji kako je pronađeno rješenje za sve probleme: ubiti druge
te ih odstraniti iz društva. Članak također pokazuje kako je konačni cilj takve
genocidne namjere postizanje sreće. Kapacitet društva da svojim članovima pruži
zadovoljenje njihovih potreba (sigurnost, hrana, psihološki oporavak, itd.) učiniti
će ljude sretnima, dok će neuspjeh proširiti tmurno ozračje u društvu. Želja ljudi
za oporavkom od velikih poraza i trenutačnom postizanju sreće zbunjuje ih te
dovodi do krivih procjena koje se, nažalost, lako ugnježđuju u mislima članova
društva te potiču podjelu na „nas i njih” u društvo što potiče na genocidne namjere.
Ključne riječi: genocid, psihologija gubitnika, sreća, međunarodna zajednica
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UDK: 355.356(100-622 NATO):327(4 EU)
327.56(100:4 EU)
Pregledni rad
Primljeno: 15. rujna 2012.
Perspektive jačanja suradnje NATO-a i Europske unije u kontekstu
regionalne i globalne sigurnosti
LADA GLAVAŠ KOVAČIĆ
Misija Republike Hrvatske pri Vijeću Europe, Strasbourg
Euroatlantska zajednica se suočava s novim izazovima – u trenutku kada se SAD
sve više okreću području Azije i Pacifika, europske države će morati preuzeti
znatno više odgovornosti u osiguranju europske sigurnosti. S obzirom da će se
zaokret u obrambenoj politici SAD-a odraziti na transatlantske i euroatlantske
odnose, te čak dovesti do „repozicioniranja“ SAD-a unutar NATO-a, upitno je
kako će se novim okolnostima prilagoditi politike europskih NATO-saveznika.
Činjenica je da NATO i Europska unija moraju stvoriti zajedničku platformu za
iskorištavanje komparativnih prednosti u podržavanju međunarodnog mira i sigurnosti. Zaključci Sastanka na vrhu NATO-a u Chicagu, u prvom redu povezivanje
koncepta „pametne obrane“ i koncepta „udruživanja i dijeljenja“ zajedničkih potencijala stvaraju pretpostavke za poboljšanja. Pojačana suradnja u oba modela
europskim državama bi omogućila da ostvare veći utjecaj u okviru NATO-a i
EU, te postigla učinke koji bi nadilazili njihove pojedinačne domašaje. Unatoč
sposobnosti nekih država da i u uvjetima financijske krize iniciraju zajedničke
operacije, izvjesno je da će geopolitički interesi država članica NATO-a i EU i
dalje otežavati postizanje konsenzusa oko modaliteta za jačanje učinkovitosti
zajedničke obrane i stvaranja zajedničkih kapaciteta. Za početak, obje će organizacije morati uložiti pojačane napore u identificiranje, a zatim i otklanjanje
neželjenog preklapanja aktivnosti. A to je i za Sjevernoatlantski savez i za EU
velik izazov s vrlo neizvjesnim ishodom.
Ključne riječi: regionalna sigurnost, NATO, pametna obrana, Europska unija,
udruživanje i dijeljenje
1. Uvod
U uvjetima globalne gospodarske i financijske
krize, euroatlantska se zajednica, uz i dalje prisutne
poteškoće u usklađivanju vojnih strategija, suočava
s novim izazovima. Zacrtane smjernice u sigurnosnoj i obrambenoj politici prisiljene su preispitati
i SAD i europski saveznici u NATO-u. Nema dvojbe da će u trenutku kada se SAD sve više okreću
području Azije i Pacifika europske države morati
preuzeti znatno više odgovornosti u osiguranju
europske sigurnosti.1 To je dugotrajan proces,
koji će predmnijevati intenzivniju i strategijski
promišljeniju suradnju s Rusijom, poglavito u kontekstu stvaranja zajedničkog proturaketnog štita,
koji bi saveznicima u NATO-u donio ne samo velike uštede u proračunima za obranu u globalnim
kriznim uvjetima, nego bi - po isteku dva desetljeća
1 Opširnije vidjeti nove strateške smjernice SAD-a u području
sigurnosti i obrane: Sustaining US Global Leadership:
Priorities for 21st Century Defense, Američko ministarstvo
obrane, siječanj 2012., http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf (10. rujna 2012.)
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od završetka Hladnog rata – u konačnici predstavljao krupan iskorak u smjeru uspostave povjerenja
„Istoka“ i „Zapada“.
Na primjeru vojne operacije u Libiji Europa
je pokazala u kojoj je mjeri spremna i sposobna
doprinijeti izgradnji sustava zaštite međunarodne
sigurnosti. U tom se kontekstu postavlja pitanje
kako će se zajedničke operacije europskih NATOsaveznika i SAD-a u Libiji, koje mnogi analitičari
smatraju testom stvarne sposobnosti europskih
obrambenih snaga za zajedničke vojne operacije, odraziti na zajedničku vanjsku sigurnosnu
i obrambenu politiku EU? S obzirom da će se
zaokret u obrambenoj politici SAD-a značajno
odraziti na transatlantske i euroatlantske odnose,
te čak dovesti do „repozicioniranja“ SAD-a unutar
NATO-a, upitno je kako će se novim okolnostima
prilagoditi politike europskih NATO-saveznika.
Činjenica je da NATO i Europska unija moraju
stvoriti zajedničku platformu za iskorištavanje komparativnih prednosti u podržavanju međunarodnog
mira i sigurnosti. Pitanje koje se u tom kontekstu
nameće je u kojoj je mjeri Europska unija doista
spremna iskorisiti mehanizme za razvoj Zajedničke
sigurnosne i obrambene politike (u daljenjem tekstu: ZSOP), predviđene Ugovorom iz Lisabona?
2. „Sondiranje terena“ na 48. Konferenciji o
sigurnosti u Münchenu
U govorima političara i vojnih stručnjaka
međunarodne zajednice koji su se i ove godine
u veljači tradicionalno okupili na 48. Konferenciji o sigurnosti u Münchenu referenca na financijsku krizu bila je svojevrsni „lajtmotiv“. Sve veća
zaduženost identificirana je kao ključan izazov
za međunarodnu sigurnosnu politiku, budući da
u velikoj mjeri opterećuje nacionalne proračune,
pa tako i proračune za obranu.
Činjenica da su SAD po prvi put u povijesti
održavanja Konferencije predstavljala istodobno
dva visoka dužnosnika američke državne administracije - državna tajnica za vanjske poslove Hillary
Clinton i ministar obrane Leon Panetta, imala je
simboličan učinak samo tri mjeseca uoči održavanja
sastanka na vrhu NATO-a u Chicagu, i tek nekoliko
tjedana nakon što je američki predsjednik Obama
najavio novu vojnu strategiju Sjedinjenih Država,
čiji će fokus u mnogo većoj mjeri nego do sada biti
usmjeren na Aziju i područje Pacifika, a manje na
Europu i njezino neposredno susjedstvo.2
2 Govori sudionika 48. Konferencije o sigurnosti u Münchenu
dostupni su na mrežnoj stranici konferencije, http://www.
securityconference.de/Speeches.422+M52087573ab0.0.h
tml (19. ožujka 2012.)
Njemački ministar vanjskih poslova Guido Westerwelle se založio za euroatlantsku sigurnosnu
zajednicu temeljenu na suradnji, pridajući upravo
Europskoj uniji ulogu „sigurnosnog stupa“ na ostvarenju toga cilja. Pretpostavka jačanju ZSOP-a je
bolje i učinkovitije planiranje i provedba operacija,
ali i otvaranje ZSOP-a partnerstvima sa SAD-om,
Rusijom i Turskom. Pritom valja istaknuti Westerwelleovu poruku kako međunarodna zajednica mora
prevladati mentalitet 20. stoljeća, koji se temeljio
na rivalstvu i nadmetanju u zonama utjecaja, te
osigurati transparentnost i međusobno povjerenje, bez kojega je u konačnici doista nemoguće
usuglašavati i provoditi preventivne sigurnosne
politike u Europi.
Da obrambene snage EU moraju postati
učinkovitije, održivije i komplementarije sa snagama
NATO-saveza posvjedočio je i njemački ministar
obrane Thomas de Maizière, koji je u svom istupu upozorio na manjkavosti ZSOP-a na primjeru
djelovanja EU u Somaliji, gdje je ova politika artikulirana „daleko ispod svojih mogućnosti“.
S druge strane, poruke ruskog ministra vanjskih
poslova Lavrova potvrdile su da se Rusija i dalje
snažno protivi planiranom projektu izgradnje proturaketnog štita pod okriljem Sjevernoatlantskog
saveza. Iako Lavrov o tom pitanju nije isključio
mogućnost nastavka konzultacija, za sada je teško
predvidjeti njihov ishod.
Smjernice koje je postavio Sjevernoatlantski
savez su jasne: naznačivši tri ključna izazova
za NATO - smanjenje proračuna za obranu u
Europi, završetak borbenih operacija u Afganistanu i promjene u obrambenoj strategiji SAD-a
- glavni tajnik NATO-a Anders Fogh Rasmussen
je poručio kako od svih saveznika očekuje predanost provedbi koncepta „pametne obrane“ kao
dugoročne strategije za postizanje tješnje suradnje
i kohezije unutar NATO-a.
3. Koncept NATO-ove „pametne obrane“ i
inicijativa EU o „udruživanju i dijeljenju“
NATO je 2010. na sastanku u Lisabonu usvojio
koncept tzv. „pametne obrane“ (smart defense) koji
podrazumijeva učinkovitiju upotrebu zajedničkih
resursa, održavanje vojnih kapaciteta i umrežavanje
postrojbi kroz multilateralne inicijative. NATO-ova
inicijativa pametne obrane je novi pristup kojim
se nastoji bolje uskladiti kolektivne zahtjeve i nacionalne prioritete država članica, koji predviđa
financijski isplativiju (štedljiviju) strategiju identificiranja zajedničkih rješenja saveznika u jačanju
kapaciteta i sposobnosti, uključujući nabavu, logistiku, obuku i specijalizaciju.
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S druge strane, Njemačka i Švedska su tijekom belgijskog predsjedanja Unijom u drugoj
polovici 2010. u sklopu neformalnih sastanaka
ministara obrane – tzv. „okvira iz Genta“ – predstavile zajedničku inicijativu o udruživanju i dijeljenju
zajedničkih potencijala (pooling and sharing), što
je u uvjetima smanjenih proračuna za obranu bilo
kompromisno rješenje, koje članicama omogućuje
da sudjeluju u zajedničkoj obrani uz što je moguće
bolju racionalizaciju troškova. Ova inicijativa ukazuje na važnost provedbe koncepta dijeljenja i
udruživanja obrambenih kapaciteta kako bi se
ojačali kapaciteti i sposobnosti za sudjelovanje u
vojnim misijama EU-a.
Centar za europske političke studije iz Bruxellesa
je u jednoj analizi predložio smjernice za provedbu
ovog koncepta, i to kroz tri „stupa“ odnosno skupina programa: prvi stup bi obuhvaćao stratešku
opremu, drugim - koji bi predmnijevao učinkovitiju
podjelu posla između država članica, Europske
obrambene agencije i Europske komisije (kao „projektnog menadžera“) - bili bi obuhvaćeni programi
istraživanja i razvoja, a treći bi stup obuhvaćao
projekte specijalizacije. Zagovarajući ovaj model,
njegovi autori (Faleg i Giovannini, 2012b: 22-23)
upozoravaju na višeznačne koristi koji bi on mogao
donijeti EU, i to prvenstveno kroz jačanje sinergije svih uključenih čimbenika i postizanje bolje
integracije obrambenih snaga EU.
U ožujku ove godine glavni tajnik NATO-a Anders
Fogh Rasmussen je pozvao Bruxelles na politički
pragmatizam u suočavanju sa sigurnosnim prijetnjama poput terorizma, oružja za masovno uništenje,
piratstva i kibernetičkog kriminala.3 Konstatirao je da
je NATO-ova operacija u Libiji pokazala značajne
nedostatke u nizu europskih sposobnosti, poput obskrbe zrakoplova gorivom u zraku, tzv. „pametne“
municije i obavještajnog nadgledanja operacije, ali
je pozdravio i napredak koji je Europska obrambena
agencija (EDA) ostvarila kroz inicijativu udruživanja
i dijeljenja. Mjesec dana kasnije Rasmussen je upozorio na potrebu veće prepoznatljivosti angažmana
europskih saeznika, uključujući i spremnost da
sudjeluju u operacijama NATO-a izvan euroatlantskog
područja, te tješnju suradnju između NATO-a i EU.4
3 Obraćanje glavnog tajnika NATO-a Andersa Fogha Rasmussena predsjednicima vanjskopolitičkih odbora parlamenata članica Europske unije u Kopenhagenu, Bruxelles,
12. ožujka 2012., http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_85119.htm (14. lipnja 2012.)
4 Obraćajući se Odboru za vanjske poslove Europskog
parlamenta 23. travnja 2012. Rasmussen je ukazao na
nedavno dogovoreni projekt EU-a u pogledu stvaranja
sposobnosti opskrbe zrakoplova gorivom tijekom leta.
Ocijenio je da operacija u Libiji, unatoč činjenici da su je
vodili europski saveznici, ne bi bila jednako uspješna bez
doprinosa Sjedinjenih država, preuzeto s: http://www.nato.
int/cps/en/natolive/news_86348.htm (15. lipnja 2012.)
4. Nakon sastanka na vrhu NATO-a u Chicagu:
status quo ili nova faza u odnosima NATO-a
i EU?
Osim izlazne strategije za Afganistan, među
temama sastanka na vrhu NATO-a, održanog 20.
i 21. svibnja o.g. u Chicagu, na kojeg ćemo se u
nastavku osvrnuti, bilo je i usuglašavanje modaliteta dijeljenja multinacionalnih projekata u cilju
poboljšanja sposobnosti („pametna obrana”).
U Deklaraciji sa sastanka na vrhu NATO-a o vojnim sposobnostima5 jedno je poglavlje posvećeno
jačanju transatlantskog partnerstva i sinergije koncepta „pametne obrane“ i „udruživanja i dijeljenja“.
