AP Syllabus focus:
'New nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe led to war and genocide in the Balkans.'
The Balkan wars of the 1990s showed that the end of communism did not automatically bring peace. In the former Yugoslavia, collapsing federal authority and aggressive nationalism produced war, mass expulsion, and genocide.
Why the Balkans became violent
After 1945, Yugoslavia was a communist but non-Soviet federation that held together several republics and national groups, including Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Albanians. Under Josip Broz Tito, the regime discouraged open nationalist conflict, but it did not eliminate older grievances.
When communist systems weakened across Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, Yugoslavia also entered crisis. Economic decline, inflation, unemployment, and political decentralization undermined loyalty to the federal state. As communist authority faded, political leaders increasingly appealed to ethnic identity and national victimhood rather than socialist unity.
New nationalisms and the breakup of Yugoslavia
Competing national programs
The most explosive nationalism came from Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević, who presented himself as protector of Serbs across Yugoslavia. Many Croats and Slovenes feared Serbian domination, while leaders in other republics pursued independence. Instead of a shared transition out of communism, Yugoslavia fragmented into rival national projects.
Labeled map of the former Yugoslavia during the wars, showing the major republics/entities and key capitals (including Sarajevo). This visual clarifies why competing territorial claims in a multiethnic region made the breakup of federal authority especially prone to violence. Source
Nationalism in this period was not just pride in language or culture. It became linked to territory, armed force, and the claim that one ethnic group had a right to dominate a state. Because populations in the Balkans were heavily mixed, these claims were inherently destabilizing.
From secession to war
In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. Slovenia’s war was brief, but Croatia descended into conflict between Croatian forces and Serb militias backed by the Yugoslav army. The violence then spread most destructively to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Bosniaks, the largely Muslim Slavic population of Bosnia, lived closely intermingled with Serbs and Croats.
When Bosnia declared independence in 1992, Bosnian Serb forces, supported by Serbia, rejected the new state. Their objective was not simply military victory. It was to create ethnically homogeneous territory by removing or terrorizing non-Serb populations.
Bosnia: war against civilians
The Bosnian War quickly became associated with ethnic cleansing, the organized removal of unwanted populations from claimed territory.
Ethnic cleansing: The deliberate expulsion, intimidation, or murder of an ethnic or religious group in order to create a more uniform population within a territory.
Serb nationalist forces used siege warfare, mass shooting, detention camps, rape, and forced deportation against Bosniak Muslims and, in some areas, Croats. Civilians became deliberate targets. The siege of Sarajevo symbolized the war’s brutality: snipers, shelling, and shortages turned daily life into a struggle for survival.
Photograph from the winter of 1992–1993 showing civilians crossing Sarajevo’s Skenderija junction near the route known as “Sniper Alley.” The scene demonstrates how the siege turned ordinary urban movement into a life-threatening act, underscoring how civilians became deliberate targets in the Bosnian War. Source
Although all sides committed atrocities, the largest and most systematic campaigns of expulsion and murder were carried out by Bosnian Serb forces seeking a “Greater Serbia.” Nationalist propaganda portrayed neighbors as permanent enemies, making coexistence appear impossible and violence seem justified.
Srebrenica and genocide
In July 1995, Bosnian Serb troops captured Srebrenica, a UN-designated safe area.
Map of the UN “safe areas” in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1993–1995), including Srebrenica, Sarajevo, and other designated enclaves. It illustrates how these protected zones were scattered and often isolated, which helps explain why peacekeeping commitments were difficult to enforce on the ground. Source
They separated men and boys from women and executed more than 8,000 Bosniak males. This massacre became the clearest case of genocide in Europe after World War II.
Genocide: The intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
Srebrenica mattered because it showed that the goal was not merely wartime displacement. The killings aimed to destroy part of the Bosniak population as a group. International courts later ruled that the massacre met the legal standard for genocide. The event also exposed the weakness of international peacekeeping when outside powers lacked the will to stop mass killing quickly.
International response and settlement
For much of the conflict, the international response was hesitant. The United Nations sent peacekeepers and declared safe zones, but these measures often failed to protect civilians. European governments and the United States were slow to intervene decisively, partly because the war was complex and partly because leaders feared deeper military involvement.
