War and Peace: The Divergent Breakups of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia

Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are among the several countries that have broken up in the last few years, largely as a result of the centrifugal forces associated with secessionist aspirations. Yet, the process of that breakup has been vastly different in the two states. In the latter, the highly legalistic, violence-free divorce was rare, as history provides us with few examples of such state creation. In the former, a gruesome war is taking place, in which some nationalities are warring against each other for the third time in this century. This article addresses itself to these two extreme types of breakup. It describes the process by which the successor states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were born, and explores the conditions which underlie the differences in the two breakups. In this study, the breakup is divided into three phases, roughly corresponding to the before, during and after: re-evaluation, redefinition and re-equilibration. Each of these is described for both countries. Finally, the role of non-economic factors, such as national minorities, is explored. The aim of the study is to come to an understanding of how to maximize the possibility of democratic and peaceful breakups, if they have to occur, and thus to avoid the pitfalls that the former Yugoslav republics fell into.