The Myth of Ethnic Warfare

It is difficult to argue with any of Kaufman's claims. He is certainly right that each of the individual explanations for conflict he describes is, on its own, inadequate. And no one would deny that all civil conflicts have a volatile mix at their core: myths that can be mustered into service, politicians willing to use those myths, and a state apparatus too weak to ensure basic civil order.

The problem with Kaufman's explanation, however, is determining whether a thing called "ethnic war" even exists. Of course, there are such things as ethnic groups, and they do occasionally come into conflict -- although as Kaufman rightly points out, they do so far less often than we normally think. But it is worth asking whether talking about a distinct category of violence called "ethnic war" is as useful as Kaufman (and many others) think.

How we label an armed conflict often has very little to do with anything intrinsic to the conflict itself. Think, for example, about how rare it is today to hear anyone talk of "insurgencies." Yet this term was once the standard way of referring to many civil wars around the world, especially those in which the so-called insurgents were supported by the Soviet Union. The idea of "ethnic war" may be similarly contingent, the product of a particular time and place -- the time being the end of the Cold War and the place being Europe. After all, the upsurge in writing on ethnicity and violence in the last decade is a direct result of the fact that the wars in the Balkans interested Western policymakers. That does not necessarily mean, however, that communal violence is a new phenomenon, or that there is more of it now than in the past (in fact, there is less), or that the types of conflicts that arose in the 1990s are significantly different from those that have long raged in many other parts of the world. Indeed, on the scale of human misery, the postcommunist wars barely register: they involved relatively few deaths, they lasted for only a short time, and crucially, they attracted the attention of the great powers, in particular the United States.

The "ethnic conflict" label is fine as an easy shorthand for wars in which the belligerents define themselves, in part, along cultural lines. But viewing such conflicts as essentially different from any other instances of large-scale violence within a single state can be misleading, in two senses. First, hatred does not need much scaffolding. In some cases, the cultural myths that Kaufman identifies as essential to violence are long-standing -- as between Armenians and Azerbaijani "Turks," for example. But in plenty of others the myths were manufactured in relatively short order, and usually after violence had already started. There was little in Georgian or Abkhaz national mythology to explain the depth of hatred that arose during the conflict there. And in Moldova, one would have had to be very creative to forge a coherent narrative of oppression on either side. Most civil wars -- whether involving ethnic groups, ideological factions, or any other social category -- have a way of manufacturing their own inevitability.

Second, the "ethnic conflict" label can encourage analysts and potential peacemakers to conflate two distinct issues -- the pathologies of individual belief and the rational motivations for group mobilization -- or, in other words, to mistake the causes of hatred for the causes of violence. The former is about precisely the "symbolic politics" that Kaufman identifies, the narratives of national suffering that can be useful in whipping up the masses. The latter is about getting armies into the field, and for that no amount of symbol-manipulating will get anywhere without a leadership and a state bureaucracy intent on perpetrating violence. Why people hate each other ought to concern psychologists and marriage counselors. Why they kill

EN MASSE IS THE PURVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENTISTS AND STATESMEN.

Kaufman courageously offers what he calls "a systematic general theory" of ethnic conflict: myths of oppression and revenge create dividing lines between social groups; real fears for communal survival create an incentive for mobilization; a faltering state, a strong leader, or an outside power provides the spark that ignites all-out violence. Take away any one of the three elements and the violence fizzles. It is easy enough to do this kind of analysis after a conflict has already broken out, as Kaufman has done. But probably the best that pundits or theorists can do is point out what countries and peoples are most at risk. We cannot know for certain why large-scale violence, of whatever type, breaks out. Even if we could, the factors involved would probably be disappointingly banal: clashing economic interests, politicians' attempts to oust opponents, lots of young men with nothing to do and easy access to guns. The rest is, to use a technical term, history.

All this is particularly relevant to the post-Soviet cases on which Kaufman bases his argument. After reading this book, one might come away with the idea that Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan remain embroiled in internal disputes largely because of the myths, fears, and opportunities that originally sparked the wars. But in all these cases, the issues that first brought the various sides to blows are very different from the dynamics that have perpetuated the quarrels.