France and Britain have to work hard to make sense of each another, because in the manner of quarrelsome siblings, they are so different and yet so similar. They inherit roughly the same strategic cards — a modest nuclear arsenal; highly professional military forces, globally deployed, which are small in relation to the emerging Asian powers; and a Security Council seat which reflects the strategic realities of yesteryear. Sometimes these assets have been used for a common purpose, but often (as in the Gulf War of 2003) the strategic choices have been utterly different. Anyway, behind this week’s glitter and repartee, there is a quiet, anxious conviction shared by Downing Street and the Élysée. The ability to understand one another — which is the literal meaning of Entente — could once again, in the near future, become a matter of life and death for both countries. At least since the fall of communism, the probability of France and Britain fighting together in a hot war has never looked so high — so both governments have said. And even in scenarios well short of Armageddon, the two countries — as Western Europe’s principal military players — could well find themselves co-policing a fragile ceasefire on the eastern edge of Europe. 

As in 1904, France and Britain see an imperative to transcend their many differences because of the emergence in Europe of an expansionist power whose appetite for territory and strategic might seems to be growing by the month. In the early 20th century, the pair were often in competition over far-flung colonies. Since 1945, the biggest single irritant has been contrasting attitudes to the United States, with Britain eagerly cultivating its special American friendship, and France striking a pose, at least, of championing European independence. In recent months, Donald Trump’s behavior has removed that problem; like teenagers abandoned by a once-generous parent, officials in London and Paris are now united in their horror at possibly having to guard Europe’s peace without an American guarantee. 

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How, then, could France and Britain — and in particular their militaries — learn to understand each other better? Perhaps the first thing French and British defense chiefs might do is have a hard look at the most recent occasion when their forces found themselves side-by-side in the heart of a bloody European war. That was not in 1944 or in 1914 — but in the Bosnian conflict of 1992-95. The need for a solemn exercise in self-examination is particularly acute on this day, the 30th anniversary of the most horrific act of mass slaughter perpetrated on European soil since the war against Hitler. The massacre of 8,000 or more Muslim men and boys from the enclave of Srebrenica began on 11 July 1995 and unfolded over the following four of five days. This orgy of killing by Bosnian Serb forces has been recognized judicially as an act of genocide. It also marked the end — morally and strategically — of a UN peacekeeping effort of which Britain and France were the joint leaders. 

There are complacent and self-congratulatory stories that British and French officials, along with American counterparts, can tell one another about Srebrenica and its aftermath. They go something like this. Shocked and surprised by the brutal actions of the Bosnian Serbs, the leaders of all Western countries concluded that it was time for an abrupt change of policy. Instead of pig-in-the-middle peacekeeping, the powers involved in Bosnia should wage a short, sharp war against the Serb forces which (apart from their misdeeds in Srebrenica) had occupied and ethnically cleansed two-thirds of Bosnia and were keeping its capital, Sarajevo, in a cruel stranglehold. This duly happened; the multinational contingent in the war zone, led by the British and French, reconfigured itself as a rapid reaction force which turned its guns on Serb positions in Sarajevo and elsewhere, while Nato (led by American bombers, but with plenty of help from the British, French and other Europeans) strafed Serb military assets from the air. There was an upsurge of fighting and battle-lines were redrawn — with the result that the Serb-controlled share of Bosnian territory was cut to barely half, and a realistic basis existed for a peace settlement which Nato’s forces could police. All that unfolded over the final months of 1995 until the Bosnians found themselves under international tutelage and at peace; people in Sarajevo could go about their lives without fear of snipers or shells. 

This happy version of the Srebrenica story — stressing what happened afterwards, not what went before — will be rehearsed in Western countries today — especially in Britain which has stood out in its determination to have the massacre remembered and recognized as genocide.

Yet, even 30 years on, there are pressing questions about what led up to the Srebrenica massacre — questions for all the countries that were involved in Bosnia over the preceding three years, Britain and France in particular. If there is one country which has taken a hard look at its responsibilities in Srebrenica, it is the Netherlands, whose lightly armed contingent of less than 400 blue-helmets were tasked with protecting the enclave and manifestly failed. Judicial proceedings and government-sponsored investigations have pored over every detail of the Dutch contingent’s activities, and its failure to understand, in time, that the Serb forces were bent not only on seizing the enclave but on slaughtering its male population.

