Balkanist Rhetoric and Diplomacy: A Case Study of Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia

Balkanist Rhetoric and Diplomacy:

A Case Study of Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford

Supervisor: Dr Nicolette Makovicky

Word Count: 14,998

6th of June 2014

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Abstract

Scholars of Southeast Europe have argued that the build-‐up of nationalism in Yugoslavia and its successor states was accompanied by a significant shift in the public discourse, as the national political elites began to employ a discourse of Othering with the purpose of distinguishing their respective nations from Yugoslavia in order to promote their Euro-‐Atlantic integration. This dissertation examines the formation of such discourses in international politics, by analysing the diplomatic statements of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia in the United Nations General Assembly between 1993 and 2003. It finds that states adopted various discursive strategies in relation to their own position in the symbolic geography of the region as well as to the political realities vis-‐à-‐vis the international community. The dissertation concludes that both Croatia and Macedonia employed Balkanist rhetoric of Othering in order to legitimize the demand of Euro-‐Atlantic integration, while Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted an alternative strategy of refuting various Balkanist claims to which it was subjected by Western actors.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Literature review ....................................................................................................................................... 7

Sources ........................................................................................................................................................ 11

Methods ....................................................................................................................................................... 13

Structure ..................................................................................................................................................... 15

Chapter 1. The Case of Croatia .......................................................................................................... 17

1.1.Designating ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ ...................................................................................................... 19

1.2.Blood and Soil: Serbia as the ‘negative Other’ ..................................................................... 23

Chapter 2. The Case of Macedonia ................................................................................................... 28

2.1. Self-‐Designations ............................................................................................................................ 29

2.2. History of War and Disintegration .......................................................................................... 33

Chapter 3. The Case of Bosnia ........................................................................................................... 40

3.1. Civil War vs. International War ................................................................................................ 41

3.2. Age-‐old Ethnic Hatreds ................................................................................................................ 43

3.3. Clash of Civilizations ..................................................................................................................... 45

Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................ 48

Biography ................................................................................................................................................... 51

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INTRODUCTION

This dissertation investigates the discourse of Balkanism in international politics. It

analyses the use of this discourse in the diplomatic statements of three former

Yugoslav states, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Macedonia, in the United

Nations General Assembly between 1993-‐2003. The purpose of this research is to

examine the ways in which these states have employed internalized notions of

Balkanism in their diplomatic communication, compare the various discursive

strategies, and to investigate the underlying motivations behind the use of Balkanist

rhetoric. This research hypothesises that states have drawn on Balkanist discourse

of ‘othering’ to portray themselves as European in opposition to the Balkans in

order to justify their integration into Euro-‐Atlantic institutions.

The main reason for conducting this research is that while numerous scholars have

identified a clear foreign policy objective – that is Euro-‐Atlantic integration – for the

use of Balkanist discourse in the former Yugoslav states, there is little if no research

on how these states have pursued this goal via this discourse outside their own

borders. This is because prior scholarship on Balkanist discourse has focused

extensively on the domestic politics in the Yugoslav successor states (Bakić-‐Hayden

& Hayden, 1992; Bakić-‐Hayden, 1995; Todorova, 1995; Todorova, 1997; Lindstrom,

2003; Razsa & Lindstrom, 2004; Neofotistos, 2008; Šaric, 2009; Sawyer, 2013).

Among others, these scholars have concurred that in the 1990s, the Southeast

European political elites began to partake in the Balkanist discourse of ‘othering’

with the distinct objective of distancing themselves, and their respective nations,

from the Balkans and from what it signified in the Western psyche – that is war,

violence, and overall backwardness. The underlying purpose of employing this

discourse was, as scholars have explained, to legitimize the elites’ claims of their

‘Europeanness’ and their states’ accession to the Euro-‐Atlantic institutions.

These prior analyses on Balkanist discourse have drawn predominantly on domestic

sources and, as such, they have not investigated how Balkanist discourse was used

in the international sphere, where the fulfilment of that underlying foreign policy

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objective of European integration is ultimately decided. Moreover, earlier scholars

focused largely on individual countries in Southeast Europe, which has left ample

room for comparative research in the field. This dissertation will address both of

these gaps in the literature by shifting the focus of analysis from domestic to

international politics and by comparing the use of Balkanist rhetoric in UN

diplomatic states among three case studies: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and

Macedonia.

This approach has some distinct benefits. First, it will be helpful in determining

whether the use of Balkanist discourse remained as a distinctively domestic

phenomenon – that was used to mobilize the public to support the agenda of

Europeanization –, or if this discourse was also employed to persuade the

international community. Second, this approach is useful for broadening the

scholarship of the various discursive functions of Balkanism and for highlighting the

continuities and discontinuities between the two discursive contexts: domestic and

international. Third, it also facilitates comparisons between different countries in

the same context within the same political institution, which cannot be achieved by

focusing on domestic politics. While domestic discourses are aimed at the publics

that vary from country to country, the discourses investigated by this dissertation

are aimed at the international community, which remains constant in all three cases.

This setting is useful for analysing and comparing the differences that exist among

the states in the use of this discourse.

This dissertation is an attempt to understand the functions and forms of Balkanist

discourse in international politics in the United Nations and, as such, it seeks to

answer the following research questions. RQ.1: in what ways have states employed

Balkanist discourse in justifying and arguing for Euro-‐Atlantic integration? Here, the

dissertation seeks to differentiate between various discursive strategies and their

links to the theme of European integration with the purpose of examining

differences and similarities between the cases. RQ.2: In what other contexts has the

discourse been used and what alternative argumentative/political function has it

served? Here, the purpose is to look beyond the theme of Euro-‐Atlantic integration

by investigating and comparing alternative functions of Balkanist rhetoric.

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Literature review

In the broadest sense, this dissertation draws on, and contributes to, the study of

political discourses. It builds on two overarching assumptions quintessential to the

study of such discourses: first, that politics and language are intimately linked and

that political discourse is a form of political action, and second, that political

discourse plays a crucial role in transforming and shaping political reality (Chilton,

2004; Chilton & Schäffner, 2002; Gastil, 1992; van Dijk, 1997). The focus of the

dissertation is on the political discourse of collective identity formation in

international relations. While the dissertation addresses in particular what scholars

have identified as a distinct Balkans discourse, the topic of investigation is

intrinsically linked to overall questions about the self/other nexus (Neumann,

1996). Here, one must acknowledge how the formation of the ‘self’ within a political

community is intertwined with that of its ‘others’, and how the “delineation of a self

from an other is an active and ongoing part of identity formation.” (Ibid, p. 166)

Therefore, by investigating internalized Balkanist discourse in international politics

and, in particular, the means of distinguishing oneself from the others and the

“Balkans”, this dissertation analyses an aspect identity formation in European

politics, which has generally depended on the use of “the East” as the ‘other’

(Neumann, 1999, p. 207).

Regarding the specific Balkans discourse, this research draws extensively on the

theoretical framework of Balkanism, defined by Maria Todorova (1996; 1997) as a

discursive practice employed in the construction of Southeast Europe’s ‘otherness’.

It is characterized by a deep-‐rooted Western perception of Southeast Europe as

aggressive, primitive, intolerant, semi-‐civilized, and underdeveloped. Todorova’s

notion of Balkanism draws on, and is inspired by, Edward W. Said’s (1978) theory of

Orientalism, but is distinguished from it in terms of historical and geographical

differences between the two regions. While the Orient does not exist as a naturally

pre-‐given geographical entity – but as a figment of Western imagination, and is

defined by a discourse of colonial domination – the Balkans is a relatively well-‐

defined geographic location without an equivalent history of colonialism. In this

regard, the Orient has become Europe’s ‘other’, while the Balkans has historically

been perceived as Europe’s ‘other within’. The former relationship is characterised

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by ‘imputed opposition’ and the latter by ‘imputed ambiguity’ (Todorova, 1997, p.

16). Still, similarly to the Orient, the Balkans has functioned as a “repository of

negative characteristics against which a positive and self-‐congratulatory image of

the “European” and the “West” has been constructed.” (ibid. p. 188).

Moreover, this dissertation also builds on Milica Bakić-‐Hayden’s (1995) notion of

nesting orientalisms, which she has defined as the gradation of Orients: “a pattern of

reproduction of the original dichotomy upon which Orientalism is premised.” (ibid,

p. 918) In other words, nesting Orientalism “describes the application of Orientalist

distinctions to one’s neighbours in an attempt to offload the stigma of difference

onto others”. (Bracewell, 2009, p.12) According to Bakić-‐Hayden (1995), Balkanism

can be seen as a variation on the orientalist theme, a subtype of Said’s Orientalism,

which distinguishes the Balkans as part of Europe, but different from Europe

“proper”. While the theory of nesting Orientalism is contested by Todorova’s

concept of Balkanism, the notions are not necessarily contradictory. According to

Wendy Bracewell (2009, p.13), the opposition associated with the Orient and the

ambiguity associated with the Balkans are not mutually exclusive, as “the Balkans

can be both utter Other and ambiguous Self”.

More specifically, the focus of this research is on what scholars have recognized as

an internalized form of Balkanism. An essential characteristic of Balkanist discourse

is that while the images of this region have been articulated by Western artists,

politicians, scientists and, in particular, by travel authors, Southeast Europeans have

not been passive recipients of this label (Hammond, 2004; Ibid, 2008). Rather, they

have internalized this outside perception and contributed to the continuing

existence of these images by redeploying historical divisions within the region and

through the process of self-‐exoticism (Todorova, 1997; Bakić-‐Hayden, 1995;

Iordanova, 2001). This phenomenon has generated a pool of scholarly literature in

the post-‐conflict era that has sought to investigate how Southeast Europeans relate

to the Balkan label and how stereotypes are repeated and reconstructed in the

region’s media, popular culture, museums and, in particular, in the rhetoric of the

political elites in the Yugoslav successor states (Bakić-‐Hayden & Hayden, 1992;

Helms, 2008; Curticapean, 2011; Sawyer, 2013; Archer, 2009).

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The strategic use of the term “Balkans” as a geographical, political and cultural

designation has been a key component in the internalized Balkanist discourse in

Southeast Europe. As a term, the “Balkans” penetrated the political discourse in

Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, when the rise of national movements began to question

Brotherhood and Unity, the popular slogan of the Yugoslav Communist Party (Bakić-‐

Hayden & Hayden, 1992). This discourse revolved around an Orientalist dichotomy:

“constructions that claim a privileged “European” status for some groups in the

country while condemning others as “Balkan” – – hence non-‐European.” (Ibid, p.5)

The pejorative use of the designation “Balkans” was an aspect of a broader discourse

of internal Orientalization, or ‘debalkanization’, employed by the political elites

particularly after the Yugoslav crisis had began to escalate in 1991. Then, the

“Balkan” name became associated with the horrors of the war – an armed conflict

that was seen in the West specifically as a “Balkan war” that was defined as

continuation of historical patterns of violence and ethnic animosity (Todorova,

1997). Balkanist vocabulary, stereotypes, and metaphorical conceptualisations

provided the discursive means for the local political elites to dissociate themselves

from the negative “Balkan” label and to seek association with Europe through the

process of ‘othering’ (Bakić-‐Hayden & Hayden, 1992; Bakić-‐Hayden, 1995;

Todorova, 1997).

A significant share of the scholarship on this topic has investigated these discursive

strategies in Croatia and Slovenia (Lindstrom, 2003; Razsa & Lindstrom, 2004;

Patterson, 2003; Lindstrom, 2008). These where the parts of Yugoslavia that had

previously been under the Habsburg rule and therefore saw a historical justification

for their Europeanness and, moreover, for distinguishing themselves from the states

that had historically been governed by the Ottoman Empire (Bakić-‐Hayden, 1995).

From the perspective of their respective political elites, “centuries under the

Habsburg rule have qualified them to “join Europe” at the present time.” (ibid, p.

924) In Croatia and Slovenia, contrasting their perceived Europeanness to

Yugoslavness, or Balkanness, functioned as a discursive means for identity

production and for promoting their integration into European institutions (Bakić-‐

Hayden & Hayden, 1992; Lindstrom, 2003; Razsa & Lindstrom, 2004). The elites

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sought to achieve this by “defining the (north)western parts of Yugoslavia as

different from the (south)eastern parts: more progressive, prosperous,

hardworking, tolerant, democratic….in a word, European, compared to the primitive,

lazy, intolerant Balkans.” (Bakić-‐Hayden & Hayden, 1992, p.8)

The situation was more complicated in areas that had once been under the Ottoman

rule, as they lacked Slovenia’s and Croatia’s historical justification for promoting

their Europeanness. Yet, they were far from immune to Balkanist/Orientalist

discourse and also they sought to find their own Others, whom they perceived even

lower: “Serbs, Montenegrins and, to a lesser extent, Macedonians share an

ambiguous identity: they have felt compelled to defend their “other”-‐Europeaness

by stressing their complimentary contributions to the European cultural heritage

and the cultural discontinuity created by the Ottoman conquest of their part of

Europe.” (ibid, p.924) This is a process defined by Bakić-‐Hayden as the gradation of

Orients: Croatia is ‘Balkan’ vis-‐à-‐vis Slovenia, Serbia vis-‐à-‐vis Croatia, and so forth

(ibid).

Vasiliki Neofotistos (2008) has analysed Macedonia’s ambiguous relationship with

the “Balkans” as what he has termed “the Balkans’ Other within” – a concept built on

Bakić-‐Hayden’s idea of nesting Orientalism –, by which he refers to Macedonia’s self-‐

positioning in the region’s symbolic geography. According to Neofotistos,

Macedonians perceive themselves distinctively different from the Balkans: “local

representations of Macedonia as “the Balkans’ Other within” build on constructions

of “the Balkans” as a social and political anomaly and portray the Other within (that

is, Macedonia) as the engulfed land of promise.” (ibid, p.22) In this regard,

Macedonia is situated in-‐between positive local constructions of “the West” and

negative local constructions of “the Balkans”: a country that escaped violence and

therefore is no longer part of the “Balkans”, but as a non-‐member of NATO and EU it

not yet part of the “West” either.

Due to its multi-‐ethnic demographics and a significant Muslim population (hereafter

Bosniaks), Bosnia and Herzegovina has perhaps been the most ambiguous case in

the former Yugoslavia in terms symbolic geography (Bakić-‐Hayden, 1995). What

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has, however, been quite clear to scholars is that Bosnian Croats and Serbs alike

have seen the Bosniaks as the non-‐European Other (Hayden, 2013, p. 74). As

Muslims, Bosniaks “are often placed outside the symbolic borders of Europe and

thus the west.” (Helms, 2008, p.91) According to Michael Sells (1996), “It is not hard

to detect in this language traces of “Orientalism,” the view that “Orientals” – which

invariably mean Muslims, of whatever geographical origin – are by nature

voluptuaries, aesthetes, authoritarians and, ultimately, perverts.” (ibid, p. 38-‐39)

Rather than rejecting the polarization of East and West, The Bosniak population, in

contrast, has tended to “shift the valences or boundaries of such dichotomies to suit

specific political agendas.” (Helms, 2008, p.92) Elissa Helms has argued that instead

of rejecting the discourse on Southeast Europe’s liminality, those Bosniaks who have

supported a unified and multi-‐ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina have endorsed a

hybrid identity that draws on the region’s in-‐betweenness (Ibid). In particular, the

supporters of this idea have favoured images of Bosnia as a crossroads of

civilizations or as a bridge between East and West (Ibid). In this regard, the

Bosniaks often came to employ expressions and metaphors typical to the West’s

Balkanist discourse in order to enhance their own political vision of Bosnia and

Herzegovina (Todorova, 1997, p.59).

Sources

Primary sources of this research are diplomatic statements of Bosnia and

Herzegovina Croatia, and Macedonia, made in the United Nations General Assembly

between 1993-‐2003. The UN was chosen for this research because it is international

organization where several former Yugoslav countries were represented

throughout the 1990’s conflicts and, moreover, because many discussions in the

General Assembly revolved around themes that are relevant to this research – that

is discussions about the Yugoslav wars. The three countries investigated here were

chosen with the purpose of exploring the realization of the internalized Balkanist

rhetoric in the discourse of former Yugoslav republics, which have different

relationships with the “Balkans” label. In this regard, the study of multiple cases

following the diverse-‐case approach can yield more a comprehensive outlook of the

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topic at hand. The purpose of this approach is to achieve the maximum variance

along relevant dimensions (Gerring, 2008, p.651). This is achieved by investigating

Croatia, which has completely rejected its Balkan status and declared itself

European; Macedonia, which has adopted an ambiguous position between the

Balkans and Europe; and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which remains utterly ambivalent

due to its ethno-‐political divisions. Moreover, some former successor states of

Yugoslavia had to be excluded from this study due to the lack of sources. This was

the case with Serbia, which did not participate in the UN between 1992 and 2000,

and Kosovo, which is not a UN member.

The primary sources of this dissertation consist of over 450 UN statements that

include all the speeches Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia made in

the General Assembly between 1993 and 2003. A certain number of these speeches

have been chosen for an in-‐depth analysis based on the relevance of their content

and the variety of discursive strategies they represent. The statements, which have

been recorded either in verbatim form or as short records 1, will be referenced

without specifying the names of the speakers. This choice was made because the all

the discourses existed beyond individual diplomats and politicians. Moreover, the

UN statements have been chosen for investigation due to their relevance and

comparability. The existence of Balkanist discourse in the United Nations was

brought to my attention while investigating the political functions of history in

diplomatic argumentation. Also, UN records contain statements on a number of

international issues, which allows observations about the use of Balkanist discourse

in various political contexts over a period of ten years. UN records also provide

source material that is amenable to comparison as speakers use a reasonably

common set of languages and symbols (Friedheim & Kadane & Gamble, 1970).

1 In the UN documents, verbatim records are marked PV (i.e. A/53/PV.32) and short records are marked SR (i.e. A/C.1/48/SR.14).

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Methods

Methodologically, this research builds on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), defined

broadly as a theoretical and methodological framework that is used in the analysis

of the constitutive societal roles of discourses. (Vaara & Tienari, 2010). As such, it

offers directions for the study of the relations between discourse and social and

cultural developments in different social domains (Jörgensen & Phillips, 2002). CDA

is best characterized an overarching research framework and, as Ruth Wodak and

Michael Meyer (2009) have explained, it is not, and never was, an attempt to

provide a single or specific theory, nor is it characterized by a single or specific

research methodology: “quite the contrary, studies in CDA are multifarious, derived

from quite different backgrounds, oriented towards different data and

methodologies.” (Ibid, p.5)

Of the various methodological framework available for deriving meaning from text,

CDA has been chosen for this research because it regards language as a social

practice and, moreover, because of its particular interest in the relations between

language and power and its focus on the issues of ideology and hierarchy.

(Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; Wodak & Meyer, 2001). This approach is deemed

particularly appropriate for this dissertation due its investigation of Balkanism and

Orientalism, which essentially are discourses of power, ideology, and hierarchy

(Todorova, 1997). Concerning the particular methodology of analysis, this

dissertation draws on Norman Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis.

Fairclough’s model of CDA, established in Discourse and Social Change (1992),

employs the concept of “discourse” in three different ways. First, it treats the use of

language as a social practice; second, it sees discourse as a language used within a

specific field (ie. political discourse, scientific discourse etc.); third, it sees discourse

as “ a way of speaking which gives meaning to experiences from a particular

perspective”, which means that “the concept refers to any discourse that can be

distinguished from other discourses such as, for example, a feminist discourse.”

(Jörgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.157) Moreover, according to Fairclough, discourse

serves three functions: it contributes to the construction social identities, social

relations, and systems of knowledge (ibid).

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Fairclough’s model of CDA treats the use of language as a three-‐dimensional process,

which consists of text (i.e. writing, speech, visual images), discursive practice (the

production and consumption of texts), and social practice (circumstances that shape

the discursive practice). In Fairclough’s model, this three-‐dimensionality provides

an analytical framework for the empirical study of discourses: ˝The analysis should

focus, then, on (1) the linguistic features of the text (text), (2) processes relating to

the production and consumption of the text (discursive practice); and (3) the wider

social practice to which the communicative event belongs (social practice).”

(Jörgensen & Phillips, 2002) In practice, however, attending to all three dimensions

can be a difficult task for researchers, which is why those employing the framework

do often so rather freely (Ibid).

Practically, then, this dissertation analyzes the discourse applying the first and third

dimension of Faircloughs model; thus combining the analysis of the textual and

linguistic features of the statements with the analysis of the social practice

associated with the discourses at hand. The combination of these two elements is

essential to Faiclough’s model of CDA, as the linguistic features of a text cannot be

analyzed nor understood in isolation from its social practice (Fairclough, 1992, p.

198). Therefore, this dissertation integrates, and moves organically between, the

analysis of the linguistic features and social practice of the texts.

The analysis of linguistic features will entail the investigation of 1) word meaning,

which involves the investigation ’key words’ that are of general or more local

cultural significance; 2) theme, which involves the investigation of thematic

structures, reoccurring themes, and their functions in the texts; 3) metaphors, which

entails the study of the factors (cultural, ideological etc.) that determine the choice

of the metaphors used (Faiclough, 1992, p 236-‐237). The social practice, then, will

be investigated by integrating into the analysis the relevant social theory from the

literature on Balkanism and nesting Orientalism.

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Structure The first chapter begins the empirical part of this research by investigating the case

study of Croatia. A critical reading of the primary source documents exposed two

dominant discourses, which will be analysed within separate subchapters. The first

of the two discourses involved the use of self-‐designations that were employed with

the purpose of distinguishing Croatia from the “Balkans”. The first subchapter will

argue that the primary purpose this discursive strategy was to emphasize Croatia’s

Europeanness and to promote its accession to Euro-‐Atlantic institutions. The second

subchapter will focus on another discursive strategy, which was employed

selectively during the Yugoslav conflict in the early 1990s. Here, it will argued that

Croatia used what can be characterized as a subaltern discourse to portray Serbia as

a ‘negative other’ in order to advance its own political agenda.

