Introduction
United States occupies a distinguishing position in global affairs. Never in history has a single country conquered the international arena to the extent that the U.S. does today, courtesy of its foreign policies, which continue to draw mixed reactions, ranging from admiration to envy and hatred (Cameron, 2005 p. xvi). However, admirers and critics of U.S. foreign policies are often in agreement that no matter what the indicator – military might, economic vitality, democratic principles, political persuasion, and cultural model – the country is indeed in a league of its own.
The U.S. is the only superpower in the world and the only country able to project power and influence in every part of the world (Glenny, 2000), a fact reinforced by Cameron (2005), who notes that the U.S. has been involved in resolving conflicts on every continent since the early 1990s either through military engagement or peaceful negotiations.
This demonstrates that contrary to assertions made by critics to the effect that the U.S. does not have sound foreign policies (Kavalski, 2005), it is indeed in the frontline when it comes to expediting its values and interests in foreign countries. This paper will critically evaluate the U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans, both during the cold war era and also in post-cold war period.
According to Cameron (2005), “…foreign policy refers to a consistent course of actions followed by one nation to deal with another nation or region, or international issue” (p. xvii). In the context of this paper. Therefore, the U.S. foreign policy would refer to the values and interests projected by the U.S. in the Balkans, a region largely made up of a number of countries, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia (US Department of State, 2011).
Apart from Kosovo, which was considered as a province in Serbia, the other countries were considered as republics under the Yugoslavia federation during the cold war era, not mentioning the fact that they heavily leaned towards communist principles and ideologies perpetrated by the former USSR immediately after the Second World War (Eskridge-Kosmach, 2009).
These political and ideological leanings towards communism greatly affected United States relations with Eastern Europe, and it was not until the collapse and disintegration of the USSR and communist ideologies in 1991 that real progress in the U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans began to take shape (Trachtenberg, 2008).
US Foreign Policy in the Balkans during Cold War Era
Immediately after the Second World War, the U.S. and her allies became cognizant of the fact that they had lost significant control of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. As such, the U.S acknowledged anti-communism to be its guiding standard to foreign policy in the region during the cold war era.
The U.S. adopted a non-military foreign policy to stabilize Western Europe and prevent communist ideologies from encroaching Western Europe territory, while devising rigid policies that could decrease the Soviet Union’s influence in Eastern Europe and at the same time not be seen as a direct provocation to the Soviet Union (Trachtenberg, 2008).
Some scholars have argued that the U.S. attempted to pursue a foreign policy that would make countries under Soviet’s influence in the Balkans to become economically dependent on the West and, if possible, coerce them into joining Western alliances, including NATO (Cameron, 2007 p. 9). This policy was meant to decrease the Soviet’s control, achieve potentially considerable geopolitical advantages, bring democracy to the Soviet bloc, recover lost trade and markets in the Balkans, and ensure a more stable and prosperous Europe (Trachtenberg, 2008).
In 1948, the U.S. saw an opportunity to project its foreign policy in the Balkans when Josip Tito’s government in Yugoslavia split with the Soviet Union for pursuing domestic and foreign affairs policies that, according to Stalin, fundamentally deviated from the Marxist-Leninist line of thought.
Yugoslav literature reveals that the breakup with Moscow was precipitated by Tito’s idea of pursuing a separate course towards socialism that could not be reconciled with the hegemonic model of the hierarchical organization witnessed in the socialist bloc (Perovic, 2007). The breakup notwithstanding, many scholars have underlined the “importance of Yugoslavia to the United States in its ‘wedge strategy’ directed towards the Soviet Bloc countries” (Eskridge-Kosmach, 2009 p. 383).
Of importance is the fact that the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower administrations saw emergent opportunities for the U.S. to develop relations with Yugoslavia, a former strong ally of the Soviet Union. According to O’Brien (2006), this foreign policy was meant to alleviate the Soviet military power in addition to discrediting the Soviet tactics in the Balkans.
This gives credence to the idea that a major hallmark of the U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans during the cold war was to discredit communism and prevent its spread. The above policies failed to achieve much, prompting the U.S. to initiate a new foreign policy in the Balkans in the 1960s under the “New Deal.”
According to Eskridge-Kosmach (2009), the new foreign policy focused on initiating “economic reforms aimed at the improvement of the system of ‘workers self-administration,’ stimulation of the private initiative in agriculture, and de-centralization of the economic management” (p. 385). In addition, the U.S. also encouraged communist countries to disobey Soviet imperialism, hoping that the economic reforms would trigger an ‘evolution’ from the communist model to national independence and free democratic societies (Trachtenberg, 2008).
Humanitarian relations and bi-lateral trade agreements with preferential terms were encompassed in the U.S’ “building bridges” concept that it entered with countries in the Balkans who exhibited a desire for political liberalization and the establishment of a representative government (Eskridge-Kosmach, 2009).
It is worth mentioning that the U.S., in its attempts to progress these policies in the Balkans, did not want to break with the Soviet Union or create a scenario that would have led to a military confrontation with the Soviet, thus employed diplomacy and foreign aid to reach out to countries in the Balkans. However, much of the aid to the Balkans remained humanitarian assistance, not development aid (O’Brien, 2006).
US Foreign Policy in the Balkans in Post-Cold War Era
Opinion remains divided about the U.S. post cold war foreign policy in the Balkans, with some commentators arguing that the U.S. has been keen not to be drawn into geopolitical and ethnic-related conflicts that rocked the region after the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Brown, 2005), while others suggest that the Balkans has indeed become an emblematic feature of post-cold war geography of United States’ international relations (Joseph, 2005).
