Hypotheses on Nationalism and War
Author(s): Stephen van Evera
Source: International Security , Spring, 1994, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring, 1994), pp. 5-39
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539176
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Hypotheses on Stephen Van Evera
Nationalism and War
Scholars have written
widely on the causes of nationalism' but said little about its effects, especially
its effects on international politics. Most strikingly, the impact of nationalism
on the risk of war has barely been explored. Most authors take the warcausing
character of nationalism for granted, assuming it without proof or
explanation.2 Factors that govern the size of the dangers posed by nationalism
are neglected. What types of nationalism are most likely to cause war? What
background conditions catalyze or dampen this causal process? These quesStephen
Van Evera teaches in the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thanks to Robert Art, Don Blackmer, David Laitin, John Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, Jack Snyder,
and Stephen Walt for sharing their thoughts on nationalism and their comments on this paper.
A version of this article will appear in 1994 in a Council on Foreign Relations volume edited by
Charles Kupchan.
1. A survey is Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row,
1983). Prominent recent works include: Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1983); Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1986); E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1990); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991); Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Barry R. Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army,
and Military Power," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 80-124. However, the
nationalism literature leaves ample room for more work on nationalism's causes: much of it fails
to frame hypotheses clearly and much does not systematically test hypotheses against empirical
evidence; hence the literature leaves many questions unresolved.
2. Thus Anthony Smith notes that "the prevailing image of nationalism in the West today is
mainly negative," and Boyd Shafer states his "belief that nationalism, especially when carried
to extremes, leads to war and destruction." Smith, Theories of Nationalism, p. 8; Boyd C. Shafer,
Faces of Nationalism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. xiii. Yet the entry under
"Nationalism and War" in Louis Snyder's 435-page Encyclopedia of Nationalism fills only two
pages, and its bibliography lists no works focused on the topic. Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of
Nationalism (New York: Paragon, 1990), pp. 248-250. Exceptions exist: a few scholars have held
a less purely critical view of nationalism, arguing that it has the potential for both good and
evil. See, for example, Carlton J.H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1926),
pp. 245-275; Hayes's views are summarized in Snyder, Encyclopedia of Nationalism, pp. 132-133.
And the impact of nationalism on the risk of war is now receiving more attention: see especially
Jack Snyder, "Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State," Survival, Vol. 35, No. 1
(Spring 1993), pp. 5-26; and Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,"
Survival, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 27-47. The Snyder and Posen pieces are also published
in Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993).
Interniational Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 5-39
C) 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
5
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International Security 18:4 | 6
tion are largely undiscussed, hence the causal nexus between nationalism
and war presents an important unsolved riddle.
This article explores that nexus. I define nationalism as a political movement
having two characteristics: (1) individual members give their primary
loyalty to their own ethnic or national community;3 this loyalty supersedes
their loyalty to other groups, e.g., those based on common kinship or political
ideology; and (2) these ethnic or national communities desire their own
independent state.4 I leave the origins of nationalism unexplored, instead
focusing on its effects on the risk of war. Seven questions are addressed:
Does nationalism cause war? If so, what types of nationalism are most likely
to cause war? How and why do they cause war? What causes these warcausing
nationalisms? Under what conditions are they most dangerous?
How, if at all, can the war-causing attributes of nationalism be suppressed
3. My usage of "ethnic community" follows Anthony Smith, who suggests that an ethnic
community has six characteristics: a common name, a myth of common ancestry, shared memories,
a common culture, a link with a historic territory or homeland (which it may or may not
currently occupy), and a measure of common solidarity. See Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations,
pp. 22-30. Summarizing Smith nicely is Michael E. Brown, "Causes and Implications of Ethnic
Conflict," in Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security, pp. 3-26 at 4-5.
Smith's second criteria (myth of common ancestry) would exclude immigrant societies of
diverse origin that have developed the other five characteristics of ethnic community, such as
the immigrant peoples of the United States, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. However, the
common usage of "nation" and "nationalism" includes these groups as nations that can have a
nationalism, e.g., "American nationalism," "Argentine nationalism," "Chilean nationalism." I
define nationalism as a movement of a "national community" as well as an "ethnic community"
in order to include these nationalisms. My usage of "national" follows the Dictionary of the Social
Sciences, which defines "nation" as "the largest society of people united by a common culture
and consciousness," and which "occupies a common territory." Julius Gould and William L.
Kolb, eds., A Dictionanj of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), p. 4
4. The academic literature defines nationalism in an annoyingly wide range of ways. My
definition follows no other exactly, but it amalgamates the more prominent definitions: each of
these include at least one element of my definition, that prime loyalty is owed to one's ethnic/
culture group, and/or that the group to which prime loyalty is given should have its own state.
My usage most closely follows Rupert Emerson and Richard Cottam, who define nationalism
(in Cottam's words) as "a belief on the part of a large group of people that they comprise a
community, a nation, that is entitled to independent statehood, and a willingness of this group
to grant their community a primary and terminal loyalty"; quoted in Shafer, Faces of Nationalism,
p. 4. Similar is Hans Kohn, whose nationalists give "supreme loyalty" to their own nationality,
and who see "the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization." Ibid. Also similar are
E.J. Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner, who define nationalism as "primarily a principle which
holds that the political and national unit should be congruent." Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalisin
since 1780, p. 9, quoting and adopting Gellner's definition. However, their definition, by
describing nationalism as an idea holding that states and nationalities should be coterminous,
omits the many nationalisms that would claim their own state while also denying the statehood
aspirations of other nationalities, and also omits more modest nationalisms that are content to
allow a diaspora beyond their state borders.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 7
or neutralized? How large are the risks to peace posed by nationalism in
today's Europe, and how can these risks be minimized? In answer I offer
unproven hypotheses that I leave untested for now. Our stock of hypotheses
on the consequences of nationalism is meager, hence our first order of business
should be to expand it. This can set the stage for empirical inquiry by
others.5
Causes of war or peace can be classified as proximate (causes that directly
affect the odds of war) or remote (causes of these proximate causes, or
background conditions required for their activation.) I explore proximate
causes first, then turn to remote causes. Specifically, the next section of this
article identifies varieties of nationalism that are most likely to cause war
(including both civil and inter-state war). The section that follows it identifies
the causes of these dangerous varieties of nationalism and the conditions
that govern the size of the dangers they produce. Twenty-one hypotheses
are proposed in all-nine main hypotheses and twelve sub-hypotheses. Some
focus on the impact of the environment that surrounds nationalist movements;
this environment can incline the movement toward peaceful or toward
warlike behavior. Others focus on the impact of the movement's internal
character, especially its ideology and vision of history; this, too, can incline
the movement toward peace or war. These hypotheses are highlighted because
they are deductively sound, survive plausibility probes, and in some
cases generate policy prescriptions. They are summarized in Table 1.6 Viewed
together, they suggest that the effects of nationalism are highly varied: some
types of nationalism are far more dangerous than other types, all types of
nationalism are more dangerous under some conditions than under others,
and nationalism can even dampen the risk of war under some conditions.
