Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?: Scholarly Debate and the Realities of Eastern Europe
Mini Teaser: The problem set the West by the Yugoslav wars between 1991 and 1995 was at bottom a simple one: whether to intervene on the ground to defeat the Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia, and then stay.
As a journalist in the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 1996 (for
much of the period stationed in the Baltic States and the
Transcaucasus), I observed half a dozen different ethnic disputes and
conflicts, and while manipulation was present in all of them, in each
one its importance, and the local response, were different.
The Baltic States, for example, present interesting examples of
determined attempts at the creation of ethnic conflict that failed to
work, despite all the necessary flammable material apparently being
at hand. In 1990-91 I witnessed Sovi