The Ties That Divide

Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Conflict

Stephen Saideman

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780231506274
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ethnic conflicts have created crises within NATO and between NATO and Russia, produced massive flows of refugees, destabilized neighboring countries, and increased the risk of nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Interventions have cost the United States, the United Nations, and other actors billions of dollars.

While scholars and policymakers have devoted considerable attention to this issue, the question of why states take sides in other countries' ethnic conflicts has largely been ignored. Most attention has been directed at debating the value of particular techniques to manage ethnic conflict, including partition, prevention, mediation, intervention, and the like. However, as the Kosovo dispute demonstrated, one of the biggest obstacles to resolving ethnic conflicts is getting the outside actors to cooperate. This book addresses this question.

Saideman argues that domestic political competition compels countries to support the side of an ethnic conflict with which constituents share ethnicities. He applies this argument to the Congo Crisis, the Nigerian Civil War, and Yugoslavia's civil wars. He then applies quantitative analyses to ethnic conflicts in the 1990s. Finally, he discusses recent events in Kosovo and whether the findings of these case studies apply more broadly.

1	The Problem: Why Do States Take Sides in Ethnic Conflicts?

After the Cold War ended and the nearly unanimous effort to defeat Iraq during the Gulf War, scholars, policymakers and publics expected that countries would able to cooperate to manage crises and conflicts around the world. The European Community, as it transformed into the European Union, tried to develop a common foreign policy, hoping to play an important role in post–Cold War international relations. Yugoslavia’s wars dashed these hopes because European states could not agree on how to handle them. Germany’s efforts to recognize and support Slovenia and Croatia frustrated Britain and France. Russia’s support of Serbia, and, by extension, the Bosnian Serbs, limited what the United States could do. Greece’s policies toward Macedonia increased regional instability. Albania’s support of the Kosovar Albanians increased the power and will of the Kosovo Liberation army, which, in part, caused Serbia to react violently, bringing NATO into a new war. Because the international community failed to cooperate effectively during the Bosnian conflict, analysts fear that unfortunate precedents have been set and that we need to develop new understandings of ethnic conflict so that we can manage future conflicts.¹

Previous efforts to understand the international relations of ethnic conflict failed to help predict the dynamics surrounding Yugoslavia’s demise. Therefore, analysts have argued that things have changed, so that the various institutions and norms that constrained states before are no longer as relevant.² There are two problems with this argument: first, it assumes that the old conventional wisdom was correct in explaining the past; and, second, as a result, it implies that past ethnic conflicts are not useful for understanding today’s. Briefly, the conventional wisdom argues that in the past the mutual vulnerability of states to ethnic conflict inhibited their foreign policies, restricting support for secessionist movements and creating the Organization of African Unity and a norm of territorial integrity.³ Now, it is argued, the norms these states developed have broken down, threatening the stability of boundaries in Africa and perhaps elsewhere. As this book will show, more states, including many that were vulnerable to separatism, supported secessionist movements even in Africa than usually suggested, but that we can still learn from the past to understand today’s conflicts.

The purpose of the book is to address these difficulties. To be clear, the focus of this book is on the foreign policies of states toward ethnic conflict—the support they give to an ethnic group or the state it is battling—and not directly on the outcomes of these disputes. While the policies of external actors matter a great deal in shaping their outcome,⁴ this study concentrates on the causes of these policies rather than their consequences. By asking why states take sides in ethnic conflicts, especially secessionist crises, past and present, I hope to show why the old conventional wisdom is wrong not only for today’s conflicts but for yesterday’s as well. In addition, I hope to demonstrate that the international dynamics of current ethnic conflicts are similar to those of the past. The answer this book poses is that the domestic political concerns of leaders, as determined by the interaction of ethnic ties and political competition, cause states to take one side or another (or both) of ethnic conflicts elsewhere. Consequently, getting states to cooperate over such disputes is much more difficult than generally argued.

In this chapter, I suggest why this question is important for both policy and academic debates, sketch out briefly the potential answers, and then present a brief outline of the book.