If accepted, these hypotheses provide a checklist for assessing the dangers
posed by a given nationalist movement or by the spread of nationalism in a
given region. To illustrate, I use them in the concluding section to assess the
risks that nationalism now poses in Europe, because Europe is a region in
flux whose future is much debated. This exercise suggests that nationalism
5. A similar exercise whose example influenced my design is Robert Jervis, "Hypotheses on
Misperception," World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 3 (April 1968), pp. 454-479; reprinted in Robert J.
Art and Robert Jervis, ed., Initernational Politics: Anarchy, Force, Political Economy, and Decision
Making, 2nd ed. (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1985), pp. 510-526.
6. The text of this article identifies factors that govern the size of the risk posed by nationalism,
and explains the proposed causal relationship. Table 1 restates these factors and explanations
as hypotheses.
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International Security 18:4 | 8
Table 1. Hypotheses on Nationalism and War: Summary.
1. IMMEDIATE CAUSES
1. The greater the proportion of state-seeking nationalities that are
stateless, the greater the risk of war.
2. The more that nationalities pursue the recovery of national diasporas,
and the more they pursue annexationist strategies of recovery, the
greater the risk of war.
3. The more hegemonistic the goals that nationalities pursue toward one
another, the greater the risk of war.
4. The more severely nationalities oppress minorities living in their states,
the greater the risk of war.
11. CAUSES OF THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES AND CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR
THEIR OPERATION
Structural Factors:
1. Stateless nationalisms pose a greater risk of war if they have the
strength to plausibly reach for freedom, and the central state has the will
to resist their attempt.
2. The more densely nationalities are intermingled, the greater the risk of
war.
a. The risks posed by intermingling are larger the more local (house-byhouse)
rather than regional (province-by-province) the pattern of
intermingling.
b. The risks posed by intermingling are larger if the rescue of diasporas
by homelands is difficult but possible; smaller if rescue is either
impossible or easy.
3. The greater the defensibility and legitimacy of borders, and the greater
the correspondence between these political borders and communal
boundaries, the smaller the risk of war.
a. The less secure and defensible the borders of emerging nation-states,
the greater the risk of war.
b. The greater the international legitimacy of the borders of emerging
nation-states, the smaller the risk of war.
c. The more closely the boundaries of emerging nation-states follow
ethnic boundaries, the smaller the risk of war.
poses very little danger of war in Western Europe, but poses large dangers
in the East, especially in the former Soviet Union. Current Western European
nationalisms are benign, and the conditions required for a return to the
malignant nationalisms of 1870-1945 are almost wholly absent. In contrast,
many Eastern nationalisms have many (though not all) of the attributes that
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War I 9
Table 1, cont.
Political/Environmental Factors:
4. The greater the past crimes committed by nationalities toward one
another, the greater the risk of war.
a. The better these crimes are remembered by the victims, the greater
the risk of war.
b. The more that responsibility for past crimes can be attached to
groups still on the scene, the greater the risk of war.
c. The less contrition and repentance shown by the guilty groups, the
greater the risk of war.
d. The greater the coincidence of power and victimhood, the greater the
risk of war.
5. The more severely nationalities oppress minorities now living in their
states, the greater the risk of war. (This restates Hypothesis No. 1.4; 1 list
it twice because it operates as both a direct and a remote cause of war.)
Perceptual Factors:
6. The more divergent are the beliefs of nationalities about their mutual
history and their current conduct and character, the greater the risk of
war.
a. The less legitimate the governments or leaders of nationalist
movements, the greater their propensity to purvey mythical
nationalist beliefs, hence the greater the risk of war.
b. The more the state must demand of its citizens, the greater its
propensity to purvey mythical nationalist beliefs, hence the greater
the risk of war.
c. If economic conditions deteriorate, publics become more receptive to
scapegoat myths, hence such myths are more widely believed, hence
war is more likely.
d. If independent evaluative institutions are weak or incompetent, myths
will more often prevail, hence war is more likely.
I argue make nationalism dangerous; hence the risk of large-scale violence
stemming from the now-rising tide of Eastern nationalism is substantial.
What prescriptions follow? The character and consequences of nationalism
are not written in stone. The Western powers have some capacity to influence
the character and consequences of Eastern nationalist movements, and
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International Security 18:4 | 10
should try to channel it in benign directions. Most importantly, the Western
powers should promote full respect for minority rights, democracy, and
official respect for historical truth; if Eastern nationalisms adopt these programs,
the risks they pose will sharply diminish.
Varieties of Nationalism: Which Cause War?
Four primary attributes of a nationalist movement determine whether it has
a large or small potential to produce violence. These are: (1) The movement's
political status: is statehood attained or unattained? (2) The movement's
stance toward its national diaspora (if it has one): if the movement has a
national state, but some members of the nation are dispersed or entrapped
beyond the state's borders, does the nation accept continued separation from
this diaspora, or does it seek to incorporate the diaspora in the national state?
And if it seeks the diaspora's incorporation, will it accomplish this by immigration
or by territorial expansion? (3) The movement's stance toward
other nations: does it respect or deny other nationalities' right to national
independence? (4) The movement's treatment of its own minorities: are these
minorities respected or abused?
IS NATIONAL STATEHOOD ATTAINED OR UNATTAINED?
Nationalist movements without states raise greater risks of war because their
accommodation requires greater and more disruptive change. Their struggle
for national freedom can produce wars of secession, which in turn can widen
to become international wars. Their freedom struggle can also injure the
interests of other groups, displacing populations whose new grievances sow
the seeds of future conflict, as Zionism's displacement of the Palestinian
Arabs in 1948 sowed the seeds of later Arab-Israeli wars. Finally, the appearance
of new states creates a new, less mature regional international
system that lacks "rules of the game" defining the rights and obligations of
its members toward one another, and norms of international conduct; these
rights, obligations, and norms can take years to define, raising the risk of
crises and collisions in the meantime.
The international system tolerates change poorly, but the accommodation
of new nationalist movements requires it.7 Thus the first measure of the risks
7. The dichotomy between stateless and state-possessing nationalist movements is analogous
to the dichotomy in international relations between "satisfied" and "dissatisfied" powers; the
latter disturb the peace in their effort to gain satisfaction, while the former cause less trouble.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War I 11
to the peace of a region posed by nationalism is found in the proportion of
its nationalist movements that remain unfulfilled in statehood, a factor expressed
in the nation-to-state ratio. Are the supply of and demand for states
in equilibrium or disequilibrium? Peace in a region is more likely the more
closely a supply/demand equilibrium is approached.8 Modern nationalism
disrupted peace over the past two centuries partly because so many of the
world's current nationalist movements were stateless at the outset, requiring
vast change to accommodate their emergence. Nationalism still threatens
peace because its full accommodation would require vast additional change:
the number of states in the world has more than tripled since World War II
(up from the 50 signers of the UN Charter in 1945, to 180-odd states today),
but many nationalities remain stateless; the world has some 6000 language
groups,9 many of which have dormant or manifest aspirations for statehood.
