Groundhog Day

Modern military leaders require solid information, with broad background knowledge, to operate in some of the world's most complex cultures. In the Balkan Peninsula, the overlapping demands of religion, ethnic loyalties, and selfish power-politics are ongoing challenges to any military operation in the region. History leading up to the Twentieth century contained numerous conflicts between nations on the peninsula and the first 50 years of the Twentieth century contained four additional major conflicts. Thus, this research examines the participants of the Balkan War I, Balkan War II, World War I, and World War II, notes the causes of each and describes the results. By extrapolating lessons learned from examining earlier conflicts and comparing those lessons to the actions of these four modern conflicts, this research demonstrates that historical norms are possible to predict. These conclusions stand up to the examples provided by the modern dissolution conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Based on the conclusions of this research, decision makers should examine the history of an area prior to conducting operations and, in the case of the Balkans, limit their expectations of successful progress as defined by the West.