Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, Revised Edition

Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Cote, Jr., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, editors

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001), 492 pages, US$27.95 (paper)

This book is a detailed, scholarly rebuttal to the idea that ethnic conflicts are simple outbreaks of "ancient hatreds." Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both offered this explanation for a variety of post-Cold War conflicts, and as a result, both presidents were reluctant to intervene in civil disputes. In contrast, the authors of this book delve into many possible explanations for the nationalist and ethnic wars fought in the Balkans, Africa, and elsewhere throughout the 1990s. Using broad-based analyses with a few individual case studies, they offer policy prescriptions for international action in preventing, halting, and resolving conflicts like these.

The first section of the book examines the sources of nationalism and ethnic conflict. In one particularly interesting chapter, John Mueller (Ohio State University) argues that "ethnic warfare" may not truly exist. He says that ethnic warfare is commonly viewed as a condition in which virtually all the members of one ethnic group become the "ardent, dedicated, and murderous enemy" of all the members of another ethnic group. More likely, he says, small groups of elites and thugs impose a reign of violence and push people to take sides. Mueller gives persuasive examples of Serbian soccer fan clubs and Rwandan criminals released from jail to participate in destruction. He suggests several strategies for preventing ethnic conflict, such as international policing, that derive from this new picture.

The second section examines the effectiveness and implications of different types of international interventions, ranging from economic sanctions to regional peacekeeping. Daniel L. Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, both of the RAND Corporation, take up the debate over whether air strikes led Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to capitulate in Kosovo. Though there is nothing in their essay that is unique to ethnic conflict, they suggest that air power was one of several tools that worked together to defeat Milosevic.

The final section takes up political challenges facing the international community in dealing with ethnic conflict. For example, in an essay called "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," Chaim Kaufmann of Lehigh University makes the pragmatic but unpopular argument that such conflicts will end only when different ethnic groups live separately. "This means that to save lives threatened by genocide, the international community must abandon attempts to restore war-torn multi-ethnic states," he says. "Instead, it must facilitate and protect population movements to create true national homelands."

Overall, this volume does an excellent job of breaking apart simplistic explanations for ethnic conflict and suggests many possible propositions. Most of the examples are drawn from the Balkans and from Africa, and it is uncertain whether they could usefully be applied to the Middle East. (Gayle Meyers)

Copyright 2004 Search for Common Ground