Most Americans have only a vague idea about the Balkan Peninsula of Southeastern Europe, the peoples who inhabit it, along with its ancient, tortured history. Of the ten countries which currently make up this region, Greece would likely be the only one which is somewhat familiar to Americans because we have learned in high school history classes that it’s the “Cradle Of Democracy” along with its ancient role as an illustrious center of Western Civilization.
The nine other countries which share the Balkan Peninsula are Albania, Bosnia Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia,Serbia, and according to most definitions, Romania. This region has typically been one the most bitterly divided along ethnic and religious lines in the world over the course of some 3,000 years. Unlike more modern nations like the United States, the Balkan region has been entirely or partially dominated by various empires through time which have also contributed immensely to its troubled history.
The Balkans have been overrun time and again by the Persian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Empires. Finally, the Turkish Ottoman Empire was the last major power to hold a grip over the Balkans and harshly imposed its will on the region from the Middle Ages into the early twentieth century. All of this fiery history culminated in the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on a state visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1914. This was the spark that set off the cataclysm of World War One. The end results of the First World fractured the region further, forcing rival ethnic groups into artificially created nations, resulting in a twenty year seething cauldron of bitterness, hatred, and resentment in the Balkan which led directly to the atrocities of World War Two and the Holocaust.
This fractious, internally violent region remained largely quiet during the mid-twentieth century Cold War era though, due to the stifling communist regimes which exerted tight control of the various countries that comprised the Balkans from 1945 to 1989. Eventually, the fading of the Cold War brought us to the early 1990s where prolific author and foreign correspondent Robert D. Kaplan had written an astute, well-traveled account of how the region was once again becoming a powder keg ready to explode on the world scene.
His book Balkan Wars functions well as a travelogue through these countries, leading us through the notable historical and political episodes of the region. His interviews with everyday people of the Balkan countries (not only other journalists or politicians) and thorough investigative reporting during the waning days of communism in the mid-1980s and 1990 informs the reader of what would soon be in store for the region. Indeed, by the time Balkan Wars was published in 1993, communist regimes had already collapsed in all of these countries (violently in Romania during 1989) and the republic of Yugoslavia which had disintegrated into a vicious civil war (during 1991-93) with bloodshed not seen in Europe since World War Two ended, causing Yugoslavia to disappear from the map, eventually breaking up into seven different angry, resentful nations.
It’s no surprise that religion has been at the forefront of Balkan blood feuds for a least 700 years. The clashes between Turkish-imposed Islam, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox churches have taken on mythic proportions. At various times throughout the history of the region either Greece, Serbia or Bulgaria was a leading power in the area, covering considerably larger geographic areas during their respective heydays than they do today, or prior to being swallowed up by the Ottoman Turks. The backward, remote mountain villages of Bosnia with a predominantly Muslim population have been at odds with Serbs and Croats for centuries.
Croatia, being heavily Catholic and with a more urbane, Western European-style outlook was always at cultural and political odds with the dominant, Orthodox Serbs when they were both coerced into the Yugoslav republic as a result of World War One boundary changes. Impoverished Albania with a largely Muslim population has had constant feuds and border friction with Greece and Serbia. The ancient, Macedonian region of Greece (of Alexander The Great fame) has had centuries of territorial disputes with Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia.
Romania has also endured more than its share of dissolute monarchies and barely fathomable political corruption. Kosovo would explode in horrendous ethnic violence six years after Balkan Ghosts was published. Of course, the Ottoman Turks played the various ethnic groups against each other to maintain control over the Balkans for some 450 years until its own internal decay resulted in it’s complete loss of control over the region by 1912. That legacy of playing different groups against each other would resume to deadly effect in the late 1990s as Kosovo exploded in ethnic bloodshed six years after Balkan Ghosts was published.
So, a reader of this article might well ask what this means for the United States. Is the history of the Balkans, past and present in any way relevant to our own history and to what future we may hurtling toward? Unlike the Balkans, the U.S. may not have intense strife between the different religions – but there is direct ideological conflict between believers and non-believers, those who believe our nation should be a theocracy and those who want a secular society.
The U.S. has fewer political parties than these smaller Balkan countries, but is also a hotbed of strife between the left/right, so-called “liberals, “conservatives”, pro-choice, pro-life, those who are supposedly “woke” and those who aren’t. There are racial hatreds and tensions that rival the ethnic Balkan feuds, constant clashes between the interests of capitalism and socialism, and so forth.
The U.S. may have more economic, political, and social issues than the countries of the Balkans do – and our democracy is being strained to the limit with how to be rational and compromise on these challenges we face together, without self-destructing as the Balkans have done, time and again. The United States has been a nation for 226 years, and when considering the period since European explorers first arrived in the Western Hemisphere – some 530 years have passed. That’s more than enough time of developed ugly history for the U.S. to follow the treacherous Balkan path.
