Why does balkanization occur

How can decades-old wars in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union teach us anything instructive about the American political environment today? After all, American political institutions are manifestly stronger and more resilient than their counterparts in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia in the s. Political rhetoric in the U.

Finally, Russia directly abetted several separatist movements in the former Soviet Union and Serbia did the same in the Balkans, but no foreign power is directly fomenting civil war in the U. But the parallels between those countries then and America now are greater than they seem. Strong institutions and norms against nationalist and racist political rhetoric take generations to build and constant effort to maintain, but can be eroded in a fraction of that time.

And foreign interference no longer need take the form of provision of weapons and equipment to separatists. It is unprecedented for a President of the United States to engage in a sustained attack on the institutions of his own executive branch.

These attacks come at a cost to the integrity and legitimacy of our institutions. A July poll found that Americans are increasingly divided in how they view the agencies at the center of the controversies surrounding the Trump administration. Despite the attacks from President Trump on the agencies he believes to be populated with his opponents, the truth is that officers in these agencies routinely check their political views at the door when they show up for work.

In a year career in the U. Although we disagreed at times, those disagreements were over policy, not politics. For instance, agencies might differ over whether the U. In this case, the Department of Defense may support the sale because the country is a priority partner and a key contributor to the effort to stabilize Afghanistan. The State Department may resist the sale because it would be provocative to a neighboring state, and the intelligence community may be concerned about the technology falling into the wrong hands.

These are normal disagreements based on policy differences, not partisan politics. In a normal environment, the relevant agencies would work out these differences and agree on a policy.

But in a supercharged partisan environment where agencies are believed to have political agendas rather than policy preferences and where large majorities of the American public trust certain agencies and distrust others based on those perceived political agendas, normal functioning of government can break down. Balkanization is a term used to describe the division or fragmentation of a state or region into smaller, often ethnically similar places.

The term can also refer to the disintegration or break-up of other things such as companies, Internet websites or even neighborhoods. In some areas that have experienced balkanization the term describes the collapse of multiethnic states into places that are now ethnically similar dictatorships and have undergone many serious political and social issues such as ethnic cleansing and civil war.

As a result, balkanization, especially with regard to states and regions, is typically not a positive term as there is often much political, social and cultural strife that takes place when balkanization occurs.

The term balkanization itself was coined at the end of World War I following this break-up as well as that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire. Since the early s, Europe, as well as other places around the world, have seen both successful and unsuccessful attempts at balkanization and there are still some efforts and discussions of balkanization in some countries today.

In the s and s, balkanization began occurring outside of the Balkans and Europe when several British and French colonial empires began fragmenting and breaking up in Africa. Balkanization was at its height in the early s however when the Soviet Union collapsed and the former Yugoslavia disintegrated. In the creation of some of these countries, there was often extreme violence and hostility. For example, Armenia and Azerbaijan experience periodic war over their borders and ethnic enclaves.

In addition to violence in some, all of these newly created countries have experienced difficult periods of transition in their governments, economies, and societies. Yugoslavia was created out of a combination of over 20 different ethnic groups at the end of World War I.

As a result of differences between these groups, there were friction and violence in the country. Following World War II, Yugoslavia began to gain more stability but by the different factions within the country began fighting for more independence. In the early s, Yugoslavia finally disintegrated after around , people were killed by war.

Kosovo did not declare its independence until and it is still not recognized as fully independent by the entire world. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia are some of the most successful but also the most violent attempts at balkanization that have taken place. In Kashmir, Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir are trying to break away from India, while in Sri Lanka the Tamil Tigers a separatist organization for the Tamil people want to break away from that country.

People in the southeastern part of Nigeria declared themselves to be the state of Biafra and in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite Muslims fight to break away from Iraq. Tito was a centripetal force for the region of Yugoslavia. This is based on a racial classification made by Carleton S. For the oldest age group, those 65 and over, the foreign-born population is expected to nearly double its share, increasing from 13 percent in to 26 percent in The two smallest alone-or-in-combination categories were American Indian and Alaska Native 5.

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