NATO je istaknuo angažman EU u području opskrbe
gorivom u zraku, osiguranja medicinske pomoći,
sustava nadziranja na moru i obuke. Prepoznata
je potreba da suradnja između dviju organizacija
postane transparentnija, a pozdravljeni su i napori
koje EU ulaže u jačanje svojih kapaciteta kako bi
osigurala zajedničke sigurnosti, čime EU doprinosi
i jačanju transatlantskih veza.
U Chicagu su se saveznici usuglasili o pokretanju paketa multinacionalnih projekata, koji bi
do 2020. godine osposobio Sjevernoatlantski
savez da korištenjem „pametne obrane“ postigne
odgovarajuće zajedničke sposobnosti kako bi odgovorio predstojećim sigurnosnim izazovima. No,
bolju koordinaciju unutar euroatlantske zajednice
neće biti moguće postići bez više transparentnosti
i jasne podjele odgovornosti između SAD-a i europskih NATO-saveznika.
5. Transatlantski/euroatlantski odnosi kroz
prizmu politika Njemačke, Francuske i Velike
Britanije
U vrednovanju kvalitete suradnje Francuske
i Njemačke te njihovog doprinosa razvoju transatlantskih odnosa valja imati na umu različite
političke tradicije ovih dviju nacija. Sintagma
„francusko-njemačke osovine“ u posljednjih je
nekoliko desetljeća gotovo u pravilu poistovjećivana
sa sintagmom „motora europske integracije“. Kroz
naglašeno zbližavanje s Njemačkom, uključujući i
u domeni oblikovanja smjernica zajedničke vanjske i sigurnosne politike, Francuska je Njemačkoj
ostavljala znatno suženi manevarski prostor,
u kojemu je Njemačka nerijetko bila prisiljena
taktički balansirati između strateškog partnerstva
s Francuskom i tradicionalno stabilnih odnosa sa
Sjedinjenim Državama.
5 Summit Declaration on Defence Capabilities: Toward
NATO Forces 2020, preuzeto s: http://www.nato.int/cps/
en/natolive/official_texts_87594.htm?mode=pressrelease
(12. lipnja 2012.)
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Naime, kao „najprivrženiji američki saveznik
u Europi“ (Brzezinski, 1999: 56), Njemačka nije
asertivnije istupala iz tradicionalno uspostavljenog
savezništva sa SAD-om, sve do razmimoilaženja
oko rješavanja iračke krize. Priroda njemačkoameričkih odnosa u velikoj je mjeri ovisila o tome
hoće li Njemačka ostati regionalna europska sila
ili će na međunarodnoj pozornici biti spremna
preuzeti više globalnih odgovornosti. Njemačka
vanjska politika, uključujući njezin sigurnosno-obrambeni aspekt, tradicionalno počiva na načelima
konstruktivnog doprinosa u okviru UN-a, NATO-a
i Europske unije.
S druge strane, odnose SAD-a i Francuske
desetljećima determinira izraženo rivalstvo u
vanjskoj politici, koje seže još iz vremena vladavine Charlesa de Gaullea i njegove odluke da
Francuska 1966. godine istupi iz vojnih struktura
NATO-a. Francuska kao stalna članica Vijeća
sigurnosti UN-a i nuklearna sila, tradicionalno
pokušava umanjiti američki utjecaj na europskom
kontinentu, te zadržati prepoznatljivu autonomnost
u međunarodnoj vanjskoj i sigurnosnoj politici.
Stoga je sasvim razumljivo da da Francuska
tijekom Iračke krize nije odbijala suradnju sa
Sjedinjenim Državama, ali se oduprla iskazivanju
„slijepe solidarnosti“ koja bi zapravo podrazumijevala podređenost SAD-u i/ili Velikoj Britaniji
(Coulon, 2003: 538). Ipak, do pomirljivijeg trenda
u američko-francuskim odnosima došlo je kada su
Sjedinjene Države pokazale spremnost da politiku prema Iraku legitimiraju kroz Vijeće sigurnosti
UN-a (Koopmann i Stark, 2004: 7).
Konačno, Velika Britanija umješno artikulira
svoje nacionalne interese u NATO-u, vodeći računa
da ne ugrozi strateško partnerstvo sa Sjedinjenim državama, kojima je tradicionalno naklonjena
(Aposkitis, 2006: 87). Britanska je politika to jasno
demonstrirala intenzivnim angažmanom u razvoju
Europskog sigurnosno-obrambenog identiteta (u
daljnjem tekstu: ESOI) u okviru Sjevernoatlantskog saveza, bezuvjetno braneći stajalište da
ESOI treba razvijati kao „europski stup“ NATO-a.
Istodobno je Velika Britanija onemogućavala svaki
pokušaj Francuske da potakne razvoj obrambenih
kapaciteta EU, sve do naglog zaokreta u britanskoj politici na britansko-francuskom sastanku
na vrhu EU u St. Malou 1998 .godine (Aposkitis,
2006: 114), kada su stvoreni temelji Europske
sigurnosne i obrambene politike.6
Ulogu i doprinos europskih država međunarodnoj
sigurnosti u prvom se redu treba vrednovati po
njihovoj sposobnosti da vode anticipirajuću europ6 Ovaj naziv je korišten sve do stupanja na snagu Ugovora
iz Lisabona i upotrebe naziva „Zajednička sigurnosna i
obrambena politika“.
sku politiku. Jedan od francuskih stratega, bivši
direktor Centra za analize i predviđanja francuskog Ministarstva vanjskih poslova Gilles Andréani,
pravodobno je upozorio da će stvaranje europske obrane predmnijevati prethodnu promjenu
pozicije Francuske prema Sjevernoatlantskom
savezu (Andréani, 1998). Bivši francuski predsjednik Nicolas Sarkozy, kojega mnogi smatraju
jednim od najotvorenijih francuskih predsjednika
za politiku suradnje sa SAD-om još od vladavine
Charlesa de Gaullea, najavio je produbljenje odnosa
s NATO-m, pa tako i Sjedinjenim državama kao
transatlantskim saveznikom, ali kao „neovisan
saveznik i slobodan partner SAD-a“.7 Nakon
gotovo dva desetljeća strateških promišljanja
o zaokretu u euroatlantskoj politici, te priprema
u okviru dvogodišnjih pregovora (započetih za
mandata predsjednika Chiraca), Francuska je na
sastanku na vrhu NATO-a u Strasbourgu i Kehlu
2009. godineboznačila povijesni povratak u punopravno članstvo vojnog zapovjedništva NATO-a.
6. Pogled na transatlantsku zajednicu s aspekta
razlika u percepciji sigurnosnih prioriteta
Europske zemlje i Sjedinjene Države različito
pristupaju rješavanju sigurnosnih pitanja, a razlikuju se i njihova iskustva u iskorjenjivanju terorizma. Uzroke različitih pozicija Europe i Sjedinjenih
Država u ovom pitanju treba, među ostalim, tražiti
u činjenici da europske zemlje i Amerika bitno
različito pristupaju rješavanju sigurnosnih pitanja,
a samim tim i terorizma kao jedne od najvećih
prijetnji za globalnu sigurnost. Prema ocjenama
nekih autora, najveći sigurnosni izazovi današnjice
predstavljaju ujedno i najveću ugrozu za američke
strateške nacionalne interese, a terorističke prijetnje se nerijetko preuveličavaju (Hamilton, 2003:
552). Za razliku od Sjedinjenih američkih država,
koje su sve do napada na Pentagon i njujorške
„blizance“ na terorizam u načelu gledale kao na
prijetnju izvan vlastitog državnog teritorija, europske zemlje su naučile tolerirati prisutnost raznolikih oblika terorizma u relativno niskom stupnju.8
U tom kontekstu je potpuno prirodan zazor nekih
zemalja od preuranjenih i pretjeranih reakcija na
sigurnosne prijetnje (Rees, 2003: 77-78).
7 Opširnije vidi govor predsjednika Nicolasa Sarkozyja na
45. Konferenciji o sigurnosnoj politici, održanoj 7. veljače
2009. u Münchenu, preuzeto s: http://www.securityconference.de/Nicolas-Sarkozy.242+M52087573ab0.0.html
(10. veljače 2009.)
8 Primjerice, Njemačke, koja se suočavale s ideološki
motiviranim skupinama poput Crvenih brigada i grupe
Baader-Meinhof te Francuska (napadi nasilničkih skupina
sponzoriranih od strane Alžira).
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Lada Glavaš Kovačić: Perspektive jačanja suradnje NATO-a i EU
U međunarodnoj zajednici su Francuska i
Njemačka, uz Kinu i Rusiju, bile glavni protivnici
vojne akcije protiv Iraka. Francusko-njemački
otpor nije se očitovao samo u odlučnim javnim
nastupima protiv američkog intervencionizma,
nego i u pokušajima da u okrilju NATO-a blokiraju samu intervenciju na Irak (Croci, 2003: 470).
Međunarodna se zajednica doslovno podijelila
nakon što su Sjedinjene Države najavile da će
napasti Irak. Jedina europska država koja nije
bila spremna tolerirati diktatorski režim Saddama
Husseina bila je Velika Britanija, dok su ostale
europske zemlje na iračku prijetnju gledale kao
na unutarnjoirački, a u krajnjem slučaju, tek regionalni problem (Croci, 2003: 474). Podijelile su
se i države „stare“ (zapadne) i „nove“ (istočne)
Europe, što je dovelo do redefiniranja europskog
sigurnosnog poretka (Cvrtila, 2003: 3-4). Naposljetku su razmimoilaženja u transatlantskoj zajednici potaknula repozicioniranje snaga, a europske
države su se 2003. godine uspjele usuglasiti oko
Europske sigurnosne strategije, ocjenjujući transatlantske odnose „nenadomjestivima“.9 Gotovo deset
godina kasnije, u kontekstu nove vojne strategije
SAD-a, otvorenim ostaje kako će se novi razvoj
odraziti na obrambene politike transatlantskih
partnera, ali i na artikuliranje nacionalnih interesa
u okrilju NATO-a i EU.
Hoće li se članice EU opredijeliti za scenarij „renacionalizacije“ ili pak scenarij „regrupiranja“ (Hill,
2004: 143-144) u vanjskoj, sigurnosnoj i obrambenoj politici?10 U EU je sve prisutniji nesrazmjer
ekonomskog i političkog jedinstva među državama
članicama: ovaj „ekonomski div i politički patuljak“
(Stürmer, 1999: 82-83) proživljava prvu ozbiljniju
krizu od uspostave monetarne unije, koja se neminovno odražava na sve njezine politike, njezinu
unutarnju koheziju, a posljedično i na perspektive
daljnje političke integracije.
Ipak - gledajući s formalno-pravnog i institucionalnog aspekta - Europska unije je stupanjem na
snagu Ugovora iz Lisabona u siječnju 2009. godine
stvorila pretpostavke za jačanje svog sigurnosnoobrambenog profila i utjecaja u međunarodnoj
zajednici. U usporedbi s Ugovorom iz Nice, Lisabonskim su ugovorom uvedene značajne institucionalne promjene na području ZVSP i ZSOP. To
9 Europäische Sicherheitsstrategie (2003): Ein sicheres
Europa in einer Besseren Welt, Bruxelles, 12. prosinca, preuzeto s: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/
cmsUpload/031208ESSIIDE.pdf (17. srpnja 2012.)
10 Christopher Hill pod pojmom „renacionalizacija“ podrazumijeva odabir nacionalnih rješenja, dok pojmom „regrupiranje“ označava inicijative za poticanje zajedničkog
djelovanja u Europskoj uniji.
se, uz proširenje „Petersberških zadaća“,11 poglavito odnosi na uspostavu mehanizma „stalne
strukturirane suradnje“, koja državama članicama
omogućuje da ostvare tješnju suradnju u području
obrane kroz sudjelovanje u zajedničkim projektima.12 Temeljna je svrha ovog mehanizma, kao instrumenta diferencirane integracije, ojačati vojne
sposobnosti EU, te potaknuti dinamiku razvoja
ZSOP-a. No, skeptici upozoravaju da je EU takav
mehanizav stvorila prerano, ne vodeći računa o
trenutnim dosezima europske sigurnosne i obrambene politike (Glavaš Kovačić, 2012: 29).
7. Zaključak
Europske države u velikoj mjeri mogu pridonijeti
međunarodnoj sigurnosti upravo na području transatlantskih odnosa, koji bi morali postati usklađeniji
i konzistentniji. U protivnom, europsko nejedinstvo bi dodatno pogoršalo odnose i u euroatlantskoj zajednici, što bi umanjilo izglede za jačanje
međunarodne sigurnosti.
Upravo je nejedinstvo europskih saveznika
tijekom intervencije NATO-a u Libiji umanjilo vjerodostojnost nekih država, poglavito Njemačke.
Naime, Njemačka nije pristala uz Francusku,
Veliku Britaniju i SAD, koje su vodile operaciju,
nego je podržala politiku nemiješanja, koju su u
Vijeću sigurnosti UN-a zastupale Rusija i Kina.
Neki analitičari upozoravaju da Njemačka kao
„drugorazredna politička i vojna sila“ predstavlja
problem za Sjevernoatlantski savez i onemogućava
Europu da preuzme vodeću ulogu u osiguranju
globalne sigurnosti. U tom smislu, Njemačka
bi preuzimanjem političkog vodstva u NATO-u
značajno pridonijela njegovoj budućnosti (Burns,
Wilson i Lightfoot, 2012: 5). No, upitno je hoće li
Njemačka, unatoč svojoj ekonomskoj snazi, biti
spremna odgovoriti na taj izazov u mjeri u kojoj
se to od nje (opravdano) očekuje.
Zaključci sastanka na vrhu NATO-a u Chicagu,
u prvom redu povezivanje koncepta „pametne obrane“ i koncepta „udruživanja i dijeljenja“ zajedničkih
11 Uz dosadašnji obim zadaća u okviru zajedničkih operacija uspostave i očuvanja mira te upravljanje krizama,
proširenje se prvenstveno odnosi na zajedničke operacije
razoružanja, vojnog savjetovanja te misija sprečavanja
sukoba i stabilizacije u kriznim područjima.
12 Prema čl. 42 toč. 6. Ugovora iz Lisabona, „države članice
čiji vojni kapaciteti ispunjavaju više kriterije i koje su se
u ovom području uzajamno obvezale radi obavljanja najzahtjevnijih misija, uspostavljaju stalnu strukturiranu suradnju u okviru Unije“. Opširnije vidi u: Pročišćena inačica
Ugovora o Europskoj uniji i Ugovora o funkcioniranju Europske unije: Ministarstvo vanjskih poslova i europskih integracija RH, preuzeto s: http://www.mvep.hr/custompages/
static/hrv/files/pregovori/111221-lisabonski-prociscena.pdf
(10. ožujka 2012.)
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suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Lada Glavaš Kovačić: Perspektive jačanja suradnje NATO-a i EU
potencijala stvaraju pretpostavke za poboljšanja.
NATO i EU imaju 21 zajedničke članice (pristupanjem Republike Hrvatske u EU u srpnju 2013.
bit će ih 22). Pojačana suradnja u oba modela
omogućila bi europskim državama da ostvare veći
utjecaj u okviru NATO-a i EU, te proizvela učinke
koji bi nadilazili njihove pojedinačne domašaje.
Perspektive razvoja europske sigurnosne i obrambene politike, pak, treba promatrati u kontekstu
daljnjeg razvoja njemačko-francuskog partnerstva,13
ali i sve intenzivnije francusko-britanske suradnje. S
obzirom da su u dosadašnjem razvoju Zajedničke
vanjske i sigurnosne politike (ZVSP) i ZSOP-a
ključnu ulogu odigrale Njemačka, Francuska i
Velika Britanija, opravdano je pretpostaviti da će
upravo one inicirati daljnje iskorake na području
jačanja sposobnosti europske obrane.14
Uz vrlo izglednu perspektivu uspostave ad hoc
koalicija država udruženih putem obrambeno-vojnih
ugovora,15 može se očekivati da će Francuska i
dalje davati najsnažniji poticaj razvoju ZSOP-a, te
da će – prvenstveno u suradnji s Velikom Britanijom - preuzeti dio tereta koji je Europi prepustio
SAD preusmjeravanjem svojih prioriteta na prostor Azije i Pacifika.16
No, unatoč sposobnosti nekih država da i u
uvjetima financijske krize iniciraju zajedničke operacije, izvjesno je da će geopolitički interesi država
članica NATO-a i EU i dalje otežavati postizanje
konsenzusa oko modaliteta za jačanje učinkovitosti
zajedničke obrane i stvaranja zajedničkih kapaciteta.
Suradnja će morati ojačati ne samo na području
koordiniranog djelovanja u okviru operacija i misija,
nego i u području razvoja sposobnosti.
13 Ministri obrane Thomas de Maizière i Jean-Yves Le Drian
su koncem lipnja ove godine najavili intenziviranje bilateralne vojne suradnje, jači angažman njemačko francuskebrigade i suradnju na izradi nove francuske Bijele knjige
o sigurnosnoj politici. Opširnije na: http://www.focus.de/
finanzen/news/wirtschaftsticker/roundup-deutschland-undfrankreich-bauen-ruestungskooperation-aus_aid_771574.
html (22. lipnja 2012.)
14 Ove tri države ostvarile su snažan doprinos ne samo
ključnim fazama razvoja ovih politika, nego i njihovoj institucionalizaciji/europeizaciji - bilo to u okviru multilataralne
suradnje država članica, poticanjem tzv. „ad hoc“ koalicija
ili kroz osmišljavanje odredbi nacrta ustavnog ugovora,
na čijim je „ostacima“ nastao i sam Ugovor iz Lisabona.
15 Primjerice, Švedska je s Estonijom sklopila dvostrani
sporazum o suradnji na području javnih natječaja za vojnu
opremu i zajedničke vojne vježbe, a zajedno s Finskom
pozvala Estoniju, Latviju i Litvu da se priključe Organizaciji
za obrambenu suradnju nordijskih država.
16 U okviru redovitih konzultacija s veleposlanicima, održanima
27. kolovoza ove godine, francuski predsjednik Hollande
je naznačio smjernice francuske vanjske politike. Govor
je dostupan na mrežnoj stranici Elizejske palače: http://
www.elysee.fr/president/les-actualites/discours/2012/
discours-de-m-le-president-de-la-republique.13812.html
(9. rujna 2012.)
Vrijeme će pokazati u kojoj će mjeri i u okviru
kojih zajedničkih inicijativa u Chicagu dogovoren
veći stupanj sinergije donijeti konkretne pomake.
S obzirom da je operacija europskih mornaričkih
snaga „EU NAVFOR Somalia-Atalanta“ najprepoznatljivija, zahvaljujući u prvom redu rastućem
trendu sudjelovanja EU u osiguranju sigurnosti
na moru, neki analitičari prosuđuju da upravo na
području mornaričke sigurnosti postoje neiskorišteni
potencijali za zajedničke obrambene inicijative
(Faleg i Giovannini, 2012a: 3 ).
U ZSOP-u nije došlo do osobitih pomaka,
unatoč činjenici da je Ugovor iz Lisabona stvorio
pretpostavke za povećanje opsega i kvalitete
vojnih sposobnosti EU u međunarodnim operacijama, prvenstveno u kontekstu mogućnosti
koje pruža instrument stalne strukturirane suradnje. Premda je nerealistično očekivati da će
države članice, pritisnute dužničkom krizom, biti
spremne izdvojiti dodatna sredstva za pojačane
oblike međudržavne suradnje u području sigurnosti
i obrane,17 sasvim je izvjesno da će članice EU
morati postići konsenzus oko uvjeta za stvaranje
zajedničkog obrambenog tržišta - koje je i dalje
vrlo rascjepkano. Sve su to pretpostavke koje EU
mora ispuniti ukoliko želi postati prepoznatljivijom,
djelotvornijom i sposobnom za preuzimanje odgovornosti u osiguranju regionalne (europske) i
globalne sigurnosti.
Jačanje odnosa s Europskoj unijom jedan je
od prioriteta mandata glavnog tajnika NATO-a
Andersa Fogha Rasmussena, a i Visoka predstavnica EU za vanjske poslove i sigurnosnu
politiku Catherine Ashton se kontinuirano zalaže
za jačanje međusobne podrške NATO-a i EU
i učinkovitiju suradnju u području obrambenih
sposobnosti. No, konstruktivne poruke koje se
odašilju javnosti gube na vjerodostojnosti ukoliko
ne rezultiraju konkretnim zajedničkim akcijama.
Za početak, obje će organizacije morati uložiti
pojačane napore u identificiranje, a zatim i otklanjanje neželjenog preklapanja aktivnosti. A to je i
za Sjevernoatlantski savez i za EU velik izazov s
vrlo neizvjesnim ishodom.
17 Kriza je utjecala na smanjenu sposobnost država da
dosegnu mjerila NATO-a. Bivši američki ministar obrane
Robert M. Gates u lipnju 2011. je izrazio sumnju da će
koncept „pametne obrane“ imati učinka na jačanje borbene sposobnosti ukoliko europski saveznici ne povećaju
izdatke za obranu. Prema njegovim riječima, tek 5 od 28
saveznika osigurava dogovorenih 2% BDP-a u izdacima za obranu (SAD, UK, Francuska, Grčka i Albanija).
Opširnije vidi govor ministra Gatesa u sjedištu NATO-a,
preuzeto s: http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.
aspx?SpeechID=1581 (7. rujna 2012.).
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Lada Glavaš Kovačić: Perspektive jačanja suradnje NATO-a i EU
suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
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Deutschland und Frankreich bauen Rüstungskooperation aus, http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/wirtschaftsticker/roundup-deutschland-und-frankreich-bauen-ruestungskooperation-aus_aid_771574.html
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centar za politološka istraživanja
political science research centre
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suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Perspectives of strengthening cooperation between NATO and the
European Union in the context of regional and global security
LADA GLAVAŠ KOVAČIĆ
Croatian Mission to the Council of Europe, Strasbourg
The Euro-Atlantic community faces new challenges - at a time when the US is
increasingly turning its focus towards Asia-Pacific, European countries will have
to take much more responsibility in ensuring European security. As the shift in
defense policy of the United States would have impact on transatlantic and
Euro-Atlantic relations, and even lead to a “repositioning” of the United States
within NATO, the question remains how the European NATO allies would adapt
to these new circumstances. NATO and the EU must create a common platform to exploit comparative advantages in supporting international peace and
security. Conclusions of the Summit of NATO in Chicago, primarily linking the
concept of “smart defense” and the concept of “pooling and sharing” have created conditions for improvements. Enhanced cooperation in both models would
allow European countries not only to exercise greater influence within NATO
and the EU, but also to achieve effects that outreach their individual achievements. Despite the ability of some countries to initiate joint operations in times
of economic crisis, member states’ geopolitical interests will continue to complicate achieving consensus on modalities for strengthening the effectiveness
of the common defense and creation of common facilities. Both organizations
will primarily have to invest more efforts in identifying - and eventually removing - unwanted overlapping activities. This is a challenge whose outcome is
very difficult to predict.
Key words: regional security, NATO, smart defense, European Union,
pooling and sharing
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UDK: 316.334.3:297
323.233:297
Pregledni rad
Primljeno: 24. rujna 2012.
Davutoğlu: Thinking Depth and Global Political Activism as New
Grand Strategy
ALI PAJAZITI
South East European University, Tetovo
This paper is an analytical synopsis of Ahmet Davutoğlu’s pro-civilizational
activism, an essay on this globally recognized diplomat and expert in the field
of international relations, history of political thought and political philosophy.
Davutoğlu is an author of the strategic doctrine of new Turkey as global actor
with neo-Ottomanist Geist. It shows his multidimensional approach to civilizations and their world views (Weltanschauung), to their truth perceptions and
cultural other/otherness, as well as his diplomatic discourse that generates
security, peace and democracy that made him one of the main initiators of the
Alliance of Civilizations in an era of Huntingtonian macro-conflictualism as new
global disorder. This article focuses on non-rational differentiation in the West
and the rest in the era of post-modern “international sprint”, when the world is
transformed into a global village and when the only solution is in finding common values, a social philosophy that ties different culturological perspectives.
In this context, Davutoğlu’s geopolitical doctrine is based on principles of security for all, dialogue, economic (inter)dependence and cultural coexistence and
pluralism, which can especially help the Balkans area to avoid being a field of
post-Ottoman historical tragedies.
Key words: global politics, civilizations, dialogue, neo-Ottomanism, interdependence
“Bookish character with a formidable knowledge in history!”
The Economist (2010)
“Davutoğlu is one of the most brilliant intellectuals not just in
Turkey but in the whole Muslim world as well. His intellectual CV is impressing.”
Arbën Xhaferri, late President of the Democratic Party of
Albanians in Macedonia
1. Introduction
Ahmet Davutoğlu, a scientific and diplomatic
celebrity, intellectual, a “great man”, the most important personality of Turkish diplomatic history, a
deep thinker who is the author of a practical and
efficient geo-political doctrine, with a “planner”
who aims to create a new world order based on
universal standards and values to establish the
contours of a polycentric world, to build a dispassionate diplomacy (Pajaziti, 2009: 105-106);
Davutoğlu the author of the major Turkish strategy (Turkish Grand Strategy) which constitutes
“the ideological depth constant of the Turkish foreign policy” (Novi Standard, 2010), the author of
the book that is the foundation of Turkish foreign
policy vision – which, more independent than
ever, takes Ankara as its axis and not others –
that made this country an actor and not an issue
(Judah, 2011), a country that has power and the
wind on its back and which is being represented
ever more strongly in international institutions.1
1 Secretary General of the Islamic Conference Organization (İhsanoğlu), NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for
Defence Policy and Planning (Dirioz), President of European Council’s Parliamentary Assembly (Çavuşoğlu).
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I consider Davutoğlu, who has launched a
new era in Turkish foreign policy and diplomacy,
a teacher of mine for the moment, for one day (i.e.
at a university lecture) I have been his “student”,
as a student of sociology and anthropology MA
(1997). Since that academic meeting Davutoğlu
has “tied me to himself” as a distance learner, has
made me his student for life, has made me constantly dependent his writings, books, interviews,
statements. My first meeting with him as an external (guest) student from the group of economists,
as far as I remember, made me interested in his
article Self-perception of Civilizations, and there
was born the initiative for translating Davutoğlu’s
discourse, for conveying a different discourse on
the perception of civilization, sociology and international relations, unlike the dialectic (Marxist) and
dialogical (Morin) ones, much more flexible and
constructive, a diplomatic discourse that “generates” security, peace and democracy and is among
the initiators of the Alliance of Civilizations.2
2. Towards a normalization of history:
Alternative self-perception
The renowned Turkish intellectual, thinker,
scientist, the famous expert of international relations, the diplomat and professor Ahmet Davutoğlu
is the man who has reached global fame by his
own creative ideas. Here is concrete evidence
to the universality of the opinion of this scientistdiplomat. According to the prestigious US magazine Foreign Policy, he has managed to position
himself among the ten most influential thinkers in
the world according to the second annual list of
Top 100 Global Thinkers, as the seventh, ahead
of Kissinger (25), Paul Krugman (26), Fareed Zakaria (27), Thomas Friedman (33), Jacques Attali
(47), etc. This magazine sees 2010 as a crucial
year when the signs of the rise of “the rest of the
world” (rise of the rest) were seen, through accelerated economic growth of China and the diplomatic
rise of Turkey and Brazil (Foreign Policy, 2011).
As a good connoisseur of social sciences in
general and psychology among them, Davutoğlu,
so fascinatingly uses the self and ego (self-perception), taking it on the sociological level, on nationbuilding and state-building (state-building: superstates, large states, regional powers and small
states), and does not stop there, but passes on
global dimensions, in a macro concept of civilizations. The globally recognized expert in the field of
international relations, history of political thought
and political philosophy shows a multidimensional
2 Launched by Erdoğan and Zapatero in 2005 with support
from the United Nations.
approach in this work to and civilizations and their
world views (Weltanschauung), by dealing with
how they see the truth, how they perceive themselves and the other/otherness and what stance
they take vis-à-vis other cultures and civilizations.
Speaking of civilizational self-perception and
awareness he offers five kinds of perceptive typology:
1. Strong and severe civilizational self-perception: The Aryan self-perception of the Indian
civilization, which constitutes the basis to the
exclusionary system of the castes.
2. Strong and flexible civilizational self-perception: Two examples of this self-perception we
find in the eclectic civilizational basin formed
under the political power of Alexander the Great
and in the different forms of Islamic civilization
displayed under Abbasid, Andalusian, Ottoman
and Indian axis.
3. Strong and local civilizational self-perception:
The traditional self-perception of the Chinese
who considers his country to be the center of
the universe. China’s traditional name Zhongguo
that means “Central Kingdom” testifies to this.
4. Poor and harsh civilizational self-perception:
A par excellence example is the Mongolian selfperception displayed by Genghis Khan, who
by gathering all nomadic elements under one
political authority blew like a hurricane or tornado over all the basins of ancient civilizations.
5. Poor and flexible civilizational self-perception:
It is based on a simple and “bare” world view
with no universal claims. We find examples of
this self-perception among natives of America,
Africa and Australia (Davutoğlu, 2010a: 39-56).
He also elaborates phrases such as homo
islamicus and homo occidentalis oeconomicus
axiomaticus and examines Westocentrism (West
and rest), the issue of mission civilisatrice, and
that of one-line or linear flow of history. He has
been among the first to challenge the distinguished
names of global theoretical science and policymaking like Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington who offer endist, confrontational-conflictual
and armageddonian-cataclysmic paradigms. Let
us just recall the following phrase in an article by
Davutoğlu where he says that the Bosnian crisis is the end of the “end of history” (Davutoğlu,
1997-1998) raising his voice as a deep analyst
against the voices of philosophers who end history. So history has not ended, there is no endism.
The author rejects Fukuyama by claiming that
the human searching process has not ended.
The most vivid proof of this is the revival of local
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values in a form of settling the accounts with the
global superficiality, giving meaning to areas of
ontological freedom and confidence that represent ancient requirements of man. He calls for
the so-called normalization of history process. He
stresses the importance of eliminating the Cold
War and colonial abnormalities. Fukuyama says
that history has ended, while Davutoğlu claims that
history has started, having been in an unnatural
state during its preliminary period that should be
normalized (Today’s Zaman, 2011).
He criticizes Huntington’s concept of the clash
of civilizations as a mental parameter that directly
represents strategic recommendations to United
States against the others, which creates a climate
of anti-Americanism (remember the book by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do
People Hate America?) and anti-globalism, of postAmericanism (Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American
World), a climate against the Pax Americana as
a paradigm of our time. Huntington’s dealing that
shows the cultural or civilizational revival of nonwestern basins as a strategic threat and recommends that western strategists should manipulate
civilizational contradictions among the basins in
question, was not only subjected to serious reactions by non-Western civilizations, especially by
the Islamic and Chinese civilizations, but at the
same time it raised many serious doubts among
the Western elite and builders who felt the dangers of a categorical differentiation in the West
and the rest (Davutoğlu, 2010b: 16). According
to Davutoğlu “confrontational categorizations
based on provoking civilizational differences like
West against Islam and West against the others
cannot in any way contribute to global peace and
security, nor to the readjustment process of the
international system. Erroneous strategic calculations based on confrontational categorizations will
continue to be the main obstacle to global peace.
Colonial ambitions and anti-colonial feelings of the
last century could occur again with such strategic
misuse of civilizational differences and all this will
harm the west in general and USA in particular
(Davutoğlu, 1997-1998)”.
Davutoğlu is a thinker who through “proactive
policy and multidimensional international policy
(Keyman, 2009, cited in Öktem, 2010: 25)”, instead
of a clash of civilizations and conflict, offers the
world a message of understanding, coexistence
and dialogue as indispensable alternatives. Unlike
dogmatic strategists he is an impartial analyst and
interpreter of the world in crisis we are living in, a
supporter of constructive policies for a functional
globe despite global conflictuality apologists. He
works for realizing in the micro plan, as well as in
the macro plan, his mission of creating a positive
political climate. He is not an anti-globalist but
an alter-globalist, as he says: a different world is
possible. And he tries to realize it by activism in
hot areas as well as by soccer diplomacy (Gül in
Armenia for the Turkey-Armenia football match
in 2008).
He also deals with the issue of the Muslim
world and concludes that this inferior, colonized,
confused world as a peripheral element of world
politics, “which has lost its status as a determining civilizational power can regain this status on
the basis of time’s circularity. This would require
a renewal of Islamic civilizational parameters and
values rather than a withdrawal of them in favor of
adopting Western ones” (Davutoğlu, 2005). According to him, the Muslim world could create a new
civilizational vitality, if the intellectual, economic
and political elites could reformulate the stability of the historical wealth of Islamic civilization
for achieving an efficient activation in the social,
economic and political arena (Davutoğlu, 2005).
3. Albanosphere, neo-Ottomanism and strategic
depth
For the Albanian reader Davutoğlu is a familiar
name. His works Self-perception of Civilizations,
The Global Crisis and Civilizational Transformation
and the Muslim World have been read with delight
for some time now by our scholars, especially by
those who want to look at things through a multidimensional approach and not only from a egocentric illusion or from the position of idola specus
(idol of the cave). His ideas have found resonance
and have encouraged the local intellectual circle
as well (A. Xhaferi, T. Arifi, S. Pendarovski, etc.).
The most voluminous and popular work of the
author, Strategic Depth: The International Position
of Turkey (2001), whose nucleus in my opinion is
to be found in the Self-perception of Civilizations.
Through the doctrine of “strategic depth”, revealed
in detail in the work bearing the same title which
was named by Graham E. Fuller as the most detailed systematic vision ever drawn about Turkey’s
strategic position, and was called “the Bible of modern Turkey (Novi Standard, 2010)” by a Serbian
diplomat and scholar (D. Tanasković), Davutoğlu
has brought a new spirit in Turkey’s relations with
the outside world. In this work, which has seen 43
publications in Turkish,3 Davutoğlu foresees that
Turkey, from a marginal state has the capacity to
become a central state and finally into a global
player or global power. According to him, Turkey
has the geographical and historical depth as a
3 Also translated in Arabic, Albanian, Persian and Greek.
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European, Balkan, Mediterranean, Asian, Middle
Eastern, Caucasian, Black Sea state that also has
an imperial historical background (as heir to the
Ottoman State) and it includes a mix of various
elements of the spaces mentioned above, which
meet under the roof of the modern Turkish state
(The Economist, 2007: 60; Koha, 2009: 14).
This doctrine based on Davutoğlu’s innovative approach on geopolitics is based on these
principles:
a) Security for all,
b) Dialogue as the primary way to resolve the
crisis,
c) Economic (inter)dependence,
d) Cultural coexistence and pluralism.
It is interesting to note that some experts oppose
thinkers who describe this doctrine as an Ottoman
or neo-Ottoman challenge, as neo-Ottomanism,
holding that the doctrine in question contains a
vision that transcends the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire and extends the historical ties and
Turkish interests to Asia, Africa and the West. According to Davutoğlu Turkey cannot be compared
with national states formed in the twentieth century;
its position can only be compared with the position of former empires such as England, France,
Germany, Russia, China, Japan, etc. According to
him, its geographical depth is part of the historical
depth because the position of Turkey makes it a
state of many geostrategic areas the same time.
According to Davutoğlu Turkey also holds quite
an important place in “East-West, North-South
tensions. Seen from the East it is an outgrowth
of the West, while from the West it appears as an
extension of the East” (2001). The basic principles
of this doctrine are: Balance between security and
freedom, zero problems with neighbors, development of good relations with close and far regions,
multidimensional diplomacy, rhythmic diplomacy
and stronger representation in international organizations. In this regard have Turkey’s relations with NATO, OSCE, OIC, the Organization of
Black Sea Economic Cooperation, the Economic
Cooperation Organization, the G8, D20 etc. been
analyzed on the plane of this doctrine. The book
also includes reflections of strategic depth doctrine on marine basins, effective water policy in
the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, Aegean
Sea, and Caspian Basin, Cyprus, in the straits, in
the Indian Basin and in the Persian Gulf. It also
deals with the intercontinental strategy of Turkish
foreign policy - based on the doctrine of strategic
depth - regarding Europe, Asia and Africa and
plans and strategies towards regions of mutual
intercontinental influence.
This doctrine of the “Turkish Kissinger”, besides the extraordinarily raised image all around
the world (as the “moderate Islamic actor”), includes the Arab countries that for a century have
squinted on Turkey while today they look at it as
an example and leader of the Islamic world. This
has brought economic benefits to Turkey like the
growth of export and these developments have led
to an expansion of relations in culture and other
vital areas. The facts show that all these countries have interests in cooperating with one of the
twenty largest economies in the world (foreseen
to be 10th by 2020) with a country that is growing
in reputation day by day.4
Let us get back to the title of my article for this
promotion: Davutoğlu is truly sui generis, he is one
who connects opposites, antipodes, and sometimes
hardly compatible or incompatible paradigms: within
a day he can meet with the Taliban and Obama,
with Ahmadinejad and Bush (Obama), with Putin
and with the Chechen leadership, with Tadić and
Thaçi or Bakir Izetbegović, until recently with Netanyahu and Abbas, with representatives of East
Turkistan and Chinese leadership.
One thing that I regret and that worries me
as knowledge seeker is that diplomacy is taking
Davutoğlu from the field of science, a concerns
he has also expressed to me in meetings that we
have had. But in a recent TV interview, he replied
to journalist’s question about “what he’d recently
read?” by saying that he had finished a literary
book (İskender Pala, The Shah and the Sultan),
indicating that he is accumulating in order to distribute and what is more interesting, that he has
no complex in reading texts by coeval colleagues,
which a good part of us does not do for various
whims. Impressing in this statement was the fact
that he had read it in the plane during the round
trip to America due to the lack of time because of
diplomatic traffic (TRT Haber, 2010). The facts
indicate that Davutoğlu is a localist as well as a
globalist, he stands for “glocalism”, recognizing
both the material values (civilization) as well as
spiritual ones (culture); he is eclectic and stands
for a symbiosis of values.
Strategic Depth - based on Özal’s neo-Ottoman policies and Erbakan’s multidimensional
diplomacy – has been dubbed a “naive concept
4 With a GDP per capita of 13.392 $ Vestel is the biggest TV
producer in Europe, THY is the fourth biggest flight company in Europe, after British Airways, Lufthansa and Air
France-KLM (officially announced as the best for 2011),
the fourth producer of cars, one of the five biggest world
producers of furniture (İstikbal), of sweets (Ülker), 11 of
100 world’s best hotels are in Turkey (Financial Times,
2011).
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and radical thesis” by some analysts under the
sky who criticize it for creating a “virtual Ottoman
Empire” and seeing the Balkans as the center of
world politics and not as a blind loop. A Turkey
abstracted from the hinterland called Balkans,
Middle East and Caucasus can have no influence
at all in the international arena. This is why Balkans has been one of the most visited regions by
Davutoğlu since 2009 when he was offered the
post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is the region
where the pacifying concept is promoted. In the
meanwhile Turkey’s economic and cultural activism in the region is not lacking too (TAV, THY,
Ramstore, Acibadem Hospitals, Epoka University,
IBU, colleges of the Gülen Movement, restoration
of Ottoman monuments, the opening of Turkish
cultural centers, etc.).
When we talk about this doctrine and the Albanian reality my dilemma is whether we and Albanian lands in general and Albania in particular
could become a pivotal country from a torn country
in the Balkans and implement the zero problems
policy with our neighbors (against the phrase
“surrounded by enemies on all sides”), whether
we could increase our confidence in our cultural,
historical, political, economic, scientific and other
capabilities. We believe that it depends on a new
intellectual spirit that knows how to make synthesis and eclecticism between time and space,
between yesterday and today, who understands
the totality of national values with which we can
compete in the post-modern “international sprint”
and that of a third wave society.
4. Conclusion
Only the qualitative human element can give
geography and history new meanings and perspectives - Davutoğlu says (Davutoğlu, 2010b:
56). According to him, every society must enter
the process of self-renewal, of rediscovering the
cultural references, of reinstating the social and
moral-ethical reflections and must avoid the false
self. In this regard, we remind remember that the
institutional “cultural terrorism” which attempts by
any means to alienate Albanians from its substantive components has to be avoided.
Through its selection of weighty works and
by shaking the Albanian erudition ground, the
Logos-A publishing house aims to give the mind
momentum to new horizons, to carry out in maximum the motto promoted on the occasion of the
20-year jubilee “being the subject of free thought”.
We believe that this work will take its place in the
annals of building the tower of major translations
and will particularly enrich the Albanian academic
field of international relations and diplomacy and
that it will become the manual of every Albanian
politician.
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References
Ali, M. (2010): Stratejik Derinlik Doktrini ve bu Doktrinin Balkanlara Yansımaları, Balkan Araştırmaları
Dergisi, 1 (2)
Davutoğlu, A. (2010a): Vetëperceptimet e qytetërimeve, Skopje: Logos-A
Davutoğlu, A. (2010b): Thellësia strategjike: Pozita ndërkombëtare e Turqisë, Skopje: Logos-A
Davutoğlu, A. (2005): Transformimi qytetërimor dhe bota muslimane, Skopje: Logos-A
Davutoğlu, A. (1997-1998): The Clash Of Interests: An Explanation Of The World (Dis)Order, Perceptions: Journal Of International Affairs, 2 (4)
Öktem, K. (2010): New Islamic actors after the Wahhabi intermezzo: Turkey’s return to the Muslim Balkans, Oxford: European Studies Centre, University of Oxford
Pajaziti, A. (2009): Fjalor i sociologjisë, Skopje: Logos-A
Walker, J. W. (2009): Turkey’s Imperial Legacy: Understanding Contemporary Turkey through its Ottoman
Past, in Harris, J. (ed.): The Nation on the Global Era: Conflict and the Transformation, Leiden: Brill
Newspapers
Davutoğlu, A. (2009): Njeriu nën hije i Turqisë, Koha, 27 May
Lauer, C. (2010): The man behind Turkey’s strategic depth, Asia Times, 20 February
Novi Standard, 4 February-26 June 2010
The Economist, 21 October 2010
TRT Haber, 26 December 2010
Web sources
Turkey says returning to ‘normal’ in ties with China, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-225717-turkeysays-returning-to-normal-in-ties-with-china.html (28 January 2011)
The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2010globalthinkers (28 January 2011)
What Turkey Wants, http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-turkey-wants.html (29 January 2011)
FT Reports: Turkish Airlines: Expansion during Recession pays off, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b1d3bac00d8-11e0-aa29-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1DHc4grsg (27 January 2012)
Judah, B. and Bechev, D. (2011): Turkey: An Actor not an Issue, http://www.ecfr.eu/blog/entry/turkey_
an_actor_not_an_issue (1 March 2011)
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Davutoğlu: misaona dubina i globalni politički aktivizam kao nova
velika strategija
ALI PAJAZITI
South East European University, Tetovo
Ovaj članak analitički je sinopsis procivilizacijskog aktivizma Ahmeta Davutoğlua,
esej o ovom globalnom priznatom diplomatu te stručnjaku u polju međunarodnih
odnosa, povijesti političkih ideja i političke filozofije. Davutoğlu je autor strateške
doktrine nove Turske kao globalnog aktera s neoosmanističkim Geistom. Ona
pokazuje njegov multidimenzionalni pristup civilizacijama i njihovom svjetonazorima (Weltanschauung), njihovim percpecijama istine i kulturnoj drugosti,
ali i njegov diplomatski diskurs koji generira sigurnost, mir i demokraciju te
koji ga je učinio jednim od glavnih incijatora Saveza civilizacija u eri Huntingtonovskog makrokonfliktualizma kao novog globalnog nereda. Ovaj članak fokusira se na neracionalnu diferencijaciju na Zapad i ostatak u eri postmodernog
„međunarodnog sprinta“, kada se svijet transformira u globalno selo i kada je
jedino rješenje u pronalaženju zajedničkih vrijednosti, socijalne filozofije koja
će povezati različite kulturološke perspektive. U ovom kontekstu Davutoğluova
geopolitička doktrina temelji se na principima sigurnosti za sve, dijaloga, gospodarske (među)ovisnosti i kulturne koegzistencije i pluralizma, što posebno
može pomoći balkanskom prostoru kako bi se izbjeglo da on postane poljem
postosmanskih povijesnih tragedija.
Ključne riječi: globalna politika, civilizacije, dijalog, neoosmanizam, međuovisnost
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Kalina Jordanova: Transmission of traumatic experiences
UDK: 325.254-053.2:159.97](497.6)
Prethodno priopćenje
Primljeno: 25. rujna 2012.
Transmission of traumatic experiences in the families of war
survivors from Bosnia and Herzegovina
KALINA JORDANOVA
UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London
This paper explores the process of transmitting war experiences from parents to
children in the contemporary Bosnian context. It is informed by studies in psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology. Using in-depth interviews with families,
family trees and children’s drawings, I try to understand why and how parents
communicate their traumatic memories to their children, and how children respond to their parents’ recollection of the recent past. In brief, I argue that parents avoid the topic of the war and this avoidance derives from the ambiguity
of their experiences in war. Second, their reluctance to talk about a certain part
of their life results in fragmentation of history and consequently in a fragmented
sense of selfhood and belonging in their children. Fragmentation is also reflected in the fact that the war narratives are gender dependent which means that
women’s stories of the war differ from those of their husbands. In most cases,
men have difficulties in sharing their war experience with their children for three
main reasons. First, they are not able to arrive at a clear-cut narrative on their
own participation in the warfare. Second, they seem to lack the language to
describe an experience which is felt to be unique and sometimes surreal. Finally, their narrative does not always overlap with the official state-recognized
version of history.
Key words: war trauma, trauma transmission, paternal function,Bosnia and
Herzegovina
1. Introduction
The concept of intergenerational trauma transmission has first appeared as a separate subject
after the Second World War.1 It denotes the process of passing one’s traumatic experiences to
the next generation through narrative, behavior
and silence. The research in the aftermath of the
1 The idea of transmitting some traumatic knowledge of the
past persists in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle
as the idea of transmitting reminiscences of a past ruled
by “the pleasure principle” but replaced by the present
which is subjected to “the reality principle” (Freud, 1920).
The loss of a world governed by immediate gratification
is felt as particularly traumatic in the context of a highly
demanding reality which requires gratification deferral.
However, the idea of the collective dimension of trauma
starts to interest social scientists after the First World War
and expands with the onset of the Second World War.
two world wars, the war in Vietnam, the riots in Sri
Lanka, and other instances of mass violence, has
contributed to a better understanding of trauma
transmission. Yet, the topic has remained underresearched because in contrast to other war-related
issues it requires a long and in-depth work with
the whole family touching upon the most intimate
aspects of the parent-child interaction. Apart from
this general problem, the post-war post-Yugoslav
milieu has been primarily examined from political, historical or ethnographic perspective, somehow failing to take into account the in-depth and
independent of ethnic or religious background
psycho-social phenomena. This paper is trying to
fill in the above mentioned gap while considering
the specific cultural context of Western Balkans.
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2. Target group, setting and main concepts
selfhood. Therefore, parental reluctance to share
certain moments of the family history often results
in inconsistent identities in children and a controversial tie to their homeland (Cattel and Climo,
2002; Connerton, 1989). The theoretical framework based on psychoanalysis and anthropology
informs the research method I use to explore the
process of transmission of war experiences. It is
composed by a set of techniques used in anthropological fieldwork and psychological research
and therapy, and namely the semi-structured interview, the life-story interview (conducted in the
mother tongue of the respondents), the participant
observation, the genogram (family tree), and children’s drawings on a preliminary given topic. In
what follows I am going to outline my observations
and provide each with an interpretation.
The respondents group comprises of 30 families
of war survivors from Bosnia and Herzegovina of
various ethnic and religious background. All survivors have experienced war violence (torture, rape,
forced conscription and displacement, imprisonment, mock executions or witnessing these) while
their children were born after the war and do not
have first-hand experience in war. Children’s idea
of their parents’ past has been first constructed on
the basis of what has been shared or kept secret
in their immediate family environment, the information from TV, internet and film, and last but
least their school and peer group. At home, children are more often exposed not to their parents’
stories about the war, but to their behavior, body
language, disabilities, and anxiety-loaded silence
with regards to war-related situations. Children
therefore re-construct their parents’ war experience with the help of their own imagination and
dependent on their already internalized knowledge
about wars, enemies, heroic death, or battlefields.
Sharing war experiences most often takes place
either in the context of the regular meetings of
the veterans when children are present or while
the family is travelling to places that trigger war
memories in parents. Children in these situations
have the feeling of encountering a lived history
since a narrative in first person links to a visual
object which is still having the traces of what is
being talked about.
For clarity reasons, I am going to briefly denote the main concepts I will be using throughout this paper. I understand trauma as a rupture
in experience which represents one’s inability to
deal with the uncanny. It occurs at the moment
when one’s most intense anxieties meet reality or
in other words, when what has been imagined as
threatening finds realization in the actual world.
Transmission of trauma represents the process of
passing one’s traumatic experiences to the peer
group (horizontal transmission) or to the next generation (vertical transmission), with the latter being
the topic of this paper. Survivors are defined as
victims of torture, rape, forced conscription and
displacement, imprisonment, and mock executions or witnessing these during the break-up of
Yugoslavia in the 1990s where bearing witness
is understood as equally traumatic to being the
actual victim due to the process of psychological
identification of the witness with the victim. I also
use the category of memory which provides the
basis to understand what is being remembered
and why. Memory is viewed as an organizing phenomenon which ensures cohesion and sense of
3. Silence, therefore fragmentation
“I am not sure whether you will understand
me. I have done things that may now seem
not normal in situations which were not normal
(M, 40, male)”.
“I will tell my son when he is old enough to
understand (R, 44, male)”.
The selected quotations from interviews with
veterans represent in condensed form the parents’
attempt - and especially of those who were directly
engaged in warfare - to avoid the topic of the war.
If asked to tell a story or when provoked by place
or event, they tend to communicate fragmented
facts such as dates, names, places while avoiding
detail and emotion. Although this observation has
been already made with regards to many trauma
patients, in the specific case of war-related trauma
I will single out one particular reason for parents’
silence: the controversy of experiences.
Regardless of the fact that the public discourse
in each Yugoslav successor state is very clear about
who fought whom in the recent wars, soldiers’ feelings with regards to their involvement in warfare
seem to be controversial. Starting from the clear
statement of having gone to the front to protect
themselves and their families, they often arrive at
a dubious and painful narrative about their actual
position during the war. The ambiguity of experiences is most visible in war veterans who were
exposed to death on a scale they had not before
imagined. During and after the war they seem to
have been assigned the role of horror keepers,
or in other words they are expected to keep their
memories locked because recalling them may have
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a devastating effect on the self and the other. In
brief, in contrast to women’s life-preserving position during the war, men had a more unclear one.
Although many of them went to the front in order to
protect life – or at least this is what they believed
in, they often ended up killing people and witnessing life’s destruction. Thus, the heroic narrative
has become firmly bound to a horrific one, which
is not expected to be shared. Furthermore, at a
rational level, veterans’ families declare the readiness to listen and understand those who survived
horror, but when faced with the reality of the possible answers, they are afraid of what they may
hear. The wife of a former soldier answered my
question about what she would like to know but
had never asked her husband with the following:
“I’d like to know whether he has killed somebody. But I don’t dare ask him because I fear
my own response to his answer”.
Men’s (unconscious) uncertainty about the
questions “What did I participate in?” and “What
had become of me during the war?” gives rise
to some unarticulated suspicion in children and
wives about what their fathers and husbands may
have done and/or witnessed. Consequently, men
often spare parts of the narrative. This contributes
to a quite fragmented version of the past where
the time line is not a continuum, but can be better
presented as an interrupted sequel of episodes
with gaps between them where events cannot be
still plausibly explained and are therefore kept
secret. Stories of the war are impossible to tell
in a consistent manner also because of the surreal aspect of the experience. Running though a
mined field with mines exploding around, surviving
after a mass execution or being spared by change
in a prison camp are experiences which border
the supernatural in respondents’ imagination. Incapacity to tell a consistent story is also due to
another phenomenon: the feeling that everything
was possible and allowed in war. This ‘functioning
without a framework’ is in sharp contrast to what
is known as a norm before and after the war and
makes life in war look thrilling, surreal and indescribable. Finally, the inability to talk about the war
is worsened by many other factors which vary in
each individual. For some of the survivors, there
is a clash between their private narratives and the
public discourse which prevents them from arriving
at a plausible version of the past. In other cases,
the lack of items which preserve memory such as
family albums, toys, gifts, and other objects lost
or destroyed in the war widens the blank spots in
parents’ experience as they do not have any ex-
ternal sites of memory to help them organize their
experience. Gaps in memory transmission often
make it difficult for children to produce a consistent narrative of their family’s past and they need
to “invent” parts of it. They must imagine parts of
their family history, so to speak, in order to know
the world as it looked before they were born.
4. The memories’ gender
Men’s narratives on the war differ from those
of their wives and mothers. Related to their previously discussed more involved position in the
warfare, men’s narratives often appear to be more
fragmented, violent and deprived of emotional reflexivity in comparison to women’s stories. Women,
on the other hand, can be seen as having the role
of life keepers during the war, as they were the
ones to supply the home with water and food, organize the daily life, take care of the children and
the elderly, and often leave the country in order to
rescue themselves and their children. Consequently,
women feel more comfortable with talking about
the war with their children.2 Very often, the result
is that the narrative which gets transmitted across
generations in a more consistent and transparent
manner is the one of the mothers. Their relative
ease to talk about the war is reflected in the order
family members talk to me with women agreeing
to see me first. Fathers’ experience is being often
communicated through silence, disability, body
language, and war jokes. Another significant resource of information for children about the last
and previous wars is grandparents since they
maintain a close relationship with grandchildren
in many Balkan families.
5. Jokes
Jokes and joking occupy a central place in remembering the war and dealing with war-related
memories in both men and women. However, men
tend to gather with front mates and remember
combat situations, while women are more open
to share their stories with “outsiders”. Veterans’
gatherings – formal and informal – are considered of a great importance and front comrades
are valued as family members. These gatherings
serve the goal of repeating the scene of the war,
mostly through jokes. War jokes have become a
significant vehicle of handing down the war memories to the next generation in an acceptable form.
Jokes and joking with the war serve the goal of
2 This is different when women were victims of war rape.
In this specific case, their story seems better organized
again but it omits the moment or period of sexual abuse.
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avoiding the reality of death and the pure horror aspect of the story. People tell jokes in order
not to talk about how traumatized they are and
in order to be able to talk about the war without
psychologically falling apart. Moreover, the ability to joke is used to prove that one is still alive
and able to enjoy life; that one has won against
death. Joking with the war betrays the triumph of
immortality and omnipotence over the temporary
and is therefore used to somehow verify that life
during and after the war is possible. Joking is also
used as a proof that people can gather together
for purposes different from conducting or suffering violence. It shows not only that life has been
somehow preserved, but also that participants’
humanness has also survived.
6. Self-harm, sexual drive and drug abuse
Following the informants’ life histories, one can
see that the war acted as an amplifier of earlier
problems. Domestic violence in early childhood,
later delinquency or alcoholism’s impact was often
aggravated by the first-hand experience in the
war. The war was felt to have been chaotic, unstructured and surreal experience which enabled
people transgress their previously established internal boundaries. Whereas these internal boundaries were not very securely established, the war
experience linked to previously unresolved issues
aggravating their traumatic impact. Three phenomena which could be linked to pre-war traumatic
experiences but triggered in war have been most
present throughout my interviews: self-harm, an
amplified sexual drive and drug abuse.
