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Diplomatic negotiators in the international political field: Narrating

peace and conflict in the former Yugoslavia

Liliana Pop

Paper prepared for the International Studies Association Meeting

San Francisco, April 2013

Draft only; please do not quote without permission

Contact details:

Dr Liliana Pop

Independent Scholar

London, UK

Liliana.pop@ntlworld.com

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Diplomatic negotiators in the international political field: Narrating peace

and conflict in the former Yugoslavia1

Abstract

This paper uses the memoirs published by the two main international negotiators

involved in the resolution of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, David Owen and

Richard Holbrooke as the starting point for a Bourdieusian analysis of diplomatic

habitus and the logic of honour in the international political field. The similarities in

terms of skills and activities between these two negotiators are useful for the

reconstruction of some of the basic features of the international political field – the

co-existence of relatively autonomous spheres within it, but equally important for an

explanation of the different outcomes of their efforts is the positionality and timing of

their actions. In this, the logic of honour, which stipulates that social judgement on

actors and the appropriateness of their actions is passed in accordance with their fit

with expectations associated with their position in the field is at work in the reactions

to and management of the failure of the Vance Owen Peace Plan and the ultimate

resolution of the conflict. In substantive terms, this analysis substantiates the claim

that European regionalism is embedded in an American imperium (Katzenstein 2005)

as both civilisational commonalities and the implicit hierarchy within this relation

were affirmed.

Key words: Pierre Bourdieu, logic of honour, international political field, diplomacy,

former Yugoslavia

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British International Studies Association meeting

in Exeter, in December 2008. I would like to thank all the participants for their comments and

suggestions. I draw here on fieldwork carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina funded through a small

grant from the British Academy.

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Diplomatic negotiators in the international political field: Narrating war and peace in

the former Yugoslavia

The work of Pierre Bourdieu has often been criticised for its seeming rigidity and

structuralist bias (Butler 1999; Callinicos 1999; Collins 2000). This paper however

builds on the suggestion that his concepts could usefully be regarded as tools that,

sensitively deployed, might enhance our understanding of international politics

(Huysmans 2002; Jackson 2008; Leander 2002, 2006; Neumann 2007, 2008; Pop

2007; Pouliot 2008). I am especially interested here in scrutinising elaborate,

published testimonies by two of the diplomats, David Owen (1996) and Richard

Holbrooke (1999), intimately involved with and indeed at times leading the efforts of

the international community to come to terms with and facilitate the resolution of the

war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-5). Written with considerable self-awareness,

candour and detail, these testimonies provide an excellent point of departure for an

assessment of some of the basic assumptions about habitus, fields and practice

formulated by Bourdieu in his extensive opus (for instance 1988, 1990, 1991, 1996,

2000, 2004, 2005a and 2005b) and their usefulness for the study of international

relations.

The diplomatic efforts surrounding the Yugoslav crisis were undertaken against a

background of significant anxiety over the definition of roles and relationships after

the end of the Cold War for all the major European and North-American states and

their international organisations, what might be called a situation of unusually high

‘ontological insecurity’ (Mitzen 2006). Many critics of the manifest inability of the

international community to stop the war or curtail its humanitarian consequences,

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have pointed out the divergent aspirations and interests of various states, their

inability to agree on a common course of action, with sometimes devastating

consequences in terms of human lives within BiH (Gowan 1999; Silber and Little

1996; Wheeler 2000; Woodward 1995). These memoirs certainly bring into focus the

day-to-day playing out of particular interests as incidents occur – within the domestic

politics of various countries or on the ground in BiH. They also support the

contention, as I will seek to show, that the concerns states have for the affirmation and

preservation of their status, through competition and cooperation with others, confirm

the hypothesis that the behaviour of states, not unlike that of other individual and

collective actors is regulated by the logic of honour. Indeed, some of the crucial and

fateful decisions during the war were motivated by such, often unspoken,

considerations.2

These memoirs also present in action elements of what might be called a ‘diplomatic

habitus’. Even though at one level this consists of a collection of individual attributes,

they also represent, in incorporated form, the social conditions in which they have

emerged and continue to operate. For this reason, they can serve for a reconstruction

of some of the features of the international political field and the relationship between

this and domestic political fields. Thus, the similarities in the ways in which the

actions of these two international diplomats are orientated towards a multiplicity of

audiences, require complex co-ordination of information and interests, and

sophisticated systems of evaluation, reflect at the same time the features of the

international political field and the assumptions held in common by effective, high-

powered participants in the dominant, North-Atlantic region of this field. The

2 For a review of works on the Bosnian wars see Kent (1997).

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differences between them, in terms of nationality, one British (Welsh) and the other

American, and thus particular training, appear as idiosyncratic and certainly less

important than the constraints on the effectiveness of their actions that follow from

their particular positions, as representatives of the EU and the US respectively.

