Efforts to hold Bosnia together are not faltering because of “Balkan scheming,” as you call it, but because the European Union and the United States cannot get their act together (“Balkan Scheming,” October 24, 2009). The two parts of the country put together by the Dayton accords—a Serb entity (or Republika Srpska, which cannot be translated into English because it means no less than “Serbian Republic”) and a federation of Croats and Bosniaks (that is, Bosnian Muslims)—will surely make trouble along the way, but the solution to the bickering still lies in Brussels and Washington. By the way, the same holds for Kosovo. Once the underlying trouble is resolved by the great powers, and resolved it must be relatively soon, Balkan scheming will disappear as if by magic. It has always been thus in the Balkans, at least since the division of the Roman Empire, when it was up to Ravenna and Constantinople to quell Balkan scheming. Back then, the Slavs were still in the Carpathian Mountains, but the essence of the problem has not changed an iota. And it never will.