GVPT 200 Chapter Notes - Chapter April 30: Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav Partisans, Security Dilemma
5 May 2018
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International Relations: Readings for April 30th
• “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars” by Chaim Kaufmann
o Introduction
▪ At the time of writing, ethnic conflicts were underway in Bosnia, Croatia,
Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Sudan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Chechnya, Tajikistan, Kashmir, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.
▪ Advocates of international action seek to redress the failures of local
political institutions and élites by brokering power-sharing agreements, by
international conservatorships to rebuild states, or by reconstructing
exclusive ethnic identities into civic identities.
▪ However, solutions to ethnic wars do not depend on their causes.
▪ Kaufmann seeks to determine how ethnic wars end and bases an
intervention strategy upon that.
▪ Restoring civil politics in multi-ethnic states shattered by war is
impossible because the war itself destroys the possibilities of ethic
cooperation.
▪ The international community should not attempt to restore war-torn multi-
ethnic states, but rather facilitate and protect population movements to
create true national homelands.
o How Ethnic Civil Wars End
▪ The key difference between ethnic and ideological wars is that individual
loyalties are fluid in ideological conflicts but rigid in ethnic ones.
▪ Solutions aiming to restore multi-ethnic civil politics and avoiding
population transfer cannot work as they do not address the security
dilemma. Also, ethnic fears and hatreds are extremely resistant to change.
o Identity in Ethnic Wars
▪ Competition to sway individual loyalties does not play an important role
in ethnic civil wars because ethnic identities are fixed at birth.
▪ Once the conflict reaches the level of large-scale violence and (true or
false) tales of atrocities are perpetuated or planned against members of an
ethnic enemy, hard-liners among the latter have unanswerable arguments
▪ Yugoslav Partisans in World War II are often credited with transcending
ethnic conflict between the Croatian Ustaše and Serbian Chetniks by
uniting them under an anti-German, pan-Yugoslav program.
• This failed because the leader, Josip Tito, was a Croat while the
rank-and-file Partisan officers were Serbs and Montenegrins. Only
when Nazi defeat was certain did Croats join in numbers, and only
then because they preferred a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia to a
Yugoslavia without Croats.
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▪ Ethnic war also shrinks the scope of personal identity choice. Even those
placing little value on their ethnicity are pressed towards ethnic
mobilization for two reasons:
• Extremists in the ethnic community may seek to impose sanctions
on those who refuse to contribute.
• Identity is often imposed by an opposing group, specifically its
most murderous members. As a Bosnian Muslim schoolteacher
noted around the time of the writing: “The definition of who we
are today has been determined by our killers.”
o Alternatives to Separation
▪ Reconstruction of Ethnic Identities
• Logically, ethnic conflicts generated by the promotion of
pernicious, exclusive identities should be reversible by
encouraging individuals and groups to adopt a more inclusive
identity.
• However, identity construction under conditions of intense conflict
is probably impossible because once ethnic groups mobilize for
war, they will have already produced and will continue
reproducing social institutions and discourses reinforcing their
group identities and shut out or shut down competing groups.
▪ Power-Sharing
• Arend Lijphard proposes a model of “consociational democracy”
which assumes that ethnicity is at least somewhat manipulable, but
not so freely as constructivists may say.
• The core reason why power-sharing cannot resolve ethnic wars is
that it is voluntaristic, requiring conscious decisions by élites to
cooperate to avoid ethnic strife.
o Objections to Ethnic Separation and Partition
▪ Five main objections exist to ethnic partition:
• It encourages the splintering of states
• Population exchanges cause human suffering
• It turns civil wars into international wars
• Rump states will not be viable
• It does nothing to resolve ethnic antagonisms
▪ Population exchange and partition are anathema to western values of
social integration and trample upon the international norm of stat
sovereignty.
▪ Below, Kaufmann overs rebuttals to these arguments.
▪ Partitioning Encourages the Splintering of States?
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Possible and impossible solutions to ethnic civil wars by chaim kaufmann, introduction. International relations: readings for april 30th: at the time of writing, ethnic conflicts were underway in bosnia, croatia, Only when nazi defeat was certain did croats join in numbers, and only then because they preferred a multi-ethnic yugoslavia to a. Yugoslavia without croats: ethnic war also shrinks the scope of personal identity choice. Even those placing little value on their ethnicity are pressed towards ethnic mobilization for two reasons: extremists in the ethnic community may seek to impose sanctions on those who refuse to contribute. Identity is often imposed by an opposing group, specifically its most murderous members. It turns civil wars into international wars: population exchanges cause human suffering, rump states will not be viable. Intervention can reduce the loss of life where states are breaking up anyway.