In Western Europe the transition of nations to statehood is largely behind
us: that region's remaining stateless nationalities are relatively few and weak.
In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the problem is more serious
because the transition to statehood, while largely fulfilled, is still incomplete.
The bulk of these stateless nationalities are found in the former Soviet Union;
15 of the 104 nationalities in the former USSR have attained states, but the
other 89 have not; these stateless nationalities total 25.6 million people,
comprising 10 percent of the former USSR's total population.10 Most of these
nationalities are not potential candidates for statehood (e.g., the Jews) but
8. Wars can result from having too many states, as well as too few. If states are too many, wars
of national unification will result, as they did in Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century,
and as they might someday in the Arab world. In Europe, however, the problem everywhere
is an excess of demand for states over the supply.
9. Alan Thein Durning, Guardians of the Land: Indigenous Peoples and the Health of the Earth,
Worldwatch Paper No. 112 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, December 1992), p. 9.
Durning reports that measured by spoken languages the world has 6000 cultures. Of these some
4000-5000 are indigenous, and comprise some 10 percent of the world's population. See also
Michael Krauss, "The Language Extinction Catastrophe Just Ahead: Should Linguists Care?"
paper presented at the 15th International Congress of Linguists, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada,
August 10, 1992. For another estimate see Gunnar P. Nielsson, "States and 'Nation-Groups': A
Global Taxonomy," in Edward A. Tiryakian and Ronald Rogowski, eds., New Nationalisms of the
Developed West (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 27-56. He identifies a global total of 589
ethnic groups, most of which are stateless (p. 33). He also found that only 41 of 161 states
surveyed were ethnically homogeneous (in which one ethnic group comprises over 95 percent
of the state's population); see ibid., Table 2.1, pp. 30-31.
10. These figures are for 1979, and are calculated from John L. Scherer, ed., USSR Facts and
Figures Annual, Vol. 5 (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1981), pp. 51-52. Of
these stateless groups the ten largest are the Tatar (6.3 million), German (1.9 million), Jewish
(1.8 million), Chuvash (1.8 miltion), Dagestan (1.7 million), Bashkir (1.4 million), Mordvin (1.2
million), Polish (1.2 million), Chechen (.8 million), and Udmurt (.7 million).
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International Security 18:4 1 12
some might be (e.g., the Tatars, Chechen, Ingush, and Ossetians), and their
reach for statehood could sow future friction.
ATTITUDE TOWARD THE NATIONAL DIASPORA: IS PARTIAL OR TOTAL NATIONAL
UNITY PURSUED? ARE IMMIGRATIONIST OR EXPANSIONIST TACTICS USED?
Does the nationalist ideology posit that all or only a part of the national
ethnic community must be incorporated in the national state? And if the
whole nationality must be incorporated, will this be accomplished by immigration
(bringing the diaspora to the state) or by territorial expansion (bringing
the state to the diaspora)?
These questions suggest a distinction among three types of nationalism:
"diaspora-accepting," "immigrationist," and "diaspora-annexing." Some nationalisms
(the diaspora-accepting variety) are content with partial union
(e.g., Chinese nationalism);11 such nationalisms are less troublesome because
they make fewer territorial demands on their neighbors. Some nationalisms
(the immigrationist type) seek to incorporate their diasporas in the national
state, but are content to pursue union by seeking immigration of the diaspora
(current German nationalism and Zionist Jewish nationalism.) Such immigrationist
nationalisms are also easy to accommodate. Finally, some nationalisms
seek to incorporate their diasporas by means of territorial expansion
(pre-1914 Pan-Germanism and current Pan-Serbianism are examples.) Such
diaspora-annexing nationalisms are the most dangerous of the three, since
their goals and tactics produce the greatest territorial conflict with others.
Thus one scenario for war in the former Soviet Union lies in the possible
appearance of a Pan-Russian nationalism that would seek to reincorporate
by force the vast Russian diaspora now living in the non-Russian republics.
This diaspora includes some 24 million Russians, or 17 percent of all Russians.12
The future hinges heavily on whether Russian nationalism accepts
separation from this diaspora (or seeks to ingather it by immigration), or
instead forcibly seeks to annex it.13
11. The Chinese state has historically left the overseas Chinese to their own political devices.
John E. Wills, "Maritime Asia, 1500-1800: The Interactive Emergence of European Domination,"
American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 1 (February 1993), pp. 83-105, at p. 87.
12. Calculated from Scherer, USSR Facts and Figures Annual, pp. 49-51.
13. Russia's extensive military meddling in the affairs of the other former Soviet republics during
1992-94 and the political rise of Vladimir Zhirinovsky in 1993 warns that a new Russian expansionism
is already emerging. On this military meddling see Thomas Goltz, "Letter From Eurasia:
The Hidden Russian Hand," Foreign Policy, No. 92 (Fall 1993), pp. 92-116.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 13
ATTITUDE TOWARD OTHER INDEPENDENT NATIONALITIES:
TOLERANT OR HEGEMONISTIC?
Does the ideology of the nationalism incorporate respect for the freedom of
other nationalities, or does it assume a right or duty to rule them? In other
words, is the national ideology symmetrical (all nationalities deserve states)
or asymmetrical (only our nationality deserves statehood; others should be
denied it)?
Hegemonistic, or asymmetrical, nationalism is both the rarest and the most
dangerous variety of nationalism. Interwar Nazi nationalism in Germany,
fascist nationalism in Mussolini's Italy, and militarist nationalism in imperial
Japan illustrate such hegemonistic nationalism; the wars they caused illustrate
its results.14 No European nationalism today displays such hegemonism,
but the vast trouble that it caused in the past advises alertness to its possible
reappearance in Europe or elsewhere.
THE DEGREE OF NATIONAL RESPECT FOR MINORITY RIGHTS: HIGH OR LOW?
