States of War - How the Nation-State Made Modern Conflict
NOVEMBER 7, 2013
Abu Ali, an 84-year-old whom activists say is the oldest Free
Syrian Army fighter in Deir al-Zor, Syria, runs to avoid snipers loyal to
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, October 2013. (Kalil Ashawi / Courtesy Reuters)
To explain recent conflicts in
countries such as Syria or Sudan, observers have been quick to point their
fingers at proximate causes specific to our times: the power vacuum created by
the end of the Cold War offered opportunities for rebels to fill the void; the
recent globalization of trade flooded the developing world with cheap arms;
rising global consumer demand generated new struggles over oil and minerals;
jihadist groups spread using networks of fighters trained in Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
Yet such explanations miss a bigger
picture. If we extend the time horizon beyond the Cold War to include the
entire modern period -- from the American and French revolutions to today -- we
can see repeating patterns of war and conflict. These patterns are related to
the formation and development of independent nation-states.
Until the eighteenth century,
empires, dynastic kingdoms, tribal confederacies, and city-states governed most
of the world. This changed when nationalists introduced the notion that every
“people” deserved its own government. They argued that ethnic likes should rule
over likes. In other words, Slovaks should be governed by Slovaks, not the
House of Hapsburg; and Americans by Americans, not the British crown. Over the
past two centuries, in wave after wave of nation-state formation, this new
principle of political legitimacy transformed the world.
In most places, two distinct phases
of conflict accompanied this transition: first, violence related to the
creation of the nation-state itself, and second, an often bloody struggle over
which ethnic or national groups would hold power in the newly established
state, and over where the country’s final borders would settle.
State formation has been the driving
force behind civil and interstate war -- a fact woefully missing from much of
the popular debate about the violent conflicts of today.
BLEEDING BORDERS
Roughly a third of present-day
countries have fought violent wars of independence that united, if only
temporarily, the diverse inhabitants of colonial or imperial provinces against
their overlords. But many of the resulting nation-states endured even worse
violence after independence was won because the like-over-like principle bred
further conflict among the victors themselves.
Imperial governments had often
recruited members of specific minorities into the colonial army and
bureaucracy. (The classic example was the Belgian preference for Rwanda’s Tutsi
minority over its Hutu majority to staff the country’s colonial
administration.) In other former colonies, the elites of the more assimilated
and educated groups controlled the post-imperial state’s nascent bureaucracies
and security apparatuses, a fact that other groups resented as a break with the
like-over-like principle. More important, many new governments lacked the
political power and resources to reach out to the entire population and
overcome colonial-era inequalities. This made nation building more difficult
and ethnic patronage more likely. Large segments of the population thus
remained politically marginalized.
Whatever its origins, ethnopolitical
inequality was perceived as a scandal once nationalism had been accepted as the
guiding principle of legitimacy. This made it easier for opposition leaders to
mobilize followers and stage armed rebellions against exclusionary regimes.
Data from every country in the world since 1945 demonstrates a tight
correlation between such inequality and conflict: an increase in the size of
the politically excluded population by 30 percent increased the chances of
civil war by 25 percent. Almost 40 percent of independent countries today have
experienced at least one ethnopolitical rebellion since World War II. It is
important to note that these countries are not more ethnically diverse than
those at peace. It is therefore not diversity per se, but political inequality,
that breeds conflict.
Of course, other factors play a role
as well, including the repressive capacity of the state: After all, it is much
harder to organize a guerrilla army in northern China than in Somalia. Civil
wars are also more likely to break out in poorer countries where it is more
economically important to have connections to the government. Finally, not all
politically marginalized ethnic groups have an educated leadership capable of
forming a political movement or staging a rebellion.