The logic of honour in the international political field

Pierre Bourdieu has offered in his extensive opus a powerful conception of the social

anchored in the notions of habitus, field and practice (Bourdieu 1988, 1996, 2000,

2004, 2005a). Actors are characterised by attributes, a certain habitus, inculcated

through prolonged immersion in their social environment, in such a way that identities

come to incorporate, as unconscious structured and structuring structures the social

conditions associated with their emergence and effectiveness. Fields of practice, such

as the economy and politics, domestic and international, have specific members, a

particular structuring principle at any one time and a (usually) hierarchical

distribution of positions characterised by the particular accumulations of capitals

valued in that field. Within this view of the social, the logic of honour is a type of

practice that regulates the ways in which the group, the participants in a certain field

tend to assess different actions. According to the principle of equality in honour, the

determining criterion for evaluating actions is their appropriateness and

correspondence with the expectations collectively associated with the position and the

occupant of that position in the social field. Thus judgements and actions are not

exclusively instrumental but incorporate a certain pre-commitment of actors in the

assumptions that give distinctiveness to the field and constitute the basis for its

relative autonomy from other social fields.

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The logic of honour refers both to the operation of symbolic processes, linked to the

underlying values of a group, or community, and the material hierarchies that operate

within it. While all social exchanges can have honour implications, in so far as they

affect the rights to occupy various positions in the field, honour exchanges as such,

direct confrontations involving fundamental identity assumptions held by actors,

points of honour, are relatively rare and most of the time, actors carry out and take for

granted the work of maintaining the current social order. Actors are embedded in their

social environments through both conscious and unconscious processes; they share

the basic premises of the field in which they participate, a specific illusio, just as they

can develop self-awareness, reflexivity and distance from field dynamics.3

Thus, actions are layered not only in the sense that they can take different meanings

depending on how they impact on different participants in the field, but also in terms

of the degrees of identification, conscious or unconscious, strong or weak with the

conventions of the field. However, in general, since actions are always attended by

some risk of failure, in most social interactions actors do not question directly what is

at stake in terms of honour, their profound social identity and may even purposely

conceal the links between the declared purpose and rules of the interaction and

consequences in terms of honour. Symbolic skills, knowing how to do the right thing

at the right time, are especially important as actors seek to reduce the uncertainty that

attends significant social exchanges.

3 The character of ‘organized hypocrisy’ (Krasner 1999) attached to sovereignty, neatly alludes to and

captures this dual determination of the norm. Its effectiveness is due to the profound structuring of the

international field, which is already (and seemingly always) made of sovereign entities which share an

interest in upholding the norm, while its ability to actually shape behaviour reflects compromises and

adjustments pertaining to particular power balances at any one time. For the actors, this means a certain

ambiguity, even hypocrisy in their behaviour: collusion with the belief that the norm is absolute and at

the same time awareness that it is not, or might not be.

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It is because the material distribution of power is reflected in and negotiated through a

symbolic order that has its own degree of autonomy, that it remains possible for the

powerful, through misjudgement, to engage an actor of inferior social status in a

power contest, and to lose, which would bring shame; for the one who aspires to

improve one’s position through demonstration of greater ability or force than so far

recognised, to translate this demonstration from material gain, for instance on the

battlefield, into a social fact accepted by the others, considerable symbolic skills are

also required (Bourdieu 1990, 98-111).

The dissolution of Yugoslavia has often been linked to the re-alignment of political

identities and alliances at the end of the Cold War for the European states, NATO, US

and Russia. It was a testing ground for how these relationships might be defined in the

new circumstances, and in a sense, what the collapse of the communist bloc might

mean in concrete terms. The initial reaction was blunt and influenced by

considerations of real politik: as the Berlin Wall fell and Central and Eastern

European states were executing their turnaround from communism, the ideological

import of Yugoslavia as the maverick, liberal communist state friendly to the West

disappeared. James Baker famously pronounced that the US ‘didn’t have a dog in the

fight’ over the Yugoslav dissolution (Glenny 1996; Zimmerman 1996).

As the crisis of the Yugoslav dissolution unfolded, however, it increasingly engaged

the honour and responsibility of the main European and North-American states. The

recognition of Croatia and Slovenia and other republics, the wars in Slovenia and

Croatia were managed through the setting up of the Baden Commission and the

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negotiation of a cease-fire that froze the conflict, leaving 30 per cent of the Croatian

territory under the control of Serbian rebels. However, the breakout of the fighting in

BiH in 1992 intensified all the dilemmas for the international community. The

diplomatic effort to search for a solution took place in the context of the UN initially

with the imposition of an arms embargo, a no-fly zone over BiH and the deployment

of UNPROFOR, whose mandate was initially to limit the impact on civilians of the

war operations and to assist with the distribution of aid. The International Conference

on Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), first convened in London at the initiative of John

Major was then institutionalised as a negotiating forum, from September 1992, co-

chaired by David Owen (for the UE) and Cyrus Vance (for the UN), the latter

replaced by Sweden’s Theobald Stoltenberg from May 1993 and was until the

summer of 1995 the main forum for the search for peace.