The second chapter will address the Macedonian case. The first subchapter will

analyse the strategic use of self-‐designations, arguing that while the underlying

purpose behind the self-‐designations – that is the promotion of Euro-‐Atlantic

integration – was the same as in the Croatian case, the discursive strategy employed

by Macedonia was distinctively different than in the Croatian case. The second

subchapter will investigate the use of Balkanist stereotypes, which Macedonia

employed frequently throughout the period of investigation. Here, the argument will

be that Macedonia used Balkanist ideas and language of Southeast Europe’s

predisposition for war and disintegration to legitimize the need for Euro-‐Atlantic

integration.

The third chapter will address the statements of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The

chapter will show that the most prominent narrative in the Bosnian case was not in

fact Balkanist, but anti-‐Balkanist. The first of three subchapters will show that

Bosnia adopted a strategy of refuting any claims that represented the Bosnian war

as civil and/or religious conflict, and instead portrayed the war as an international

conflict caused by Serbian aggression. The second and third subchapters will argue

that Bosnia was also very aware of various Western – and often

Balkanist/Orientalist – theories concerning the Bosnian conflict. Here, the argument

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will be that Bosnia sought to counter these claims both during and after the war and

instead represented Bosnia as place of peaceful coexistence.

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Chapter 1. The Case of Croatia

An Overview of the Discourses

The antagonism, which characterized the Croatian political elite’s relationship with

the name and idea of the “Balkans” from the late 1980s onwards (Bakić-‐Hayden,

1992), did not appear from thin air. As a term and designation, the “Balkans” has

profound linguistic-‐cultural roots and it was compromised long before the seed of

disunity was sown in Yugoslavia. Already in the early 20th century, the “Balkans”

came to be known not only as a name, but a signifier: one that is “saturated with a

social and cultural meanings that [have] expanded its signified far beyond its

immediate and concrete meaning.” (Todorova, 1997, p. 21). According to Todorova,

the word “Balkans” was misused so frequently that it got “snatched from its

ontological base and recreated as an abstract demon”: it was turned into “linguistic

weed” and a “harmful attribute” (Ibid, p. 36-‐37).

The pejorative associations of the word “Balkan” do at least partially explain why

term was not used frequently in Croatia, or elsewhere in Yugoslavia, as long as the

federation remained undivided. Instead of Balkan, Yugoslavs saw themselves as

Danubian or Adriatic, and many rejected geographical self-‐designations entirely

(Todorova, 1997, p. 53). As Liljana Sarić (2009) has observed, the word “Balkan”

appeared in the self-‐images of Yugoslavia extremely rarely if at all, and that the

word began to emerge Southeast Europe after the nationalist tensions had began to

build in Yugoslavia. It took the Yugoslav wars to bring the “Balkan” name into the

public sphere and make it “an unavoidable part of political, economic and

sociological discourses” in Southeast Europe (ibid, p.390).

The way the “Balkans” was brought to the public sphere in Croatia in the late 80s

and 90s has received much scholarly attention. Several scholars have pointed out

that the Croatian political elite adopted a discourse, which advocated Croatia’s links

to Europe – that is to say it promoted Croatia’s Europeanness –, while

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simultaneously degrading the less-‐worthy southern and eastern neighbours as

“Balkan” (Bakić-‐Hayden, 1992; Lindstrom, 2003). These former Yugoslav

compatriots came to be seen in Croatia in terms of a southern ‘Balkan burden’,

"which has slowed if not prevented entirely the non-‐Balkan parts of the country

from being what they “really are” – European.” (Bakić-‐Hayden & Hayden, 1995,

p.924) In this discourse, as Razsa and Lindstrom (2003) have explained, the

“Balkans” became an important signifier that was employed systematically and

frequently by politicians to distinguish Croatia from its neighbours, which,

simultaneously, served as means for promoting Croatia’s Euro-‐Atlantic integration.

As Dimitar Bechev (2011) has argued, it is this notion of the “Balkans” as a signifier

with a complex and often problematic relationship with the ‘signified’ that calls us to

consider and study “the politics of identification with or rejection of that label” (ibid,

p. 66).

While the political rhetoric in Croatia was characterized by the use of geographical

and cultural self-‐designations, it was not the only discursive strategy used to

distinguish Croatia from the “Balkans”. Another discourse that existed alongside the

self-‐designations involved the use of self-‐serving historical narratives that were

used to promote an utterly idealized and highly selective version of Croatia’s own

past and an utterly pejorative version of the histories of other nations (Bakić-‐

Hayden, 1995; MacDonald, 2009). This dynamic was particularly visible in

representations of the Second World War, which were paramount to justifying

Croatian, as well as Serbian, nationalism during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s

(MacDonald, 2002, p. 208; MacDonald, 2009). Therefore, references to Nazism

penetrated public discourse in both states. Serbs portrayed Tuđman’s government

as “neo-‐Ustaša criminals” and blamed it for fascist intentions, while the Croatian

side responded by accusing Milošević for reliving the Četnik legacy, using

terminology borrowed from the Third Reich itself (Hayden, 2013).

What made this discourse Balkanist was that the concepts employed by Croats and

Serbs contributed to the broader discourse about the region itself. There was a

tendency, even among Western academics, to simplify the Yugoslav wars down to

the Nazis’ Blut und Boden (blood and soil) ideology, and to treat them as a

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consequence of the Southeast Europeans “affinity for the land that – – makes them

perpetual genocidaires.” (Mojzes, 2011, p.4) Both Todorova (1997, p. 53) and

Drakulić (2011, p. 89) have associated such references and, in particular, to the

notion of blood and soil, with the discourse of orientalism. Indeed, as Robert Hayden

(2013) has concluded, the images of Četniks and Ustašas “play into a wider

European symbolic geography – – which privileges a supposedly civilized West

against a putatively uncivilized East, a distinction often expressed as being between

“Europe” and “the Balkans.”” (ibid, p.5)

1.1. Designating ‘Self’ and ‘Other’

The UN documents showed that between 1993 and 2003, Croatian representatives

continuously defined their state as Western European, Central European, European,

South-‐East European, Mediterranean and Danubian, but not once “Balkan”. The term

“Balkans” has appeared in the statements rarely and always to denote an entity

outside Croatia. In the UN, Croatia employed self-‐designations in various discursive

contexts, often without any particular link to the topic at hand. Most frequently,

however, self-‐designations have been associated with the theme of Croatia’s

European integration. A critical reading of Croatia’s statements exposes two

narratives of geographical self-‐designation. The first and more commonly employed

discursive strategy has defined Croatia as European, Central European, and/or

Mediterranean state, as is shown by the following quotations.

“Croatia, as a small country, sees its place, first of all, in West European civilization and in its economic and security system in order to have a guarantee for its independence, security and progress. (A/49/PV.9, 1994) “Croatia is best described as a diverse borderline country, both lodged in the heart of Central Europe and spread along the Mediterranean coast of the (A/54/PV.72, 1999)

These quotations provide evidence of what has been a mantralike tendency to evoke

an image of Croatia’s Europeanness that was repeated throughout the period of

20

investigation. This discourse is illustrated by the use of certain keywords and

wordings that have been reoccurring in the statements. First, there is the notion of

Croatia as a Central European and/or Mediterranean country, which was often

featured in President Franjo Tuđman’s domestic rhetoric as an attempt to

disassociate Croatia from the Balkans by providing it with an alternative self-‐

designation (Winland, 2007; MacDonald, 2002, p.118). The same applies to claim

that Croatia is in the “heart of Central Europe” – a metaphor also featured in

Tuđman’s domestic speeches – and in the “Western European civilization” (Winland,

2007; Bellamy, 2003 p.69; Sarić, 2010). Indeed, Croatia’s UN statements bear a

striking resemblance to the Balkanist discourse employed by the Croatian political

elite domestically. The UN statements are not only thematically similar to those

made by leading Croatian politicians in the 1990s, but they also employ the same

vocabulary, terminology and key phrases. The similarity between the domestic and

international discourses can be illustrated by the following quotation from Croatian

president Tuđman’s State of the Union Address from January 1997.

“By its geopolitical position, by all of its fourteen-‐century history, by its civilization and culture, Croatia belongs to the Central European and Mediterranean circles of Europe.” (as cited in Razsa & Lindstrom, 2004, p.642)

Tuđman’s speech featured a very similar formula as Croatia’s statements to the UN.

It contains a reference to history – evoking the antiquity of Croatia’s ‘Europeanness’

–, it states the words “civilization” and “culture” and, moreover, it characterizes

Croatia as a “Central European and Mediterranean” country. All of these semantic

features can also be found in Croatia’s speeches in the UN. These similarities would

indicate a continuum between the domestic discourse and the one employed in the

United Nations. Moreover, they also come to show that the Balkanist rhetoric of self-‐

designation has not been limited to domestic politics in Croatia, but that the same

rhetoric has also been employed in international relations.

What is perhaps most outstanding feature of Croatia’s statements to the UN is the

explicit association between Croatia’s geographical and cultural self-‐designations

and the theme of Europeanization/EU integration. As Lindstrom (2003) has noted

21

based on her analysis of domestic rhetoric, casting “Croatian national identity and

culture as European was viewed [by the national elite] as a means to further their

goal of joining the European institutions.” This was, in particular, a response to the

changes in Croatia’s international reputation, which continued to deteriorate during

and after the Yugoslav wars, signalling Croatia’s ‘fall from grace’ in the eyes of the

international community (Lindstrom and Razsa, 2004). The recurring geographical

self-‐designations in Croatia’s UN statements seem to support Lindstrom and Razsa’s

findings, as these references were featured most frequently in association with the

Europeanization discourse. This is demonstrated by the following sample.

“Croatia looks with ambition and sharpened senses towards reclaiming its place in the old Europe and contributing to the new Europe and the global community. Since ancient times Croatia has been a European country. Integration into Euro-‐Atlantic institutions remains our strategic goal.” (A/53/PV.18, 1998)

As Lindstrom and Razsa (2004) have argued, the trope of “return” formed a central

element of the public discourse in the region, as the elites hoped to restore Croatia

“to its rightful place in Europe”. While the expression “return to Europe” has not

appeared in the statements, Croatia has discussed “reclaiming its place in the old

Europe and contributing to the new Europe”. While this statement does not

explicitly mention the Balkans or Yugoslavia, it exposes the undertone of Croatia’s

Balkanist discourse, which draws on the idea that Croatia has been inherently

“European” since the ancient times, and that its links with the Balkans were only a

temporary phase, which comes to an end when Croatia reclaims its position in the

West (Lindstrom, 2003). Furthermore, this particular comment stands out also

because of the wording “old Europe” and “new Europe”. As the statement reveals,

Croatia has rejected the label “new Europe” – a term traditionally used to describe

the post-‐socialist states of CEE (Lehti, 1994) –, but instead announced to reclaim its

place in the “old”, non-‐socialist, Europe. The UN statements show that Croatia

predominantly used the above-‐mentioned terms “Central European” and

“Mediterranean”, and not once characterized itself as “Central and Eastern

European” or simply “Eastern European”.

