Describing Yugoslavia’s position in the Balkans as a “geopolitical pivot,” analogous to Mackinder’s concept, helps explain the country’s strategic importance. Stalin may have confused the use of force organization based on party affinity, the Comintern, with an association of states, the Cominform. The defeat of transnational fascism (not an oxymoron) destroyed fascism and the notion that ideological affinity could pass for political legitimacy. The Tito-Stalin split’s further strategic impact on the Cold War was expressed through the end of the Greek Civil War and the Trieste settlement. The split imperfectly resolved the boundaries of “socialist” political change and led to the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. However, apparently benign “non-alignment and self-managing socialism” were bound to the generational experience of partisan Yugoslavia and the person of Tito. Communism’s collapse returned past Balkan conflicts reinforced by the Tito-Stalin split. Internecine “Balkan Wars” returned as wars among Yugoslavia’s successors, and with them, a return to “conference diplomacy.” Only lately have European Union members offered incentives for Balkan integration.