Post on 12-Jan-2023
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Diplomatic negotiators in the international political field: Narrating
peace and conflict in the former Yugoslavia
Liliana Pop
Paper prepared for the International Studies Association Meeting
San Francisco, April 2013
Draft only; please do not quote without permission
Contact details:
Dr Liliana Pop
Independent Scholar
London, UK
Liliana.pop@ntlworld.com
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Diplomatic negotiators in the international political field: Narrating peace
and conflict in the former Yugoslavia1
Abstract
This paper uses the memoirs published by the two main international negotiators
involved in the resolution of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, David Owen and
Richard Holbrooke as the starting point for a Bourdieusian analysis of diplomatic
habitus and the logic of honour in the international political field. The similarities in
terms of skills and activities between these two negotiators are useful for the
reconstruction of some of the basic features of the international political field – the
co-existence of relatively autonomous spheres within it, but equally important for an
explanation of the different outcomes of their efforts is the positionality and timing of
their actions. In this, the logic of honour, which stipulates that social judgement on
actors and the appropriateness of their actions is passed in accordance with their fit
with expectations associated with their position in the field is at work in the reactions
to and management of the failure of the Vance Owen Peace Plan and the ultimate
resolution of the conflict. In substantive terms, this analysis substantiates the claim
that European regionalism is embedded in an American imperium (Katzenstein 2005)
as both civilisational commonalities and the implicit hierarchy within this relation
were affirmed.
Key words: Pierre Bourdieu, logic of honour, international political field, diplomacy,
former Yugoslavia
1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British International Studies Association meeting
in Exeter, in December 2008. I would like to thank all the participants for their comments and
suggestions. I draw here on fieldwork carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina funded through a small
grant from the British Academy.
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Diplomatic negotiators in the international political field: Narrating war and peace in
the former Yugoslavia
The work of Pierre Bourdieu has often been criticised for its seeming rigidity and
structuralist bias (Butler 1999; Callinicos 1999; Collins 2000). This paper however
builds on the suggestion that his concepts could usefully be regarded as tools that,
sensitively deployed, might enhance our understanding of international politics
(Huysmans 2002; Jackson 2008; Leander 2002, 2006; Neumann 2007, 2008; Pop
2007; Pouliot 2008). I am especially interested here in scrutinising elaborate,
published testimonies by two of the diplomats, David Owen (1996) and Richard
Holbrooke (1999), intimately involved with and indeed at times leading the efforts of
the international community to come to terms with and facilitate the resolution of the
war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-5). Written with considerable self-awareness,
candour and detail, these testimonies provide an excellent point of departure for an
assessment of some of the basic assumptions about habitus, fields and practice
formulated by Bourdieu in his extensive opus (for instance 1988, 1990, 1991, 1996,
2000, 2004, 2005a and 2005b) and their usefulness for the study of international
relations.
The diplomatic efforts surrounding the Yugoslav crisis were undertaken against a
background of significant anxiety over the definition of roles and relationships after
the end of the Cold War for all the major European and North-American states and
their international organisations, what might be called a situation of unusually high
‘ontological insecurity’ (Mitzen 2006). Many critics of the manifest inability of the
international community to stop the war or curtail its humanitarian consequences,
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have pointed out the divergent aspirations and interests of various states, their
inability to agree on a common course of action, with sometimes devastating
consequences in terms of human lives within BiH (Gowan 1999; Silber and Little
1996; Wheeler 2000; Woodward 1995). These memoirs certainly bring into focus the
day-to-day playing out of particular interests as incidents occur – within the domestic
politics of various countries or on the ground in BiH. They also support the
contention, as I will seek to show, that the concerns states have for the affirmation and
preservation of their status, through competition and cooperation with others, confirm
the hypothesis that the behaviour of states, not unlike that of other individual and
collective actors is regulated by the logic of honour. Indeed, some of the crucial and
fateful decisions during the war were motivated by such, often unspoken,
considerations.2
These memoirs also present in action elements of what might be called a ‘diplomatic
habitus’. Even though at one level this consists of a collection of individual attributes,
they also represent, in incorporated form, the social conditions in which they have
emerged and continue to operate. For this reason, they can serve for a reconstruction
of some of the features of the international political field and the relationship between
this and domestic political fields. Thus, the similarities in the ways in which the
actions of these two international diplomats are orientated towards a multiplicity of
audiences, require complex co-ordination of information and interests, and
sophisticated systems of evaluation, reflect at the same time the features of the
international political field and the assumptions held in common by effective, high-
powered participants in the dominant, North-Atlantic region of this field. The
2 For a review of works on the Bosnian wars see Kent (1997).
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differences between them, in terms of nationality, one British (Welsh) and the other
American, and thus particular training, appear as idiosyncratic and certainly less
important than the constraints on the effectiveness of their actions that follow from
their particular positions, as representatives of the EU and the US respectively.
