Slovenia and Croatia were the most developed parts of it and would be burdened by fiscal transfers to undeveloped regions of Bosnia Macedonia and Kosovo. I'd argue Croats and Slovenians enjoy a higher quality of living with a government that can focus on the needs of its own citizens.
You don't need political relevance or even resources to develop a great country. Look at Denmark as an example.
Is this how our allies think?
The old quip about NATO is that its purpose was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. I don't know how much that really reflected elite sentiment or not.
EDIT: well it was coined by the first Secretary General of NATO so make of that what you will https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay
In post war Germany the sentiment of relative status compared to our allies in the most powerful people was mostly gone. You can expect as we move more towards the right, and WW2 gets more and more forgotten, it will come back.
They even put it into their National Security Strategy: https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/12/make-europe-great-...
You could’ve stopped there.
No side is without blame. Everyone did horrible things, everyone is trying to tune out their own atrocities and emphasize the ones committed by the others.
Yes, the Serbs did horrible crimes. But ask the population of Mostar if the Croats were without blame. Ask Serbs how they felt about their treatment by Bosniaks in Čelebići.
As long as we keep this pretense of "our side good, other side bad", we are falling for the same trap that caused this mess in the first place.
Bratstvo i jedinstvo, a ništa drugo.
Which subethnicity started it or whatever doesn't fucking matter., this whole line of thinking only leads to more hatred, more destruction, more dysfunction.
As a Croat, my enemy is not my fellow Yugoslav, my enemy is the nationalist thugs on all sides that destroyed my country so they could rule over their hateful little fiefdoms.
Bratstvo i jedinstvo is coming back, under a blue flag with yellow stars. Montenegro is joining the EU next, with Schengen etc bratstvo i jedinstvo between crna gora and hrvatska will be restored.