Shaping the Twenty-First Century International Security Community in South East Europe and Beyond: An Introduction

Abstract

International relations specialists and policy makers had initially anticipated the emergence of a more peaceful international order following the collapse of the Soviet empire, but the implosion of the former Yugoslavia, plunging the region into a series of secessionist wars and dividing peoples along ethnic and religious lines, would become the first major test for defining the new security architecture and major features of the post-bipolar system. The peaceful coexistence of nearly 50 years post-1945, in which ethnic animosities had been subdued with at least an appearance of assimilation in Yugoslavia, was shattered by a new reality of conflict reaching a level of violent confrontation that was entirely unanticipated for a relatively modern European nation at the conclusion of the twentieth century. The wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1991–1995) and Kosovo (1999) were accompanied by significant outside intervention involving nations of Europe, the United States, and Russia in regional conflict and long-term postwar transition. More than a decade has passed since the Dayton Agreement of 1995 established the terms for settlement of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and since the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 78-day Kosovo air campaign in 1999, which culminated in the introduction of a United Nations mission and peacekeeping forces in Kosovo, bringing an end to the Yugoslav secessionist wars.