Geopolitical Glossary of the Balkans

The promotion of the book “Geopolitical Glossary of the Balkans” by Professor Milomir Stepić will be held in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Thursday, November 7th, 2024, starting at 6 p.m. Historian Ljubodrag P. Ristić, PhD, Branimir Nešić, director of the publishing house “Catena Mundi”, as well as the author himself, will talk about the book.

The book provides a detailed insight into the geopolitics of Southeast Europe and was created after several decades of research into the geopolitics of the region and the world. It represents the most extensive and complete source of knowledge about the forces and processes shaping our peninsula and a concise and systematic dictionary that provides definitions, explanations and context for geopolitical terms, phenomena and events that are familiar to everyone. This scientific guide to understanding the Balkans makes it easier to understand the laws by which states come into being and disappear in this part of the world. Through a complicated network of geopolitical concepts and a clearly expressed intention to reveal their often-hidden meanings, or colloquial interpretations, it enables a precise insight into the complex conceptual structure that geopolitics as a synthetic science uses, explicated on the example of the Balkans as a complex zone of geographical, cultural, political, economic, religious and geopolitical interests.

The book was created as a product of the scientific work of the author – a top expert in geopolitics, whose theoretical knowledge, social cognition and decades of scientific experience undeniably go deep into many scientific disciplines. The book presents the author’s great scientific-theoretical knowledge in scientific fields such as geography, history, economics, political science, military strategy, defence science, sociology, law, culture science, ethnography, communication science. That is why it is intended for experts as well as for a wider audience. As a geopolitical guide for reliable movement through the intricate “Balkan wasteland”, the book demystifies the secrets of historical traditions and cultural-religious heritage, thereby refuting entrenched and arbitrarily understood geopolitical stereotypes about the Balkans.

Through Stepić’s glossary, the Balkans are seen as a historically created “contact zone” of “meeting civilizations”, their confrontation and conflict, while also pointing to the constantly present non-Balkan geopolitical vectors of influence and interests of their regional “partners”. As the author states in the preface of the book, “The original characteristic terms, neologisms and compounds arose not only from dynamic geopolitical processes at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, but also from their tendentious placement in the so-called a hybrid war that is continuously being waged primarily in the (post)Yugoslav part of the Balkans”. This geopolitical pattern has been against the national and state interests of Serbs and Serbia for at least two centuries. Coded as the “main geopolitical opponent” of the West in the wider area of the Balkans, and especially in the (post)Yugoslav area, the Serbs are constantly the target of their destructive actions and interests. Milomir Stepić (1959) is a Serbian geographer and geopolitician. He graduated in 1985 from the Faculty of Geography at the University of Belgrade, and in 1997 he obtained the title of Doctor of Geographical Sciences. He worked as a professor at the Faculty of Geography at the University of Belgrade from 1986 to 2008, and from 2008 to 2012 he was a professor at the Faculty of Geoeconomics at Megatrend University.

He was also an invited lecturer at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade, the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade, the Military Academy of the University of Defense in Belgrade and the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a scientific associate of the Institute for Political Studies, a member of the Committee for the Study of Kosovo and Metohija and the Committee for the Study of the Population of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, as well as a member of the Serbian Geographical Society. Since 2020, he has been the editor of the Collection of Matica Srpska for Social Sciences, and he is also a member of the editorial board of the scientific journals National Interest and Serbian Political Thought. He is the holder of the Order of the Star of Karađorđe, first class. His most famous works are: “Kosovo and Metohija: A Postmodern Geopolitical Experiment”, “Geopolitics – Ideas, Theories, Concepts”, “Serbian Geopolitical Pattern”.