Borders have always been used to determine a territory within which firm control is supposed to be established. Borders in Europe were mostly drawn up after massive and bloody wars. Drawing up borders in the Balkans was always followed by violence and ethnic cleansing.
On the historically rooted borders and possible “corrections” in the Balkans
Borders have always been used to determine a territory within which firm control is supposed to be established. Borders in Europe were mostly drawn up after massive and bloody wars. Drawing up borders in the Balkans was always followed by violence and ethnic cleansing. Yugoslav external borders were solid during the 20th century and the attempts of their expansion were justified by ethnic criteria (requests for deeper penetration into the West – Carinthia, for example, after First and Second World War) and ideological reasons (intentions of solving the national question of Macedonians and Albanians in Yugoslavia were in the background of the idea of the establishment of a Balkan federation with Bulgaria and Albania). Internal Yugoslav borders had their historical justification and the independent countries that emerged from Yugoslavia were recognised in their existing borders. The current intentions of “correcting the borders” between Balkan independent countries represents going back to the circumstances of the 1990s. These ideas are very dangerous because drawing up new borders in a controlled and a peaceful manner would be impossible. Possible “corrections of border” between Serbia and Kosovo would most certainly reflect on the rest of the Balkans and this is why it would be best not to start this process in the first place. In case that the “border correction” process is launched, the only option to keep the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina under control is a robust military presence in B&H and readiness to genuine and efficient military action. Without this, Bosnia and Herzegovina would have slim chances of maintaining its existing borders. Besides this, changing the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina would lead to a new wave of violence and ethnic cleansing with uncertain consequences. In case of braking up Bosnia and Herzegovina, there would be no more possibility of building a civil and tolerant society on its ruins. Logical radicalisation of situation in such Bosnia and Herzegovina could not be controlled or fenced by walls. This would not be a problem for the Balkans only, but for Europe as well.
The conviction that has been built in the Balkans for the last twenty years – that all problems in the relations between the Balkans states would be solved by their integration into the European Union, and that the borders are not so important in the Union – got quite shaken in the last few years. The dispute between Croatia and Slovenia over the maritime border, as well as the re-establishment of borders by certain European Union member states aimed at "defending" the countries against the migrant crisis, show the importance of borders in the European Union today. This importance is particularly significant in relations between the countries of South-Eastern Europe that are yet to be integrated into the EU. Ideas on border changes are gaining increasing attention, but they also cause fears of the consequences for the South-Eastern Europe in case of drawing up new borders, even if the new borders are drawn up on the basis of an agreement. A big banner that was noticed during protests in Belgrade, which was set across the Serbian Government and read: “If Kosovo is not Serbia, then the Republika Srpska is not Bosnia”, shows that changing the borders in the Balkans might cause a chain reaction that would completely get out of control. Have borders always been this important and what was their function?
Throughout the history, borders were important for establishing identities of certain communities, but they were not always quite clearly set. Observing the history of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, one can conclude that the borders of certain communities that inhabited this vast empire were difficult to notice. Although one cannot deny the fact that certain religious and national communities within that Empire were striving for more visible isolation from others, the stereotype is that these communities actually did live completely apart from each other. As German historian Hannes Grandits pointed out in the example of Herzegovina, the boundaries of social and political loyalty were fluid here even in the second half of the 19th century. The era of national states dramatically changed these things.
Even they were not always completely clear, the borders have always been a source of potential conflicts. The overall aim of establishing firm borders was maintaining control over certain areas that are being established by those borders. However, borders were often porous: it was often impossible to limit the culture and language, and even the movement of the people. Throughout the history it was often impossible to determine the exact borders of individual states, and the era of nations was actually what changed the attitude towards borders. For example, while it was difficult to define the borders of the Habsburg Empire, the borders of the national states that emerged on the ruins of that empire were quite solid. In the course of history, there were different criteria for drawing up borders (in Europe, for most of the history, religious reasons were the criteria used for creating borders. For example, the border between the Catholic and Protestant parts of Western Europe was drawn in the 16th century), but the rule was that new borders in Europe have always been drawn up after great and terrible wars, and this rule existed until the end of the 20th century.