Is the nationalism minority-respecting, or minority-oppressing? A minorityrespecting
nationalism grants equal rights to other nationalities lying within
the boundaries of its claimed state; it may even grant their right to secede
and establish their own state. A minority-oppressing nationalism denies such
rights to these other nationalities, subjugating them instead. Many of the
nationalisms of immigrant nations (American, Anglo-Canadian) have been
relatively minority-respecting (in the Canadian case this includes a tacit right
to secession, which the Quebecois may soon exercise.) Non-immigrant
nationalisms often display far less tolerance for their minorities: prominent
current examples include Iraq's and Turkey's oppression of their Kurdish
minorities, Bulgaria's oppression of its Turks, China's cruelties in Tibet,
Croatia's intolerance toward its Serb minority, and Serbian oppression of its
14. On twentieth-century German nationalism, see Louis L. Snyder, German Nationalism: The
Tragedy of a People, 2nd ed. (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1969); Louis L. Snyder,
From Bismarck to Hitler: The Background of Modern German Nationalism (Williamsport: Bayard Press,
1935); and Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York: Harper and
Row, 1960). On official ideas and perceptions in fascist Italy see Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini's
Roman Empire (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1977). On domestic currents in imperial Japan
see Saburo lenaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1978); and lenaga, "The
Glorification of War in Japanese Education," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993/
94), pp. 113-133. Nationalism is not, of course, the only possible source of claims against
neighbors. These can also arise from non-nationalist expansionist political ideologies (communism),
from hegemonistic religious ideas (the crusading Christianity of the middle ages), from
safety concerns arising from the security dilemma, from economic greed, and so forth.
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International Security 18:4 | 14
Slavic Moslem and Albanian minorities. Nazi German nationalism was an
extreme case of a minority-oppressing nationalism.
The first three attributes-is statehood attained? attitude toward diaspora?
attitude toward other independent nationalities?-define the scope of a nationalist
movement's claims against others; conversely, the fourth attributepolicy
toward minorities?-helps determine the scope of others' claims
against the movement. The larger these others' goals become, the more they
will collide with the movement's goals, raising the risk of war. Minorityoppressing
nationalism can cause war in two ways: (1) by provoking violent
secessions by its captive nations; or (2) by spurring the homelands of these
captive nations to move forcefully to free their oppressed co-nationals15 (as
Croatian threats against the Serb minority in Croatia helped spawn the Serb
attack on Croatia in 1991).16 Minority-oppressing nationalism is most dangerous
if the oppressed minorities have nearby friends who have the capacity
to protect the oppressed nation by force. (The Serbo-Croat war exploded
partly because Croatia's Serbs had such a friend in Serbia). The attitude of
many nationalisms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union toward
their minorities remains undefined, and the future hinges on whether they
evolve toward minority respect or oppression.
These four attributes can be used to create a nationalism "danger-scale,"
expressing the level of danger posed by a given nationalism, or by the spread
of nationalism in a given region. If all four attributes are benign, the nationalism
poses little danger of war, and may even bolster peace. Specifically, a
nationalism is benign if it has achieved statehood; has limited unity goals
(i.e., accepts the existence of any unincorporated diaspora) or adopts an
immigrationist strategy for ingathering its diaspora; posits no claim to rule
other nationalities living beyond its national territory; and respects the rights
of minorities found in this territory. Multiplied, such nationalisms may even
dampen the risk of war, by making conquest more difficult: where these
nationalisms are prevalent, conquest is harder because nation-states are
15. Thus the second and fourth attributes are related: if some states oppress their minorities
(the fourth attribute) this affects other states' propensity to pursue diaspora recovery (the second
attribute).
16. On the war's origins, including the important role of Croatia's pre-war threats against its
Serb minority, see Misha Glenny, "The Massacre of Yugoslavia," New York Review of Books,
January 30, 1992, pp. 30-35, at 30-31; and Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan
War (London: Penguin, 1992), pp. 12-14, 123. An account stressing international aspects of the
war's origins is Morton H. Halperin and David J. Scheffer with Patricia L. Small, Self-Determination
in the New World Order (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, 1992), pp. 32-38.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War 1 15
among the most difficult type of state to conquer (since nationalism provides
an inspirational liberation doctrine that can be used to mobilize strong popular
resistance to conquest).17 As a result strong states will be deterred from
reaching for regional or global hegemony, and will also be less fearful that
others might achieve it; hence all states will compete less fiercely with one
another. 18 In contrast, a nationalism is bound to collide with others if all four
attributes are malign: If the nationalism has no state, the risk of civil war
arising from its struggle for national independence is increased; this also
raises the risk of inter-state war, since civil war can widen to engulf nearby
states. If, after achieving statehood, the nationalism seeks to incorporate a
diaspora by force, oppresses minorities found in its claimed national territZory,
and seeks hegemony over nationalities lying beyond that territory, violence
between the nationalism and its neighbors is inevitable.
Causes and Conditions for War-Causing Nationalism
What factors determine whether these four variables will have benign or
malignant values? What conditions are required for malignant values to have
malignant effects? The deciding factors and conditions are grouped below
into three broad families: structural (those arising from the geographic and
demographic arrangement of a nation's people); political-environmental
(those arising from the past or present conduct of a people's neighbors); and
perceptual (those arising from the nationalist movement's self-image and its
17. On the greater peacefulness of a defense-dominant world, see Robert Jervis, "Cooperation
Under the Security Dilemma," World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 167-214.
18. Thus the evident power of nationalism helped dampen Soviet-American competition during
the Cold War, by persuading some in the West that nationalism imposed a natural limit on
Soviet expansion. These observers argued that the Western powers need not actively check
Soviet expansionism at every point because local nationalism could defeat it alone, nor move
actively to roll back Soviet gains, because these gains would eventually be rolled back by
indigenous nationalism, and in the meantime nationalist resistance would bleed Soviet power.
For example, George Kennan took a calm approach to containment partly because he believed
that resistant local nationalism would check Soviet expansion in the short run, and would rend
the Soviet empire in the long run. See John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical
Appraisal of Postzwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982),
pp. 42-48. Other arguments for Cold War restraint that rested in part on the power of nationalism
included Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy 1941-1968,
rev. ed. (Greenwich: Fawcett, 1968), pp. 78-80; Jerome Slater, "Dominos in Central America:
Will They Fall? Does It Matter?" International Security, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1987), pp. 105-134, at
113; and Stephen M. Walt, "The. Case for Finite Containment," International Security, Vol. 14,
No. 1 (Summer 1989), pp. 3-49,'at 26-27. Had nationalism been weaker, these arguments would
have lost force, leaving a stronger case for more aggressive American policies.
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International Security 18:4 1 16
images of others, including its images of both sides' past and present conduct
and character).
STRUCTURAL FACTORS: THE GEOGRAPHIC, DEMOGRAPHIC,
AND MILITARY SETTING
The size of the risks posed by nationalism is influenced by the balance of
power and of will between stateless nationalisms and the central states that
hold them captive; by the degree and pattern of regional ethnic intermingling;
by the defensibility and legitimacy of the borders of new national states; and
by the correspondence of these borders with ethnic boundaries.
THE DOMESTIC BALANCE OF POWER AND OF WILL. Unattained nationalisms
are more troublesome under two conditions: (1) the movement has the
strength to reach plausibly for statehood; and (2) the central state has the
will to resist this attempt.
