The Balkanization Of The West

The author argues that the media have reduced the world audience to a collective voyeur passively watching, monitoring, and observing crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia. The author also argues that the war has derailed the movement for unification in Europe.

From the perspectives of postmodernism and post-Communism - central to discussion in this work - the butchery in former Yugoslavia is a special case because this violence is occurring in the heart of Europe, a continent which had promised never to tolerate such a bloodbath again. Consideration of rational solutions seems incapable of getting to grips with the problem. The author argues that the media have reduced the world audience to a collective voyeur passively watching, monitoring, and observing crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia. The Balkan war has produced the Balkanization of the West with the leading Western powers seemingly paralyzed by the spectacle of internecine warfare. Mestrovic claims that the Balkan war has derailed the movement for unification in Europe. The Islamic world has seen that the West is quite willing to bomb Muslim targets, from Iraq to Somalia, but absolutely unwilling to wage a just war to save the Bosnian Muslims. Review: ... a truly masterful and provocative argument ... Mestrovic's wide-ranging book must not be missed by students of Bosnia or theorists in the social sciences. -B. J. Macdonald, Colorado State University On the threshold of the next century--a time that promises to be one of ethnic and religious violence dominated by media images--this gloomy but passionately and brilliantly argued cri di coeur must be heard by those wishing to understand our troubled times. -Akbar S. Ahmed, Cambridge University a daunting and original effort that earlier admirers of Stjepan Mestrovic's work will enjoy. - Contemporary Sociology