Contentious collaboration: Explaining Great Power cooperation in the Balkans (United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia)

This dissertation combines social theories concerning communicative action and the influence of culture on states' security policies to examine multinational crisis management in the Balkans through the 1990s. By examining how the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, and France (members of an informal group named “the Contact Group”) collaborated in response to the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo I have been able to isolate specific, security-related cultural incompatibilities that contributed to their inability to collaborate quickly and effectively. These incompatibilities concern issues such as the legitimacy and efficacy of different tools of statecraft; the definition of sovereignty; and, the role and importance of international law. My analysis also points to specific characteristics of institutions and rules for communication that can either exacerbate or minimize the effect of these incompatibilities.; My central claim is that each state possesses a distinct “security culture” that provides state leaders with understandings about which actions are possible, probable, and preferable. When individuals with incompatible security cultures gather to respond collectively to a crisis, their willingness to communicate non-coercively, combined with the institutional setting in which they consult, influences whether collaboration will allow them to bridge their cultural incompatibilities and coordinate efforts.; This work builds on existing theories that document that states possess distinct and influential security-related cultures. This project takes the next step by examining what happens when states with different security-related cultures try to act collectively. To test the cultural theory of collaboration developed in this work, I offer detailed, process-tracing accounts of discussions by the Contact Group members within the Contact Group, the UN Security Council, and NATO regarding (1) the siege of Bihac in late 1994; (2) the decision to launch Operation Deliberate Force in August 1995; (3) the decision to threaten Milosevic with NATO force in October 1998; and (4) the decision to negotiate with Milosevic during Operation Allied Force.