Reconciliation Across Religious/Political Borders
Westphalian Norms and the Legacy of the Bosnian War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/de-ethica.2001-8819.259238Keywords:
Borders, Sovereignty, Westphalian system, Reconciliation, Transitional justice, Bosnia, Interfaith relationsAbstract
The question of reconciliation within the legacy of the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina presents religious ethicists with a challenge. A promising resource for this challenge lies in the relationship between religious and political borders, which complements the formal, juridical character of transitional justice. The religious/political borders relationship does not apply to all reconciliation-related cases, yet it does bear on cases in which religious/political identities overlap and questions of sovereign territoriality are at issue. The Bosnian conflict not only fulfills these criteria; its legacy reveals it as a harbinger of contemporary changes in norms associated with sovereignty. Because of their background in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, these changes can be labeled ”toxic Westphalianism,” in which adherence to Westphalian norms remains, even as its anchoring distinctions have become unmoored. These claims suggest two further contributions to the ethical engagement with reconciliation. First, the historical approach demonstrates the value of tracing reconciliation to its roots. Second, self-conscious attention to religious-political relations carves out a distinct and important role for religious ethics, which is uniquely placed to navigate between internal and external borders of a religious tradition and promote better forms of public and interfaith engagement.
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