Ethnic Cleansing and the European Union

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Security, Memory and Ethnography

L. Tesser

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137308771
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Militärpolitik

This book offers the first multi-case analysis of the politics of ethnic remixing in an expanding EU, including studies on Central Europe, the Balkans and Cyprus. Tesser explains the politics of minority return in a post-national Europe, with particular attention to the long-term aftermath of minority removal as a conflict resolution policy.

Part I

Background and Theory

1

Introduction

Prior to the early stirrings of the European Union, the great powers and others in the incipient international community approved of ethnic separation. Key were the early- and mid-20th century population exchanges and transfers removing minorities who were considered irredentism-prone in Europe’s eastern half. National elites also worked aggressively to claim territory during this era of the nation-state’s ascendancy, often expelling ethnoreligious or national minorities after acquiring new lands. The population exchanges and transfers facilitated the departure of many remaining, leaving the international community in the awkward position of fulfilling radical nationalist goals and appearing to condone a usually violent wartime practice. Within such a context, international sanctioning of minority removal delivered an ominous lesson: if territory could not be won by winning ‘hearts and minds’ over competing national projects, it could be secured or even acquired by expulsion.

Fast-forwarding to the post–Cold War period, the lesson would be repeated. Bosnian–Serb nationalist extremists succeeded in claiming a part of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) through ethnographic re-engineering – with help from Belgrade. Bosnian Croats with secessionist goals likewise hoped to lay the foundation for a ‘Greater Croatia’ by forging Croat majority areas. The ensuing Dayton Agreement recognized a Serb autonomous region and cantons for Croats and Muslim ‘Bošnjaks.’ Yet, the ostensible mismatch between an incompletely ‘cleansed’ BiH and international recognition of these internal boundaries spurred post-war efforts to coax or compel minorities elsewhere to bolster ethnographic majorities, leaving Dayton an inadvertent accomplice in the re-engineering.¹ While the international community vigorously promoted the reconstitution of a multi-ethnic BiH, the lesson was nevertheless reiterated. Forging ethnically ‘pure’ territory, or at least the impression of purity, can bring territorial dividends.

Time and time again key elements in the international community (IC) sanctioned identity-based forced migration – what is often called ethnic cleansing today. A ‘regime’ of ethnic separation may accordingly be noted in the first half of the 20th century in the population exchange, transfer and repatriation agreements of 1913–1923 and 1939–1949 – with after-effects extending decades later. The regime refers to the harmonization appearing in international policy preferences around the removal of minorities deemed highly irredentism-prone for Europe’s eastern half – whether tacit or explicit. The great powers and others in the IC usually justified the approach on the basis of two claims: lessening the violence surrounding already-occurring expulsions and reducing chances for repeated instances.

International regimes have been broadly defined as encompassing the shared rules, norms, principles and modes of decision-making within a particular area of international relations.² Regime theory focuses on policy harmonization in the Cold War and particularly post-1989 era in arms control, environmental regulation and human rights, among other areas. Scholars stress the power of policy convergence and ensuing institutions – formal or informal – to influence or at least reflect major states’ interests. The regime of ethnic separation instead examines policy convergence at odds with contemporary self-professed Western values and occurring prior to the Cold War’s onset.

Minority removal was closely linked to the rise of the nation-state principle as a means for ordering the entire European states system, commencing with the incipient nation-states of southeastern Europe in the 19th century. Stress on the principle heightened with the carve up of Europe’s empires after the First World War, replacing them with a plethora of new or redrawn nation-states, even while debate lingered over the viability of the new order. The interwar period similarly featured tacit endorsement of separation in the peace treaties recognizing these countries, a time of heightened minority discrimination if not expulsion. Signed with the expectation that many among the minority nationalities would move to their ‘kin’ states, the treaties featured clauses stipulating that those persons not affiliated with the dominant titular nationality had the right to resettle in another state within a year or two. Though provisions for minority rights were also included in the treaties, host states often ignored them as the great powers showed little interest in their enforcement.

It was also a time when the dominant view of international relations – realism – faced challenges to the assumed primacy of great power politics. More idealistic visions of world peace and international cooperation embodied in the League of Nations and United Nations garnered strength following the 1907 Hague Conference, with US President Woodrow Wilson a prominent promoter of making international relations like the internal politics of liberal-democracies. Wilson believed the liberation of many subject nationalities would mitigate realpolitik, among other significant changes in the conduct of international affairs. Yet, he failed to anticipate that a new European order based on the nation-state – the amorphous concept of self-determination in particular – would spur on many nationalisms, or that the tensions and eventual conflict between territorial winners and losers would help lay the foundation for more nationalism and war.

While the nation-state principle does not preclude minority rights provisions, its rise in the late 19th and early 20th century coincided with the increasing understanding that territories composed of homogeneous nations were more viable in the long-term than multinational empires.³ Key was the 1923 Greek–Turkish population exchange of Muslims in Greece and Orthodox/Greeks in Turkey. Historian Philipp Ther conveys the agreement’s importance: ‘it made politicians all over the world believe that homogenous nation-states were the ideal for international peace and stability, and that members of national minorities could be considered a potential source of conflict and instability.’⁴ And while minority removal was not the dominant feature of the international order, it was used frequently enough to notice significant policy convergence in the first half of the 20th century for Eastern Europe, with great powers sometimes endorsing minority extraction when unsure if it served their interests.