22

These findings are consistent with Larry Wolf’s (1994) conceptualization of Central

Europe as an intellectual construct that was rediscovered in the 1980s, when it

emerged “as an ideological antidote to the iron curtain” (ibid, p.15) According to

Wolf, the advocates of Central Europe tried to shatter intellectually the oppressive

idea of Eastern Europe, which was very much tainted by state socialism (ibid, p.15).

Moreover, these findings are also consistent with Bakić-‐Hayden’s (1995)

observations on Croatia’s domestic discourse, which also stressed participation in

Mitteleuropa. What makes these UN statements noteworthy is that they show that

this discursive strategy was not confined to domestic politics. They also reveal that

Croatia’s concerns over its place in Europe’s symbolic geography were expressed

very explicitly and frequently and that these ideas were promoted to serve a

particular political goal – European integration.

While Croatia avoided labels that would have associated it with Eastern Europe, it

did, however, occasionally use the self-‐designation “South-‐East Europe”, which

constitutes as the second discursive strategy of self-‐designations. This is illustrated

by the following quotation.

“Being at the same time a Central European, Mediterranean, Danubian and South-‐East European country, Croatia plays an active role in several regional initiatives that serve as a foundation for stabilization, cooperation and development in our part of the world.” (A/55/PV.13, 2000)

“South-‐East Europe” has been an infrequently used self-‐designation and, as shown

by the sample, Croatia has defined itself as Southeast European only in contexts

where it has sought to underline its own foreign policy and leadership in the region

– that is when it has suited the purpose of diplomatic self-‐promotion (A/56/PV.103,

2002). Moreover, Croatia’s statements expose a tendency to use “Southeast Europe”

as a supplementary category – an additional self-‐designation that is presented in the

speeches alongside the “Central European”, “Mediterranean” and “Danubian” labels–

, which is never used in the speeches as a sole geographical, political or cultural self-‐

designation for Croatia. These findings indicate that Croatia has avoided the self-‐

designation “Eastern”, unless being labelled as “South-‐Eastern” has had the

potential to increase Croatia’s international prestige. Furthermore, Croatia’s UN

23

statements also reveal an attempt to redefine Southeast Europe in order to make it

more fitting for Croatia’s own political discourse.

”In the very short time since it gained independence, Croatia has become a mature and responsible member of the international community. It is already a pillar of future stability and cooperation in that part of southeastern Europe which is linked to the traditionally agitated Balkans.” (A/49/PV.9, 1994)

While “Southeast Europe” and the “Balkans” are normally recognized as synonyms,

the former being a more neutral and the latter a more controversial term (Todorova,

1997, p.141), Croatia has addressed them in UN as distinctively separate

geographical entities. According to Croatia, there is “Southeast Europe” to which

Croatia belongs, and then there is the “traditionally agitated Balkans”, which is only

linked to “Southeast Europe”. This statement and the dichotomy it presents stand

out as an attempt to redeem Southeast Europe from the negative connotations of the

Balkan label. Moreover, it presents an explicit example of Balkanist ‘othering’ and

nesting Orientalism. By labelling the Balkans as “traditionally agitated” and defining

Croatia as non-‐Balkan, Croatia has taken part in the symbolic inclusion and

exclusion that is in the heart of this discourse (Bakić-‐Hayden, 1992).

1.2. Blood and Soil: Serbia as the ‘negative Other’

The primary sources showed that besides the systematic use of self-‐designations,

Croatia did not actively engage with Balkanist discourse in its UN statements.

Croatia’s statements did not include similar uses of Balkanist stereotypes nor the

linguistic choices associated with them as in the case of Macedonia (see chapter 2).

However, Croatia’s statements from 1993 to 1995 contained frequent references to

Serbia and its role in the Yugoslav conflict. The underlying tone of these statements

was condemning, as Croatia accused Serbia and the Milošević regime of aggression

against other Yugoslav successor states and of human rights abuses against the non-‐

Serb populations. Besides the more general characterizations used by Croatia to

portray Serbia as an aggressor, Croatia also employed WW2 references to represent

24

Serbia as a fascist state, whose participation in the Yugoslav conflict was similar to

the aggression of the Nazi Germany in the World War 2. This discourse is illustrated

by the following quotation.

“We have to ask ourselves whether there is really any difference between Hitler's expansionist theory of Blut und Boden and Milosevic's claim that "all Serbs have to live in one State”. What is "ethnic cleansing" but the implementation of the genocidal Nazi ideology of the extermination of all non-‐members of the "superior race"? Do we need to argue about the difference in brutality and sick-‐minded imagination in the torture of innocents when we compare the never-‐forgotten Nazi death factories and the present Serbian death camps? (A/47/PV.86, 1993)

This quotation shows evidence of the World War 2 references in the United Nations,

which, as scholars of Balkanism have observed, formed an essential element in the

domestic discourse in Croatia during the Yugoslav conflict. As David MacDonald

(2002, p. 209-‐2011) has argued, Croatians invoked the myths of persecution and

holocaust and employed images of the Second World War in order to rally support

for the state and to project an image of Croatian unity to the outside world. In such

depictions, Serbs were often portrayed as Nazis (Ibid, p.208). This discourse stands

out clearly also in the above-‐quotation, which shows the reoccurring juxtaposition

between Serbia and the Nazi Germany. By comparing Milošević’s ideas to Hitler’s,

and the Serbian death camps to those of Nazi Germany, Croatia essentially

represented Serbia as a genocidaire, whose war aims in the Yugoslav successor state

were no different from those of the Nazis’ in the WW2.

Croatia’s statements to the UN are thematically similar to those made domestically

in the 1990s, but they also include the use of the same key phrases and terms. As

MacDonald (2002, p. 210) has argued, Croatians were consumed by the myth of

‘Greater Serbia’. This was a belief that the basis of Serbia’s national identity was

territorial expansion, which followed the ideology of blut und boden, blood and soil

(Ibid, p.208). This was an aspect in what MacDonald has titled as victim centred

propaganda, which clung to Milošević’s often-‐repeated demand that "all Serbs have

to live in one State”. (Macdonald, 2009 p.209; Ramet, 1995, p. 437) In its appeals to

the international community through the UN, Croatia has employed these very same

25

concepts and wordings. Moreover, another prevalent aspect of Croatian discourse

and propaganda in the 1990s was the acquisitions that the Serbia was a willing and

zealous collaborator of the Nazis during the Second World War (MacDonald, 2002;

MacDonald, 2009). The presence of this discourse is evidenced by the following

quotation.

If we look back into history, we will see that the Chetniks and other Serbian nationalist forces were not usually among those who fought bravely against the invaders. On the contrary, they collaborated with German forces during the Second World – –.” (A/47/PV.86, 1993)

First, this statement appears as an attempt to discredit perhaps the most pivotal

narrative of the Serbian national myth – that is the belief that Serbia has stood as a

brave bulwark of Christendom against foreign invaders (Segesten, 2011, p. 155;

MacDonald, 2002, p.255). Second, the Croatia has referred to Četniks, the World War

2 Serb extreme nationalists. While Croatia did not address the Serbs as Četniks,

which was typical to the domestic discourse in Croatia, the statement functioned as

a rhetorical bridge, connecting the Serb nationalists of the 1990s and the Serb

nationalists of the past. Singling out the Četniks would also appear as a deliberate

remark, as they have a particularly negative reputation in and outside Southeast

Europe due to their extremism and the severity of their crimes After all, Četniks

have, as Robert Hayden (2013) has explained, come to “to symbolize the worst

elements of murderous extreme nationalists among Serbs.” (Ibid, p.7).

This quotations features also a narrative of the World War 2 history that is highly

selective, as is illustrated by the following line: “they [the Serb nationalists]

collaborated with German forces during the Second World War and started to

change sides when the Red Army entered Serbia in 1944.” While the collaboration

between the Četniks and the Nazi Germany – and the Fascist Italy for that matter –

has been documented voluminously by historians, this collaboration happened in

part in cooperation with the Croatian Ustašas; another extremist group that

consisted of fervent supporters of Nazi Germany (Ramet, 2006, p. 145). Indeed,

accusing the Serb nationalists of collaboration with the Nazi Germany demonstrates

26

significant ignorance towards Croatia’s own WW2 history with militant nationalism

and collaboration with the Nazis.

Croatia’s UN statements are consistent with what MacDonald (2009) has described

as a form of subaltern discourse, which was an aspect of nationalist accounts in both

Serbia and Croatia. Subaltern discourse promotes a selective reading of the past that

underlines accounts that support those writing the narrative, while excluding

material that is less fitting for the political cause of the narrator (ibid). In this case,

such discourse has provided the means for depicting Serbia as the fascist aggressor

– that is the ‘negative other’. By invoking the similarities between Serbia and the

Nazi Germany and, moreover, by portraying Serbia as an aggressor historically and

contemporarily, Croatia has also sought emphasize its own victimhood in the face of

Serbian aggression. This narrative of victimhood has been present also in other

contexts, as the following quotation demonstrates.

“[the arms embargo] was accepted when – – [people] deceived themselves into thinking that that policy could save Yugoslavia, failing to see that the post-‐Tito crisis had developed because of the attempt to impose Serbian hegemony over all non-‐Serbian peoples in that artificial and Communist State formation. (A/49/PV.9, 1994)

As noted by McDonalds (2002, p. 214), both Serbs and Croats “claimed to be a victim

of the other, both during the Communist period, and after, as the Federation

disintegrated.” This above-‐quotation from the General Assembly evidences that

same narrative on Croatia’s part. Here, Croatia has argued that the Yugoslav crisis

was essentially caused by Serbian attempts to establish hegemony over Yugoslavia.

This selective version of the past was essential to Croatian propaganda during the

Yugoslav wars, as the Croatian elite capitalized on the fears of ‘Serbian hegemony’ to

legitimize the war and to mobilize the Croatians to wage it (Kollander, 2004, p.10).

The above-‐quotation, as well as the others cited in this chapter, come to show that

international diplomacy has not been immune to the subaltern rhetoric that came to

define the nationalist discourse in Croatia during the Yugoslav conflict and that the

systematic ‘othering’ of Serbia was not limited to domestic politics.

28

Chapter 2. The Case of Macedonia

An Overview of the Discourses The first scholars to address Macedonia’s self-‐designation vis-‐à-‐vis the Balkans were

Bakić-‐Hayden and Hayden (1995), who argued that the Macedonian identity was

more ambiguous than the Croatian identity, which compelled the Macedonian elites

to defend their “other”-‐Europeaness by emphasizing Macedonia’s contributions to

the European culture (Ibid, p.924). More recent scholarship has shed more light on

this ambiguity, but no conclusive results be drawn from these studies. Sarič (2009)

has discovered that the Macedonian media is the only one in the region that uses the

term “Balkans” also in a neutral sense, while Thiessen (2007), in contrast, has

argued that the “Balkans” is generally seen in Macedonia in a negative light.

According to Neofotistos (2008), Macedonia has adopted an interstitial position as

“the Balkans’ Other within”: meaning that it rejects the “Balkans” label but cannot

quite yet claim a membership in “the West”.