The logic of honour in the international political field
Pierre Bourdieu has offered in his extensive opus a powerful conception of the social
anchored in the notions of habitus, field and practice (Bourdieu 1988, 1996, 2000,
2004, 2005a). Actors are characterised by attributes, a certain habitus, inculcated
through prolonged immersion in their social environment, in such a way that identities
come to incorporate, as unconscious structured and structuring structures the social
conditions associated with their emergence and effectiveness. Fields of practice, such
as the economy and politics, domestic and international, have specific members, a
particular structuring principle at any one time and a (usually) hierarchical
distribution of positions characterised by the particular accumulations of capitals
valued in that field. Within this view of the social, the logic of honour is a type of
practice that regulates the ways in which the group, the participants in a certain field
tend to assess different actions. According to the principle of equality in honour, the
determining criterion for evaluating actions is their appropriateness and
correspondence with the expectations collectively associated with the position and the
occupant of that position in the social field. Thus judgements and actions are not
exclusively instrumental but incorporate a certain pre-commitment of actors in the
assumptions that give distinctiveness to the field and constitute the basis for its
relative autonomy from other social fields.
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The logic of honour refers both to the operation of symbolic processes, linked to the
underlying values of a group, or community, and the material hierarchies that operate
within it. While all social exchanges can have honour implications, in so far as they
affect the rights to occupy various positions in the field, honour exchanges as such,
direct confrontations involving fundamental identity assumptions held by actors,
points of honour, are relatively rare and most of the time, actors carry out and take for
granted the work of maintaining the current social order. Actors are embedded in their
social environments through both conscious and unconscious processes; they share
the basic premises of the field in which they participate, a specific illusio, just as they
can develop self-awareness, reflexivity and distance from field dynamics.3
Thus, actions are layered not only in the sense that they can take different meanings
depending on how they impact on different participants in the field, but also in terms
of the degrees of identification, conscious or unconscious, strong or weak with the
conventions of the field. However, in general, since actions are always attended by
some risk of failure, in most social interactions actors do not question directly what is
at stake in terms of honour, their profound social identity and may even purposely
conceal the links between the declared purpose and rules of the interaction and
consequences in terms of honour. Symbolic skills, knowing how to do the right thing
at the right time, are especially important as actors seek to reduce the uncertainty that
attends significant social exchanges.
3 The character of ‘organized hypocrisy’ (Krasner 1999) attached to sovereignty, neatly alludes to and
captures this dual determination of the norm. Its effectiveness is due to the profound structuring of the
international field, which is already (and seemingly always) made of sovereign entities which share an
interest in upholding the norm, while its ability to actually shape behaviour reflects compromises and
adjustments pertaining to particular power balances at any one time. For the actors, this means a certain
ambiguity, even hypocrisy in their behaviour: collusion with the belief that the norm is absolute and at
the same time awareness that it is not, or might not be.
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It is because the material distribution of power is reflected in and negotiated through a
symbolic order that has its own degree of autonomy, that it remains possible for the
powerful, through misjudgement, to engage an actor of inferior social status in a
power contest, and to lose, which would bring shame; for the one who aspires to
improve one’s position through demonstration of greater ability or force than so far
recognised, to translate this demonstration from material gain, for instance on the
battlefield, into a social fact accepted by the others, considerable symbolic skills are
also required (Bourdieu 1990, 98-111).
The dissolution of Yugoslavia has often been linked to the re-alignment of political
identities and alliances at the end of the Cold War for the European states, NATO, US
and Russia. It was a testing ground for how these relationships might be defined in the
new circumstances, and in a sense, what the collapse of the communist bloc might
mean in concrete terms. The initial reaction was blunt and influenced by
considerations of real politik: as the Berlin Wall fell and Central and Eastern
European states were executing their turnaround from communism, the ideological
import of Yugoslavia as the maverick, liberal communist state friendly to the West
disappeared. James Baker famously pronounced that the US ‘didn’t have a dog in the
fight’ over the Yugoslav dissolution (Glenny 1996; Zimmerman 1996).
As the crisis of the Yugoslav dissolution unfolded, however, it increasingly engaged
the honour and responsibility of the main European and North-American states. The
recognition of Croatia and Slovenia and other republics, the wars in Slovenia and
Croatia were managed through the setting up of the Baden Commission and the
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negotiation of a cease-fire that froze the conflict, leaving 30 per cent of the Croatian
territory under the control of Serbian rebels. However, the breakout of the fighting in
BiH in 1992 intensified all the dilemmas for the international community. The
diplomatic effort to search for a solution took place in the context of the UN initially
with the imposition of an arms embargo, a no-fly zone over BiH and the deployment
of UNPROFOR, whose mandate was initially to limit the impact on civilians of the
war operations and to assist with the distribution of aid. The International Conference
on Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), first convened in London at the initiative of John
Major was then institutionalised as a negotiating forum, from September 1992, co-
chaired by David Owen (for the UE) and Cyrus Vance (for the UN), the latter
replaced by Sweden’s Theobald Stoltenberg from May 1993 and was until the
summer of 1995 the main forum for the search for peace.