As the fighting in BiH continued, uncertainty over the honour implications of the

actions of the different actors increased and all played on time in order to secure a

better outcome for themselves. In fact, it might be said that the conflict was so

protracted because the opposing claims made by the different parties were so difficult

to reconcile or adjudicate. Croatia and Serbia (or, with Montenegro, the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia, FRY), aspired to expand their territories and annex parts of

BiH inhabited by their co-ethnics. Moulded by historical grievances and pre-World

War II, eminently territorial models of sovereignty, the techniques of statecraft

utilised by the Serb and Croatian leaders have had the effect of alienating whatever

support there might have been for their aspirations.4 At the same time, as sovereign

4 Owen (1996: 32-5) discloses for instance that the possibility of redrawing the republican borders

within Yugoslavia had been entertained by the EC in mid-1991 and discarded as a result of lack of faith

on the ability of the parties to carry out such a chance peacefully and without endangering the human

rights of the various ethnic groups.

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states, both Serbia/FRY and Croatia could mobilise the rights available to them as

members of the international field and could request, for instance, UN assistance, as

well as pursue advantageous bilateral alliances, for instance with Russia or Germany

in order to sustain, more or less covertly, their expansionist hopes.

At the same time, the position of the international community as a whole, with some

specific differences for the different European countries and the US and Canada, was

ambivalent as to the extent to which it could intervene. Military presence on the

ground by the UNPROFOR was meant to ensure the protection of civilians and the

distribution of aid, but their position was morally ambiguous. They were sometimes

reduced to unwilling assistants to ethnic cleansing, as they guaranteed safe passage to

refugees leaving conquered areas, and, later in the war, they could do little to protect

civilians when the ‘safe areas’ of Goradze, Zepa and Srebrenica were overrun by the

Bosnian Serb army. There seemed to be very little that could be done in the face of

the determination of the warring ethnic armies and their political leaders to keep

fighting with any means available to them, short of military intervention to impose a

settlement.

The diplomatic habitus

Both Owen (1996) and Holbrooke (1999) document work in its day-to-day content

and rhythms. For instance, at the beginning of his book, Owen lists all major events

and meetings during his tenure as co-chairman as the ICFY: there are odd days when

nothing of consequence seems to be happening, but these are the exception rather than

the rule. The book also comes with an extensive CD-Rom which provides access to

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much of the paperwork, the COREU telegrams for instance, written by Owen and

circulated among the EC/EU members. And, equally, with Holbrooke, it is apparent at

every step that intensive personal and professional mobilisation is required, with

barely a chance to pause for a week-end break or personal time. This includes

extensive travel and almost constant communication with the relevant policy-makers

and the press.

Within this extraordinary mobilisation, the accounts also contain indications of the

particular skills required and deployed. Some of these are embedded in relationships

built over decades. Holbrooke’s last assignment before becoming Assistant Secretary

of State for European and Canadian Affairs in charge with handling the negotiations

over the Bosnian wars was as the US ambassador to Germany, but he started his

career in the State Department as part of the team negotiating the end of the Vietnam

War in 1962. Equally, Owen’s prominent position within the British foreign policy

establishment is well known, having served as a member of parliament for 26 years

and as Foreign Secretary between February 1977 and May 1979. This prolonged

habituation with international politics is also supported in each case by a certain

independence of means – for instance Owen decided not to draw a salary in the first

few months of his chairmanship and Holbrooke has combined periods of government

service (he was part of President Johnson’s White House staff in 1966-67) with

appointments in the private and non-governmental sectors, in the media and banking.

Written on the back of the success of having concluded the war, at Dayton, but also

published against some background of uncertainty over whether the agreement would

hold, Holbrooke’s account has something of the upbeat feel of a ‘how to’ book, and it

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is perceptive and precise as to the actions that, in his view, made a difference. In a

sense he provides sharper definition of decisive skills and interventions that are also

documented by Owen. In the latter’s account the overall tone is given by the intention

to show the profound, sustained involvement over a period of time with a process of

search for peace, which, in spite of his and those of his co-chairmen’s efforts, did not

succeed in the immediate sense of actually leading to an agreement.

Most evidently in Holbrooke’s account the art to improvise was central to his success.

In turn, this rests on correct perception of the difference between what people say, and

seek to represent, and what they actually mean or the reality of the situation; on astute

understanding of the resources available within different institutional set-ups, their

logics and thus effective ways of access; and decisiveness in trying to shape all these

elements in order to achieve a particular outcome. It also entails a great capacity to

process situations in such a way that pragmatism wins over emotionalism, an ability

to develop empathy and cognitive frameworks of understanding for divergent,

potentially seemingly hostile points of view within an overall ethic of fair-play and

sportsmanship.

This includes for instance the ability to shift between registers of discourse, including

the astute, adequate mobilisation of what Holbrooke calls ‘high history rhetoric’. For

instance, in his conversation with the Greek Prime-Minister Andreas Papandreou, he

brings to bear moral and affective arguments, such as the profound commitment to

make a positive difference to a situation and effectively to shape the course of history,

in order to persuade him to reopen negotiations with Macedonia (p 125) in spite of

opposition from his foreign minister. Similar arguments are deployed in conversation

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with the reluctant decision makers involved in deliberation over the resumption of

NATO bombardment in August 1995, at a time when suspension of bombardment

could have become permanent if resumption had been delayed for more than 72 hours

(p. 132).

