War and Peace: European Conflict Prevention. EU-ISS Chaillot Paper 11, September 1993

Freedman, Lawrence and Hassner, Pierre and Senghaas, Dieter and Silvestri, Stefano and Zaldivar, Carlos. (1993) War and Peace: European Conflict Prevention. EU-ISS Chaillot Paper 11, September 1993.

Abstract

[Introduction]. For more than two years, wars and atrocities all too reminiscent of another epoch have set in--perhaps permanently--in the heart of Europe. Yet the Continent is for the most part focused towards its prosperity, its restored security and the extension of fundamental liberties. This coexistence of peace and war is not attributable solely to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. In the former Soviet Union as a whole the pattern is echoed in one republic or another and threatens at any moment to spread to Russia itself, or to involve Russia and one or other of those republics. For over forty years the communist threat and nuclear deterrence froze the march of history in Europe, under the double seal of relative stability for the whole continent and a tyranny clearly reserved for its eastern part. The explosion of political liberty in the East has ended this division and, paradoxically, introduced into the European order regional anarchy of the most traditional type. The end of the Cold War has been marked in effect by the return of real wars to Europe. And yet with this reservation, that a conflict in Sarajevo does not imply the risk of global conflagration but merely signifies that a war is raging in Sarajevo. A security differential is now growing, from west to east and from north to south of what can be regarded as Europe from a strategic point of view: Washington is much more secure than Bonn, London or Paris, and the latter capitals are much more secure than Budapest, Kiev or Skopje. If the notion of collective security has any meaning, it is more that of a myth or a long-term objective than of a reality for Europe in 1993. The general rule today is rather the inequality of Europeans in the face of war and the diversity of reactions in the face of a given conflict, and thus the primacy of national differences over contractual or de facto solidarity. The nationalism which is now feeding the new logic of European wars is not, after all, the exclusive right of the former Soviet empire. For the European Community and Western countries in general managing other people's wars has become both a common necessity and one variable, among others, in their national interests. Formerly, the collective threat gave rise to a reflex of collective response; today's different, limited risks generate minimal, divergent responses. A certain degree of nationalism in the Western partners' security policies has thus become normal once again. When added to the monetary or economic difficulties each of them is experiencing, it explains in part the failure of the Twelve, the United States and the international community in general to deal with the war in the former Yugoslavia. It was doubtless necessary to let things take their course: just as the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence was not achieved in a day, so a certain time was necessary for the European democracies to adapt to and implement any preventive--or punitive--diplomacy worth speaking of. Neither the existing institutions nor common strategic thinking was suited to the new requirements for the management of European crises. Regarding in particular the legitimacy of the use of force, the democracies were obliged, and the process unfortunately seems far from completed, to re-learn how to escape from the narrow framework of legitimate individual or collective self-defence: when, by whom and why may recourse to the use of force therefore be legitimate--to halt or even prevent aggression? Since de Tocqueville, it has been recognised that democracies have an almost natural difficulty in considering the use of violence: will Yugoslavia provide confirmation of their powerlessness--or of their abdication of responsibility? Can democratic Europe live side by side with, supposedly limited, pockets of barbarism at the Community's frontiers? These are only some of the dilemmas posed daily by the new conflicts now scattered throughout Europe. An impartial observer, the Institute has brought together the views of five of the most eminent European specialists in the field of security: Pierre Hassner (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches internationales, Paris), Dieter Senghaas (Bremen University), Carlos Zaldivar (Cabinet of the Prime Minister of Spain), Lawrence Freedman (King's College, London) and Stefano Silvestri (Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome). In chapters dealing with the new European disorder, the suppression of nationalism, the common responsibility of the Twelve in crisis prevention, the use of force and the limitation of conflicts, each contributor puts forward views which, while different one from another, are essential to the forming of any practical solution. While not giving any definitive answer to the current conflicts, nor exhausting a subject which remains the major challenge of post-communist Europe, we hope these essays nevertheless constitute an essential contribution to the creation--or survival--of a lasting order of peace and freedom in Europe.