Humanitarian State-buiding by Internationals – Lessons on Peacemaking Tools:
The History of the Albanian International Commission of Control 1913/1914

One of the current trends in the study of international relations is the examination of the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian interventions in post-war state-building processes. Successful humanitarian interventions can save millions of lives. As opposed to humanitarian actions and humanitarian aid, which are well-researched by historians, humanitarian intervention is popular among political scientists, scholars of international law, and philosophers. For them, the history of humanitarian intervention prior to 1945/1990 is only a short introduction or a footnote. The need for a new perspective in humanitarian intervention research is compelling.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, it was an axiom for political scientists that the collapse of a state (empire) automatically threatens peace and regional or global security. Shattered security environments consequently give rise to humanitarian crises. Humanitarian problems then create new challenges to global security and require international action. International assistance, however, is efficient only if it targets the root problems. Two typical root problems are the lack of law and order and a stable state structure. State-building is always a task that the international community cannot avoid if the results of the intervention are meant to be lasting.

Since 1990, the EU and NATO countries have been compelled several times to launch state-building operations in post-war environments (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan). For the very mixed results of these vastly expensive efforts, political decision-makers and theoretical experts increasingly need a deeper understanding of historical cases that could serve as lessons for handling future challenges.

As one of the most important tools of international peace-making and state-building efforts, the International Commission of Control (ICC) began its activity in the second half of the 19th century. The main goal of this type of commission was to assist and control the organization of new nation-states that were to emerge on the site of collapsing empires for a limited period defined in cooperation with the political centers of the local people. This type of commission was created in areas where the interests of great powers were in direct conflict, mainly in Eastern Europe. Studying the history of this type of international cooperation, one can venture to predict that once the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian war ends, a new type of ICC may become a useful diplomatic means to rebuild an independent Ukraine.

From the point of view of research and lessons learned, the history of the Balkans represents a considerable corpus of so far unexplored and unutilized experience: the chosen case study of Albania (1913–1914) shows striking structural similarities with current state-building attempts (Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina).

The project has two main objectives. On the one hand, Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics, the principal investigator aims to reconstruct the complex history of the ICC in Albania in a monograph by integrating the concepts and perspectives of contemporary political science, diplomacy, and peace studies disciplines (weak state, bad neighborhood, responsibility to protect, accountability) into concrete historical research.

On the other hand, László Márkusz, the co-researcher of the project, an active diplomat currently serving as Deputy High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, aims to explain the historical experience of the Albanian ICC to contemporary diplomats. Through formal and informal channels, the task of this co-researcher, who earlier also served in Kosovo as an ambassador, is to “interpret” the historical experiences formulated by the principal investigator into the terminologies of political science and diplomacy and to make them available for diplomats active in the Balkans and the post-Soviet regions and even in the Middle East.

Closely related to the above objectives, the co-researcher will also carry out independent research within the project: examining the experiences of international state-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo after 1990, analyzing the contact points of international interventions and local nationalisms in the Western Balkans, and seeking answers to the question of why the international consensus behind these state-building efforts evaporated.

At the end of the project, the researchers intend to make recommendations for a possible ICC-type organization for Ukraine.