Stateless nationalisms whose statehood is unattainable will lie dormant,
their emergence deterred by the power of the central state.19 Nationalism
becomes manifest and can produce war when the power-balance between
the central state and the captive nationalism shifts to allow the possibility of
successful secession. Thus two safe conditions exist: where national statehood
is already attained; and where it is not attained, but clearly cannot be.
The danger zone lies between, in cases where statehood has not been attained
yet is attainable or appears to be.20 In this zone we find wars of nationalist
secession.21 Such conflicts can, in turn, grow into international wars: examples
include the 1912-14 Balkan secessionist struggles that triggered World
War I, and the 1991-92 Serbo-Croatian conflict.
19. If nationalism is unattainable it may not even appear: the captive nation will submerge the
nationalist thought. This is similar to the realist argument that imperialism is a function of
capability: states imperialize simply when and where they can. Likewise, and conversely,
nationalism is in part simply a function of capability: it emerges where it can.
20. We can scale up this logic from single states to regions by asking: do nations have states in
proportion to their power? That is, does the state-to-nation ratio correspond with the state-tonation
power ratio? Or do nations have fewer states than their power justifies? If the former is
the case, peace is more likely. But if nations have fewer states than their power would allow,
trouble results in the form of wars of secession.
21. Overall, then, three variables matter: (1) the supply of states; (2) the demand for states; (3)
the capacity of submerged nations to acquire states. Peace is stronger if supply and demand are
in equilibrium; or if supply and capacity are in equilibrium. In one case, nationalism is satisfied;
in the other, it is dissatisfied but impotent. Dangers arise if both supply and demand, and
supply and capacity, are not in equilibrium. We then have submerged nationalisms that both
desire and can assert the demand for statehood.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 17
The Third World nationalisms of the twentieth century erupted partly
because the spread of small arms and literacy shifted the balance of power
in favor of these nationalisms, and against their imperial captors. Nationalism
emerged because it could. Likewise, nationalism exploded in the former
Soviet Union in the late 1980s partly because Soviet central power had waned.
War is inevitable if central states have the will to resist emerging nationalist/
secessionist movements, but these movements can win freedom without
violence if that will is missing. Many sub-Saharan African states gained
freedom in the 1960s without violence because the European colonial powers
lost their imperial will. Likewise, the emergence of non-Russian nationalisms
in the former Soviet Union was accompanied by (and encouraged by) the
loss of imperial will in Moscow; this loss of will at the center allowed the
non-Russians to escape the Soviet empire without waging wars of secession.
French decolonization was far more violent, spawning large wars in Vietnam
and Algeria, because the French metropole retained its will even after nationalism
gained momentum in the French empire.
The will of the central state is largely governed by its domestic politics,
but is also determined partly by demographic facts. Specifically, central governments
can allow secession more easily if secession would leave a homogeneous
rump central state, since permitting secession then sets a less damaging
precedent. Thus the Czechs could accept Slovak independence without
fear of setting a precedent that would trigger another secession, since there
is no potential secessionist group in the rump Czech Republic. Likewise, the
United States could grant independence to the Philippines fairly easily in
1946 because the United States had few other colonies, and none of these
were large or valuable, hence Philippine independence set no dangerous
precedents. Conversely, the Austro-Hungarian empire strongly resisted
secessions before 1914 because the empire contained many potential secessionists
who might be encouraged if any secession were allowed.
THE DEMOGRAPHIC ARRANGEMENT OF NATIONAL POPULATIONS: ARE THEY
INTERMINGLED OR HOMOGENEOUS? Are nationality populations densely intermingled?
If they are, does this create large or small national diasporas?
Intermingling raises the risk of communal conflict during the struggle for
national freedom, as groups that would be trapped as minorities in a new
national state oppose its reach for freedom. Dispersion and intermingling
will also trap some co-ethnics outside the boundaries of their nation-states;
this raises the danger that, new nation-states will pursue diaspora-recovering
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International Security 18:4 | 18
expansionism after they gain statehood, and the possibility that their abuse
of minorities will trigger attack from outside.22
These dangers are reduced if national populations are compact and homogenous-diasporas
and minorities then occur only if political boundaries
fail to follow ethnic boundaries. They are intensified if the nationality is
dispersed abroad, and intermingled with others at home. The Czechs, for
example, can pursue nationalism with little risk to the peace of their neighborhood,
because they have no diaspora abroad, and few minorities at home.
They need not limit their goals or learn to accommodate minorities. The 1947
partition of India was a far bloodier process than the 1992 Czech-Slovak
divorce partly because Hindus and Moslems were far more intermingled
than Czechs and Slovaks. The partition of Yugoslavia has been especially
violent partly because nationalities in former Yugoslavia are more densely
intermingled than any others in Eastern or Western Europe outside the
former Soviet Union.23
Overall, nationalism poses greater dangers in Eastern than Western Europe
because the peoples of Eastern Europe are more densely intermingled. A
survey of Eastern Europe reveals roughly a dozen minority group pockets
that may seek independence or be claimed by other countries.24 The ethno-
22. The scope and structure of intermingling governs the acuteness of what might be called the
"inter-ethnic security dilemma": this dilemma is posed where one group cannot achieve physical
security without diminishing the physical security of other groups. It is analogous to the interstate
security dilemma of international relations, except that the clashing units are ethnic or
culture groups, not states.
23. Moreover, Yugoslavia's one easy secession-that of Slovenia-was easy because the Slovene
population was not intermingled with others. An excellent ethnographic map of the former
Yugoslavia that details its intermingling is Central Intelligence Agency, "Peoples of Yugoslavia:
Distribution by Opstina, 1981 Census," Map No. 505956 9-83 (543994). A useful though less
detailed ethnographic map covering all of Eastern Europe including former Yugoslavia is Central
Intelligence Agency, "Ethnic Majorities and Minorities," in Central Intelligence Agency, Atlas of
Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office [U.S. GPO], August 1990),
p. 6. A good ethnographic map of the former USSR is National Geographic Society, "Peoples
of the Soviet Union," supplement to National Geographic, Vol. 149, No. 2 (February 1976), p. 144A;
back issues of National Geographic containing this map are available from the National Geographic
Society, Washington, D.C.
24. These include Hungarians in Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia; Poles in Lithuania, Belarus,
Ukraine, and the Czech Republic; Germans in Poland and the Czech Republic; Turks in Bulgaria;
Greeks in Albania; Albanians in Serbia and Macedonia; Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Serbs
in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Summaries include F. Stephen Larrabee, "Long Memories
and Short Fuses: Change and Instability in the Balkans," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3
(Winter 1990/91), pp. 58-91; Istvan Deak, "Uncovering Eastern Europe's Dark History," Orbis,
Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 51-65; Barry James, "Central Europe Tinderboxes: Old Border
Disputes," International Herald Tribune, January 1, 1990, p. 5; and the CIA map cited above,
"Ethnic Majorities and Minorities, 1990."
