Clark C. Abt and Karl W. Deutsch Hungary, for example, built most of the buses for all of Communist Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, and still has the capacity to do so. Now, however, with the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, COMECON, and the Soviet Union, only the Hungarians buy their own buses. Massive unem­ ployment, industrial and commercial decline are the consequences. The eco­ nomic relationships among Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzego­ vina are being broken now, but it is to be hoped that after the resolution of the current political-military and ethnic conflicts, they will gradually learn peaceful solutions from successful Western European small countries. One of the first lessons the former Yugoslav republics must learn, parti­ cularly the militarily dominant ones, is the firm but unaggressive defense of ethnic and national minorities and their civil rights and economic property, within a national context, making it unnecessary to gain national political independence as the last resort response to protecting these legitimate mino­ rity rights. The Swiss cantons, for example, can be more secure within the Swiss state, than they would be as independent nation-states. Students of small states development have asked what is thought in Liechtenstein about these issues and the advantages and disadvantages of small states and countries. With this modest overview we have made a small start, deepened and amplified by the small states experts expressing their views on the topic and filling out additional areas of concentration. There are already many almost - or quasi - small states, such as Bosnia, Slovakia, Armenia, Georgia; Macedonia, possibly Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad and Kur- destan, and they will all want to know if and how it works building up a successful small country, particularly a successful multi-national, multi-eth­ nic small state. In this respect there are many questions and many difficul­ ties, some of which are addressed in the essays following. Unfortunately the most urgent and decisive issues for incipient newly independent or independence seeking small states are not much addressed by the essays following. These are the issues of indigenous ethnic / national group survival in the context of a larger surrounding state that not only fails to protect the lives and property of such indigenous minority men, women and children, but attacks them brutally and attempts to drive them from their homes and habitats and property by terror and force. Thus far the small, secure, and wealthy small countries of Western Europe have hung back from helping the beleagured and violendy threate­ ned small states of the Balkans, waiting for the major regional powers - Ger­ many, France, England - and the U. S. and the U. N. to solve the problem. 24