Violence-Prone Area or International Transition?: Adding the Role of Outsiders in Balkan Violence

Abstract

The author assesses the roles of international organizations & local-level forces in causing the disintegration of Yugoslavia. She argues that nostalgia for an ethnic identity led local actors to attempt to recover that identity through communal violence. However, this longing for a lost home was not the cause of the broader conflict, even though it provided the local context in which the violence was actualized. The origins of Yugoslavia's internal violence emerged during the last decade of the Cold War, when the Yugoslavian state was faced with a series of crises that eventually overwhelmed it. After the state broke down, communal violence emerged because of "the demand for majority rights in a land of minorities." However, this communal violence was a minor danger compared to the violence generated by the response of the international community. NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the UN, the US, & individual European governments all contributed to the Balkan debacle. International actors used such concepts as "culture of violence" & "violence-prone area" to attribute a form of dangerous subjectivity to the inhabitants of the region & to rationalize their own role in Yugoslavia's dissolution. The politics of international relations & agencies pushed Yugoslavia to the point of complete disintegration. 17 References. A. Funderburg