Following Holbrooke’s testimony, getting the job done involved a complicated

balancing act between specific dynamics in a few different social spheres: the

negotiating team, the US administration, NATO, the Contact Group, the parties to the

conflict in BiH and the press. Each can be conceived as relatively autonomous

institutional and organisational fields, with specific logics and constraints, but most of

the actions taken by Holbrooke as his team as part the negotiating effort had the

potential to resonate, signify, impact and bring consequences in each of these fields.

The US negotiating team comprised representatives from a variety of government

departments, who needed to stay loyal both to these departments, and their career

concerns there, and to be committed to negotiating for a positive result. The loss of

three of the initial members of the team in an accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo,

was effectively mobilised to sustain motivation for the peace effort, as both public

ceremonies and occasions for more personal bonding between colleagues and

survivors were carefully calibrated.

The relationships with the commander in chief, President Clinton, his national

security advisor and the State and Defense Departments, were also potentially

difficult, as sometimes conflicting advice coming from them had to be carefully

counteracted through appropriate deployment of argument and evidence in often short

notice, decisive meetings. For instance, the obligation of the US to provide troops in

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case of UN withdrawal from BiH had been built into a semi-automatic decision-

making mechanism within NATO, apparently without the members of the

administration being fully aware of the fact that the choices available to the President

were thus severely reduced. In another instance, to do with the choice of site for the

final negotiations, Holbrooke suggests that the choice for a US site, which he

favoured, was taken in spite of an initial consensus against such a choice. As the 1996

election campaign in the US was drawing near, the concern within the Clinton

administration was that a failure would impact negatively on his chances with the

American electorate.

Here Holbrooke is generally complimentary of colleagues and superiors and notes in

one instance the importance of ambiguity in the formulation of the mandate of the

negotiating team:

While Washington wanted the offensive to stop, we never had a clear

instruction, only the general sense of our senior colleagues, who left to us the

exact calibration of the signal. Remembering again how Harriman and Vance

had been “overinstructed” during their negotiations with the North Vietnamese

in 1968, I was grateful that Washington was giving us such flexibility and

support. Later, Tom Dillon told me that most of the credit for protecting our

flexibility was owed to Warren Christopher, who, despite his own views,

argued that Washington should back its negotiators. (Holbrooke 199: 159)

Internationally, the negotiating efforts took place nominally under the umbrella of the

Contact Group, whose members, especially Russia and France, or non-members, such

as Italy are presented as forces that had to be contained, cajoled and generally

managed. In a characteristically astute observation that captures a more general

tension in international relations, Holbrooke (p. 116-7) notes that often the most

intense debates among members are over the venues for meetings, as hosting is often

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seen as actually playing an important role even when the scope for variations,

modifications, amendments of policy is in fact quite limited.

Acute awareness of and effectiveness in the art of shaping meetings is also in

evidence for instance in relation to the use of space – location – but also the number

of places at the negotiating table: the exclusion of the Bosnian Serbs from direct

participation in the negotiations was an important strategic decision, dramatised for

instance at the first meeting in two years of the Foreign Ministers of Croatia, FRY and

BiH, in Geneva, in September 1995, though their relegation to the status of observers,

seated at the margins of the gathering. Initially, they did not take this quietly, but

when Holbrooke confronted them, they acquiesced only requesting that they be

allowed the gesture of publicly delegating to the FRY team the authority to negotiate

for them (Holbrooke 1999: 137-41).

There is no direct testimony in Holbrooke about having learned explicitly from the

previous negotiations, but his choices in shaping meetings are very much in keeping

with the conclusions that Owen drew from his own experience. For instance, the

constraints built into the negotiating positions proposed by the US team, and accepted

by parties before each new step in the process, sought to eliminate some of the escape

routes from committing to an agreement taken in the past. Throughout the war, all

Bosnian parties often created uncertainty over agreements they had seemingly

accepted, by delegating final decision to their parliaments or even referendums, by

using the press to create a certain climate of opinion, by trying to provoke outrageous

behaviour on the part of their adversaries, by using back channels in the US and EU

political establishment to mobilise greater support for their particular positions.

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For instance, the Dayton agreement, prepared by the US team, with collaboration

from and certainly closely fought over by the parties, is a comprehensive document

running to over 120 pages and 11 annexes. According to Holbrooke, this was question

of using to maximum advantage the opportunity to achieve a settlement, on the

assumption that matters not agreed at Dayton would be unlikely to ever be agreed.

Thus the Dayton Peace Accords built in positions in a wide range of areas from

military aspects of the peace settlement, regional stabilization, the inter-entity

boundary line, elections, constitution, human rights, refugees and displaced persons,

public corporations, civilian implementation and the international police task force.5

The media, in the US and internationally, is also seen to play an important role. On

the one hand, it is constantly monitored for information about significant

developments. There is a certain assuredness and precision in the attribution of

meanings even in the absence of absolute proof, which must indicate that at some felt,

experience-based and practical level the connections between the message printed or

broadcast and the intention of the source of the information that it should be out in the

public sphere to signal to others are known to be effective. For instance, after the

drawing up of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), in early 1993, the US press is

seen by Owen to misrepresent constantly the contents of the plan and seems to signal

ambivalence within the US administration towards it. Even though, within the direct

channels of communication, assurance is given that the VOPP is supported, with the

reservation that the administration would not go as far as asking the Muslim party to

accept it, further enquiries establish the tensions within the new administration on this

issue and at times the lack of a clear policy on Bosnia. In any case, Owen and Vance

5 For an analysis of the importance of the Dayton Accords as the decisive reference point in the post-

conflict period and in BiH see Pop (2008).