But excessive preoccupation with the Dutch responsibility only serves to obscure the role played by more powerful countries — above all, America, Britain and France. It is a story whose origins predate the massacre by more than two years. In March 1993, it was a French general and UN commander, Philippe Morillon, who took a personal initiative and promised the 40,000 people, mostly Muslim, who were holed up in Srebrenica that they would be safe from the Serb forces which dominated the surrounding territory. “You are now under the protection of the UN forces… I will never abandon you,” he declared, in one of the war’s most famous sound-bites.

Dutch officials insist that they accepted responsibility for guarding the enclave after receiving an absolute guarantee from the United Nations that in the event of a major Serb attack, air power would be called in to stem the advance. On 10 July 1995, Dutch commanders did call in air power — even though its use might have cost the lives of their soldiers who were being held as hostages. After a complex and still-murky set of international deliberations, it was decided not to use air power. Who exercised that veto is still not clear, but an important place in the decision-making chain was held by General Bernard Janvier, a Frenchman who was commander of UN forces in the region.

Over the preceding months, tension had been building between General Janvier and Britain’s General Rupert Smith, who had taken command of UN forces in Bosnia. Janvier generally hewed to the cautious, peace-keeping line which had been common currency between Britain and France as of the previous year. But Smith came to the view that the UN contingent’s mission of guarding a ceasefire line was untenable and destined to fail; Western forces, if they had any role to play at all, should go onto a war footing and be prepared to confront the Serbs.

One of the reasons why Smith was so convinced that war, rather than sputtering peace, lay ahead was that the Serbs themselves were telling him so. Their commander Ratko Mladic — later convicted of genocide in Srebrenica — had made clear his determination to overrun the UN-protected enclaves; in particular Srebrenica, where local Bosnian fighters were — so he grumbled — taking advantage of UN protection to make hit-and-run attacks on the surrounding Serbs.

As events in late May 1995 would demonstrate, both Janvier and Smith were right in their different ways. Janvier was right to say that the blue-helmets could not change their military posture (from peacekeeping to war) without putting themselves in deadly danger. Smith was right to see that renewed war was probably coming anyway. He called in air strikes against the Serbs to punish some egregious acts of misbehavior; the Serbs retaliated by taking hundreds of UN peacekeepers hostage and sharing pictures of them shackled to posts. The clear message was: bomb us any more, and your peacekeepers will be killed.

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What happened then is still a shady business. The documentary evidence suggests that the Americans, British and French cut an informal agreement to “pause” air strikes in return for the release of the hostages. American officials leaked to the press that General Janvier had played a leading role in parleying with Ratko Mladic and assuring him that air strikes would cease. Whoever gave those assurances, the three leading powers in Bosnia were clearly co-responsible for them; the one party which was not informed was the Dutch, who were still in the hapless role of defending an indefensible haven for tens of thousands of human beings. That bargain, whatever its precise terms, paved the way for the Srebrenica tragedy.

Questions about the Srebrenica massacre fall into at least three categories. Was it generally known that the Serbs were planning an attack on the eastern enclaves which were under notional UN protection — and were the Serbs given some encouragement to think such an attack could proceed with impunity? Second, could more have been done to stop the Serb advance immediately after its forces crossed the boundary of the enclave on 6 July? Thirdly, during the crucial days of 11-15 July, when the Serb forces machine-gunned almost all the men and boys under their control, could something have been done, even at that late stage, to interrupt the massacre? It is fair to assume that the two countries which were best informed, in real time, about what was happening were the United States and Britain — given the former’s uniquely powerful satellite and human intelligence and Britain’s privileged access to that information. So it might be said that France bears a particular responsibility because of Janvier’s doveish line; while Britain faces hard questions about what it knew and when.

Hundreds of documents relating to the Srebrenica massacre have been released, but many remain classified. Some of those documents — especially pertaining to the question of when exactly full details of the horror emerged — are to be found in very secret places in London and Paris, as well as Washington DC.

It would have been rude to raise this matter at a glittering banquet in Windsor Castle, but as part of their general rapprochement, shouldn’t British and French officials be making a renewed effort to understand why their cooperation in Bosnia initially went rather well — and then failed so tragically?

