618
PARTISAN REVIEW
the EC Conference on Yugoslavia brought together distinguished jurists
from several European countries to make up the Badinter Commission
and asked their legal opinion about issues of recognition. The commis–
sion determined that only Slovenia and Macedonia fulfilled all the re–
quirements. Nevertheless, the foreign ministers recognized Croatia and
Slovenia instead. Apparently, a deal had been struck between Genscher
and his Greek counterpart Samaras: the Greeks, the Serbs' traditional al–
lies in the Balkans, waved their objections to recognizing Croatia, and
in return Germany promised Greece it would delay EC recognition of
Macedonia.
The foreign ministers' meeting of December 17, 1995, as a bitter
Dutch diplomat put it, off the record, to journalists, was important for
Germany: it cast Germany as a superpower. Indeed, Yugoslavia's civil war
was the first European crisis after the end of the Cold War and Ger–
many's reunification. Croatia was recognized despite British and French
reluctance, discontent, and resentment. Germany's aggressive action upset
its European partners and was out of character. Until then, Germany had
had a great deal of economic clout but little political muscle, and had
always followed the French in matters of diplomacy. Now, it was in
radical opposition to the plans and desires of Britain, France, and Russia.
This was an unfortunate debut. However, feeding into Serbian para–
noia also sealed Bosnia's fate. Later on, the Germans argued that recog–
nition of Croatia momentarily had stopped the fighting in Croatia. But
this was somewhat disingenuous. A different sequence of events could
have taken place. By December 17th, United States Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance already had put the finishing touches on the terms for the
Serbo-Croat cessation of hostilities, and on the Unprofor mandate in
former Yugoslavia. The Vance plan was to be signed in less than two
weeks. In fact, the EC recognized Croatia and Slovenia two weeks after
the Vance plan became effective.
Therefore, Germany's premature recognition of Croatia had no im–
mediate effect on the length of the war. Instead, it forced Bosnian Presi–
dent Alija Izetbegovic to make the choice he had desperately tried to
postpone, that is, to apply for recognition of Bosnia before the deadline.
This put him in a highly precarious position. As he stated to Lord Car–
rington, "If I ask for recognition, there will be a civil war. If I don't,
they'll cut my throat."
During the fall of 1991, Izetbegovic had argued during every session
of the EC Conference on Yugoslavia that he was against partial solu–
tions to the Yugoslav conflict and separate recognition for any republic
- a position the EC itself had promised to take when the conference had
opened in September at the Hague. Izetbegovic was wary of the Bosnian