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become much more involved in something like a media campaign in the US in the

first few months of 1993 to put the record straight.

In one occasion, a press article on an agreement that had yet to be agreed was felt to

have ‘bounced’ the parties into actually accepting it. For instance, the Joint Action

Plan worked out by the US, first in agreement with Russia, as an initiative of

continued involvement by the international community, against the background of

perceived failure of the VOPP is announced as fact in a New York Times article on 18

May 1993. Published on the day when the foreign ministers of the UK and France,

presumed co-signatories were flying to Washington to discuss the initiative, it did

much to force their hand to present a show of unity. Thus, the art of government

clearly includes careful judgement of when a leak is necessary, and, conversely,

because leaks are almost unavoidable, how secrecy can be guarded for a period of

time, to ensure effective, sometimes staged disclosure in official announcements.

Before Holbrooke sets out for the Balkans, at the beginning of his negotiating effort,

he makes a point of giving an interview to the International Herald Tribune, because

it is read in the Balkans, to signal his tough position against the Bosnian Serbs. There

is no evidence that they had read the interview, or acted on it, but when a particularly

vicious bombing occurs in the besieged Sarajevo a few days later, he feels doubly

awful (p. 91) and takes the attack as ‘the first direct affront to the United States’ (p.

93). In spite of the mediation so many relatively distinct social spheres, clearly,

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inferences are drawn about links between events, even though they rarely can be

invoked publicly, except within the conventions of a book such as this.6

There are two broader points to note about the significance of this configuration of

habitus-related attributes. First, they reflect a particular, multilayered structuring of

the international political field in which relatively autonomous social spheres can and

sometimes are brought in relation to each other in the resolution of complicated crises

such as that in the former Yugoslavia. Second, the differences in their deployment by

the EU (UK) and US negotiators are not significant enough to explain the difference

in outcome of their efforts. Further probing of the material and symbolic mechanisms

that underpin and contribute to the reproduction of the current, hierarchical order, and

of the difference in timing and positionality of these efforts, is necessary.

Timing, positionality of action and diplomatic effectiveness

Two insights and lines of scholarship have vied for attention in the study of

international agreements: that effectiveness of agreements depends on effective

design7 and that effectiveness depends on the backing of the powerful. And in this

case, the evidence for the latter seems stronger. As Owen (1996) rightly emphasizes,

the Vance-Owen plan negotiated by the ICFY co-chairmen with all the parties in BiH

6 Sensitive appreciation of the different degrees of truth, formality and informality, and areas of

circulation for information is of course a requisite of normal government business. For instance,

Holbrooke (1999: 176) mentions the existence of an informal channel of communication between the

deputy foreign ministers of the US and Russia: ‘The Talbott-Mamedov channel, low profile at the time,

was the modern version of the special channel between Washington and Moscow that had existed from

1941 through the end of the Cold War and now constituted the main vehicle for negotiating important

issues between the two countries, including NATO enlargement, economic assistance, presidential

summits, and sensitive political issues.’ 7 See for instance the recent special issues of International Organization dedicated to work on

legalisation and institutional design (Vol. 54, no. 3 (2000) and Vol. 55, no. 4 (2001). The second

argument is usually made by realist scholars, see for instance Gilpin (2001) and Mearsheimer (2001).

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had the endorsement of the EU and the UN and, in substantive terms was reducing the

control of the Bosnian Serbs to 43 per cent (compared to the 49 per cent they

eventually achieved at Dayton); it also required them to retreat from about 38.6 per

cent of the territory of BiH they held in early 1993. Unsurprisingly, the Bosnian Serbs

prevaricated and postponed giving a clear commitment to the plan; even though their

negotiators agreed, final approval was given to the parliament in Pale and then a

referendum. But the real stumbling bloc on which the plan foundered was the lack of

endorsement from the US. As with Dayton, implementation would have required,

potentially, military deployment and the new US government, under President Clinton

was not prepared to contemplate this option.

The non-endorsement of the VOPP by the US was couched in terms of policy

difference, as the US advocated in turn the lifting of the arms embargo, NATO strikes

(which were impractical due to the presence of UN personnel on the ground) and

containment, and it offered a critique of the insufficient consideration given to

Muslim and then, paradoxically, Serb interests. In Owen’s reading, this was a tactic

through which the plan itself and the European position were discredited to mask

indecision and tension within the US administration and their inability to act in

accordance with the expectation that, as the world’s only superpower, they could lead.

Taking the analysis one step forward, Owen (1996: 173-4) also suggests that the

undermining, scapegoating tactic was not only face-saving but also served to maintain

the status-quo:

US attitudes to European unity have been essentially ambivalent for decades.

