The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect

458 Pages·45.118 MB·English

by  George F. Kennan

The
Other
A 1913 Carnegie Endowment
Inquiry in Retrospect
with a New Introduction
and Reflections on the
Present Conflict by George F. Kennan

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The
Other
A 1913 Carnegie Endowment
Inquiry in Retrospect
with a New Introduction
and Reflections on the
Present Conflict by George F. Kennan
Wars
A CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT BOOK
Copyright©1993bythe
CARNEGIEENDOWMENTFORINTERNATIONALPEACE
2400NStreet,N.W.,Washington,DC20037
Allrightsreserved
Introduction
TheBalkanCrises: 1913and 1993
Copyright ©1993byGeorgeF. Kennan
Allrightsreserved
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
InternationalCommissiontoInquireintotheCausesand
ConductoftheBalkanWars.
TheotherBalkanwars: 1914CarnegieEndowment Report
oftheInternationalCommissionto Inquireintothe
CausesandConductofthe BalkanWars/ introduction
with reflectionson thepresentconflict
byGeorgeF. Kennan.
p.cm.
"ACarnegieEndowmentbook"
Originallypublished: ReportoftheInternationalCommissionto
InquireintotheCausesandConductoftheBalkanWars:
TheEndowment, 1914.
ISBN0-87003-032-9(pbk.) $15.95
1. Balkan Peninsula—History—Warof1912-1913.
I. Kennan,George Frost, 1904— . II. InternationalCommissionto
Inquire intotheCausesandConductoftheBalkanWars. III.Title.
DR46.I63 1993
949.6—dc20
93-19720
CIP
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CopyEditor: StephanieTerry
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The Carnegie EndowmentforInternational Peace
The Carnegie Endowment was founded in 1910 by Andrew Carnegie to
promote international peace and understanding. To that end the Endow-
ment conducts programs ofresearch, discussion, publication and education
in international affairs and American foreign policy. The Endowment also
publishes the quarterlyjournal Foreign Policy.
As a tax-exempt operating foundation, the endowment maintains a
professional staffofSenior and Resident Associates who bring to their work
substantial firsthand experience in foreign affairs. Through writing, public
and media appearances, Congressional testimony, participation in confer-
ences, and other means, the staffengages the major policy issues ofthe day in
ways that reach both expert and general audiences. Accordingly the Endow-
ment seeks to provide a hospitable umbrella under which responsible analysis
and debate may be civilly conducted, and it encourages Associates to write
and speak freely on the subjects oftheir work. The Endowment serves as a
forum for discussion and debate, and policy consultation, and from time to
time issues reports ofcommissions or study groups.
The Endowment normally does not take institutional positions on public
policy issues and funds its activities principally from its own resources,
supplemented by other non-governmental, philanthropic sources ofsupport.
TheOtherBalkanWars /Hi
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iv / TheOtherBalkanWars
Preface
I
>n November 1992, I read a "Letter
from Bosnia" in the New Yorker magazine, which chronicled the horrors of
Serbian"ethniccleansing." Thearticleledoffwithaquotationfromareportthat
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released in 1914 on this
century's first Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913. 1 knew about the report but had
never read it.
I retrieved a copy from the Endowment's archives, along with other docu-
mentationindicatingthatNewYorkTimesdispatchesandinterviewsinJuly1913
describedterribleatrocitiesoccurringintheBalkans. Thoseaccountsprompted
Nicholas Murray Butler, one of the Endowment's leaders and president of
Columbia University, to send an urgent telegram to the president ofthe Board
ofTrustees, Elihu Root, then a U.S. senator and formerly secretary ofwar and
secretaryofstate. "AmazingchargesofBulgarianoutragesattributedtotheKing
ofGreece," Butler told Root, "give us great opportunity for prompt action. If
youapproveIwillsendnotablecommissionatonceto Balkanstoascertainfacts
and to fix responsibility for prolonging hostilities and committing outrages.
Please reply. today ifpossible."
..
Root approved by midnight. In a remarkablyshort span oflittle more than
a month, an International Commission ofInquiry was on its way to Belgrade.
