TOURISM AS A TRANSNATIONAL ACTOR IN COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE NON-ALIGNED POLICY OF FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2292.2026/1-62/43-51Keywords:
Cold War, international tourism, Yugoslavia, transnational actors, non-aligned policy, containment, U.S. foreign policy, liberal world order.Abstract
Background. Within the bipolar system of international relations during the Cold War, Yugoslavia occupied an exceptional position as a socialist state that, following its break with the USSR, developed an autonomous model of development and a policy of non-alignment, thereby becoming an important element in the strategic calculations of both superpowers. In this geopolitical context, international tourism transcended its purely economic and cultural functions and acquired the significance of a transnational actor, actively supported by the United States as an instrument of the “peaceful engagement” of Yugoslavia into the Western political and economic sphere. This makes it necessary to conceptualize the international-political potential of tourism through the Yugoslav case as a key non-aligned actor.
Methods. The study is based on an interdisciplinary approach combining core methods of international-political analysis. Systemic, historical-descriptive, and structural-functional methods are employed to conceptualize tourism as an instrument of transnational interaction and an element in the expansion of the liberal world order. The source base is complemented by materials from U.S. diplomatic and intelligence archives, which make it possible to reconstruct how tourist mobility was perceived within American strategic planning.
Results. The research demonstrates that the attraction of Western tourist flows became one of the key pathways through which Yugoslavia emerged from diplomatic isolation after 1948 and an important instrument for its integration into Western networks of economic and cultural exchange without a formal abandonment of non-alignment. Support for freedom of movement, travel, and tourism was embedded in the transformation of U.S. policy from classical “containment” toward a logic of “constructive engagement,” aimed at the gradual transformation of the socialist system through openness and interdependence. At the same time, tourism performed an important function in demonstrating an alternative, “more liberal” version of socialism and in distancing Yugoslavia from the Soviet model, enabling Belgrade to position itself as a bridge between East and West and to combine non-alignment with a gradual incorporation into the liberal world order.
Conclusions. It is argued that under Cold War conditions tourism evolved into a significant form of transnational agency capable of generating political, economic, and identity-forming effects beyond the framework of classical diplomacy. The Yugoslav case shows that mobility and tourist exchanges functioned as instruments of long-term influence, contributed to the erosion of bipolar boundaries, and promoted the liberal world order, with the role of the United States being system-forming in this process. Tourism thus emerged as a structural component of Yugoslavia’s non-aligned policy and an important factor in the transformation of its foreign-policy identity.
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