By Håkan Wiberg

Written in late 1992 or early 1993

The Yugoslav crisis since the late 1980s has been one of the most complex in European history. This complexity consists in the multiplicity of sources of conflict behaviour: economic, cultural, political, constitutional, international, etc. It also consists in the “spider web” character of the conflict pattern between political leaderships: interconnected triangular relations with shifting coalitions, each change having effects on the entire pattern.

Academic specialization, journalistic criteria of newsworthiness, political demands for mobilizing simplifications and plain ignorance have interacted in tending to picture the Yugoslav conflicts as a set of isolated bilateral one-issue conflicts, usually also with clear value directions. It will therefore take many years before we see any solid and comprehensive analyses. Trying to anticipate them already now would be hubris.

The present section merely attempts to present some components of the complexity and to highlight some background causes before focusing on how the concept of societal security may contribute to a more comprehensive analysis. [Read more…]