Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Peace – Yugoslav'

In their last years of existence the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) experienced a similar state of affairs. Yet, in the years after the break-up of each, the occurrence and spillover of ethnopolitical conflicts was comparatively higher on the territory of former Yugoslavia. In addressing this puzzle, the thesis seeks to argue that the difference can be accounted for by looking at the distinctive dynamics of ethnonationalist mobilization in the core and peripheral republics. The central hypothesis is that the timing of mobilization with respect to political liberalization matters for the likelihood of conflict occurrence. Moreover, it is not only important to consider when mobilization takes place, but also where. In that respect, the distinction between the core and periphery is critical. Combining these two hypotheses, the dissertation expects that conflict is most likely to occur in regions where both core and peripheral republics mobilize prior to political liberalization. Furthermore, such dyads are more likely to result in conflict spillover. The explanation for the difference in regional conflict formations in the Western Balkans and the former Soviet territory hinges on these spatio-temporal assumptions. It identifies the most precarious dyads in the former Yugoslavia, as early mobilization was present within both core and some peripheral republics. On the other hand, in the former Soviet Union, the core underwent late mobilization, while the experiences of peripheral states varied. The contributions of the thesis are three-fold: 1) it explores the links between identity politics and international relations; 2) it contributes to the literature on the democratization-conflict nexus; and finally, 3) it offers a non-institutional explanation for the difference in state collapses and ensuing conflicts in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

In 1918, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes established a kingdom called "Yugoslavia." Serbs were considering this state as the state of Serbs. Bosnia Hercegovina's community or political powers did not help the establishment of Yugoslavia. The official ideology considered Muslims as the heir of the Ottoman occupiers in the Balkans. In the first Yugoslavia, Bosnian Muslims were under pressure and they were attacked by Serbs who had the official support of the administration. In time those attacks turned into ethnic cleansing. Bosnian Muslims were pushed out of the government bureaucracy and their lands.

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It has been nearly two decades since the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars of secession and subsequent deployment of peace operations into the region, and over that time numerous attempts have been made to assess the success of these missions. This thesis evaluates elements of these peace operations, which, although generally considered critical to their success, have been largely overlooked in these assessments. These include efforts to promote social well-being and combat organized crime in Bosnia, and the United Nations' preventive deployment to Macedonia. This study concludes that the peace mission in Bosnia promoted some aspects of social well-being, reduced the level of violent organized crime, and prevented a recurrence of violent conflict. However, its long-term success has been undermined by its inability to establish a truly unified, sovereign nation with an effective central government. In comparison, the preventive deployment to Macedonia has had a more positive long-term effect, promoting security and stable governance without undermining the state's independence.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the understanding of conflict intervention in protracted violent conflicts by studying the activities of civil society actors in regard to the conflicts in what was Yugoslavia until 1991. A very broad understanding of ‘intervention’ is used for this purpose that includes all kinds of activities that relate to the conflicts. Based on a survey of activities in the period between 1990 and 2002, a framework for categorising and describing these interventions is applied according to basic functions in four ‘grand strategies’ of ‘peace-making’, ‘peace-keeping’, ‘peacebuilding’, and ‘information, support, protest and advocacy’, with a total list of about 230 instruments of conflict intervention identified. The study concludes that civil society actors played three different basic roles: They complemented the work of state actors, they were the avant-garde for approaches, strategies and methods that later became ‘mainstream’ in conflict intervention, and in some cases, they were able to control or correct actions by governments through advocacy or direct action. The development of instruments of civil conflict transformation received a massive boost through this engagement in the 1990s. The study supports the position taken recently by some researchers making comparative studies of cases of conflict intervention regarding the limited role played by dialogue and reconciliation work in regard to dealing with the overall conflicts: In spite of ‘reconciliation’ and inter-ethnic cooperation being at the core of the vast majority of all projects and programmes undertaken in the area, indicators of real impact regarding an overall positive change in society and prevention of future violence seem to be rather weak. The study further observes that there was a social movement developed relating to former Yugoslavia in many Western countries that in a hitherto unknown way combined traditional methods of protest and advocacy with concrete work in the field.

