Contrary to accepted wisdom, Yugoslavia's disintegration was not the product of inherent and irrational ethnic animosities and centuries of strife that inevitably boiled over into the carnage of the early 1990s.

Arguing that the primary utility of this interpretation is to help vindicate the West's policy of inaction, journalist and former war correspondent Christopher Bennett here suggests that the roots of the conflict can be traced directly to 1987. In this pivotal year, a fierce struggle was waged within the Serbian Communist party, between adherents of a Serb nationalist ideology (embodied by Slobodan Molosevic) and those Yugoslavs who clung to the concept of a multinational state.

Once Milosevic gained the upper hand, he ruthlessly purged his rivals and launched a massive - and highly successfulcampaign of media indoctrination to stir up Serb nationalist sentiment. This new Serb nationalism, which has so alarmed and repelled the world since 1991, is thus Milosevic's creation and not simply the result of ancient historical enmity.

Beginning and concluding his work with a detailed examination of the Yugoslav killing fields and explicitly rejecting the notion that Balkan peoples are somehow predisposed to violence, Bennett also provides a concise and accessible history of Yugoslavia, tracing Slavic culture and politics through the world wars and the age of Tito.