Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

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> "One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans"

I absolutely despise these statements, that are perpetuated to the present day. I'm from near the Balkans, from Romania.

They depict the Balkan region as being some sort of backwards warmongers, which is not the case (yes, the region is not very developed but it's far from the poorest regions on this planet; also, yes, I know about the Yugoslav Wars, but that's a rather extreme scenario and even people in the region were appalled at what the Serbs did, especially).

Anyway, the reason I don't like it: it was foreign empires vying in the region that made the mess. Turks, Austrians, Russians, Brits, Italians, Germans, French, they're the ones that started the wars. There was no way the local conflicts would have ever become global conflicts. The locals just didn't have the desire or resources to escalate such a conflict. Instead these empires just used them as battering rams against the other empires.

> I absolutely despise these statements.

The statement is true and you give yourself a very good description of it. He did not say "it will come of some damned fools" but "some damned foolish thing in the Balkans", i.e. the power play between Russia and Austria-Hungary.

You say this but just as soon as the yoke of Tito (and the follow on) was removed from the region everyone starting killing each other again. Historically it has been a very violent region filled with ethnic strife. The great powers just exploted that to help control, but it's existence is on the population.

I think the great powers had more to do with it than that. The Yugoslav region was right at the line between the Ottoman and Byzantine empires, and the Catholic world of the west. The great powers spent centuries turning that region into an elite military culture dedicated to defending against the other side. They stopped the Mongols (or at least the Mongols mysteriously turned around there and went home), they stopped the Turks and they stopped the Russians. And then when Tito was gone, their natural state was to go back to war due to centuries of tradition.

Ethnic strife? Just like the one between Denmark and Sweden for centuries? Or between France and Germany (kind providers of WW1 and WW2)?

In my eyes the main difference between those and the Balkans was that the former were mostly allowed to blow themselves up. Peace only came when they got tired of it. In the Balkans they got tired of it in 1999. They couldn't do it earlier because of... empires :)

Are you predicting no further horrible violence in the Balkans? In what, the next decade? Any longer than that would be a bold prediction...

Where would the violence come from? Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece are in the EU. Albania and Montenegro have no territorial claims they are pursuing. Macedonia and Kosovo are limping along in a depressing manner but there's no violence there that I know of. Serbia is getting over the Kosovo affair. Bosnia is the only wildcard but I don't think even it can blow up again.

Of course, there are no guarantees in life, but if I were a betting man I'd say that for each extra peaceful year of peace in the Balkans you can add 1 year of peace in the future.

So my forecast is for at least 19 years of peace :)

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