New nation-states are also more
likely to go to war with each other than established empires or dynastic states
were. Empires drew loose and often arbitrary borders with little regard to
ethnicity. Nation-states, on the other hand, care more about borders because
these may divide a single national group across various states. This creates
the risk that those who end up on the wrong side of the border are treated as
second-class citizens in neighboring states dominated by other ethnic groups --
another way that the like-over-like principle can be violated. Conflict between
neighboring nation-states thus often erupts over territories where ethnic
groups overlap or over borders that divide a single ethnic group. In the early
1990s, for example, the Serbian minority resisted integration into the newly
founded state of Croatia. The government of Serbia, expecting that their
co-ethnics in Croatia would be mistreated (and in pursuit of its own national
unification project), intervened on their behalf. War between the two states
followed, ending with the expulsion of the Croatian Serbs across the border.
The domestic struggle over who “owns”
a new state does eventually come to an end -- on average, after sixty years. It
often comes violently, by way of expulsions, population exchanges, or forced
assimilation that result in a more homogenous country. In other cases, strong
central governments and well-established civil society organizations have made
ethnicity irrelevant to the formation of political alliances (as in Switzerland)
or encouraged voluntary assimilation into the core group (as in France and
Botswana). In other instances, a power-sharing arrangement between the
representatives of politicized ethnic groups helps to avoid future civil war
(as in Canada).
MINORITY REPORT
In short, the spread of the
like-over-like principle and the formation of nation-states have been driving
forces behind civil and interstate war -- a fact woefully missing from much of
the popular debate about the violent conflicts of today.
Take Syria, whose history of conflict
conforms closely to the pattern. The Arab uprising against Ottoman rule during
World War I did not lead to the country’s independence but instead to another
round of colonial domination by France. After a series of failed anticolonial
rebellions during the mid-1920s, Syria finally gained independence from France
at the end of World War II. Much of the political turmoil in the postcolonial
period concerned the distribution of political power among ethnic elites. After
a number of coups, the al-Assad clan and its small Alawite sect emerged as the
new owners of the state.
It is not diversity, but political
inequality, that breeds conflict.
Syria thus became a classic example
of an ethnocracy – where an ethnic minority dominates the entire state
apparatus. As a consequence of this departure from the like-over-like
principle, the government utterly lacks popular support and political
legitimacy. The regime compensated by adopting pan-Arab rhetoric and
anti-Israel policies, accommodating the Sunni economic elite, building a
massive security apparatus that penetrated the entire fabric of society, and
brutally suppressing any form of protest or rebellion, such as the Sunni
uprising of 1982. Now, Syria’s civil war is increasingly being fought along
religious and sectarian divides, as was the case in neighboring Iraq after the
U.S. invasion. Although the future remains unpredictable, it is safe to say
that no durable peace will be achieved until the ethnocratic regime under Assad
gives way to a power structure that integrates the country’s Sunni majority.
The Kurds, meanwhile, may perhaps end up in a Kurdish state sometime in the
future.
Sudan has followed a similar path. A
decades-long nationalist war finally led to the secession in 2011 of southern
Sudan, where non-Muslims of African descent form the majority, from northern
Sudan, which has been politically dominated by Muslim Arabs since its
inception. Tensions between the two states run high over the exact demarcation
of the boundary between them. In its present form, the divide leaves tens of
thousands of non-Muslim Africans politically marginalized in North Sudan. In
South Kordofan and the Blue Nile area, which are on the northern side of the
demarcation, former fighters for an independent South have continued to attack
northern troops with tacit support from the newly established South Sudanese
government and army. Clashes between the two states’ militaries have led many
analysts to fear more violence in the future.
In the South, ethnopolitical
inequality has led to domestic conflict as well. Shortly after independence,
new complaints arose about the dominance of former Dinka fighters, who had
founded and controlled the independence movement, in the recently formed
bureaucracy and army. Armed conflicts erupted between government forces and
various rebel factions claiming to represent Nuer or Murle constituencies.
What will the future bring for the
two Sudans? Given that control over significant oil resources is at stake,
their conflict is unlikely to be settled through a simple redrawing of
boundaries. It is equally improbable that the current government in Khartoum
will open its ranks to former independence fighters and their ethnic followers.
