GEOPOLITICAL INTERESTS AND POLITICAL CONCEPTS OF FORMING OF TWO YUGOSLAVIA AND THE REASONS FOR THEIR STATE BREAKDOWN

Abstract

The paper deals with the geopolitical aspects of the creation and disintegration of two Yugoslav states. The introductory part of this paper lists the geopolitical features of this area, as an important geopolitical context, which influenced the political processes in the two countries. After the introduction, the authors analyze the creation of the “first” Yugoslavia and the geopolitical reasons that led the great powers, especially the thalassocratic states of the West, to manage the process of building and then dismantling the state. The third part of this paper deals with the geopolitical aspects of the creation of the “second” Yugoslavia, which had a distinct geopolitical role during the Cold War, especially in the view of the United States, which tried to turn it into an Atlantic exponent, by all means. After the end of the Cold War the geopolitical role of Yugoslavia disappeared and so did the reason for its existence. The creation of the Yugoslav state was presented as the crown of Serbian success in the war, but for decades this illusory vision made it impossible to see the real political circumstances, obscuring the geopolitical reasons of the great powers that decisively influenced the creation of the new state and its future. The basic geopolitical features of the Balkan area presented in the introductory part of the work explicitly show its importance for the great powers, which is why it is impossible to exclude the role of the foreign policy factor in making local and regional decisions. The victorious forces in the Great War (USA, Great Britain and France) had a clear vision and interest when it came down to the creation of the Yugoslav state. First, the goal was to prevent the German factor from creating Mitteleurope (Central Europe), which according to Friedrich Naumann should be a geopolitical entity gathered around Germany and as such represent the fourth world power. Central Europe would stretch from the Baltic Sea to the northern part of the Adriatic and would represent a kind of continental, tellurocratic whole located between the west and the east. It is precisely the tectonic disturbances in the international and geopolitical order of power that occurred at the end of the twentieth century that will erase all the geopolitical needs of the West for the political existence of Yugoslavia. Either as Kingdoms or as communist creations. All significant geopolitical reasons for survival have ceased. Because of that, the destructive processes of state disintegration began on the ruins of the construction of synthetic nations and their state creations as geopolitical trabants of Atlanticist interests in the geospace of the Balkans.