Friday 5 July 1991

EUROPE IS SOLUTION TO BALKAN CRISIS

Tribune leader, 5 July 1991

Unlike previous Balkan crises, the current upheaval in Yugoslavia is hardly the stuff on which continental or world wars are made: the collapse of Soviet power in eastern Europe has seen to that. But this is not to say that the attempt of the Yugoslav federal army and airforce to suppress Slovenian aspirations to indepen­dent nationhood can be dismissed by the rest of Europe as an internal Yugoslav affair. Already scores of people have died in the fighting. To avert disaster, it is impera­tive that the other European states, acting in concert and using every diplomatic means available to them, do their utmost to secure a binding ceasefire and withdrawal of federal forces from Slovenia.

Nevertheless, it has to be recognised that such mea­sures will probably not be enough. The unavoidable fact is that Yugoslavia is falling apart. The Slovenes and Croats have had enough of being dominated by the Serbs and want to be out of the federation, preferably becoming part of an enlarged European Community. The federal armed forces, the last remaining functioning part of the old communist federal apparatus, whose officer corps is dominated by Serbs, are prepared to go to war to preserve Serbian hegemony.

Even if a ceasefire can be secured, it seems unlikely that the protagonists can be brought to the negotiating table; it is even more unlikely that negotiations will produce a way of keeping Yugoslavia in one piece. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the rest of Europe is going to have to decide whether it will take a constructive role in the creation of several new states out of Yugoslavia or whether it will merely be a passive witness as those new states attempt to go it alone.

Established governments do not like nascent states because such states are, at best, unpredictable and, at worst, pose a threat to international security; states that are the products of secessionism are almost anathe­ma. If Slovenia can do it, what about (to take just a few examples close to home) Northern Ireland, Wales, Scot­land, Brittany, Corsica, Catalonia and the Basque coun­try? It is perhaps hardly surprising that the chancellories of Europe have so far been unwilling to grasp the nettle of recognising Slovenia as an independent state.

Eventually, however, the nettle will have to be grasped – which in turn will raise the question of how the new state should be integrated with its neighbours. It is not too Utopian to suggest that the problem could best be solved neatly by rapid, simultaneous enlargement and deepening of the European Community. In a "Europe of the regions", with a judicious mix of pan-European control of economic, defence and foreign policy and regional (or small nation) control of most of the rest, Slovenian independence would threaten no one. But to get from here to there requires that the governments of the EC put aside the sterile debate between the deepeners, who want to exclude rich neutral and poor ex-communist states from an affluent militarist EC, and the enlargers, who want to hold on to national sovereignty at any price.

The real task is the creation of a democratic federal European polity that takes in the entire continent.