Yesterday, in the final hours of Macron’s visit, he and Starmer held a video conference at a British military base with other possible participants in a “coalition of the willing”, led by Britain and France, whose job would be to shore up a Ukrainian ceasefire. London and Paris have been talking about this project since last November, and they believe at least 30 countries could take part. But in a throwback to the Franco-British force in Bosnia, there are many unanswered questions about the new mission’s exact mission and rules of engagement. As of now, its very existence is hypothetical. Whatever happens, the French and British commanders will, in the end, be answerable to their national capitals, not to any multinational structure. Huge potential exists for tragic misunderstanding. That’s why a refresher course in Balkan history is well overdue.

Have you had experience of being cast as pro-Putin for expressing unease about some of the Western measures against Russia?

Immensely, and painfully. But let’s be clear, my pain is neither here nor there when you have atrocities, murders, a whole country being devastated by Putin’s armies. Who gives a damn about how I feel about my treatment by people on social media?

Back in 2001, I labelled Vladimir Putin a war criminal because of the murder of 250,000 people in Grozny, Chechnya. It was in a Senate meeting of the University of Athens, which was discussing the motion for awarding an honorary doctorate to Putin, who had just become president of Russia. And I was in a minority of one opposing it. So having gone out on a limb, having condemned Putin, it was a bit surprising to be lambasted by several commentators as “Putin’s useful idiot.”

Was the charge against you based on your blaming Nato expansion for the current crisis?

The most pertinent criticism that I received was that I was “Westsplaining” — this is a version of “mansplaining” — that I was being condescending in the way that I was telling Eastern Europeans what’s in their interest. Now, that is a very serious accusation. Because we do know that mansplaining is something that we men often do.

While I’m not claiming to have the monopoly of truth, I do believe that as a European, as a citizen of the world, I have the right to, for instance, comment that Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian power was built on a bedrock of animosity between the West and Russia, and that Putin exploited the humiliation of the Russians — at the hands of Nato, at the hands of the International Monetary Fund.

Don’t forget how in the Nineties, even the reformers — liberals, neoliberals in Russia — were crushed by the West, by the International Monetary Fund, forcing Russia into an awful default in 1998 that caused the life expectancy of men in Russia to drop from 75 to 58. It was a catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe. And Putin, being a KGB strategist, utilised that pent-up frustration of Russians against the West in order to build up his horrid empire.

Is your argument that without Nato expansion in Eastern Europe we would not be in this position?

My point is this: there was an agreement between Gorbachev and George Bush Senior that Gorbachev would let Eastern Europe go its own way, on the condition that Nato would not expand eastward. We know that; this is well established. Given that Putin was pushing Russia back towards a re-militarised stance, and Nato and Russia were always going to develop an enmity between them, is it not a good idea to have a neutral zone between the two? Do we really want Russian nuclear weapons and Nato nuclear weapons to be side by side? For me, the neutrality of Eastern Europe is not a second best, it would be first best. It will be good for the people of Eastern Europe, it will be good for Nato, and it will be good for Russia, to minimise tensions to the extent that we can do that.

But in any case, I am perfectly willing to accept an Eastern European progressive who says to me that I’m wrong. What I find intolerable is the lack of tolerance — that I’ve been told, “butt off, you’re a Westplainer in that you even have an opinion about what should be happening in Eastern Europe”. This is not a good foundation for Europeanism.

They do say that when war begins, the truth dies very quickly. But it’s not just truth. It’s a capacity that we have in the West to have a civilised, rational debate amongst ourselves.

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What about the sanctions against Russia — do you support them? 

Well, it’s always the case that when sanctions are slapped on a dictatorial regime they hurt the people, not the dictators. Especially in the case of Putin. Putin has a war chest, which is quite large. And he doesn’t care about the plight of Russian people. But let me be clear on this. I’m not against the sanctions. Watching the atrocities coming out now — the towns, the villages that the Russian army has vacated — watching the devastation on the coastal areas of eastern Ukraine, I can understand why people say, “look, we simply do not want to trade with these people — we’re not going to let them have access to their yachts, and to their money, and all that,” that’s fine by me.

