US FOREIGN POLICY AND "EUROPEANISATION" OF THE BALKANS
US FOREIGN POLICY AND "EUROPEANISATION" OF THE BALKANS

Summary/Abstract: While Europe is considered a "cradle" of the system of parliamentary democracy, America (USA), in the late twentieth century is considered the "engine" of this system. Such an assessment for America came especially after the collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe and Southeast. Twenty-five years ago, in the southeast corner of Europe, called the Balkans, or in a region known as Yugoslavia, old interethnic contradictions had returned, which returned images forgotten since the World War II. In this historical period, seventy years later the process of dissolution of Yugoslavia had happened. The political creature "framed-up" by Europeans in Versailles (UK and France) had to be "broken up" by the clearheaded Europeans also. At the beginning of this process, the United States, a country that cared for global processes of humanity, as a result of the collapse of communism, took a secondary role in the Balkan events, letting the Europeans to deal with its "internal" issues. When the Balkan events in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina went out of control and jeopardized not only the emerging democratic values, but also the humanitarian principles on which US foreign policy was based. This is the time when the US, due to the failure of the Europeans took the initiative for the final settlement of the Yugoslav conflict, a process that led to military intervention against Serb Yugoslav Army and signing of the Dayton peace accord (1995 - Bosnia-Herzegovina), continuing with the Rambouillet Agreement and the intervention of the north Atlantic Alliance against militarist Serbia (Kosovo - 1999), and to complete the process with the Ohrid Agreement (2001 - Macedonia).In the post-conflict period in the Balkans, US foreign policy is focused on the "Europeanization" of the region, which according to historians and Western diplomats, always "produces more history than it can consume"!

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