War in the Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

Although the Croatian and Bosnian wars of the early 1990s were brought to a peaceful conclusion over ten years ago, they remain pertinent events today both for the study of political science and future attempts at global conflict resolution. While they are often characterized as ethnic conflicts, this study poses the question of whether a conflict can ever truly be ethnic in the sense that the sole motivation for violence is ethnic hatred rather than strategic considerations. This question brings the motivations for violence in the Yugoslav case into question. This project explores relevant literature on contemporary theories of ethnic conflict and surveys events in the region from the arrival of the Slavic people to the Balkans in the sixth century to occurrences as recent as 2006. The conflicts are viewed in terms of more general views about conflict prevention and resolution as well as being more specifically applied to the current conflict in Iraq.