Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics

 

keywords: humanitarian state-building, liberal humanitarian intervention, Blair Doctrine, state-building vs. nation-building, applied history

 

„I’m here today not to lecture but to listen to those of you from Bosnia and the region. We in the Trump Administration are willing to provide our good offices to improve conditions, but only if our involvement is wanted and warranted. […] What does this mean for Bosnia-Herzegovina? It means that we’re willing to listen to, and to work with, all affected parties.”

(Highlighted in bold by KCsD)

These were the words of Christopher Landau, US Deputy Secretary of State, at a conference in Dayton, Ohio, on 23 May 2025, to mark the upcoming 30th anniversary of the agreement that ended the bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

(Source: https://www.state.gov/deputy-secretary-of-state-christopher-landau-at-the-2025-nato-parliamentary-assembly/)

Landau’s speech had a number of novelties, some of which were already foreshadowed by US President Donald Trump’s speech in Riyadh. One of the new elements concerns the contemporary history of state-building for humanitarian purposes: the US State Department seems ready to face the ‘nation-building’ failures of the so-called liberal era of humanitarian intervention.

(Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-trumps-speech-in-riyadh-dawn-of-the-bright-new-day-for-the-great-people-of-the-middle-east/)

The era of liberal humanitarian intervention is the third major historical period in the history of humanitarian intervention (HI). The first, significant classical period, the long 19th century of great power negotiations, ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. The literature places the second major historical phase of HI during the Cold War, although it is important to note that the UN Charter successfully limited the use of force during those decades.

The third, liberal, phase began in the second half of the 1990s, during the interventions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, after the genocide in Rwanda and the failure of the international ambitions in Somalia. Humanitarian intervention helped by military means became part of international crisis management following the break-up of Yugoslavia, when NATO military capabilities were deployed to broker a peace agreement (Bosnia and Herzegovina) or at least a ceasefire (Kosovo). Following the successful military operations of NATO, international organizations, under the political leadership of Western countries, started international state-building efforts in these two Balkan countries.

The beginning of an era of liberal humanitarian interventions was foreshadowed in a number of speeches, mainly by US politicians (e.g. Bill Clinton), but was formulated as a doctrine by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999. The so-called Blair Doctrine states that humanitarian interventions and subsequent humanitarian state-building by Western-oriented states and organizations must be “value-centered”, reflect the liberal worldview of the Western world and disseminate the key elements of the liberal world’s particular institutional system of freedom: multi-party parliamentary system based on free elections; constitution; free market; respect for human rights, etc. (Blair: “If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society, then that is in our national interest.”)

Nation-building was an essential element of this type of intervention.

(Source: https://archive.globalpolicy.org/empire/humanint/1999/0422blair.htm)

It is worth noting that the diplomatic, political, philosophical, (i.e.: non-historian!) etc. experts who cite, analyze, and interpret the Blair Doctrine or liberal humanitarian intervention have consistently used two terms synonymously in their writings and speeches: state-building and nation-building.

But for nearly two hundred years, the concepts of state-building and nation-building have been interpreted differently by diplomats in the transatlantic world and politicians in Eastern Europe. Different interpretations of the two concepts have always led to confusion when the great powers or members of the international community have engaged in state-building in (South) Eastern Europe for humanitarian reasons – this was the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s and in Albania in 1913/1914.

For historical reasons, following the German model of the early 19th century, there is a sharp cleavage in Eastern Europe between the concepts of Staatsnation and Kulturnation, state-building and nation-building.

The concept of Staatsnation has French roots. When the concept of modern nation emerged in Europe around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the borders of the Francophone people and the French state largely coincided; therefore, the modernization of the state and the development of modern national culture took place within the same geographical-administrative framework.

However, the concept of a Kulturnation with German roots was based on the painful experience shared by the German speakers who found themselves scattered in dozens of sovereign states in the first half of the 19th century. When nationalism was rising, Germans were not bound together by citizenship, but by a common language and a culture (called national).

Since most of the ethnic communities of Eastern Europe lived dispersed in the territory of several countries or under the rule of many foreign powers in the long 19th century, the concept of the Kulturnation was their main point of reference in the age of nationalism.

