In pursuit of unity: The West and the breakup of Yugoslavia

More than twenty years on, the collapse of Yugoslavia still offers salutary lessons on crisis-management and intervention – activities the international community will find no less essential now than in 1991. Drawing on new evidence, this article shows how Western leaders had prescient intelligence on the political currents in Yugoslavia, and yet followed a knee-jerk policy counter to them. The stubborn preference for stability and the familiar at a time of global systemic uncertainty ultimately bore the terrible consequences of Vukovar, Sarajevo and Srebrenica.