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Overview
A primer for American responses to ethnic conflicts, past, present, and future.Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya—these names reverberate in the news for good and uring reasons as examples of a "new tribalism." But ethnic conflict has always been with us. In this timely and important book, David Callahan offers a thorough history of twentieth-century ethnic conflicts, an analysis of the failures and successes of American involvement in them, and recommations for American actions in the future.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780809016105 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 10/30/1998 |
| Series: | Twentieth Century Fund Books Series |
| Edition description: | 1 PBK ED |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.65(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Ethnic Conflict and U.S. Interests
MOST ETHNIC CONFLICTS in recent times have been fueled by a group's bid for greater autonomy, full national independence, or affiliation with a neighboring country. The principle of self-determination is, of course, hardly a new concept. The central difference between the new nationalism and its anticolonial forerunners, however, is that it has generated fissures along far more troublesome territorial lines. Much of the process of decolonization earlier in the twentieth century allowed large and distinct countries to win their independence from distant masters of an entirely different color, economic status, and cultural background. In today's struggles, peoples who often share many common traits are in conflict with one another as a result of nationalist efforts to carve out states that never previously existed or to rewrite regional maps to reunite ethnic groups across borders. There are plenty of real grievances fueling some of these efforts. In other instances, the case for a group's self-determination is less clear and compelling.
All this has created great confusion for U.S. policy makers. This, too, is not new. Historically, Americans have approached questions of self-determination with both stridency and uncertainty. The very concept of the United States, as it emerged in the late eighteenth century, was premised on the notion that all peoples with a sense of national distinctiveness had a right to self-governance. Early U.S. leaders were often self-righteous in espousing this idea as a global ideal; indeed, their liberal outlook was teleological: democratic self-governance, they suggested, was the way of the future. Less than a century after the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, however, the U.S. government fought a bloody war to stop the South from seceding. The government also destroyed Indian tribes that considered themselves sovereign nations and, at the turn of the century, acquired colonial holdings as a result of the Spanish-American War.
Woodrow Wilson's embrace of the concept of self-determination after World War I was marked by controversy and ambivalence. Some U.S. elites were disturbed by his call for the creation of many new states to represent the yearnings of ethnic groups that had been ruled by the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The president's own secretary of state, Robert Lansing, was among the skeptics. "Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion?" Lansing wrote of the self-determination proclamation. "The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives.... What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"
Like much else in Wilson's Fourteen Points, his views on self-determination had rhetorical staying power, but they failed to muster a consensus for action in the 1920s and 1930s. The plight of the Kurds, for example, was taken up by U.S. officials after World War I long enough to secure a treaty guaranteeing that they would get an independent state. Later, when Turkey changed its mind, U.S. statesmen did not raise a protest on behalf of one of the largest ethnic groups in the Middle East.
After World War II, as the vast empires of the European powers crumbled, the principle of self-determination was embraced by U.S. policy makers with an eye toward geopolitical gains. It was used as a cudgel in the cold war arena, wielded in uncounted U.S. protests at the fate of states under Moscow's rule. American diplomats also showed support for the concept in the developing world, where many new countries were coming into existence. The political allegiance of these countries was up for grabs and the United States invoked its own anticolonial heritage to establish its credentials as a sympathetic great power. Of course, it also sometimes undermined these efforts, backing, for example, the French effort to hold on to Vietnam. For the most part, however, the United States found it relatively easy to support the principle of self-determination as it related to decolonization. A factor that further simplified U.S. policy was a 1960 U.N. resolution, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. By backing decolonization efforts, the United States allied itself with the consensus of the international community and the trajectory of history.
On only one occasion during the cold war did the United States recognize the independence of a region that had seceded from a state with long-established postcolonial borders: in 1971, when East Pakistan, separated from West Pakistan by a thousand miles of Indian territory, proclaimed its sovereignty. In other notable cases--Biafra in the late 1960s and Eritrea in the 1970s and 1980s--the United States was steadfast in its support of the territorial status quo. This tendency reflected the view of other major powers and the thrust of international law. While the U.N. and regional organizations of states backed decolonization, they also consistently rejected any right of secession from already independent states and, as a 1970 U.N. declaration stated, condemned "any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other state or country."
