Germany and Interdependence Theory
A Comparative Study

Still, there remain significant roadblocks in the near future which will continue to prevent Germany from assuming a global, or even regional, role befitting her statistical great power status. These include a reluctance on the part of France to give up her preeminent position as Europe's center of gravity, a continued paranoia throughout the Anglo-American and Eastern Slavic realms of any signs of German national power, and the reluctance of Germany's people and leaders to take the initiative necessary to pivot their nation into the position awaiting it as regional leader and global player.

Interdependence theory is an important foundation for understanding Germany¯s place in the current geopolitical context. Because it is rooted in classic liberalism and the understanding of the modern trading state, interdependence is capable of explaining many of the theoretical bases upon which the behavior of successive German governments and the population of Germany itself rests since the Second World War. In this paper, I will examine the relationship between German foreign and security policy and interdependence theory. My goal is to demonstrate that interdependence theory is the most accurate representation of the theoretical basis for contemporary German foreign and security policy, and also show the outcomes of such a theoretical foundation in the visible direction such policy has taken. Because it is the most important foreign policy matter for Germany today, I will place special emphasis upon the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia. By examining Germany¯s role in this matter, I intend to relate how this reflects her role as a supporter of Western institutions, and what it promises for the future. Finally, Germany's position in Europe and the world will continue their slow and tricky ascent towards regional and global power in the years to come, and this paper is also intended to answer those questions regarding whether Germany's spotless post-War liberal record is in danger because of this ascent.

INTERDEPENDENCE THEORY

Interdependence theory is very applicable to the relations and foreign policies between today's advanced industrial nations, of which Germany is one. The theory was originated by Keohane and Nye in Power and Interdependence(1) as a reaction against what was seen as the increasing inadequacies of Realism(2) in properly describing international relations in the late 20th century. The theoretical claim of interdependence is that contemporary foreign policy is subject to the global marketplace. National governments will execute policy allowing their state to be most competitive, but in the end it is the market, rather than nationalism, which determines the direction foreign policy takes. Economic interdependence between nations creates an international system of regimes and treaties which strip nations of true sovereignty and the role of the state becomes one of performing tasks which the market cannot adequately carry out (yet), and as a vehicle for further competitiveness and integration of their nation's economy into the global economy. Thus, interdependence can be best described as the liberal interpretation of a world order whose nature is that of a global market. Liberal economics assumes that all humans are equally capable of producing, consuming and creating, thus every person's economic status will be determined by their relative productivity and ambition(3).

By describing interdependence as a liberal theory, one traces its philosophical foundation to the economic philosophy of Adam Smith. Smith believed that by eliminating those laws favoring and subsidizing the production of agricultural goods and other trades dominated by the aristocracy, that industry could be free to grow and tap new resources and labor markets, increasing aggregate welfare and rewarding, rather than retarding, innovation(4).

With the contemporary development of technologies such as mass global transportation and telecommunications, this theory has become accepted in most industrialized nations. Telecommunications allows capital and information to be transferred at the speed of light, and mass shipping by air and sea allows goods to be moved around the world very fast and very cheap. The global marketplace favors those businesses capable of operating with immense economies of scale, transporting massive amounts of goods worldwide, and eliminating local variations(5).

Since the geographical distribution of commodities is unequal, no nation can be self-sufficient, since it will have an excess of certain commodities and a deficit of others. Thus, it is in every nation's interest to participate in the marketplace, since it must rely on the relative efficiency of that market to prosper. Although nations which are well-endowed with various vital resources can more effectively maintain a more self-sufficient and dominant role in the global market, no one nation can control it. When many nations, however individually resource-poor, pool enough power, they can eliminate any dominance other nations may have over the market.

THE EFFECT OF INTERDEPENDENCE UPON NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

Although realists claim that states can exercise control over their domestic economy through monetary, fiscal or industrial policy, such an argument is not valid in a world of free markets. If a nation, for instance, raises interest rates to stem inflation, the currency will become more valuable, forcing more of it onto the market, doing nothing to halt inflationary pressures. If currency boards or exchange rate pegs are used to control the value of a currency, massive amounts of capital must be used to buy and sell one's own currency, and often lessens the competitiveness of that nation's products on the world market. Subsidizing industry inevitably leads to higher taxes, and usually is implemented because domestic goods are lower in quality or higher in price, and the end result is lack of competitiveness on the world market for those goods.(6)

Nations are also relatively powerless when they desire to impose trade favoritism, since their inherent interdependence would warrant retaliatory sanctions by their trading partners, and inevitably weaken the domestic economy . In addition, as shown in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, any nation attempting to exercise its alleged sovereign right to invade a foreign territory will be met with swift collective action if it affects a significant enough group of other states. The United Nations functioned well in this endeavor, as nations with otherwise quite unfriendly relations banded together to uphold the principles of collective security under the UN(7).

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are very important players in interdependence theory. MNCs provide the capital and resources that keep markets efficient. The immense capital housed by MNCs allows great incentive for innovation and entrepreneurship. MNCs contribute to the interdependence of states by making economic nationalism ambiguous and ineffectual(8). The global market is driven by a benevolent self-interest, via the marginal profitability of every individual's productivity. This is reflected in the emergence of pluralist domestic policy, which is driven by interest groups concerned with their own economic stake in government policy. The only things governing this market system are the mechanisms and factors affecting the commodities and capital being exchanged. International treaties and organizations function as a means of either keeping the market competitive or providing those services commonly regarded as a foundation for a market economy, such as enforcing laws and protecting property. Military strength is useless between interdependent nations, since going to war with one another would mean mutual economic disaster (although going to war with non-interdependent enemies is often a necessity, and explains why industrialized nations usually maintain a large standing army).

As an advanced industrial nation, and the third largest national economy on Earth, Germany has an interest in common with other rich nations in maintaining the relative efficiency of this global market. In addition, the necessity to rely upon international cooperation and trade creates the conditions that make Germany's relations with her neighbors and partners as important as any domestic policy. The foundations of this economic and geopolitical interdependence can be traced to the end of the Second World War, the outcome of which permanently locked Germany into a situation in which any policy direction other than one based upon interdependence would be almost impossible.

COLD WAR GERMANY

Germany's defeat in the Second World War was the preface to a period of global tension known as the Cold War. The United States, having joined the War late in the game and become the decisive player in that defeat, was able to exercise leverage in the region which would have been unheard of in earlier times. Being a market economy, the US had a direct philosophical and economic interest in establishing such a system in other parts of the world. This created a major stumbling block in peace talks, due to the obvious ideological divide between the victorious war-time allies, specifically the Soviet Union on the one hand and the US, France and Britain on the other. This divide became increasingly problematic as the months wore on after the war, but few would have predicted how tense east-west relations would end up several years down the line.

REARMAMENT

The US presence in Europe became what is best termed hegemonic. Such a relationship was best described by Bismarck(9) as "an unequal relationship established between a great power and one or more smaller powers which is nevertheless based on the juridical or formal equality of all the states concerned" and characterized not by "'ruler' and 'ruled'" but by "'leadership' and 'followers'." This occurred for two key reasons. First, the US and Britain had a strong interest in maintaining their political and economic status quo apart from their war-time allies in the Soviet Union, and wished to also usher Germany into that order. France declared similar aims, but was more inclined to focus her energy upon breaking up, weakening and humiliating Germany for dragging the continent into yet another horrible war. On the other hand, the Soviet Union wished both to cripple Germany and to gain a foothold in the industrial heartland of Europe, the eastern edge of which was held as the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.

Second, in order to secure its place as a European player the United States had an interest in tying its allies to it after the War was over. The Soviet Union was not exactly invited into this alliance, since the US saw the USSR as an emerging threat, what with her diametrically conflicting political-economic foundations and expansionist ambitions, as well as a degree of military power capable of matching, if not overwhelming, US forces in Europe. Thus, as peace plans and talks regarding Germany's future broke down over the months and years following the War, the USSR became the new focal point for US interests in Europe.

As the Soviet Union entrenched herself in Central and Eastern Europe, the probability of finding a solution to The German Question (as Germany's place in the post-War order came to be known) became less and less likely, and the threat of a Soviet offensive to increase her holdings in the West and throughout the world became an all-encompassing occupation for Western leaders. As long as that threat remained, the US maintained that her most vital national interest was the global containment of Soviet communist influence, and the establishment of a Western alliance (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO) became the focal point of that containment.