As the fighting in BiH continued, uncertainty over the honour implications of the
actions of the different actors increased and all played on time in order to secure a
better outcome for themselves. In fact, it might be said that the conflict was so
protracted because the opposing claims made by the different parties were so difficult
to reconcile or adjudicate. Croatia and Serbia (or, with Montenegro, the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, FRY), aspired to expand their territories and annex parts of
BiH inhabited by their co-ethnics. Moulded by historical grievances and pre-World
War II, eminently territorial models of sovereignty, the techniques of statecraft
utilised by the Serb and Croatian leaders have had the effect of alienating whatever
support there might have been for their aspirations.4 At the same time, as sovereign
4 Owen (1996: 32-5) discloses for instance that the possibility of redrawing the republican borders
within Yugoslavia had been entertained by the EC in mid-1991 and discarded as a result of lack of faith
on the ability of the parties to carry out such a chance peacefully and without endangering the human
rights of the various ethnic groups.
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states, both Serbia/FRY and Croatia could mobilise the rights available to them as
members of the international field and could request, for instance, UN assistance, as
well as pursue advantageous bilateral alliances, for instance with Russia or Germany
in order to sustain, more or less covertly, their expansionist hopes.
At the same time, the position of the international community as a whole, with some
specific differences for the different European countries and the US and Canada, was
ambivalent as to the extent to which it could intervene. Military presence on the
ground by the UNPROFOR was meant to ensure the protection of civilians and the
distribution of aid, but their position was morally ambiguous. They were sometimes
reduced to unwilling assistants to ethnic cleansing, as they guaranteed safe passage to
refugees leaving conquered areas, and, later in the war, they could do little to protect
civilians when the ‘safe areas’ of Goradze, Zepa and Srebrenica were overrun by the
Bosnian Serb army. There seemed to be very little that could be done in the face of
the determination of the warring ethnic armies and their political leaders to keep
fighting with any means available to them, short of military intervention to impose a
settlement.
The diplomatic habitus
Both Owen (1996) and Holbrooke (1999) document work in its day-to-day content
and rhythms. For instance, at the beginning of his book, Owen lists all major events
and meetings during his tenure as co-chairman as the ICFY: there are odd days when
nothing of consequence seems to be happening, but these are the exception rather than
the rule. The book also comes with an extensive CD-Rom which provides access to
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much of the paperwork, the COREU telegrams for instance, written by Owen and
circulated among the EC/EU members. And, equally, with Holbrooke, it is apparent at
every step that intensive personal and professional mobilisation is required, with
barely a chance to pause for a week-end break or personal time. This includes
extensive travel and almost constant communication with the relevant policy-makers
and the press.
Within this extraordinary mobilisation, the accounts also contain indications of the
particular skills required and deployed. Some of these are embedded in relationships
built over decades. Holbrooke’s last assignment before becoming Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Canadian Affairs in charge with handling the negotiations
over the Bosnian wars was as the US ambassador to Germany, but he started his
career in the State Department as part of the team negotiating the end of the Vietnam
War in 1962. Equally, Owen’s prominent position within the British foreign policy
establishment is well known, having served as a member of parliament for 26 years
and as Foreign Secretary between February 1977 and May 1979. This prolonged
habituation with international politics is also supported in each case by a certain
independence of means – for instance Owen decided not to draw a salary in the first
few months of his chairmanship and Holbrooke has combined periods of government
service (he was part of President Johnson’s White House staff in 1966-67) with
appointments in the private and non-governmental sectors, in the media and banking.
Written on the back of the success of having concluded the war, at Dayton, but also
published against some background of uncertainty over whether the agreement would
hold, Holbrooke’s account has something of the upbeat feel of a ‘how to’ book, and it
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is perceptive and precise as to the actions that, in his view, made a difference. In a
sense he provides sharper definition of decisive skills and interventions that are also
documented by Owen. In the latter’s account the overall tone is given by the intention
to show the profound, sustained involvement over a period of time with a process of
search for peace, which, in spite of his and those of his co-chairmen’s efforts, did not
succeed in the immediate sense of actually leading to an agreement.
Most evidently in Holbrooke’s account the art to improvise was central to his success.
In turn, this rests on correct perception of the difference between what people say, and
seek to represent, and what they actually mean or the reality of the situation; on astute
understanding of the resources available within different institutional set-ups, their
logics and thus effective ways of access; and decisiveness in trying to shape all these
elements in order to achieve a particular outcome. It also entails a great capacity to
process situations in such a way that pragmatism wins over emotionalism, an ability
to develop empathy and cognitive frameworks of understanding for divergent,
potentially seemingly hostile points of view within an overall ethic of fair-play and
sportsmanship.
This includes for instance the ability to shift between registers of discourse, including
the astute, adequate mobilisation of what Holbrooke calls ‘high history rhetoric’. For
instance, in his conversation with the Greek Prime-Minister Andreas Papandreou, he
brings to bear moral and affective arguments, such as the profound commitment to
make a positive difference to a situation and effectively to shape the course of history,
in order to persuade him to reopen negotiations with Macedonia (p 125) in spite of
opposition from his foreign minister. Similar arguments are deployed in conversation
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with the reluctant decision makers involved in deliberation over the resumption of
NATO bombardment in August 1995, at a time when suspension of bombardment
could have become permanent if resumption had been delayed for more than 72 hours
(p. 132).
Following Holbrooke’s testimony, getting the job done involved a complicated
balancing act between specific dynamics in a few different social spheres: the
negotiating team, the US administration, NATO, the Contact Group, the parties to the
conflict in BiH and the press. Each can be conceived as relatively autonomous
institutional and organisational fields, with specific logics and constraints, but most of
the actions taken by Holbrooke as his team as part the negotiating effort had the
potential to resonate, signify, impact and bring consequences in each of these fields.
The US negotiating team comprised representatives from a variety of government
departments, who needed to stay loyal both to these departments, and their career
concerns there, and to be committed to negotiating for a positive result. The loss of
three of the initial members of the team in an accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo,
was effectively mobilised to sustain motivation for the peace effort, as both public
ceremonies and occasions for more personal bonding between colleagues and
survivors were carefully calibrated.
The relationships with the commander in chief, President Clinton, his national
security advisor and the State and Defense Departments, were also potentially
difficult, as sometimes conflicting advice coming from them had to be carefully
counteracted through appropriate deployment of argument and evidence in often short
notice, decisive meetings. For instance, the obligation of the US to provide troops in
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case of UN withdrawal from BiH had been built into a semi-automatic decision-
making mechanism within NATO, apparently without the members of the
administration being fully aware of the fact that the choices available to the President
were thus severely reduced. In another instance, to do with the choice of site for the
final negotiations, Holbrooke suggests that the choice for a US site, which he
favoured, was taken in spite of an initial consensus against such a choice. As the 1996
election campaign in the US was drawing near, the concern within the Clinton
administration was that a failure would impact negatively on his chances with the
American electorate.
Here Holbrooke is generally complimentary of colleagues and superiors and notes in
one instance the importance of ambiguity in the formulation of the mandate of the
negotiating team:
While Washington wanted the offensive to stop, we never had a clear
instruction, only the general sense of our senior colleagues, who left to us the
exact calibration of the signal. Remembering again how Harriman and Vance
had been “overinstructed” during their negotiations with the North Vietnamese
in 1968, I was grateful that Washington was giving us such flexibility and
support. Later, Tom Dillon told me that most of the credit for protecting our
flexibility was owed to Warren Christopher, who, despite his own views,
argued that Washington should back its negotiators. (Holbrooke 199: 159)
Internationally, the negotiating efforts took place nominally under the umbrella of the
Contact Group, whose members, especially Russia and France, or non-members, such
as Italy are presented as forces that had to be contained, cajoled and generally
managed. In a characteristically astute observation that captures a more general
tension in international relations, Holbrooke (p. 116-7) notes that often the most
intense debates among members are over the venues for meetings, as hosting is often
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seen as actually playing an important role even when the scope for variations,
modifications, amendments of policy is in fact quite limited.
Acute awareness of and effectiveness in the art of shaping meetings is also in
evidence for instance in relation to the use of space – location – but also the number
of places at the negotiating table: the exclusion of the Bosnian Serbs from direct
participation in the negotiations was an important strategic decision, dramatised for
instance at the first meeting in two years of the Foreign Ministers of Croatia, FRY and
BiH, in Geneva, in September 1995, though their relegation to the status of observers,
seated at the margins of the gathering. Initially, they did not take this quietly, but
when Holbrooke confronted them, they acquiesced only requesting that they be
allowed the gesture of publicly delegating to the FRY team the authority to negotiate
for them (Holbrooke 1999: 137-41).
There is no direct testimony in Holbrooke about having learned explicitly from the
previous negotiations, but his choices in shaping meetings are very much in keeping
with the conclusions that Owen drew from his own experience. For instance, the
constraints built into the negotiating positions proposed by the US team, and accepted
by parties before each new step in the process, sought to eliminate some of the escape
routes from committing to an agreement taken in the past. Throughout the war, all
Bosnian parties often created uncertainty over agreements they had seemingly
accepted, by delegating final decision to their parliaments or even referendums, by
using the press to create a certain climate of opinion, by trying to provoke outrageous
behaviour on the part of their adversaries, by using back channels in the US and EU
political establishment to mobilise greater support for their particular positions.
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For instance, the Dayton agreement, prepared by the US team, with collaboration
from and certainly closely fought over by the parties, is a comprehensive document
running to over 120 pages and 11 annexes. According to Holbrooke, this was question
of using to maximum advantage the opportunity to achieve a settlement, on the
assumption that matters not agreed at Dayton would be unlikely to ever be agreed.
Thus the Dayton Peace Accords built in positions in a wide range of areas from
military aspects of the peace settlement, regional stabilization, the inter-entity
boundary line, elections, constitution, human rights, refugees and displaced persons,
public corporations, civilian implementation and the international police task force.5
The media, in the US and internationally, is also seen to play an important role. On
the one hand, it is constantly monitored for information about significant
developments. There is a certain assuredness and precision in the attribution of
meanings even in the absence of absolute proof, which must indicate that at some felt,
experience-based and practical level the connections between the message printed or
broadcast and the intention of the source of the information that it should be out in the
public sphere to signal to others are known to be effective. For instance, after the
drawing up of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), in early 1993, the US press is
seen by Owen to misrepresent constantly the contents of the plan and seems to signal
ambivalence within the US administration towards it. Even though, within the direct
channels of communication, assurance is given that the VOPP is supported, with the
reservation that the administration would not go as far as asking the Muslim party to
accept it, further enquiries establish the tensions within the new administration on this
issue and at times the lack of a clear policy on Bosnia. In any case, Owen and Vance
5 For an analysis of the importance of the Dayton Accords as the decisive reference point in the post-
conflict period and in BiH see Pop (2008).
