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This project began as my dissertation, which I started shortly before the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The initial hope of the dissertation was to help understand what might happen if the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia collapsed. Ironically, I am not too late—as I revised the penultimate version, the Western countries intervened in Kosovo, breaking up de facto, if not de jure, the rump Yugoslav state. Further, the former Soviet Union is still disintegrating as the Chechnya conflict continues. In the time it has taken for me to complete this book, I have benefited from the assistance of many people.

The first debts I would like to acknowledge are to those who fostered the dissertation from which this book has sprung. The Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation’s Dissertation Fellowship funded my initial work on this project. Several people at IGCC, including the former directors, John Ruggie and Susan Shirk, as well as Sue …