“Waging the peace in Kosovo may prove to be much more difficult  than waging 
the war.”

Waging Peace in  Kosovo
By _Barry  Ryland-Holmes_ 
(http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_13/ryland_kosovo.html#Anchor)  
 
Among issues  raised by NATO’s intervention in Kosovo is the complex question 
of  self-determination. Mr. Ryland-Holmes, an attorney, analyzes state 
sovereignty  in the context of international law. Further, he asks if the search for 
 reconciliation following intervention is realistic. Read on for his  
prescription on how the Global Democracy Project might play a useful role. ~  Ed.

In the decades following World War II, there has  been continuing debate 
among scholars of international law as to whether the  concept of the sovereign 
nation-state is sustainable in a modern world which  places increasing emphasis 
on human rights and the right of peoples to  collective self-determination. 
The conflict in Kosovo has intensified this  debate.

It was the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, bringing to an end the  Thirty Years 
War in Europe, which laid the foundations of the nation state with  its 
attendant supremacy over internal affairs. Prior to the Reformation, Europe  had 
been regarded—and regarded itself—as a cultural whole, united in Christendom  
by its Holy Catholic faith. Whilst this did not stop rivalry between competing  
princes, it did weaken the concept of national identity. This was accentuated 
 because the educated were united by the common language of Latin; national  
identity as defined by language therefore was almost irrelevant.

The  Reformation permanently destroyed the cohesion of Europe. Competing 
communities,  owing to a variety of religious allegiances, ultimately formed 
themselves into  what we recognize as sovereign nation-states. The Treaty of 
Westphalia  formalized the fragmentation of Europe into a multiplicity of petty 
states that  conducted their internal affairs free from interference by other 
nation-states.  This autonomy of action came to be enshrined in international law 
and applied to  nation-states beyond the borders of Europe. Given this 
background, there can be  no question that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo marks a 
defining moment in  international law.

Kosovo could signal the beginning of a return to an  almost pre-Westphalian 
world order where state sovereignty cedes authority to  the will of an 
international community in which it is not religious belief that  unites the countries 
of the developed West, but rather shared beliefs about the  universal 
applicability of human rights. Intervention may appear to be the most  appropriate 
course of action for any country that considers itself civilized.  This policy, 
however, runs the risk of replacing the economic imperialism of the  
nineteenth century with a cultural imperialism as we enter the  twenty-first.

That such action is fraught with problems and is  potentially damaging to 
international relations was immediately demonstrated by  the reaction of Russia 
and China. The G8 summit of June 20 seems to have gone  some way to repairing 
the rift between the United States and Russia. This is not  the case with 
China, however. Equally worrying is the position adopted by Greece  which, while 
maintaining its membership of the NATO alliance, refused to  participate in any 
initiative in Kosovo until the bombing had  ceased.

NATO’s action in Kosovo raises two fundamental issues: 
    *   Is the peace keeping and reconciliation project a legitimate policy 
goal?  
    *   and even if it is, is reconciliation realistic? 
Is peace keeping  legitimate? 
Most scholars of international affairs would draw a clear distinction between 
 the intervention of the UN in Bosnia and the intervention of NATO in Kosovo. 
 Whilst the UN is a truly international body, made up of countries from every 
 region of the world, NATO is an entirely Western organization. This is an  
important distinction and one that is likely to gain in significance, given 
that  there seems to be no question that both President Clinton and Prime 
Minister  Blair see an increasing role for NATO in the future.

This could prove to  be both a disturbing international trend and a 
destabilizing force in Kosovo  insofar as, at least in the eyes of the Serbians, NATO 
lacks the legitimacy of  the UN. It may well hasten the approach of a future 
for international relations  characterized by Samuel Huntington as “the West 
versus the rest.” Huntington has  pointed out that the future fundamental source 
of conflict in the world is  unlikely to be either ideological or economic. 
Rather, the great divisions among  mankind and the dominant source of conflict 
will be cultural. Such cultural  differences are much less susceptible to 
resolution than either political or  economic ones.

Whilst many see an international military presence in  Kosovo as essential, 
experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere demonstrates  that troops 
interposed between two ethnic or religious groupings opposed to each  other soon 
become the whipping boys for both groups’ hostilities. Moreover, of  the 50,000 
troops planned for the Kosovo peace keeping force, 7,000 will be U.S.  service 
personnel. Given the need to rotate troops periodically, the reality is  that 
this could tie up an entire US Army division for a generation.