As the breakup of the Soviet Union became likely in the late 1980s, U.S. policy makers reacted with considerable caution and at times evinced a preference for continued unity. For good reason they feared the potential instability that could follow the disintegration of so vast an empire. When that disintegration became inevitable, however, it presented few conundrums for policy makers. The breakup was akin to the decolonization processes earlier in the century, with large and distinctive nationalities winning independence from imperial overlords who spoke a different language and governed from far away. In its broad contours, the Soviet breakup was an easy case for U.S. policymakers: there was no question about the legitimacy of new states such as Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan.
Yet harder cases have also emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet empire and from the former Yugoslavia as well. These have included the quest by the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to secede from Azerbaijan, the effort at secession from Georgia by Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the conflict over the Dniester region of Moldova. In Yugoslavia, an independent Slovenia was easy enough to support, given the ethnic homogeneity of Slovenia and its distance from Belgrade. Croatian independence was a more dangerous proposition because of Serbian pockets in Croatia and the history of violence between Serbs and Croats. The creation of a separate state of Bosnia was the most dubious venture of all, as it attempted to unite three distinct ethnic groups: Muslims, Croats, and Serbs.
SELF-DETERMINATION: CONFLICTING CLAIMS
It is impossible to predict the number of new secessionist efforts likely in the future. But whatever the number, it seems inevitable that some of these efforts will present agonizing choices for U.S. leaders. If recent history is any guide, U.S. policy makers will be unprepared to deal well with future dilemmas. There is, consequently, a need to lay out the conditions under which the United States will support or oppose secessionist efforts--or simply remain neutral.
At the broadest level, crafting a policy on self-determination requires adopting clear preferences as to the optimal size of states and degree of heterogeneity within them. It also means weighing the risks to international stability of a policy that tends to favor the status quo as against a policy that indulges nationalist aspirations. Is there really anything wrong with fragmentation that yields many small new states, or are there intrinsic virtues to larger and more ethnically diverse states? Does supporting some secessionist movements risk setting off a dangerous chain reaction of ethnic dominoes falling throughout the world?
These questions have been the subject of much debate in recent years and no clear consensus has emerged in the U.S. foreign policy community. The case for a policy favoring the status quo has generally been the most powerful, resting on several arguments. First, there is the sentiment Warren Christopher expressed at his confirmation hearing: that in a world consisting of thousands of ethnic groups and less than two hundred states, fragmentation would increase to enormous levels if left unchecked. Most new states would still contain stranded minority groups and these groups would begin their own quests for autonomy. If there were a true right to ethnic self-determination, the international system would likely be in permanent turmoil as this right was exercised in one state after the other.
A second argument in favor of the status quo is that largeness and diversity are good things. Amitai Etzioni suggests that "in most states of the world, further fragmentation is likely to imperil democratic forces and endanger economic development." Ethnic breakaway states, Etzioni contends, tend to be highly nationalistic and intolerant of minorities within them. They are predisposed toward creating monolithic national cultures that undermine the kind of social pluralism democracies thrive on. To the degree that such newborn states remain in conflict with the states from which they have seceded, the resulting garrison atmosphere might also serve to weaken democracy. Economically, too, Etzioni and others argue, small states tend to be worse off than larger ones. At a time when advanced industrial states are seeking to expand free-trade zones and collaborate on high-tech ventures, smaller economic units are at a disadvantage. Secession will thus often hurt rather than help the economic prospects of an ethnic group. Quebec, for example, would be better off remaining part of Canada.
Those who support the status quo qualify their argument by pointing out that much can and should be done to protect the rights of minorities. International leaders should try to keep Pandora's box firmly shut while nurturing democratic pluralism and ethnic tolerance around the world. They should also consider creative solutions to meet ethnic demands for greater autonomy and unity among groups separated by national borders. Under this strict approach, secession would be a very last resort. It would be supported only in rare cases that involved egregious oppression of a minority and a lack of other alternatives.
Opposing these arguments are those observers who downplay the dangers of fragmentation and believe that the United States should side with minority groups seeking to control their destiny. Michael Lind, for example, suggests that there is little chance of ethnic dominoes toppling uncontrollably since there are not more than a dozen or so ethnic groups that have both the cohesion and the ambition to form their own states. In any event, the international system has accommodated a sudden spurt of new states gaining independence before and can do so again. Even twenty or thirty states entering the system over the next decade or two would not be historically unprecedented. Moreover, the disruption that accompanies the creation of new states will often be less great than the instability caused by ethnically riven states. As in a marriage gone sour, divorce can be the best of all possible solutions.
