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Peaceworks 8
 Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis
Vesna Pesic
The dissolution of multinational communist federations and the ensuing armed conflicts that have emerged with their transformation into independent nation-states have returned the "national question" (i.e., the relationship of a national or ethnic group to a state that includes multiple ethnic groups within its territory) to the forefront of debates over international politics, law, and theory. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia, in particular, demonstrates the inability of the international community to rely on any solid legal principles, guidelines, or established mechanisms to avoid such chaos and mass suffering when constituent parts of these types of multinational states decide to go their own way.
Vesna Pesic, a noted advocate for peace and democracy in the Balkans, was a Jennings Randolph fellow at the Institute during 1994-95. As a senior research fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade for the past four years, she has directed projects on ethnic nationalism, conflict resolution, and human rights.
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