6. 1. Self-harm
Drawing on previous research on self-harm,
primarily in borderline and post-traumatic stress
disorder patients, I denote the concept of selfharm as a deliberate bodily self-injury. Most of
my respondents, who practiced self-harm, mention self-cutting, burning or scratching while under
the effect of alcohol and/or drugs, or when experiencing severe psychic pain. In spite of the fact
that many have severely damaged their bodies,
none has mentioned the intention to commit a
suicide. Self-harm has often taken place as a
part of a group game in the combat zone or while
dealing with war-related memories in the aftermath of the war. However, most respondents do
not feel comfortable while tackling the issue and
are very unclear about the reasons for damaging their body. Some have even tried to cover
the scars that resulted from the self-injury with a
tattoo. On the basis of my interviews, I advance
the hypothesis that people who were not able
to deal with mental pain opted for self-harm as
a coping mechanism providing relief of intense
death-related anxiety. Faced with destruction on
everyday basis, soldiers for example practiced
self-harm as a way of evoking pain at the bodily
level in order to deafen the psychic pain. Second,
in situations where everyday life in war has made
people callous to disturbing sights and events,
self-harm was a way to prove that they were still
normal; in other words that they were still able to
experience pain, therefore they remained sensitive to the world as they had been before the war.
Finally, evoking pain may have had the meaning
of checking out whether alive. The more specific
aspect of self-harm during the war as told by informants is its group setting. Often performed as
a part of a group game, self-harm may have had
the role of a symbolical representation of the theatre of the war in a smaller setting where there
were victims, perpetrators and witnesses. These
games allowed everybody to take all three positions by being the victim, the perpetrator and the
witness of his/her own self-harm. I imagine that
this served the goal of making sense of the uncanny; explaining an inexplicable reality by putting
oneself in each possible position in order to view
the world of the war from each possible angle. Finally, self-harm was practiced with a great dose
of emotional excitement. I argue that war experiences were perceived on the verge between life
and death and were therefore felt to be unexpectedly thrilling. They provided the individual with the
feeling of having exercised control over life and
death at least for a moment in a context where
life and death were actually totally controlled by
someone/something else.
6. 2. An amplified sex drive
“There is so much sex in war. It is enough to
wear a uniform… You know why? Because
you could die at the very next moment (A,
male, 43)”.
“Once I was the first to make fun of people
who got married during the war… And then…
I got married myself, one year before the war
ended (S, female, 41)”.
In this vignette I argue that an amplified sexual
drive in war is a response to an aggravated sense
of vulnerability and exposure to death. As recent
research in hospitals and other (total) institutions
shows, the encounter with death, illness and dis-
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ability on everyday basis evokes a life-asserting
counter-response. The feeling that one could be
killed and was not in control of his/her life, the
lack of activities to provide meaning in life and the
frustration in front of the unknown contributed to
an amplified sexual drive. This sexual drive may
be a component but is not equal to what was underlying war rape, so the latter is not the topic of
this paragraph. The amplified sexual drive in war
often took the shape of promiscuity, numerous
marriages or the desire to have children in order
to oppose meaninglessness in everyday life in war.
Heightened libido is explained by male respondents also as a way of proving masculinity which
was felt to be essential in combat. Children born
during the war are often referred to as saviors
and meaning-givers. Sometimes fathers sought
demobilization, used to come home regularly or
visited the family abroad in order to see their babies. Mothers share that they had someone to live
for which fed into their motivation to survive the
war. Often children born in the war and immediately after have developed a special connection to
one or both parents and have become their “weak
point”. This special attitude is due to the specific
role these children had, and namely showing in
the most tangible manner that life could not be
entirely destroyed.
6. 3. Drug abuse
A significant part of my male respondents –
particularly former soldiers – share experiences
of drug addiction after the war. However, some of
them have started using soft drugs during the war.
In the following paragraph I will link drug addiction
to the lack of humanness in war and the possible
early experiences of emotional deprivation. As
mentioned by some of my informants, drugs were
often taken as a way of avoiding emotional pain
evoked by flashbacks, nightmares and memories
of the war. Drugs were used as a substitute of the
feeling of being accepted and unconditionally loved;
they can be considered a temporary weapon to
fight trauma-related depression.
Following my earlier thought about the war
as an amplifier of previous problems, I advance
the hypothesis that people with childhood experiences of emotional deprivation may have found
it more difficult to deal with horror scenes in war
since their capacity to emotionally reflect the world
outside has not been properly developed. The difficulty to handle traumatic sights and events in war
has often resulted in a delayed response in drug
addiction in the aftermath of the war as a way of
deafening the psychic pain related to war trauma.
7. Weakened paternal function, strengthened
religiosity
In psychoanalytical literature, the function of the
father is mostly connected to the establishment of
the order through the first external prohibitions the
child faces in early development. In later years,
the internal censorship or the internalized paternal figure in other words helps sustaining order
and law in the wider community. In the post-war
environment of Bosnia and Herzegovina, children
seem to experience a conflict with regards to the
paternal figure. On the one hand, they struggle to
imagine their fathers as competent, reliable and
moral, but on the other, they are faced with the
suspicion about their fathers’ debatable morality
in war, degradation in captivity and depressive
withdrawal in the aftermath of the war. Furthermore, the two basic rules which sustain order in a
human community and are therefore in the basis
of civilization – the prohibition of murder and incest – have been severely violated during the
war namely by men. Killings and rape, although
claimed to be done by “the other”, often leave the
suspicion about one’s own father’s involvement.
This seriously challenges the paternal function in
the post-war environment and feeds into the fantasy that transgression of any kind is possible and
rarely sanctioned. In fact, those who are meant
to sanction were probably the first to transgress.
The necessity to provide some framework and establish order seems to find a solution in religiosity.
In all three main religious groups in Bosnia and
Herzegovina religion is experiencing a revival. I
argue that this represents the group dimension of
the compensation for the damaged paternal function. It compensates for the collapse of the function
of the Father inside the family. There is a pursuit
of an external authority to sanction and regulate
since at a more intimate family level fathers have
failed to sustain the order they had themselves
once created in Yugoslav times.
8. Conclusion
In this paper I have argued that transmission
of memories in the post-war context of Bosnia
and Herzegovina is not a clear-cut process. It is
marked by fragmentation of history, handicapped
sense of selfhood and belonging in children and
a crisis of the paternal function in the family. The
lack of a consistent and non-controversial reflexion on one’s own experiences in the war puts the
emphasis on jokes, body language and silence at
the expense of a coherent war narrative people
could communicate to their children. Children are
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exposed to the controversies and inconsistencies
both on a family and wider social level. They seem
to struggle to make sense of their parents’ experience while at the same time trying to protect the
parents from re-experiencing psychic pain. In the
context of a troubled paternal function and controversy with regards to the past, religion may be
seen as an external tool sought by people in order
to explain, regulate and sanction.
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Prenošenje traumatičnih iskustava u obiteljima preživjelih u ratu u
Bosni i Hercegovini
KALINA JORDANOVA
UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London
Ovaj članak istražuje proces prenošenja ratnih iskustava s roditelja na djecu u
suvremenom bosanskom kontekstu. Rad se oslanja na studije u psihoanalizi i
kulturnoj antropologiji. Pomoću dubinskih intervjua s obiteljima, obiteljskih stabala i dječjih crteža, pokušavam shvatiti zašto i kako roditelji svoja traumatična
sjećanja komuniciraju djeci te kako djeca reagiraju na roditeljsko prisjećanje
nedavne prošlosti. Ukratko, tvrdim da roditelji izbjegavaju temu rata, a ovo izbjegavanje je posljedica dvoznačnosti njihovog ratnog iskustva. Drugo, njihova
nevoljkost za razgovor o pojedinim dijelovima vlastitog života rezultira u fragmentaciji povijesti te posljedično kod djece stvara fragmentirani osjećaj pripadanja i
sebstva. Fragmentacija se također odražava u činjenici da su ratni narativi rodno
uvjetovani, što znači da se ženske priče o ratu razlikuju od one njihovih muževa.
U većini slučajeva muškarci imaju poteškoća u dijeljenju svojeg ratnog iskustva
s vlastitom djecom iz tri glavna razloga. Prvo, ne uspijeva postići jasni narativ o
vlastitom sudjelovanju u ratovanju. Drugo, čini se da im nedostaje jezik kojim bi
opisali iskustvo koje osjećaju kao jedinstveno i ponekad nadrealno. Naposljetku,
njihove priče se ne poklapaju uvijek sa službeno priznatom inačicom povijesti.
Ključne riječi: ratna trauma, prenošenje trauma, očinska uloga, Bosna i Hercegovina
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Noutcheva: European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession
suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
GERGANA NOUTCHEVA
European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession:
Conditionality, Legitimacy and Compliance
London and New York: Routledge, 2012, 264 pp.
“Why have the Balkan countries responded
differently to the EU’s pre-accession demands?
(Noutcheva, 2012: 5)”. In this book Gergana
Noutcheva aims to explain this puzzle and thereby
to increase knowledge on the impact of EU policy in its neighboring countries. The author is an
associate professor in International Relations
and European Foreign Policy at the University
of Maastricht. Her research focuses on the EU
enlargement and neighborhood policy, in particular
the impact of the EU on the domestic structures
of non-EU countries.1 Noutcheva’s most recent
book on EU influence abroad is based on her
PhD thesis in 2006, EU Conditionality and Balkan
Compliance: Does Sovereignty Matter?. As I will
argue below, Noutcheva’s effort stands out thanks
to an appealing research approach that refines
previous attempts to explain diverging responses
to EU demands in receiving countries.
In the first part of her book (Chapters 2 and
3), Noutcheva takes stock of the literature on
Europeanization in Central and Eastern Europe
(CEE) and European Foreign policy to discuss subsequently the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of her research endeavor. As reviewed
by the author, previous literature on European
enlargement mainly stressed two mechanisms to
explain the compliance of CEE countries to the EU’s
pre-accession demands. According to the rationalist
“logic of consequences”, compliance is the result of
domestic political elites’ cost-benefit calculations
regarding EU conditionality. External incentives,
such as pre-accession aid and the prospect of EU
membership, are seen to induce a shift towards
compliance because domestic actors gradually
realize that the benefits of accession outweigh
the costs of adaptation. Alternatively, according to
the socialization-based “logic of appropriateness”,
1 http://www.fdcw.unimaas.nl/staff/default.asp?id=294
(10 December 2012)
compliance is the product of social learning, where
domestic actors begin to internalize EU norms
and values through the regular interaction with
and persuasion by EU actors. Whereas these
two explanations have been mostly treated on
an “either-or” basis of competing hypotheses,
Noutcheva acknowledges the value of both of
them to explain the compliance patterns in the
Balkans. In addition, the author highlights “legal
coercion” as a further explaining variable, which
enables the EU to induce compliance beyond
the conditionality and socialization mechanisms
in some Western Balkan states. She asserts that
the EU, as part of the international community
and via its proper foreign policy instruments, is
in a position to provoke compliance by exercising
coercive power on semi-sovereign states such as
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.
While all three above mentioned factors find
their way into Noutcheva’s model, the author
gives particular prominence and scrutiny to the
socialization argument. Departing from dominant
accounts in the literature, she points out that the
success or failure of socialization depends on the
legitimacy of EU conditions. Since actors tend to
disagree on what is universally legitimate or mutually beneficial, Noutcheva “proposes to examine
the reactions of political actors on the receiving
end of EU policies” as a proxy of legitimacy beliefs
(Noutcheva, 2012: 37). Hence, instead of assuming the EU’s “normative power”, understood as
the structuring force of EU norms, Noutcheva
problematizes these norms by underlining the
relevance of perceived legitimacy for explaining
compliance. This may seem obvious for some
readers, but it represents a pleasing perspective
change vis-à-vis the Europeanization literature,
where the appropriateness of EU demands is
rather taken for granted than questioned.
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Noutcheva: European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession
The theoretical framework proposed by Noutcheva
comprises a three-step model (Noutcheva, 2012:
32). When EU demands enjoy high legitimacy
in the would-be member state, one can expect
substantial compliance to the conditions in question, although the costs of compliance perceived
by domestic elites can have a delaying effect.
When the legitimacy of EU demands is low, but
domestic elites consider the benefits of compliance to overturn their costs, the result is partial
compliance. In case of low legitimacy and preponderance of costs versus benefits, compliance is
only possible through coercive power. If the EU
maintains strong pressure in a consistent manner,
one can observe imposed compliance. When the
EU is perceived to be weak (or to become weak)
in maintaining its pressure, imposed compliance
can turn into fake compliance, which risks to be
reversed later on (reversed compliance). One
could surely argue that this step-by-step model
artificially divides processes that appear simultaneously. But from a political science perspective
the theoretical abstraction of the different variables
is promising and facilitates a clear analysis of the
main influencing factors.
Turning in chapter 3 to the legitimization of
EU pre-accession demands, Noutcheva draws
the distinction between the “usual” Copenhagen
criteria and specific additional conditions for the
Western Balkans countries. The former concern
the political and economic criteria as well as the
adoption of the acquis communautaire as agreed
by the European Council in 1993. As for the former candidates of CEE, Noutcheva sees these
conditions to be legitimized by their deep anchorage in the values of democracy and economic
governance that are enshrined in the European
treaties and secondary law. Regarding the specific
conditions for the countries of former Yugoslavia,
the author is particularly concerned with the EU
demands’ effects on the sovereignty structures
in several Western Balkan countries, for example the country’s international legal status or the
composition of the state. In these cases of indirect
sovereignty conditions, Noutcheva considers the
local response as crucial for evaluating the legitimacy of EU demands.
The sovereignty question is also the author’s
main case selection criteria. Acknowledging the
complexity of the sovereignty concept, Noutcheva
focuses on two attributes of authority, i.e. the formal dimension of sovereignty. On the one hand,
internal sovereignty relates to the presence or
absence of external actors in the domestic authority structures; on the other, external sovereignty
refers to the country’s international legal status.
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Along these two dimensions, Noutcheva selects
four cases out of the “Balkans”2: Bosnia and
Herzegovina (external sovereignty, lack of internal
sovereignty), Serbia and Montenegro 2002-2006
(internal sovereignty, lack of external sovereignty),
Kosovo (lack of internal and external sovereignty)
and Bulgaria (presence of external and internal
sovereignty).