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become much more involved in something like a media campaign in the US in the
first few months of 1993 to put the record straight.
In one occasion, a press article on an agreement that had yet to be agreed was felt to
have ‘bounced’ the parties into actually accepting it. For instance, the Joint Action
Plan worked out by the US, first in agreement with Russia, as an initiative of
continued involvement by the international community, against the background of
perceived failure of the VOPP is announced as fact in a New York Times article on 18
May 1993. Published on the day when the foreign ministers of the UK and France,
presumed co-signatories were flying to Washington to discuss the initiative, it did
much to force their hand to present a show of unity. Thus, the art of government
clearly includes careful judgement of when a leak is necessary, and, conversely,
because leaks are almost unavoidable, how secrecy can be guarded for a period of
time, to ensure effective, sometimes staged disclosure in official announcements.
Before Holbrooke sets out for the Balkans, at the beginning of his negotiating effort,
he makes a point of giving an interview to the International Herald Tribune, because
it is read in the Balkans, to signal his tough position against the Bosnian Serbs. There
is no evidence that they had read the interview, or acted on it, but when a particularly
vicious bombing occurs in the besieged Sarajevo a few days later, he feels doubly
awful (p. 91) and takes the attack as ‘the first direct affront to the United States’ (p.
93). In spite of the mediation so many relatively distinct social spheres, clearly,
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inferences are drawn about links between events, even though they rarely can be
invoked publicly, except within the conventions of a book such as this.6
There are two broader points to note about the significance of this configuration of
habitus-related attributes. First, they reflect a particular, multilayered structuring of
the international political field in which relatively autonomous social spheres can and
sometimes are brought in relation to each other in the resolution of complicated crises
such as that in the former Yugoslavia. Second, the differences in their deployment by
the EU (UK) and US negotiators are not significant enough to explain the difference
in outcome of their efforts. Further probing of the material and symbolic mechanisms
that underpin and contribute to the reproduction of the current, hierarchical order, and
of the difference in timing and positionality of these efforts, is necessary.
Timing, positionality of action and diplomatic effectiveness
Two insights and lines of scholarship have vied for attention in the study of
international agreements: that effectiveness of agreements depends on effective
design7 and that effectiveness depends on the backing of the powerful. And in this
case, the evidence for the latter seems stronger. As Owen (1996) rightly emphasizes,
the Vance-Owen plan negotiated by the ICFY co-chairmen with all the parties in BiH
6 Sensitive appreciation of the different degrees of truth, formality and informality, and areas of
circulation for information is of course a requisite of normal government business. For instance,
Holbrooke (1999: 176) mentions the existence of an informal channel of communication between the
deputy foreign ministers of the US and Russia: ‘The Talbott-Mamedov channel, low profile at the time,
was the modern version of the special channel between Washington and Moscow that had existed from
1941 through the end of the Cold War and now constituted the main vehicle for negotiating important
issues between the two countries, including NATO enlargement, economic assistance, presidential
summits, and sensitive political issues.’ 7 See for instance the recent special issues of International Organization dedicated to work on
legalisation and institutional design (Vol. 54, no. 3 (2000) and Vol. 55, no. 4 (2001). The second
argument is usually made by realist scholars, see for instance Gilpin (2001) and Mearsheimer (2001).
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had the endorsement of the EU and the UN and, in substantive terms was reducing the
control of the Bosnian Serbs to 43 per cent (compared to the 49 per cent they
eventually achieved at Dayton); it also required them to retreat from about 38.6 per
cent of the territory of BiH they held in early 1993. Unsurprisingly, the Bosnian Serbs
prevaricated and postponed giving a clear commitment to the plan; even though their
negotiators agreed, final approval was given to the parliament in Pale and then a
referendum. But the real stumbling bloc on which the plan foundered was the lack of
endorsement from the US. As with Dayton, implementation would have required,
potentially, military deployment and the new US government, under President Clinton
was not prepared to contemplate this option.
The non-endorsement of the VOPP by the US was couched in terms of policy
difference, as the US advocated in turn the lifting of the arms embargo, NATO strikes
(which were impractical due to the presence of UN personnel on the ground) and
containment, and it offered a critique of the insufficient consideration given to
Muslim and then, paradoxically, Serb interests. In Owen’s reading, this was a tactic
through which the plan itself and the European position were discredited to mask
indecision and tension within the US administration and their inability to act in
accordance with the expectation that, as the world’s only superpower, they could lead.
Taking the analysis one step forward, Owen (1996: 173-4) also suggests that the
undermining, scapegoating tactic was not only face-saving but also served to maintain
the status-quo:
US attitudes to European unity have been essentially ambivalent for decades.