The separation regime’s importance for this study lies primarily in clarifying a second order argument: that repeated international sanctioning of minority removal: 1) amplifies the link between ethnography and sovereignty already present in nationalist discourse, and 2) presents incentives for the use of ethnic cleansing to claim or further secure territory. More central is my forthcoming explanation for why the contemporary after-effects of minority removal, and related mass population movements, vary between particular cases.

European integration: the end of the nation-state?

By the early 1950s, ethnic separation had vanished from the official Western repertoire of stability policies in Europe. It would be replaced by a more respectable vision for long-term peace, albeit one that remains a stark contrast to its predecessor: European integration. The emerging integration project initially included only six member states – France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg the Netherlands – later bringing in Britain, Denmark, and Ireland (1973), Greece (1981), and Spain and Portugal (1986). East Germany entered through the ‘back door’ thanks to German reunification (1990), with Austria, Finland, and Sweden gaining membership in the fourth official round (1995) – before 12 additional countries joined in the new millennium with Croatia slated for 2013.

The EU’s primary institutional predecessors – the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and European Economic Community (EEC) [renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993]⁵ – would have a central role in minimizing prospects for divisive nationalism.⁶ Several logics lay behind the idea of integration as peace promoting. First, putting coal and steel industries essential for war under supranational control would make conflict between historic rivals France and Germany all but unthinkable. French–German reconciliation would then be furthered through economic and initially hoped for political integration, and by enmeshing Germany into constraining institutional structures. Related was the prediction that national political units – and ultimately nationality – would diminish in importance. The second reason concerns economic reconstruction. Increased economic integration would ultimately raise output and productivity predicted to lessen regional disparities in wealth and income as each could make the most of comparative advantage that could diminish prospects for nationalism. Third was the hope of creating an international legal order to constrain realist balance of power politics. Over time, and particularly with EU expansion south and eastwards, came the stress on exporting values of human rights, democracy, markets and enmeshment in EC institutions for continent-wide peace and stability,⁷ with some hoping that French–German reconciliation would provide a model for Polish–German reconciliation. Academic accounts have also stressed the EU’s moderating power, particularly the leverage it wields to spur or enhance liberal–democratic reforms.⁸

The idea of European integration as the recipe for long-term peace reappeared with force after the Cold War, even while a number of Western elites were initially reluctant to bring Central and East European (CEE) states into a widened EU. When formally announcing eastern expansion in October 2002, European Commission President Romano Prodi remarked that if CEE countries were not allowed to join, then this part of the continent would fall prey to the kind of nationalism that broke Yugoslavia apart.⁹ Former external relations commissioner Chris Patten claimed likewise that ‘either Europe exports stability to the Balkans or the Balkans export instability to the rest of Europe,’¹⁰ while a survey in The Economist reminded readers that ‘EU enlargement is part of the same “peace project” that was initially centered on reconciliation between France and Germany.’¹¹ The year 2004 ushered in the largest round of enlargement with ten new members: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, and a still divided Cyprus. The year 2007 brought Romania and Bulgaria as new member states, a round of expansion later judged to have been premature, with Croatia set to join in mid-2013.

Yet, European integration signals a reversal of the early and mid-20th century stress on ethnic separation, a time when minority removal coincided with the nation-state’s ascendance – trends later reappearing in the Yugoslav wars of dissolution. At its zenith, forced migration involved massive numbers of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and others, while figures of Germans moving in the post–Second World War era alone totaled roughly 15 million. The Western Allies’ policy response to Nazi irredentism was, after all, the transfer of approximately six million ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, with over ten million Germans departing Czechoslovakia and Poland. Europe’s largest wave of forced migration occurred in 1944–1948 when nearly twice the number found themselves leaving their homes than during the hostilities. Over 20 major waves of largely compulsory population movements occurred in Europe since the final days of the war – all identity-based, a figure that encompasses the more recent ethnic cleansing in the Western Balkans.

In principle, EU expansion brings an end to states’ rights to exclude goods, capital, labor, and services from other member states. Its appearance as a post-modern, post-national economic and political space may then seem jarring for those accustomed to a tight linkage between nationality and state territory conveyed by nationalist ideology and implied through the repeated international sanctioning of minority removal often following war related expulsions. The dropping of borders for free movement may then appear unsettling as the prospect of minority return signals a potential ethnographic shift within states, changes that can be interpreted as presenting possible sovereignty questions. After allowing the removal of checkpoints along the Polish–German border in January 2008, for example, Polish diplomat and former ambassador to Germany Janusz Reiter remarked that the idea of the border being noticeably softened would take some getting used to. While a substantial majority of Poles hold a positive view about the EU, Reiter noted that ‘a significant minority is having trouble with the idea of living in an open space without protective borders. Such fears also exist in other European countries. In Poland – for historic reasons – they have a lot to do with Germany.’¹² Noteworthy is that much of the Polish side of the border area lay in Germany up until 1945 and witnessed the flight, expulsion or transfer of the majority of Germans not long thereafter.

An unprecedented case: (re)integrating ‘unmixed’ areas

Though diverse areas indeed remain in Europe’s eastern half,¹³ having countries marked by relatively recent mass identity-based forced migration enter the EU presents the very first ‘case’ of a new phenomenon. It is the large-scale (re)integration of lands subject to extreme campaigns of ethnic separation. While there are certainly inconsistencies in EU conditionality – particularly allowing a divided Cyprus to join – non-discrimination and free movement across member state borders remain major principles of the Union. This book offers a comparative analysis of EU anti-separation policies’ impact on ‘unmixed’ areas – including pressures for policy adoption – and poses some new research questions.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I  Background and Theory
• Part II  Country Cases
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index