The aim of this study has been to explore the political and legal significance of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, both within the territory of the former Yugoslavia and beyond. Within these parameters, the overall purpose of the study has been to examine, firstly, whether the ICTY has contributed to the restoration of peace and security in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and secondly, whether, using the experience of the ICTY, it is reasonable to expect that the newly established International Criminal Court (ICC) will make a similar contribution to international peace and security and the rule of law in international relations more generally. Therefore, the academic aim of the thesis is to use the results of the empirical research on the ICTY as a basis for reasoned speculation about the ICC. In seeking to answer whether the ICTY has contributed to peace and security in the former Yugoslavia, the thesis analyses the cooperation of the actors within and outside the former Yugoslavia, both state and non-state, arguing that the ICTY has not achieved its main objective. Using the lessons of the ICTY, the thesis seeks to modify expectations about the potential of the ICC to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security by helping to manage similar conflicts in the future. In answering whether the ICTY has contributed to the rule of law in international relations, the thesis has contextualised the ICTY within the history of similar attempts to use international law and international institutions to prohibit and/or regulate the use of force in international relations. The overall conclusion is that the ICTY has not achieved this goal either.

When the whole wave of "ethnic conflicts" exploded, as if out of the blue, in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 1990s, I spent a total of more than 24 months as a social anthropologist and reporter in the war areas of Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, Chechnya, Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. It surprised me that despite the considerable cultural differences between these areas, the post-communist nationalist conflicts were in many respects very similar. In this work I focus on their common features from the point of view of the agency of the participants as actors -the activists, soldiers and wider groups of those who agreed with or even supported them. What interests me is "why the boys go to war and why those who ought to have had some sense applaud them for it". This question is all the more urgent because these conflicts were often dominated by paramilitary volunteer units, even the regular armies were often formed at the beginning on a strikingly activist principle and initially the conflicts had unbelievably broad mass nationwide support. Using the extensive material of my own observations, and studies of nationalist political aesthetics, pre-war urban legends and popular metaphors I show how the conflicts developed from a political aesthetic of post-modern nationalisms (cultivated in a similar way in all cases), with its source deep in the contradiction between the universalism of radical modernisation and the nationally orientated cultural politics both cultivated by communist regimes. I try to show that war did not come out of the blue, or result from some politician pressing a button. I show how its political aesthetic first emerged very inconspicuously in the cultural sphere of the imagination of works of art, dreams and later manifestos, and then "exploded" on the squares in the form of great national spectacles (carefully followed by the media), to be followed by the performance of smaller already armed street-dramas, prewar parades, exercises and provocations from which the real armed conflict was eventually born. I seek to show the steps along the way from the ethos of war "on paper" and "in the marble of statues" to war in the field. I stress that for any real understanding of these movements of mass mobilisation it is essential not to consider the phenomena of nationalist (pre)war aesthetics, their embodiment through ritualisation and a certain mass ecstasy in isolation from each other, but to study them all as parts of one process. Particular emphasis is placed on work with temporality and the typical liminally ecstatic feeling, so typical for post-communist societies in the time of discontinuity, that an "explosion" is simply inevitable, that (in this time of the crisis of modernity and universalism), we must now finally "wake up", "be reborn" and "return to roots". To the expectation that everything is about to "hatch out".

El estudio de la intervención española en la ex - Yugoslavia se organiza a partir de dos temáticas centrales: el análisis de los mecanismos jurídicos e institucionales de las organizaciones internacionales y la experiencia vivida de los protagonistas de estas misiones de paz. Por lo tanto, la tesis se articula a tres bandas: historia jurídica, historia social del pensamiento y la experiencia vivida. Las fuentes originales aúnan declaraciones internacionales, testimonios personales, y análisis pormenorizado de los medios de comunicación social.
The study of the spanish intervention in the former Yugoslavian Republic is based in two main subjects: The analysis of legal and institucional mechanism of international organizations and the lived experience of the main figures of these peace missions. Therefore, the thesis is articulated in a trilateral way: Legal history, Social History of thought and the lived experience. The original sources join international declarations, personal evidence and the detailed analysis of the social media