Ever since President Kennedy gave support to the Common Market and the idea
of European unity, American foreign policy has been based on encouraging EC
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unity, but with the unstated proviso that it supports US policy. The moment
European unity manifested itself as being critical of US policy the US had a
tendency to revert to bilateral consultation to head off a united European
opposition. That divide and rule policy had served them pretty well in NATO
and other fora. The ICFY was seen by some in Washington as an undesirable
innovation in that it was a formalized mechanism for achieving an EC policy
and tying that in to the UN, leaving the US to either cooperate or be challenged.
And indeed, the US moves to rally Russia, as well as France, UK and Spain for a Joint
Action Plan, announced on 22 May 1993 that provides the cover of continuity of
international involvement with the resolution of the Yugoslav crisis, in spite of the
ditching of the VOPP. Keen to heal what had been portrayed as an ‘Atlantic rift’,
these European powers choose (temporarily) to break the multilateral consensus
(much to the resentment of Germany and others in Europe) and act on an bilateral
basis.
Further transmutations of the peace plans produced by the ICFY – such as the Union
of Three Republics, the EU action plan and contact group map – serve the same
purpose of providing a sense of continuity for the international efforts and
involvement in the Yugoslav crisis. However, for the first time, they also incorporate
the principle of territorial division within BiH, the substantive gain made by the
Bosnian Serbs by default, through the abandoning of the VOPP, which had been
identified as an attempt to prevent this. Diplomatically, the stage is then prepared for a
more active involvement on the part of the US, at the price of sidelining most of the
EU members, as the Contact Group gradually becomes the main forum for the
negotiating efforts.
On the occasion of the signing the Croat-Muslim federation agreement, the first
moment of active US involvement, in March 1994, the American negotiator,
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Ambassador Redman graciously acknowledges the transfer of the baton, in a
television broadcast, on 22 March 1994:
Almost everything that we have done has been built, in large measure, on the
work that has been done by the Conference, by Lord Owen, Mr Stoltenberg,
by the European Union and the engagement of their Ministers, particularly in
November and December and on into January and February, so that we had
added out weight to that effort. No doubt we have brought some new elements
to the table just by virtue of having another actor, and it may also be that the
time is right, that the parties have sensed that this is the time to move to a
negotiated solution, so we may be profiting from a more favourable
environment in that sense. (quoted in Owen 166: 290)
Holbrooke’s success occurs when in fact lack of US commitment to military backing
or a peace plan is no longer in danger of becoming an issue. NATO bombing in
August 1995 had led to the conclusion of a ceasefire. Moreover, the offensive of the
Croat army that summer which had reclaimed the territories held by Serb rebels, albeit
undertaken, according to Holbrooke against advice from the US military who
anticipated much greater resistance on the part of the Serbs, was successful and closed
a significant source of instability and uncertainty. But most importantly the military
equilibrium on the ground in BiH had changed and the level of troops necessary for
implementation, were not much more than the existing UNPROFOR in conditions of
my lowered danger. Moreover, beyond the negotiation of the Dayton agreement, its
implementation, and especially the civilian effort was going to be funded by the
Europeans who have nominated the leading personnel, including the High
Representive to the UN Secretary General.
Thus the historical account surrounding the conclusion of the war in BiH would
suggest that elements of both design and power interest came into play as a delicate
redefinition of the relationship between the US and Europe has taken place, renewing
and modulating to a certain extent what Katzenstein (2005) has defined as the
21
embedding of regionalism within a loosely framed but nonetheless powerful
American imperium. Against a common civilisational background, a commitment to
democracy, human rights, models of state identity that take account of diverse
populations and shared sovereignty in some areas of cooperation, the actions of the
US and the European states, acting within the EU or on a bilateral basis, also confirm
the underlying hierarchy. This analysis also shows that the symbolic aspects of this
order are also important as all states and social actors accept the obligation to behave
in such a way as to avoid open contestation of basic identity assumptions: in this case,
the US is not exposed as unable to back up militarily the VOPP plan in 1993 and thus
deliver in what might be legitimate expectations of consistent behaviour on the part of
the world’s only superpower. In their alacrity to avoid the development of an ‘Atlantic
rift’, the European powers participate in the work of averting a direct honour
challenge to the US, even as the seeds are sawn for a search for a Common foreign
and security policy within the EU.
Subaltern truths and truth telling
Particularly relevant for this Bourdieusian analysis of the relationship between
diplomatic habitus and the international political field is testimony related to the
handling of the various layers or aspects of reality by the Owen and Holbrooke.