Another predominant Balkanist narrative in Macedonia’s UN statements involved

the use of Balkanist language and stereotypes that were employed to emphasize the

region’s predisposition for conflict and disintegration. While previous research has

not associated Macedonia with such discourse, the more general use of the

discourse has a long and well-‐researched history. Indeed, the perception of the

Southeast Europeans’ predisposition for war has been a defining characteristic of

Balkanist discourse since the late 19th century. This negative image of the region

crystallized in the Western psyche in the aftermath of the First World War

(Todorova, 1997), when the Balkans became an abstract symbol of violence that

was explained by the region’s ethnic composition (Tuathail, 1999, p.115). While this

discourse remained largely concealed between 1945 -‐1991, the beginning of the

Yugoslav conflict signalled the return of the pejorative stereotypes that were echoed

by contemporary Western leaders as well as the elites of the Yugoslav successor

states (Previsic, 2010, p. 184) An essential feature of this discourse was that the

29

Yugoslav wars came to be seen in terms of a historical continuum, as mere

repetition of prior conflicts (Bechev, 2011, p.66).

2.1. Self-‐Designations

In contrast to Croatia, the UN statements show that Macedonia welcomed the labels

“Balkan” and “Southeast European”. In the case of Macedonia, the “Balkans” has

appeared in the speeches as the most frequently employed geographical self-‐

designation between 1993-‐2003. In fact, from 1993 till 1996, the “Balkans” was the

only explicitly asserted geographical self-‐designation in Macedonia’s statements to

the UN. After 1996, the term “Balkans” remained as an essential part of Macedonia’s

discourse as a means for self-‐definition, but it began to be featured in the speeches

increasingly often alongside the more neural term, “Southeast Europe”, which, till

then, had been almost entirely absent from the speeches. This trend is illustrated by

the following quotations.

This is particularly important for our region, the Balkans, which, as is very well known, is bristling with all kinds of conventional armaments. (A/C.1/49/PV.6, 1994) “The region of my country, the Republic of Macedonia, is the Balkans or South-‐Eastern Europe, and it is mentioned in various chapters of the Secretary-‐General’s report” (A/55/PV.30, 2000)

Despite of the derogatory connotations of the word “Balkans” and the fact that it is

often associated with war and violence (Todorova, 1997), Macedonia has used the

“Balkans” self-‐designation rather unproblematically. In several statements,

Macedonia simply defined itself as “Balkan” or, alternatively, referred to its region

as the “Balkans” without an explicit argumentative purpose. This is noteworthy,

since while the term has appeared in the self-‐determination in the Macedonian

media (Sarić, 2009), the ”Balkans” is usually perceived in derogatory terms in

Macedonia. As Ilká Thiessen (2007, p.78) has explained, Macedonians are generally

averse to the “Balkan” label and avoid it as a self-‐definition. In Macedonia, the word

“Balkans” has maintained many of its derogatory meanings and it has come to

30

denote many of the unwanted features of the economic and political transition: “The

“Balkan” they see as the cause of the Yugoslav civil war and the “Western”, by

definition, as anything in direct opposition to the “Balkan.”” (Ibid, p. 77) Neofotistos

has noted the same, arguing that in Macedonia, “the “Balkans” are identified with

antagonism and lack of order” (2008, p. 21). Moreover, his notion of Macedonia as

the “Balkans’ Other within” is build on the idea that Macedonians perceive

themselves as no longer part of “the Balkans”.

Thiessen’s and Neofotistos’ observations do not hold true in Macedonia’s diplomatic

rhetoric. In the UN, Macedonia has not only characterized itself as a Balkan state, but

also embraced what it has portrayed as its position as a central state in the Balkans

and as a country at the heart of the Balkans (A/C.1/51/PV.11, 1996; A/57/PV.13,

2002). The use of such self-‐designations is in contradiction with prior scholarly

findings on Macedonia. One factor that may sufficiently explain the difference

between the domestic and international discourses is the underlying argumentative

purpose of these self-‐designations in the UN. It seems that in contrast to Croatia,

which primarily advocated for its own Europeanization, Macedonia adopted a

discursive strategy of promoting the Euro-‐Atlantic integration of the entire region

(A/C.1/48/SR.14, 1993; A/56/PV.49, 2001).

To achieve this objective, it was logical for Macedonia to represent itself as part of

that region. A reason for using the name “Balkans” instead of the more neutral

synonyms may in fact be that the term “Balkans” is more pejorative than its

alternatives (Todorova, 1997). Indeed, as the “Balkans” itself is a “discursive

phenomenon woven into popular perceptions and representations” (Bechev, 2011,

p. 66), it is difficult to use the term without evoking various negative associations. In

Macedonia’s UN statements, however, evoking such associations may have been the

actual purpose of the discourse. By emphasizing the word Balkans and what it

entails – volatility, uncertainty, and conflict –, Macedonia could also underline the

need for a fundamental political change, which was Euro-‐Atlantic integration. This

interpretation is supported by the fact that Macedonia also used pejorative

Balkanist stereotypes – which will be analysed in the following subchapter – to

argue for Europeanization.

31

Furthermore, as an additional discursive strategy to promote Euro-‐Atlantic

integration, Macedonia has also presented the Balkans as a historical centre of

European civilization or, alternatively, as the cradle of European civilization (A/S-‐

21/PV.9, 1999). These particular phrasings echo what scholars have characterized

as antiquization – a central theme in Macedonian nation building that emerged in

the early 1990s (Vangeli, 2011). Antiquization is an intellectual project that evokes

the national myths of Macedonia’s ancient descent by promoting an “idea of the

direct link between Slavic Macedonian people and historic ancient Macedonian

people from the distant past” (ibid, p. 15) As such, it has entailed the promotion of

Macedonia as a “cradle of culture” (ibid, p. 23). While Macedonia’s UN statements do

not associate these ideas with Macedonia specifically, they do associate them with

the “Balkans” region, to which Macedonia claims to belong. In this regard, these

statements seem to have served two complimentary argumentative functions: to

promote the region’s Euro-‐Atlantic integration as well as to promote the idea of

Macedonia as an ancient and inherently European country.

Although it was the cradle of European civilization, due to historical reasons our region has found itself on the margins of the development of European integration in the past few years. All the countries of our region are presently endeavouring to become members of the European Union – – (A/C.1/51/PV.11, 1996)

This quotation also underlines the fundamental differences between Macedonian

and Croatian cases. While Croatia avoided the “Balkans” designation – and instead

emphasized its own historical, cultural, and geographical ties to Europe and the

Mediterranean (see chapter 1) –, Macedonia has represented the “Balkans” as

inherently European, as the birthplace of Europe. However, while Macedonia has

been accepting towards the “Balkans” label, but yet it has not been immune to the

discourse of ‘othering’. As Neofotistos (2008) has argued, Macedonia’s self-‐

positioning as the “Balkans’ Other within” has been constructed on the idea that

Macedonia is different from the rest of the Yugoslav successor states because, unlike

the rest of the republics, it did not get entangled in the Yugoslav wars that ravaged

the region in the 1990s.

32

This notion of particularity has legitimized the Macedonian political elite to assert

that Macedonia is not only different, but that it is better, or in a sense more

‘Western’, than its warring neighbours in the north. This was the message repeated

by the elites not only to the Macedonian people, but also to the international

community as to show Macedonia’s superiority over the rest of the former

Yugoslavia (Neofotistos, 2008). As part of this discourse, Macedonian politicians

were also inclined to present Macedonia as an “oasis of peace” in Southeast Europe;

a state that is a stable and functional multi-‐ethnic democracy that contributes to

peace and security in the region (Ibid; Bechev, 2011; Vankovska, 2013, p.99).

Similar, while not always explicit, discourse can also be detected in Macedonia’s UN

statements.

By attaining its independence in a peaceful and legitimate manner, the Republic of Macedonia has kept the peace and forestalled a spill-‐over of the war into the southern Balkans. The comprehensive efforts of the past two years have changed our historic position from a bone of contention to a factor for peace and stability in the Balkans (A/48/PV.10, 1993)

The quotation evidences a narrative that was repeated in Macedonia’s statements

throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, by which Macedonia underlined its process

of independence. Macedonia recurrently stated that it was the only Yugoslav

republic, which avoided the war. It emphasized that its independence was achieved

peacefully and legitimately, juxtaposing itself with the Yugoslav successor states that

partook in the wars (A/50/PV.36, 1995). The fact that this discourse has been

featured in the statements rather prominently seems to support the theory that

Macedonia has sought to distinguish from the rest of Yugoslavia. Indeed, this is in

consonance with Neofotisto’s (2008) idea of Macedonia as the “Balkans’ Other

within”. Also, according to Alexander Panev (2005), Kiro Gligorov’s, the first

Macedonian president who served in office from 1991 to 1999, “recurring theme

was that Macedonia had gained its independence peacefully and legally, had stayed

out of the war of Yugoslav succession, had secured interethnic peace – –.” (Ibid, p.

606)

33

Moreover, the above sample also illustrates another often-‐occurring narrative,

which has underlined Macedonia’s perception of itself as a source of stability in

Southeast Europe. While this narrative has not featured the expression “oasis of

peace”, the statements have insisted on the same idea, according to which

Macedonia has “moved away from being a “consumer” to being a “producer” of

security and stability.” (Neofotistos, 2008, p.21) This discourse is exemplified well

by the above assertion that Macedonia is no longer a bone of contention in the

region, but a factor for peace and stability. While being a common idiom, “bone of

contention” is also an expression often used, among others, by scholars to denote

the historical tensions between different Slavic states and Greece that existed

specifically in the area where the Republic of Macedonia is now located (Archibald,

p. 334; Wachtel, 1998, p.90).

In particular, “bone of contention” is has historically been used as a reference to the

so-‐called Macedonian question, a series of disputes between Bulgaria, Greece and, to

a lesser extent, Serbia over the possession of Macedonia that began in the second

half of the 19th century (Rossos, 2008). Considering that it was the Macedonian

question that contributed to the image of Southeast Europe as a turbulent region

and of Macedonia as the “land of terror, fire, and sword” (Todorova, 1997, p. 117),

the assertion that Macedonia has abandoned its status as the region’s bone of

contention appears as a discursive strategy for deconstructing a narrative that for a

long time had defined the image of Macedonia in the West. The fact that all other

Yugoslav successor faced war in the 1990s seemed to have provided a justification

and means for Macedonia to do so. Therefore, this discourse has essentially, while

not always obviously, followed the logic of nesting orientalism. By pointing to the

warring state of the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia was able to renegotiate its own

position in the symbolic geography: it was no longer the bone of contention, but a

mitigator of conflict.

2.2. History of War and Disintegration Besides the use of self-‐designations, Macedonia’s statements revealed the presence

of various linguistic choices, such as particular wordings, expressions, and

34

metaphors, as well as certain well-‐known stereotypes that can be analysed in the

framework of Balkanism. Such notions and the language associated with them were

featured in Macedonia’s UN statements regularly throughout the 1990s, but they

became less frequent towards the end of the decade and in the early 2000s. While

this discourse consists of various micro narratives, the underlying theme behind

these narratives has been Europeanization. The discourse analysed below does no

feature highly exaggerated remarks about the “Balkans” associated with many

Western observers, including academics, journalists and high-‐level politicians in the

1990s (Todorova, 1997; Hammond, 2004). The discourse has, however, drawn on

the same presuppositions about Southeast Europe as the Western observers, and it

is premised on the same ideas about the region’s propensity for war and turmoil, as

is exemplified by the following quotation.