I think that, in the end, we are going to have a lot more suffering — as a result of price increases, especially electricity prices — among the poor in Western Europe. I believe the dollar as the reserve currency is being placed under immense pressure. So I think that the American administration is going to live to regret the cutting off of the Central Bank of Russia from the dollar payment system.

But none of that matters really at this very moment. Because what matters is the war. Freddie, what keeps me up at night is that people are being killed. And what I want us to work for, all of us — and let’s iron out our differences: how can we have an immediate cessation of fire and a withdrawal of Russian troops?

What appalls me about those who purport to support Ukraine and who are attacking my position, is that they seem to be seriously considering the possibility that Ukraine is going to win the war and overthrow Putin. Now that’s completely pie in the sky. Anybody who believes that is jeopardising the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as we speak.

At best, you’re going to have a stalemate. Now a stalemate is terrible for the people of Ukraine. Because we know what Putin is going to do. He’s going to do what he did in Grozny. He’s going to raze to the ground areas that he needs to abandon. The Ukrainian army has been very heroic, and I applaud them for having resisted. But they cannot win the war. Do we really want this painful, murderous stalemate go on and on and on? Do we really want to invest in regime change in Russia that is instigated by the United States? Whenever the United States has tried to regime change we’ve had complete catastrophe. Look at Afghanistan, look at Iraq, look at Libya. And this is a nuclear power. Do we want to play with this fire, with this nuclear fire?

We should have an immediate ceasefire. President Zelenskyy, to his credit, has now adopted the proposal that I’ve been making from day one: that we should have an agreement between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin — of course, with Zelenskyy, and the European Union participating — that makes a very simple trade, a deal. Russia withdraws from Ukraine, in exchange for an end to the sanctions and a commitment, by the West, that Ukraine is going to be part of the West but not part of Nato.

Does that include being part of the EU?

Putin wants a way out. I think that the United States and Zelenskyy, together, and the EU, must give him a way out. If he can be seen to have won a victory — something that he can present to his own people as a victory (“I have ended Nato’s eastward expansion. I went to war to stop Nato expanding and I succeeded”), I think that we have a moral duty to give him this way out. Now, I can’t guarantee that he will take it. But the West can offer him this way out, to stop the killings.

A few weeks ago, giving an off-ramp to Putin might have proven popular. But it feels like the situation is different now. We’ve had a full-scale withdrawal of Russian troops from around Kyiv, and there seems to be increased confidence that something like a full-scale defeat might actually be in sight. What’s your reaction to that?

That’s madness. There is no way that the Ukrainian army is going to defeat the panoply of the Russian army in Mariupol, in the areas between Crimea, and Donbas. All power to them if they can do it. I don’t believe that Zelenskyy believes it. I don’t believe that anybody actually believes it. Yes, it is wonderful that Putin did not walk into Kyiv unopposed. It’s wonderful that he’s been given a bloody nose. This is the time to sue for peace.

Look, the West did that after the awful civil war in Yugoslavia. You’ll recall Srebrenica. We had atrocities galore across Bosnia. And not just in Bosnia — in Croatia, in Ukraine, in various areas that were devastated by the original civil war within Yugoslavia. And yet, under the auspices of the American President, the West sat down with Milosevic and they created an imperfect peace for Bosnia, which has been holding since then. Was that a mistake? Should we have continued the bloodletting, hoping that one side would completely annihilate the other side? I don’t believe so.

There’s talk of really escalating the amount of military hardware being sent to support the Ukraine war effort. I’m presuming from what you’re saying that you’d be against that?

While the Ukrainian army is resisting, I think we have a moral duty to support them militarily. Not me and you personally, but I’m not going to criticise the West for sending weapons to the Ukrainian resistors. But the whole point of resisting is to come to the point where we sue for peace. We can come to an agreement that leaves everybody slightly dissatisfied, which is the optimal agreement. Where, for instance, Ukraine stays out of Nato, it stops arming itself. Maybe there can be a demilitarised zone on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border. Crimea can be discussed in the next 10 years or so.

Such an agreement could also be augmented with an understanding that Ukraine would not be prevented from entering the EU. Well, that agreement goes hand-in-hand with ending the arms race on both sides. Because who knows, maybe Putin tomorrow is going to be supported by the Chinese military? Do we really want that kind of escalation?

