Balkan Cold War alignments dissolved into religious-civilizational blocs

Evidence

Similar realignments occur in the Balkans. During the Cold War, Greece and Turkey were in NATO, Bulgaria and Romania were in the Warsaw Pact, Yugoslavia was nonaligned, and Albania was an isolated sometime associate of communist China. Now these Cold War alignments are giving way to civilizational ones rooted in Islam and Orthodoxy. … Overall, the Balkans have once again been Balkanized along the religious lines. “Two axes are emerging,” as Misha Glenny observed, “one dressed in the garb of Eastern Orthodoxy, one veiled in Islamic raiment” and the possibility exists of “an ever-greater struggle for influence between the Belgrade/Athens axis and the Albanian/Turkish alliance.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 336 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

A resurgence in religious violence has caught the post-cold war world off guard. From the subways of Tokyo to the ruins of a mosque in India, from the World Trade Center and the federal building in Oklahoma City to a Jerusalem rally for the Israeli prime minister, religious militants have transgressed the boundaries of civil society in pursuit of their aims. Bosnians have faced the most brutal religious violence unleashed in the aftermath of the cold war, but the forces that assaulted Bosnia are not due to “age-old antagonisms” peculiar to Balkan peoples, as the cliche would have it. They are forces with us all. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 49 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Post-Cold War Balkan alliances reorganized along Orthodox-versus-Muslim civilizational lines. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 336; Orthodox religious identity united Russia behind Serbia during the Yugoslav wars — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 782; Religious violence in the post-cold war era is a global, not Balkan, force — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and…, 49 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Post-Cold War Balkan alliances reorganized along Orthodox-versus-Muslim civilizational lines. #corroborates (0.97) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 336
• Religious violence in the post-cold war era is a global, not Balkan, force #complicates (0.78) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 49