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.
