A region buffeted by great-power and local rivalries, the Balkans has long been synonymous with cultural, political, and territorial fragmentation. The complexity of this small, diverse region, sitting on the crossroads between past and present and East and West, can be daunting for outsiders. Best known for his epic tale of a bridge that both spatially united the inhabitants of a small Bosnian town and divided them over their past, Ivo Andrić—the Yugoslav diplomat-turned-Nobel-Prize-winning literary icon—suggests that understanding the Balkans is like discovering a fish on a tree by looking at the sky in a creek (“Tko nije naučio gledati nebo u potoku, ne zna što su ribe na drveću”).
Accordingly, the role of the Balkans in the Cold War can be interpreted in similar dialectic terms—the Balkans in the Cold War versus the Cold War in the Balkans. Local, regional, and global dimensions of the conflict are highlighted in...