Journal articles on the topic 'Failed states – Yugoslavia'

The Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the St Vitus Day Constitution of 1921 were quite different in many aspects. Their comparison is nevertheless of interest not only because it shows some influences of the older one to the younger, but also for the fact that it displays the line of developments of the two countries - Germany and Yugoslavia. If considered from the standpoint of parliamentary government, territorial organization of the two states and some other features the analysis of the respective constitutional developments leads to several conclusions. The two constitutions had their initial shortcomings, but those did not belong to the same area of constitutional law. In Germany they concerned the horizontal separation of powers, whereas in Yugoslavia they belonged to the vertical division of power. Both constitutions under survey ended up in dictatorships. In both countries, attempts were made in the course of history to remedy the initial shortcomings or constructive errors of the two constitutions. In Germany such attempts were successful, which on the contrary was not the case in Yugoslavia. Germany therefore became a well-functioning liberal democracy, while Yugoslavia failed and disappeared.

With the end of the Cold War, many observers expected that international conflict would be less likely to occur and easier to manage. Given the successful resolution of the Gulf War and the European Community's (EC) efforts to develop a common foreign policy, observers expected international cooperation to manage the few conflicts that might break out. Instead, the disintegration of Yugoslavia contradicted these expectations. Rather than developing a common foreign policy, European states were divided over how to deal with Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Germany pushed for relatively quick recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, whereas other members of the EC wanted to go slower. Some observers expected Russia to fall in line with the West because of its need for investment and trade, but instead it supported Serbia. It is puzzling that Europe failed to cooperate regardless of whether greater international cooperation could have managed this conflict. How can we make sense of the international relations of Yugoslavia's demise? Since secession is not a new phenomenon, we should study previous secessionist conflicts to determine if they share certain dynamics, and we should consider applying to Yugoslavia the arguments developed to understand such conflicts.

The United Nations ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had primacy over national judicial agents for crimes committed in these countries during the most notorious civil wars and genocide of the 1990s. The UN Charter granted the Security Council the right to establish a tribunal for Yugoslavia in the context of ongoing civil war and against the will of recalcitrant national agents. The Council used that same right to punish individuals responsible for a genocide that it failed earlier to prevent in Rwanda. In both cases the Council delegated a portion of its coercive title to independent tribunal agents, thereby overriding the default locus of punishment in the world order: sovereign states.

This paper will analyze France’s attempted foreign policy strategy in Yugoslavia and in Eastern Europe during the 1960s, beginning with the various positions of de Gaulle’s France and Tito’s Yugoslavia and the numerous similarities in how the two countries’ diplomacy functioned. In both countries, the course of foreign policy was determined according to the authoritarian characteristics of their systems and of their central figure–the president. Both countries were also interested in transcending the Cold War division of Europe, and they based their strategies on attempts to marginalize the United States and pacify the Soviet regime. De Gaulle’s attempt at a détente, which Yugoslavia was very sympathetic toward and had also committed itself to similar goals, failed due to unrealistic illusions of overcoming this bipolarity by forging a middle way between the two opposing Cold War blocs. Faced with an overestimation of their own influence, along with the Warsaw Pact’s aggression toward Czechoslovakia, Moscow’s complete lack of interest in pacification, and the US’s unwillingness to withdraw, end of de Gaulle’s attempts at détente, in which Yugoslavia would play an important role, came to an end. Nevertheless, similar European and global policy goals brought France and Yugoslavia closer together, and this established the principles on which a cooling down period in the mid-1970s became possible.

The Balkan crisis is the result of a series of conflicts in various areas of political, economic and social life in the former Yugoslavia. Relations between the former republics show the complex character of European security. Without a sustainable development of the whole region, it is impossible to guarantee security throughout the European continent. Europe was shaken by the bloody events that marked the break-up of Yugoslavia. No one could have imagined that such violent military clashes could take place in a European country, 50 years after the end of World War II, and that hundreds of thousands of people would seek refuge throughout Europe. It was clear from the beginning of the crisis in Yugoslavia that the war would continue for many years and if the international community did not intervene the result would be many casualties. The United Nations, the European Union and the OSCE tried to prevent military conflicts between the nations of the former Yugoslavia, but they failed. National elites pursued a policy aimed at creating nation-states and had outside support from influential forces. To achieve this goal they were willing to pay any price. The collapse of the former Yugoslavia, in fact, meant the end of the process that had defined the development of Western Europe since the beginning of the 20th century, in the time between the two world wars. It was the beginning of nation-states. The Balkans had lagged behind in its transformation for many reasons and unlike Western and Central Europe, the Balkan states found themselves in a different wave of historical development, accompanied by conflict and chaos. The collapse of socialism had an impact on this situation, causing new economic and political conflicts. From this point of view, all the efforts of the European and international communities, aimed at controlling the situation after the break-up of Yugoslavia, had no chance of success.