“The Balkans are a region where violations of international law have a historical continuity. – – Fuelled by ethnic hatred disguised in different ideologies, the policy of aggressive nationalism has devastated the region over and over again. – – One of the ways to put an end to these outbursts, which have repeatedly thrown the region into misery and suffering, is to develop legal codes of behaviour and institutions which see to it that justice is done. – – [The ICTY] is such an institution.” (A/51/PV.59, 1996)

The beginning of the Yugoslav conflict in early 1990s brought forth the claim that

the wars were an extension of earlier cycles of conflict and that the history of

violence was bound to repeat itself in the region again and again. As Keith Brown

has explained, the violent breakup of Yugoslavia “acquired in retrospect a certain

aura of inevitability.” (2003, p.23) The above-‐quotation from Macedonia’s UN

statements draws on these very ideas that defined the Western perspective of the

conflict. The above-‐quoted notion that “ violations of international law have a

historical continuity” exposes this thinking quite explicitly. While Macedonia has

also stated that outbursts of violence have been shorter than the periods of peace,

by emphasizing the continuity and not the particularity of region’s conflicts,

Macedonia contributed to the discourse that portrayed the Yugoslav wars in terms

of specific “Balkan” patterns of violence.

35

These ideas of the historical continuity of violence were intrinsically linked to the

notion that the Yugoslav wars were an ethnic conflict: a manifestation of ancient

hatreds between the Balkan peoples that resurfaced in the 1990s (Ramet, 2007;

Sells, 1996). In this regard, the Western discourse was very much centred on

concepts such as ‘ethnic hatred’, which were cited as the cause of inter-‐ethnic

violence in Southeast Europe (Ramet, 2007; Detrez & Segaert, 2008, p. 10). This was

a controversial theory that was criticized extensively by scholars for ignoring the

essentially nationalist nature of the conflict and therefore for being depoliticizing

and inaccurate (Campbell, 1998b, p. 33-‐34; Schwandner-‐Sievers, 2003, p.205). It

was, nonetheless, an influential notion, and Macedonia’s speeches feature elements

from this same discourse. This is illustrated, first, by the use of the phrase ‘ethnic

hatred’, which itself was very much politicized and controversial, and deemed by

several scholars as stereotypical and Balkanist (Todorova, 1997; Engström, 2009).

Second, by asserting that “ethnic hatred” was the driving force, or fuel, behind the

policy of nationalism, Macedonia portrayed the aggressive nationalist policies in the

former Yugoslavia as a result of ethnic conflict, and not the ethnic conflict as a result

of nationalist policies. The difference may seem semantic, but as Florian Bieber

(1999) has explained, a key element in some of the most influential and most

problematic accounts on the conflict was that they emphasized ethnicity and

religion over nationalism.

In statements, such as the one quoted above, Macedonia emphasized the historical

continuity of the conflicts and their ethnic character in order to argue for the

legitimacy of international presence in the post-‐conflict Southeast Europe. By

underlining the essentialist nature of the conflicts in the region, Macedonia asserted

that it is the international community that must prosecute the war criminals, as the

Southeast European nation states, which are haunted by their pasts, are unable to

do so (A/51/PV.59, 1996). In this regard, one finds that Macedonia used Balkanist

notions as a supportive argument for international assistance and cooperation. Most

often, however, Macedonia employed Balkanist references specifically as part of the

Europeanization discourse. This is illustrated by the following examples.

“The history of the Balkans is one of uncertainty, problems, conflicts, and so on. The region has always been referred to as a keg of

36

dynamite. We have to change that, and the only means of doing so is by Europeanization of the Balkans.” (A/C.1/50/PV.17, 1995)

“–– it is interesting to note that it is no coincidence that the First World War started in the Balkans and that the Second World War lasted longest in the Balkans; Europeanization of the Balkans should not be delayed.” (A/C.1/50/PV.5, 1995)

These quotations show a frequently featured practice of employing Balkanist

stereotypes as an argument for Euro-‐Atlantic integration. This practice has been

characterized by the use of certain well-‐known metaphors, such as the keg of

dynamite. This is an alteration of the more common expression, ‘(Balkan) powder

keg’, which came to being at the verge of the First World War to denote the tensions

in Southeast Europe. It is one of the most well known stereotypes and “mythical and

fatalistic concepts” concerning the region (Dakovic, 2004, p. 474). Its prophecy – the

belief that the Balkans peoples are predisposed to violence and that war is bound

breakout in the region every fifty years – was seen to be fulfilled in the Yugoslav

conflict that in the minds of many “confirmed an image of the Balkans as a powder

keg of barbarian peoples.” (Promitzer, 2003 p.209)

The idea of the keg of dynamite is associated closely with the belief that Balkans

started the First World War – a long-‐standing allegation that very few historians

would take seriously (Todorova, 1997, p. 6). Yet, Macedonia has asserted this claim

in the General Assembly and, moreover, it has stated that the breakout of the Great

War in the region was not coincidental. While this statement could be interpreted in

various ways, the underlying implication in both quotations seems to be that the

region has a predisposition for war. This Balkanist insinuation, then, has functioned

as an argument for Europeanization: the idea being that the Euro-‐Atlantic

integration of the region’s countries should not be postponed due to risks inherent

to the Balkans. In other words, Macedonia has posed the argument that the

Southeast European states should be allowed to integrate to the EU because it would

reduce their natural/historical tendency for conflict.

37

Furthermore, Macedonia was the only case that has employed the term

“Balkanization” – a word that generally denotes the fragmentation of political units

into small and hostile states. As a term, “Balkanization” is the most important

derivative of the name “Balkans” (Todorova, 1997, p.32). It was used in various

contexts with various meanings over the course of the 20th century, but its prime

feature has been its markedly negative connotation (Todorova, 1997, p. 36-‐37). As

Goran Janev (2003, p. 313) has noted, the word “is taken to mean, among many

other things, the primitive, uncivilized, raw, wild, violent and merciless promotion of

nationalist causes.” According to Todorova (1997, p. 36-‐37), these connotations as

well as the different usages of “Balkanization” have contributed to the region’s

stigmatization internationally. As such, it is a term in which the presumptive

negative images of the Balkans find a concentrated expression (Fotev, 2004, p. 5).

The UN statements show that Macedonia employed the term “Balkanization”

relatively frequently and nearly always in the same context as part of the discourse

of Europeanization. “Balkanization” was featured in the speeches during the

Yugoslav conflict, lasting from 1991 until 1995, and also just before and during the

Kosovo war that took place between 1998 and 1999. After 1998, the word no longer

appeared in the statements. These findings indicate that while the use of Balkanist

rhetoric was not bound to the Yugoslav and Kosovo conflicts, it was certainly

associated with them. In this regard, the Balkanism can be seen as an underlying

discourse that is triggered by events, specifically conflicts, which legitimize actors to

use it. In this particular case, Macedonia was capitalize the conflicts in the

neighbouring countries to justify a political demand that was very much in its own

interests, and the Balkanist rhetoric provided the appropriate rhetorical tool for this

purpose, as is illustrated by the following quotations.

“– – further Balkanization of the Balkans is the most serious threat to security in Europe and globally – – Europeanization of the Balkans should not be delayed. (A/C.1/50/PV.5, 1995) “The future of our region lies therefore in its Europeanization, not in its Balkanization. It is difficult to foresee a stable and prosperous Europe without a stable and prosperous Balkan.” (A/C.1/53/PV.10, 1998)

38

The most outstanding feature of these quotations and the discourse in general is the

direct juxtaposition of the terms “Balkanization” and “Europeanization”: the former

being presented as an antithesis of the latter. As the quotations illustrate, Macedonia

has not elaborated on the meaning of the word “Balkanization”. Its statements have,

however, presented it as a thoroughly negative and undesirable and, moreover, as a

“threat” to security not only in Europe but in the world in general – the argument

being that an extended war in Southeast Europe could also lead to the expansion of

“Balkanization” elsewhere. “Europeanization”, in contrast, is represented as

something highly desirable for Southeast Europe and as a solution to the problems

posed by “Balkanization”. In the statements, the former stands for the promise of

tomorrow, and the latter for a threat from the past.

The recurrent juxtaposition of terms “Europeanization” and “Balkanization” that

continued in the same format with the same underlying thematic and argumentative

function over the course of several years can only be understood as a conscious

linguistic choice. The fact that as a term “Balkanization” is loaded with negative

connotations is what has made it usable in the discourse of Europeanization. In this

regard, “Balkanization” has been an ideal counterpart to “Europeanization”. They

are both well-‐known concepts, but the former has a very pejorative and the latter a

very positive meaning (Todorova, 1997; Anastasakis, 2005). However, the problem

that lies within this juxtaposition is that while it promotes one idea, it inadvertently

perpetuates another.

By using the term “Balkanization” in the pejorative sense of the word, Macedonia

has contributed to the Balkanist discourse that gave the word its negative

connotations and meaning in the first place. The word exists in the speeches not to

denote something specific, but something abstract. It has been used, as phrased by

Maria Todorova (1997, p. 36), as an “abstract demon”. This is what makes it a useful

counterpart to “Europeanization”, another concept without a precise meaning.

Together, however, they create what can be perceived as a dichotomy between good

and evil. This dichotomous construct is an affective rhetoric device, but it is also

problematic because it associates with Europe all that is desirable and with the

Balkans all that is undesirable. Acknowledging that dichotomies that contrast the

39

superiority of Europe with the inferiority of the Balkans have defined the Balkanist

discourse (Todorova, 1997; Bakić-‐Hayden, 1995), Macedonia’s UN statements

would seem to play right into the heart of that narrative.

40

Chapter 3. The Case of Bosnia

An Overview of the Discourses

The Western discourse in the 1990s subjected the Bosnian war to conflicting views,

which can be classified into two general categories. According to the first

explanation, the war in Bosnia was a civil war, while the second interpretation

portrayed it as an international conflict (Campbell, 1998a). On one hand, the war

was perceived as a civil war involving three ethno-‐religious groups, Bosniaks, Serbs,

and Croats, some of which received significant military and political support from

the neighbour states, as often is the case in civil wars (Burg & Shoup, 1999, p.190).

According to the other interpretation, Bosnian war was an international conflict, in

which the Bosnian Serb forces were de facto controlled by the Serbian leadership in

Belgrade and which involved violations of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s territorial

integrity on the part of Croatia’s armed forces. (Ibid, p.191)

In addition, the war was also often attributed to ethnic, religious, nationalist, and

historical factors. These explanations were mobilized as part of both, ‘civil war’ and ‘

international conflict’ narratives, but accounts belonging to the former category

gave more emphasis on ethnic, religious, and historical factors than those belonging

to the latter (Campbell, 1998). Indeed, besides the fact that several scholars have

seen it as an inaccurate interpretation of the Bosnian conflict (Tatum, 2010; Blitz,

2006), what has made the ‘civil war’ accounts problematic is their association with

stereotypical – that is to say Balkanist or Orientalist – ideas about ethnicity, religion,

and historical animosities. The ideas of ethnic and religious war, or ethno-‐religious

war, did not only depoliticize the Bosnian war, but they perpetuated the already-‐

existing Balkanist discourse about the region’s propensity for ethnic hatred and

violence (Campbell, 1998b, p. 33-‐34; Davis, 1996 p.41; Tuathail, 1999, p.114;

Coward, 2008, p.31).