It is  nevertheless the case that many scholars of international law are 
moving away  from a traditionalist, positivist position, where international law 
is seen as  no more or less than the rules to which states have agreed through 
treaties,  custom or other forms of consent. Absent direct evidence of the 
will of states,  positivists assume that states remain at liberty to undertake 
whatever actions  they choose. For many, this represents an old fashioned, 
continental European  view. Indeed, some would say that state sovereignty has 
become the last refuge  of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes the world over. 
Such scholars  recognize alternative paradigms and seek a transformation of the 
concept of  state sovereignty which will make a connection between the role 
of international  law and the theory and practice of international relations. 
This  multidisciplinary approach, they hold, reflects more truthfully the 
increasingly  complex international environment. 
Is reconciliation  realistic? 
Turning to the second issue raised, even if intervention and the search for  
reconciliation is a legitimate policy goal, is it a realistic one? Given the  
immense task of rebuilding the physical infrastructure, it is clear that 
Kosovo  cannot afford to wait for that rebuilding to be completed before embarking 
upon  the establishment of a civil society. Bearing in mind what has been said 
about  the role of NATO, using direct government agencies to try to 
facilitate the  establishment of a civil society in Kosovo is likely to lead to adverse 
effects  on international relations. Thus, waging the peace in Kosovo may 
prove to be  much more difficult than waging the war.

Project Bosnia, part of the  Global Democracy Project, suitably expanded, may 
well provide an exemplar of the  way to proceed in the reconstruction of a 
civil society in Kosovo. The Global  Democracy Project, conceived and 
administered by Villanova University School of  Law in Pennsylvania and its partners, 
established in Bosnia a temporary  “virtual” legal infrastructure based on the 
use of computers which provided  access to the world wide web.

Building a stable and lasting civil society  based on the rule of law begins 
with a free flow of information. In Bosnia, as  in Kosovo, the physical 
infrastructure had been destroyed by war. Rebuilding  such physical resources would 
take years but the information infrastructure  needed to establish and 
maintain the rule of law was required immediately.  Unlike a conventional 
infrastructure, the internet-based system in Bosnia  utilized the international network 
of computers linked to the internet to  provide access to information by 
connecting the legal, political, social,  economic, educational, and media 
communities to the outside world and to each  other. Thus, Project Bosnia clearly 
demonstrated the potential of modern  technologies to replace a physical 
infrastructure with a virtual one, providing  the kind of information exchange essential 
to the day-to-day operations of  legal, economic, and educational 
institutions.

Of course, technology  alone is not enough to foster, let alone create, a 
civil society in a country  such as Kosovo, torn by ethnic and religious hatreds. 
Nor can military force  impose the democratic processes that are inherent in 
a civil society. Only a  planned and comprehensive program of reconciliation, 
undertaken over a long  period of time and displaying infinite patience with 
the hostile and competing  parties, can ever hope to effect the kind of changes 
necessary to make people,  of their own volition, choose to adopt the 
democratic processes of a civil  society and to live in harmony with their former 
enemies. Reconciliation is not  a hopeless task, but it is certainly a long-term 
one.

In order for the  United States and the UK to maintain good international 
relations with other  nation-states in the light of the Kosovo intervention, it 
is essential that the  initiative for establishing a civil society in Kosovo 
and any programs of  reconciliation should be undertaken by private institutions 
and nongovernmental  organizations. These may be funded by individual 
countries’ government  departments and draw from time to time on their professional 
expertise. But one  of the reasons the Bosnian initiative was effective was 
precisely because it  lacked U.S. (or any other) government involvement; it was 
thus perceived as  maintaining its neutrality throughout.

Previously Kosovo was part of a  larger state. It now faces the onerous task 
of creating a state system of its  own. The Global Democracy Project, suitably 
expanded to encompass the economic  and educational spheres, as well as the 
legal and providing a basis for the  implementation of a comprehensive 
reconciliation program, all part of a Joint  Regeneration Program for Kosovo, could 
point the way to a brighter future for  that country and the enhancement of U.S. 
foreign relations  simultaneously.
 
____________________________________

The writer, based in Sheffield, England, is a senior  legal counsel 
specializing in emerging economies. He holds an LL.M. degree  from London University. 
He has lectured at at the Center for International  Legal Studies, Salzburg, 
Austria, and the Sheffield Business School and has  been special advisor on 
institutional planning and chairman of the Foundation  for International 
Commercial Arbitration, the  Hague.




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