HOW TO THINK ABOUT ETHNIC CONFLICT

HOW TO THINK ABOUT ETHNIC CONFLICT
by Chester A. Crocker

Volume 7, Number 10
September 1999

This essay is adapted from the Perlmutter Lecture on Ethnic
Conflict, delivered May 25, 1999, as the keynote address of
the Foreign Policy Research Institute's conference "Ethnic
Conflict: The   Role of   Religion, the Media, and the
Mediator." FPRI thanks Howard V. Perlmutter and Foulie
Psalidas-Perlmutter for sponsoring this lecture series as
well as the larger program of which it is a part.

Chester Crocker is chairman of the Board of the U.S.
Institute of   Peace, an   independent government agency
dedicated to the study and advancement of the peaceful
resolution of international conflict. He is also the James
R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown
University.   From 1981 to 1989, he served as Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs.

              HOW TO THINK ABOUT ETHNIC CONFLICT

        The 1999 Perlmutter Lecture on Ethnic Conflict

                    by Chester A. Crocker

I have been asked to speak to the question of the challenge
of ethnic conflict in U.S. foreign policy. The subject, of
course, could not be more timely because of the Balkan wars.
I don't intend to give you a remedy for the Balkan wars, but
I do want to clarify one thing. We are not waging ethnic
conflict, they are. Just in case there is doubt in anyone's
mind.

In point of fact, a number of different wars have been
raging in the former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. The first
was a preventive war that did not really work. The second
was a deterrent war. We are now at the phase of an
extinguishing, or   punitive war,   meant to punish the
perpetrators of the previous conflicts. Finally, we shall
soon enter the phase of a war of reversal, undoing misdeeds
or preparing to do so. And at the same time, we are fighting
a war of alliance maintenance insofar as the health, if not
life, of NATO has been called into question. If you are
confused as I go down this list, I do not think you are
alone. This is a rather feckless process. But it is a very
important one with very important stakes. We must find a way
to arrive at a definition of victory to which we can all
subscribe before we are done with this chapter.

I would like to focus in my remarks on three points. First
of all, some myths have arisen surrounding the idea of
ethnic conflict in our foreign policy over the period of
time since the Berlin Wall came down. As a result, there is
a need for clearer public discourse about ethnic conflict,
its place in our foreign policy, and how we might want to
think about it as it impacts on our interests in the
post+Cold War era.

Secondly, I would like to say a few words about the
scholarly work done in the field of ethnic conflict and what
it adds up to at this point in time. The scholarly and
nongovernmental community generally have done quite a bit by
way of researching this phenomenon. If the insights arrived
at could be operationalized through the policy process-or to
put it another way, if we have a foreign policy process
interested in operationalizing it-we could well devise more
credible and practical strategic remedies for dealing with
ethnic conflict.

My conclusion concerns the strategic implications of ethnic
conflict. How do we define the enemy, affect the enemy, and
cope with our own limitations? How, in short, can we develop
some "traction" on the ground in places like Kosovo that we
seem to have lacked in the past?

DEBUNKING THE MYTHS
Let us begin with the myths. One myth that should be laid
aside very quickly is the notion that ethnic conflict is
new. It is as old as mankind. What is more, the database
developed at the University of Maryland by Ted Robert Gurr
amply demonstrates that ethnic conflict remained with us
throughout the Cold War period, and-contrary to myth-is no
more prevalent now than it was before the Cold War ended.
(See his Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical
Conflicts, U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1993.) What is new
is the way ethnic conflict has leapt onto center stage due
to the structural changes brought about by the end of the
Cold War international system and the European colonial
system that predated it. These structural changes have
promoted, or highlighted, ethnic conflict by challenging the
personal identity of the masses, the men and women in the
street, and encouraging them to act forcefully on the basis
of ethnicity, and secondly by creating career opportunities
for the would-be leaders of all kinds of new political
movements, including ethnically based ones. Indeed, many of
the acts presently played out on the global stage which we
describe as ethnic conflict, are, in fact, more complicated.

In sum, the first point I wish to make is that we should not
entertain the notion that wars of ethnicity and identity are
a wholly new phenomenon. What is new is the breakdown of the
structures that previously contributed to keeping such
conflicts under some control.

The second myth that must be dispelled is the idea that
these conflicts are so intractable as to be beyond our
ability to influence. We are told that they involve ancient
hatreds, primordial sentiments, and reciprocal vengeance. We
are told that such conflicts, deplorable as they are, lie
essentially within the sovereign domestic arena of the
countries involved, and thus we have no right to intervene
in them. We are told that ethnic conflicts are uniformly
ugly, and that if we think for a moment that war in the
former Yugoslavia is a good guys/bad guys situation, we are
greatly mistaken: just wait until we get to know the Kosovo
Liberation Army up close and personal. Hence, it is best to
stay out. Finally, we are told that "superpowers do not do
windows." (See John Hillen, "Superpowers Don't Do Windows,"
Orbis, Spring 1997.) Leave it for the Chinese to wage ethnic
conflict in Tibet, or the Indonesians to do so in East
Timor, or the Italians on occasion to intervene in Albania
(which they actually did rather well), or the Russians to do
it in the Caucasus. Americans are both too wise and too
important, in terms of our military role in the world, to
volunteer to walk between dogs and lamp posts.