Furthermore, the argument that ethnic pluralism strengthens democracy is far from universally accepted. Every year human-rights groups document a wide array of abuses of ethnic minorities living in democracies. Ethnic divisions have not destroyed democracy in states like India, Turkey, and Israel, but neither have they strengthened it. Democratic rule has not guaranteed the rights of minorities in these countries. Historically, the strongest arguments in support of secessionist movements have rested on human-rights claims. Many observers have argued that persistently abused minorities should be given international support if they make a bid for independence--assuming that selected other criteria are met as well. What faith, for example, can the Kurds of Iraq have that democracy will come anytime soon to Iraq or that it will truly change their plight if it does, given the oppression of Kurds in Turkey? Americans know only too well from their own history that minorities are not necessarily safe in a democratic system.
Finally, some analysts counter the claim that small states are less economically viable. In the past hundred years the average size of states has been steadily shrinking. There is no solid evidence that this has been a bad trend, either for smaller states themselves or for the international economy as a whole. There are plenty of examples of small states that are very prosperous--Taiwan, Singapore, Switzerland--and of larger states that have economic problems--Brazil, France, Turkey. A state's size is not the determining factor behind economic success. Sometimes secession will have negative economic consequences, but sometimes it is a boon: Slovenia and Croatia rightly saw that they would be better off if they were separated from Yugoslavia, since these areas were more prosperous than the rest of the country.
Disagreement exists as to whether a world with a greater number of smaller states would be less stable. More international borders mean more potential for territorial disputes, while more separate defense establishments mean more potential for military rivalries and arms races. Conversely, smaller states tend to be more interdependent with their neighbors and with the international economic system as a whole. Often they cannot produce even basic necessities like food and energy and arms; they are more likely to be landlocked or dependent on supply routes that run through other countries. "Trade or die" is the maxim they must live by. With that maxim comes a foreign policy imperative: Don't disrupt the peace that is required to keep economic ties functioning. By this logic, the international system is less stable when it contains many large and self-sufficient states that can endure economic isolation from the rest of the system during times of war.
SECESSION AND U.S. POLICY
The mixed consequences of secessionist efforts suggest that the U.S. government should avoid sweeping edicts supporting or opposing a further fracturing of the state system. If U.S. polity makers make blanket statements in favor of the territorial status quo, they might encourage state leaders to think that the United States will tolerate the repression of ethnic secessionist movements. Such repression, in turn, might only fuel the push for secession and undermine prospects for settling internal conflicts without war and the breakup of states. At the same time, U.S. leaders should be wary of general statements supporting secessionist efforts. Such rhetoric is capable of giving false encouragement to secessionists whose movements are doomed or lack merit and of helping instigate or prolong violence. They can feed the impatience of secessionist leaders and damage efforts to resolve disputes within the framework of existing states.
A case-by-case approach to secessionist movements should be founded on guidelines for judging their merits and assessing the alternatives. A skeleton of such guidelines already exists. During the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, U.S. policy loosely held that Washington would not recognize new states unless they were democracies that respected the rights of minorities, had come into existence as a result of a peaceful referendum process, and had the status of some kind of republic or centrally governed entity before attaining independence. This policy was clearly articulated, as well, by the foreign ministers of the European Community when they agreed in December 1991 on guidelines for recognizing the new states in the former Yugoslavia.
Neither the United States nor its Western allies consistently followed these guidelines. Different Western countries recognized the seceding republics at different times and for different reasons. Occasionally the guidelines were blatantly ignored and new states were recognized prematurely. Some of the new states of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were only marginally democratic and showed little interest in safeguarding minority rights. In Bosnia, the referendum for independence was boycotted by many Serbs.
Nevertheless, however roughly defined and inconsistently followed, the guidelines that the United States and its allies set in the 1990s serve as a useful foundation on which to build a more sophisticated approach to secessionist efforts. Work by analysts outside government can inform such an approach as well.
