America's Balkan Disengagement

In the world after 11 September, international attention to the Balkans will decline. Western priorities are shifting, and drawing resources with them. The region's historic window of opportunity, which opened at the end of the 1990s, may be swinging shut. Changes to the transatlantic relationship will have multiple knock-on effects on policies and attitudes toward the region. These are likely to include the accelerated disengagement of the United States from the direct management of the post-war Balkans. As developments in Macedonia in 2001 demonstrate, military, economic and political responsibilities will be overwhelmingly assumed by the EU, its leading members and, in particular, by those West European countries - such as Italy and Germany - that are most exposed to Balkan instabilities.

Cold war · Development economics · Disengagement theory · Economics · Economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Window of opportunity · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Engineering · European Politics and Security · Law · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics