Wars and armed conflicts in Slovenia's immediate security environment
In the 20th century Slovenia was subjected to three armed conflicts
that directly threatened its security (World War I, World War II and
the War of Independence). In the preceding centuries Slovenia was
exposed to an even greater number of wars. From the statistics on current armed conflicts around the
world it can be concluded that military threats to security in the
time following the Cold War are becoming ever more present, and only
modern, economically developed democratic societies do not make use of
this mutually destructive means of solving problems between
themselves. Today, Slovenia's immediate security environment,
South-Eastern Europe, remains Europe's focal crisis point.
The Yugoslav crisis - with its episodes in Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia - represented a sort of microcosm in
which the new post-war European security arrangement was shaped. Each
country that wished to preserve and play a significant role in
ensuring security in Europe wanted to confirm this through crisis
management in the former Yugoslavia. This even held true for
international organisations that used their presence to build
credibility in what became known as the new security environment. The
UN
thus tested the doctrine of cooperation with regional security
organisations in Europe for the first time in the former
Yugoslavia. The
Western
European Union, with its first operations in this area,
transformed itself from a "sleeping beauty" into a strategic
international organisation. It was precisely in the Balkans that
NATO first intervened outside the territory
of its member states, in the form of maritime inspection operations
upholding the embargo on arms and military equipment for the former Yugoslav
republics (together with the Western European Union), air observation
of the flight ban in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, the offer of air
support to UNPROFOR, which was continually experiencing difficulties,
organising and coordinating IFOR,
SFOR and
KFOR, the carrying
out of the "Allied Force" air operation against Yugoslavia,
etc. Not least of all, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE) also became institutionalised in the form of an
organisation with permanently accredited ambassadors and a secretariat
(the OSCE) because of the needs for a greater contribution to the
resolution of the Yugoslav crisis.
For more information, see
http://www.osce.org/field_activities/.
One of the fundamental lessons of the Yugoslav crises emerges from
the incapacity of individual security organisations to resolve a
crisis alone. Thus the initially unsuccessful engagement of the
European Union in preventing the outbreak of armed conflicts compelled
the UN to take on a greater role in the region The inability of
UNPROFOR to monitor the Adriatic Sea as well as the airspace above
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, to protect the "safe areas"
inside Bosnia-Herzegovina, and so on created a greater need for the
inclusion of NATO in crisis management in this region. It was show
that, for successful crisis management, it is necessary to find and
use an appropriate combination of international non- military and
military (UN, NATO) apparatus. From the point of view of the UN, which
after the Cold War was confronted with the growth of armed conflicts
around the world and a corresponding increase in the number of
peacekeeping operations, any kind of effective military or
non-military crisis resolution on the part of organisations for
regional security or collective defence was very welcome.
The disintegration of Yugoslavia did not contribute to shaping an
effective security alliance among the countries of South-Eastern
Europe, which could have brought a stop to the continued development
of armed conflicts. It was a long time before Western Europe and its
security mechanisms began to seriously participate in resolving this
crisis. It was only the Dayton Accord that established a foundation
for a new security arrangement in this area, which however did not
prevent the start of new crises in Kosovo and in Macedonia as well.
The fact that European countries are contributing nearly all of their
peacekeepers to this region is not contributing to its long-term
stabilisation. The question of when the international community will
withdraw and what will then happen remains unclear. Currently in the
region there are a number of more or less definite conflicts that
could, with escalation, even become true military threats to
security. With this in mind it is necessary to point to the on-going
border dispute between Greece and Turkey, the issue of the future
status of Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the problematic
Romanian-Hungarian and Romanian-Moldovan relations, the question of a
lasting solution between Croatia and Yugoslavia to the issue of the
Prevlaka Peninsula, the problem of repatriation of refugees to all
former conflict areas, the Macedonian-Greek and Macedonian-Bulgarian
problems, and so on.
|