The development of democracy in the successor states of Yugoslavia illustrates the whole range of differences among these states: from Slovenia which is considered most advanced and consolidated, over Croatia which is on its way to become a consolidated democratic state, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia which are seen as still very fragile zones for democracy to take roots in. While scholars refer to these latter cases as to failed or unconsolidated democracies, this article argues against the common theoretical framework and calls for the use of different theoretical and methodological tools to measure the (un)success of these states. For this purpose this article discusses the main (internal) features and weaknesses of these democracies and points at a number of external factors and internal objective circumstances, which (unintentionally) hinder the process of democratization.

The relationship between national jurisdictions and the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda raises many problems. One of them concerns the surrender of indicted war criminals from national jurisdictions to the Ad Hoc Tribunals. Several obstacles stand in the way of effective surrender to the Ad Hoc Tribunals. This contribution focuses on the legal obstacles that may be encountered in this respect. By means of the case of the failed surrender of Ntakirutimana from the United States to the Rwanda Tribunal, it will be demonstrated that legal assistance to the Ad Hoc Tribunals is of a fundamental different nature than legal assistance offered to foreign tribunals.

After the end of the First World War, some countries in the Balkans remained dissatisfied with the status quo achieved with the Versailles system of peace treaties. The Albanian movement for territorial and ethnic Albania failed to fully realize - Kosovo and Metohija remained in the Royal Yugoslavia, established in 1918, which emerged from the First World War as a victorious state. The large Albanian population is a serious problem for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. One of the culprits, according to some researchers, is Belgrade's own political circles in the interwar period. Nationally, culturally, economically and politically, the Albanians in this period are in the worst position of any other national minority in the royal Yugoslavia. Here are a few examples to support the above. In the period between the two world wars, the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia did not have a single school in their mother tongue, nor did it have a single cultural, educational or economic association. Dissatisfaction among Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija is growing with the policy of colonizing the Serb population from other parts of the country. This policy of repression against the Albanian population in Kosovo and Metohija provoked his numerous emigration to Albania. Much of the progressive emigration, in the person of Hassan Prishtina, Bedri Peyani, Ibrahim Gjakova and others, is extremely hostile to the Yugoslav state. This was cleverly used by the Albanian and Italian governments to break up Yugoslavia years later. In this regard, it is very important for Italian intelligence to engage Kosovo emigration in order to achieve full Italian control over Albania and weaken Yugoslavia's position in the south. With the impending new military confrontation on the international field, which would undoubtedly affect this region of Europe as well, Albanians see a real opportunity to achieve their national goals. Undoubtedly, the Albanian territory is also included in the geostrategic plans of the major countries for conducting military operations in the Balkans and implementing their further plans. In this regard, Italy's goal of making Albania a bridgehead in the Balkans for control of the Straits and the Middle East is to support the aspirations of Albanian nationalists after their long struggle to create a state that unites all Albanians. The status quo of the Balkans, reached by the Versailles system of peace treaties, was destroyed in the course of the Second World War. From all the Balkan states Albania was the first to experience the new order of Hitler and Mussolini and with their help accomplished its national program, precisely с the unification of the Albanian people and establishment of an Albanian identity in the Balkans. With the capitulation of Yugoslavia on April 7, 1941, a new territorial situation was created for the Axis forces and their satellite allies. The partition of Yugoslavia is one of the conditions for the realization of the „New Order“ in Southeast Europe. Convinced that the time was coming when, with the help of Italy and Germany, Kosovo and Metohija, western Macedonia, the eastern regions of Montenegro, etc. would enter Albania's borders, the Kosovo Committee with leading figures of Albanian nationalism, such as Bedri Pejani, Rexhep Mitrovica, Ibrahim Gjakova and Rexhep Krasniqi, have elevated political concepts for ethnic and territorial Albania familiar from the interwar period. In these years „Greater Albania” was a wartime creature, which did not get international recognition. The end of the war also put to rest the idea of a national unification of the Albanian people. The Albanian state again had its boundaries established after the end of the World War I; a large part of the Albanian population was left outside of these borders.