Ever since President Kennedy gave support to the Common Market and the idea

of European unity, American foreign policy has been based on encouraging EC

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unity, but with the unstated proviso that it supports US policy. The moment

European unity manifested itself as being critical of US policy the US had a

tendency to revert to bilateral consultation to head off a united European

opposition. That divide and rule policy had served them pretty well in NATO

and other fora. The ICFY was seen by some in Washington as an undesirable

innovation in that it was a formalized mechanism for achieving an EC policy

and tying that in to the UN, leaving the US to either cooperate or be challenged.

And indeed, the US moves to rally Russia, as well as France, UK and Spain for a Joint

Action Plan, announced on 22 May 1993 that provides the cover of continuity of

international involvement with the resolution of the Yugoslav crisis, in spite of the

ditching of the VOPP. Keen to heal what had been portrayed as an ‘Atlantic rift’,

these European powers choose (temporarily) to break the multilateral consensus

(much to the resentment of Germany and others in Europe) and act on an bilateral

basis.

Further transmutations of the peace plans produced by the ICFY – such as the Union

of Three Republics, the EU action plan and contact group map – serve the same

purpose of providing a sense of continuity for the international efforts and

involvement in the Yugoslav crisis. However, for the first time, they also incorporate

the principle of territorial division within BiH, the substantive gain made by the

Bosnian Serbs by default, through the abandoning of the VOPP, which had been

identified as an attempt to prevent this. Diplomatically, the stage is then prepared for a

more active involvement on the part of the US, at the price of sidelining most of the

EU members, as the Contact Group gradually becomes the main forum for the

negotiating efforts.

On the occasion of the signing the Croat-Muslim federation agreement, the first

moment of active US involvement, in March 1994, the American negotiator,

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Ambassador Redman graciously acknowledges the transfer of the baton, in a

television broadcast, on 22 March 1994:

Almost everything that we have done has been built, in large measure, on the

work that has been done by the Conference, by Lord Owen, Mr Stoltenberg,

by the European Union and the engagement of their Ministers, particularly in

November and December and on into January and February, so that we had

added out weight to that effort. No doubt we have brought some new elements

to the table just by virtue of having another actor, and it may also be that the

time is right, that the parties have sensed that this is the time to move to a

negotiated solution, so we may be profiting from a more favourable

environment in that sense. (quoted in Owen 166: 290)

Holbrooke’s success occurs when in fact lack of US commitment to military backing

or a peace plan is no longer in danger of becoming an issue. NATO bombing in

August 1995 had led to the conclusion of a ceasefire. Moreover, the offensive of the

Croat army that summer which had reclaimed the territories held by Serb rebels, albeit

undertaken, according to Holbrooke against advice from the US military who

anticipated much greater resistance on the part of the Serbs, was successful and closed

a significant source of instability and uncertainty. But most importantly the military

equilibrium on the ground in BiH had changed and the level of troops necessary for

implementation, were not much more than the existing UNPROFOR in conditions of

my lowered danger. Moreover, beyond the negotiation of the Dayton agreement, its

implementation, and especially the civilian effort was going to be funded by the

Europeans who have nominated the leading personnel, including the High

Representive to the UN Secretary General.

Thus the historical account surrounding the conclusion of the war in BiH would

suggest that elements of both design and power interest came into play as a delicate

redefinition of the relationship between the US and Europe has taken place, renewing

and modulating to a certain extent what Katzenstein (2005) has defined as the

21

embedding of regionalism within a loosely framed but nonetheless powerful

American imperium. Against a common civilisational background, a commitment to

democracy, human rights, models of state identity that take account of diverse

populations and shared sovereignty in some areas of cooperation, the actions of the

US and the European states, acting within the EU or on a bilateral basis, also confirm

the underlying hierarchy. This analysis also shows that the symbolic aspects of this

order are also important as all states and social actors accept the obligation to behave

in such a way as to avoid open contestation of basic identity assumptions: in this case,

the US is not exposed as unable to back up militarily the VOPP plan in 1993 and thus

deliver in what might be legitimate expectations of consistent behaviour on the part of

the world’s only superpower. In their alacrity to avoid the development of an ‘Atlantic

rift’, the European powers participate in the work of averting a direct honour

challenge to the US, even as the seeds are sawn for a search for a Common foreign

and security policy within the EU.

Subaltern truths and truth telling

Particularly relevant for this Bourdieusian analysis of the relationship between

diplomatic habitus and the international political field is testimony related to the

handling of the various layers or aspects of reality by the Owen and Holbrooke.

