[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 110 (Friday, July 30, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9937-S9938]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      BALKAN HISTORICAL PARALLELS

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, yesterday the Committee on Foreign 
Relations held a remarkable hearing on the prospects for democracy in 
Yugoslavia. Testifying were two of the Administration's top Balkan 
experts, two leading representatives of the non-governmental 
organization community with wide and deep experience in the Balkans, 
the executive director of the Office of External Affairs of the Serbian 
Orthodox Church in the United States, and a courageous woman from 
Belgrade who chairs the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia.
  One of the many topics raised during this hearing was the question of 
the correctness of the decision of the United States to refuse to give 
reconstruction assistance--as distinct from humanitarian assistance--to 
Serbia as long as Slobodan Milosevic remains in control in Belgrade. I 
completely support the Administration's policy in this matter, which, I 
am certain, comes as no surprise to any of my colleagues.
  Since on this very day President Clinton and more than forty other 
world leaders are meeting in Sarajevo to discuss a so-called Balkans 
Stability Pact, which would deliver reconstruction assistance on a 
regional basis, I thought it would be appropriate at this time briefly 
to discuss two alleged historical parallels, one of which I believe is 
fallacious, the other which I would assert is directly applicable to 
the current situation.
  At yesterday's hearing it was asserted that there was a moral 
imperative for NATO countries to offer reconstruction aid to Serbia 
just as after World War II the United States included Germany in its 
Marshall Plan assistance.
  Mr. President, I would submit that this intended parallel falls short 
in several respects. First of all, in spite of twelve brutal years of 
criminal Nazi rule, post-war Germany still had the democratic tradition 
of Weimar as a basis for rebuilding its political system, with several 
prominent surviving leaders. Nothing like that exists in Serbia today. 
There are no Serbian Konrad Adenauers or Kurt Schumachers.
  Secondly, the United States made as preconditions for Marshall plan 
assistance adherence to democracy, free-market capitalism, and 
cooperation with neighboring countries. Needless to say, the Serbia of 
Slobodan Milosevic would qualify on none of those grounds.
  Finally, in order to guide post-war Germany toward democracy, the 
victorious allies occupied the country, dividing up responsibility into 
four zones. The Soviets quickly made clear their intention to impose 
communism in what became East Germany, and Stalin pressured the East 
Germans and other satellite countries to refuse the offer of Marshall 
Plan aid. In the U.S., British, and French zones of Germany, however, 
hundreds of thousands of troops and civilian officials essentially ran 
political life until the Federal Republic of Germany was established in 
1949, and allied troops have remained until today.
  It may well be that in order to bring Serbia into the family of 
democratic nations just such an international occupation would have to 
happen, but it is simply not in the cards.
  So, Mr. President, the alleged parallel of today's Serbia with post-
war Germany is totally inappropriate.

  There is, however, a historical parallel chronologically much closer 
to today, which is, in fact, an appropriate one. That is the case of 
the Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina.
  After the Dayton Accords were signed in late 1995 and the two 
entities--the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska--were 
established, the Congress of the United States put together a 
reconstruction assistance package. Because of the brutal crimes of the 
Bosnian Serbs under Radovan Karadzic from 1992 to 1995, the legislation 
excluded the new Republika Srpska, then under Karadzic's control, from 
any reconstruction assistance except for infrastructural projects like 
energy and water, which spanned the inter-entity boundary line with the 
Federation. That meant that in the immediate post-Dayton period the 
Federation received about ninety-eight percent of American development 
assistance to Bosnia.
  Largely as a result of this policy, the Federation's economy 
immediately began to recover from the war, while the Republika Srpska, 
under Karadzic's control in the town of Pale, stagnated.
  But our policy has not been one exclusively of sticks; there have 
also been carrots. If localities in the Republika Srpska cooperated 
with Dayton implementation, the U.S. Agency for International 
Development was prepared to channel assistance to them. USAID lays down 
strict conditions in contracts with the individual localities. The 
policy is not perfect, and it is carefully monitored by Congress. But, 
in general, it has worked, and it has had positive results.
  People in the Republika Srpska saw the economic resuscitation of the 
Federation and noticed the assistance that a few of their own 
localities were receiving. They compared this modest, but undeniable 
economic progress with the persistent, grinding poverty of most of the 
Republika Srpska, led by Karadzic and his corrupt, criminal gang in 
Pale, which had been effectively isolated. The indicted war criminal 
Karadzic was finally banned from political life, but one of his puppets 
took his place.
  No matter how ultra-nationalistic or even racist many of the people 
in the Republika Srpska were, most of the population caught on pretty 
quickly that their future was an absolute zero as long as their current 
leaders stayed in office.
  The result was a reform movement, initially led by Mrs. Plavsic, 
which legally wrested control from the Pale thugs and moved the capital 
of the Republika Srpska to Banja Luka. Last year she lost an election, 
but the government of the Republika Srpska is now led by Prime Minister 
Dodik, a genuine democrat, who has survived attempts from Belgrade by 
Milosevic to unseat him, is supported by a multi-ethnic parliamentary 
coalition, kept the lid on the situation during the Yugoslav air 
campaign, and now is beginning to implement Dayton.
  The situation in Bosnia, as we all know, is far from satisfactory, 
but real progress has been made. And, back to my original point, in the 
Republika Srpska we have the real historical parallel of a policy of 
excluding a government from economic reconstruction assistance as long 
as it is ruled by an indicted war criminal or his puppet.
  I hope this discussion of historical precedents may be helpful as the 
Senate continues to debate our Balkan reconstruction policy.

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