Hitler (sorry to bring that up again) was the product of the Treaty of Versailles, fairly well predicted by the bourgeois Keynes in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace", and by many other people who could see that demanding reparations from a country while closing all markets to its exports was a recipe for disaster. Similarly, it could be seen that when the relatively wealthy provinces of Slovenia and Croatia--essentially the tax base for all of Yugoslavia--got their independence, there would be trouble due to economic dislocation.
Maybe it's true hate springs eternal, but it doesn't by itself lead to war.
Only when many people have already been driven to private desperation will they acquiesce in or join in the activities of a few violent psychotics or paid provocateurs. In better times they alternate between gently humoring them or openly making fun of them, or even ostracising them. Yugoslavia under Tito was no paradise, but it was as peaceful as any other European country. Ethnic trouble, as could palpably be seen in Indonesia, is the result of economic trouble. It didn't take even a week there to begin, after the collapse of the Rupiah, did it?
The "socialism" of eastern Europe disappointed people in many ways. It didn't lead to democracy or equality or justice. It wasn't very productive or innovative. It lacked glamour. But one thing it taught us, if we pay attention: It taught us how much--or rather how little--it costs to keep even the most militantly chauvanistic people at peace. Basically, every drunk, derelict and psychotic had some kind of job, some source of income. Young people had places to go and work to do. Nothing great, mind you, just enough to keep them complacent. Of course, the jobs still available in Germany for migrant workers at that time helped too. My point isn't really to glorify Tito or anything else.
My point is that people need to be bought off: it's maybe the best hope for peace and the only form of intervention welcome everywhere. We have to stop thinking of war as the result of evil, racist people, but rather as the result of people like you or me getting so angry and desperate that we at least cease to resist when the gangleaders come to town, and when we see a friend marching down the street in some stupied uniform, we consider at least for a moment doing likewise. That was a large part the story of Germany that is repeated in every country where people are deprived of livelihood and place in society.
"If you want peace, work for justice" has the right idea, but not quite right enough. If you want peace, you must guarantee a living, not just to the good and beautiful, not just to the right minded, and not just to those with marketable skills. You must guarantee a living--more than they "justly deserve"--to the scum, whomever in your mind you fit into such a category. Then you will have again the cynical, complacent, and inefficient society that to so many now seems like a remote impossible dream from their blissful youth.
Send money!--not bombs, and screw neoliberalism! Nothing new in that idea, but maybe now we see more clearly why we have it.
Michael Brun