Endgame in the Balkans

Can Europe tame the Balkans? This is the question that veteran journalist Elizabeth Pond poses in her timely and absorbing book. With rich detail and penetrating analysis, Pond first sets the scene of the 1990s' wars of Yugoslav succession and the region's yearning to join the European Union zone of peace and prosperity. Exploring the premise that the Balkans should be seen and treated as an integral part of today's Europe, she describes how the lure of EU membership is shaping the Balkans—and how Balkan developments are reshaping the EU.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and decades of experience as a foreign correspondent, Pond moves deftly across the region, painting a vivid picture of the political, economic, and ethnic challenges each Balkan land faces as it seeks to vault from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, and Montenegro must all carry out painful reforms to qualify for EU membership by establishing democratic institutions, rule of law, and a general tolerance. Pond examines the tension between these demands and traditional mindsets engendered by years of poverty, corruption, and chauvinism.

Already, in its brief existence, the European Union has forged a historic reconciliation between France and Germany and helped consolidate democracy in Portugal, Spain, and Greece. In southeastern Europe, it faces one of its most difficult tasks yet. Is the magnetic attraction of EU membership strong enough to pull the Balkans through the agonies of reform to the democratic and market ''normality'' they long for? Endgame in the Balkans reveals the importance and excruciating difficulty of nation building, state building, and institution building, but also offers grounds for hope in the region.