The reminder of the book addresses the empirical examination of these case studies. Part II comprises two chapters where the author analyses,
first, the EU’s demands vis-à-vis each case study
country (Chapter 4), and second, the EU’s legitimization practices, the coherence between EU
actors and the compatibility of the EU approach
with other major actors, e.g. the United States
(Chapter 5). The third part of the book is devoted
to the response of the four receiving states. While
Chapter 6 retraces their compliance record,
Chapter 7 discusses the “why” of compliance, i.e.
the reasons for the compliance patterns with reference to the theoretical framework. Consequently,
each of the four empirical chapters (4-7) features
one subchapter for each case study. This sectioning is comprehensible from an analytical point of
view but detrimental to the readability. For this
reason, the mayor results are discussed below
on a case-by-case basis.
The case of Serbia and Montenegro falls according to the author into the category of fake compliance which turned into reversed compliance.
Whereas the two former Yugoslav republics
formed a common state after the dissolution of the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY),
the Montenegrin pro-independence movement
gained weight with the fall of the Milošević regime
in 2000. The EU, backed by the larger international community, championed the re-creation of
a common state since one feared the destabilizing
effect of state partition. However, the EU demand
for a common state was not perceived legitimate
by the Montenegrin pro-independence actors who
could invoke the same right for self-determination
as other former Yugoslav republics. Nor was it
perceived beneficial from an economic point of
view because the EU’s insistence on domestic
economic harmonization went against the diverging patterns of the economy in the two republics.
2 The selection of the cases is naturally linked to the study’s
focus on the “Balkans”. While the author claims that
“these countries belong to the same historical region
(Noutcheva, 2012: 10)”, the cultural meaning and connotation of the “Balkan” notion is discussed only at the
margin. Its use in the book seems to arise rather from
common language than from “implicitly ‘privileging’ something (Stokes, 1997)”. The same is true for its use in this
review.
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Due to the pressure of EU actors and the unlikelihood of international recognition in case of a
declaration of independence, the Montenegrin
government acquiesced to a broad framework
agreement in 2002 (the “Belgrade agreement”)
and a Constitutional Charter in 2003. Yet, these
(fake) compliance moves left many important
aspects unaddressed and maintained the right
to call a referendum on independence after a
period of three years (Noutcheva, 2012: 70f). The
Montenegrin government’s quest for independence
was emboldened by the subsequent weakening
and incoherence of EU pressure in maintaining a
common state. The lack of legitimacy, perceived
benefit and EU coercion paved thus the way for
Montenegrin independence, which followed the
referendum held in 2006.
The Kosovo case is according to Noutcheva
an example for imposed compliance. After the
end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the EU led the
economic reconstruction of the new UN protectorate, but kept a low profile on the sensitive issue
of the final status (Noutcheva, 2012: 77). From
a legitimacy perspective, the dilemma regarding Kosovo’s independence is “the legal tension
between the right to self-determination and the
principle of territorial integration (Noutcheva, 2012:
107)”. This dilemma provoked not only diverging
views between Serbs and Kosovars, but also
between EU member states. Accordingly, several EU members have not recognized Kosovo’s
independence bid from 2008 due to the fear of
emboldening own domestic secessionist movements. The EU nevertheless converged in taking
a pragmatic “approach of diversity in recognition, but unity in engagement” (Noutcheva, 2012:
79). In fact, Kosovo’s independence was widely
seen as a security-enhancing outcome, but the
EU abstained from legitimizing this step from a
moral human rights perspective in order to avoid
a precedent for other secessionist movements.
International and intra-EU division just enhanced
the pronounced perception of illegitimacy inside
Serbia regarding Kosovo’s independence. Faced
with an ambivalent legitimacy status and the huge
costs for political parties in Serbia to sell the loss
of Kosovo to their voters, the EU has heavily pressured Serbia to accept the status quo and pursue
negotiations with Kosovo’s political leaders. In line
with the book’s explanatory model, the according
outcome can be described as imposed compliance.
In the case of Bulgaria, the EU demands were
the “classic” Copenhagen criteria of democratic
and economic governance. In contrast to the above
mentioned cases, the EU could here fully rely on
the normative appeal of the EU common values
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CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
which were largely welcomed by the Bulgarian
population. The delayed EU accession of the
country as compared to the ten accession members of 2004 was mainly due to the resistance of
different domestic actors who tried to shield their
lucrative positions in the state machinery from EU
induced reform undertakings. The EU conditionality mechanism of incentives and disincentives
succeeded in the long run to foster substantial
compliance. As Noutcheva (2012: 186) acknowledges, the politics of compliance in the Bulgarian
case is somewhat different from the remaining
selected countries. This is due to the deferred
time horizon of the Bulgarian accession process
and, more importantly, to the lack of sovereigntyrelated conditions as compared to the other cases.
It could have been interesting to replace Bulgaria
with Croatia or to add the latter country to the
set of cases. Noutcheva (2012: 9) recognizes
that Bulgaria and Croatia can be categorized in
the same way regarding the sovereignty status
(presence of external and internal sovereignty).
In addition, as Croatia’s accession to the EU is
imminent, the country would also fit the status of
substantial compliance as conceptualized by the
author. At the same time, Croatia shares with the
remaining country cases the legacy of the war, the
same starting point of the enlargement process
and some contested additional EU conditions
compared to the CEE candidates. For instance,
the cooperation with the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), one
of the “special” conditions inflicted on Croatia during the accession negotiations, entailed a certain
degree of legitimacy-based contestation in Croatia,
which makes the case interesting vis-à-vis the
proposed theoretical framework.
For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the author thoroughly identifies the underlying state-building
aspects of the EU’s political and economic reform
requirements. The Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA)
put in place a highly decentralized state structure
with a weak central state and two entities with
state-like competences, i.e. the Serb Republic (RS)
and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The latter was further divided into ten
cantons, each with its own legislative and governmental bodies. The main objective of the international community throughout the years became to
enhance the powers of the central state level with
the justification that the DPA system was inefficient
and too costly. The High Representative, deployed
as the guardian of the DPA, was provided in 1997
with extraordinary powers (the “Bonn powers”),
which gave him the right to interfere extensively
in the internal authority structures of Bosnia and
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Noutcheva: European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession
Herzegovina to foster the implementation of the
DPA. But as the transfer of competences to the
state level requires the approval of both entities,
the High Representative admittedly needed alternative leverage to his “Bonn powers” for inducing the
reform steps. The EU filled this gap by requesting
congenial requirements when the EU perspective
loomed for Bosnia and Herzegovina as of the year
2000. Influenced by the High Representative, who
became double headed as EU special representative in 2002, the EU asked widely for institutional
reforms under the normative banner of efficiency
and accountability. While these norms seemed
plenty of legitimacy in the eyes of EU actors, the
demanded reforms touched the core of the contested internal sovereignty structure in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Notably, political leaders in the RS
were reluctant to cede any competences to the central state because they perceived such moves as a
creeping destruction of the RS. The EU demands
were thus perceived illegitimate at least in the
Serbian segment of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian
leadership (and society) which could rely on the
compatibility of its position with the Dayton provisions. Noutcheva argues that the EU succeeded
nevertheless to induce domestic-driven reform
projects through intermediary incentives in the EU
accession process. The author cites the reform
of the indirect taxation system and the more contested police reform as examples where the parties reached agreement when faced with the possibility to take an important step on the road to EU
membership, e.g. the signing of the Stabilization
and Association Agreement (SAA). With a lack
of perceived legitimacy, but a positive account of
benefits versus costs thanks to the EU incentives,
the author classifies Bosnia and Herzegovina in
the category of partial compliance.
The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates
that the book’s compliance typology is not to take
in a rigid manner. Some authors would probably
tend to file the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina
rather in the category of imposed compliance than
partial compliance. For instance, this view seems
to be reflected in several works of David Chandler
who accused external actors (including the EU) of
“sucking out the life from elected bodies” in Bosnia
and Herzegovina (Chandler, 2007: 346; Chandler,
2011). Furthermore, recent attempts from political leaders in RS to roll back previously agreed
transfers of responsibilities suggest that under
current circumstances one could tend to reclassify the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina as fake
compliance with first attempts of reversal.
Finally, one could argue that the case of BiH,
notably the EU’s cutting down of requirements
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CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
related to police reform (Noutcheva, 2012: 167),
illustrates the context-based volatility of the compliance concept. As Chandler points out, “(…) the
incremental use of conditionalities is not some
technical process, it is entirely political. When the
EU is considering which ‘benchmarks’ are important or what level of reforms are necessary for
the next stage, a large number of factors come
into play (…) (Chandler, 2010: 78)”. Accordingly,
compliance benchmarks may change for political reasons, and this makes the measurement
of an “objective” compliance status a cumbersome venture.
In spite of these points for debate, the reviewed
book is in summary a highly recommendable contribution and starting point for further research. The
theoretical framework enables to combine different
explanatory perspectives (logic of consequences/
logic of appropriateness) that were often artificially separated in the previous literature for the
sake of “scientific” hypotheses competition. While
the author’s inclusive theoretical approach is certainly detrimental to the parsimony of explanation,
it carries the great advantage of drawing theory
closer to reality. Furthermore, the study advocates a
much needed perspective change for the research
on EU norm diffusion. Previous literature considered EU demands mostly as given (exogenous)
or embedded in near to undisputable norms. By
contrast, Noutcheva’s work suggests that norms
are exposed to contestation and that we need to
look at their legitimacy in the eyes of receiving
actors (see also Wiener, 2007). Recent resistance
to austerity measures (or norms) in several EU
countries and growing Euroscepticism suggest
that this insight is not limited to EU enlargement
or cases of contested sovereignty. More generally, international norms, rules and standards
coined by Western civilization are not automatically perceived as legitimate in other parts of the
world. The challenge is to thoroughly analyze the
politics of norms and the legitimacy perceptions
of affected actors (e.g. emerging and developing
countries) without falling into pure relativism or
polemic debates on Western imperialism.
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Ivo Križić
University of Lucerne
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References
Chandler, D. (2011): „Governance” statt „Government”? Die Grenzen des post-liberalen Peacebuilding
am Beispiel Bosnien, Wissenschaft & Frieden, 1 (2): 43-46
Chandler, D. (2010): The EU and Southeastern Europe: the rise of post-liberal governance, Third World
Quarterly, 31 (1): 69-85
Chandler, D. (2007): From Dayton to Europe, International Peacekeeping, 12 (3): 336-349
Noutcheva, G. (2012): European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession: Conditionality,
Legitimacy and Compliance, London and New York: Routledge
Stokes, G. (1997): Review of Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans, Habsburg, H-Net Reviews, http://
www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=1320 (12 December 2012)
Wiener, A. (2007): Contested Meanings of Norms: A Research Framework, Comparative European
Politics, 5: 1-17
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CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Cvetković-Sander: Sprachpolitik und nationale Identität
ksenija cvetković-sander
Sprachpolitik und nationale Identität im sozialistischen Jugoslawien
(1945-1991): Serbokroatisch, Albanisch, Makedonisch und
Slowenisch
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011., 453 str.
Knjiga Ksenije Cvetković-Sander temelji se
na doktorskoj disertaciji obranjenoj kod Holma
Sundhaussena, uglednog njemačkog povjesničara
dobro poznatog istraživačima suvremene povijesti
istočne i jugoistočne Europe. Holm Sundhaussen
profesor je u miru te projektni direktor na Institutu
za jugoistočnu Europu na Slobodnom sveučilištu
u Berlinu. Ksenija Cvetković-Sander zajedno
sa suprugom Martinom Sanderom vlasnica je
istoimene (znanstvene) knjižare u Berlinu. Ova
monografija pod naslovom „Jezična politika i
nacionalni identitet u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji
(1945.-1991.): srpskohrvatski, albanski, makedonski i slovenski“ pedeseti je svezak u ediciji
Balkanologische Veröffentlichungen: Geschichte–
Gesellschaft–Kultur (Balkanološka izdanja: povijest–društvo–kultura) Norbert Reiter, a uređuju
ju Hannes Grandits i Holm Sundhaussen. Radi
se o biblioteci izdavačke kuće Harrassowitz iz
Wiesbadena koja već skoro 150 godina izdaje
monografije i znanstvene časopise koji pokrivaju
širok spektar od arheologije i antičke povijesti,
preko bibliotekarstva, komparativne književnosti i
komparativnog istraživanja religije do suvremene
povijesti koja se isprepliće s političkom znanošću.
Regionalni fokus ovog izdavača je na slavenskom
svijetu, kao i na onome što se nekada u europskoj znanosti (i umjetnosti) nazivalo Orijentom,
a danas se dijeli na Bliski istok, srednju Aziju,
indijski potkontinent te Daleki istok.
Pred nama se nalazi knjiga koja se dotiče izrazito
bitne teme jezične politike u Drugoj Jugoslaviji kao
jednom od izvora političkih i znanstvenih kontroverzi kako u hrvatskoj javnosti, tako i u europskoj percepciji i recepciji jugoslavenskih i postjugoslavenskih previranja. Još i danas u hrvatskoj
javnosti, a posebice u jezikoslovnim krugovima
vode se polemike o jezičnoj prošlosti bivše države,
kao i o naravi odnosa standardnog hrvatskog i
standardnog srpskog jezika, što se pak reflektira
na različite pristupe pravopisnim rješenjima u
suvremenoj Hrvatskoj te za posljedicu ima tržišno,
stručno (i politički) konkurirajuće i supostojeće
pravopise hrvatskog standardnog jezika u optjecaju u javnosti. Socijalistička Jugoslavija bila je
federalna politička zajednica, za razliku od unitarne
Kraljevine Jugoslavije. Međutim, jugoslavenski
nacionalni identitet itekako je promican, a u nekim
razdobljima te u nekim dijelovima zemlje imao je
itekako uspjeha (SR Hrvatska prema popisu iz
1981. godine). Je li državna politika ujedinjavanja
srpskog i hrvatskog jezika i stvaranje zajedničkog
standardnog jezika (srpskohrvatski) bila posljedica želje za stvaranjem novog, jugoslavenskog
identiteta čija bi okosnica bilo kulturno stapanje
Hrvata i Srba ili pak posljedica ideje o stvaranju
kulturne (i političke) hegemonije Srba kao najmnogoljudnijeg etnikuma u Jugoslaviji? Je li kulturni
rat oko jezika dao poticaj raspadu Jugoslavije ili
je njegovo rasplamsavanje bilo posljedica krize i
kraja jugoslavenske federacije? Na ova i mnoga
druga pitanja Ksenija Cvetković-Sander pokušala
je ponuditi odgovore u ovoj vrlo pažljivo i precizno
pisanoj historiografskoj analizi jezične politike u
Titovoj Jugoslaviji, dakako, s naglaskom na hrvatsko-srpskim jezičnim odnosima.