Relevance For Policymakers

Leaders throughout Europe, North America, and even the Middle East have focused their attention on the Yugoslav conflict, expending considerable political, military, economic, and diplomatic resources. Obviously, they must think the conflict is important. There are many reasons why policy-makers cared about the Yugoslav conflict. There are the humanitarian concerns, as the conflict has produced atrocities reminiscent of Nazi war crimes. Refugee flows have caused resentment and conflict in Germany and elsewhere. Economic sanctions have disrupted economies within the region, particularly hurting Macedonia and Romania. During the Bosnian war, leaders feared that the conflict might spread to Macedonia, perhaps causing a new war between Turkey and Greece. Many also argued that, as the first conflict after the end of the Cold War, the Yugoslavia conflict might set unfortunate precedents, encouraging demagogic politicians elsewhere to play the ethnic card. Finally, many politicians cared about the conflict because their supporters did. These same reasons also drew the attention of many states to ethnic conflicts in Rwanda, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, and Nagorno-Karabakh, among others.

Clearly, ethnic conflicts pose grave threats to the lives, livelihoods, and well being of everyone involved. Many articles and books have documented the costs of ethnic conflict imposed upon civilians as well as combatants. Ethnic cleansing has now entered our vocabulary, referring to the forced expulsion of members of an ethnic group to purify the region for another one. The strategy includes using artillery, selective executions, rape and other forms of terror to “encourage” civilians of the targeted ethnic group to flee. Many have documented the horrors committed in the name of ethnic nationalism in Bosnia.⁵ When journalists reveal particular atrocities, leaders and publics in other countries are likely to desire an end to the conflict.

Since the early 1980s, ethnic conflicts have generated more refugees than any other kind of phenomena, natural or man-made, short of interstate war.⁶ Refugee flows draw international attention and cause states to seek an end to the conflicts that spawn such movements for humanitarian, economic, and security reasons. When people flee a conflict, they usually suffer a great deal in the process, again causing outside actors to seek an end to the suffering. Refugees also impose costs on the countries to which they flee, since the host countries have to pay for food, shelter, clothing, and more. This is particularly troublesome since the poorest countries tend to bear the most severe burdens,⁷ as the recent plight of Albania and Macedonia illustrates. Refugees cause economic dislocations as they compete for jobs and scarce goods.⁸ The problem of civilians fleeing ethnic conflicts now affects more developed countries as nearly a million people fled to Western Europe from Yugoslavia.⁹ Refugees may also threaten the security of countries. They can disturb the internal political balance of the host state by changing its ethnic composition. Refugees may also challenge the sovereignty of a country by controlling the territory they inhabit.¹⁰ They may also increase tensions and conflict with the state from which they fled. To end the flow and return the refugees, the conflict that caused them has to end.

Refugee flows are not the only dynamic causing economic problems. States frequently rely on economic sanctions to compel various combatants to negotiate. While the debate about whether this strategy works is a lively one, there is much less controversy about the costs the sanctioning states must bear.¹¹ While economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro (the rump Yugoslavia) have had little impact on the economies of the United States and other major powers, they have cost Romania and other neighbors of Yugoslavia quite dearly.¹² Although sanctions are supposed to end a conflict, over time the desire develops to end the war so that the sanctions can stop.

Perhaps the most important reason why leaders care about ethnic conflict is the threat such conflicts pose to international peace and stability. “Saying the threat of ethnic violence today is ‘no less serious than the threat of nuclear war was yesterday,’ the Russian Foreign Minister today called for expanded United Nations peacemaking and peacekeeping, especially in the troubled republics of the former Soviet Union.”¹³ In his first speech at the United Nations, President Bill Clinton considered regional ethnic conflict to be one of the three most important sources of international instability.

The wars of Yugoslavia’s disintegration provided the international community with a dramatic example of how ethnic conflict can promote regional instability. These conflicts remind us of other crises in the history of the region, highlighting the enduring relevance of ethnic conflict for international politics. Conflict between the Serbs and their neighbors occurred at the turn of the last century, leading to the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian irredentist, an event that triggered the First World War. While the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts remained within the boundaries of “Yugoslavia,” the war in Kosovo threatened the stability of Macedonia, as well as increasing the likelihood of war among Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Turkey. Separatist conflicts have spawned other wars, including the Ethiopia-Somalia war of 1977–1978 and the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971.