Notwithstanding a broad range of internal and external stresses, Macedonia was the only republic to attain its independence peacefully from the otherwise violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Subject of a timely and sustained international response, it was feted as a rare preventive success for the international community. Whilst not necessarily decisive, this mobilisation helped ensure a non-violent transition to independence. Yet, much to the surprise of outside observers, Macedonia would fall into conflict a decade after independence, when self-styled freedom fighters purporting to represent the local Albanian community launched an eight-month insurgency in the name of political and cultural equality. Triggered by a coalescence of political, nationalist, ideological and criminal interests, the insurgency had complex roots, as much an intra-Albanian putsch as a struggle for greater group rights. Regardless of their precise genesis, from the perspective of conflict prevention, the events of 2001 challenge popular assumptions of Macedonia as an international success story. Above all, they reinforce the need for external actors to incorporate short-term strategies of prevention targeting immediate sources of instability within a more comprehensive, long-term framework that addresses structural, underlying conflict causes. Indeed, whilst proximate threats to Macedonian stability were addressed, fundamental risk factors remained, namely social polarisation, a large ethnic minority disenfranchised with the state, economic under-development, high levels of organised crime and corruption, a weak rule-of-law and continuing regional uncertainty. These were partly aggravated by the mistakes of a complacent international community, whose engagement in the country, accordingly, receded over time. In particular, the dissertation is critical of the European Union for its initial failure to articulate a genuine pathway to membership for Macedonia and the broader western Balkans, as well as the handling of NATO's military intervention in neighbouring Kosovo. Of course, in any preventive endeavour, the international community can only do so much; in the first instance, responsibility lay with unresponsive Macedonian institutions, who failed to adequately address legitime Albanian demands dating from independence. Be that as it may, the international community was culpable for its failure to sufficiently apply the formidable soft-power leverage it wields over a weak Macedonian state to implement reforms that, conceivably, could have precluded the outbreak of armed conflict. As a case-study of prevention, Macedonia holds instructive lessons for scholars and policymakers. Yet it remains under-researched. Examining the period 1991-2001, this investigation analyses precisely why and how Macedonia avoided violence during the process of Yugoslav dissolution yet ultimately fell into conflict, and extrapolates broader lessons that may be applied to other at-risk societies. Its purpose is to advance understanding of a poorly understood country, and contribute knowledge to key on-going international security debates. Highlighting the inter-connectedness and trans-national character of contemporary security threats, it posits that the major powers have a practical interest in addressing emerging intra-state crises, even when the putative national interest appears marginal. To facilitate more timely multilateral responses, it calls for the de-nationalisation of security, and its conceptualisation in international - as opposed to strictly national - terms.

Diploma project_ Belgrade_ Danube_ Sava As the theme of my thesis I chose the city of Belgrade in the magic we see everyday. An interesting feature is its strategic location at the confluence of the rivers Danube and Sava. The project first deals with research in a broader context. It focuses not only on Belgrade,but also the whole Serbia and its ethnic and religious diversity, the Balkan temper of the population. Survey maps on one side of the city, its beauty and challenges, on the other hand, thesociological context, which examines the main problems of the population of the former Yugoslavia, their mutual coexistence and conflict.. Stigma of the City The work sets in five most problematic points that directly affect the river basins. These problems selecting a continuous strip length of 10 kilometers. Urban areas have a water factor and the city, which is reflected in the grid of streets. Cross streets are straight line to the city, continuing today boulevards that leads to the Danube. Longitudinal its streets and roads follow the river undulation. Based on the original idea of creating islands of the other two islands which make their way onto the side of the Danube three cities waterfront. We get water in the city, which is not only artificial reservoirs, but water in its nature and dynamics. Most exposed parts of the scarred area, the left bank of the Marina Luka which leads to the Francouzská boulevard linking the main square to the Danube. In this area has focused more specifically in connection with the sociological survey. Stigma of the Nation Due to the fact that Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia, I focused on interpersonal and economic problems of the population of the former Yugoslavia and its dissolution. On the outside Yugoslavia was united in its time in terms of a strong state economy. After the disintegration of countries to stop cooperating and their economy has significantly dropped. Interpersonal ethnic hatred grew in mutual exploitation of minorities, whether ethnic, and religious. The hatred and conflict in humans are deep and mutual grievances will be difficult to erase. Stigma of the City + Stigma of the Nation = Peace Center Thus we come to the junction of scar and the scars of a nation and a way to deal with both. In a significant proportion of exposed and Belgrade should be the function that has a deeper meaning, overlap, and the importance for the nation, the whole Balkan peninsula. Shaping a platform for peaceful dialogue and mutual cooperation of the former states of Yugoslavia at all levels. Building project will be a peace organization, which will fill this space understanding, cooperation and reconciliation, heal the stigma of a nation and city. The Centre is engaged in projects in the economic, social, medical, religious and cultural. A strong element is the continued ramp-boulevard of the Danube, which shows that the path to the goal may have obstacles and the goal is far off, but worth it to continue. Torn heart_ Peace Center building_ Culture_ media_ Arts As Yugoslavia disintegrated in the Yugonostalgi a back to each other, and the design of the building is torn heart of Yugoslavia, which on itself can not completely back, so at least communicate through the atrium, but are otherwise separate entities.