The key event was the Berlin Congress held in 1878, which established the principle of ethnic sovereignty, and the Balkan countries subsequently reached for ethnic cleansing of multi-ethnic societies in order to create homogeneous national states. This can be noticed in Serbia, and especially in the operations of the Serb and Montenegrin army in the Balkan wars of 1912-1913. Thus, the borders established in 1878, which were based on the principle of national self-determination, were a trigger for new wars and ethnic cleansing.
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The importance of borders in the Balkans is nothing more significant than the importance given to borders in the Balkan neighbourhood, although the very notion of the Balkans as well as its borders, as shown by Maria Todorova and Mark Mazower, is quite vague and subject to change. The area in the Balkans that made up Yugoslavia in the 20th century was particularly exposed to border changes at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. As De Gaulle once said that Europe was a space "from the Atlantic to the Ural", Yugoslavia had a narrative about the country stretching "from Vardar to Triglav, from Đerdap to the Adriatic", and the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina are still defined: "from Sava to the sea, from Una to Drina".
This points to the importance of space, or geography, in drawing up borders, although in reality, geography was not crucial in establishing borders. Other reasons, primarily political ones as well as power relations at a certain historical moment, were often crucial in drawing up borders (sometimes real, sometimes imaginary or phantom borders). One may claim that, both in Europe and in the Balkans, human geography (the relation between man and nature, i.e. the "home-mille" interrelation) was more important in creating borders of small regions (e.g. Western Herzegovina, Eastern Slavonia, Southern Serbia) than in establishing borders of national states. On the contrary, the idea of destroying natural borders was an integral part of the national movements in the Balkans, but these movements did not see anything unusual in the abolition of natural borders. Even some obvious natural borders were treated as completely unnatural. For example, according to this ideology, rivers are not natural, but completely unnatural borders.
When for the first time in the history the Drina River stopped being the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1929 (that year Yugoslavia was subdivided into banates, and the borders of the banates were drawn up in such a way that they destroyed all historically shaped units, and thus the historical entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina), it was justified by claiming that it was completely unnatural for Drina River to be a border, although it had been a border for centuries. The 1931 official calendar of the Drina Banate contained a claim that the fact that Drina River had been a "border for centuries" represented an "unnatural way" of separating the people of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, because this "separated the inhabitants of a rather large river basin of this river, which, together with its tributaries, brings the region of eastern Bosnia and western Serbia into one whole unit". It was therefore argued that rivers are not natural borders but natural bridges that bring people closer together (it is interesting, for example, that during the 1990s, in the nationalist narratives, rivers were treated as possible borders - for example, the Neretva River as the border between Croats and Serbs. At the same time, the Drina River was treated not as a border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but as a place of Serbs connecting into a single unit. Today, some projections of border changes in Kosovo, contain an idea of establishing the border on a river – Ibar River which flows through Kosovska Mitrovica and divides the city into northern and southern parts. A large number of Serbs lives just south of the river, and the largest number of Serb church saints is located in this area. Therefore, just like it was the case in the past, it is clear that this principle would lead to a new wave of migration of the population – whether controlled or uncontrolled, which cannot be defined at this moment.
The Yugoslav borders were established after the First and Second World War. Therefore, after great wars. In both cases, ethnic affiliation of the population played a key role in determining the borders. The first example refers to the border between Yugoslavia and Austria, when it was planned that the Carinthian population should decide in a plebiscite whether they wanted to live in Yugoslavia or Austria. In this case, the border was drawn up at Yugoslavia's dissatisfaction, since the majority of the population voted in the 1920 plebiscite in favor of staying within Austria.
The Yugoslavs considered that the 1920 plebiscite was the result of the Germaniyation of the Slavic population, and even after the Second World War they insisted that the borders be established following ethnic affiliation criteria. The Yugoslavs considered that, according to this criteria, Yugoslavia should get the area of big cities, like Trieste and Gorizia. Although they insisted on certain historical and ethnic criteria, the main argument on which the Yugoslavs relied was the power: the Yugoslav military troops entered Trieste at the end of April and early May 1945 and continued to the west. They returned only after the military threat by Western powers, so the border was established not by ethnic criteria, but by the criterion of power and effective force.
On the other hand, Yugoslavia had the idea to use new borders to resolve the national question. For example, it sought to resolve the Macedonian national question in the idea of creating a federation with Bulgaria. Similarly, Yugoslavia tried to tackle the problem of separatism in Kosovo through the idea of a federation with Albania, (martial law was established in Kosovo in 1945 due to problems and difficulties surrounding the establishment of communist authorities).
