All (non) European wars

The war in Ukraine inevitably evokes memories and imposes comparisons on those who survived the wars of the XNUMXs. There are similarities, but also some important differences, Zorica Ilić believes in her personal opinion.

As I approach the colossal statue in silence, I feel deep respect and sadness. With each step, the emotions are stronger. There, in front of a statue of a soldier holding a child in one hand and a sword in the other, under which a swastika is destroyed, I stop and think for a long time: about the war from the history textbooks and about the war I have experienced in my life. The monument in Treptov Park in Berlin was erected in honor of the Soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the Battle of Berlin. More than 7.000 of them are buried here. The 30-meter tall statue seems to want to say: We defeated you! Defeated right there on the ground where it all started.

The monument was erected only twenty kilometers from the town of Vanza, where the infamous conference was held where the Nazis, over tea and cognac, worked out a plan to destroy all Jews in Europe, 11 million people.

(Another) war on European soil

Since the beginning of Putin's war in Ukraine, I have been thinking about the Ukrainians, then about the Russians who did not want war, then about the soldiers of the Red Army whom the survivors of Auschwitz were happy about, and then also about those Europeans who were invaded by Ukraine - the first war on the Old Continent after defeated Nazism, that is, fascism.

"Many of us still remember the stories about the war that our parents or grandparents told us. And it's hard for younger people to understand: the war in Europe," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in his – not a platitude – historic speech in the Bundestag . A speech in which he marked a complete turnaround in German foreign policy. But while announcing a new time, he forgot that there are Europeans who have not heard about the war from their grandparents.

"We will defend every inch" of ourselves

In the same speech, Soltz expressed his unequivocal solidarity with the Ukrainian people. It must be very difficult for the same people to listen to their president Volodymyr Zelensky when he tells them "we defend our country ourselves" or when they hear the same message from Washington, through Brussels and Oslo to Berlin "we will defend every inch of NATO". In other words: You are not NATO, we don't want you because it is too dangerous, but when it is dangerous enough for us, then we will defend. Myself.

However, no matter how hard it must have been for Ukrainians to listen to such statements, the war in Ukraine from the point of view of Bosnia and Herzegovina. citizen - that is, one who, after the victory over Nazism, has already experienced one war on European soil - this war and the one from the nineties differ in at least two points: the degree of promptly expressed solidarity towards the suffering of the affected citizens and the readiness to provide assistance: from the introduction of " "unprecedented sanctions" against Russia, as US Vice President Kamala Harris called them, until the delivery of weapons to Ukraine.

Solidarity and weapons

The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who begged the international community for help, must still remember the thoughts "it's a shame we don't have oil", "we are not geopolitically important", ..., "maybe then they would protect us". In other words: maybe someone would have some interest in protecting us.

How long did it take to start an effective wave of solidarity with Bosnia and Herzegovina? Should we ask the citizens of Sarajevo who survived the four-year siege? Or let's dwell on just one other fact from the terrible BiH. experiences: How, after the American journalist Roy Gutman discovered the existence of concentration camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1992, how could the genocide in Srebrenica happen three years later?

When there was no effective solidarity, and the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina realized that they were left to fend for themselves, they begged in vain for only one thing: At least lift the arms embargo!

Just three days after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Germany made a decision that fundamentally changes one of Berlin's main foreign policy doctrines, which was: no delivery of weapons to war-torn areas. German weapons were delivered to the Ukrainians less than seven days after the start of Putin's invasion. Three days after Russian troops began attacking Kiev, the Netherlands made a decision to supply weapons to Ukraine.

What irony. The same Netherlands that failed so shamefully in Srebrenica. Why did they not at that time support their soldiers in carrying out what was their mandate within the UN Peacekeeping Forces: the protection of the UN enclave? Today, they would be less ashamed, and they would save themselves court proceedings in The Hague. The same Hague from which, just a few days after the start of the war in Ukraine, information arrives about the initiation of an investigation into possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, and the world media is widely discussing whether Putin will therefore be accused of war crimes.

The hesitation of the West

And how long did it take, for example, for the investigations against Slobodan Milošević and a number of other actors to be launched in another Hague court?

"I am convinced that if we continue our joint efforts, we will succeed in overthrowing Milošević," Boris Yeltsin, who was the president of Russia during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, wrote in his memoirs. As he writes, he addressed the quoted sentence to the then US President Bill Clinton at the height of the war in Kosovo. Yeltsin and Clinton differed on this issue: the methods of overthrowing Milosevic. Therefore, nobody in the Kremlin during the nineties threatened to pull the atomic trigger if the West stopped the war and protected innocent civilians. So why did the West hesitate?

Evil-doers, taking into account the current reaction of the West towards Putin, could sarcastically conclude that it was more difficult to stop Milosevic at that time, than it is today to stop Putin.

Even bigger villains, those who advocate Huntington's thesis about the clash of civilizations, could ask themselves whether the support was absent because of the two million Muslims in BiH?

But in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they did not live on Huntington's theses, but lived in practice what Europe considers its heritage: life in a multi-ethnic, multicultural society.

Europe defends itself in ...

Europe is defending itself in Ukraine, the Ukrainians are repeating these days what the Bosnians and Herzegovinians repeated during the war, but also 30 years later. Of course, what else is left for the weak than to present their problem as universal, begging for help. The Bosnians did not succeed in this.

Ukrainians, on the other hand, still have a chance because they are the inhabitants of the largest European country by area and because the war in their country inevitably affects every European - either because of rising prices, because of the humanitarian crisis due to the number of refugees, or because of fear for their lives because of Putin's finger on the atomic bomb I am knocking. But also because the West has an interest in stopping Russia, and thus helping Ukraine. A question that inevitably arises, and taking into account BiH. experience, it is - to what extent is solidarity truly sincere, and to what extent is it the result of egoistic concern for oneself. But it shouldn't matter to Ukrainians, now it's only important to survive.

From perspective to interest

When it comes to Ukraine's request for quick accession to the EU, the citizens of the Western Balkans would have something to say here as well. Namely, no one knows better than them how the attitude of Brussels looks towards those who will not join their ranks, so they constantly talk to them about the perspective of membership and constantly set new conditions. In this context, the current increased interest of Brussels in the region is the best confirmation of the previous disastrous policy towards the Western Balkans. Because: did Ukrainian victims really have to fall in order for everyone in Brussels to accept that the countries of the Western Balkans are part of Europe, and not some kind of "Hinterhof" (dark, neglected space behind the house, ed.)?

If Europe had reacted earlier, the war could have been prevented, is another one of the messages coming from the direction of Kiev, which is so similar to the same messages that have been coming from another address for years.

Whether she could have done something to prevent the current war is too complex and a completely separate question. But what she certainly could and can do is:

that, lulled into self-indulgence, she stops cultivating an arrogant narrative about the Balkan powder keg, about "die da unten" (those below - op. aut.) who are immanent to fight every now and then and slaughter each other; that even in the nineties, it accepted that the dark ages did not end with the victory over Nazism and that another war on its soil is very possible;

that there are no peace-loving and non-peace-loving peoples and that every nation at different historical moments, guided by (wrong) policies, can find itself in the role of defenders and the role of attackers. Even those soldiers buried in Treptov Park in Berlin know that...