That attitude, too, is a myth, for the United States cannot
disavow all strategic responsibility and expect to remain a
great nation, a nation that will lead and be accepted by
others as a leader. We cannot focus exclusively on defining
ethnic threats out of existence, because they are among the
primary threats that we face.

"What about 'exit strategies'?" you may ask. "Surely we
cannot get sucked into ethnic conflict unless we see in
advance a way out." Well, President Roosevelt did not go
into World War II thinking about an exit strategy. We cannot
necessarily wait until one side capitulates. We cannot
always expect there to be mutual exhaustion or mutually
damaging stalemates. We cannot wait for there to be a peace
to keep. So I would attack this myth head on. Defining every
ethnic conflict as "too hard" is not going to take us very
far.

The third myth concerns the very terminology of ethnic
conflict. It is only one label, but "ethnic conflict" can be
a response to stimuli of all kinds. It can be a response to
the removal of alien rule. It can be simply the playing out
of political entrepreneurship. It can be a response to the
creation of new economic threats and opportunities. It can
be the response to, or the result of, premature elections
that turn out to be one-time plebiscites in the absence of
structural machinery to hold a country together in a power-
sharing constitution. Ethnic conflict can arise from the
collapse of a state or an empire.

It should be obvious that there are some triggers here that
we should be much better aware of than we are. Quite often
what goes by the name of ethnic conflict is in fact
something much more interesting, complex, diverse, and case-
specific, with more varied implications for policy than any
distortive catch-all slogan like "superpowers don't do
windows" can cope with.

THE STATE OF THE ACADEMIC ART
Now let us turn to the second topic I want to address: what
we have learned from the literature, and what pertinent
areas scholars   have focused   on. We should start by
recognizing that no one has professed to come up with real
"solutions" to ethnic conflict. We would be startled, I
think, if they did, and in any case most "solutions" in
foreign policy are just the preamble to the next set of
problems. In that sense, most ethnic conflict is normal. It
is natural when peoples come into contact and compete for
scarce items like jobs, land, respect, or recognition that
conflict will arise. And the conflict that must be worked
out is usually more complex than one that takes place in a
schoolyard, over who gets to use the red crayon. What is not
natural, in my view, is genocidal violence. We must be very
careful about the term ethnic conflict, because it does not
equate to genocide. Ethnic conflict is something that needs
to be managed and can be managed through various kinds of
constitutional systems,   military structures, and other
remedies.    (See William Zartman, "Mediation in Ethnic
Conflict," paper presented to FPRI Conference on Ethnic
Conflict, May 25, 1999.)

Likewise, internal warfare in general, and ethnic conflict
in particular, is not equivalent to interstate war. Scholars
have made considerable progress in pinpointing what makes
internal strife more challenging and identified some of the
obstacles to resolution created by the circumstances of
internal war. To begin with, many of the stakes involved are
indivisible, rendering internal war a zero-sum game. Hence,
security   dilemmas    involving    trust-making    military
concessions or launching preemptive attacks-are even more
thorny in an internal conflict than they would be in an
interstate conflict, and many problems related to the
conduct of disarmament and elections are very hard to
resolve. Finally, there are problems created by so-called
spoilers of settlements. Even when a negotiated outcome has
been achieved in an ethnic conflict, people who are left out
or just feel somewhat marginalized, and people who did not
achieve their maximum or even minimum goals, will look for
an opportunity to strike from the sidelines and undermine or
sabotage an   agreement. We   have seen this happen in
situations around the world when what we thought was a peace
falls apart because some group, whether motivated by need,
greed, or creed (in Bill Zartman's evocative words) remains
unsatisfied.

An interesting debate continues among scholars concerning
the extent to which ethnic conflicts are driven by the
instrumental, or shall we say Machiavellian, tendencies and
tactics of political leaders rather than issuing from long-
standing historical ancient hatreds and rivalries. We cannot
resolve that debate, because it depends on the circumstances
of the case. What needs fixing in the Balkans-Milosevic, the
Serbs, or the history books of all the Balkan peoples? In
Indonesia, are the regionalism and pressures for autonomy
happening because of ancient hatreds and long-festering,
previously suppressed regional tendencies, or are they a
product of revulsion against Suharto and his family, or is
it the case that Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 13,000
islands, is   somehow an artificial creation, like the
Democratic Republic of Congo, and the time has come for its
artificiality to   be exposed? These are the kinds of
questions at the center of academic debates that are of
particular salience to us as we try to understand ethnic
conflict.

