WorldView: The death of Slobodan Milosevic is a sharp reminder of a dark period in European history after the end of the Cold War.
Such a geopolitical transformation could have led to a generalised conflict throughout the former Soviet sphere, where minority populations were left stranded in newly independent states, similar to the situation in disintegrating Yugoslavia. In fact this happened only in the Balkans. The reasons remain highly relevant for the future of Europe.
Milosevic created a lethal combination of Stalinism and Serb nationalism to maintain his hold on power as Yugoslavia fell apart. His strategy involved mobilising the Serb minorities in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro towards a greater Serbia by war and ethnic cleansing. Psychologically, he relied on a combination of victimhood and blame, making him simultaneously a pyromaniac and a fireman.
It could have worked had he stopped in 1992 after applying the formula in Croatia and Bosnia; but the dynamics of the wars already in train and of the international response prevented that. Thereafter, he was effectively kept in power by the international standoff over Bosnia, in which Britain resolutely opposed military action to relieve Sarajevo; and then by the 1995 Dayton accord which held until Nato's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, which precipitated his downfall the following year.
His 13 years in power coincided with huge change elsewhere in Europe. In the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia, and in Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, there was a similar mix of minorities and majorities which could have triggered conflicts comparable to those in the western Balkans during the 1990s. National minorities, newly nationalising states and external national homelands such as Russia or Hungary could have been prey to a Milosevic-type logic.
That this was not so requires explanation and understanding in equal measure. The American journalist Elizabeth Pond put it well in her study published in 1999, The Rebirth of Europe: "The new paradigm is not, after all, the atrocities of former Yugoslavia, or even the old nineteenth century balance-of-power jostling. It is an unaccustomed reconciliation in the heart of Europe, between France and Germany, Germany and Poland, Poland and Ukraine, Romania and Hungary, Germany and The Netherlands."
Seven years on, one can add, tentatively, to this list a gradual normalisation of relations between Russia and the former Soviet states. And one can see much more clearly that the precedent set by Slovenia, which escaped Yugoslavia nearly unscathed in 1991 and is now a member of the European Union, is the one the other successor states wish to follow. Croatia is likely to join the EU by 2009, shortly after Bulgaria and Romania. And by 2020, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia may have brought it to a membership of 34. If Turkey joins then too, the existing 25 member-states would have grown to 35 in 16 years.
The EU's enlargement from 15 to 25 between 1995 and 2004 - with the exception of Cyprus and Malta, all of them from the heart of central and eastern Europe - is justifiably seen as an outstanding foreign policy success. By laying down norms and values, providing aid and investment and imposing them in prolonged membership negotiations, the EU created a new hegemony over other European institutions which contributed immeasurably to that reconciliation.
The notions of rejoining or returning to Europe were powerful instruments encouraging elites to reform and reconcile rather than plan for war or ethnic cleansing. And the eventual reward of EU membership is what now drives similar movements of reform in the western Balkans. This perspective has made Milosevic's formula redundant there. Should the commitment to EU enlargement be slackened, the Balkan region could revert to other methods.
A large question facing the EU now is whether that point has been reached after the constitutional treaty fell in the French and Dutch referendums last year. The treaty deepened the EU the better to enlarge it, but did it fall on enlargement or deepening? Can an enlarged EU function without the structural and procedural changes contained in the treaty? Could many of them be introduced without treaty change? Or will the constitution need to be amended?
The current Austrian EU presidency is orchestrating a debate and decision on these issues. Following the autumn pause for reflection, in which little was done at political level, there are calls for a further pause - this time to digest the latest members - in both France and The Netherlands. The French have always been sceptical about enlargement.
French voters complained during the referendum they had not been consulted about the 2004 enlargement. A poll that year found 70 per cent of them thought the EU was unprepared for it, 55 per cent opposed it altogether (compared to 35 per cent in the then EU15) and only one in 50 could name all 10 of the new member states. The mood against Turkey is emphatic, and sceptical about Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkans. Turkey is seen by most French people as a non-European Muslim state, which would set disturbing precedents for the entry of other Mediterranean ones. In The Netherlands, there is a similar mood in government.
Geopolitical arguments about European stability or the need to engage the Muslim world and the Middle East in dialogue to pre-empt civilisational clashes do not resonate with such attitudes. But these arguments remain central to the debate about enlargement and are intimately bound up with the case for having an EU constitution to regulate it.
It would be premature to conclude the issue, or the treaty, is dead.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie