Cascading normalization in the ‘Western Balkans’

To a number of Western observers, last month’s arrest of Ratko Mladic brings to an end the long drawn out implosion of the former Yugoslavia. The arrest comes twenty years since the beginning of that country’s break-up, and the wars that made the previously obscure local toponyms, from Srebrenica to Lazarevo, world-famous. In some sense, Mladic’s extradition to the Hague might be cathartic both for those who seek justice, and to those who wish to forget. Yet sixteen years after the end of major hostilities (twelve in the case of Serbia/Kosovo) we still cannot say that people in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia have moved on.