Crucially, their skills are related to the sensitive handling of information, something
like the truth of the situation and the truth of the sentiment behind positions taken by
the different actors. As already mentioned, a capacity for getting real, effective
information, and for mobilising it effectively, is crucial for taking action and
modulating that action for maximum effect in any case. Such access is the result of
22
trust and mutual respect in relationships built over a long period of time, and these
qualities have to reaffirmed and renewed in actions in the present that also anticipate
correctly the future to a certain extent. To give one trivial example, Holbrooke notes
the care in handling the opposition between General Clark, a member of his
negotiating team, and the UNPROFOR and some of the NATO commanders over the
NATO bombing, in August 1995, so that Clark’s career prospects would not be
affected. Or, it is noted, that Kofi Annan’s then UN Undersecretary-General for
Peacekeeping collaboration with the US position (as Boutros Ghali was away, he was
responsible for leaving to NATO the decision for air strikes, under the dual-key,
shared UN-NATO responsibility for this decision). This marked him out for future
UN leadership, even though his eventual election with US support did not occur until
1997. Also, the impact of some of Holbrooke’s own interventions is perhaps more
powerful than can be officially acknowledged: he is not allowed to quote from his
cable pleading for a US site for negotiations, to protect the privacy of the President’s
decision making process, even though he suggests, through reference to third party
testimony, that this was one of most decisive interventions from a subordinate, at this
level of government.
Equally, Owen is aware of the personal consequences of certain position takings.
Alert that the signals from the US department in relation to the VOPP are
contradictory and confused, in January 1993, he attempts to rescue the position
through greater mobilisation in publicising the features of the plan. Significantly, this
is because since he is not looking for another international job, he does not need to
seek US patronage. And at the same time, contemplating resignation after the eventual
‘ditching’ of the plan by the US, he decides to stay on because there is no principled
23
position to draw attention to through such a gesture and the British position is that he
should stay. Decisively, he feels he has Izetbegovic’s support, who does not blame
him for this outcome. With this support he can then endure the personal humiliation
of meeting an ebullient and openly triumphant Karadzic, who had practically been
rewarded for opposing the VOPP.
However, these, as well as Owen’s analysis of the underlying power dynamics that
surrounded the abandonment of the VOPP and the shift in leadership in subsequent
negotiating efforts remain subaltern truths in one of two senses. Once Clark’s or
Annan’s or Holbrooke’s positions have been taken up by the powers that be, have
thus been officialised, the origins of these decisions, their actions no longer matter as
such. Their positions have become social, institutionalised, public facts and an
institutional rationale for their promotion or election is easily provided.8 And, on the
other hand, the truths that are too close to the bone, for which there seems to be no
practical possibility of them being taken into account, they may get to be articulated
forcefully and aired, in fora such as these, in the publishing of the books and in ‘never
to be answered’ memos to the relevant authorities.
In theoretical terms, what this tells us, of course, is that, as Bourdieu (1991: 130
argues, the principles of pertinence that inform the official, formal life of a group
create a formal coherence that suppresses competing aspects of experience, which
could potentially become legitimate if the life of the group were to be structured along
different lines. Most social actors, as a matter of basic social competence are usually
able to distinguish between these different kinds of truths – effective because
8 See for instance Edelman (1964) and Searle (1995) on some of the underlying dynamics in the
constitution of social, and political, facts.
24
sanctioned by the existing order and the social relations that underpin it – or subaltern
truths, even as they decide to deploy such knowledge in the service of the smooth
reproduction of the status quo, seek the thrill of embarrassing revelation or mobilise
for longer term change. In this sense, actor’s embeddedness, in their social reality is
always only partly illusio, an identification with and treatment of certain facts as taken
for granted reality, and partly a double consciousness that can basis for change.
The Balkans in the mirror
Within Yugoslavia, the impact of the end of the Cold-War, the uncertainty created by
the fluidity of external relations was compounded by specifically domestic factors:
economic crisis (Bartlett 2008, Woodward 1986), the complex structure of the state
and the uneasy balance between competing political principles for the organisation of
the state, nationalist, republican and multiethnic. As was the case with other
communist states, however seemingly ‘liberal’, the time spent ‘outside history’ and in
a very peculiar ideological bubble, did much to engender a particular political style
based on a preference for abstract argument rather than pragmatic consideration of
realities in which nationalist themes gradually came to dominate. The affect freed up
by the sudden collapse of the communist regimes was channelled there in a febrile
revival of nationalist grievances and concomitant political mobilisation to adopt a
democratic system of government. The two processes converged to impose
nationalism as the organising principle for the organisation of the newly emerging
states (Dragovic-Soso 2002; Gordy 1999; Ramet 2004a; 2004b; Razsa and Lindstrom
2004; Vladisavljević 2004).
25
Both Owen (1996) and Holbrooke (1999) are detached and neutral in their reference
to domestic political processes in the states emerging from the disintegration of
Socialist Yugoslavia. Moreover, their characterisations of the Balkan leaders often
balance a number of different considerations, even though personal disquiet at some
of their behaviours also comes through at times. The relative autonomy of domestic
political fields is especially visible in the fact that there is no questioning for instance
of the right of Izetbegovic to represent what is in fact a collective, often divisive and
at times nearly disappearing institution, the Presidency of BiH.
Milosevic, contrary to his portrayal by Zimmerman (1996) appears here as a
pragmatist rather than an ideologue and his decision in April 1993 to support the
VOPP plan and to distance himself from the virulent nationalism of the Bosnian Serbs
gains him Owen’s appreciation and also a degree of sympathy for the fact that
domestically, this position led to a political crisis for him, especially after the failure
of the plan. Increasingly feeling the cost of economic sanctions against his country, he
maintained this position in the negotiations leading up to the Dayton agreement, of
which, he was indeed a signatory. For Owen, however, it is clear that Kosovo is a
topic of a different degree of sensitivity for Milosevic who could not countenance
critical appraisal of Serbia’s position on this issue.