By the time NATO was established, the German Question had been shelved in favor of tying the Western-occupied portion of Germany to this alliance, as well as other Western political and economic institutions. Massive amounts of reconstruction aid had been pouring into Western Europe from the US in an endeavor to rebuild the region's military-industrial complex, as well as facilitate a post-War expansion of US economic hegemony. With the development of a Soviet-led alliance in the East (the Warsaw Pact) and renewed Soviet ambitions in Asia and the South, Germany itself became the front lines of this Cold War (fought between ideologies, as opposed to a common hot war, fought between armies) between East and West. Thus, far from defeat leading to a weakened and powerless Germany, post-War Germany was rearmed by the early 50s, albeit with her armed forces entirely integrated into NATO's command and control structures and constitutionally prohibited(10) from performing any acts of military aggression or other endeavors which do not demonstrate a specific interest in territorial defense. Those armed forces were still the largest of any Western ground force in Europe, and were supplemented with allied forces from throughout NATO.

Such a set-up is consistent with the foundations of interdependence. In Germany's case, there was no option after the war except the acceptance of integration of her economy, military and ideologies into the structures of her occupiers. Not accepting this would have been impossible, due to the realities of military defeat and the necessity to rebuild a destroyed nation.

Being the West's largest front-line state, Germany was dramatically affected by the Cold War. Having gone from a defeated aggressor to an allied protectorate and only very late on to a semi-sovereign state, Germany(11) never really adapted a true post-War identity outside of the multilateral structures she was absorbed into. This makes Germany, in fact, somewhat of a 'poster-child' for interdependence theory, since no other nation (save perhaps Japan, and all for the same reasons) has had quite the necessity to integrate with her neighbors and global trade and military partners. Post-War reconstruction and then rearmament involved a massive civil re-mobilization of Germany's (and indeed most of Europe's) people in order to rebuild devastated economies and infrastructures. This was accomplished very effectively by the mid-1950s in most of Western Europe, but was done in the shadows of the Iron Curtain at Germany's eastern frontier.

COLD WAR POLITICAL CULTURE

The constant fear of Soviet invasion made the strengthening and deepening of military and economic ties all the more important. Because Germany had the most to lose from the Soviet military threat, her population and leadership was dedicated to multilateralism, or the building of international policies in concert with other states and international organizations. This German multilateralism took the form of both official policy and of a deep entrenchment of what might be termed timid institutionalism in the political culture of the Germans.

Timid institutionalism is meant to describe the source of German political behavior. The lack of any ability to perform unilaterally in the face of a domineering alliance, an indisputable hegemon, and a persistent and overwhelming military threat from her eastern neighbors forced Cold War-era German leaders to build and strengthen international alliances and friendships, as well as participate in a broad and numerous array of multilateral forums, in order to maintain some semblance of national security. In a case such as this, national security took the form of a psychological state among the general population, where a majority of the state's people could function in a civil order without an overriding daily fear of the state of geopolitics. Such was the creation of a populous around which this multilateralism revolved, and generated a consensus among leaders, academics and journalists which amounted to what is best termed Germany's Cold war political culture. The specifics of this political culture continue today, and are described in the following sections.

ALLIANCE MENTALITY

The idea that participation and membership in the European defense arrangements of NATO (and later other multilateral partnerships such as the Western European Union, or WEU, and the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, which became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE in 1992) were integral to maintaining security and stability for Germany in the face of the Soviet threat. Constitutional arrangements encouraged this as well,(12) specifying that Germany was to give up her sovereignty where necessary in order to enhance security and peace through multilateralism.

With such an overwhelming political atmosphere weighing upon the minds of Germany's citizens and leaders for the forty years of the Cold War, it is easy to see that such an "alliance mentality" can develop. Germany emerged from the Cold War with very little capacity to develop unilateral foreign or security policy, instead harboring an immense skepticism toward unilateralism, military force, and political assertiveness, and a strong commitment toward multilateral action. Having spent half a century atoning for the Second World War, Germany also had acquired an obsession with demonstrating reliability toward her partners and maintaining a back-seat role among the other major Western players.(13)

GERMANY IN THE 1990s

Needless to say, Germany was thrust into a whole new world in the last decade of the 20th century. Being on the front lines of the Cold War meant that Germany was also on the front lines of the revolutions which ended that era, most notably the breaching of the Berlin Wall, which came to signify both physically and symbolically the defeat of the eastern side of the Cold War ideological divide. The fall of communism had direct effects upon Germany as well as indirect effects, via the numerous new geopolitical matters that would overwhelm her foreign relations agenda for years to come. Germany's foremost challenge was to somehow fill the void left by the retreating Soviet sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and bring some semblance of stability to the region whilst at the same time anchoring those CEE states to the Western institutions and ideals they coveted.

THE PERSISTENCE OF THE COLD WAR POLITICAL CULTURE AFTER UNIFICATION

Achieving such an immense aim would doubtless be problematic, but few expected the combination of peaceful and bloody revolutions that would follow in the wake of the fall of CEE's communist governments. In states such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the transition was astonishingly mild, with able new governments implementing economic and democratic reforms speedily and without extensive suffering for their citizens. Yugoslavia was the other side of the coin, where the fall of communism was slower, and yet the new governments were far from capable of managing the reforms and transitions necessary to peacefully displace the previous order.

German foreign and security policy can be seen in this case to have been a victim of the Cold War. After four decades of constructing a dependency relationship with her allies, Germany was suddenly required to fill new shoes in the global game of geopolitics. First came the Gulf War, where Germany was rankly criticized for its "cheque-book diplomacy" and timid reserve in regards to contributing militarily to the coalition forces.(14) One cannot really blame such policy, however, when this was in fact uncharted territory for German citizens and leaders. Never before in history had Germany been expected by the West to play the role of a great power and at the same time be playing that role as a Western Ally. To complicate matters, Germany had only just started the cosmic rebirth which was reunification, and which would manage over the next few years to drain the country of a large part of her resources.

Finding her way into a fitting post-Cold War role would end up consuming an entire decade of Germany's foreign policy endeavor, and would also prove to be washed with false starts and monumental failures. But such is the result of the rapid transition that has overtaken Europe since 1989.

THE ADVANTAGES OF A CONTINUED ALLIANCE MENTALITY

On the positive side, Germany's Cold war history has provided an important foundation for the future: multilateralism. Dependency upon alliance structures and foreign cooperation had created a Germany that did not see herself as a world power. Despite economic hegemony in Central Europe and the possession of a large armed forces, Germany had become accustomed to an interdependent relationship with her allies and trading partners resulting in what was little more than a merchant state. The armed forces (Bundeswehr) were in fact composed overwhelmingly of non-professional conscripts, with only basic military training, and best suited to territorial defense in the Cold War context. Unlike the British, Soviet and American (and to some extent the French) armed forces, which had spent the Cold War projecting military power throughout their (often shrinking) empires and in concert with containment or expansion policy, the Bundeswehr had stayed within Germany, bracing for an invasion, but never endeavoring to build the flexibility or mobility necessary for rapid and intensive deployment. After all, it was constitutionally forbidden to deploy for reasons other than territorial defense. Although Germany's post-War constitution (or Basic Law) was composed under duress from Americans, like the Japanese constitution it was embraced by citizens who later adopted it as their own, and the years since the Cold War have seen numerous modifications to the text, creating something which truly is a popular German legal document.

Thus German foreign policy, when it was assertive, was primarily concerned with the establishment of a neoliberal economic order benefiting her commercial interests. Germany grew rich during the Cold War not through nationalist mobilization (like the Soviet Union), but through exporting her goods. Germany therefore continued to be rather ignorant of the status she had attained as a major economic power (and supposedly therefore capable of military prowess) even after the Cold War had ended.(15)

Germany continued to commit herself to the ideals of collective defense with her allies, but her post-Cold War security environment was so favorable that few German politicians really saw anything that Germany or her allies needed to be defended from. Many conservative politicians both in Germany and abroad assumed that the post-Cold War world would allow the War's victors to comfortably snuggle up in their fortresses now that the threats had passed. Unfortunately, the world was still more complicated than that.

GERMANY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

What does set Germany apart from her neighbors, and what will weigh more strongly in her foreign policy as the EU's dominant state as opposed to France or other major European powers, is the new sphere of influence Germany is gaining in post-Soviet Central and Eastern Europe. Germany's history and geography make this obvious. As Soviet power hastily retreated after 1991, German capital swiftly moved in, aiding the post-communist success stories such as Poland and Hungary.