Crucially, their skills are related to the sensitive handling of information, something

like the truth of the situation and the truth of the sentiment behind positions taken by

the different actors. As already mentioned, a capacity for getting real, effective

information, and for mobilising it effectively, is crucial for taking action and

modulating that action for maximum effect in any case. Such access is the result of

22

trust and mutual respect in relationships built over a long period of time, and these

qualities have to reaffirmed and renewed in actions in the present that also anticipate

correctly the future to a certain extent. To give one trivial example, Holbrooke notes

the care in handling the opposition between General Clark, a member of his

negotiating team, and the UNPROFOR and some of the NATO commanders over the

NATO bombing, in August 1995, so that Clark’s career prospects would not be

affected. Or, it is noted, that Kofi Annan’s then UN Undersecretary-General for

Peacekeeping collaboration with the US position (as Boutros Ghali was away, he was

responsible for leaving to NATO the decision for air strikes, under the dual-key,

shared UN-NATO responsibility for this decision). This marked him out for future

UN leadership, even though his eventual election with US support did not occur until

1997. Also, the impact of some of Holbrooke’s own interventions is perhaps more

powerful than can be officially acknowledged: he is not allowed to quote from his

cable pleading for a US site for negotiations, to protect the privacy of the President’s

decision making process, even though he suggests, through reference to third party

testimony, that this was one of most decisive interventions from a subordinate, at this

level of government.

Equally, Owen is aware of the personal consequences of certain position takings.

Alert that the signals from the US department in relation to the VOPP are

contradictory and confused, in January 1993, he attempts to rescue the position

through greater mobilisation in publicising the features of the plan. Significantly, this

is because since he is not looking for another international job, he does not need to

seek US patronage. And at the same time, contemplating resignation after the eventual

‘ditching’ of the plan by the US, he decides to stay on because there is no principled

23

position to draw attention to through such a gesture and the British position is that he

should stay. Decisively, he feels he has Izetbegovic’s support, who does not blame

him for this outcome. With this support he can then endure the personal humiliation

of meeting an ebullient and openly triumphant Karadzic, who had practically been

rewarded for opposing the VOPP.

However, these, as well as Owen’s analysis of the underlying power dynamics that

surrounded the abandonment of the VOPP and the shift in leadership in subsequent

negotiating efforts remain subaltern truths in one of two senses. Once Clark’s or

Annan’s or Holbrooke’s positions have been taken up by the powers that be, have

thus been officialised, the origins of these decisions, their actions no longer matter as

such. Their positions have become social, institutionalised, public facts and an

institutional rationale for their promotion or election is easily provided.8 And, on the

other hand, the truths that are too close to the bone, for which there seems to be no

practical possibility of them being taken into account, they may get to be articulated

forcefully and aired, in fora such as these, in the publishing of the books and in ‘never

to be answered’ memos to the relevant authorities.

In theoretical terms, what this tells us, of course, is that, as Bourdieu (1991: 130

argues, the principles of pertinence that inform the official, formal life of a group

create a formal coherence that suppresses competing aspects of experience, which

could potentially become legitimate if the life of the group were to be structured along

different lines. Most social actors, as a matter of basic social competence are usually

able to distinguish between these different kinds of truths – effective because

8 See for instance Edelman (1964) and Searle (1995) on some of the underlying dynamics in the

constitution of social, and political, facts.

24

sanctioned by the existing order and the social relations that underpin it – or subaltern

truths, even as they decide to deploy such knowledge in the service of the smooth

reproduction of the status quo, seek the thrill of embarrassing revelation or mobilise

for longer term change. In this sense, actor’s embeddedness, in their social reality is

always only partly illusio, an identification with and treatment of certain facts as taken

for granted reality, and partly a double consciousness that can basis for change.

The Balkans in the mirror

Within Yugoslavia, the impact of the end of the Cold-War, the uncertainty created by

the fluidity of external relations was compounded by specifically domestic factors:

economic crisis (Bartlett 2008, Woodward 1986), the complex structure of the state

and the uneasy balance between competing political principles for the organisation of

the state, nationalist, republican and multiethnic. As was the case with other

communist states, however seemingly ‘liberal’, the time spent ‘outside history’ and in

a very peculiar ideological bubble, did much to engender a particular political style

based on a preference for abstract argument rather than pragmatic consideration of

realities in which nationalist themes gradually came to dominate. The affect freed up

by the sudden collapse of the communist regimes was channelled there in a febrile

revival of nationalist grievances and concomitant political mobilisation to adopt a

democratic system of government. The two processes converged to impose

nationalism as the organising principle for the organisation of the newly emerging

states (Dragovic-Soso 2002; Gordy 1999; Ramet 2004a; 2004b; Razsa and Lindstrom

2004; Vladisavljević 2004).

25

Both Owen (1996) and Holbrooke (1999) are detached and neutral in their reference

to domestic political processes in the states emerging from the disintegration of

Socialist Yugoslavia. Moreover, their characterisations of the Balkan leaders often

balance a number of different considerations, even though personal disquiet at some

of their behaviours also comes through at times. The relative autonomy of domestic

political fields is especially visible in the fact that there is no questioning for instance

of the right of Izetbegovic to represent what is in fact a collective, often divisive and

at times nearly disappearing institution, the Presidency of BiH.

Milosevic, contrary to his portrayal by Zimmerman (1996) appears here as a

pragmatist rather than an ideologue and his decision in April 1993 to support the

VOPP plan and to distance himself from the virulent nationalism of the Bosnian Serbs

gains him Owen’s appreciation and also a degree of sympathy for the fact that

domestically, this position led to a political crisis for him, especially after the failure

of the plan. Increasingly feeling the cost of economic sanctions against his country, he

maintained this position in the negotiations leading up to the Dayton agreement, of

which, he was indeed a signatory. For Owen, however, it is clear that Kosovo is a

topic of a different degree of sensitivity for Milosevic who could not countenance

critical appraisal of Serbia’s position on this issue.