After the Second World War, a large number of members of the fascist regime of the Kingdom of Albania found refuge in Italy, Turkey and the countries of Western Europe, where they continued to politically act. The leading political options in exile - Balli Kombetar, Zogists and pro-Italian National Independent Bloc, decided to cooperate with each other, so they have formed the Albanian National Committee in 1946. The turning point for the Albanian extreme emigration in the West is Operation Valuable, by which the United States and Great Britain sought to overthrow the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania. Although the operation failed, strong ties were forged between US and British intelligence and Albanian nacionalist emigration, which were further intensified in the 1960s. Xhafer Deva, who was dedicated to act on the annexation of Kosovo and Metohija to Albania, immigrated to the United States in 1956 and established cooperation with the CIA. Albanian emigration in the West applied different methods in politics towards Kosovo and Metohija. Some organizations, such as Xhafer Deva's Third Prizren League, have focused on lobbying Western intelligence. The Bali Kombetar Independent, headquatered in Rome, paid particular attention to working with Albanian high school and student youth in Kosovo and Metohija. The Alliance of Kosovo, formed in 1949, was engaged in subtle methods of involving Albanian nationalists in Yugoslav state structures, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav People's Army, and educational and health institutions in Kosovo and Metohija. Albanian emigration was also involved in violent demonstrations in Kosovo and Metohija in 1968, and cooperated on this issue with the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania.

The Republic of Kosovo is one of the newest states in the world. Separated from a former communist federation – Yugoslavia and occupied for over a decade by Serbia, it turned out to be free after a systematic destruction and with great consequences in all respects, including the environment. And of course, being a new state, made Republic of Kosovo to inherit many problems, which were very difficult to solve, while the environmental issues did not even come into the agenda ever to be discussed, which should not have been done as it was. In other words, having many major problems, the environmental issue as to the international community that has governed Kosovo for more than a decade, as well as for Kosovo's institutions itself, has never become an issue of importance to be discussed nor to be protected. Almost same happened in every country, which was under the international community protection, as for them it is the importance of security rather than environment protection in a country, where they are serving and far from their home country. Even after some positive developments in Kosovo's environmental legislation, by adopting the law on environmental protection, by creating a state agency for environmental protection, by creating environmental directorates in municipalities, etc., which developments and steps failed to become successful, because they lacked their implementation in practice, and cases like this were also in Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, etc.. ..

Yugoslavia was destroyed through the concerted effort of domestic forces of the seceding republics and foreign factors, embodied by the entirety of the Western world. Although the USA undoubtedly supported the West, in the early stages of the process, they favored the preservation of Yugoslavia. The country with the leading role in the destruction of Yugoslavia was Germany. The causes of the disappearance of Yugoslavia from the political map of Europe and the world were numerous: economic, social, political, geopolitical, etc. In this article we focus on the military component, that is, the role of the Yugoslav People's Army in the destruction process. We consider various factors which brought to the situation in which the YPA proved itself utterly unsuccessful and ineffective in defending itself from destruction from the inside. We also look at the opportunities with which the YPA was presented, which it failed to seize. These choices lead the country and its citizens into a bloody civil war with countless victims and great destruction. The YPA itself was finally pilloried for its ultimately disastrous attempts to protect the state from aggressive forces within.

Abstract: The aim of the codification of the Austrian General Civil Code (ABGB), a work which started in 1753 and took more than half a century to complete, was not only to renew the law but more importantly to unify the law. The multitude of kingdoms and provinces which had been connected by a loose constitutional union in 1713, were to be merged regarding all civil matters. The "Oberste Justizstelle" (predecessor of the Austrian Supreme Court), established in 1749, was responsible for the Austrian, Bohemian and Galician hereditary lands and it was only in these regions where the incomplete Civil Code laid out by Joseph II. was applied in 1787. By the time the new ABGB replaced the aforementioned code in 1812, the reach of the monarchy had been considerably reduced due to the Napoleonic wars. It was in the years after the Vienna Congress of 1815 that the ABGB was continuously introduced in all the new and recently re-acquired provinces. The introduction of the ABGB in the rest of the monarchy in 1853 was an unprecedented political achievement. It was introduced at the time of Neo-absolutism with the intention of fully integrating all provinces into a centrally controlled monarchy. The end of Neo-absolutism in 1861 led to the removal of the ABGB in Hungary, but the Code continued to be used in Croatia and Transylvania. However, it developed independently from Austria in these countries. The end of the Habsburg Empire did not mean the end of Austrian legal unity. The ABGB was maintained in all successor states and was even extended. During the interwar period, the newly created states of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia attempted but failed at creating their own national codes. After 1945, the new communist regimes replaced the ABGB in favour of new laws in line with their ideologies. Since 1964, the Republic of Austria and the Principality of Liechtenstein are the only states, where the ABGB is still in force. Résumé: Le but de la codification du Code civil général autrichien (ABGB), ouvrage qui débuta en 1753 et mit plus d'un demi-siècle avant d'être achevé, ne fut pas seulement de renouveler le droit mais,de manière plus importante, d'unifier le droit. La multitude de royaumes et de provinces qui avaient été réunis en 1713 parune union constitutionnelle assez vague devaient être unifiésen ce qui concerne toutes les affaires civiles. L'Oberste Justizstelle' (qui précéda la Cour suprême autrichienne) établie en 1749, avait sous sa juridiction les terres héréditaires d'Autrichie, de Bohème et de Galicie et ce n'est que dans ces régions que le Code civil incomplet établi par Joseph II fut appliqué en 1787. Au moment où le nouvel ABGB remplaça le code sus-mentionné en 1812, l'influence de la monarchie avait été considérablement réduite suite aux guerres napoléoniennes. C'est au cours des années qui suivirent le Congrès de Vienne de 1815 que l'ABGB fut peu à peu introduit dans toutes les provinces nouvelles et récemment récupérées. L'introduction de l'ABGBdans le reste de la monarchie en 1853 constitua un achèvement politique sans précédent. Il fut introduit à l'époque du Néo-absolutisme avec l'intention d'intégrer complètement toutes les provinces dans une monarchie aux pouvoirs centralisés. La fin du Néo-absolutisme en 1861 conduisit à la suppression de l'ABGB en Hongrie, mais le Code resta en vigueur en Croatieet en Transylvanie bien que dans ces pays, il se développa indépendamment de l'Autriche. La fin de l'Empire des Habsbourg ne signifia pas la fin de l'unité juridique autrichienne. L'ABGB fut maintenu dans tous les états successeurs et fut même étendu. Durant la période d'entre deux guerres, les &e

