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Balkan Tragedy - Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Paperback)
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Balkan Tragedy - Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Paperback)
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"Yugoslavia was well positioned at the end of the cold war to make
a successful transition to a market economy and westernization. Yet
two years later, the country had ceased to exist, and devastating
local wars were being waged to create new states. Between the fall
of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the start of the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina in March 1992, the country moved toward
disintegration at astonishing speed. The collapse of Yugoslavia
into nationalist regimes led not only to horrendous cruelty and
destruction, but also to a crisis of Western security regimes.
Coming at the height of euphoria over the end of the cold war and
the promise of a ""new world order,"" the conflict presented
Western governments and the international community with an
unwelcome and unexpected set of tasks. Their initial assessment
that the conflict was of little strategic significance or national
interest could not be sustained in light of its consequences. By
1994 the conflict had emerged as the most challenging threat to
existing norms and institutions that Western leaders faced. And by
the end of 1994, more than three years after the international
community explicitly intervened to mediate the conflict, there had
been no progress on any of the issues raised by the country's
dissolution. In this book, Susan Woodward explains what happened to
Yugoslavia and what can be learned from the response of outsiders
to its crisis. She argues that focusing on ancient ethnic hatreds
and military aggression was a way to avoid the problem and
misunderstood nationalism in post-communist states. The real origin
of the Yugoslav conflict, Woodward explains, is the disintegration
of governmental authority and the breakdown of a political and
civil order, a process that occurred over a prolonged period. The
Yugoslav conflict is inseparable from international change and
interdependence, and it is not confined to the Balkans but is part
of a more widespread phenomenon of political disintegration.
Woodward's analysis is based on her first-hand experience before
the country's collapse and then during the later stages of the
Bosnian war as a member of the UN operation sent to monitor
cease-fires and provide humanitarian assistance. She argues that
Western action not only failed to prevent the spread of violence or
to negotiate peace, but actually exacerbated the conflict. Woodward
attempts to explain why these challenges will not cease or the
Yugoslav conflicts end until the actual causes of the conflict, the
goals of combatants, and the fundamental issues they pose for
international order are better understood and addressed. "
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