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Hypotheses on Nationalismn and War 1 19
graphic structure of the former Soviet Union is even more ominous; an
ethnographic map of the former USSR reveals massively intermingled nationalities,
scattered in scores of isolated pockets, a mosaic far more tangled
and complex than any found elsewhere in Europe except the former Yugo-
slavia.25
Two aspects of intermingling determine the size of the dangers it poses:
the scope of intermingling, and the pattern of intermingling. All intermingling
causes trouble, but some patterns of intermingling cause more trouble
than others.
Groups can be intermingled on a regional scale (regions are heterogeneous,
small communities are homogeneous) or local scale (even small communities
are heterogeneous, as in Sarajevo.) Regional intermingling is more easily
managed, because inter-group relations can be negotiated by elites. In contrast,
elites can lose control of events when intermingling extends to the local
level: conflict can flare against the wishes of elites when unofficial killers
seize the agenda by sparking a spiral of private violence. Local intermingling
can also produce conflict-dampening personal friendships and inter-ethnic
marriages, but the Bosnian conflict shows the limits of this tempering effect.
Overall, local intermingling is more dangerous.
The most dangerous pattern of regional intermingling is one that leaves
elements of one or both groups insecurely at the mercy of the other, but also
allows for the possibility of forcible rescue-either by self-rescue (secession)
or external rescue (intervention by an already-free homeland).
If rescue is impossible, then the goal of secession or reunion with a homeland
will be abandoned. Israel cannot rescue Soviet Jewry, except by immigration,
and Ukraine cannot rescue the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia; hence
neither considers forceful rescue. This lowers the risk of war.
If rescue is easy, it may not be attempted, since the threat of rescue is
enough to deter abuse of the diaspora. Russia could fairly easily rescue the
Russian minority in the Baltics and perhaps elsewhere on the Russian periphery,
because much of the Russian diaspora lies clustered near the Russian
25. See the maps cited in note 23 above. Overall, 16 percent of the titular peoples of the 15
successor states of the former Soviet Union, totalling 39 million people, live outside their home
states ("titular peoples": the peoples after whom republics are named, e.g., Armenians, Kazakhs,
Russians, etc.). Calculated from Scherer, USSR Facts and Figures Annual, pp. 49-51. And, as
noted above, another 10 percent of the former Soviet population (26 million people) are members
of the 89 smaller nationalities without titular home republics ("titular home republic": a republic
named after the nationality).
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International Security 18:4 j 20
border, and Russia holds military superiority over its neighbors. These power
realities may deter Russia's neighbors from abusing their Russian minorities,
leaving Russia more room to take a relaxed attitude.26
It is in-between situations-those where rescue is possible, but only under
optimal conditions-that are most dangerous. This situation will tempt potential
rescuers to jump through any windows of opportunity that arise.
Forceful rescue is then driven by both fear and opportunity-fear that later
the abuse of diasporas cannot be deterred by threatening to rescue them
(since the difficulty of rescue will rob that threat of credibility), and by the
opportunity to rescue the diaspora now by force.27 Thus Serbia would have
probably been unable to rescue the Serb diaspora in normal times: Serbia is
too weak, and the Serbian diasporas in Croatia and Bosnia are too distant
from Serbia. But rescue was feasible if Serbia made the attempt at a moment
of peak Serbian military advantage. Such a moment emerged in 1990, after
Serbia consolidated the weaponry of the Yugoslav army under its control,
but before the Croatian and Bosnian states could organize strong militaries.28
In contrast, such a moment may never emerge for Russia, because it can
always rescue large parts of its diaspora should the need ever arise, leaving
less need to seize an early opportunity.
These in-between situations are most troublesome when the diaspora is
separated from the homeland by lands inhabited by others: wars of rescue
then cause larger injury. In such cases rescue requires cutting a secure corridor
through these lands; this, in turn, requires the forcible expulsion of the
resident population, with its attendant horrors and cruelties. In 1991 the
Serbian diaspora in Croatia and Bosnia was cut off from the Serb homeland
by walls of Moslem-inhabited territory,29 and the vast Serbian cruelties
against the Bosnian Moslems during 1992-93 grew mainly from Serbia's effort
to punch corridors through these walls in order to attach these diasporas to
Serbia proper. In contrast, more of Russia's diaspora is contiguous to Russia,
hence a Russian war of rescue would do relatively less harm to others
innocently in the way (though it would still do plenty of harm.)
26. Making this argument is Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," pp. 32-35.
27. See Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," pp. 32-38.
28. The intensification of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1991-92 had similar
origins: Armenia moved to free Nagorno-Karabakh at a moment that Armenia's power relative
to Azerbaijan's was at its peak.
29. See Central Intelligence Agency, "Peoples of Yugoslavia."
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War j 21
BORDERS: DEFENSIBILITY, LEGITIMACY, AND BORDER/ETHNIC CORRESPONDENCE.
The risks to peace posed by a nationalism's emergence are governed
partly by the defensibility and international legitimacy of the nation's borders,
and by the degree of correspondence between these political borders
and ethnic boundaries.
The satisfaction of national demands for statehood extends international
anarchy by creating more states: hence nationalism's effects are governed
partly by the character of the extended anarchy that it creates. Some anarchies
are relatively peaceful, others more violent. The acuteness of the security
dilemma is a key factor governing the answer. Anarchy is a precondition for
international war, hence extending anarchy may expand the risk of war, but
this is not always the case: the fragmentation of states can deepen peace if
it leaves the world with states that are more difficult to conquer, hence are
more secure, than the older states from which they were carved. The character
of boundaries helps decide the issue: if the new borders are indefensible,
the net impact of the creation of new national states will be warlike; if
borders are highly defensible, the net impact may be peaceful.30
Defensible boundaries reduce the risk of war because they leave new states
less anxious to expand for security reasons, while also deterring others from
attacking them. The nations of Western Europe can be more peaceful than
those of the East because they are endowed with more defensible borders:
the French, Spanish, British, Italian, and Scandinavian nations have natural
defenses formed by the Alps and the Pyrenees, and by the waters of the
English Channel, the Baltic, and the North Sea. Icelandic nationalism is
especially unproblematic because geography makes Iceland unusually secure,
and almost incapable of attack. In contrast, the nationalities living on the
exposed plains of Eastern Europe and western Asia contend with a harsher
geography: with few natural barriers to invasion, they are more vulnerable
to attack, hence are more tempted to attack others in preemptive defense.31
They are therefore more likely to disturb the status quo, or to be victims of
other disturbers.
The international legitimacy of a new nation's borders helps determine the
level of danger raised when it gains independence: if borders lack interna-
30. The new states may also be more defensible than their parent states because they can call
upon nationalism as a mobilizing defensive force, as their multi-ethnic parent states could not.
