What strategic interests does the US have in the Balkans?

They don't have strategic intersts by themselves but they want to prevent others from achieving heir own strategic goals namely Russia and in the 90s Gemany and nowdays EU. Let's take as a test case Yugoslavia's dissolution wars, especialy Bosnia.In that conflict the US suported Bosnian Muslims as a counterbalance against pro-Germans Croatians and potentially pro-Russian Serbs.But the proof that was the case and the nauseatic litterature about human rights was simply a cheap exercise in Goebelsian propagada was to be given by a revaeling event in the next conflict:Kossovo.As it is well known and publised even by Newsweek (a U.S. magasine) the commander of the U.S. troops during that conflict was ready to order NATO troops to fire upon Russian troops which came to Pristina airport in order to restore order, with well imagined consequances.Only US fear that through Servia Russia would gain a fouthold in the Balkans could motivated this otherwise mad desicion.The well-known mineral wealth of Kossovo was only a bonus, but not the pricipal factor.tjhe same reasoning namely to createw problems for EU and Russia lays behinf the whole-hearted US support for a "indepedent" Kossovo (in reality a US client state)