“The region’s rising nationalist tensions and dizzying ethnic diversity confounded all attempts to find lasting solutions to the seemingly endless conflicts… European diplomats understood that ethnic, economic and political connections between Balkan groups and several of the Great Powers meant that a ...
assemblies in 2003, effectively erasing Yugoslavia from the map. Three years later, after Montenegrins approved a referendum on independence, Serbia and Montenegro disbanded the federation and became independent republics. Meanwhile, the future status of Kosovo remained uncertain; the ethnic Albanian ...