The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia
Subtitle: Nationalism in a Multinational State
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: November 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 222
ISBN-13: 9780312163426
Subjects: Eastern Europe - Yugoslavia; Eastern Europe - History; Nationalism; History - General History; 1918-1945; Diplomatic history; History; Yugoslav War, 1991-1995; Yugoslavia; Politics/International Relations
First sentence: In the evening of 1 December 1918, in a small villa in the centre of Belgrade, the regent of the Kingdom of Serbia, Prince Aleksandar Karadordevic, flanked by ministers of the Serbian government and members of its general staff received the Delegation of the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs from Zagreb.
Description: Why did Yugoslavia disintegrate in a series of brutal civil wars? The roots of the conflict are to be found in the Croat and Serb as well as Kosovo Albanian and Bosnian Muslim national ideologies which make competing claims for the same territory. These national ideologies, which predate the Yugoslav state created in 1918, re-emerged first as anti-communist dissident ideologies in the 1980s and then in 1990 as the ideologies of the new ruling parties in each Yugoslav republic.

As the Yugoslav constitution of 1974 offered no mechanism for the arbitration of the conflicting territorial claims, the new political leaders in the Yugoslav republics attempted to settle them by force. Neither the European Community (Union) nor the United Nations was able to resolve the conflict by a negotiated settlement; in 1995 in the USA and NATO undertook to impose a settlement by a combination of armed and diplomatic intimidation of the Serb leaders.

Whether this strategy will bring a lasting peace is still to be seen.