Another debate that goes on among scholars asks whether or
not there is a single constitutional model that can be
deployed to resolve some of these problems. Again, there is
not-it all depends on the case. I simply do not believe that
we can look at the writings of people as diverse as Eric
Nordlinger, Donald Horowitz, Arend Lijphart, Milton Esman,
Tim Sisk, and Bill Zartman and decide which one is right.
(See the bibliography at the end of this essay.)

Yet another growing body of scholarship focuses on the
economic roots and triggers of ethnic conflict. This is an
exciting and emerging field that relates to the "greed"
dimension, as opposed to need and creed. I am referring to
such people as Mark Duffield, Susan Woodward, David Shearer,
Bill Reno, David Keen and Mats Berdal. (See bibliography.)
The main theme of their books is the criminalization of the
economy in states that have forgotten how to govern or that
no longer have the means to govern. In failing states or
actually   failed    states,   the   government   habitually
distributes spoils and divides the opposition by offering
different fiefdoms to different groups. That ultimately
leads to the privatization of security itself in many parts
of the transitional world and the third world, leading to
situations that are becoming more and more frightening in
terms of the weakness of the center and the potential for
conflict among rural warlords.

To make matters worse, this is a problem that can splash
across borders. Consider the case of Sierra Leone and the
involvement of Guinea and Liberia, as well as more distant
South Africans and Ukrainians, in that conflict. What is
happening is a link up between diamond dealers, arms
merchants, and mercenaries who are no longer needed by their
home states. The large private arms markets of Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union enable the funneling, in
a quite purposeful way, of diamonds out and arms in, thereby
creating an open invitation to spreading ethnic conflict,
not only within individual countries but across borders and
whole regions of the troubled African continent. The cutting
edge of the literature endeavors to pull all these strands
together.

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
The examination of ethnic conflict has several implications
for American foreign policy. First, it might be useful if we
would think about the phenomenon we are dealing with-which
is nothing less than the breakdown of empires, federations,
and nation-states-before we act. We must think about how, in
the present era, the breakdown of the old colonial and Cold
War structures empowered challengers to governments. Whether
their challenges come through information technology, the
erection of new standards of governance, or new demands from
donor clubs, the World Bank, and the International Monetary
Fund, a fundamental shift in the balance of power on the
ground has occurred. The disappearance of the old structures
has, in short, created strategic vacuums that will be
filled, in one fashion or another, by a new set of actors or
by older actors marching under new flags. That is really
what much ethnic conflict is all about.

Secondly, we need to reflect on the stakes. As a superpower
which supposedly "doesn't do windows," we may be tempted to
think that the stakes are low for the United States. But
what is at stake in Kosovo is not just the Albanians or
Serbs, but (now that we have backed into this forest without
a compass) what is at stake is American leadership, the
survival of NATO, and the danger that members of the U.N.
Security Council, including Russia and China, will acquire
something of a veto over American policy-including how we
get out of the woods we have wandered into.

Think, too, about the stakes involved for the people who
become victims of these conflicts. Waiting for a conflict to
"ripen" will achieve nothing if the contesting leadership
elites are living off the conflict. When both sides in a
conflict find the status quo preferable to any settlement,
the situation will never "ripen" and the humanitarian toll
will mount. And the numbers of victims of these conflicts is
huge: up to four million in Sudan alone over the past forty
years, and countless thousands in Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Indonesia, and the Balkans. Similar conflicts have raged in
the South Asian subcontinent since the massive postcolonial
population transfers of the late 1940s, and now that nuclear
weapons have been openly thrown into the mix, the Indo-
Pakistani worst-case scenario has gotten a lot worse. So the
stakes are huge in moral as well as strategic terms.

The third thing we need to do is begin relating means to
ends. You would think this an essential requirement of any
strategy. But if we do not get the resources and the goals
in some kind of relationship to each other in American
foreign policy, we are going to have more and more Kosovos
to worry about. This may seem a fairly obvious point,
another truism out of Washington, but perhaps because of our
unique global standing, as well as our post+Cold War hubris,
we sometimes behave as if the laws of gravity do not affect
us. Contemporary experience to me suggests otherwise. When
was it that Dayton became possible? Only when the Croatian
army, assisted by some NATO air power, began really to roll
back the Serbs-in other words, when the means began to
relate to the ends we were seeking.

