This is a revisionist history of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia. Assessing the geopolitical and strategic reasons for its creation and dismemberment, it is an important corrective to much contemporary theorising about the destruction of the Yugoslav state. Kate Hudson draws attention to the role of foreign states whose involvement in Yugoslavia did much to destabilise the region, and explains how and why this happened. Tracing the state's origins from 1918 through war and the Tito years, she explains the distortion of the socialist economy resulting from Yugoslavia's unusual position between the two Cold War blocs, and the economic collapse of the 1980s as part of the US's drive for a free market. She also investigates the true causes and effects of the recent wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and brings the book up-to-date with an analysis of Milosevic's downfall, and events in Macedonia and Montenegro.