Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes in the Hague Tribunal

Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes in the Hague Tribunal

John Hagan
Reviewed by By Robert Legvold
January/February 2004
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
John Hagan
University of Chicago Press
2003
304 pp.
0226312283
$29.00

With our attention shifted from ethnic cleansing to global terrorism, we have lost track of what is at stake in The Hague, where the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been at work since 1994. With this penetrating analysis of the court's workings, Hagan forcefully yanks us back. The arrest and trial of Slobodan Milosevic have been the sensational culmination of the process, but other crucial trials preceded it, including those of the perpetrators of Srebrenica and Foca. Hagan traces the complex interactions between investigatory and prosecutorial teams, the dynamics between witnesses and prosecution, and how the special leadership of three successive chief judges turned an unpromising start into a forceful finish. On the path from the Nuremberg trials to the "liberal legalism" of the International Criminal Court, these proceedings, Hagan argues, stand as a milestone in the creation of humanitarian and international criminal law.

Related

Essay, Special 1980
Poland and the Soviet Imperium
Seweryn Bialer

Events in Poland since August 1980, the struggle of Polish workers for their rights, constitute a critical turning point in the history of the Soviet imperium. The situation, still completely unpredictable at the onset of the new year, holds much more importance for the future of the world communist movement, the Soviet empire, and the Soviet Union itself than the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Polish revolt of the same year, the Czechoslovak reforms of 1968, and even the Stalin-Tito rupture of 1947-48. Its international implications are no less grave. Poland is the key country in the Soviet bloc in terms of strategic location, military and economic potential, and size of population. A major lasting change there could transform, if not destroy, the Soviet Union's East European empire.

Read
Essay, May/Jun 2003
Milosevic in The Hague
Gary J. Bass

Yugoslavia's former tyrant now sits in the dock facing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Serving as his own counsel, Slobodan Milosevic rages against NATO conspiracies and victor's justice. But these courtroom antics cannot detract from the trial's great achievements: revealing the truth about Milosevic's role in the Balkan wars and removing him from Serbian politics once and for all.

Read
Comment, Jul/Aug 1997
Women's Vital Voices: The Costs of Exclusion in Eastern Europe
Swanee Hunt

Post-communism has been bad for women in Eastern Europe: their representation, employment, and safety have suffered. America must support women leaders and entrepreneurs for the transition to democracy and capitalism to be complete.

Read