Among Bosniak population itself, the notions of ‘civil war’ and ‘religious war’ were

very unpopular in the 1990s (Samary, 1997, p. 177). In contrast, the most frequent

41

terms used for labelling the war were resistance to aggression and struggle against

fascism: “as for the Bosnian authorities, they defined the war as external aggression,

rejecting any interpretations that would frame it as a civil or religious war.”

(Bougarel, 2007, p. 175)

The evidence from UN General Assembly showed that in contrast to Croatia and

Macedonia, the predominant narratives in the case of Bosnia were directed at

refuting popular Western, and often Balkanist, ideas about the Bosnian war. Bosnia’s

UN statements addressed and critiqued: 1) the civil war interpretation; 2) the

theory of ancient hatreds’; 3) the notion of the ‘clash of civilizations’. In this regard,

Bosnia’s UN statements were essentially anti-‐Balkanist. This chapter will investigate

this discourse with reference to the use of certain key words, expressions, and

terminology, which came to define the Western political discourse of the Bosnian

war in the 1990s.

3.1. Civil War vs. International War

The first of three narratives that were identified in the UN documents addressed the

issue of how the Bosnian war should be defined. The UN documents showed that

Bosnia recurrently critiqued the popular Western framing of the Bosnian conflict as

a civil and ethnic war. Bosnia used the UN as a platform for challenging this

interpretation and promoting an alternative narrative. According to this view, the

Bosnian conflict was an international war, which was caused by the interference of

external powers, in particular of Serbia. This narrative is illustrated by the following

quotation.

“You [the international community] further victimized us by equating the responsibility of the victim with that of the aggressor through the irresponsible and even malicious labelling of this aggression as a civil or religious war.” (A/48/PV.82, 1993)

This quotation reflects a broader discourse that was featured prominently Bosnia’s

UN statements during the Bosnian war from 1993 to 1995. During the conflict,

Bosnia explicitly condemned the Western narrative of the war, addressing the labels

42

civil war and religious war as “irresponsible” and “even malicious”. Bosnia asserted

that the labels of ethnic and religious war are victimizing to the Bosnian people and,

moreover, untruthful because they fail to encompass what Bosnia saw as the actual

cause of the war: “the Serbian desire to carve out an ethnically homogeneous

greater Serbia.” (A/C.4/49/SR.9, 1994) The fact that these findings are in

consonance with those of prior scholarly works is not entirely surprising. As Samary

(1997), Bougarel (2007) and others have explained, the wartime Bosniak-‐led

government was consistent with the ‘international war’ interpretation of the

conflict. However, the UN statements evidence more than an interpretation, as they

show that Bosnia used diplomatic speeches as a means for challenging competing

explanations about the conflict. Moreover, similarities between prior scholarly

findings on the discourse of the Bosnian wartime government and the UN

statements analysed here are underlined by the use of the same terminology in

describing the war. This is shown by the following sample.

“However, more directly, the war is about ideology — ideology not of religion and ethnicity but of politics and tolerance. –– our enemy is not defined by its ethnicity or religion but by the ideology of intolerance, dictatorship and fascism that it promotes.” (A/50/PV.6, 1995)

The quotation shows the discursive means by which Bosnia addressed the claims

that the conflict caused by religion and ethnicity. To refute such theories, Bosnia

underlined the political character of the war, emphasizing the ideologies of

intolerance, dictatorship and fascism. The last of these terms appears in the

statements regularly and often in the same context. As David Campbell (1998b, p.

33) has explained, an understanding of the war in terms of fascism was “an essential

element in foregrounding the political nature of the conflict” in the Bosniak

communities. Among the Bosniaks, the horrors of the war were often blamed on the

“Srpski fasisticki aggressor.” As evidenced by the above quotations, similar

association of Serbia (the enemy) with fascism has also been present in

international politics

While this discourse draws on the same ideas as the Second World War references

employed by Croatia (see chapter 1), these two cases are fundamentally different.

43

While Croatia employed very provocative rhetoric and historical references with the

purpose of portraying Serbia as a ‘negative other’, Bosnia has used the term ‘fascism’

primarily to refute alternative – that is to say non-‐political – interpretations about

the Bosnian war. This function is demonstrated well by the following phrasing: “our

enemy is not defined by its ethnicity or religion but by the ideology of intolerance,

dictatorship and fascism.” This sentence seeks to shift the debate from religious and

ethnic explanations to political explanations for the war. In this regard, the word

‘fascism’ is used primarily with the purpose of repolicitizing a conflict that had been

depoliticized in the Western discourse (Campbell, 1998b, p. 33-‐34).

3.2. Age-‐old Ethnic Hatreds Further statements from Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrate what has been a

persistent discursive strategy to discredit some of the most prominent Western

theories about the causes of the Bosnian war. The Western understanding of the

conflict in the 1990s was influenced conspicuously by theories that explained the

war in terms of deep-‐rooted historical animosities between the Southeast European

peoples (Sells, 1996 p. 23-‐24; Ramet, 2007). The most prominent of these theories

was propelled to fame by an American journalist, Robert D. Kaplan (Ramet, 2007).

His book “Balkan Ghosts” (1993) acclaimed the now infamous “ancient hatreds”

thesis, which became the catchphrase of the Balkanist discourse of the 1990s

(Hanse, 2006; Marko, 2010). Kaplan’s book was seen as of particular influence in

American decision-‐making on Bosnia after it became associated with the Clinton

administration (Sells, 1996; Kaufman, 1999). As Michael Sells (1996, p. 23) has

argued, “the “age-‐old antagonisms” refrain, as used by UN and NATO officials, served

as the primary excuse for the four year policy that culminated at Srebrenica.”

Indeed, some of these Western beliefs about the conflict were potentially

detrimental to the Bosnian wartime government, whose war efforts depended on

the assistance of the international community (Shoup & Burg, 2000, p.195). The

ideas of ‘age-‐old ethnic disputes’ and ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ implied irrationality

and lack of control over the events that were seen as a result of unstoppable

historical animosity (Joras & Schetter, 2004, p. 319), and therefore made external

44

armed intervention in Bosnia seem futile (Hehir, 2010, p.3). As Riikka Kuusisto

(1998) has observed, the Bosnian war was represented in the West as “something

terrible and paralyzing, chaotic and strange, as a mysterious ethnic feud with a

dreadful logic which left almost no room for well-‐meaning attempts to interfere.”

(ibid, p.610) Rhetoric that evoked such beliefs was also employed by Bosnian Serb

leaders in order to proof the irrelevance of Western attempts to intervene (Ramet,

2007).

Evidence from Bosnia’s UN statements showed that Bosnia was very conscious of

these theories during and after the conflict and used multilateral diplomacy as a

means for challenging and refuting them. The following quotations reveal particular

references to theories that came to characterize the Western political discourse in

the 1990s.

“Some have called this a tragedy when we know it is a criminally inflicted disaster. Others call it the product of age-‐old ethnic hatreds. – – may I note that any generalization that condemns ethnic groups as historically bent on murdering one another is inherently bigoted.” (A/48/PV.75, 1993)

This statement reflects a broader narrative, by which Bosnia challenged the Western

perception of the “static ethnic essentialism” (Coles, 2007, p.259) of the Balkans

during the Bosnian war. As evidenced by the quotation, Bosnia directed its criticism

at the idea that the conflict was a product of ethnic animosity. This criticism was

characterized in particular by the use of the expression “age-‐old ethnic hatreds”,

which Bosnia addressed as being a “completely false” theory (A/C.3/48/SR.10,

1993). The use and criticism of this specific wording is unlikely to be a coincidence,

since, as Carole Rogel (2004, p.42) has explained, the phrase “age-‐old ethnic

hatreds” was “repeated so often, as if by rote, that hardly anyone bothers to think

about its meaning or validity.” It became an umbrella term, a key phrase in the

Western discourse, which entailed the idea that the conflicts in the region “erupted

because of deeply ingrained differences in religion, culture and state traditions.”

(Bozić, 1999, p.106)

45

In this regard, challenging the notion of the “age-‐old ethnic hatreds” was a means for

Bosnia to question the Western narrative of the conflict. As the “age-‐old ethnic

hatreds” thesis went unquestioned by many, including foreign governments and

heads of states, by exposing and critiquing the underlying assumptions behind the

phrase Bosnia could reveal the prejudice that characterized and defined this and

other similar beliefs about the Yugoslav conflicts. Bosnia proposed this criticism by

asserting that a theory, which “condemns ethnic groups as historically bent on

murdering one another is inherently bigoted.” With this assessment, Bosnia

attempted to deconstruct the “age-‐old ethnic hatreds” theory by exposing and

criticizing its presupposition: that is the belief that Southeast Europeans were

predisposed to violence and hatred. Therefore, by engaging with this criticism,

Bosnia challenged the Balkanism/Orientalism on which the ideas of “age-‐old ethnic

hatreds” were arguably constructed.

3.3. Clash of Civilizations

The UN statements showed that Bosnia’s criticism of the Western discourse

extended beyond the notion of “age-‐old ethnic hatreds”. Bosnia also challenged

Samuel Huntington’s (1996) influential theory of the “clash of civilizations”, which,

as Ramet (2007) has argued, is a variation of the “ancient hatreds” thesis.

Huntington used Bosnia and Herzegovina as a case study of what he described as a

fault line war: a war that “involve[s] nations, people or other groups of different

civilizational provenance”, one that is “more likely to occur inside states which

bridge different civilizations.” (Bieber, 1999) In this regard, the Bosnian war came to

be seen in the West as a religious war and a war between two incompatible

civilizations, Christianity and Islam (Marko, 2010). This has, arguably, contributed

to the further orientalization of Southeast Europe (Drakulić, 2011, p. 89). The

following quotation from the General Assembly illustrates the discursive means by

which Bosnia has addressed the issue of the “clash of civilizations”.

“A multi-‐ethnic, multicultural Bosnia and Herzegovina within both its entities – – will be the best answer to superficial theories on the

46

inevitable clashes between different cultures and civilizations.” (A/53/PV.24, 1998)

Criticism of the “clash of civilizations” thesis was featured in Bosnia’s statements

regularly from 1998 onwards, after the theory had made lefts its mark on

mainstream international political discourse (Bieber, 1999). Between 1998 and

2002, Bosnia addressed the theory in several speeches, always criticising it

extensively. The foremost criticism posed by Bosnia was that the theory of the

Bosnian conflict as a manifestation of the “clash of civilizations” was an inaccurate

interpretations of the events. To support this argument, Bosnia referred to the end

of violence in the country in 1995, when the Dayton accords brought the Bosnian

conflict to an end. The speakers represented the end of the conflict as evidence of

the theory’s fallaciousness: “Bosnia and Herzegovina has proved to be the place that

rendered the notion of a clash of civilizations null and void.” (A/56/PV.42, 2001)

Another discursive strategy employed by Bosnia to challenge the theory of the

“clash of civilizations” was to evoke a narrative of peaceful coexistence among

Bosnia’s various ethno-‐religious groups. This narrative is demonstrated by the

following quotation.