Holbrooke (1999: 114), in a spirit of sportsmanship, sounds almost complimentary as

he recognises controlled deployment of emotional states as part of the skills of the

politician or the diplomat: ‘Milosevic could switch moods with astonishing speed,

perhaps to keep others off balance. He could range from charm to brutality, from

26

emotional outbursts to calm discussions of legal minutiae. When he was angry, his

face wrinkled up, but he could regain control of himself instantly.’

The Bosnian Serbs were initially treated as one of the parties to the conflict and

involved in the negotiations up until their indictment for war crimes following the

overrunning of the safe areas and specially Srebrenica in the summer of 1995.

Meeting them posed serious moral dilemmas for the US delegation later that year.

Even though the position assumed from the start was that they would negotiate only

with Milosevic, who was to represent the Bosnian Serbs, in one occasion Karadzic

and Mladic were waiting in the wings to meet the Americans during one of their visits

in Serbia. Whether the Americans will shake hands with these two indicted war

criminals was left to their individual conscience.

It is clear, however, that there is a significant distance between the moral and

emotional universe of the Balkan leaders and that of their international partners. Even

when every effort is made to respect their dignity, and significant resources are

mobilised in search for a peaceful solution that is acceptable to all parties, there seems

to be continual, almost compulsive pushing at the boundaries of reasonable behaviour

and a tendency to multiply objections, problems, and escape routes from meaningful

commitment to a workable agreement. Sometimes, this kind of mobilisation of affect

is accompanied by clearly uninformed statements. Asked by Owen why he did not

allow women and children to leave Sarajevo during the siege, Izetbegovic answers

that Churchill would not have allowed them to leave London during World War II.9

Even though the technical evidence is sometimes ambiguous, Owen accepts that it is

9 Of course, the British encouraged and actively organised the evacuation of children from London at

that time.

27

quite likely that the Muslin side had in fact engaged in provocations, outrageous

endangering of their own, for instance by firing from the grounds of one of the

hospitals in Sarajevo, to compromise morally the other side and prompt further

international involvement.

For this reason, it is perhaps understandable that damning comments also occur in

these texts, even though the general tone is very much restrained. Owen queries to

towards the end of 1993 how much longer he can be expected to spend his energy

‘swimming hard to keep my head up in this Balkan sewer.’ (p. 259), and in the

introduction his overall assessment is that ‘[n]othing is simple in the Balkans. History

pervades everything and the complexities confound even the most careful study.

Never before in over thirty years of public life have I had to operate in such a climate

of dishonour, propaganda and dissembling. Many of the people with whom I had to

deal in the former Yugoslavia were literally strangers to the truth.’ (p. 1).

Thus, it is apparent that both in the negotiating effort itself and in the personal

engagement with the Balkan leaders careful consideration was given to their rights,

rights that follow from the legitimate participation of BiH and the other successor

states of Yugoslavia in the international political field. In spite of the sometimes great

personal costs to themselves as a result of inappropriate behaviour on the part of the

Balkan leaders, Holbrooke and Owen clearly abide by the expectation that they

should not be engaged on the same level. The strength of this norm of honourable

behaviour is demonstrated by the fact that doing anything else is virtually unthinkable.

Conclusion

28

This paper has used the memoirs published by the two main international negotiators

involved in the resolution of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, David Owen (1996)

and Richard Holbrooke (1999) as the starting point for a Bourdieusian analysis of

diplomatic habitus and the logic of honour in the international political field. It has

argued that Bourdieu’s understanding of embeddedness of actors in their social

environment can be used as an entry point for the analysis of that environment, due to

the inextricable link between habitus and field. At the same time, even as the

similarities in terms of skills and activities between these two negotiators are useful

for the reconstruction of some of the basic features of the international political field –

the co-existence of relatively autonomous spheres within it – equally important for an

explanation of the different outcomes of their efforts is the positionality and timing of

their actions. In this, the logic of honour, which stipulates that social judgement on

actors and the appropriateness of their actions is passed in accordance with their fit

with expectations associated with their position is seen to be at work in the reactions

to and management of the failure of the VOPP and the ultimate resolution of the

conflict.

In substantive terms, this analysis substantiates the claim that European

regionalism is embedded in an American imperium (Katzenstein 2005) as both

civilisational commonalities and the implicit hierarchy within this relation were

affirmed. It was against the common civilisational background and fundamental

identity of interest that a certain division of the labour of dominance could occur, not

only in the negotiating process but also post-conflict. Many of the risks of the earlier

involvement with the crisis in the former Yugoslavia were absorbed by the European

(and UN) efforts, just as it fell to them the hard work of implementing the Dayton

29

Accords. However, the prestige (and profit) of actually bringing the war to an end

accrued, perhaps rightfully, to the world’s only superpower.

30

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