On 27 June 2004, Serbian voters went to the polls for the third time in a year to choose a president. The winner of the first two rounds of voting, Tomislav Nikolić, Deputy to the President of the extreme right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), lost the third round of voting to the more liberal Borisav Tadić by just under 8 percentage points (53.2 to 45.4), and the Radicals failed to form a ruling coalition in government. Nevertheless, more than five years after the last war in the disintegration of the Yugoslav state, the largest political party in the largest of the successor states has been characterized as the most extreme right party in the Balkans today. Indeed, the Radicals have been an enduring force in Serbian politics for the past decade and a half, sometimes ruling in coalition with Slobodan Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). SRS founder Vojislav Šešelj, a flamboyant, obstreperous, highly influential figure, and his fellow Radicals have sought and in many ways succeeded in shaping the post-communist transformation of Yugoslav politics and society, calling for a return to the true spirit of Serbia, when the nation was strong because its men defended its honor as well as its borders.

The post-Soviet space is once again in turbulence. It is difficult today to predict how such reorganization will play out and what consequences it will have for Russia, its neighbouring states and forthe international order as a whole. Nevertheless, we are already witnessing the most extensive changes in the former Soviet Union since the collapse of what was once a single state. It is necessary, however, to separate the legal process ofthe collapse ofthe USSR from the historical dimension of the phenomenon. In legal terms, the USSR does not exist, and in historical terms, the end of the single state could not automatically ensure the viability and legitimacy of the new independent entities that emerged from its ruins. At the present stage, it is indisputable that the Belovezha Accords failed to provide a real guarantee against a repetition, to one degree or another, of the Yugoslav scenario.

The central assumption of this paper is that international regime theory constitutes an important heuristic tool which contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of European security as it emerges from the Cold War era. Comprising a set of principles, norms, decision-making procedures and a framework of permanent organizations, the new European architecture forms an authentic security regime based on a process of regional cooperation. The Yugoslav conflict, which constitutes the first test of this regime, illustrates the fact that, even if these institutions failed to end the conflict, they did influence the behaviour of the main European actors. Not only did they favor interstate cooperation but they also reined-in the inclination of states to opt for self-centered policies based on short-term interests. From this perspective, regional security organizations have helped significantly to limit the scope and potential spill-over risks of the conflict in addition to decreasing the tension between the major European actors.

The paper analyzes what is the current position of the Western Balkans in the context of contemporary European trends and events. The author considers the European and Euro-Atlantic integration a certain attempt to ?relocate? the whole region of the Western Balkans from an obvious periphery to a semi-periphery position. The focus of analysis is on numerous problems such as continued revitalization of the local ethno-nationalisms, structural economic crisis, the presence of high levels of organized crime and corruption. The author points out that, so far, numerous attempts of the most influential members of the international community primarily the United States and the European Union have failed to promote the improvement of the relations between new-formed countries and to establish a sort of regional identity. The author argues that the creation of the antagonistic identities of the states and nations of the Western Balkans during the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation was the main obstacle to the creation of the common identity. The author concludes that, in view of the new growing trends of ethnic nationalisms and certain forms of extremism and radicalism, the ?relocation? of the Western Balkans from European periphery to the semi-periphery will not be short-term or easy, as evidenced by numerous internal problems and problems in bilateral relations.