Defense date: 20/09/2010
Examining Board: Lene Hansen (Univ. Copenhagen), Friedrich V. Kratochwil (EUI) (Supervisor), Ramesh Thakur (Univ. Waterloo, Canada), Pascal Vennesson (EUI/RSCAS)
This thesis is motivated by the puzzle that while the practice of collective security continues to grow and expand with more and bigger peacekeeping operations, the system is struggling increasingly to address the threats and stabilize the global world. Thus to find out more about the justificatory background of the reinvention of collective security after the end of the Cold War, an in-depth critical analysis is conducted of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) for the former Yugoslavia and the subsequent peacebuilding missions. Question are asked about whether in fact the problems of multidimensional peacekeeping are limited to bureaucratic and technical flaws that can be corrected through institutional and instrumental adjustments, or if they also relate to more fundamental normative problems of collective security in a global world. As such, the thesis has two main trajectories: collective human security and multidimensional peacekeeping. On the one hand, it addresses the relationship between security and world order, and on the other, the correlation between peace and collective security. By bringing security and peace studies together within a critical analytical framework that aims to inform theory through practice, divides between the discourse and the system of collective security are highlighted and connected with the practical problems of multidimensional peacekeeping and collective security in a global world. Three main sets of findings are made that indicate that multidimensional peacekeeping amounts to an institutionalization of internal conflicts that requires a practice of peace-as-global-governance that the UN is neither technically let alone normatively equipped to carry out. First, the policies of multidimensional peacekeeping have perverse consequences in practice whereby peacekeeping comes at the expense of peacebuilding. Second, in order to terminate multidimensional peacekeeping successfully, the UN is forced to compromise the initial aims of the operations to accommodate practice. Third, the aim of multidimensional peacekeeping is in the doing or in the ritual, rather than in the end result. Against this background, the argument is made that there are conceptual incoherencies between the practice and the system of collective security, which assumes that collective security is a sphere of influence in its own right that can tackle delicate normative dilemmas, both making and enforcing decisions about which processes and needs should be upheld and satisfied at the cost of others.

Since the end of the Cold War, political and geographical realities have changed considerably. One such reality was the balance of power between East and West, which was especially visible in Europe. The contest between rivals, the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), was over. Ultimately, NATO found itself the pre-eminent security organisation in Europe. The new post-cold war environment forced questions about the appropriate role for NATO. However, that changed with both the process of NATO expansion into former Warsaw pact countries and the ethnic conflicts throughout the former Yugoslavia. NATO found a new purpose during the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia as ‘peace-enforcer’ in the Balkan region. The focus of this thesis is NATO’s role in peace-enforcement in the former Yugoslavia. It examines how NATO dealt with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Specifically, how NATO managed to re-establish its relevance as a security organisation. NATO’s military intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo were crucial in securing the end of hostilities in both those regions. NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR), Stabilisation Force (SFOR) and Kosovo Force (KFOR) all played significant roles in subsequent peace-enforcement and peace-building roles in the region by suppressing violence through power projection and institution building. In 2001, NATO undertook a third operation in the Balkans, that time of a more limited nature, disarming ethnic Albanians in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. NATO’s presence there also encouraged stability. This thesis argues that, ultimately, NATO maintained its relevance by the establishing a new role for itself after the Cold War through Eastward expansion and in suppressing ethnic conflict in the Balkans. Both these roles have been successful. The decisive interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and FYROM forced the belligerents to stop fighting. NATO’s subsequent enforcement of the peace has stopped each conflict from flaring up again. With NATO membership now including most of Europe, it remains the only viable security organisation on the continent. NATO’s effectiveness as a security organisation was demonstrated with its ability to end the conflict in the Balkans and providing a stable environment for the people of the region. This intervention was crucial to the definition of a new role for NATO in the post-Cold War world.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics 2008

