French Policy toward the War in the Former Yugoslavia: A Bid for International Leadership

Abstract

As Yugoslavia entered into its final crisis in the spring of 1991, France was still recovering from the shock of the fall of the Berlin wall, which had shaken the very basis of French foreign policy. France could no longer exploit the bipolarity which had created so much room for an independent policy between the United States and the USSR. The unification of Germany, which France had accepted with great reluctance, upset the balance of power within the European Community (EC), which had always favoured unification. Finally, the end of the Cold War called into question a defence policy based on an independent nuclear deterrent. It is, therefore, by no means surprising that France, like the other members of the EC, was at sea when faced with the first major crisis of the new European order. However, if one looks beyond the fluctuations in French policy toward the various conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, it becomes clear that this crisis acted as a catalyst in the process of adapting French foreign policy to the post-Cold War age. In particular, it underscored the limits of the capabilities of the budding European Union (EU) as a political institution and raised serious questions about the aim of establishing a treaty system for European security. Above all the crisis gave France an opportunity to reclaim its position as a leader, not just within the EU, but also worldwide. French policy toward the former Yugoslavia can be divided into three distinct periods: (1) from the beginning of the crisis in the summer of 1991 to the victory of the French right in the March 1993 parliamentary elections; (2) the so-called cohabitation period (April 1993 -- April 1995) between Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and the conservative government of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur; and (3) from Jacques Chirac's presidency in May 1995 to the signature of the Dayton peace accord in November 1995. During the first period, foreign policy making was dominated by Mitterrand, supported by his trusted foreign minister, Roland Dumas. It was a time of deep division, not only between the government and the opposition but also within the governing Socialist party. The main architect of French policy toward the former Yugoslavia during the second period was the Gaullist foreign minister, Alain Juppe. Despite the change of government in April 1993, everything indicates that the three main French foreign policy makers (the president, the prime minister, and the minister for foreign affairs) came to an agreement, even though the new government did not hesitate to criticize the policy of its predecessor.(f.1) In the third phase, Chirac sought to establish his mark with a vigorous foreign policy -- beginning with the former Yugoslavia. THE IMPOSSIBLE EUROPEAN SOLUTION The Yugoslav crisis should have given the European Community its first chance to prove that it could settle a problem in its own backyard. In fact, it showed just the opposite. After six months of fruitless attempts to find a solution, the EC was forced to hand the question over to the United Nations early in 1992. However, by sharing the lead in the peace negotiations with a United Nations special envoy, France managed to remain on the front line, at least until the Contact Group was formed in July 1994.(f.2) Unfortunately the crisis happened at the very time that the EC was reflecting on its own future. On the one hand, there was talk of expansion to include other West European countries and possibly some from Eastern Europe. And on the other, the existing member states were seeking ways of strengthening integration among themselves. Events in Yugoslavia were to show that the conditions for formulating a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), as provided for by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, were still far from being met. On the contrary, they revealed the deep divisions between the member states and their incapacity to agree on how to handle the break-up of the Yugoslav federation. They also highlighted the fragile nature of the Franco-German axis on which the dynamics of European integration depended. …