Karadzic’s Arrest: Triumph of European Soft Power?

Finally, Serbia is back in Europe. Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger write in the NY Times:

Europe on Tuesday welcomed the arrest of Radovan Karadzic not just as a victory for international justice, but as a vindication of the Continent’s favored political doctrine: soft power. (…)
In the last few months the European Union has helped bring a pro-Western political party to victory in Serbia’s elections while ensuring that it has powerful incentives to hand over war crimes suspects. The arrest of Mr. Karadzic demonstrates how effective the union’s leverage can be, particularly with neighboring countries that have ambitions to join it.

Yeah, it only took a bit more than a decade…

But then again, how successful (and how costly) is hard power? Milosevic and Karadzic were not arrested during the many Balkan wars… Well, obviously, without the wars, they might still be in power, but the war itself did not get them arrested.

Cross-posted from Atlantic Review