WhenthesecondBalkanwarendedaweeklater,theinquiryturnedinto astudy
ofthe "causes and conduct" ofthe two wars.
Readingthatcommission'sreportconvincedmethatothersshouldalsohave
an opportunity to read it. It is a document with many stories to tell us in this
twilightdecadeofthetwentiethcentury,whenyetagainaconflictintheBalkans
tormentsEuropeandtheconscienceoftheinternationalcommunity,andwhen
our willingness to act has not matched our capacity for moral outrage.
IdonotknowexactlywhyGeorgeKennanagreedsoreadilywhenIaskedhim
togive contextandperspectivetothosestoriesbywritinganewintroduction to
the original report. I know only that he did so with dispatch that rivals Elihu
Root's, andthatweallnowbenefitfromhisinsight,hissuresenseofhistory,and
his felicitous literary style.
Kennan'sintroductionliftsoursightswhileloweringourexpectations. In its
— —
final pages, he focuses our attention as it must eventuallybe focused not on
tomorrow or the next day, but on what must be done in the former Yugoslavia
afterthe present hostilities havecome to an end. The "very uglyproblem in this
TheOtherBalkanWan /i
southeastern part ofthe European continent" will not go away, Kennan warns.
Will we then muster the political will to do what we have been unable to do in
the midst of conflict? Our expectations about the virulence of the postwar
environmentintheBalkansneedstobeclear-headed.Theferocityofthepresent
warwill scar and embitter all peoples ofthe Balkans, alreadylongburdened by
the history that Kennan obliges us to remember.
Regrettably,thepostwarproblemsthathetrenchantlydiscussesmaybesome
time coming. The first two Balkan wars, for all their savagery, were mercifully
brief. But a malignant nationalism still dominates the leaders of the present
Balkan states, much as it did their predecessors in the then new Balkan states
eightyyearsago.NooneknowswhenthecurrentBalkanwarwillendorwhether
it will spread. Many anticipate strife and simmering violence to continue until
exhaustion or political upheavals transform Serbia and Croatia. The driving
ambition to create a greater Serbia, a factor in those earlier wars, could again
today engulfMacedonia and totally change Kosovo's ethnic makeup.
AstaffmemberinElihu Root'sEndowment,afterreadingincomingdraftsof
this report, confided to a colleague that hewas "feelingconsiderablydepressed.
Itseemsimpossiblethatsuchthingsasarerelated...canhaveoccurredinthe20th
Century." Indeed, the illusions at that far end ofthis century seem simple in
retrospect. But were they anysimpler than the illusions accompanying the end
oftheColdWar,when even thosewho foresawthebreakupofYugoslaviadared
not imagine "in the twentieth century" that the breakup could be so incompre-
hensibly violent and tragic?
Ifcontemporary readers are sobered and enlightened by what they read in
thisvolume,thentheEndowmentwillhavedoneaservicetoitsownhistoryand,
moreimportant, to the ever-more relevant historyofthe Balkans. For it is here,
and it is now, that the uphill task of building a better international order
— —
in Europe and elsewhere is being tested in European capitals and in
Washington.
Morton Abramowitz
President
Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
May 2, 1993
2 / TheOtherBalkanWars
The balkan crises: i913 an° i993
Introduction
George Kennan
F.
A,
d the outset of the present century
thereemergedintheUnitedStates, EnglandandotherpartsofnorthernEurope
a vigorous movement for the strengthening and consolidation ofworld peace,
primarilybythe developmentofnewlegal codes ofinternationalbehavior. The
movementwas given a significant fillip when TsarNicholas II ofRussia in 1899
issued a call for an international conference on disarmament. This curious
initiative, largely the product ofthe immature dilettantism ofthe Tsar himself
and elaborated by the characteristic confusions of the Russian governmental
establishment ofthe time, was not a serious one. But itwas atonce seized upon
with enthusiasm by adherents ofthe peace movements and had consequences
theTsarhimselfhadnotanticipated. Ofthose, themostimportantwerethetwo
Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, resulting in a modernization and
renewed codification of international law and in a significant elaboration, in
particular, ofthe laws ofwar. Beyond that there was, especially in the United
States, a marked surge of interest and enthusiasm for the negotiation and
adoption of treaties of arbitration and conciliation. And these governmental
effortsweresupportedbyanumberofprivateinstitutionalinitiatives,oneofthe
most lasting and notable ofwhich was the founding, in 1910, ofthe Carnegie
EndowmentforInternationalPeace.Thatinstitutionwasonlyoneoftheseveral
creative initiatives ofAndrewCarnegie onbehalfofworldpeace, anotherbeing
the erection ofthe great "Peace Palace" at the Hague.