Ethnic conflicts may also spread to cause ethnic tensions to rise within other states. This chapter has thus far focused on some of the direct mechanisms through which ethnic conflict may diffuse—refugees and international intervention, but ethnic conflict may also indirectly cause more conflict elsewhere through demonstration effects and learning—contagion.¹⁴

Because of these consequences, which are likely to hurt many countries, analysts generally assume that the priority is to end such conflicts and to prevent a crisis from becoming an ethnic war. Barbara Walter argues that outside states need to mediate and provide credible security guarantees so that the combatants will agree to stop fighting.¹⁵ Frank Harvey, among others, has argued that states need to make credible threats to compel the actors to stop fighting and to deter future fighting.¹⁶ Jarat Chopra and Thomas Weiss argue that international organizations should subcontract to major powers to intervene in ethnic conflicts.¹⁷ Chaim Kaufmann has argued that the best of all the bad solutions is to partition states that have deep ethnic conflicts, and that the international community should intervene on behalf of the weaker side.¹⁸ A group of scholars, led by John Davies and Ted Gurr, has considered early warning systems so that states can act preventively.¹⁹ Stedman takes more seriously the problem of getting domestic actors to cooperate, but he, too, overlooks the difficulty of getting states to cooperate.²⁰ The flaw in these approaches is that decisionmakers may actually care more about who wins and who loses. They may prefer the conflict to continue, rather than have their preferred combatant lose. If this is the case, then the problem of international cooperation is less about which mechanism is best for enforcing peace agreements,²¹ and more about getting states to cooperate despite their disagreements.

Therefore, it is crucial that we examine whether and why states take sides in ethnic conflicts. It is logically prior to considering which mechanism should the international community use to deal with a conflict, since there needs to be some agreement among the relevant states for nearly any mechanism to work. This book evaluates explanations for why a state might choose to support one side or another—an ethnic group or its host state, because this question has been overlooked in the rush to develop conflict management tools to deal with such crises. Again, the Yugoslav conflict is quite instructive. Much frustration existed within the domestic politics of all of the states in the Contact Group (Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States), as states failed to agree on solutions to the conflict. There was much criticism of President Clinton’s inability to follow through on his campaign promises and other statements to do more for Bosnia. Perhaps the most important obstacles to American foreign policy toward Yugoslavia were the opposition of American allies, France and Britain, and sensitivity toward President Yeltsin’s plight. The nationalists within Russia demanded support for their fellow Slavs, the Serbs, and criticized both the West and Yeltsin for failing to defend the Serbs.²² I address the problem of cooperating over the Kosovo conflict in the concluding chapter.

It is important to realize that the Yugoslav experience is not unique. There have been other secessionist conflicts where states disagreed about whom they should support and about the mandate of international organizations. Rather than just trying to derive lessons from the most recent conflict, we need to compare the Yugoslav conflict to other similar conflicts to determine which patterns and dynamics are common to ethnic conflict in general. This book, by comparing the Congo Crisis of 1960–63 to the Nigerian Civil War and to the wars of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, will provide some insights about how states react to such conflicts. Policymakers should not be surprised when states disagree, particularly when the leaders of various states depend on constituents who have ethnic ties to different sides of a conflict. By considering the three most likely explanations of the international relations of ethnic conflict—vulnerability, realism, and ethnic politics, I hope to clarify what policymakers should expect when ethnic crises develop in other states and what can be done to get states to cooperate to manage them.

Implications for Theory

This book also will have important implications for foreign policy analysis and international relations theory as it relates to the likelihood and consequences of international cooperation. Specifically, there are at least three different debates to which this book may relate: (1) diversionary theories of war—under what conditions will leaders use foreign policy for domestic political purposes; (2) preference formation—determining interests is essential for understanding international relations;²³ and (3) the relevance of international norms and international organizations—do international norms and organizations constrain the behavior of states, and if so, how and under what conditions?

The recent movie Wag the Dog and the coincidence of Clinton’s impeachment with the use of force against Iraq have made the diversionary theory of war perhaps the most widely discussed hypothesis in public debates of all of foreign policy analysis. The essence of the argument is that external conflict tends to cause groups to become more united,²⁴ so politicians, intuitively understanding this, will engage in aggressive foreign policies when they want to increase unity at home.²⁵ Th...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Problem: Why Do States Take Sides in Ethnic Conflicts?
• 2. Explaining the International Relations of Ethnic Conflict
• 3. Understanding the Congo Crisis, 1960–1963
• 4. Religious Ties and the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970
• 5. The International Relations of Yugoslavia's Demise, 1991–1995
• 6. Quantitative Analyses of Ethnic Conflict's International Relations
• 7. Findings, Future Directions and Policy Dilemmas
• Notes
• References
• Index