No
Can the Balkans ever become a peaceful penisula like that of Scandinavia? With enlightened backing, can it ever make common cause with the rest of Europe rather than being an arena of periodic conflicts, political misrule, and economic misery? In the last years of the twentieth century, Western states watched with alarm as a wave of conflicts swept over much of the Balkans. Ethno-nationalist disputes, often stoked by unprincipled leaders, plunged Yugoslavia into bloody warfare. Romania, Bulgaria and Albania struggled to find stability as they reeled from the collapse of the communist social system and even Greece became embroiled in the Yugoslav tragedy. This new book examines the politics and international relations of the Balkans during a decade of mounting external involvement in its affairs.

no
The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH) was the most violent phase of the dissolution of former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), of which, for almost 50 years, BiH was one of six constituent republics. In the course of the war BiH¿s three main ethic groups- - Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs, with active involvement of neighbouring Croatia and Serbia, fought each other in pursuit of its own vision of BiH political and territorial (re) organization. The causes and the character of the war remain contentious, the main disagreement being over the issue of whether it was a war of aggression by BiH¿s neighbours or a civil war. Essentially, it contained the elements of both, which determined the way the war was fought, the multiplicity of actors involved, and complexity of agendas played out in the course of the conflict, its settlement and peace building process. The fighting was brought to end by an intense international military and diplomatic campaign, which pushed the worrying parties into compromise none of which considered just. The task of implementing complex terms of the peace agreement was put overwhelmingly in the hands of international actors, while local parties pursued the strategy of obstruction, trying to assert their own interpretation of the peace agreement that would accommodate some of their war aims.This paper looks at war veterans associations, as one particular type of non- state actors engaged in undermining peace settlement in the specific context of BiH war. Because of their position on the continuum between combatants and outside actor, and the nature of relationship with the political leadership negotiating the peace agreement, this case could provide different insights into the issue of spoiling in the types of contemporary conflicts characterised by multiplicity of both actors and agendas, and complex strategies needed to pacify them. The paper starts by brief analysis of the political and economic goals behind the 1992-1995 war, narrowing inquiry into Bosnian Croats self- rule as a political project and goal of the strategy of spoiling pursued by Bosnian Croat war veterans associations. It then reflects on the terms of the peace agreement, indicating some of the main areas the implementation of which was actively obstructed by this group. The analysis of the war veterans association deals with their origins and the position in the Bosnian Croat post- war power structures, the sources of their funding and their official and hidden agenda. The probe into spoiling tactics focuses on three important aspects of the peace agreement i.e. refugee return, war crimes prosecution and institution building, and is followed by a brief analysis on the impact of various strategies the international community as a custodian of peace has used to sustain its implementation.

This thesis is a qualitative analysis of the international legal response to rape as war crime in the former Yugoslavia. Through the examination of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the case law it has generated, this thesis addresses the question will the androcentric characteristics of law found in domestic rape cases be replicated at the international level? More specifically this thesis undertakes an examination which questions will international law be able to adequately amplify and listen to women voices, or will the women’s words be silenced by the rule of law? The following research is loosely informed by Carol Smart’s (1989) sociology of law theory combined with Liz Kelly’s (1988) notions of coping, resisting, and surviving. The purpose of using Kelly’s theory is to go beyond viewing women as inevitable victims of sexual assault. The methodological approach is both qualitative and inductive. It draws on data from the ICTY structure, Statute, Rules of Procedures and Evidence, case law and transcripts and women’s stories presented outside the legal realm. The analysis reveals that while written law (including the interpretation and application of the law) is somewhat aware of the experiences of women, it falls short of adequately responding to the needs of women. A detailed look at the women’s stories of war revealed diverse experiences not captured in the legal realm. The women’s stories spoke of concerns beyond sexual assault and other crimes identified by the ICTY Statute. This thesis also introduces alternatives or complimentary approaches to law when dealing with war crimes. These alternatives include women’s local groups and truth commissions. This thesis also identifies the criminological relevance of studying war crimes (as defined by international law) and crimes of war and marks an important step in understanding rape and war from a criminological perspective.
February 2005