Germany also did manage to secure some quick political ambitions in the region. The imminent demise of Yugoslavia was of particular importance to German policy-makers, since(13)Yugoslavia had in fact been a Cold War-era partner in Germany's endeavors toward an East-West dialogue and in securing for Europe and the West an ally among the 'uncommitted' countries in a bipolar world.

Like many sources of German foreign policy, the post-war policy toward Yugoslavia was one of constructive engagement and atonement. Hitler's invasion of the region and support for the fascist regime of Croatia under Ante Pavelic left an indelible mark on the German conscience with regard to Yugoslavia. Being on the front lines of the Cold war, Germany was always dedicated to diplomatic engagement, and the constructive Ostpolitik adopted from the late 1950s and beyond resulted in cooperative and embracing relations by the time Hans-Dietrich Genscher took over the Foreign Ministry in the 1970s. The adoption of a 'non-aligned' foreign policy by Tito also aided in a warming of relations between Yugoslavia and her Western neighbors.(16) For these reasons of history and geography, Germany held a key position as the best-qualified state to aid in tying CEE's new democracies to the West. Best of all, most post-communist Europe wanted little else.

Before the Second World War, Europe was considered a fairly contiguous geopolitical entity. Europe was geographically the peninsular semi-continent stretching from the tip of Iberia to the Urals, from the Arctic ice caps to the Mediterranean, and politically the land of imperial homelands, which controlled the political and economic lives of most of the world's population directly, as conquerors. There was Britain and France in the west, with scattered global maritime empires, Italy and Iberia in the south, with older, less extensive more 'privatized' holdings, the German and Austrian continental empires, and oddball Russia, whose empire stretched from the edges of Central Europe all the way past the Urals and originally into Arctic North America. But Europe of the pre-war years was still thought of as a unit. Even the Bolsheviks failed to eliminate that unit, although they successfully overthrew the overriding economic status quo for a large part of Western civilization.

This changed when a non-European player, the United States, gained its hegemonic foothold over half of the continent after the Second World War had successfully devastated the dominant states of the region, specifically Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Russia, one of the few states still capable of significantly projecting its military power after the war, was able to balance America's dominance by occupying the central and eastern half of the continent. The long-standing ideological rivalry between the two hegemons thus created the Cold War, which resulted in the first true division of Europe into two systemically conflicting parts: Eastern and Western.

These two pieces of Europe developed separate identities over the next half century. It was only when the Russian/Soviet hegemony over the central and eastern piece began to disintegrate that the idea of a single Europe began to reemerge. This was, ironically, an ideal introduced by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who often spoke of softening the east-west divide and creating a "common European home." The definition of what Europe was, however, would turn out far different than Gorbachev or pre-War Europe could imagine.

This fact originated from the post-War treaties and agreements that, by the late '90s, had resulted in the European Communities (ECs), a supranational group of organizations which had tightly integrated Western Europe both economically and politically. The agreements establishing the ECs had led to a Western Europe so well united that war between its traditional rivals was unthinkable, and the elimination of trade and commerce barriers between member states had made the West far more prosperous than the East. It was this prosperity which in large part contributed to the loss of communism's appeal and thus Soviet influence among her Central and Eastern European partners. By the late 1980s, the campaigns in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltics were focusing upon conscious Westernization, including competitive elections, political pluralism, and converting the economy from a state-socialist system to a market system. In each case, the leaders of the newly democratizing states spoke of "returning to Europe."

The most important part of Westernizing for the states of Central and Eastern Europe has become the symbolic status associated with inclusion in the economic, political and military institutions of the West, primarily NATO, the EC (now the European Union, or EU), and the broader regional organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe. The foremost among these, however, is the European Union.

Since the fall of communism, the desire of Eastern European states to 'rejoin Europe' has been driven especially by the many symbolic and economic benefits associated with membership in the EU. Since 1990, that organization has also managed to make itself larger, more powerful, and even more desirable. By 1995, it was enlarged to include the traditionally 'non-Western' or 'neutral' states of Austria and Sweden, and with Eastern Europe clamoring to get in, had come to represent its continent as a whole, rather than a 'rich state club'.(17) Additionally, the 1994 Maastricht Treaty on European Union had deepened the organization into a true federation, with democratic legitimacy and independent institutions responsible to the federation as a whole, rather than member governments. The intriguing thing about Europe's transformation since 1990 is that very little of it was conducted with the whole of Europe in mind. Western Europe transformed its institutions with little focus upon a future that might see its Eastern neighbors at the table with it. Eastern Europe effectively reunited the continent under the Western model, with little thought of creating its own separate post-communist identity within Europe, and little doubt that development was synonymous with Westernization. On the whole, the West became more cohesive and more exclusive whilst the East concurrently became more vehement about adopting a Western system of statehood. This has resulted over the past 10 years in a Europe whose image is more Western than ever. Western Europe today has come to signify the economic, political and social realities that the East is attempting to attain. Rather than reinventing Europe, the desires and policies of the governments of Central and Eastern Europe have created an image of Europe more Western than ever before, and an ideal of 'development' which is far more Western than even 500 years of imperialism were capable of achieving elsewhere in the world.

THE YUGOSLAV CRISIS

The Yugoslav crisis is not an event, but a process. Its beginnings can be placed at many different dates: in 1991, when the actual territorial break-up (and consequent large-scale civil war) began; 1987, with the ascendancy of Slobodan Milosevic as leader of Serbia; 1980, with the death of Marshal Tito, and the resulting disunity and economic downturn of the state; or even 1918, when the state was born by the redrawing of the imperial boundaries of the Great War's losers. Like its beginning, an end to the crisis is difficult to determine.

That first Yugoslavia, born in 1918, enjoyed a quite stable and promising statehood. Her ethnic diversity was encouraging in the intolerant interwar period, and many Central European Jews sought shelter inside her borders. This encouraging state of affairs was shattered in 1941, however, and the roots of Yugoslavia's recurrent troubles can be seen when observing how the first Yugoslavia stumbled.

In the interwar period, Yugoslavia was placed under the ceremonial crown of the Serbian Keradjordjevic family. Although most European powers were either kingdoms or constitutional monarchies at the time, this statistic was problematic, since it led most Serbs to view Yugoslavia as Serbia. Thus, when Hitler's Wehrmacht arrived with its Axis Allies (the Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians), the Serbs were left defending a state in which all other constituent groups had allied with the invaders. Slovenia and Dalmatia, the northernmost regions, had been dominated by Italy, which had maintained interests in the north-west Balkans for decades prior to the Great War. The Hungarians quickly annexed the Vojvodina region of northern Serbia under few protests from the local population. The Bulgarians, in turn, occupied Macedonia and Montenegro, whose inhabitants were perpetually rather curious as to why the Bulgarians were never included in a "Land of the South Slavs." Together with the Croatian Fascists under Pavelic, the rump Serbia was brutally repressed, being administered directly from Germany as a separate polity from the other Yugoslav regions. This suited the non-Serb inhabitants fine, many of whom had been all but ignored when the first map of Yugoslavia was drawn.(18)

With the subsequent fall of the Third Reich, however, the state of Yugoslavia was returned almost entirely to her inter-war status quo. Disheartening news for the non-Serb population, especially those such as the Albanians and Hungarians of Serbia, who never actually saw Yugoslavia as their homeland. The Serbs were returned as the dominant group of the country and most maintained a view of that state as being little more than Greater Serbia.

This Yugoslavia did enjoy a relatively prosperous life, however. Under the Partisans of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia was pulled out of the ashes of the Second World War, and reborn as a one-party socialist state. Although having secured early ties with the communists in the Soviet Union, Tito slowly shifted his state's center of gravity from East to West over the next 30 years. By the 1970s, Yugoslavia was indeed a hallmark case of a well-managed socialist order. Both through lucrative contacts with the West and an addiction to foreign borrowing, Yugoslavia prospered and enjoyed important bilateral relationships with most major players in both the East and West. Her people were given more freedom to travel and consume than any other communist state of the region, and were often looked upon by the inhabitants of other communist states with the same sort of envy heaped upon citizens of the West.(19) Tito worked his magic formula of "non alignment" in a way similar to states such as India had: pretending they couldn't decide between capitalism and communism, and playing East and West against each other for influence; in the end being able to choose one's own terms in the relationship and what one got out of it. It was quite brilliant. Tito thus helped Yugoslavia shed its backward image abroad and at the same time exercised his unflinching authoritarianism at home to maintain stability and unity among the traditional antagonists inhabiting the state.

