By Marcus Havelock
At the turn of the 20th century, the Balkans were derided as “the powder keg of Europe.” Great powers pressed their claims through proxy conflicts, alliances shifted with dizzying speed, and small states found themselves pawns in a larger imperial game. Today, in the fractured spaces of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and even the Pacific, that old pattern has returned. Fragmented states are once again laboratories for global ambition, where the maneuverings of giants are tested on the fragile sovereignty of the small.
The Chessboard of the Weak
In the 19th century, empires treated minor states as squares on a strategic board. Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria mattered less for their intrinsic power than for the way they checked or advanced Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian designs. The very condition of weakness made these states useful to others—pliant enough to accept loans, armaments, or “advisers,” but sovereign enough to serve as proxies in disputes their patrons preferred not to fight directly.
Fast forward, and the script remains eerily familiar. Armenia and Azerbaijan, locked in the volatile Nagorno-Karabakh struggle, attract rival sponsorships. Pacific microstates are courted by both Washington and Beijing with promises of ports, cables, and aid. Fragmentation, once again, creates opportunity for those who would rule indirectly.
The Return of Sphere-Building
The great irony is that globalization promised to dissolve these dynamics. By knitting markets and institutions together, it was supposed to blunt the need for spheres of influence. Yet the very tools of globalization—finance, trade, and technology—have become the currency of modern sphere-building.
Where Britain once offered naval protection, China now offers infrastructure. Where Russia once wielded religion and language, today it uses pipelines and cyber-systems. The mechanisms are new, but the impulse to anchor influence in fragile borderlands is the same.
Lessons from History
History does not repeat, but it does instruct. The Balkan precedent reminds us that fragmented regions are rarely left to their own devices. They become pressure valves for wider contests, their conflicts magnified by outside interest. The lesson for small states is sobering: sovereignty, in such conditions, is less about independence than about negotiating patronage without being devoured.
For larger powers, the lesson is equally stark. The Balkans spiraled from proxy maneuvering into world war because the chessboard proved unstable. When enough small states hold enough grievances, great-power games can ignite uncontrollably.
A Precarious Future
The world is littered with potential “new Balkans”—from the island nations of the South Pacific, to Central Asian republics, to the frozen conflicts of Eastern Europe. Each exists at the fault line of larger rivalries, each risks becoming a testing ground for strategies whose real target lies elsewhere.
The global order now confronts an old dilemma in modern guise: how to prevent fragmented states from becoming the tripwires of a wider conflagration. For history shows, with brutal clarity, that the periphery is never truly peripheral.