A long-lasting, low-intensity conflict is far more likely -- at least as long
as the ethnocratic regime in Khartoum survives. As for the domestic conflict in
South Sudan, given the state’s low institutional capacity, it will be difficult
to pursue a successful nation-building project by integrating the country’s
various ethnic constituencies and depoliticizing tribal and ethnic allegiances.
One can expect that jostling for power in unstable coalitions and occasional
infighting will continue.
Kosovo also conforms to the pattern.
It became a sovereign country after decades of nationalist mobilization against
alien rule by the Serbian state. The independence war of the late 1990s led to
NATO intervention, followed by a decade of UN administration. In 2008, Kosovo
was declared sovereign. Tensions between the young state’s Albanian majority,
empowered by independence, and its Serbian minority still run high. Without
NATO protection, these Serbian enclaves would probably have been ethnically
cleansed a long time ago. And if Serbia had not been under the threat of
further NATO bombings, it most likely would have intervened militarily to
protect its ethnic brethren across the border, bringing the two states to war.
Intervening relatively early, then, can help prevent such conflicts from
escalating to the level of full-scale war seen in Bosnia. The Bosnian episode
also illustrates, however, that it is not a sustainable solution to force
elites with opposing nationalist agendas to share power in a state they do not
want.
This historical pattern is not
without exceptions. Nor does it explain all of the wars in the world. Some
ethnically heterogeneous nation-states, including Montenegro, have emerged
without violence and have remained peaceful. Some of the most intractable
conflicts have erupted in such long-established nation-states as Colombia and
have nothing to do with nationalism or ethnicity. Still, far more examples
could be cited that do follow the pattern: Think of the Kurdish struggle in
Turkey, the shaky peace process in Northern Ireland, the Darfur drama, the
sectarian violence still haunting Iraq, the series of Caucasian conflicts that
have emerged since the dissolution of the Soviet empire, or resistance to
Chinese rule in Tibet. More complicated cases are those in which ethnopolitical
exclusion has led to a guerilla movement with a non-ethnic agenda, such as the
Marxist fighters in Guatemala, or the Maoist ones in Peru, Nepal, and parts of
India.
One can reasonably predict, then,
that contemporary states that politically marginalize large portions of their
population might well descend into protracted armed violence. A number of
countries are at risk, including Rwanda, where a small group of Tutsi returnees
from neighboring Uganda rules over the Hutu majority with an iron fist; Jordan,
which might one day no longer be able to divert the political aspirations of
its large, politically powerless group of Palestinian citizens to neighboring
Israel; Peru and Guatemala, which, unlike Bolivia, continue to marginalize
their large indigenous populations; and Guinea, where the party favored by the
ethnic Peul, who make up roughly 40 percent of the population and have long
been excluded from power, has protested rigged elections as recently as
February.
These enduring patterns of violence
demand policy solutions that sound simple in theory but are deeply challenging
to put into practice. Building more inclusionary power structures -- not
necessarily through electoral democracy -- represents the most viable strategy
for new states to prevent armed conflict. Macedonia is often cited as a
successful example of how institutional engineering, under intense
international pressure, can lead to a relatively stable power-sharing
arrangement. One can enlarge the list of successful strategies by calling
attention to Tanzania, where a dominant nationalist leader built a far-reaching
infrastructure of power that bridged ethnic divides. Botswana and Burkina Faso
also provide examples of successful ethnic inclusion -- in the case of latter,
thanks to a strong network of trade unions that provided a platform for ethnic
political integration. At the same time, the recent U.S. experience in
Afghanistan shows just how difficult it is to foster political integration
through occupation. Outsiders who provide public goods -- schools, hospitals,
and the like -- undermine the legitimacy of the domestic government, rather
than foster it. Nation building from the outside, then, is not just difficult
but structurally impossible. The path to peace -- toward an inclusionary state
that does not violate the like-over-like principle -- begins at home.
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