Holbrooke (1999: 114), in a spirit of sportsmanship, sounds almost complimentary as
he recognises controlled deployment of emotional states as part of the skills of the
politician or the diplomat: ‘Milosevic could switch moods with astonishing speed,
perhaps to keep others off balance. He could range from charm to brutality, from
26
emotional outbursts to calm discussions of legal minutiae. When he was angry, his
face wrinkled up, but he could regain control of himself instantly.’
The Bosnian Serbs were initially treated as one of the parties to the conflict and
involved in the negotiations up until their indictment for war crimes following the
overrunning of the safe areas and specially Srebrenica in the summer of 1995.
Meeting them posed serious moral dilemmas for the US delegation later that year.
Even though the position assumed from the start was that they would negotiate only
with Milosevic, who was to represent the Bosnian Serbs, in one occasion Karadzic
and Mladic were waiting in the wings to meet the Americans during one of their visits
in Serbia. Whether the Americans will shake hands with these two indicted war
criminals was left to their individual conscience.
It is clear, however, that there is a significant distance between the moral and
emotional universe of the Balkan leaders and that of their international partners. Even
when every effort is made to respect their dignity, and significant resources are
mobilised in search for a peaceful solution that is acceptable to all parties, there seems
to be continual, almost compulsive pushing at the boundaries of reasonable behaviour
and a tendency to multiply objections, problems, and escape routes from meaningful
commitment to a workable agreement. Sometimes, this kind of mobilisation of affect
is accompanied by clearly uninformed statements. Asked by Owen why he did not
allow women and children to leave Sarajevo during the siege, Izetbegovic answers
that Churchill would not have allowed them to leave London during World War II.9
Even though the technical evidence is sometimes ambiguous, Owen accepts that it is
9 Of course, the British encouraged and actively organised the evacuation of children from London at
that time.
27
quite likely that the Muslin side had in fact engaged in provocations, outrageous
endangering of their own, for instance by firing from the grounds of one of the
hospitals in Sarajevo, to compromise morally the other side and prompt further
international involvement.
For this reason, it is perhaps understandable that damning comments also occur in
these texts, even though the general tone is very much restrained. Owen queries to
towards the end of 1993 how much longer he can be expected to spend his energy
‘swimming hard to keep my head up in this Balkan sewer.’ (p. 259), and in the
introduction his overall assessment is that ‘[n]othing is simple in the Balkans. History
pervades everything and the complexities confound even the most careful study.
Never before in over thirty years of public life have I had to operate in such a climate
of dishonour, propaganda and dissembling. Many of the people with whom I had to
deal in the former Yugoslavia were literally strangers to the truth.’ (p. 1).
Thus, it is apparent that both in the negotiating effort itself and in the personal
engagement with the Balkan leaders careful consideration was given to their rights,
rights that follow from the legitimate participation of BiH and the other successor
states of Yugoslavia in the international political field. In spite of the sometimes great
personal costs to themselves as a result of inappropriate behaviour on the part of the
Balkan leaders, Holbrooke and Owen clearly abide by the expectation that they
should not be engaged on the same level. The strength of this norm of honourable
behaviour is demonstrated by the fact that doing anything else is virtually unthinkable.
Conclusion
28
This paper has used the memoirs published by the two main international negotiators
involved in the resolution of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, David Owen (1996)
and Richard Holbrooke (1999) as the starting point for a Bourdieusian analysis of
diplomatic habitus and the logic of honour in the international political field. It has
argued that Bourdieu’s understanding of embeddedness of actors in their social
environment can be used as an entry point for the analysis of that environment, due to
the inextricable link between habitus and field. At the same time, even as the
similarities in terms of skills and activities between these two negotiators are useful
for the reconstruction of some of the basic features of the international political field –
the co-existence of relatively autonomous spheres within it – equally important for an
explanation of the different outcomes of their efforts is the positionality and timing of
their actions. In this, the logic of honour, which stipulates that social judgement on
actors and the appropriateness of their actions is passed in accordance with their fit
with expectations associated with their position is seen to be at work in the reactions
to and management of the failure of the VOPP and the ultimate resolution of the
conflict.
In substantive terms, this analysis substantiates the claim that European
regionalism is embedded in an American imperium (Katzenstein 2005) as both
civilisational commonalities and the implicit hierarchy within this relation were
affirmed. It was against the common civilisational background and fundamental
identity of interest that a certain division of the labour of dominance could occur, not
only in the negotiating process but also post-conflict. Many of the risks of the earlier
involvement with the crisis in the former Yugoslavia were absorbed by the European
(and UN) efforts, just as it fell to them the hard work of implementing the Dayton
29
Accords. However, the prestige (and profit) of actually bringing the war to an end
accrued, perhaps rightfully, to the world’s only superpower.
30
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