War in the Balkans, 1991-2002

Armed conflict on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001 claimed over 200,000 lives, gave rise to atrocities unseen in Europe since the Second World War, and left behind a terrible legacy of physical ruin and psychological devastation. Unfolding against the background of the end of cold war bipolarity, the new Balkan wars sounded a discordant counterpoint to efforts to construct a more harmonious European order, were a major embarrassment for the international institutions deemed responsible for conflict management, and became a preoccupation for the powers concerned with restoring regional stability. After more than a decade of intermittent hostilities the conflict has been contained, but only as a result of significant external interventions and the establishment of a series of de facto international protectorates, patrolled by UN, NATO, and EU sponsored peacekeepers with open-ended mandates. The 1990s saw numerous regional conflicts, Haiti, Colombia, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Sierre Leone, Congo, that were comparable to or, in some cases, more destructive than the Balkan war. Few of these contests have received anything like the intense scrutiny devoted to the Balkans, for reasons good and bad. The Balkans is a part of Europe, and therefore more accessible to scrutiny by the international media, and engagement by external powers, than conflicts waged in less developed and approachable regions. The atrocities committed in the Balkans were no more or less lamentable than those carried out in parallel conflicts in Africa, Latin America, or Asia, but they were prominently displayed and extensively discussed on televised news reports. The resulting impact on elite and public opinion made the Balkan conflict politically compelling, it was a war that could not be ignored. The Balkans has been an object of international political competition for centuries, and many of the great European and Eurasian powers have long-standing interests in the region. Once the stasis of the cold war system was broken, traditional perceptions of interest were quick to reemerge, perhaps to the surprise of the contending parties themselves. From the outset, therefore, the Balkan war was shaped by great power intervention, whether in support of local allies, in the name of conflict resolution, or with an eye to the long-term benefits to be derived from geopolitical realignment in what was still regarded as a strategically relevant world region. The Balkan conflict was a part of the generic phenomenon of post-communist transition in Central and Eastern Europe as a whole, a dynamic with major implications for international relations. It has likewise, and correctly, been perceived as a kind of testing ground for international conflict management efforts in the post-cold war era.