In Lieu of a Conclusion: Chasing Proteus—Deadly Existential Threats, the Security Synthesis, the Existential Entities, and the State

Abstract

In this final chapter, I focus on a number of issues and findings that are of importance to the subject. I also draw some theoretical and practical implications for policy. The most important finding is that history matters. The past becomes the invisible hand that shapes the existential entity and its security synthesis and that conditions the future as well. History, therefore, is immensely important to the nation-builders. Their failure to understand and appreciate the complex and intense history is at the root of their failure to solve the riddle of nation-building in Kosova. As I have shown here, assuming that the nations are tabula rasa, malleable, and amnesiac is a major fallacy that leads to the inevitable failure. The major lesson is that the indigenous elites have a central role in the interpretation of the security synthesis and, thus, are able to mobilize their existential entity in their support. The other practical lesson but of theoretical significance as well, as this case shows us, is that unless a great power has unchallenged control over the area/region where the ethnic/national conflict takes place, nation-building is an impossible enterprise. The balance of power is a powerful mechanism that determines the fortunes of small existential entities and communities of destiny. Other great powers will intervene, covertly and overtly, to undermine the project and have the opponent become bogged down, bleeding resources and, above all, prestige. Thus, the case of the failure of nation-building in Kosova seems to strongly support the core claims of this book.