While actions were taken around the external borders (in the western parts, towards Austria and Italy, Yugoslavia called for an ethnic principle in order to move the border further west, and in the eastern parts it advocated the ideological closeness on basis of which a federation with Bulgaria and Albania was supposed to be established, but in the background it was an attempt to resolve the Macedonian and Albanian national issues), the borders between the republics within Yugoslavia, although conceived as weak and invisible, were very important and visible. And here, especially in the process of demarcation between Croatia and Serbia in 1945, the key principle was the ethnic principle. However, the historical criterion was of crucial importance for the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also certain corrections were made with reference to geographical and natural criteria. Therefore, after the Second World War, several minor corrections were made on Bosnia and Herzegovina's historical border with Croatia and Serbia, while it is still unclear how the correction of the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro was made (that is the Sutorina issue, which became the discussion topic in Bosnia and Herzegovina a few years ago).
In general, the borders between individual Yugoslav republics were based on a deep historical foundation. In the process of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the position on the republics' right to self-determination was taken into account, respecting the existing borders.
The border problem has been reopened recently by all sides. Bosnia and Herzegovina is questioning its border with Croatia (the most important issues are the maritime border and the construction of the Pelješac Bridge, but there are some other unresolved problems as well). Some circles (political and academic) have raised the issue of the border between B&H and Montenegro, claiming B&H's right to Sutorina. However, this was completely unreasonable, because it is important for the borders in the Balkans to adhere to the positions taken during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, related to the fact that the Yugoslav republics received international recognition within their existing borders.
In the end of the 1990s, the only exception was Kosovo (i.e. Serbia, because even though it did not have a status of a republic within Yugoslavia, Kosovo was granted the right to independence. The Kosovo issue was brought up in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and Serb nationalism contributed to its development – instead of Kosovo's possible integration into Yugoslavia, Serb leadership, led by Slobodan Milošević, imposed the policy of Kosovo's integration into Serbia which opened conflicts at the level of Yugoslavia and in the end led to the break-up of the country). After the 1999 war, Kosovo received its independence within the boundaries that existed in Yugoslavia. Ideas of “correcting” the border are now being brought up, but the correction would be based exclusively on the principle of ethnic affiliation. This is very dangerous as it would lead to opening the Pandora’s Box and it would be difficult to implement this in a controlled manner without violence. It would be difficult to prevent this principle from being implemented in other areas, where biggest threat is aimed at Bosnia and Herzegovina (the issue of Macedonia and the threat of big part of west Macedonia, where many Albanians live, move towards uniting with Kosovo and Albania is not realistic anymore, especially after Macedonia entered NATO. Therefore, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains as the only area threatened by great dangers, because potential consent to changing the borders between Serbia and Kosovo in accordance with the principle of ethnic affiliation would reflect on this country). This was confirmed by the recent protests in Belgrade and a banner that reads “If Kosovo is not Serbia, then the Republika Srpska is not Bosnia”, as well as statements of the President of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) Milorad Dodik, that in case of raising the issue of the name of the Republika Srpska entity, they might request adding “the western Serbia” next to the name of the “Republika Srpska”. The only more dangerous thing than this is the silence of the official Belgrade, which indicated the possibility that the official Belgrade would support such developments.
In case that Kosovo and Serbia accept the concept of border correction in the Balkans, it would be difficult to prevent the Republika Srpska (RS), except with a tough military pressure, from starting the process of breaking up Bosnia and Herzegovina and unifying with Serbia, especially due to the fact that the Republika Srpska remained largely ethnically clean as a result of the 1992-1995 war actions. Without a tougher military presence, primarily of the NATO Alliance (despite the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina is far from that military alliance), it would be difficult to prevent the Republika Srpska from implementing its separatist demands (probably supported by Russia, which has great influence in the Republika Srpska and Serbia). However, if Europe allowed this change of the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, through the potential consent to the unification of the Republika Srpska and Serbia, this would open up new dangers: first, the unification would be followed by new waves of violence (on all sides) and the consequence would be the creation of a small state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, probably with a radical Islamic orientation, because any argument about the existence of a civil state would be annihilated.
Based on this, one can conclude that changes of the existing borders in the Balkans are very dangerous. This would lead to new waves of violence, but also create the basis for further destabilization of Europe. The centre of this destabilization would be in Bosnia and Herzegovina.