Miloš Hrnjaz
Associate Professor of International Law
University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science
Jove Ilića 165, 11000 Belgrade
milos.hrnjaz@fpn.bg.ac.rs; miloshrnjaz@gmail.com
The National Interest After the War Defeat: The Curious Case of Serbia
Abstract
The concept of ‘national interest’ is contested in the international politics in conceptual, ontological, epistemological, and practical way. Relying on the work of Ayşe Zarakol (After Defeat: How East Learned to Live with the West, CUP, 2011), I am arguing in this paper that the process of identifying and implementing the national interest in contemporary Serbia has been predominantly developed through the process of self-understanding of the consequences of war and defeat in Yugoslavia in the last decade of the XX century. I am pointing out that Serbia was facing the challenge of defining and implementing its national interest including its relation with the West after defeats in the above mentioned armed conflicts. As it will be mentioned, Serbia was involved in several armed conflicts during the last decade of the XX century – namely, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and in the armed conflicts on its own territory which occurred between its forces and Albanians from Kosovo, and its forces and NATO member countries. However, contrary to some of the Zarakol’s conclusions about the post-defeated choices of countries and the proposition of this Conference, Serbia’s war defeats didn’t necessarily “create a powerful impulse for change”, nor “national recreation, rejuvenation and salvation”. This makes the case of Serbia and its military defeats curious and practically and scientifically relevant.
I am arguing in this paper that one of the major causes for the above mentioned situation is the internalization of the norm of prohibition of the use of force in international relations and the influence of this process on the interpretation of the constructs of the war and defeat. Namely, due to the existence of the prohibition of the use of force, Serbia publicly and formally rejected its involvement in the armed conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. The predominant narrative over these conflicts in Serbia is that Serbia wasn’t the actor in these conflicts – and consequently, if there was no Serbia’s direct role in the conflicts, there was no war, no defeat and no powerful impulse for change. In the same time and for the similar reasons, NATO denied that it was in a state of war with Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Instead, it insisted on the terms ‘operation’ and ‘intervention’. Even though NATO member states practically dictated the substance of Kumanovo Agreement which ended the war, the political and legal circumstances were significantly different compared to those that were in place in the period before the adoption of the UN Charter, when defeated countries were left to the mercy of the winner. Namely, in the period of NATO intervention in Serbia, a jus cogens norm of prohibition of the use of force in international relations was widely accepted and founded as one of the core principles of international law. The illegality of NATO’s use of force against Yugoslavia enabled Serbian authorities to claim that Serbia wasn’t defeated in this war either and prolonged the negotiations on the status of Kosovo until today. In addition, NATO countries didn’t act as the winners of the conflict. They took the clear position in the process of Kosovo’s state-building, still they didn’t literally forced Serbia to accept the independence of Kosovo after its adoption of Declaration of Independence in 2008. These facts had long-term consequences on the processes of identifying and implementing the concept of national interest and nationalism in contemporary Serbia. Namely, these armed conflicts determined both the regional relations of Serbia with neighboring countries and dominant anti-Western sentiment in Serbian society. My main goal in this paper is to illustrate the trajectory of these processes.
More generally speaking, the curious case of Serbia demonstrates how the prohibition of the use of force as a general principle of international law, despite many criticisms, affect the behavior of states and their understanding of contemporary concepts of war and war defeat. In that sense, it can also shed some new light on the reactions of many actors on the existing wars such as the one in Ukraine.