Geopolitical History of the Western Balkans

The “landscape history” of rivalry over the power capacities necessary for territorial possession on the Balkan Peninsula unfolded in two dimensions – at the level of local actors and at that of macro-regional powers. Strategic processes were shaped by the morphological features of the Balkans: the vertical and horizontal characteristics of the geographical landscape determined the framework within which political and cultural space evolved. The cohesive potential of empires proved capable of counterbalancing the centrifugal forces of physical-geographical factors, leading the peninsula to become “dissolved” into an imperial space. The collapse of the bipolar world order highlighted the geopolitical complexity of the Balkans and the weaknesses in the spatial-retentive and cohesive capacities of its political entities. From the nineteenth century onwards – with the strengthening of regional nationalism and the decline of the Ottoman-Turkish Empire –, the strand of historiography analyzing modern great-power relations increasingly focused on the Balkan region. The so-called “Eastern Question” encompassed not only regional spatial-organizational ambitions but also the (geo)political perceptions of external powers regarding the peninsula. As one consequence of the mutually negating perceptions of rival state spaces, the emerging Balkan political entities came to rely on the support of geopolitical and geo-economic patrons. Following the disintegration of the European Concert of Great Powers, the “distant” great powers were, in certain situations, unable to keep their small-state allies under strategic control due to their conflicting interests. In the historical periods of the so-called imperial interregna, the balance of power in the region had (or would have had) to be maintained by the small states themselves, which defined one another as geo-strategic rivals. The ambitions of regional competitors could only be realized in part, and then only insofar as they aligned with the geopolitical support and current objectives of their respective great-power patrons. In certain phases of Balkan fragmentation, the relatively overt presence of intersecting interest-articulations by external powers was a defining feature. This remains partly true today, as numerous analysts in the twenty-first century continue to apply the classical Great Game theory when examining the spatial hierarchy of global power. The Western Balkans – primarily through the challenges arising from the fragmentation of the Yugoslav space – came to the fore in the aftermath of the disintegration of the post-bipolar world order.