>>507967925 (OP)In the late 1990s NATO was really in its infancy in terms of actually doing stuff together. The conflict in the Balkans was highly complicated and Bill Clinton a little too eager to prove himself as a strongman, which is ultimately why you saw NATO take such a weird approach to the Balkan war. On one hand, the idea was to expand influence into the Balkans at a time when there was a lot of unrest and complete lack of control, on the other hand nobody in North America or Western Europe had a clue about anything connected to the region. It's why as time has gone by most people have a pretty apathetic view of the Balkans. This is further amplified by those jihadist organizations that came out of countries like Bosnia and Albania, who went off to fight for groups like the Taliban, Hamas, and ISIS.
Although if you want to be a little more optimistic, the intervention of NATO incidentally has led to the most stable period in Balkan history. It's also the peaceful, too. There isn't really any conflict beyond Albanian gangs and Serbian turbo-patriots that kick off once in awhile. You simply don't see the same kind of rhetoric that you had in the past, and with Turkey and Austria firmly kept out of the picture in terms of expansionism the Balkans doesn't really have any external threat at the moment.