Војно дело (Jan 2020)

Strategic culture in the geopolitical interpretation of transit and transition

  • Knežević Miloš

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5937/vojdelo2004161K
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 72, no. 4
pp. 161 – 188

Abstract

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The author explains and proves that in epochal changes at the crossroads of centuries and millennia, there are two similar, but in many ways different processes: transit and transition. Transit means the passage of some parts of the state through a complex and unique state in the direction of international independence. From an empirical perspective, transit proceeds in two ways: peacefully or in a conflict or. Transit is, in fact, another name for separation or secession. Transit secession in one state shapes several independent states. In that sense, transit is the exteriorization of national politics, its internationalization and geopoliticization. Although it manifests dramatically, tragically and catastrophically in the secession conflict, in the theoretical discourse of social, national and state changes, transit is covered by the process of transition. Therefore, the author recognizes three approaches to the relationship between transit and transition: transit that is partially differentiated from transition; transit that is fully differentiated from transition and transit equated to transition. The author advocates a clear and principled distinction between the phenomenon of transit and the phenomenon of transition. Finally, the paper emphasizes the chronopolitical moment of geopolitical metamorphoses in which transit precedes and in many ways determines the later transition. Transition as a socio-economic process, i.e. the political-economic structural transformation of the socialist into the capitalist society cannot be sufficiently understood without understanding the previous events of transit. It is precisely the Yugoslav case of the disintegration of a complex state that could be instructive for the current EU integration, and also certain multinational and mononational states that face the danger of extreme regionalism, autonomy and separatism.

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