The Ethnicization of War and Politics in the Balkans: A Review Essay

Abstract

Since decolonization began in the former European colonies in Asia, Africa, and Middle East at the conclusion of World War II, ethnic warfare and “ethnic cleansing” have dominated the military and political agendas of Europe, the United States, and the former Soviet Union.1 Highlighting this ethnic warfare was the blood letting that occurred in the former Yugoslavia (FRY), that started shortly after the disintegration of Yugoslavia after the death of Marshal Tito in 1980. The violence that wracked the Balkans during the 1990s ushered in one of the worst conflicts Europe has witnessed since the end of World War II. Whereas historian Samuel P. Huntington has labeled this era a “clash of civilizations,”2 it has been, in the opinion of this reviewer, more of a clash of competing nationalist ideologies that have used ethnicity and religion as a “cloak” to hide their respective “expansionist” agendas. These “expansionist tendencies have led to some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity that up until now Europeans and Americans have associated with Equatorial Africa, the Infantada on the West Bank in Palestine, and “killing fields” of Cambodia.