Sidebar: I find it curious, but perhaps understandable, that Friedman entirely omits the northernmost - Slovenia - from his discussion. Slovenians have apparently managed to “pass” as real Europeans no longer tainted by their Balkan origins, perhaps they have the elegant Melania to thank. When the DrsC visited Slovenia it could have been mistaken for southern Austria, gemutlichkeit and Alpine-style charm were the order of the day.
A too-brief summary of Friedman’s thesis is that the Balkans is the cockpit in which the roosters of Turkish Islam, Russian Orthodoxy, and German Catholicism meet to fight. The locals all took sides centuries ago. Furthermore, as Friedman notes:
In the Balkans, nothing is forgotten, and nothing is forgiven. It is an essential and abysmal reality. Sometimes the fights between the villages draw in other villages, draw in capitals, draw in great powers. Sometimes the great powers competing with each other draw in the Balkan capitals and the villages. Either way, there are countless local feuds and endless powers seeking hegemony over a continent, and together they open the door to all the malice in the region.Tough neighborhood. World War I began there.