THE 1980s

The unfortunate part of Tito's leadership is that few, including Tito himself, believed it could be matched. Understanding that his days were numbered, Tito invented a unique power-sharing government to succeed himself, meant to balance the ethnic interests of Yugoslavia by diminishing Serbia's dominance and giving smaller groups an equal voice in communist party policy at the federal level. The system involved an immense devolution in most authority to the republics and to local bodies, creating only a loose confederacy. Unfortunately, this was a double-edged sword. Republics which desired to build policy separate from the central government were relatively free to do so, even when it created systemic challenges which conflicted with federal law or order.

Such was the undoing of Yugoslavia. In the northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia, new power-sharing governments emerged with opposition voices and a mixture of pluralism and electoral legitimacy. By the middle of the 1980s, Slovenia was already giving a voice to opposition parties in the regional assembly, and Croatia soon followed. Such was the case in other republics to the south (Serbia notably excluded) as the decade wound to an end. As other CEE nations began to hold free elections, notably Poland and Hungary in 1988-89, the trend quickly spread south. Slovenia and Croatia, and then Macedonia and Montenegro soon held multi-party elections. The key elections were the northern ones, however, where opposition democratic parties (and in Croatia's case, a nationalist party) gained control of the regional governments.

With centrifugal forces threatening the authority of the central government, one group felt an obvious fear: the Serbs. Having spent most of the 20th century under the belief that the Yugoslav state was created to pull the Serbs together, Serbian leaders quickly realized what devolution was doing to Greater Serbia. As secessionist movements emerged in the regions, ethnic tensions between the Serbs and the dominant groups of the republics intensified. Kosovo, a southern Serbian province, housed a majority Albanian population that had long resented Serb rule. Though no free elections were in the offing, maverick Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic decided to circumvent rebellion before it could occur, and eliminated Kosovo's autonomy within Serbia, to rule the province directly from Belgrade. A similar decree was given in regards to the north Serbian province of Vojvodina, with its sizable Hungarian population. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the constitutional authority Milosevic could use to control the regions. Secessionist forces were bound to start setting their own agenda.

Combined with this crisis was the economic downturn that was spreading like a plague from the Soviet Union and the CEE countries. With central planning a dismal failure, economies throughout the communist world were submerging with staggering rapidity. This hit Yugoslavia's trade-dependent economy especially hard, as her marginally competitive goods were no longer receiving the 'sympathy demand' which international politics had created for them until the 80s. The economic conditions in the country only made discontent worse, and most groups blamed the central government in Belgrade for not taking enough of a proactive economic policy, instead sticking to aging and ineffective socialist principles. The republics were determined to do something about it.

DECENT: 1990-1992

Having received an enormous amount of autonomy in the post-Tito era, but still feeling at a loss for control of their economic and political destinies, which were rapidly deteriorating under the monopoly of the central government in Belgrade, most of Yugoslavia's republics decided independence was the only solution. Croatia, containing a large Serb minority in several regions, was ill-prepared for what such a declaration would lead to. Her nationalist leader, Franjo Tudjman, had already spent his short term in office paying lip service to Croatian autonomy and independence, and gaining power through his blend of centralization of authority, ethno-nationalist doctrine, historical amnesia and anti-Serb rhetoric. Sensing that Croatian independence was imminent, leaders in Serb-held regions of Croatia declared independence from the republic themselves in March of 1991. This was hotly followed in Slovenia and by Tudjman.

Slovenia had many advantages in the drama of it all. A homogeneous population made more so by relative intolerance and assimilative government policy, Slovenia did not harbor the menace of majority-minority antagonism. Instead, just before their declaration, Slovenia's new democratic leaders nationalized the local territorial defense forces into a republican army, which was used to ward off the brief war with Belgrade that followed the formal independence declaration. The central government in Belgrade, led by Milosevic, realized that few interests remained in Slovenia for the Serbian people, and a blend of ethnic politics and practical public relations allowed Belgrade to leave the Slovenian matter behind them.(20)

Croatia was quite a different matter. With a large Serb population, which was quite concentrated into regional majorities, Milosevic maintained that Croatia had no right to secede so long as her Serbs remained committed to Belgrade. With Tudjman turning a blind eye to such arguments, leaders in the three regions in Croatia housing majority Serb populations (Krajina in the west, Western Slavonia in central Croatia and Eastern Slavonia in the east on Croatia's only frontier with Serbia) began a brutal campaign to consolidate their holdings and prevent the authorities in Zagreb (the Croatian capital) from successfully governing them or managing secession. This campaign consisted of forced expulsion and execution of Croatian inhabitants of the regions, as well as armed insurrection, aided by the central government in Belgrade. In response, Tudjman declared war on Yugoslavia in August of 1991, intensifying the conflict.

Two months later, the Muslim-led government of Bosnia-Hercegovina, which straddled an ethnically-mixed region of Yugoslavia between Croatia and Serbia but containing no true majority population, followed suit. In response to Serb paramilitary activity along the Croatian frontier and Belgrade's unwillingness to put a stop to it, Bosnia's democratic parliament voted for independence from Yugoslavia, followed by an escalation in Serb aggression. The aggression was in part easy to justify: because most other ethnic groups were housed in their respective republics (Slovenes in Slovenia, Croats in Croatia, Muslims in Bosnia, Macedonians in Macedonia, etc.), independence was seen as a positive move by the new republican governments, whom had won office on nationalist platforms.

But Bosnia was an unfortunate oddball. With no true dominant ethnic group, there was less of a nationalist platform upon which its leaders could justify independence. Croats, Serbs and Muslims were relatively equal (within a 15% range) in proportion of the population, with the Muslims holding the plurality within government, as well as dominating urban population centers. Most Croats supported Tudjman's ideal of a Greater Croatia which would include Bosnia's majority Croat regions, and most Serbs supported Milosevic's veiled attempts to hold Yugoslavia together as a representative of the Serb homeland ruled by the Keradjordjevic crown in the interwar dynasty. Unfortunately, both ideals were based upon a disregard for the Bosnian Muslims, and thus much of the violence which erupted at the beginning of 1992 was against the Muslim population.

Bosnia's secession was the true death knell for Yugoslavia. Ethnic hatreds were especially fueled by the inability of any group to conclude upon Bosnia's place in the new nationalist order. Intercommunal and paramilitary violence, supported both by the Croatian and Yugoslav armies, erupted with renewed fury after 1992's recognition of the newly independent states by most of the world. Floods of the war's refugees began knocking on Western Europe's doors, and Europe was persistently reluctant to take part in the conflict. Most governments of the West were hoping to content themselves with letting the wars burn, allowing ethnic cleansing to create a new geopolitical order for the region, subscribing to the popular 'fortress' mentality adopted by many of the Cold War's winners (as described earlier). Unfortunately, such a point of view did not serve well the interests of Germany, a country still managing an identity crisis of its own.

GERMANY AND THE YUGOSLAV CRISIS

Germany was a major trading partner with Yugoslavia, not least because of some concessions which the Cold War made necessary to those states who pretended that they couldn't decide which side they wanted to be on. In return for extending some semblance of freedom to his subjects, Tito gained access to German and other Western markets for the (few) goods capable of selling in them. In addition, Tito had managed to distance himself from the Soviet Union over the years, and had maintained a pro-Western presence in the Nonaligned Movement that prevented pro-Eastern states such as Cuba from tilting that organization's balance of power. During Tito's golden age in the 1970s, Germany had built a vital bilateral relationship with Yugoslavia, sharing numerous diplomatic and economic contacts. This relationship had managed to keep Yugoslavia's new leaders engaged with the West after Tito's death, as well, even as more staunch communists began to take the reigns in Yugoslavia and anti-Communists such as American President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began to stir up increased East-West intolerance.

TROUBLE IN THE BACK YARD

Germany had the unfortunate position as the West's forward player in this debacle. Her close bilateral ties were frayed beyond recognition by the time summer of 1991 arrived. Caught up in reintegrating the newly acceded eastern part of the nation, as well as opening the newest round of treaty talks with her European Community (EC) partners which would result several years later in the formation of the European Union, the last thing Germany needed was a war in the back yard. The course of the war, and Germany's response could both have been less chaotic, but a decade after the shock therapy began, Germany has begun to fit her new shoes rather well, if still awkwardly.