After Srebrenica and further atrocities, NATO launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions in 1995. Combined with shifts on the ground, this pressured the belligerents into the Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian War later that year. Dayton stopped the fighting, but it preserved a deeply divided Bosnia with ethnic boundaries hardened by violence.
Interpreting the conflict
The Balkan wars showed that the collapse of communism did not automatically produce liberal democracy. In parts of Central and Eastern Europe, new nationalisms became more powerful than civic institutions or pluralist politics. The result could be state breakdown, paramilitary violence, and campaigns against civilians.
This conflict also reveals a major continuity in modern European history: nationalism remained powerful enough to inspire both self-determination and atrocity. In the Balkans, leaders used memory, fear, and propaganda to turn political crisis into war. The genocide at Srebrenica demonstrated that mass murder based on ethnic identity was still possible in late twentieth-century Europe.
The wars left major consequences:
large refugee flows and permanent demographic change
international war crimes trials for political and military leaders
lasting distrust among ethnic communities
a warning that weak states and militant nationalism could combine with devastating effect
FAQ
The safe area depended on lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers with a narrow mandate. They were not equipped to stop a major Bosnian Serb assault on their own.
Air support was delayed, command structures were confused, and peacekeepers feared that stronger resistance might lead to hostage-taking or wider escalation. In practice, the label “safe area” created expectations that the UN could not enforce militarily.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was created in 1993 and based in The Hague. It prosecuted war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed during the Balkan wars.
Its importance was both legal and symbolic:
it indicted senior leaders, not just low-level perpetrators
it helped establish evidence about atrocities
it strengthened international law on genocide, rape, and command responsibility
Sexual violence was not simply incidental brutality. In many areas, it was used systematically to terrorise communities, humiliate families, and force civilians to flee.
It also served political aims. By attacking women’s bodies and social status, perpetrators tried to destroy community bonds and make return seem impossible. Later prosecutions helped establish wartime rape as a serious international crime rather than a private or unavoidable by-product of conflict.
Dayton created a single sovereign state, but divided it into two main entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Power-sharing arrangements were meant to prevent renewed war.
This ended the fighting, but it also made government highly complex. Many institutions require ethnic balancing, multiple layers of approval, and co-operation among groups that often distrust one another. As a result, Bosnia has often struggled with political deadlock.
Television, newspapers, and radio helped turn fear into political action. Nationalist leaders used media to spread stories of victimhood, exaggerate threats, and portray neighbours as enemies.
This mattered because many people were not born hating one another. Propaganda helped redefine ordinary political disputes as existential struggles. Historians study it closely because it shows how modern mass communication can prepare societies for exclusion, forced removal, and mass violence.
Practice Questions
Answer all parts briefly.
a) Identify ONE factor that weakened Yugoslavia in the late 1980s. [1]
b) Identify ONE way nationalist leaders in Bosnia turned political conflict into ethnic violence. [1]
c) Identify ONE reason the Srebrenica massacre is historically significant. [1]
(3 marks)
a) 1 mark for identifying a valid factor, such as economic crisis, weakening communist authority, decentralization, or the collapse of federal unity.
b) 1 mark for identifying a valid method, such as propaganda, support for paramilitaries, ethnic cleansing, siege warfare, or targeting civilians by ethnicity.
c) 1 mark for identifying a valid significance, such as its recognition as genocide, its status as the worst massacre in Europe after World War II, or its exposure of UN failure.
Evaluate the extent to which new nationalism, rather than long-standing ethnic divisions alone, caused war and genocide in the Balkans during the 1990s. [6 marks]
1 mark: Presents a defensible thesis that directly answers the question.
1 mark: Provides broader historical context, such as the collapse of communism, the breakup of Yugoslavia, or the end of the Cold War.
2 marks: Uses specific evidence relevant to the argument, such as Milošević, Bosnian independence, ethnic cleansing, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, NATO intervention, or Dayton.
2 marks: Demonstrates historical reasoning by explaining causation and weighing nationalism against other factors such as mixed populations, economic crisis, weak institutions, or older grievances.
