Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences

Christopher Bennett argues that Yugoslavia's disintegration was not, contrary to accepted wisdom, the product of inherent and irrational ethnic animosities and centuries of strife - an interpretation which helps to vindicate the West's policy of inaction. He suggests that the decisive turning-point came in 1987, when a struggle was waged within the Serbian Communist party between adherents of a Serb nationalist ideology (embodied by Slobodan Milosevic) and those Yugoslavs who clung to the concept of a multinational state.