Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars
Although the Balkan wars of the 1990s were homegrown, diasporas from Australia to North America played more than a cameo role. Hockenos is the first person with enough curiosity and drive to unravel systematically the connections between the Croat, Serb, and Albanian emigre populations and Franjo Tudjman, Slobodan Milosevic, and others who presided over the Balkan calamity. He carefully stresses that Croat, Serb, and Albanian diaspora communities are immensely varied and that only a radical fringe of emotional right-wing nationalists is the target of his sleuthing. But these were the people who mattered, and for the worse. Gojko Susak, a Canadian businessman, returned to fill a key ministerial post in Tudjman's regime, and Radmila Milantijevic, a professor and dean at the City University of New York, served as Milosevic's loyal spokesperson. No less important, an array of murky groups provided money, arms, and well-heeled public-relations support.
Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.