“– – our fragile State — the only European State where Muslims represent the majority religious group — was confronted with the heavy pressure of prejudice regarding a “clash between civilizations”. But, as members may know, I come from a State that represented a crossroads of different cultures and religions, where different civilizations lived for centuries in tolerance and mutual respect.” (A/57/PV.7, 2002)

In this critique of the “clash of civilizations” thesis, Bosnia has appealed to the past

in order to demonstrate that various cultural and religious groups are capable of

living together peacefully “in tolerance and mutual respect.” This strategy has

followed the same line of reasoning as the arguments posed by several scholars,

who have sought to disproof claims about the inevitability of conflict in this region

by showing that Bosnian or Balkan history is not characterized by animosity or

clashes between civilizations (Malcolm, 1996; Rogel, 2004). What is particularly

noteworthy about the above-‐quotation and this discourse in general is that evoked

an image of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a crossroads between civilizations. The

47

prevalence of the crossroads thematic in this discourse is not entirely unforeseen, as

the theme has become an institution of its own in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There,

according to Nirman Moranjak-‐Bamburać (2001), the idea of Bosnia as a crossroads

between civilizations has become a predominant part of the political discourse:

“Ritual mention of the crossroads has become an ID card, an ideological mantra in

political speech. The awkwardness of the past has become abolished, tamed by a

newly-‐established rhetorical strategy.”

In Bosnia, the crossroads metaphor has typically used in two ways: either as a

defense against the paranoia of nationalist discourse or, alternatively, as a political

slogan (ibid). The evidence from the UN suggests that while Bosnia did indeed use

the crossroads as a general political slogan to promote the idea of multiculturalism,

which was the message Western powers wished to hear, the metaphor was also

used as a counterargument to the prejudice to which Bosnia was subjected to from

the West. This function of the metaphor was particularly noticeable in the “clash of

civilizations” debate, in which Bosnia evoked the rhetoric of crossroads to critique

the Huntingtonian paradigm for not taking into account the history that preceded

the 1990s conflict. In this regard, one could argue that while in Bosnia the crossroads

metaphors has functioned as a rhetoric defense against nationalism, internationally

it has been used as a defense against the prejudice of Orientalism.

48

Conclusions This dissertation has investigated the manifestations of internalized Balkanist

discourse in international politics in the United Nations between 1993 and 2003.

The research hypothesized that states would employ Balkanist rhetoric to

demonstrate their Europeanness and hence to legitimize their integration into Euro-‐

Atlantic institutions. Based on the findings of the three case studies, Croatia,

Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, one can conclude that this hypothesis

received partial support. In the cases of Croatia and Macedonia, the analysis showed

a clear association between Balkanist rhetoric and the discourse of Europeanization,

but it revealed also other, divergent, argumentative functions for Balkanist rhetoric.

In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the hypothesis was not supported by the

findings. The analysis showed that Bosnia did not employ Balkanist discourse, and

instead adopted an overtly anti-‐Balkanist rhetoric – that is rhetoric that challenged

the Western, and Balkanist, notions about the Bosnian conflict – that continued

throughout the period of investigation.

First, this research set out to investigate how states employed Balkanist discourse in

justifying and arguing for Euro-‐Atlantic integration (RQ.1) using Norman

Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to investigate the links

between the linguistic features of the texts and their social practice. The scope of the

investigation was narrowed down to three principal linguistic features – word

meanings and key words, themes, and metaphors –, which were investigated in

relation to the social practice by incorporating the relevant background and social

theory into the analysis.

In the case of Croatia (chapter 1), Fairclough’s model of CDA was proven useful in

deconstructing the self-‐designations that reoccurred in the UN documents

throughout the period of investigation. First, by focusing on reoccurring wordings

and key words, this dissertation identified a repeating pattern of self-‐designations.

The analysis of these word choices showed unequivocally that Croatia sought

association with Central Europe and disassociation from the Balkans. This use of

49

language was, then, linked to the domestic discourses in Croatia by drawing on the

findings of prior scholarship. The comparison word choices in domestic politics and

in the UN revealed evident similarities between the two discourses, which comes to

show that this aspect of the domestic rhetoric was transferred into international

politics. Finally, by focusing on the textual element of themes, this dissertation

established a link between the use of key words and the theme of Europeanization.

The analysis showed that self-‐designations that labelled Croatia as a European

country were patently associated with statements that addressed the topic –that is

the theme – of Croatia’s Euro-‐Atlantic integration. In this regard, the findings

supported the hypothesis that Croatia employed Balkanist discourse of ‘othering’

with the purpose of enhancing its image as a European state in order to justify its

Euro-‐Atlantic integration.

Following the CDA in investigating the use of key words, the Macedonian case

(chapter 2) revealed a pattern of self-‐designations, which showed that Macedonia

sought association not with Central Europe but with the Balkans. However, a further

analysis of the linguistic elements revealed two distinct discursive strategies of

promoting Euro-‐Atlantic integration. First, an investigation of how Macedonia used

language to construct itself vis-‐à-‐vis the Balkans exposed certain culturally salient

phrases and metaphors, which were used with the purpose of distinguishing

Macedonia from its conflict-‐ridden neighbours. These linguistic elements were

analysed in regard to prior research to establish the social practice of the discourse.

This analysis showed that on one hand Macedonia accepted its ‘Balkanness’, but that

it also constructed its own particularity vis-‐à-‐vis the former Yugoslavia with the

purpose of underlining qualities that make it a suitable candidate for EU

membership. Second, an analysis of the linguistic choices used in representing the

Balkans showed that Macedonia also employed pejorative Balkanist wordings,

phrases, and metaphors in order to demonstrate the need for international

assistance in the region. By focusing on the linkage between the word usage and

reoccurring themes, the dissertation established a relationship between these

stereotypes and the topic of Euro-‐Atlantic integration, which supported the

hypothesis that Balkanist discourse was used to promote EU and Nato membership.

50

The second objective of this dissertation was to employ CDA in investigating

alternative argumentative/political functions of Balkanist discourse in

international politics (RQ.2). In the case of Croatia (Chapter 1), the UN

statements also showed that while Balkanisms were used predominantly in

promoting Croatia’s ‘Europeanness’ and hence its Euro-‐Atlantic integration,

the discourse functioned also as a means for ‘othering’ Serbia during the

Yugoslav conflict. The dissertation analysed various key words and

metaphors, which were linked to the broader social practice of ‘othering’ via

prior scholarly research. These findings indicated that the subaltern

discourse typical to the nationalist rhetoric in Croatia was transferred to

international politics with the purpose of promoting Croatia’s victimhood in

the eyes of the international community. In the case of Bosnia (chapter 3),

there were little signs of the use of Balkanist discourse. In contrast, an

analysis of the textual elements showed that while Bosnia did indeed adopt

certain key words, terms, and metaphors from the Western discourse, they

were used with the distinct purpose of disproving the underlying Balkanist

presumptions that defined them. By drawing on earlier scholarly works on

Bosnia to establish the political function – that is the social practice – of this

discourse, it was argued that Bosnia adopted this discursive strategy to

stress the need for international support and, later, to mitigate the damage

the conflict had done to its international reputation.

51

Biography

Primary Sources

Croatia: United Nations, General Assembly, Provisional Verbatim Record of the 86th Meeting, A/47/PV.86 (6.8.1993), available from undocs.org/A/47/PV.86 United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐ninth Session, A/49/PV.9 (28.9.1994), available from undocs.org/A/49/PV.9 United Nations, General Assembly, Fiftieth Session, A/50/PV.13 (29.9.1995), available from undocs.org/A/50/PV.13 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐third Session, A/53/PV.18 (28.9.1993), available from undocs.org/A/53/PV.18 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐fourth session, A/54/PV.72 (7.12.1999), available from undocs.org/A/54/PV.72 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐fifth session, A/55/PV.13 (13.9.2001), available from undocs.org/A/55/PV.13 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐sixth session, A/56/PV.103 (18.6.2002), available from undocs.org/A/56/PV.103 Macedonia: United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐Eighth Session, A/48/PV.10 (30.9.1993), available from undocs.org/A/48/PV.10 United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐ninth Session, A/C.1/49/PV.6 (19.10.1994), available from undocs.org/A/C.1/49/PV.6 United Nations, General Assembly, Fiftieth Session, A/50/PV.36 (22.10.1995), available from undocs.org/A/50/PV.36 United Nations, General Assembly, First Committee, A/C.1/50/PV.17 (9.11.1995), available from undocs.org/ A/C.1/50/PV.17 United Nations, General Assembly, First Committee, A/C.1/50/PV.5 (17.10.1995), available from undocs.org/A/C.1/50/PV.5

52

United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐first session, A/C.1/51/PV.11 (22.10.1996), available from undocs.org/A/C.1/51/PV.11 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐first Session, A/51/PV.59 (19.11.1996), available from undocs.org/A/51/PV.59 United Nations, General Assembly, Nineteenth Special Session, A/S-‐19/PV.8 (26.6.1997), available from undocs.org/A/S-‐19/PV.8 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐third Session, A/C.1/53/PV.10 (20.10.1998), available from undocs.org/ A/C.1/53/PV.10 United Nations, General Assembly, Twenty-‐first special session, A/S-‐21/PV.9 (2.7.1999), available from undocs.org/A/S-‐21/PV.9 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐fifth session, A/55/PV.30 (27.9.2000), available from undocs.org/A/55/PV.30 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐sixth session, A/56/PV.49 (12.11.2001), available from undocs.org/A/56/PV.49, United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐seventh session, A/57/PV.13 (17.9.2002), available from undocs.org/A/57/PV.13

Bosnia and Herzegovina:

United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐eighth session, A/48/PV.75 (10.12.1993), available from undocs.org/A/48/PV.75 United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐eighth session, Third Committee, A/C.3/48/SR.10 (18.10.1993) United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐eighth session, Plenary Meeting, A/48/PV.82 (17.12.1993), available from undocs.org/A/48/PV.82 United Nations, General Assembly, Forty-‐ninth session, Fourth Committee, A/C.4/49/SR.9 (21.10.1994), available from undocs.org/ A/C.4/49/SR.9 United Nations, General Assembly, Fiftieth Session, A/50/PV.6 (26.9.1995), available from undocs.org/A/50/PV.6 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐third Session, A/53/PV.24 (1.10.1998), available from undocs.org/A/53/PV.24 United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐sixth session, A/56/PV.42 (9.11.2001), available from undocs.org/A/56/PV.42,

53

United Nations, General Assembly, Fifty-‐seventh session, A/57/PV.7 (14.9.2002), available from undocs.org/A/57/PV.7

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Balkanist Rhetoric and Diplomacy: A Case Study of Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia

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