yugoslavias implosion

all so-called Serbian lands. While this ambition persists, the region
remains fundamentally unstable.
Chapter 4 also shows that Serbia’s elites (its political, military,
cultural, religious, and other elites) were unanimous in their support
of the Serbian national program. Actually, it was they that had
framed the program in the first place; Slobodan Milošević came later
and was skilfully installed with a view to implementing the program.
The consensus of opinion regarding the national project was precisely
what blinded Serbia to seeing an alternative. In his important
and highly relevant book Geschichte Serbiens. 19.-21. Jahrhundert, the
German historian Holm Sundhausen concludes that “the history of
Serbia would have taken a different course had her elites been interested
in regulating the state and society rather than in territorial
expansion. It could have been a highly developed country, but that
was sacrificed in the name of a grand idea that during the 1990s set
Serbia back by a hundred years.” 5
In CHAPTER 5, the final chapter of this book, I draw some general
lessons from the Yugoslav experience for policymakers, academics,
and activists working to maintain communal and regional peace
in the face of entrenched animosities and high tensions between ethnic
or national groups. Some of these lessons are specific to Serbia
and its neighbors, but most are pertinent not just to the Balkans or
even to Europe as a whole but to all parts of the world where nationalist
passions have the potential to ignite a violent conflagration. For
instance, the break-up of Yugoslavia points not only to the fact that
the parties to a conflict mired in historical grievance need external
help in resolving their dispute peacefully but also to the need for
the international community to accurately understand the nature,
causes, and course of that conflict, to reach consensus on how to
handle its conflict management efforts, to avoid the temptation of
5 Holm Zundhausen, Istorija Srbije od 19. do 21 veka (History of Srebia
from XIX to XXI Century), Clio, Beograd (2008), p . 507 .
29
IntroduCtIon