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Something’s happened quite suddenly where to speak like that is now seen as a betrayal.

It’s what happens when war begins: we lose our head. Warmongering becomes cool and mainstream. Now, I have no doubt that there are cooler heads around Europe who are despairing. But they can’t speak out. I can see it in Germany, I can see it within the government of the Federal Republic: there are people who are besides themselves. They are pulling their hair out. Because if they speak out they will be immediately taken to task by the warmongers who are having a field day.

This is why it’s important that we band together to bring a modicum of rationality back to the debate and to focus on the only thing that matters at the moment. It’s not money. It’s not trade. It’s not natural gas. It is human lives in Ukraine. How can we stop people from dying? Because if they continue — the ones who put the theoretical right of Ukrainians to be members of Nato above the life of people in Ukraine, and above the opportunity of Ukraine to prosper as a Western democracy, which is inside the EU and outside of Nato — we’re going to be creating a quagmire that will ensure two things. Firstly, that thousands of people will die who could be saved, and secondly, that Ukraine is going to be a desert.

Do you observe that the people leading this warmongering, as you call it, would mainly describe themselves as liberals?

Yes. I can see that. But it’s not the first time. I remember when the United States were about to invade Iraq, even Left-wingers like Christopher Hitchens, a man that I admired all my life, became liberal imperialists. He was gung-ho about invading Iraq and spreading democracy. If you think of the early 1960s, it was JFK who initially showed a degree of enthusiasm for taking over Vietnam.

I do fear that it’s not just some liberal imperialists or liberal supporters of victory — of war until the final victory is achieved, as if it is possible to imagine invading Moscow. I feel that there’s something else there: a missing ingredient. Follow the money. The United States is a very complex economy. And it’s not homogeneous. Segments of the American economy are suffering as a result of the war, with the increasing price of oil. I believe Silicon Valley is not happy, because they’re being put in a very difficult situation. Even the banking sector, Wall Street, can’t really be enjoying what’s going on.

But if you are selling weapons, you are having a party. You have Olaf Scholtz, the German Chancellor, about to order 100 billion euros worth of American equipment, because the Germans are not making the stuff. If you are providing fracked oil and gas from New Mexico, from Minnesota, from Texas, you are looking at the new deals that are being struck between the European Union and the United States for LNG (liquefied natural gas), and you are rubbing your hands with glee. Because what was a dying industry in the United States now suddenly has been given a huge lease of life. This is not a conspiracy. If you have liberal imperialists, and you’ve got people that are going to make a lot of money out of this liberal imperialism, and you bring these together, you have a very powerful constituency in favour of maintaining the conflicts.

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A lot of people will listen to what you’ve just said and think that it is verging on conspiracy: evil Americans in suits sitting around board tables, trying to create wars in order to profit from them. 

There’s no conspiracy; nothing of what I said is conspiracy. It’s the truth that if you’re selling arms, you are making a lot of money. If you’re selling oil and gas that is fracked in the United States, you are making a lot of money. We know that.

It’s not causation though, is it? It’s one thing to observe that, but those people aren’t in charge of making the decisions.

Of course. Because why didn’t they do it ten years ago? They would have had an interest in doing this ten years ago. Nobody forced Putin to invade. It wasn’t Nato’s fault that he invaded, even if Nato created circumstances for him to be powerful, in my view. It was Putin’s criminal choice to invade Ukraine. And that gave rise to military resistance by the Ukrainians, which I applaud. And then on the coat-tails of these developments that have nothing to do with them, people come in with particular axes to grind, political ones, and financial agendas. So the whole thing acquires momentum. This is not a conspiracy theory. That is, I think, a solid rational analysis of what was going on.

How, then, should we treat the very popular and successful president of Ukraine? He has been incredibly effective at generating international attention. Should we support him? Should we be critical of him?

We should be critically supportive. Look, I followed Zelenskyy’s career. It was interesting that he was elected on a platform for making peace with Moscow, and for sidelining the oligarchic and ultra Right-wing elements within Ukraine. We have to note that. It’s also true that he failed in doing this to a very large extent: the oligarchs that he was going to wage war against effectively had him. His reign has not been easy. And the oligarchs managed to maintain their control over the country, some would say, forcing Zelenskyy to succumb.