Territorial and historical issues constitute the most obvious starting point for assessing a secessionist claim. For the United States, the independence bids of most of the Soviet republics were the "easy" cases because many of these republics had some previous history of independence. Most of these states, moreover, had clear borders and centralized administrative capacities that facilitated the step to independence. The same was true of new states in the former Yugoslavia. The federal system in that country gave each of the republics distinct borders and significant capacities for self-rule. Some of these republics had a history of either outright independence or substantial autonomy. Croatia was an independent state earlier in the twentieth century. Macedonia had a long history of seeking independence and was an autonomous republic in Yugoslavia, its people recognized as a separate nationally. Slovenia was never formally independent, but its territorial situation--it is far from Belgrade and shares international borders with several countries--enhanced its viability as a separate state.
Outside Europe, territorial and historical issues have also influenced U.S. policy. The desire of East Pakistan to secede struck many in Washington as intrinsically defensible because of its great distance from the rest of Pakistan. In recognizing Eritrea's independence in 1991, the United States acquiesced for the first time to a major change in Africa's postcolonial borders, but Eritrea's lack of a deeply rooted historical tie to Ethiopia made independence seem sensible, as did its geographic position, which gave it both access to the sea and its own international boundaries. By contrast, the state of Biafra had deep ties to Nigeria and no history of independence. The Ibo tribe, which formed the ethnic core of Biafra, had previously been well integrated into Nigerian economic and political life.
Territorial and historical issues should remain an important part of the calculus that U.S. officials employ in considering the merits of secessionist movements. These issues, it must be granted, are more practical than normative: they tell nothing about whether a state would be a benign entity. Ultimately, therefore, the democratic credentials of a secessionist movement are what U.S. policy makers should examine most closely. However, because avoiding failed states and the disruption of the international system are paramount goals of U.S. policy, the ease with which a stable state can be established is a crucial consideration. In general, new states will be more viable if they have long-established and natural borders, if they are distant from the center of the state from which they are seceding, if they have a history of independence or autonomy, and if they have a strong capacity for self-governance.
While the republics of the former Soviet Union and some of the republics in the former Yugoslavia represent the easy cases, places like Kurdistan and Kashmir represent the hard ones. In these regions people feel little kinship with those who rule them from the center, yet there is no clearly delineated governing entity that could be the basis of a new state. Moreover, while there is some historical record that gives credence to demands for independence, there is no record of a state or autonomous region actually existing in recent times. As the largest ethnic group in the Middle East, the Kurds have, in principle, a solid case for statehood. Past promises of a state are recognition of this fact. An independent Kurdistan has never existed, however, and creating one would mean carving up at least two existing states. Many in Kashmir would probably be willing to forgo full independence if they could at least merge with Pakistan. Yet such a move would mean a redrawing of international borders in a way that India finds unacceptable. Altering borders is also the only solution in many other areas where an ethnic minority in a state seeks formal union with a neighboring state in which its group is in the majority.
The United States must exercise extreme caution in approaching the hard cases. Supporting the creation of states with a thin territorial and historical basis can be disastrous even if the claims of ethnic nationalists have great moral merit. It would be folly, for example, for Washington to endorse the cause of Kashmiri separatists. Such encouragement could lead the rebels to escalate their war with India and eschew any compromise settlement. The result could be heightened tensions in South Asia that would bring India and Pakistan to the brink of war or beyond. Encouraging the Kurdish separatists would also be unwise. The United States already has blood on its hands from its covert support for the doomed Kurdish insurgency of the mid-1970s. These great losers of history are not likely to win statehood in the foreseeable future and it would be cruel to cater to any illusions they might harbor. In retrospect, we can see that those states that encouraged the Biafran secessionist bid in the late 1960s only helped prolong a war that Biafra was destined to lose. The United States was right to remain neutral in that conflict.
Overall, the United States will always have little choice but to evaluate secessionist movements on the basis of their likely success, and territorial and historical factors are inescapable elements of this calculation. Issues of economic viability are also relevant; the creation of new states that have no natural resources or manufacturing facilities or other means of self-sustenance is obviously not a good thing.
Nevertheless, hard-nosed calculations regarding viability should not be allowed to dominate U.S. policy. A more idealistic outlook also should inform judgments about secessionist efforts. Long-oppressed minorities and democratically inclined secessionists present a better case for independence than do nationalists who seek statehood for chauvinistic reasons and offer no guarantee of democracy. There is little appeal in backing the creation of new states that are likely to be authoritarian. Few problems are solved if an ethnic minority creates its own state and then proceeds to oppress other minorities trapped within the new borders. `The United States must make clear that it will not even consider supporting secessionist efforts or recognizing new states unless a number of criteria are satisfied, most of which were laid out by U.S. and European officials during the early 1990s.