Another conclusion about the implications for our policy is
that we   may need to think beyond mediated outcomes.
Obviously, mediated outcomes are the best in some ways
because they seem softer and more user-friendly. They imply
an integrationist outcome after which peoples learn to live
together peaceably. But is that really going to be possible
in many of these situations? The ideal is already preemptive
intervention to prevent bloodshed in the first place.
Failing that, mediation works in certain cases, but not all
that many. Failing that, in turn, we could become a bit more
heartless and argue from history that the most stable
outcomes are those that flow from an outright victory by one
side. But do we really want to get into the business of
looking at victory as a solution to ethnic conflicts? If we
had done nothing in Kosovo, there would have been such a
victory, and the Serbs would have produced an ephemeral
stability. But that would hardly be an outcome to cheer.

Other possible   outcomes include negotiated separation,
separation at gun point, forced population transfers, and
military intervention to reverse victories we don't like.
But none of these is very appealing either. So if we are not
prepared to countenance what we are seeing out there, if we
are worried about the track record of mediated approaches
which are only effective in a minority of cases, if we are
not good enough to do preemption, maybe we have to begin
thinking a little bit more creatively about how to deal with
problems of ethnic communities that simply show signs that
they do not really want to live together. That is one area
of thinking that needs additional reflection.

Another problem   on which we need to reflect is the
development of strategic traction on the ground. The way we
Americans are thinking about war these days is deeply
disturbing. We seem to believe that we can prepare for the
wars that we want to fight while remaining ill-equipped for,
and uninterested in, the kinds of challenges we will most
likely face. There is an asymmetry developing between our
kind of strategy, which we are seeing played out night after
night and day after day with the NATO bombing campaign, and
the kind of strategy which the Milosevics of this world
specialize in, which affects the people on the ground, in
their towns, in their homes, in their villages. We must
figure out how to get some strategic traction, which in turn
means being willing to accept casualties for interests that
may appear to be non-vital. This point is pretty obvious,
but it has taken Kosovo to teach us that high-tech warfare
cannot by itself stop ethnic cleansing and genocide, even if
it may   impose a   heavy price   on the   perpetrators.
Overwhelming local force applied to the circumstances on the
ground makes   an indispensable   difference, and at an
acceptable cost.

Finally, we must find ways to target the people who exploit
these conflicts for their own economic gain. There has been
much talk about economic sanctions and how they are overdone
by the United States. According to one measure, we have
imposed sanctions on more than sixty different countries.
The problem is that those sanctions apply to countries
rather than to individuals. We now know enough about the way
financial transfers work to target the bank accounts of
individuals, and   to find and break criminal business
enterprises. But we are not doing it, even though these are
the very actors who actively tear apart country after
country.

CONCLUSION
Ethnic conflict is a complex phenomenon. There is no single
cookie-cutter approach that will work. Dramatic differences
exist between the circumstances of a Bulgaria or Kosovo on
the one hand and an Indonesia on the other. Or take the case
of Ireland. What accounts for the fact that the Irish
conflict looks closer and closer to being finally resolved?
There are some special ingredients there, as in every case.
There is the long learning process, the empowerment of civil
society, the role of churches in building bridges, and the
role of third parties in Ireland, which makes it a promising
example. There is also a combination of important nations
such as the United Kingdom, United States, and Republic of
Ireland, as well as the European Union coming together and
in effect strengthening those parties that want peace and
marginalizing the parties that do not want peace. Yet even
with all these assets it is not assured.

In conclusion, ethnic conflict is a case-by-case story. I
know that sounds likes a Washington answer, but I do not
believe in any abstract theory of ethnic conflict. There is
no substitute for knowing the facts of the case and the
range of tools and instruments available to you. Above all,
you must make an act of will, and be determined if you are
to be effective.

                         BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mats Berdal and David Keen, "Violence and Economic Agendas
in Civil Wars," Millennium, vol. 26, no. 3. (1997), pp.
804+5.

Mark Duffield, "The Political Economics of Internal War:
Asset Transfer, Complex Emergencies and International Aid,"
in War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses to
Complex Emergencies, ed. Joanna Macrae, et al. (London: Zed
Books, 1996)

Milton J. Esman, Ethnic Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1994); Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and
International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington,
D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996)

Donald Horowitz,   Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley,
Calif.: University of California Press, 1985)

David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil
Wars, Adelphi Paper #320 (London: Oxford University Press
for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998)

Arend Lijphart, "Self Determination versus Pre-Determination
of Ethnic Minorities in Power-sharing Systems," in The
Rights of Minority Cultures, ed. Will Kymlicka (Oxford,
U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Eric A. Nordlinger, Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies
(Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Affairs, Harvard
University, 1972)

William Sampson Klock Reno, Warlord Politics and African
States (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998);

David Shearer, Private Armies and Military Intervention,
Adelphi Paper #316 (London: Oxford University Press for the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998)

Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution
after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
1995)

I. William Zartman, "Toward the Resolution of International
Conflict," in Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods
and Techniques,   ed. I. William Zartman and J. Lewis
Rasmussen (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of
Peace Press, 1997), pp. 3+19.

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