"The specific nature of the Yugoslav crisis was somewhat different. Yugoslavia was not at war, and the system was not in the throes of vast social and institutional transformations on a par with those engineered by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the 1930s or by the Khmer Rouge in their first months of power. But Yugoslavia did face its own combined domestic and international crisis that rapidly undermined the premises of the existing system. The collapse of communism and the increasing power of globalized capitalism destroyed the Cold War umbrella that had given Yugoslavia its protected and privileged place in the international order. Its economy stagnated and lacked the flexibility to function effectively in the more competitive global markets of the late twentieth century. As the communist system’s ability to provide for its people deteriorated, and the political order became mired in internal conflicts and incompetence, people turned to extreme nationalism for solutions. But the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the transition to violent population politics were not the result of age-old ethnic hatreds, as the popular media and government circles in the West often proclaimed. At a moment of crisis, in large part self-generated, nationalist leaders opted to destroy the system. To accomplish their aims, they mobilized longstanding national sentiments but also drew upon the very character of Yugoslavia as a federation of nationally based republics and as a communist society."