Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

The conflict in the former Yugoslavia 215
‘ensured that international diplomacy without military power was the
hallmark of every attitude and action towards the former Yugoslavia’. 19
In turn, however, it was the memory of this disastrous approach which
compelled action in the next war, Kosovo – as many politicians and editorial
writers reiterated. For example, the following appeared in the Sunday
Times of 4 April 1999: ‘Let me remind you of what someone you revere
said just six years ago: “We have been a little like an accomplice to massacre.
We cannot carry on like that.” That was Lady Thatcher on Bosnia.’
It was clear that the modern Balkan wars had created their own cycle of
memory, locking in the international community no less than the warring
factions. And while this may have ensured speedier action, it was not necessarily
more effective – simply inverse. In other words, speeded on by
the memory of Bosnia, the international community intervened swiftly
in Kosovo – with massive military power but very little diplomacy.
Macaulay wrote a relatively unknown Great War novel, but there is no
doubt that literature about, and from within, the Balkans was immensely
influential in creating a strong image of the region and its people. Largely
a bleak one, reflecting both a long sense of history and deep underlying
emotions of past miscarriages of justice – on all sides, but mostly the
Serbs – it was this image that became a memorialised filter through which
many Westerners perceived the conflict. Ivo Andric was probably the best
known of Balkan writers with this perspective, having won the 1961
Nobel Prize for The Bridge over the Drina, but he was far overshadowed by
the English writer Rebecca West, author of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. 20
First published in 1941, it is a beautifully written account of a journey
made in 1937 that has rarely been out of print. However, like Andric’s,
her narrative enshrines the historic role of the Serbs in the region – an
attitude that influenced the many readers who imbibed it over the next
half century, including those who intervened in the wars of the former
Yugoslavia and wrote of them. Thus Robert Kaplan partially incorporated
West’s themes into his bestselling Balkan Ghosts (1993), a book apparently
highly popular with US president Bill Clinton and many members
of his administration. Unfortunately, as Richard Holbrooke notes, the
Kaplan/West combination was undoubtedly instrumental in creating the
19 David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (London: Indigo, 1996), 18.
20 As the war progressed, other works by Andric also gained a modest international following,
most notably Bosnian Chronicle, also known as The Days of the Consuls (London:
Harvill Press, 1996 [1945]). Apart from West, two other Western books were probably
influential, both establishing an image of the region based in the Second World War: Sir
Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches (London: Macmillan, 1949), and Evelyn Waugh,
Unconditional Surrender (London: Chapman & Hall, 1961). Maclean, one of the founder
members of the Special Air Services regiment (SAS) and head of the 1944 mission to
Yugoslavia, was imbibed by many soldiers and diplomats; while Waugh covers the same
territory from the perspective of a lowly officer on the ground.