The neo-Nazi Azov battalion in Mariupol and so on maintain their swastikas. I’m sure that Zelenskyy wanted to get rid of them, but he couldn’t. But none of this matters. Because when a country is invaded, I feel a natural duty to support the people who have been invaded and to support their leader — even if it’s somebody I would not have voted for, had I been one of them.

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But what about this overt campaign by Zelenskyy to encourage more direct Western military intervention?

He’s the leader of a country that is being invaded: it is perfectly natural for him to be calling upon the rest of the world to come to their assistance. I’m sure he would have loved it if Nato waltzed in, even though I’m sure he understands that it would bring us to the precipice of a nuclear catastrophe. It is his job to ask for us to step in.

But to his credit, he’s done something else as well. He’s embraced the neutrality solution. And he is participating in discussions with Russians, and negotiations. Let’s face it, the European Union is a figment of our imagination. We’re so fragmented, we are a non-player, really. It’s only the United States that can provide Zelenskyy with the backing he needs in his negotiations with Putin.

What people object to about that is that it has the whiff of people making decisions for smaller countries over their heads. What the people of Ukraine want is neither here nor there.

My own country would not exist if we didn’t have such an arrangement back in the late 1820s. We were under the Ottomans for 400 or 500 years. We had our own revolution, our own resistance against the Ottoman armies. In the end, how did Greece come about? It came about because the great powers — the English, the French, and the Russians — sat down with the Ottomans. And they said: “Greece becomes an independent state, it’s a kind of buffer zone between the Ottoman Empire and the West”. And we were given a chance to exist.

What is your message, then, to people who object to the invasion of Ukraine but also feel deeply uneasy about the West’s involvement? How should they react when they are called Putin supporters?

Be kind. I don’t think you should antagonise anybody these days, because there is so much antagonism already. Maintain your cool, support the Ukrainian resistance against Putin’s armies. Do not succumb to the silence of militarism and perpetual war. And always keep your eye on the trophy, which is immediate peace, withdrawal of Russian troops — and a neutral, democratic Ukraine that we all help get back up on its feet.

Despite their distance in time and space, not to mention qualitative differences of magnitude and geopolitical significance, the conflicts in Ukraine and Bosnia nonetheless remain entangled. Fundamental questions that have surfaced over the past month — over European strategic autonomy, Germany’s status as a great power, multipolarity and the role of Nato expansion — all emerged with the war in Bosnia.

The German recognition of the secession of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia in 1991 — in express defiance of the US secretary of state at the time, James Baker — spurred the collapse of the Yugoslav federation, leading to Bosnia’s bid for secession and its slide into civil war. At the time, German defiance of the US was taken to signal the revival of German power in the wake of the country’s reunification in 1990. Yet its fumbling for foreign policy independence was eventually ended by Washington, which reasserted its strategic domination on the continent with a Nato bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb forces that helped bring the war to an end in 1995. Followed by war in Kosovo in 1999, the wars of Yugoslav secession only ended in 2001 with a Nato deployment to end a conflict brewing in North Macedonia.

Although Western military intervention in another multi-national, multi-ethnic ex-communist federation spurred fears in the Kremlin that the West would reprise such adventures in the ex-Soviet Union during the Nineties, the collapse of the Russian state and the low price of oil meant that there was little Russia could do to stymie Nato expansion in the region. Russian weakness helped foster the mirage of a continent that had transcended great power rivalries, which would in turn smooth the path for Nato’s reckless policy expansion eastwards. Nonetheless, there were occasional portents of future conflict, such as when British Lieutenant-general Sir Mike Jackson refused the orders of his Nato commanding officer to fire on a Russian column attempting to seize Pristina airport in Kosovo.

The war in Bosnia and the brutality that defined it shattered the Long Peace that had prevailed in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Today, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a similarly shattering effect on a public that seems to have forgotten the wars in former Yugoslavia. Such collective amnesia — which also omits the bloody Greek Civil War that ended in 1949 — evinces a peculiar Eurocentrism, which treats European territory as if it were holy soil consecrated for perpetual peace by European blood, and as if Europe’s bloody history of internecine war makes war less rather than more likely.

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The Nato-led international intervention that brought the wars of Yugoslav secession to an end were seen as restoring the peace of Europe. In reality, however, the diplomatic, military and humanitarian tools developed in the Balkans would become instruments for extending war outside of Europe. All the elements of the international intervention in the Bosnian war would be globalised in subsequent decades across conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. Arms embargoes, sanctions against “rogue regimes”, No-Fly Zones that escalated into bombing campaigns conducted alongside proxy forces and favoured ethnic militias, the deployments of large and militarised United Nations peacekeeping operations, the establishment of protectorates and international criminal courts — all these became the political and military instruments of a new global humanitarian order. Bosnia remains a de facto protectorate of the European Union to this day, hosting international forces and even sporting a blue and yellow flag expressly modelled on that of the EU.

The implications of humanitarian intervention in the Balkans were understood in Moscow even if not in Brussels or Washington. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly cited the precedent of Nato’s 1999 Kosovo War as a legal and political justification for his dismemberment of Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which was modelled on how Nato oversaw the detachment and independence of the former Serbian province in 2008. So we find ourselves in a situation where Russia claims to be retaliating against Nato encroachment in its sphere of influence in Ukraine, while in the Balkans it is Nato and the EU that decry Russian interference in stoking support for Serb secessionism in Bosnia.

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How the Ukraine war saved Orbán

By Aris Roussinos

This geopolitical tangle of imperial hypocrisy shows that we are fully returned to a baleful era of great power spheres of influence, depriving smaller powers in Europe of the political space for their sovereignty and independence. The Balkans have been returned to their nineteenth century status, as what was formerly a single sovereign state has been reduced to a clutch of small, dependent states enmeshed in mutual hostility and rivalry as they jostle for great power patronage.

Given the war in Ukraine and renewed geopolitical rivalries in the Balkans, what are the prospects for Europe’s middle and smaller powers to emerge from tutelage? During the First World War, the British journalist H.H. Munro published The Purple of the Balkan Kings, a short story during the First Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, which had laid the ground for the Great War itself. The story recounts the discomfiture of his absurdly named protagonist Luitpold Wolkenstein, a “financier and diplomat on a small, obtrusive, self-important scale” who, while sitting in his favourite Viennese café, is astounded to read of the military victories of the Balkan League in rolling back the Ottoman Empire in Europe. Munro recounts how vital the subordination of the Balkan states was to Wolkenstein’s mental tranquility:

“His judgment had been one of unsparing contempt for small-scale efforts, of unquestioning respect for the big battalions and full purses. Over the whole scene of the Balkan territories and their troubled histories had loomed the commanding magic of the words ‘the Great Powers’…”

Filled with dread at the prospect that the Balkan states might redraw the map of Europe independently of the Great Powers, and that they might even roll their military victories over into a “project of fiscal unity, extending over the entire Balkan lands, and further of a constitutional union”, Munro has his “plump-bodied café oracle” retire from his café in a depressive mood.

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By Jacob Siegel

Today, latter-day Wolkensteins are firmly back in charge in Europe, not only in Vienna but also especially in Brussels, with their own equivalents in Moscow. Social media provides them with a hubbub that would easily outdo an early twentieth century Viennese café for its complacent febrility and bourgeois extremism. Thinking of the two Eastern European wars that now frame the rise and fall of the era of liberal hegemony — Bosnia and Ukraine respectively — will Europe’s smaller states ever be able to assert their independence against imperial domination?

There is a real risk that a peace settlement for Ukraine reproduces the problems that have plagued post-war Bosnia, which has been carved up into separate, ethnically homogenous statelets with no meaningful central government able to exert sovereignty over the territory as a whole. Ukraine would also carry the further risk of being torn between West and East, with the two halves of the country divided between Brussels and Moscow respectively.

Describing Russian war crimes as “genocide” risks overshadowing the political questions at the core of the conflict. If Ukraine is to safeguard the independence it is fighting for, it must not only repel the Russian invasion but also avoid becoming a Western protectorate, dependent on Nato arms and EU aid to survive. Neutrality offers Ukraine the best hope of preserving its sovereignty. In due course, a neutral Ukraine may even offer an example of how smaller and weaker European states may escape Balkanisation in the years to come.