This article comparatively examines the instabilities in the world’s two most complicated regions with reference to the decline of the systemic factors, absolute determinism on social, political, and economic developments. The author argues that actors in the Balkans and the Middle East will continue to defy U.S. and West European preferences and lectures as they work out the relationship between their parochial interests, ideological preferences, and economic exigencies. To this end, as the author holds, in both regions domestic grassroots level social and political factors will be the main driving factor of both political status quo and political change. In this way, the article concludes that since no single state or group of powers stands astride international relations, in this new era, regional patterns of trade, aid, alliance, and enmity will become difficult to read.