Germany was well aware of events as they unfolded in Yugoslavia. However, Germany's busy government had its own interpretation of its interests and how they applied in Yugoslavia's troubled territory. The economic crises throughout Europe from 1989-1992 were the most immediate of Germany's concerns, since the 1980s had seen a flood of German capital enter CEE states. Coupled with the rising tensions throughout the 1980s, Germany took a leading role in encouraging new constitutional reforms capable of dealing with the ethnic questions without destroying the state of Yugoslavia.(21) Far too much time has been spent by scholars searching for the roots of the Yugoslav crisis in German history and foreign policy, but the roots truly only lie in the paranoia of Yugoslavia's own inhabitants. Only the extent of the carnage and depth of the international consequences can to some extent be blamed upon German policy, but not what Germany did so much as what she failed to do.

GERMAN INTERESTS IN YUGOSLAVIA

Stability and continuity best describe most of Germany's foreign and defense policy aims throughout the decade. The first and foremost goal of Germany's Balkan policy was to stabilize the region. Germany's geopolitical dominance of the CEE region after the Soviet implosion left the seceding states of Yugoslavia appealing especially to her for legitimacy and support. German and other Western leaders initially supported dealing with Yugoslavia as a state even after the independence declarations in Slovenia and Croatia. However, a firm policy goal for Germany was to eliminate the chances of Serbia monopolizing the bilateral relationship. This was very difficult, however, since Slobodan Milosevic made it his firm policy to re-centralize federal government structures and deal unilaterally on behalf of Yugoslavia.

Germany tried to persuade Milosevic to restore the constitutional order that had separated and devolved power, and to renegotiate the federal power-sharing system into a more loosely-tied confederation. This appealed most to Macedonia and Bosnia, but not at all to Milosevic or the Serbs throughout Yugoslavia, since devolution of any kind would ultimately mean control by a non-Serb government. Slovenia and Croatia had initially appealed to Belgrade for a new confederal order, but such pleas fell on deaf ears, and Bosnia and Macedonia became more cautious about maintaining the federation if it meant becoming an even smaller minority amidst the Serbs once Slovenia and Croatia left.(22)

Few German officials could have predicted that Serbia's policies would have the violent implications they did. The diplomatic deadlock of early 1991 turned into outright hostility once formal declarations were extended by Croatia and Slovenia. Once the fighting began in Croatia's Serb-held areas, appeals by the Croat population of Germany became vehement, and German politicians began hammering out a policy plan for the emerging crisis.

This policy was based around Germany's traditional belief in diplomacy and non-invasive (mainly meaning non-military) solutions. Once initial attempts at bilateral talks for a constitutional solution had failed, Germany turned to the multilateral institutions in which she participated. With her EC partners, Yugoslavia became a hot topic in the EC treaty talks during 1991. Though most EC states were skeptical about intervening or recognizing the legitimacy of the seceding republics, German diplomats understood how vital it was to quiet the hostilities before they could erupt into war. Since bilateral talks had already proved worthless, Germany successfully secured an EC arms embargo and successive sanctions provisions as a means to threaten the combatants and bring them to the negotiating table. Unfortunately, by late summer of 1991, the violence had only escalated, and sanctions had begun starving the ordinary citizens of the least violent regions of Yugoslavia.

In an attempt to raise the pressure, the UN was called upon to follow EC sanctions with an international embargo. As before, this only made for more violence.(23) Germany and her partners were becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of progress, but Germany most of all. Still striving to be seen as a reliable player and responsible polity, German leaders were pointing out their responsibility to Yugoslavia's stability via historical and geographical ties: it was Germany's duty to respond swiftly to the crisis because German pre-War actions had resulted in the state of affairs in the Balkans; it was Germany's duty to defend human rights and ethnic atonement, both because of her own historical abuses of human rights and because, yet again, human rights were a constitutional mandate.(24) The violence which was escalating every day was seen by many German politicians as unacceptable, and the proximity of the instability was alarming, both because of the threat of floods of refugees washing over Germany's ailing welfare economy and the possibility that neighboring states, especially those which had yet to consolidate liberal regimes, may be drawn into the conflict.

COLD WAR TIMIDITY

Though German leaders had yet to threaten anything but diplomatic ostracism and economic penalties for the warring parties should they fail to come to the negotiating table, it was still more than most of the West was willing to do. However, it can generally be said that the biggest problem was, for the proximity of the violence and the repeated failures of German attempts to end it, that it took so long for Germany to take a more proactive stance. Most solutions before the Autumn of 1991 were merely grudging attempts to do anything which required more than a minimal effort for the West. Several EC-brokered cease-fires had been passed and ignored by the Serbs fighting in Croatia, and German policy-makers were finally beginning to muster up a more determined policy.

Sanctions had seemed to injure all parties except the Serb insurgents, and Milosevic was still preventing the three separtist republican governments (in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia) from coming to the table with Belgrade's. German Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl recognized this as an obvious attempt by the Serb administration to monopolize Yugoslavia's foreign relations, and his repeated appeals to his partners in the EC and CSCE were having no effect. Foreign ministers meeting at the CSCE in October, just after Bosnia had made her declaration, insisted that they had to continue negotiations to persuade Milosevic's government to disarm the militants in Croatia¯s and Bosnia's Serb-controlled regions. But such was the policy that every international body had been attempting for half of a year.

Initially, like most players, German policy makers saw little cause for concern with the political crisis that had broken out within the Yugoslav Federation by the late 1980s, before any large-scale violence. Germany acted entirely within the political confines of the EC, which would later be criticized for lack of insight as to how quickly the situation was to deteriorate and how slow the multilateral institutions of Europe, including NATO and the CSCE, were in addressing the conflict. German policy makers, like their American and European counterparts, saw Yugoslavia's problems primarily as economic, exacerbated by the inability of any successor to fill the void left by Tito.(25) Few statesmen or scholars predicted that the tensions would escalate with the rapidity of or to the degree with which they did, and thus few felt that a more assertive policy was necessary.

GERMANY'S PROACTIVE POLICY

Another EC-brokered cease-fire came and went with no effect on the conflicts, until finally on 15 November Chancellor Kohl proposed that the only way the West could end the Serb monopoly over Yugoslav politics and bring all parties to the negotiation table as equals would be to recognize the sovereignty of all the republics which desired it. This did not go well with Germany's partners, and received a bitter reply from Milosevic. Croatian president Tudjman used the opportunity to deepen his government's historical relationship with the wartime German puppet government, and for some reason only non-Croats found it offensive.

Germany worked diligently with her EC partners to secure a deal which would extend recognition to Slovenia and Croatia specifically, and any other republic that qualified generally, though most other EC leaders criticized her government for it. Whilst America, the Soviets and other EC partners believed recognition would lead to escalating violence and end any possibility of bringing Milosevic to the negotiating table, German leaders saw it more comprehensively. Most German policy-makers already understood that negotiating with Milosevic was not likely to change anything, and wished at the same time to seek a non-military solution. Kohl emphasized that only once Milosevic's fellow Yugoslavs had equal leverage would he possibly be willing to negotiate with them.(26) Under the current EC policy, Milosevic was the only player with any foreign policy clout. In addition, whilst Milosevic was unwilling to permit UN peace-keepers into Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia would be more cooperative once they were entitled to separate diplomatic relations.

Under intensifying German pressure, the EC set up a special committee to review each applicant republic's (there ended up being four: all but Montenegro expressed a desire to secede) qualifications for recognition. Most important was an EC mandate that any applicant given such legitimacy explicitly guarantee ethnic and minority rights in their constitutions. This would seem simple enough, but it was anything but. Slovenia and Macedonia, both the most peripheral of the Yugoslav republics, did not find it difficult to conform with the EC demands, and both met the constitutional test. Bosnia's government, on the other hand, was being wracked with in-fighting due to its lack of any dominant ethnic party. Constitutional negotiations in Bosnia remained at a standstill for the rest of 1991, and eventually disqualified the republic for the first round of recognition talks. Croatia's nationalist government refused to convene a constitutional session, since Tudjman and his followers were fearful that any sign of acquiescence to minority rights would be a sign to Serbs that they were willing to back down on their territorial claims to the Serb-held regions of Croatia and could mean a loss of political power among the most radical nationalist groups in the government.(27)

Thus, the EC was initially qualifying Slovenia and Macedonia, whom the EC was convinced had established verifiable constitutional protections for minorities. Though Croatia failed on this count, Germany was vehement that recognition should be extended to Croatia as a means of eliminating the Serbian hold on Croatian international representation, and thus providing that collateral Croatia could use to end the violence in her Serb-controlled regions. Additionally, Greece threatened to veto the EC move, since it saw Macedonia as threatening the region by preserving the imperial name associated with the Greek, Bulgarian and Serb territory. Consequently, Macedonia failed to receive recognition in the first round.