It isboth sad and ironic to reflectthat these so far-seeingand commendable
effortsonbehalfofinternationalpeacewereproceedingsimultaneouslywiththe
intensive pursuit by the great European powers of what were, whether so
intendedorotherwise,preparationsfortheFirstWorldWar.Asrecentlyas 1894
the French and the Russian general staffs had linked the fates oftheir countries
inasecrettreatyofalliance, sowordedasalmosttoensurethattherecouldbeno
further minor complication in European affairs that would not lead to wider
hostilities among the great powers. It was in 1898 that there had been inaugu-
rated, for the first time in earnest, the unnecessary and dreadfully misguided
effort of Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany to compete with Great Britain in the
developmentofnavalpower.Andthroughoutallofitthegreatpowerswerebusy
with military preparations that, however defensively conceived, simply dimin-
ished whatever small possibility ofavoiding a general conflagration might still
have existed.
TheOtherBalkanWare / 3
Inthe face ofallthepreparations,thestrivings andenthusiasms ofthepeace
movementofthosefirstyearsofthiscenturymightappear,intoday'sretrospect,
—
unrealistic, naive and pathetic. But they were, in addition to being as we see
—
today profoundly prophetic and welljustified in the concerns they reflected,
deeply,almostdesperately,believedinbythosewhoexperiencedthem.Andthey
were notwhollywithoutjustification. Nearlya hundredyears had then elapsed
since the last great all-European military conflagration, that ofthe Napoleonic
wars. An entire generation had intervened since the last great bilateral intra-
European conflict, the Franco-PrussianWar. Was there not then, people could
ask themselves, a possibility that the great European powers could now be
brought, with sufficient outside encouragement and pressure, to perceive the
follyofwar among highly industrialized powers in the modern age and then to
retire at the brink?
It was in the entertainment of such hopes, fears and aspirations that the
protagonists ofthe American and European peace movements were struggling
along as Europe entered the second decade ofthe present century.
A hundred years before that time the entire Balkan Peninsula, from the
Aegean Sea and the Turkish straits to the borders ofthe Russian and Austro-
Hungarianempires,hadbeen,with minorexceptions,embracedbytheTurkish
empire. But in the course of the nineteenth century the Turks had been
compelled to withdraw southward and eastward, to a point where all that
remained of their European dominions were the southernmost parts of the
peninsula, primarilyThrace and Macedonia. Bythe beginning ofthe twentieth
—
century a number of new states notably Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and
—
Rumania hadsprungupintheareathusliberatedfromTurkishcontrol.Those
states were, without exception, monarchical!/ governed; and the monarchs
were,asarule,somewhatmoremoderateandthoughtfulthantheirsubjects. But
theirdynastieswerenotwellestablished. Theirpowerswere usuallydisputedby
inexperiencedandunrulyparliamentarybodies.Borderswereinmanyinstances
vagueandlackingin firm acceptance. Theentirepeninsulawas, in short,devoid
ofinternational stability.
It was, ofcourse, a time when the powerful forces ofmodern nationalism
were achievingeverywhere, but particularly in nations new to the experienceof
political independence, their greatest intensity. And nowhere did this have a
more violent, intoxicating effect than on the politicians and military leaders of
the newly founded Balkan countries. If, initially, the leading impulses for the
expulsion ofthe Turks from European Russia had come from the neighboring
great powers, Russia and Austria-Hungary, the political leaders of the newly
established Balkan states were now beginning to take matters into their own
hands. And it was hard for people who had recentlyachieved so much, and this
so suddenly, to know where to stop. Dreams ofnew glories to flow from new
4 /TheOtherBalkanWan