Knjiga sadrži šest poglavlja, od kojih se pak
svako dijeli na više potpoglavlja, što značajno
doprinosi preglednosti cijele monografije. Autorica
u uvodnom poglavlju objašnjava središnju ulogu
standardnog jezika u oblikovanju suvremenih
nacionalnih identiteta te ukazuje na činjenicu da je
kodificiranje standardnog jezika uvijek politički čin
i posljedica procesa socijalne konstrukcije. U tom
smislu jezičnu politiku shvaća kao svaku svjesnu
(političku) radnju koja utječe na jezičnu uporabu u
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Cvetković-Sander: Sprachpolitik und nationale Identität
javnom komuniciranju. Cvetković-Sander naglašava
kako postoje politički i lingvistički oprečni stavovi
o nekadašnjem središnjem službenom jeziku u
Jugoslaviji, tj. srpskohrvatskom, budući da je za
jedne on bio ili jest jedan jezik, dok se za druge
radi o dva, tri ili četiri različita, no srodna jezika.
Također pokazuje kako taj službeni jezik zapravo
nikada nije posjedovao jedinstveni standard, već
je imao nekoliko varijanti. Nadalje ukazuje kako
i danas dio srpskih lingvista taj službeni jezik,
temeljen na novoštokavštini, izjednačava sa srpskim, tj. sve štokavske dijalekte smatra dijelom
srpskog jezičnog naslijeđa i identiteta. S druge
strane opisuje napore hrvatskih jezikoslovaca u
(ponovnom) osamostaljivanju hrvatskog standardnog jezika. Autorica spominje i razmišljanja hrvatske lingvistice s njemačkom adresom Snježane
Kordić koja zastupa tezu o jednom policentričnom
jeziku. S druge pak strane, Cvetković-Sander
ističe kako su (standardni) jezici objekt (političkog
i društvenog) dogovora i pregovaranje te ih stoga
treba sagledavati kao društvene i kulturne artefakte. Drugim riječima, autorica se opredijelila
za jasan konstruktivistički pristup. Zatim autorica
ukazuje na činjenicu da su jezično-politički prijepori obilježili cijelo razdoblje druge Jugoslavije,
a ne samo njen raspad. Jugoslavenska jezična
politika proizlazila je iz identitetske politike koja je
počivala na razlikovanju naroda (npr. Hrvati, Srbi),
narodnosti (primjerice Talijani, Mađari, Albanci)
te etničkih grupa (npr. Romi, Židovi). U ovom
uvodnom dijelu ističe se kako je cilj ove knjige
rekonstruirati jezičnu politiku Druge Jugoslavije
te pokazati kako jezik funkcionira kao politički
objekt. Dakle, radi se o strogo historiografskoj
analizi koja nema za cilj donositi sudove o samoj
jezikoslovnoj problematici ili pak uzrocima raspada Jugoslavije. Povijesna vrela korištena u
knjizi daju se ugrubo podijeliti u tri kategorije – do
sada neobjavljene i neobrađene akte Centralnog
komiteta Saveza komunista Jugoslavije (kao i
akte republičkih centralnih komiteta), stručne i
znanstvene jezikoslovne i književnoteorijske publikacije kao što su Jezik, Letopis Matice srpske,
Odjek, Književni jezik, Sveske, Makedonski jazik
te ključne dnevne i tjedne tiskovine (npr. Vjesnik,
Borba, Delo, Rilindja).
Drugo poglavlje opisuje povijesni kontekst
nastanka suvremenih jezično-političkih prijepora,
tj. daje pregled razvoja nacionalnih identiteta i
standardnih jezika do kraja Drugog svjetskog rata.
U tom kontekstu autorica upućuje na činjenicu da
još na prijelazu stoljeća nije postojalo (današnje)
jednoznačno preklapanje jezičnih, nacionalnih i vjerskih identiteta te da su regionalni identiteti, poput
dalmatinskog, počesto bili u opreci s nacionalnim
identitetima (poput hrvatskog) koji su još bili u
fazi etabliranja. Slovenski nacionalni program
19. stoljeća temeljio se na zajedničkom jezičnom
identitetu. Srpski nacionalni pokret isprva nastaje
na području današnje Vojvodine te se bazirao na
konfesionalnom identitetu i pripadnosti Srpskoj pravoslavnoj crkvi. Hrvatski nacionalni program svoj
ishod ima u tradiciji državnog prava, a operacionalizira se kroz Ilirski pokret. Upravo su ilirci kroz
ideju o ilirskom identitetu dali poticaj jugoslavenskoj
ideji, ali i stvaranju zajedničkog standardnog jezika
Hrvata i Srba. Međutim, usprkos Bečkom sporazumu, iskristalizirale su se dvije jezično-političke
koncepcije – Karadžićeva o štokavcima kao Srbima
te zagrebačka o štokavskom standardu koji crpi i
iz drugih narječja te može poslužiti kao zajednički
standard Hrvatima i Srbima. Kroz jezične prijepore
druge polovice 19. stoljeća razvile su se i oprečne
hrvatske i srpske političke koncepcije. Za vrijeme
Kraljevine SHS, jugoslavenski unitarizam pratio je
i jezični unitarizam, tj. nametanje srpskohrvatskog
kao zajedničkog jezika koji su trebali prihvatiti i
Slovenci i Makedonci. Ovo forsiranje dosegnulo
je svoj vrhunac za vrijeme kraljeve diktature kada
se, uz veliki otpor u Hrvatskoj, na području cijele
zemlje (izuzev Slovenije) uvodi jedinstveni, srpski
pravopis. Za vrijeme Drugog svjetskog rata ustaški
pokret u svojoj kulturnoj politici razgraničavanja
od Srba posebnu pozornost daje jezičnoj politici
i izbacivanju svega što je percipirano kao utjecaj
srpskog jezika. S druge strane, KP Jugoslavije
se u ratu zauzimala za jednakopravnost naroda i
jezika, što se posebice očitovalo u makedonskom
slučaju, budući da je na Titov poticaj kodificiran
makedonski standardni jezik. Iako je isprva govorila o dva jezika, Partija je ubrzo nakon kraja rata
ponovno počela operirati s pojmom zajedničkog,
srpskohrvatskog jezika.
U trećem poglavlju autorica pokazuje kako
tijekom pedesetih i šezdesetih godina dolazi do
ponovnog rasplamsavanja sukoba oko jezika i
jezične politike. U duhu unitarizma, smanjivanja
razlika i „kulturnog prožimanja“, partijski čelnici
poput Kardelja i Stambolića podupirali su jezično
zbližavanje, prvenstveno Hrvata i Srba. No, prvi
ustav iz 1946. nije da jasan politički odgovor smatra li se hrvatski i srpski dvama jezicima ili pak
dvjema varijantama istoga jezika. Međutim, 1954.
dolazi do Novosadskog sporazuma kojim je dogovoren jezični unitarizam Hrvata i Srba, no uz dvije
varijante – zagrebačku i beogradsku. U stvarnosti
nakon ovog sporazuma dolazi do političkog suzbijanja (hrvatskih) jezičnih specifičnosti i promicanja onih jezičnih rješenja koja bi naglašavala
jedinstvo jezika. Jezično zajedništvo trebalo je
biti potvrđeno i zajedničkim pravopisom (1960.),
centar za politološka istraživanja
political science research centre
www.cpi.hr
67
suvremene TEME, (2012.) god. 5., br. 1.
CONTEMPORARY issues, (2012) Vol. 5, No. 1
Cvetković-Sander: Sprachpolitik und nationale Identität
međutim i on je kroz dublete ukazivao na dvojstvo
srpskohrvatskog, tako da je hrvatski jezikoslovac
Brozović uveo pojam jezična varijanta za situaciju
u kojoj unutar jednog službenog standarda zapravo
postoje dvije različite jezične inačice. Ostatak
poglavlja autorica posvećuje razvoju standardnog
makedonskog te standardnog albanskog jezika u
kontekstu odnosa Albanije i Kosova.
Četvrto poglavlje pokriva razdoblje od sredine
šezdesetih do sredine sedamdesetih godina. Za
ovaj period karakteristična je ponovna važnost
nacionalnog pitanja, a u tom kontekstu dolazi do
polaganog napuštanja jugoslavenstva kao etničke
kategorije. U Sloveniji počinje ustrajna i snažna
borba za ravnopravnost slovenskog jezika kojeg se
smatralo ugroženim pred dominacijom srpskohrvatskog u vojsci i saveznim institucijama. Novim
ustavom iz 1974. zajamčena je ravnopravnost
svih službenih jezika. Unutar konteksta srpskohrvatskih jezičnih odnosa, Brozovićeva ideja o
varijantama jezika naišla je na kritiku i osudu srpskih jezikoslovaca. Borba za samostalnost hrvatskog kulminirala je 1967. Deklaracijom o nazivu i
položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika. Deklaracija
nije dovela u pitanje zajedničku jezičnu osnovu
hrvatskog i srpskog, no zahtijevala je samostalni
naziv (hrvatski), položaj i razvitak hrvatske varijante. Političke rasprave o Deklaraciji bile su uvod
u hrvatsko proljeće. Godine 1971. Matica hrvatska proglašava Novosadski dogovor nevažećim te
više ne govori o dvjema varijantama istog standardnog jezika, već o dvama standardnim jezicima
izraslima iz jednog dijasistema. U tom kontekstu
počinje i bitno drugačije tumačenje uloge Vuka
Karadžića za razvoj standardnog jezika u Hrvatskoj,
tj. ukazivanje na to da njegova jezična rješenja
nisu i ne moraju biti uzor za hrvatski standardni
jezik, budući da hrvatska književna tradicija, kako
na štokavštini, tako i na drugim narječjima, predstavlja temelj razvoja suvremenog standardnog
jezika. Usprkos slomu hrvatskog proljeća, novi
je ustav iz 1974. značio barem djelomičnu pobjedu hrvatskih jezikoslovaca, budući da je dao
temelj samostalnom statusu hrvatskog jezika.
Kao posljedica problematičnosti teze o dvjema
varijantama za Bosnu i Hercegovinu, dolazi do
priznanja Muslimana kao nacije i pokušaja razvoja bosanske jezične međuvarijante. Na ovaj razvoj se nadovezala crnogorska rasprava o naravi
tamošnjeg jezika i nacionalnog identiteta. Jačanje
važnosti samostalnih jezika na Kosovu je imalo
za posljedicu snažnije zahtjeve Albanaca za statusom republike i pripadajućim jezično-kulturnim
pravicama.
U petom poglavlju autorica pokazuje otpor beogradske elite osamostaljivanju hrvatskog jezika i
jezične politike, kao i jačanju jezične autonomije u
Sloveniji te na Kosovu. Intelektualna elita u Srbiji u
tom je kontekstu dovodila u pitanje kompatibilnost
novog ustava s temeljnim vrednotama jugoslavenskog federalizma te bratstva i jedinstva. Srpska
akademija znanosti i umjetnosti 1986. u svojem je
Memorandumu dala svoju ocjenu položaja Srba u
Jugoslaviji, osudila širenje kosovske i vojvođanske
autonomije te pozvala na ispravljanje percipirane
nepravde prema Srbima kao najbrojnijem narodu
u Jugoslaviji. Memorandum je postao podloga za
srpski politički projekt preustroja Jugoslavije, a
ubrzo je dobio odgovor u slovenskom nacionalnom programu. Srpsko-albanski sukob oko Kosova
svoju jezičnu dimenziju doživio je kroz srpsko
osporavanje korištenja standardnog albanskog na
Kosovu kao posljedicu utjecaja albanskog vođe
Envera Hoxhe te optužbe o albanizaciji Kosova.
Cvetković-Sander nadalje analiza unutarpartijske rasprave u Hrvatskoj o tome jesu li školski
udžbenici u skladu s ustavom (i bratstvom i jedinstvom), tj. ima li tendencija jezičnog purizma koji
ima nacionalističke intencije. Toj raspravi slijedila
je 1986. zajednička sjednica četiriju centralnih
komiteta srpskohrvatskih republika koja je rezultirala osudom jezičnog separatizma i pozivom na
jedinstvo i suradnju. Pitanje jezičnog jedinstva ili
jezičnog razdvajanja preneseno je 1988. i u saborsku raspravu o novom nazivu jezika – hrvatski
ili srpski ili pak prethodni naziv – srpskohrvatski, a
na ta raspravu se naslanjalo i pitanje jezika Srba
u Hrvatskoj, tj. vezanosti jezika uz republiku ili uz
narod. Godine 1989. tisak u Srbiji počinje pisati
o ugroženosti Srba u Hrvatskoj, koristeći pojmove poput genocida i asimilacije, a u kontekstu percepcije o nametanju hrvatskog jezika srpskom stanovništvu u Hrvatskoj. Nakon demokratske tranzicije, službeni jezik u Hrvatskoj postaje
hrvatski, a jezikoslovni rad dobiva značaj u kontekstu izgradnje samostalne države. Također,
s nastankom samostalnih postjugoslavenskih
država, dolazi do više-manje uspješne standardizacije bosanskog kao jezika Bošnjaka i crnogorskog kao jezika Crnogoraca. Međutim, jezikoslovne (pa time i političke) kontroverze i prijepori
o broju i naravi jezika na bivšem jugoslavenskom
prostoru nisu u potpunosti nestale.
Knjiga Cvetković-Sander ozbiljno je istraženo,
pedantno i metodološki dobro koncipirano djelo koje
bi svakako trebalo prevesti kako bi bilo dostupno
hrvatskoj javnosti.
Višeslav Raos
Centar za politološka istraživanja, Zagreb
centar za politološka istraživanja
political science research centre
www.cpi.hr
68