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The Collaborative International Dictionary
balkanize

balkanize \balkanize\ v. 1. to divide a territory into small, hostile states.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Balkanize

1920, first used in reference to the Baltic states, on the model of what had happened in the Balkans; said to have been coined by English editor James Louis Garvin (1868-1947), but A.J. Toynbee (1922) credited it to "German Socialists" describing the results of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Either way, the reference is to the political situation in the Balkans c.1878-1913, when the European section of the Ottoman Empire split up into small, warring nations. Balkanized and Balkanization both also are from 1920.

Wiktionary
balkanize

vb. (alternative case form of Balkanize English)

Usage examples of "balkanize".

And in the balkanized world of the transnat nets, that seemed to be doing the job.

The United States of America has been Balkanized, has been divided into twenty petty nations so that it will never again be a threat to world peace.

And in Billy's fantasy of the future, "The United States of America has been Balkanized, has been divided into twenty petty nations so that it will never again be a threat to world peace.

The federal government-or what was left of the federal government, trying desperately, and not always successfully, to keep a battered and Balkanizing country from flying completely apart, struggling to put the Humpty Dumpty that was America back together again-the federal government paid Abner (and others like him) a yearly allowance in federal scrip or promise-of-merchandise notes for giving room and board to refugees from the drowned lands .