Croatia ultimately won recognition over Macedonia initially for three reasons. First, the EC-brokered cease-fire of 3 January 1992 between Croatia's army and the Serb militias (the 15th such cease-fire) actually held for the nearly two weeks preceding recognition. Second, the Serb parties lost their rights to fair treatment by the EC when one of their militias shot down a clearly marked helicopter carrying EC observers. And third, in a deal regarding provisions of the concurrently progressing Maastricht Treaty, Britain extended its support for Croatia in return for German agreement on its own pet issues regarding the treaty. This left France as the only major EC state clearly against Croatian recognition, who backed down quickly to lend unanimity to the final EC vote.(28)

Thus a second phase in Germany's Yugoslav policy process can be described as that phase during which German foreign policy became both the most assertive and most vilified. As the violence escalated and the political crisis within the Federation became a civil war, Germany was the first state to take the initiative. Most German leaders (and eventually most world leaders) saw the Yugoslav crisis as a result of Serb aggression and saw Serbia as exercising a monopoly over Yugoslav politics. Germany was first to assert that bringing the successor states to the diplomatic table as equal partners was vital, and eventually to insist that the most likely method of ending the violence would be to end the Serb monopoly over the politics of the successor states by recognizing their sovereignty. The recognition given to the successor states on 15 January 1992 was, rather than hasty, a delayed recognition of the obvious: that Yugoslavia was no longer the multiethnic state of Tito.(29) Rather than a unilateral German demand, it was a rather widespread global assertion that there was little still necessarily tying the states receiving recognition to the Yugoslavia claiming to represent them. The act of recognition was merely the most assertive action taken by Germany and her partners thus far in the crisis, greatly contrasting from earlier policy and, as it would turn out, from later.

UNILATERALISM OR OPTIMISM?

Many scholars have heaped scorn on Germany for her supposedly unilateral action in seeking independence for Slovenia and Croatia. Aleska Djilas,(30) sees German policy in the recognition debacle as intrinsically different from her Cold War variety. This is tied to an assertion that Germany will progressively outgrow the multilateral institutions in which she is currently a major player. Djilas is quick to point out the populist nature of historical German initiative, and correlates this with the reemergence of an initiative by the German government after the reliance upon allied security began to lose its necessity. In other words, rather than asserting that German foreign policy gives high priority to the stability of international and domestic peace and respect for human rights, as most literature implies, Djilas sees German policies as cyclically imperialistic, despite the lessons of history and latent fear of German power still existing throughout the international community.

Djilas states that "In the summer of 1991, Germany broke ranks with the United States and the European Community and began an intense campaign for the immediate and unconditional international recognition of Slovenia and Croatia...". However, such a statement is littered with distortions or contradictions of the historical facts as presented by the majority of authorities, as well as being somewhat simplifying. In fact, no state, least of all Germany, was willing to recognize Slovenia and Croatia when they first declared independence in June of 1991. Before their declarations, there was only small-scale political conflict and some inter-communal unrest. It was not until after declaring independence that the Serbian-dominated central government began to crack down aggressively upon the successor states, and Germany finally began to favor recognition as a last-ditch effort to end the violence in late fall of that year. In addition, Germany never "broke ranks" with her allies, instead merely being one of the more proactive partners in the numerous multilateral institutions that were endeavoring to deal with the crisis. Germany had the most to lose among the big powers, being closest geographically and having the most economic ties with the region. Thus assertiveness was to be expected. Finally, Germany desired neither immediate nor unconditional recognition of the successor states. Timely recognition was desirable primarily because of the escalating conflict, but the German government stuck with the EC timetable. Although few norms existed to determine what qualifies a state for independence, the EC bodies created important formulas designed to ensure the viability and stability of the states being recognized, and Slovenia and Croatia were forced to accept numerous conditions and limitations in order to qualify for recognition.

The German government itself was not quite unitary enough to accomplish such specific aims, and the multilateral institutions of Europe are not so susceptible to manipulation by a state still seen by most as a second-class member. However, what Djilas does make evident is that the false sense of security which recognition brought forth proved the death knell for a nation and yet failed to be the true watershed in post-Cold War German policy which it seemed likely to be at the time. In a sense, the energy expended by German leaders in obtaining Slovenian and Croatian independence was wasted in light of the fact that the goal of such a policy was an end to the violence. Thus "unilateral" does not describe the German policies toward Yugoslavia in 1991 as well as does "optimistic." Perhaps Yugoslavia was destined to die; should that excuse hastening the death and then running scared whilst the corpse festers?

THE FAILURE OF DIPLOMACY

Thus describes the third phase, where Germany's policy retreated back into the timid bubble of the Cold War era. When the recognition of the successor states failed to end the violence, most multilateral institutions at last saw that no other option remained but to deploy military forces in the successor states to enforce security and stop the war. Not only did the German public recognize that this could result in casualties, but it was made even more unpopular by the constitutional debate which deploying such forces sparked. German politicians agreed to maintain a strong diplomatic role and to allow Germans to participate as unarmed observers, but this only promised Germany a back-seat role, and the crisis intervention was soon yet another American-led effort in Europe.(31) Once the realization set in that diplomacy would not be enough, Germany retreated to her Cold War posture as an Allied protectorate, failing to accept the role she had already established for herself as a World Power by leading the international community into an engaging position with the Former Yugoslavia. Although such behavior was entirely consistent with the continued adherence to political interdependence, it was inconsistently employed, and left its mark in the inability of multilateral institutions to be their most effective and efficient throughout the following years, as the conflict moved south. Such a policy reversal damaged Germany's reputation and set back Germany's ascendancy to a position as Europe's leader for many years thereafter.

BOSNIA AND ITS AFTERMATH

The war in Bosnia from 1992-1995 can best be summed up as a set-back for civilization in general. It was the product of paranoia of both the warring factions and the Western arbitrators. Upon the 1992 recognition if Bosnia-Hercegovina's independence, all three major ethnic parties began an assault upon each other for the rights to dominate the new state. Tudjman's ambitions for a greater Croatia lent support for Croatian ethnic cleansing, especially of ethnic Muslims, in the western half of the republic. A fear of being cut off from their fellow Serbs in Serbia proper led ethnic Serbs to step up their revolt in Croatia and north-east Bosnia. Any diplomacy fell by the wayside, and a large-scale war was underway by the time summer arrived.

At this point, the lack of any diplomatic solutions on the horizon had led Germany to once again take a back seat among her NATO partners. The constitutional debate regarding out-of-area deployment of the Bundeswehr scuppered any possibility of Germany accepting a major role in the peacekeeping forces which were soon to be approved for the region under the United Nation's auspices. Unfortunately, this renewed timidity most likely contributed to the ineffectiveness of that peacekeeping mission.

UN peace-keepers were sent in, led by NATO, in the late Spring of 1995, after numerous false starts and empty threats or promises. The West was still absorbed in a fear that had haunted them for two years: that they were protecting a Muslim state. The Serb and Croat parties took delight in exacerbating those fears. Both Serbs and Croats appealed their alarm that the Muslims in Bosnia were endeavoring to gain independence from Yugoslavia in order to form an Islamist polity, and this sparked a natural fear of fundamentalism in the West that delayed many negotiations and UN actions. What was never addressed was the fact that most ethnic Muslims in Bosnia were in fact southern Slavs of Serbo-Croat descent, who spoke the same language as their fellow Yugoslavs and few practiced a traditional Muslim lifestyle.

Western hesitation allowed the ethnic cleansing of Muslims to carry on, and Tudjman and Milosevic began to entertain realistic hopes that a new ethno-political order might be arranged to eliminate Bosnia and result in a division of its territory into Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia. Some Western leaders in fact advocated allowing the war to carry on in order to eventually arrive at this solution and therefore end the need for negotiations or subsequent wars. Unfortunately, such an outcome would result in the extermination of the Bosnian Muslims; an unacceptable price for many statesmen. Thus, once peace-keepers went in, they were a reluctant blend of grudging Western powers, led by America and intent on seeing a quick end to the conflict, however painful it may be. "Safe areas" were set up in several cities, most of them with Muslim majorities, as a means of creating zones of demilitarization. One of these were Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims were subsequently massacred, right under the UN's 'watchful eyes'.