31. Likewise, Germany has produced the most troublesome Western nationalism partly because
German borders are relatively exposed.
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International Security 18:4 | 22
tional legitimacy or are unsettled altogether, demands for border changes
will arise, providing new occasions for conflict. The successor states of the
former Soviet Union find themselves with borders drawn by Stalin or other
Bolshevik rulers; these have correspondingly small legitimacy. Israel's post-
1948 boundaries at first lacked international legitimacy because they had no
historical basis, having arisen simply from truce lines expressing the military
outcome of the 1948 war. In contrast, the borders of the recently-freed states
of Eastern Europe have greater legitimacy because they have firmer grounding
in history, and some were the product of earlier international negotiation
and agreement.
Borders may bisect nationalities, or may follow national demographic divides.
Nation-bisecting borders are more troublesome, because they have the
same effect as demographic intermingling: they entrap parts of nationalities
within the boundaries of states dominated by other ethnic groups, giving
rise to expansionism by the truncated nation. Thus Hungary's borders bisect
(and truncate) the Hungarian nation, giving rise to a (now dormant but still
surviving) Hungarian revanchism against Slovakia, Serbia, and Rumania.32
The Russian/Ukrainian border bisects both nationalities, creating the potential
for movements to adjust borders in both countries.
The borders of new states can arise in two main ways: from violent military
struggle (e.g., Israel) or as a result of cession of sovereignty to existing
administrative units whose boundaries were previously defined by the parent
multiethnic state (e.g., former Soviet Union). War-born borders often have
the advantage of following ethnic lines, because the cruelties of war often
cause ethnic cleansing, and offensives lose strength at ethnic boundaries;
inherited administrative borders (e.g., the boundaries of Azerbaijan, which
entrap the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh) more often plant the charge of
future conflict by dividing nations and creating diasporas. The peaceful dissolution
of the former Soviet Union was thus a mixed blessing: its successor
states emerged without violence, but with borders that captured unhappy
diasporas behind them.
32. On latent Hungarian revanchism see, for example, Judith Ingram, "Boys Impatient for 'Great
Hungary' to Take Wing," New York Times, January 15, 1993, p. A4. On its official manifestations
see Stephen Engelberg with Judith Ingram, "Now Hungary Adds Its Voice to the Ethnic Tumult,"
Nezv York Times, January 25, 1993, p. A3.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War j 23
POLITICAL/ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: HOW HAVE NEIGHBORS BEHAVED?
HOW DO THEY NOW BEHAVE?
The conduct of nationalities and nation-states mirrors their neighbors' past
and present conduct.
PAST CONDUCT: WERE GREAT CRIMES COMMITTED? The degree of harmony
or conflict between intermingled nationalities depends partly on the size of
the crimes committed by each against the other in the past; the greater these
past crimes, the greater the current conflict. Memories of its neighbors'
cruelties will magnify an emerging nation's impulse to ingather its diaspora,
converting the nation from a diaspora-accepting to a diaspora-annexing attitude.
Thus the vast Croatian mass-murders of Serbs during the 1940s were
the taproot that fed violent pan-Serbianism after 1990: Serbs vowed "never
again," and argued that they must incorporate the Serbian diaspora in Croatia
to save it from new pogroms.33 Past suffering can also spur nations to oppress
old tormentors who now live among them as minorities, sparking conflict
with these minorities' home countries. Thus the past horrors inflicted on the
Baltic peoples by Stalinism fuels their discrimination against their Russian
minorities today;34 this discrimination, in turn, feeds anti-Baltic feeling in
Russia. In contrast, non-victim nations are less aggressive toward both neighbors
and minorities. Czech nationalism is benign partly because the Czechs
have escaped real victimhood; Quebec nationalism is mild for the same
reason.
Mass murder, land theft, and population expulsions are the crimes that
matter most. Past exterminations foster diaspora-recovering ideologies that
are justified by self-protection logic. Past land theft fosters territorial definitions
of nationhood (e.g., the Israeli Likud's concept of "the Land of Israel,"
a place including once-Jewish lands that Likud argues were wrongfully taken
by others) and claims to land that excludes the rights of peoples now on that
land (the Likud rejects equal rights for the Palestinian inhabitants of these
33. See Bette Denich, "Unbury the Victims: Nationalist Revivals of Genocide in Yugoslavia,"
Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois,
November 1991.
34. On the Baltic states' policies see Steven Erlanger, "Baltic Identity: Russians Wonder If They
Belong: New Citizenship Rules May in Effect Expel the Ex-'Occupiers'," New York Times, November
22, 1992, p. 1. This Baltic anti-Russian discrimination reflects the great cruelties inflicted
on the Baltic peoples by Stalin's government: during the years 1940-49 some 36 percent of the
indigenous population of Latvia, 33 percent of the indigenous population of Estonia, and 32
percent of the indigenous population of Lithuania were killed, deported, or driven into exile.
Dag Sebastian Ahlander, "Help Baltics Deal with Russian Minority," New York Times (letter to
the editor), December 6, 1992, p. E18.
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International Security 18:4 j 24
once-Jewish lands; Serbs likewise reject equal rights for Albanian Kosovars
who Serbs claim wrongfully took Serb land.) Past expulsions and dispersions
feed diaspora-intolerance: if others created the diaspora, it is argued, then
others should pay the price for restoring the diaspora to the nation by making
territorial concessions.
The scope of the dangers posed by past crimes is a function, in part, of
whether these crimes are remembered, and whether victims can attach responsibility
for crimes to groups that are still present. Crimes that have faded
in the victims' memories have a less corrosive effect on intergroup relations;
thus mayhem that occurred before written records poses fewer problems
than more recent crimes that are better-recorded.35
Crimes committed by groups still on the scene pose more problems than
crimes committed by vanished groups. This, in turn, is a matter of interpretation:
who committed the crime in question? Can inherited blame be attached
to any present group? Thus the Ukrainians can assess responsibility
for Stalin's vast murders of Ukrainians in several ways.36 Were they committed
by a crazed Georgian? This interpretation is benign: it points the
finger at a single man who is long gone from the scene. Were they committed
by that now-vanished tribe, the Bolsheviks? This interpretation is also benign:
those responsible have miraculously disappeared, leaving no target for violence.
Or, more ominously, were these the crimes of the Russian empire and
the Russian people? This interpretation would guarantee bitter RussianUkrainian
conflict, because the crimes in question were so enormous, and
many of the "criminals" live in Ukraine,37 making ready targets for hatred,
and setting the stage for a Russian-Ukrainian conflict-spiral. Such a spiral is
more likely because Russians would not accept the blame assigned them:
they count themselves among the victims, not the perpetrators, of Bolshe-
35. For example, native Americans can coexist, albeit uneasily, with European immigrants partly
because the enormous horrors that the Europeans inflicted on the natives have faded into the
mists of history. On these horrors see David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the
Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Stannard estimates that
the native population of the Americas fell by roughly 95 percent-in absolute numbers by about
71-95 million people-after the European arrival in 1492 (p. 268). If so, this was the greatest
human-caused human death in world history.
