Peace with Justice?: War Crimes and Accountability in the Former Yugoslavia (The New International Relations of Europe)

Resolving the Yugoslav conflict was the last great foreign policy challenge of the twentieth century. Never before in history was so much emphasis placed on the need to employ the concept of justice in the peace process or was so much energy devoted to creating and utilizing international justice-based institutions. In this provocative and insightful book, two former State Department lawyers, Paul R. Williams and Michael P. Scharf, undertake to tell the true story, 'warts and all,' of the role of justice in building peace in the former Yugoslavia. During the Yugoslav conflict, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was transformed from a key partner in peace to an indicted war criminal, who now sits in a 10 x 17 foot cell at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. But the road from accommodation to accountability in the Balkans was anything but smooth. Based on their personal experience, extensive research, and interviews with key players in the Yugoslav peace-building process, Williams and Scharf provide a gripping account of how and why justice was misapplied and mishandled throughout the peace-builders' efforts to settle the Yugoslav conflict. All too often human rights and peace advocates treat justice as a panacea for conflict and atrocities, while self-proclaimed realists and professional diplomats dismiss justice as an impediment to peace. Williams and Scharf demonstrate that the truth lies in between. Their definitive study provides a novel framework for understanding the utility of justice as well as its practical limits as a diplomatic tool so that it can be more effectively applied in resolving future conflicts around the globe.