Germany's insistence on a back-seat role for the extent of the worst of the conflict in Bosnia meant that she had little say in how the multilateral bodies handled the situation. One primary reason for Germany's continued timidity was that deploying the Bundeswehr outside of the NATO area was believed to be political suicide for most German leaders. Most cited that the Basic Law's provisions prohibiting military aggression and war meant that foreign deployment was impossible. However, no such constitutional debate had ever been formally turned over to Germany's judges.

This changed in July of 1994 when, under more vehement international pressure than ever before, as well as the increased popular outcry over the seemingly endless violence transpiring in Bosnia, the constitutional court recommended that the Bundeswehr participate in full capacity with her allies in any operation it was called upon to perform, including those outside the NATO area.

Unfortunately, America had already taken up much of the responsibility for arbitrating the conflict, and only after the American-brokered Dayton agreements in late 1995 did the Kohl government finally decide to contribute to the implementation force, with more than just money and materiel, to the tune of 4,000 troops. Such a move, though refreshing and desperately needed at the time, was too late to give Germany the leading role needed to carry on developing a role as Europe's leading power, and far too late for the tens-to-hundreds of thousands of lives which could have been spared had she continued her proactive policies initiated in 1991.(32)

German citizens and politicians failed Bosnia. Though Germany had spent most of 1991 trying to prove her foreign policy initiative and clout among her allies, and gained some respect (despite the criticism) for it, such a policy was not sustained after recognition of the successor states alone failed to secure an end to the fighting. Three years of debate and domestic negotiation finally delivered German troops to the war zone to implement what would turn out to be a relatively successful peace treaty, but the fact that it was too little too late would be hard to overlook. These failures in Bosnia would in fact contribute to yet another rather ill-conceived chapter in the evolution of Germany's geopolitical future: NATO's war in Kosovo.

KOSOVO

Strangely enough, once Dayton had been implemented, one heard relatively little about Yugoslavia for two years. Sanctions against what was left of the country (Serbia and Montenegro) remained in place by the UN contingent upon the handing over of war criminals. Milosevic maintained his power despite now having the most multiethnic state left in the Former Yugoslavia. His nationalism turned to populism, as the ailing Serbian economy became a much more important worry than any remaining delusions of a future Greater Serbia.

German troops were in Bosnia, but Germany remained a secondary player in post-Bosnia international relations. This continued to be America's endeavor. France and Britain even shouldered a much heavier burden in Bosnia and other UN mandated areas (principally Macedonia and Eastern Slavonia in Croatia) than did Germany. The reasons for this were relatively straight-forward: continued lack of domestic support for any extensive foreign use of the Bundeswehr, diminishing funding for military operations, as the federal budget continued to be siphoned off by reunification policies, and a lack of political will to defend the human rights causes Germany had been such a vehement advocate for merely five years or so before.

The picture began to change in 1998. America was beginning to talk tougher with Yugoslav President Milosevic (his term as Serbia's president hand ended, and he duly acceded to the federal presidency), whose army had been stepping up its campaign against Albanian separatists in the southern province of Kosovo. The most oppressive warfare yet began toward the end of Summer in 1998, and America was among the few Western powers who dutifully sought to pressure Milosevic to find a diplomatic solution to the Kosovo problem, ideally to restore the province's autonomy and cease the harassment of ethnic Albanian civilians.

By November of 1998, as such calls went unheeded, even America's nay-sayers (led by France and Russia) began to realize the brutality of the military operations being waged by Serbs in Kosovo. The trickle of Albanian refugees became a stream, and NATO threatened air-strikes on Serb military targets in Kosovo if they refused to accept a cease-fire in lieu of a new round of diplomatic negotiations. Such threats worked, and by early 1999, Serbian and Albanian leaders were brought together for talks at Rambouillet in France, where a peace deal was tabled which would have provided for a withdrawal of Serb troops from the province, disarming of the Kosovar militias (UCK) and the stationing of a Bosnia-style international peace-keeping force led by NATO. After numerous haggles, and a turnover in the Kosovar leadership, the Abanians accepted the deal. The Serbs rejected it. NATO started bombing.(33)

THE NEW GERMAN GOVERNMENT AND KOSOVO

For all intents and purposes, this was an American war. America was contributing the bulk of the firepower and air power (which is unsurprising, since no European power could match America's projective capability), with Britain and France edging for second place. However, the new German government was intent on raising German foreign policy from the ashes of the pre-Bosnian fiasco. The new Chancellor of the "Red-Green" coalition (a joining of the center-left Social Democrats and the Green party), Gerhard Schroeder, was caught on television several times giving pro-NATO pep talks, which did seem to tilt public opinion towards support for the allied effort, even if only slightly. Anyway, questioning the bombing after it had already been initiated would be foolish.

Whether the air strikes were the wisest decision is what was questionable. Empty threats had been a call sign endemic of the Yugoslav crisis, and American President Bill Clinton was ill-prepared to face yet another round of criticism for all-talk diplomacy. Support among alliance members varied, but the consensus was that victory was the only exit strategy. Most governments had agreed that the Rambouillet accords were the most realistic and flexible plan yet put forth, since they would have ended Serb brutality against the Albanian majority in the province, but diligently maintained the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia for at least the near future.

Germany's new Green Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, wholeheartedly supported the idea, to the derision of many in his party. His campaigning for NATO also won support with many of their number however, and the government managed to remain united that Germany must maintain solidarity with Europe's other major powers (Britain and, refreshingly, France were immensely supportive) and America, and see that Milosevic accepted the Rambouillet deal. One of Fischer's foremost feats was a campaign to obtain Russian participation, which highlighted the importance of Germany's geopolitical position in the Western alliance: geography and a strong bilateral relationship with Russia could result in Russia pushing its weight about with the Serbs.(34)

This was more wishful thinking than anything else, however. Germany remained a cheque-book player for most of the bombing campaign. The Luftwaffe managed a few sorties, but it was still a war fought overwhelmingly with American firepower. After the campaign hit its third month, the hawks and the doves in the German government began to divide the coalition. The most likely explanation for the extensive time it took before Milosevic succumbed is likely the foolhardy decision not to promise a ground war if the air war were not enough. Perhaps Milosevic believed he could hold out long enough to divide NATO (which he very nearly did), since he knew he did not face the threat of a land invasion. Regardless, air power alone could have failed to win the day for many more months had a last-ditch effort by Russian and EU delegates not managed to secure the compromise it did.

A BUNGLED WAR

And compromise it was. The Serbs remained uncommitted to the Rambouillet accords, instead withdrawing from Kosovo entirely. Rather than allowing NATO peace-keepers to station throughout Serbia and Yugoslavia, Kosovo alone was divided into occupation zones among the major NATO powers, with Russia and other powers having scattered responsibilities throughout the province. America had only a small sector, with Britain, France and Germany contributing the lion's share.

The costs of the war seem few now that it is over, and most Western politicians see it as a mild success. Milosevic charged with war crimes, Serbian troops removed, Albanian majority restored. That's not what it seemed whilst it was underway, however. Quickly after the war had been initiated, Serbian troops began a brutal offensive that emptied the province of most of its ethnic Albanian population. The United States began to run alarmingly short of a local supply of her most effective ammunition, and domestic politics did not help. America's bungled delivery of 24 anti-tank helicopters symbolized the alliance's ill-preparedness for the war, and probably gave Milosevic the piece of mind he needed to hold out that much longer.

Then came the numerous errors and misfires. The Chinese embassy in Belgrade was the most infamous, but more horrible were the hundreds, possibly thousands of Albanian and Serb civilians who lost their lives due to not-accurate-enough "smart bombs." Such firepower perhaps gave the West too much confidence for her own good. The endgame was the result of American military bungling and European diplomatic bungling.

THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF NATIONAL INTEREST

The fact that Germany's policy in Yugoslavia was inconsistently formulated and inconsistently executed give even more validity to the dominance of political interdependence in that policy. Rather than choosing quick, decisive and unilateral effort which would serve immediate nationalist political outcomes, Germany¯s politicians and citizens had to keep in mind the true stakes at hand. In fact, the issue was far less a concern for Yugoslavia or her citizens, as much as a concern for Germany¯s place in her alliances and the economic hazards of doing nothing. The fact that Germany was interdependent with her allies and trading partners demonstrated the prickly importance of all activity in concert with and opposition to those allies and partners. Unilateralism, as always, was not an option, first and foremost because Germany was not sovereign or independent enough of a state to act unilaterally. Instead, the opinions and effects of national policy had to be weighed with the opinions and effects of all parties involved, where those parties were in any way tied to Germany's organizational or alliance structures.

