After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, no-one was prepared for the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. Suddenly old terms like chetnik and ustasha found new currency, and a new term surfaced – 'ethnic cleansing' – with its sickening echo of 'final solution'. The upsurge of nationalist sentiment in Eastern Europe raises the question whether the wars in the former Yugoslavia are harbingers of things to come. Will the racist idea of the ethnically pure state crush the humanist ideal of the multicultural society? Yugoslavian Inferno provides a rich analysis of the complex issues that brought about the demise of Yugoslavia and the ensuing fratricidal warfare. It pays particular attention to the role of religion in fanning the flames of interethnic hatred and is written by a scholar uniquely placed to write it. A Yugoslavian-American with roots in both Croatia and Serbia, whose religious tradition is Protestant, rather than Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim, Paul Mojzes is an internationally recognized authority on religion in Eastern Europe. Based on travels in the region, interviews with politicians, scholars, and religious leaders, as well as news accounts and monographs in generally inaccessible languages, and formulated after a lifetime of scholarly achievement, Yugoslavian Inferno presents insights that only a native can provide and the critical objectivity that only an outsider can offer.

For most of the twentieth century, the most critical concerns of national security have been balance-of-power politics and the global arms race. The religious conflicts of this era and the motives behind them, however, demand a radical break with this tradition. If the United States is to prevail in its long-term contest with extremist Islam, it will need to re-examine old assumptions, expand the scope of its thinking to include religion and other "irrational" factors, and be willing to depart from past practice. A purely military response in reaction to such attacks will simply not suffice. What will be required is a long-term strategy of cultural engagement, backed by a deeper understanding of how others view the world and what is important to them. In non-Western cultures, religion is a primary motivation for political actions. Historically dismissed by Western policymakers as a divisive influence, religion in fact has significant potential for overcoming the obstacles that lead to paralysis and stalemate. The Incorporation of religion as part of the solution to such problems is as simple as it is profound. It is long overdue. This book looks at five intractable conflicts and explores the possibility of drawing on religion as a force for peace. It builds upon the insights of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (OUP, 1994) -- which examined the role that religious or spiritual factors can play in preventing or resolving conflict -- while achieving social change based on justice and reconciliation. The world-class authors writing in this volume suggest how the peacemaking tenets of five major world religions can be strategically applied in ongoing conflicts in which those religions are involved. Finally, the commonalities and differences between these religions are examined with an eye toward further applications in peacemaking and conflict resolution.

In 1992 Yugoslavia finally succumbed to civil war, collapsing under the pressure of its inherent ethnic tensions. Existing accounts of Yugoslavia s dissolution, however, pay little regard to the troubled relationship between the Yugoslav Federation and the European Community (EC) prior to the crisis in the early 1990s, and the instability this created. Here, Branislav Radeljic offers an empirical analysis of the EC s relations with Yugoslavia from the late sixties, when Yugoslavia was under the presidency of Josep Broz Tito, through to the collapse of the Yugoslav federation in 1992, after the rise of Slobodan Milo evi? and the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars. Radeljic explores the economic, political and social elements of these discords, and also places emphasis on the role of Slovenes, Croats and other diasporas focusing on their capacity to affect policy-making at a Europe-wide level. Radeljic argues convincingly that a lack of direction and inadequate political mechanisms within the EC enabled these non-state actors to take centre-stage, and shows how EC paralysis precipitated a bloody conflict in the Balkan region."

Countries rarely disappear off the map. In the 20th century, only a few countries shared this fate with Yugoslavia. The dissolution of Yugoslavia led to the largest war in Europe since 1945, massive human rights violations and over 100,000 victims. Debating the End of Yugoslavia is less an attempt to re-write the dissolution of Yugoslavia, or to provide a different narrative, than to take stock and reflect on the scholarship to date. New sources and data offer fresh avenues of research avoiding the passion of the moment that often characterized research published during the wars and provide contemporary perspectives on the dissolution. The book outlines the state of the debate rather than focusing on controversies alone and maps how different scholarly communities have reflected on the dissolution of the country, what arguments remain open in scholarly discourse and highlights new, innovative paths to study the period.

This book places the current wave of religion-based terrorism in a historical perspective, explaining why religion is associated with terrorism, comparing religion-based terrorism to other forms of terrorism, and documenting how religion-based terrorism is a product of powerful political, socioeconomic, and psychological forces. Religion-based terrorism is perceived as one of the most significant threats to U.S. homeland security in the 21st century. Sacred Terror: How Faith Becomes Lethal makes the central argument that religion-based violence and terrorism is primarily a result of political, socioeconomic, and psychological forces, thereby demystifying religion-based terrorism and revealing its inherent similarity to other forms of terrorism and war. Daniel Price examines religious texts and traditions in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; looks at the history of religion-based terrorism; and explores why religion facilitates violence. He builds upon this foundation to explain how religion as an ideological force that motivates violence is not as powerful as commonly believed, and that religious fervor is not unlike other non-religious ideologies such as Marxism, nationalism, and anarchism. The work also presents in-depth analysis of the political, socioeconomic, and psychological forces that are behind religion-based violence, and discusses case studies from multiple religions that illustrate the author's argument.

Balkan Holocausts? compares and contrasts Serbian and Croatian propaganda from 1986 to 1999, analyzing each group's contemporary interpretations of history and current events. It offers a detailed discussion of holocaust imagery and the history of victim-centered writing in nationalism theory, including the links between the comparative genocide debate, the so-called holocaust industry, and Serbian and Croatian nationalism. No studies on Yugoslavia have thus far devoted significant space to such analysis.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book assesses the formation of Croatian national identity in the 1990s. It develops a novel framework, calling into question both primordial and modernist approaches to nationalism and national identity, before applying that framework to Croatia. In doing so, the book provides a new way of thinking about how national identity is formed and why it is so important. An explanation is given of how Croatian national identity was formed in the abstract, via a historical narrative that traces centuries of yearning for a national state. The book shows how the government, opposition parties, dissident intellectuals and diaspora groups offered alternative accounts of this narrative in order to legitimise contemporary political programmes based on different versions of national identity. It then looks at how these debates were manifested in social activities as diverse as football, religion, economics and language. This book attempts to make an important contribution to both the way we study nationalism and national identity, and our understanding of post-Yugoslav politics and society.