First, a putative new state must promise to put in place the structures of democratic governance, including an elected parliamentary body, a chief executive with checked power, and an independent judiciary. It must have a plan for free elections and a willingness to allow international observers to monitor those elections. It must be ready to place all armed forces under civilian control, to rein in or disarm paramilitary groups, and to ensure that police agencies are professional organizations and not bastions of irregular power.
Second, a secessionist group must pledge to respect human rights generally and minority rights specifically. This means guaranteeing a free press, an independent judiciary, and professional police. It also means affirming the commitment to human rights that comes with membership in an international organization like the United Nations and in regional organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Cooperation with human-rights monitors from these organizations, as well as with those from groups like Amnesty International and the Red Cross, is an important indicator of a state's intentions. A secessionist group or new state must make clear its tolerance of minority rights by refraining from discriminatory actions. These include language requirements for citizenship, property laws that disadvantage minorities, educational arrangements or curricula that disparage minorities, and travel or immigration restrictions that clearly target a given group. If significant ethnic pockets exist within its borders, a putative new state must show a willingness to engage in a dialogue with minority groups about safeguarding rights and expanding autonomy. If there are irredendist issues involving an ethnic group and a neighboring state, a secessionist group must indicate its openness to discussions with both parties.
Third, a secessionist effort must be judged not simply by its democratic credentials but also by the process that it pursues to achieve independence. Trouble is likely in a new state if a large number of its inhabitants never wanted it to secede in the first place and felt that their views were ignored. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United States and its allies held that they would not recognize new states that were not born through popular referendums. This condition made sense, but referendums are only one part of a workable process for moving toward independence. Hasty referendum votes often represent a tyrannical majority's grab for power, especially if they are orchestrated by a nationalist movement in an atmosphere of rising ethnic tensions. The referendums in Bosnia and Croatia did little to reassure the Serb minorities in those countries that their rights would be respected. In Bosnia many Serbs boycotted the referendum and never recognized the legitimacy of the Bosnian government. In mobilizing Bosnian Serbs for war, Serb nationalist leaders exploited fears that the Serbs would be a persecuted people under a Muslim tyranny.
The European Community and the United States should have insisted on a slower and more elaborate process of independence for the states of the former Yugoslavia. By contrast, the path Canada took in weighing Quebec's secessionist claim is a good model for future policy. The referendum of October 1995 was scheduled far in advance to allow for a drawn-out debate within Quebec. Had the secessionist proposal passed, Quebec would have entered into negotiations with the government of Canada about the exact timing and arrangements of independence. Overall, the process allowed for ample reflection and the tempering of nationalist passions. Mechanisms that allow for a cooling-off period can reassure minorities and may sometimes cause a rethinking of the entire secessionist enterprise.
Secessionist efforts are often creatures of a fast-moving and euphoric moment. The breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, for example, left U.S. leaders scrambling just to keep up with events. Calls for dialogue and gradual change were repeatedly made, only to be ignored. In future situations, too, the U.S. government will often have little more than marginal influence over the policies that secessionist leaders pursue. It will find itself pushed to the sidelines, its counsel and demands unheeded. As in the past, the United States will be confronted by the de facto existence of new states that may or may not be territorially viable, may or may not be democratic, and may or may not be respectful of minorities.
Despite these realities it makes sense to think through the criteria for supporting secession and to state those criteria emphatically. If nothing else, these criteria are internally useful for U.S. policy makers, giving them a tool with which to evaluate secessionist movements and achieve intragovernmental consensus on how to handle specific ones. And in the instances when the United States does have some leverage, the criteria may emerge as important instruments of diplomacy. Not all new states are born in a frenzy. In situations that move more slowly and dispassionately, nationalist leaders will take into account the views of the United States and its allies. They will worry about how their state will secure from the West aid, trade, arms, and loans. If they know that their secessionist effort cannot meet the criteria set out by the United States and that their new state will face isolation, they may think twice about pursuing full independence. If they are close to the criteria, they will be able to identify the steps necessary to win the backing of the United States. In theory, at least, clearly stated U.S. criteria for backing secessionist efforts can help nix ill-conceived efforts and democratize deserving nationalist movements.