Conceptual Definition of the Balkans

Conceptual Definition of the Balkans

BALKANS, a geopolitical region in the south of Europe, which should not be equated with the geographical area of the Balkan Peninsula, from which it is more extensive, differently bounded, more populous, more civilizationally heterogeneous and geopolitically more complex; from the Western European and Germanocentric geopolitical “standpoint,” it is often also called Southeast Europe (it includes Moldova as well), although from the traditional geographical standpoint of “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals” it is a southern part of Europe; the northern boundary of the Balkans is not on the Danube and the Sava, but coincides with the northern boundary of the former “second” Yugoslavia, as well as with the northern and eastern boundary of Romania; the Eurasian intermediary position, the specific relation of land (terrain) and water (sea), and favorable natural conditions for life, economic activity and spiritual development favored the emergence of early civilizations (“First Europe”), and there are opinions that it will also represent the place of the end of civilizations (“Last Europe”); old state structures were built there, and powerful autochthonous medieval empires were formed (Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia); these qualitative characteristics also motivated allochthonous powers (Hungary, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Ottoman Empire…) to mutual competition, alternating occupation and centuries-long violent rule over the whole or parts of the Balkans, which caused mass suffering, migrations and ethno-religious conversions of the population, as well as comprehensive social and spatial transformations of large scale; in that context, the key communication, integrative and geostrategic role is held by the naturally predisposed Danube–Morava–Vardar “axis,” which connects the Pannonian and Aegean basins (Belgrade–Thessaloniki–Athens), and branches into the Nišava–Maritsa direction oriented toward Constantinople (Via Militaris); several other trans-Balkan corridors are also of great importance: the Pannonian and Adriatic basins are connected by the Kupa, Una, Bosnia–Neretva and Kolubara–Morača directions, the Wallachian and Aegean basins are connected by the Timok branch, which joins the Morava–Vardar “vertical,” then the directrix from Vidin, via Stara Planina and Sofia, along the Struma valley to the Gulf of Thessaloniki, the Black Sea and Adriatic basins are connected by the traditional Via Egnatia (Constantinople–Thessaloniki–Durrës), the Danube–Sava “horizontal,” and the increasingly relevant Burgas–Sofia–Niš direction, which branches into the Kosovo–Drim and West Morava–Morača/Podrinje branch; particular importance is also held and will be held by future pipeline corridors (the Adriatic and Pan-European oil pipeline, the South Stream and TurkStream gas pipelines); their routes are not only a transport-economic issue, but have become instruments of geopolitical confrontation of great powers, even of changes of regional borders and the construction or deconstruction of states; the contemporary political-geographical structure of the Balkans today consists of the entire territories of Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and the post-Yugoslav countries of Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, as well as the European part of Turkey; characteristic is the phenomenon of former or existing Balkan state-like formations (the Republic of Serbian Krajina, Republika Srpska, the so-called Republic of Kosovo) which contribute to territorial fragmentation (Balkan kleinstaaterei), while on the other hand, a specificity of Balkan peoples is the existence of expansionist great-state projects (Balkan grossstaaterei); the area of the Balkans within geopolitical boundaries amounts to 788,770 km² (7.7% of the area of Europe and 1.1% of the area of Eurasia), and the population about 73 million (9.8% of the European and 1.4% of the Eurasian population); the key geographical predisposition of its position is that it represents a “Euro-Asian bridge,” i.e. a link of Central Europe with Asia Minor, the Near and Middle East; this makes it essentially geopolitically more attractive than the other two southern European analogues – the Iberian and Apennine peninsulas – which end in wide and (for now) insurmountable straits; additionally, their outlets on the other side of Gibraltar and the Sicilian Channel, not far from the African coast of the Mediterranean, end in the desert “dead end” of the vast Sahara; on the other hand, from the Balkans, through the narrow and easily passable straits of the Bosporus (660 m) and the Dardanelles (1,300 m), land communication and geostrategic routes lead toward destinations whose control brings world supremacy: toward the centers of ancient civilizations, the holy places of major religions, the planetary “reservoirs” of oil and gas, and points and regions crucial in the global contest between thalassocratic Atlanticism and tellurocratic (neo)Eurasianism; this quality produces continuous “geopolitical magnetism” by which the Balkans attract major European and world powers, motivating them to compete for its (in)direct control; the diverse “bundles” of vectors of their interests multiply and increasingly furrow it, and most of all intersect in Cvijić’s Central area, forming the “Balkan geopolitical knot”; the historically continuous influences of great powers, combined with regional ethnic heterogeneity and confrontation, as well as a fragmented political-territorial structure, together produce Balkanization; therefore, the Balkans are considered a space “at the crossroads of worlds and centuries” and a latently explosive “powder keg”; this instability of the Balkans is the result of major civilizational and political “fault lines” traced across its territory: from the division of the Roman Empire in 395 into Eastern and Western (“Theodosian division”), the Christian schism of 1054 into Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism (the Great Schism), and the long-standing oscillating Habsburg–Ottoman imperial border along the Sava and the Danube, to the recent Cold War Iron Curtain, the division into Orthodox and Western civilization, as well as the emerging contemporary neo-bipolar dichotomy of the pro-Atlantic and anti-Atlantic bloc; also, its geopolitical character derives from its position within Inter-Europe, which, in different historical phases, functional forms and spatial scopes, is installed as a buffer zone from the Baltic to the Mediterranean: from the interwar Sanitary Cordon, to the China+17/14 initiative; after the bipolar Formula 2+2+2, according to which the regional balance was guaranteed by the division into two countries in the Warsaw Pact, two in NATO and two outside the blocs, the unipolar expansion of the West from the 1990s implied first the liquidation of the SFRY, and then the successive inclusion of Balkan countries into NATO and the EU; by the end of the second decade of the 21st century only Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are not members of either of these two organizations, while Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia (and Turkey) are included only in NATO; the contemporary Balkans have remained a synonym of geopolitics, so that its name is also used for other areas of similar characteristics (e.g. “Eurasian Balkans” for Central Asia), but also for some non-geopolitical phenomena (e.g. for fragmentation, i.e. “balkanization” of large corporations for the purpose of their demonopolization).

(Taken from: Milomir Stepić,

Geopolitical Lexicon of the Balkans,

Catena mundi, 2023, pp. 39–42).

 Map: The Balkans as a geopolitical region

Source: https://thisisyouth.org/2016/12/20/backpacking-the-balkans/