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Read that before it's available only for a fee: Florian Bieber reviewed V.P. Gagnon's Beyond Ethnic, another refusal of connecting the bloody break-up of former Yugoslavia to ancient ethnic hatred.

The book and Bieber's review stimulatingly combine the Yugoslav war in the 1990's with its aftermath today:

In a thoughtful conclusion, Gagnon raises the question whether "ethnic solutions," such as increased minority rights protection, as for example in the Ohrid Agreement after the short conflict between Macedonian forces and Albanian-minority fighters in 2001, are appropriate if we agree that the conflicts were not "ethnic wars." This observation is certainly worth more thorough contemplation than the book (or this review) has space for. It also raises a question: If the wars do not start as "ethnic," do they end up being "ethnic"? The authoritarian regimes and the wars in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have transformed societies, which is one reason why clear hindsight of the 1980s is so difficult to achieve today. Stereotypes and nationalist world views have often become more socially acceptable in the post-conflict regions of former Yugoslavia than some 15 years ago and a new generation has grown up in the isolated countries of the region, suggesting that the postwar systems have to engage with a fundamentally different reality.