In a way, this makes the Yugoslav conflict a success story despite its miserable record. Because no single country (save perhaps the US, who also was unwilling to act unilaterally) would be capable of addressing all of Yugoslavia's issues, it was necessary for the most important players to deal with the matter in cooperation with all of their fellow interdependent states. This makes for a slow policy process, and the outcomes may be for the most part compromises. However, it demonstrates the immense impact which political, economic and military interdependence have had upon the running of today's industrialized nations.

Which brings up whether Germany's participation reflected a true concern for her international obligations to NATO, Europe, and her constitutionally-mandated respect for human rights, or merely national interest and international expectations. Germany's post-Kosovo behavior seems more closely linked to her domestic concerns about the plight of Europe's security identity and how she will measure national interest in the future. Although often turning a blind eye to the new victims of Kosovo's ethnic order (the Serbs), Germany's leaders have at last achieved some semblance of a foreign policy that displays both German primacy in Europe and a concern for something broader. Supporting the operation in spite of its defiance of the UN showed that maintaining a viable and purposeful NATO was important for the West.

The aftermath of Kosovo has yet to support such a claim, however. Joschka Fischer has sternly condemned such ethnic populism as that advocated by Milosevic for "Greater Serbia" as no different from Hitler's calls for a "Greater Germany."(35)

GERMANY IN AN INTERDEPENDENT EUROPE

Which draws us to our maze of conclusions. This survey of German foreign and security policy has endeavored to draw two key points: first, that German national interests are indeed transforming as Germany becomes a more pivotal regional and global player, and second, that the world must avoid over-scrutinizing that national interest merely because of misplaced fears that German liberalism is in danger. In this case, liberalism is most synonymous with interdependence. Here, it can be represented by Germany's spotless Cold war record and frustrated but commendable post-unification record. No other nation in or out of the Western alliance can claim such a deep commitment to demilitarization, disarmament, and internationalism. Few other nations so vehemently see themselves less as a unitary actor than as a partner and ally. And as Europe continues to evolve into a much more cohesive actor on the world stage, Germany's role will be vital in making Europe a better place.

The evolution of the European Union is itself a result of an interdependent theoretical foundation, and Germany's commitments to such a philosophy will most likely provide the momentum Europe needs to continue the integration process. Although numerous countries remain nervous about what a Europe led by Germany rather than France will be like, few are overly alarmed. Although Germany does have certain geopolitical options available to it outside of the European Union today, most of them focus on the Europe of the future. Filling the void left by the Soviet presence in Central and Eastern Europe has come rather naturally for German leaders and Businesses, who now act almost hegemonically in the new markets to their east. But to extend this to predictions of a new unilateral Germany is to ignore the past half century, along with the confidence among her allies which Germany has worked so hard for. Germany does have a strong interest in her national security, but the consensus among Germans is that that security is best managed in a united Europe, a united West, and an institution-building world. What's more, a Europe with Germany at the reigns may prove both more interesting and more feasible than the previous one dominated by France. Germany's liberal (in the Anglo-American sense) credentials put France's to shame, in fact, since Germany has learned so much from history. Where France maintains a chauvinist desire to export her culture and centralize Europe, Germany understands the importance of devolution, and where France wishes to build a protectionist, unitary Europe, Germany is much more likely to integrate Europe into a more stable global order and support a freer economy, since such an alliance mentality served her so well during the Cold War, and because Germans tend to be the ones levied with the costs of Euro-protectionism.(36)

If this makes other world powers nervous, it's something Germany will have to get used to. If it becomes an excuse to ride the alliance coat-tails for another decade or two, Europe as a whole will suffer. Without a proactive Germany working for greater interdependence, via integration and regional stabilization, as she has in the past, the applicant CEE states will be left alone waiting for an increasingly xenophobic West to let them in, even after the West spent forty years telling them to knock down the iron curtain. This could set back the European project for decades, if not put it in jeopardy altogether. Germany is the best qualified entity to see in the new millennium as a vital player in Europe and for Europe; not, as the more paranoid commentators would have us believe, in spite of Europe.

Notes:

(1) (Boston: Little Brown, 1977).

(2) Realism is used here to describe the theory that governments act exclusively in the interest of national power relative to their neighbors and other comparable nations, as unitary actors in a system of international anarchy. See Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th edition (New York: Knopf, 1973).

(3) Robert Gilpin, "Three Ideologies of Political Economy," in Kendal Stiles, ed., International Political Economy: A Reader (Harper Collins, 1991), 5.

(4) Before the industrial revolution, Smith realized that the nationalistic policies of Britain at that time were restricting the growth of industry and urbanization, keeping the aristocracy in power and preventing the emergence or empowerment of the industrialists. Thus, Smith's ideas spear-headed a revolution which shifted the balance of power from the rural agriculturalists to the urban industrialists.

(5) To interdependence theorists, local variation is due to local inequalities in balances of trade. If all regions traded equally, liberal economics suggests that all regions would eventually be the same both culturally & economically (eg. 'McWorld').

(6) As evidenced by the ongoing quarrels between the US and EU.

(7) For instance, Syria's participation, as well as the almost unanimous agreement of the Arab world to side with the West, and the continued condemnation by most Arab leaders of the behavior of Iraq's government.

(8) In Robert B. Reich, 'Who is Us?' in Marc A Genesh, ed., Conflict and Cooperation: Evolving Theories of International Relations (Harcourt Brace Publishing, 1996), 219-220, it becomes odd to speak of something as 'made in America' when in fact components of a product bearing such a label can come from anywhere in the world, and the label speaks rather of the location of the manufacturer's corporate offices or the place from which the product is packaged, assembled or shipped from.

(9) Cited in "A Work in Progress: A Survey of Europe," Economist, 353 (23 October 1999), S6

(10) Chapter II, Article 26; Chapter VIII, Article 87a and 87b; and Chapter Xa, 'Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, available from "http://www.hsrc.ac.za/constitutions/gercontents.html"; Internet; accessed 6 December 1999.

(11) "Germany," unless otherwise stated or implied in the text, refers to the Federal Republic during the Cold War.

(12) Chapter II, Article 24 and 25; Chapter VIII; Chapter Xa, 'Constitution of the FRG.'

(13) John S. Duffield, World Power Forsaken: Political Culture, International Institutions and German Security Policy After Unification (Standord: Stanford University Press, 1998), 5.

(14) Ibid., 177.

(15) Lothar Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defense Policy After Unification (New York: Pinter, 1994), 84.

(16) Michael Libal, Limits of Persuasion: Germany and the Yugoslav Crisis, 1991-1992 (Westport: Praeger, 1997), 3.

(17) "A Work in Progress," S1.

(18) Sabrina P. Ramet, "Yugoslavia," in Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture, and Society Since 1939, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), 160.

(19) Slavenka Drakulic, Cafe Europa: Life After Communism (New York: WW Norton, 1997), 23.

(20) "A Ghost of a Chance: A Survey of the Balkans," Economist, 352 (24 January 1998), S5.

(21) Libal, 3.

(22) Ibid., 6.

(23) Ibid., 74.

(24) Chapter I, Article 1, 'Constitution of the FRG.'

(25) Hans W. Maull, "Germany and the Yugoslav Crisis," in Survival 37 (n. 4, Winter 1995-6), 101.

(26) Libal, 84.

(27) Ibid, 85.

(28) 'Wreckognition,' Economist, 322 (18 January 1992), 48.

(29) Maull, "Germany and the Yugoslav Crisis," 104.

(30) Aleska Djilas, "Germany's Policy Toward the Disintegration of Yugoslavia," in Steven E. Hanson and Willfried Spohn, eds., Can Europe Work? Germany and the Reconstruction of Postcommunist Societies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 151-167.

(31) Maull, "Germany and the Yugoslav Crisis," 112.

(32) Duffield, World Power Foresaken, 215-216.

(33) "Did Clinton Think It Through?" Economist, 353 (3 April 1999), via http://www.economist.com, Internet.

(34) "Germany and Kosovo," Economist, 353 (24 April 1999), via http://www.economist.com , Internet.

(35) "Joscka Fischer, a Sterner Shade of Green," Economist, 353 (15 May 1999), via http://www.economist.com, Internet.

(36) "A Work in Progress," S6