In response to Jasmin Mujanovic’s comment article, ‘New Partitions are the Last Thing the Balkans Need,’ Timothy Less maintains that the Balkan countries lack even the most basic elements needed to make multi-ethnicity work, so it is time to consider a new territorial settlement.

The starting point when formulating policy is to recognise the world as it is, not as one would like it to be.

In the Balkans, political reality is sadly very far from the “vibrant and organic multiculturalism” that Jasmin Mujanovic describes. On the contrary, the region is one of the least stable in Europe, where divided, multi-ethnic states subsist in a state of frozen conflict, requiring the presence of thousands of international peacekeepers on the ground to prevent a relapse into violence.

The causes of this malaise have been analysed at length but a mass of complexity ultimately boils down to two basic points. The first is that minority populations do not want to be a part of another group’s state if that means living as second-class citizens without adequate security, rights and opportunities. And the second is that majority populations do not want their minorities to leave with their land because they claim the territory on which the minorities live. Wherever these contradictory objectives clash, the result is tension and dysfunctionality.

For the last two decades, minorities have had little choice but to accept their place in their adoptive state at the insistence of a hegemonic West, which has vetoed any changes to the political arrangements put in place after the collapse of Yugoslavia. The quid pro quo was that NATO agreed to guarantee their security and the EU their rights and prosperity, provided the locals could meet the conditions for entry to these two organisations.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/multi-ethnic-states-have-failed-in-the-balkans-01-16-2017