Over the past decades there has been a major paradigm shift between the idealist and realist model of self-determination. Earlier on in this century, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson "promoted national self-determination as a basic political principle." .

             Yet more recently, President Bill Clinton "warned of the ills of unrestrained nationalism." Stating, "Militant nationalism is on the rise.transforming the healthy pride of nations, tribes, religious, and ethnic groups into cancerous prejudice, eating away at states and.

             leaving their people addicted to the political pain-killers of violence and demagoguery." This statement most clearly portrays the United States recent impetus upon NATO to use persuasive military force in order to prevent the Yugoslavian government from cracking.

             down on ethnic Albania separatists in the renegade region of Kosovo.

             In order to better understand the current crisis in Kosovo and NATO"s threat to use military force against the Serbs, one must foremost delve into the organization of European powers, the United State"s strategy urging NATO to act, and the long standing history between ethnic minorities in Kosovo, from a realist point of view.

             At the background of this event, is the xenophobic feeling created by extreme Serbian nationalism towards the Albania separatists. With over five centuries of Ottoman Turk domination in the Balkan states, the Serbian peoples have always felt a sense of.

             nationalist unity against other ethnic groups. Which they hoped would one day overcome oppression and result in the formation of a unified Serbian government. But with the unification of Yugoslavia also came the negative attributes associated with exacerbated.

             nationalism. This being most clearly portrayed in the opening of past injuries inflected upon the Serbs by another ethnic group, the ethnic Albanians. Who can be most closely associated with the Muslim Ottoman Turk Empire, to whom they once belonged.