For the reasons listed above, such a state is intolerable provided one's main objective is to preserve the peace and stability of the region concerned. Ethno-centric policy has historically seemed the most suitable means of securing one's interest in the Balkans. Many members of the regional elites have believed that their cause can be realized only within an ethnically homogeneous environment. In order to create such an environment they had to resort to a series of ethnic cleansing deployed to sort out the ethnic hodge-podge and eventually give stable and orderly political boundaries to the region. Apparently, the communities ended up caught in a vicious circle.
Stability is therefore a very relative term.
Many theorists of Balkan affairs see the creation of the civil society as the panacea to the region's malady. However, these scholars seldom address the grave reality that such civic virtues do not emerge out of the blue, particularly not in a region that has been bruised and battered by ethnic struggle for centuries. In fact, according to such a simplistic rationale, we are practically asking the Balkan minorities to forget about their past and take an elegant historical short-cut, i.e., develop trust in both the rule of law and in members of surrounding ethnic groups. A clearly formulated set of laws including well-defined criteria of the justified conditions for secession coupled with adequate minority rights guarantees appear to be the most urgent stipulations of any lasting settlement. Democracy and recognition, rather than ethno-centric theory and practice might pave the way to a more stable situation in the Balkans.