According to Daalder (2002), “the U.S. debate over engagement in the Balkans has been conducted primarily in terms of the burdens the United States and Europe should carry in attempting to improve conditions in the region” (p. 3). While the EU accepts that it should bear the main burden in the reconstruction of the Balkans, it also expects others, including the U.S., to contribute.
It is clear that the U.S. foreign policy of military intervention through NATO-sanctioned air strikes against Serb targets helped to end the wars witnessed in the Balkans in the 1990’s, though many analysts still maintain that the U.S. was late in its contribution, leading to the massacre of thousands of people (Brown, 2009).
However, it should be remembered that in the mid-1990s, the U.S. diplomatic efforts played an instrumental part in the establishment of the Dayton Peace Agreements, which led to the halting of hostilities among warring parties in the Balkans by crafting the decentralized political system of Bosnia. However, the Dayton political compromise is largely viewed across various quarters as an unworkable one, and which hinders the successful integration of Bosnia into Euro-Atlantic institutions (Woehrel, 2009).
One major post-cold war objective of the U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans is to stabilize the region in a way that is self-sustaining, democratic and does not require the frequent intervention of NATO-led forces and international diplomats (Woehrel, 2009), In equal measure, the United States has considerably assisted in the transition of the Balkan countries that were formerly under the Soviet bloc by encouraging political and economic reform, and by orienting them to join the EU and other Euro-Atlantic institutions (Veremis, 2001; Wisner, 2008).
Many countries in the Balkan are now holding free and fair elections, have vibrant civil society groups that are free to express a wide variety of views, and the independence of the media is almost guaranteed (Woehrel, 2009). This again demonstrates that the U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans has clearly underlined the need for the countries involved to shed off communist policies and ideologies, and embrace Western democratic principles and values.
To support the rule of law and the punishment of initiators of the 1990’s Balkan war, the U.S. continues to condition developmental aid to Serbia on the full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY), not mentioning that the U.S. has initiated active mechanisms to support NATO membership for the countries in the Balkans (Woehrel, 2009).
The U.S. continues to demand constitutional reforms in countries such as Bosnia and Serbia, implying that its foreign policy in the Balkans is more oriented in solidifying the democratic gains so far been achieved. Woehrel (2009) also notes that the Balkans still “have a higher strategic profile given U.S. use of military bases in Romania and Bulgaria, which could be useful for U.S. operations in the Middle East” (p. 1).
The U.S. has also played a role in facilitating economic reform in the Balkans and ensuring that countries achieve fiscal and monetary austerity. However, resistance to economic transparency, weak and corrupt state structures, and the absence of the rule of law in a number of countries continue to hinder progress in the economic front (Woehrel, 2009).
It is important to note that the U.S role in the Balkans is largely viewed as peripheral since the EU is the mandated institution to oversee economic and political reforms in the Balkans, and to bring countries to join Euro-Atlantic institutions, thus stabilizing the region and the whole of Europe (Veremis, 2001; Joseph, 2005).
The observation can be reinforced by the fact that President Bush’ foreign policy in the Balkans oscillated along “controlled and gradual military and economic disengagement from the Western Balkans, allowing EU to fill this gap” (Sakellariou, 2011 para. 3).
Through diplomatic means, however, the U.S. played perhaps the most fundamental role towards Kosovo’s independence, by pushing the latter to unilaterally proclaim her independence and by pressuring other EU member states to also recognize Kosovo’s independence (Dunn, 2009).
Although the U.S. still maintains ground forces in Kosovo, and although the U.S. still retains its political and diplomatic clout in the region, it has substantially reduced the costs of its commitments in the Balkans, particularly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States (Sakellariou, 2011).
International concerns, including the war on global terrorism and political stabilization of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, have substantially placed strains on U.S. resources, forcing the country to reduce its attention in the Balkans. In keeping with its current main foreign policy priority, however, the U.S. still actively engages the Balkans to stop terrorists from operating in countries such as Bosnia and Albania (Brown, 2009).
The U.S. has also succeeded in bringing many countries in the Balkans to support the war on global terrorism. It is worthwhile to note that the Obama Admistration still pushes for further stabilization of the Balkans, but has continued to keep the region low on the U.S. foreign policy radar, in part due to the war on global terrorism and the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Conclusion
Many policy analysts still feel that the U.S. should strengthen its foreign policy in the Balkans due to the perceived incapacity of the EU to give the needed impetus in the region, and also due to increasing Russia’s influence (Sakellariou, 2011). It is indeed true that the U.S. has for over a decade provided significant aid, advice and troop deployments to countries in the Balkans, but more still needs to be done to solidify the political, economic and democratic gains so far achieved, to uproot possible terrorist networks in the region, and to enhance trade ties with the region (Wisner, 2008; Joseph, 2005).
It is imperative to note that unlike the EU, the U.S. still enjoys a substantial political credibility and good will in the Balkans, particularly among the Bosniaks and Albanians (Sakellariou, 2011). As such, it is only proper for the U.S. to remain committed towards solving the serious problems that still affects the region, including weak government structures, ineffective and politicized public administrations, weak and politicized judicial systems, government corruption and organized crime (Woehrel, 2009). A stable Balkans will not only ensure peace and prosperity in Europe, but also in the whole world.
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