Frail federation

A century after the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, nationalist conflict in the region is not necessarily at an end. Some problems remain. The federal republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, established in November 1995 in Dayton, remains a frail construct. Its constituent components, the Bosniak-Croat federation and the Serbian Republic, continue to be hostile to each other. The federal apparatus, with a collective presidency reminiscent of the institution that had succeeded Tito in Yugoslavia after his death, barely functions. The survival of the state in this form is tenuous.

The Balkan Wars also failed to resolve the issue of Macedonia. In 1913 Serbia and Greece gained most of its territory. Bulgaria obtained a small section of south-eastern Macedonia but maintained claims to the Greek and Serbian portions. Bulgaria occupied these regions during the First and Second World Wars. Macedonia became one of the six constituent republics of Tito's Yugoslavia, but following the collapse of the composite state in 1991 the old Serbian part of Macedonia declared its independence. Greek insistence that the name Macedonia implies claims on its part of that territory has impeded the efforts of the independent state, sometimes called FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), to develop economically. Greek intransigence means that Macedonia remains excluded from both the European Union and NATO.