For liberal Westemisers in the Russian government, the Yugoslav crisis provided the opportunity to demonstrate Russia’s ‘liberal democratic’ credentials and to forge a ‘strategic partnership’ with Western liberal democratic states. In relation to the conflicts themselves, ‘democratic, capitalist Russia’ could not be expected to support an ethnic nationalist, communist Serbia. It was in Russia’s interests to control and limit the conflicts in co-operation with its Western partners. The inclusion of Russia in mediation efforts would act not only as a balancing force, preventing any potential bias, but would also serve to demonstrate Russia’s great power credentials (as I have already argued, this concept is not exclusive to realism/neo-realism, and we have seen the importance that Andrei Kozyrev himself attached to it). Furthermore, the Yugoslav crisis provided an opportunity for co-ordination through international organisations that would promote the development of an institutionalist ‘new world order’; but this co-ordination must be through institutions that included Russia, preferably the CSCE and the United Nations. In this institutionalist context, the use of sanctions and even force could not be mled out, but should be used only as a last resort. The development of international humanitarian law, even into the domain previously considered the internal affairs of the sovereign state, was also to be welcomed.
Such developments are resisted resolutely by neo-realists, for whom state sovereignty is one o f the foundations o f the international system. From a realist viewpoint, intervention in local ethnic conflicts such as those in former Yugoslavia should be kept to a minimum, and morality should not spur the ‘international community’ to become too involved. It was often accepted that the strongest side would be allowed to win, and that this was the natural outcome. According to Igor Zevelev and Sharyl Cross, some politicians and intellectuals in Russia believed that
external involvement in the crisis under the auspices of the UN has only prolonged the war. Otherwise, the Serbs would have won long ago, and the map of the former Yugoslavia would have been reshaped to appropriately reflect the balance of forces.*
International action might be necessary, particularly to prevent a spill-over o f the fighting and the drawing in of major powers, but a great power concert on the nineteenth century model would be preferable to the involvement of a wider international institution. Kirill Benediktov, for instance, suggests that a Balkan ‘Security Council’ should be formed.^ Whichever institution is used - be it the UNSC, the Contact Group, or the 0 8 - it must consist o f a small number of major powers, and it must include Russia; the worst scenario is for Russia to be pushed aside, to be excluded from conflict resolution and peace enforcement.
The implications o f the Yugoslav conflicts for the framework of the post-Cold War world may lead to more instrumentalist calculations. For instance, the evolution of European institutions is significant for the disputes in the former Soviet Union, and while neo-realists would prefer Russia to have the main responsibility for the ‘near abroad’, liberal internationalists might be more amenable to an OSCE role in that region, as in former Yugoslavia. Also, for the liberal Westemisers, co-operation with the West over the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, by demonstrating Russia’s pro- Westem orientation, might bring significant benefits for Russia in terms of trade and aid. Hence, policy may take an instrumentalist form in which the approach to the Yugoslav conflicts is determined by the aim o f achieving goals in a different area. Neo realists, regarding this as humiliating subservience to the West and believing that interests should be derived directly from geo-political position, are adamantly opposed to such an approach (as we shall see in the sanctions debate). For instance, Elena Gus’kova, head o f the Centre for the Study o f the Contemporary Balkans Crisis at the * Zevelev and Cross (1997), p. 264.
Institute for Slavonic and Balkan Studies (Russian Academy o f Sciences, RAN) criticises official Russian policy to the Yugoslav conflicts for having ‘tactics, but no strategy’.^
Nevertheless, neo-realists might seek to use the crisis in another instrumentalist form: to establish Russia’s great power credentials and to insist on Russia’s rights as a great power. The idea is that Russia has an interest in using the conflicts to achieve the goal o f establishing its great power status and preventing the development of a uni-polar system, that is American global hegemony. And it should prevent any developments in relation to former Yugoslavia - such as military intervention by NATO - that would be contrary to Russian interests elsewhere, in particular in the former Soviet space and the Russian Federation itself.
The insistence on Russia’s rights as a great power often sounded tautological, in the sense that the chief ‘right’ which Russia claimed as a great power in relation to the Yugoslav crisis was the right to be recognised as a great power. I shall argue that, after 1992, attempts were made to ‘create’ Russian interests in the Balkans distinct from Western interests there, in order to show that Russia must be taken into account in conflict resolution. However, most neo-realists genuinely believe that Russia does have strategic and economic interests in the Balkans, and they view the Yugoslav conflicts in this regional context.