HU/EN
Main objectives of the research
The Balkans, a geopolitical buffer zone in a power vacuum but of strategic geographic importance (energy security, migration routes, transport development), still faces many problems due to its cultural, ethnic and political diversity, as it did in the past, when the formation of a large, stable state failed rendering the region (because of competing national ideals) as a buffer zone between three empires. The burdensome legacy of the past also seems to have stalled the realisation of the other alternative, the process of European integration of the Western Balkans: the Macedonian–Greek–Bulgarian disputes, the separatism of the Bosnian Serbs, the unresolved status of Kosovo etc.
The aim of the project is – by placing the events of the past in a new interpretative framework, and by studying the geostrategic perspective and the mechanisms of decision-making in foreign policy – to interpret the contemporary relationship of the Balkan region towards Europe and East-Central Europe through the conflict management and intervention methods of the period 1878–1918 (in particular the 30 years of peace without any clashes between the powers before 1914), in order to assist EU, nation-state decision-makers and diplomats to understand the region and opt for best solutions.
To this end, we experiment with the implementation of geopolitical analysis and aspects of contemporary international relations (IR analysis) on foreign policy actors into historical research, ensuring a link between past and present through methodological coherence.
Beside the implementation of new methods into historical research the project is source-oriented, though it is not based on the primacy of official documents, but focuses on the unpublished ego-documents of key diplomats of Austria-Hungary (diaries of Stephan Burián, 1886–1908, Lajos Thallóczy 1912–1916) and on the transmission of data from informal-unofficial information gathering (travellers, scholars) to official politics. The project is based on three pillars, that is:
1. the implementation of new methodological approach (geopolitics, IR, game theory, conflict theory). The research questions:
- a) What trends can be outlined in Austria-Hungary's geopolitics towards the Balkans?
- b) What socio-economic and political factors have influenced the strategic considerations of Powers towards the Balkans?
- c) Was Austria-Hungary's Balkan strategy coherent on the whole or was it characterised by differentiated attitude towards the countries of the peninsula?
- d) Was Austria-Hungary’s strategy proactive or reactive, preventive or interventional?
- e) To what extent were the geopolitics influenced by individual factors/foreign policy actors?
2. The exploitation of contemporary informal sources (diaries) in order to estimate their role on decision-making and influencing political thinking. Investigations on the production and the (filtered) transmission of unofficial-informal sources to the official levels is also promising in this respect. The research focuses on the following questions:
- a) How can individual geopolitical concepts be identified from the ego-documents?
- b) How did these actors use their informal networks of contacts to gain information and influence people?
- c) How much room for manoeuvre and what instruments did they have to assert their individual positions and influence Austria-Hungary’s Balkan strategy?
3. To examine the collective international mechanisms and measures through which the European powers tried to solve the (Balkan) problems (refugee issues, government reforms, maintaining security) peacefully. Four case studies labelled by posterity as humanitarian interventions will be analysed, which will provide additional data on the functioning of the pre-World War I great power system and may also serve as a reference for the better functioning of international missions in the Western Balkans today.
