EX-YU PROSTOR U EPOHI GLOBALNOG GEOPOLITIČKOG PREOBLIKOVANJA
EX-YU SPACE IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL TRANSFORMATION

Summary/Abstract: The area of the Balkan Peninsula has been a zone of conflicting geopolitical interests for centuries. For centuries, influences from the West, East, North and South have shaped this area. The past three turbulent decades have brought great changes to this area. From changing borders and state structures, ideological changes, restructuring the economy, to international sanctions, ethnic and religious conflicts with tens of thousands of victims and war crimes. The collapse of the economic and political systems of the communist countries resulted in these societies falling into a state of complete social and value confusion. Continuity of national issues and frozen conflicts in Southeast Europe came to the fore again - due to the historical heritage, which created numerous ethnic and religious mixtures in this area, which again represents a fertile ground for geopolitical interference and foreign influences. The states created by the dissolution of the SFRY became to a greater or lesser extent subject to the influence of foreign factors, both in the regulation of internal policy and in the tracing of foreign policy directions. Such a factual state of limited sovereignty created a kind of: protectorates, semi-protectorates, ambassadorships. The turbulent geo-economic and geo-political movements of the past decades, the movement from a unipolar to a multi-polar global order, with more economic, military and political centers of power - has a significant impact on the areas located on the periphery of the capitalist system and vulgarized neoliberalism. The ex-YU space represents a typical syndrome of emphasizing small differences, and on the other hand - there is much more that unites, mutual respect, solidarity during natural disasters, floods, earthquakes, fires and during pandemics. There is an ongoing geopolitical struggle, in which, in order to realize certain political and economic interests, various means are used against the targeted states, from hybrid war, sanctions, armed conflicts based on the model of „controlled chaos“. The effort of the Great Powers to achieve stability in the world is often wrong, because the international environment is an excellent example of a chaotic system. The world is destined to be chaotic, because geopolitical players have different goals and values. Therefore, the great powers see chaos as a source of opportunity and pursue the illusory goal of global stability. The geopolitical strategy of „controlled chaos“ produced an adequate reaction, which is also reflected in the media field. The wide use of mass media and new technologies in such complex international relations, with multiple crisis hotspots (Middle East, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, islands in the South China Sea, neuralgic hotspots in Africa) is evident. So, even though a deceptive peace reigns at the global level, „below the surface“, the conflicting geopolitical interests of leading but also regional states intersect in the mediasphere through special services. At the beginning of the new millennium, the world is facing numerous challenges. The challenges are of a security, political, economic, ecological, cultural, technological nature, with the enormous power and use of mass media. The economic rise of China, the military and political rise of Russia, the creation of the BRICS economic alliance, the rise of South American economies striving for independence from the influence of the USA - represent new factors on the geopolitical map of the world. New, economic-political organizations are trying to reduce the power of the IMF and reduce the use of petro-dollars, while international political relations are moving towards the tendency of creating a new multipolar world, with more economic, political and military power centers. A multipolar world, the emergence of which can be seen during the second decade of the new millennium, global hotspots in the Middle East, the migrant crisis, the struggle over the deposits and flows of energy sources and water sources, the struggle for the influence of the Great Powers through the so-called hybrid wars - have their consequences on the territory of Southeast Europe.Small countries, like the Balkan ones, cannot allow themselves some foreign political freedom and strategy and geopolitical games. Therefore, they act towards the Great Powers - primarily with tactics of survival and short-term gains.

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