[ SEE books ]

Two new books that sound interesting, from Balkan Academic News (Book Notes 1/2005):

Heinz Loquai, Der Kosovo-Krieg--Wege in einen vermeidbaren Krieg. Die Zeit von Ende November 1997 bis März 1999 [The Kosovo War--The Roads to a Avoidable War]. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000, 183 pp. 22.5 EUR, ISBN 3-789-06681-8 (softcover).

Heinz Loquai, a retired German general, who was based with the OSCE in Vienna, wrote this polemical study on the period leading up to the Kosovo war shortly after the war. This is not, however, an insiders account of efforts to prevent the war. His more recent study Weichenstellungen für einen Krieg. Internationales Krisenmanagement und die OSZE im Kosovo-Konflikt seems to incorporate more personal experiences. Loquai in this volume instead seeks to suggest that the war in Kosovo was inevitable, but US and German policies precluded successful alternative strategies. While documented in some detail, this book is largely frustrating to the reader in regard to some crucial questions. While he claims that international organizations were anti-Serbian in their orientation due to atrocities committed by the Serb side in Bosnia (p. 149), he does not discuss whether suspicions over the intentions of the Milosevic were not maybe justified. There can be little doubt that many attempts at negotiations with the Milosevic regime in the year leading up to the war in Kosovo were half-hearted and at time disingenuous. At the same time, and Loquai oscillates here between acknowledging that the regime was not ready to negotiate and merely criticizing its strategy for 'provoking' the war. The key with making the war avoidable lay with the Milosevic regime, not with NATO. As such, the book avoids some of the crucial questions, which are admittedly still hard to research to limited access to the internal mechanisms of the Milosevic regime.

Loquai rightly identifies some of the distortions by Western, especially German, decision-makers in the period leading up to the war, which are in need of critical scrutiny. As polemic against the war in Kosovo, the book however lacks to the critical distance to be truely engaging and balanced.
Florian Bieber

Anton Kumer, Miroslav Polzer and Anselm Skuhra (eds), Europäisierung versus Nationalismus. Der ex-jugoslawische Raum auf der Such nach Stabilität. Peter Lang: 2000, 214 pp., 38 EUR, ISBN 3-631-35885-7 (softcover).

This collection of essays, largely based on contributions to a conference in Austria in 1999, formulates the key dilemma for the region the alternative between European Integration and the persistence of nationalism. Indeed much progress has been made towards Europeanization, as the key instrument mentioned in the book, the Stability Pact, has been largely eclipsed by closer and more direct links to the EU.

Of the 11 chapters, four examine regional aspects (clash of civilizations, gender studies, EU foreign policy and regional cooperation), while among the others chapter there is a clear emphasis on the successes, i.e. Slovenia (national question, EU integration), and the most problematic case at least at the time Serbia (European perspectives, the status of Roma, Kosovo and a historical retrospective). While the book is suffering from the general problem of most edited volumes with contributions uneven in style, approach and quality, and furthermore is relatively dated due to the timely topic of the book, some articles remain interesting. Zoran Lutovac examines the view of European integration in Serbia through opinion polls which offers an insightful overview over the degree of isolation and self-isolation. Also worth mentioning is the article on “Serbia and Europe”. Here Arnold Suppan traces the tensions between European orientation and nationalism in Serbia in the 20th century. Finally, Anton Kumer's article, including its strong theoretical emphasis, on the Slovenian nationalism in the later 1980s and early 1990s is instructive on the evolution of contemporary national movements.
Florian Bieber