For the above reasons, state-building and nation-building in Eastern Europe, including the Balkans, are distinct and sharply different concepts. While state-building is constructing an organizational, administrative order (state administration, armed forces, public education, judicial system, etc.), nation-building organizes a politically cohesive community based upon integrative features, such as language, perception of shared history, or religion. In simple terms, the first is to create an institutional framework for a country (school system, army, etc.); the latter is to transform the country’s population into a cohesive community with a sense of solidarity (e.g., school curricula to lay the foundations for national cohesion).

The problem with humanitarian state-building based on liberal values was that what was called nation-building in Eastern Europe meant state-building. Hence, the misguided Western presumption that the export of liberal institutions automatically served “nation-building” functions. That these two concepts do not necessarily go hand in hand beyond the transatlantic world is / has become clear to the Anglo-Saxon cultural community, primarily through the bitter experiences of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia.

These lessons could have been drawn from the activities of the International Control Commission in Albania (1913/1914). And much more easily than today: diplomats from Austria–Hungary, who knew the difference between state- and nation-building, were also involved in the activity of the International Control Commission of Albania. Accordingly, Austro–Hungarian diplomacy had a social engineering program that could have helped the difficult state-building process.

However, the Austro–Hungarian plans and ideas, which were partly based on contact with the local society and the resulting continuous and interactive learning process (!), were swept aside by British proposals based on the liberal ideas of the British Balkan Committee at the turn of the century, which did not even recognize the need for society building and sought only to build a state structure whose framework was conceived in London - i.e. abroad, without the Albanians.

British historiography now recognizes that turn-of-the-century British liberal thinking could not handle the nationalism of the Balkan peoples before 1914 (see Perkins: The Congo of Europe below).

The outbreak of the First World War ended state-building in Albania in 1914. The question is what will happen today. Will Donald Trump and Christopher Landau’s speeches mark a change of direction or a paradigm shift in the history of humanitarian state-building? A change of direction, i.e., staying within the framework of liberal humanitarian intervention and looking for new ways of implementing state-building directed or supervised by internationals, or a paradigm shift, i.e., a complete break with the principles of the Blair Doctrine.

What is certain is that since Trump took office in January, the US foreign policy leadership has “pulled the handbrake” on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Former US ambassador to BiH, Michael Murphy, who was an interventionist and sharply criticized the Bosnian Serb leadership, was called back to his capital in February. Furthermore, the State Department failed to send a delegation to Sarajevo for the Peace Implementation Council meeting in early June. Since this body is responsible for the political oversight of implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement, such an absence sends a strong political message.

In the pragmatic world of diplomacy, however, there is one more explanation: since America is bogged down by key strategic issues (Ukraine, the Middle East, trade war, China), US diplomacy has handed over the Balkans and the ‘nation-building projects’ to the Europeans for temporary management.

Online Sources:

References:

  • Barnett, Michael: Empire of Humanity. A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011. 186–193.
  • Burke, Anthony: Against the New Internationalism. In: Ethics & International Affairs 19, no. 2 (2005): 73–89, főként: 74–83.
  • Gellner, Ernest: Nationalismus und Moderne. Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1991.
  • Hroch, Miroslav: Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegungen bei den kleinen Völkern Europas: Eine vergleichende Analyse zur gesellschaftlichen Schichtung der patriotischen Gruppen. Praha: Universita Karlova, 1968.
  • Márkusz, László: A nemzetekről szóló elméletek a balkáni valóság tükrében. In: Pro Minoritate 2022 tél (https://prominoritate.hu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pro-Minoritate_2022_tel_Markusz_web.pdf)
  • Perkins, James: The Congo of Europe: The Balkans and Empire in Early Twentieth-Century British Political Culture. In: The Historical Journal 58, Issue 2 (2015): 565–587.
  • Ring, Éva: Államnemzet és kultúrnemzet válaszútján. A modern nemzetek születése Kelet-Közép-Európában. Budapest: Eötvös, 2004.