Balkans, Europe, South East Europe: Identity Politics and Regional Cooperation

Abstract

It is certain that neither regional interdependence nor external push give a fully satisfactory answer to the question of what sustains the Balkans as a regional unit. As noted, different external initiatives have mapped the area in variable ways, though the centre of gravity has been former Yugoslavia. However, South East Europe is used in political discourse to denote a grouping spanning well beyond the confines of the Western Balkans. We have also seen that interdepend­ence typically binds territorially contiguous countries, yet by that token Romania would form a region with neighbouring Hungary or Moldova, rather than with Albania or Bosnia. Turkey and Greece’s security concerns might be interdependent but what, if any, is the common thread that links them to, say, Montenegro’s relations with Serbia and Croatia?

Countries belong beyond their boundaries on a map to where their spirit takes them.

N. Iorga (1940, p. 8)