RFE/RL has many excellent pieces on the less settled parts of Europe and beyond.

Here is a gloomy piece about the current trends in former Yugoslavia, arguing that with so many other problems going on elsewhere the ‘international community’ is not gripping Balkanic divisons which are reappearing busily all over the place:

For political leaders in the Balkans and others who have their own agendas, this is a perfect opportunity. The cat is away, and so the mice will certainly become brave — and will step up their efforts to use empty stomachs to create more hot heads…

Which means that:

… the global economic crisis, the lack of democratic habits and institutions, and the complete absence of a plan for future development have created fertile ground for nationalism and renewed ethnic conflict across the Balkans.

The wars in the Balkans have been put into pause mode. There were no winners, no losers, so all sides can claim victory and march on. New flags of nationalism are again waving in the region. Can it be long before people begin digging out their weapons as well?

Welcome back to Bosnia as High Representative, my excellent former colleague Valentin Inzko!

Thus:

The new high representative will be the seventh. Most likely, he or she will be in office to mark the 15th anniversary of the creation of the post of high representative with the task of supervising postwar normalization and the transition to stable democracy. But after 15 years of trying, Bosnia is neither stable nor democratic.

Rather than serving as midwife to a new democracy, the EU high representative is just a nanny to a sickly patient who refuses to take his medicine.

Ouch.

Or is it that the fact there is just too much poison in the system for the patient ever to get better, whatever modern diplomatic medicine might try to do?