36. On these murders see Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the
Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Stalin's other crimes are covered in
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
37. Ukraine contains 10.5 million Russians, 21 percent of its total population. Calculated from
Scherer, USSR Facts and Figures Annual, p. 49.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War j 25
vism's crimes, and they would view others' demands that they accept blame
as a malicious outrage.
The danger posed by past crimes also depends on the criminal group's
later behavior: has it apologized or otherwise shown contrition? Or has it
shown contempt for its victims' suffering? Nazi Germany's crimes were
among the greatest in human history, but Germany has re-established civil
relations with its former victims by acknowledging its crimes and showing
contrition, e.g., by postwar German leaders' public apologies and symbolic
acts of repentance. Conversely, Turkey has denied the great crimes it committed
against the Armenian people during World War 1;38 this display of
contempt has sustained an Armenian hatred that is still expressed in occasional
acts of violent anti-Turkish retribution.
A final significant factor lies in the degree of coincidence of power and
victimhood. Are the groups with the greatest historic grievances also the
groups with the greatest power today? Or is past victimhood confined to
today's weaker groups? Things are more dangerous when power and aggrievement
coincide, since this combination brings together both the motive
and the capacity to make trouble; when power and aggrievement are separated,
grievances have less effects. On this count the past crimes of the
Russian and Bolshevik states leave a less dangerous legacy than the crimes
committed in the former Yugoslavia during World War II, because the strongest
group in the former Soviet Union (the Russians) is the least aggrieved;
in contrast, in former Yugoslavia the strongest group (the Serbs) is the most
aggrieved.
CURRENT CONDUCT: ARE MINORITY RIGHTS RESPECTED? As noted earlier, nations
are less diaspora-accepting if others abuse the rights of that diaspora;
such abuse magnifies the impulse to incorporate the territory of the diaspora
by force. Thus Serbia's 1991 attack on Croatia was spurred partly by Croatian
threats against the Serbian minority.39 Likewise, Russia's attitude toward the
38. On Turkish denial of these murders see Roger W. Smith, "The Armenian Genocide: Memory,
Politics, and the Future," in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics,
Ethics (New York: St. Martin's, 1992), pp. 1-20; Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Ottoman Archives and
Denial of the Armenian Genocide," in Hovannisian, Armenian Genocide, pp. 280-310; and Roger
W. Smith, "Genocide and Denial: The Armenian Case and Its Implications," Armenian Review,
Vol. 42 (Spring 1989), pp. 1-38. On the general disappearance of the Armenian people from
Turkish historical writings, see Clive Foss, "The Turkish View of Armenian History: A Vanishing
Nation," in Hovannisian, Armenian Genocide, pp. 250-279.
39. Glenny, "The Massacre of'Yugoslavia," pp. 30-31; and Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia, pp. 12-
14, 123.
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International Security 18:4 j 26
Russian diaspora will be governed partly by the treatment of the Russian
diaspora in their new homelands. Oppressive policies will provoke wider
Russian aims.40
PERCEPTUAL FACTORS: NATIONALIST SELF-IMAGES AND IMAGES OF OTHERS
The effects of nationalism depend heavily on the beliefs of nationalist movements,
especially their self-images and their images of their neighbors. Nations
can co-exist most easily when these beliefs converge-when they share
a common image of their mutual history, and of one another's current conduct
and character. This can be achieved either by common convergence of
images on something close to the "truth," or by convergence on the same
distortion of the truth. Relations are worst if images diverge in self-justifying
directions. This occurs if nations embrace self-justifying historical myths, or
adopt distorted pictures of their own and others' current conduct and character
that exaggerate the legitimacy of their own cause. Such myths and
distortions can expand a nation's sense of its right and its need to oppress
its minorities or conquer its diaspora. If carried to extreme such myths can
also transform nationalism from symmetrical to asymmetrical-from a purely
self-liberating enterprise into a hegemonistic enterprise.41
40. Even moderate Russian officials have voiced deep concern over the rights of Russian minorities
in nearby states. See, for example, Sergei Stankevich, "Russia in Search of Itself," The
National Interest, No. 28 (Summer 1992), pp. 47-51, at 49-51; and "Four Comments" in ibid.
pp. 51-55, at 51-53. They have so far proposed solutions within the framework of international
law and institutions: for example, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev suggested in 1992
that the UN establish a mechanism to protect the rights of Russians in non-Slavic former Soviet
republics. Thomas Friedman, "Russian Appeals to U.N. to Safeguard Minorities," New York
Times, September 23, 1992, p. A17. If the rights of these minorities remain otherwise unprotected,
however, it seems likely that Russia will act on its own to protect them.
41. In the past I referred to such myth-poisoned nationalism as "hypernationalism." See Stephen
Van Evera, "Primed for Peace," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/1991), pp. 7-
57, at 47-48n ("Hypernationalism is artificially generated or magnified by chauvinist myths.
Conflicts arising from hypernationalism thus derive from the beliefs of nations," not from their
circumstances.) However, my usage is narrower than others: see, for example, John Mearsheimer,
who defines hypernationalism as the belief that other nationalities are "both inferior and
threatening," and as an "attitude of contempt and loathing" toward other nations; Mearsheimer
suggests these beliefs can arise from false propaganda or from real experience. John Mearsheimer,
"Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," International Security,
Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-56, at 21. Others use the term "hypernationalism" still
more broadly to refer to any type of nationalism that spawns aggressive conduct and war. I
avoid the term in this paper because it has acquired these several meanings. I regret adding to
the confusion, and suggest we settle on a single usage-probably Mearsheimer's, since it has
seniority.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War 1 27
Chauvinist mythmaking is a hallmark of nationalism, practiced by nearly
all nationalist movements to some degree.42 These myths are purveyed
through the schools, especially in history teaching;43 through literature; or
by political elites. They come in three principal varieties: self-glorifying, selfwhitewashing,
and other-maligning. Self-glorifying myths incorporate claims
of special virtue and competence, and false claims of past beneficence toward
others.44 Self-whitewashing myths incorporate false denial of past wrongdoing
against others.45 Both types of myths can lead a nation to claim a right
42. Indeed, the intellectual history of Western nationalisms is largely a record of false claims of
special self-virtue and of overwrought blaming of others. See examples in Shafer, Faces of
Nationalismn, pp. 313-342. However, myth is not an essential ingredient of nationalism: nationalism
can also rest on a group solidarity based on truth, and the effects of nationalism are largely
governed by the degree of truthfulness of the beliefs that a given nationalism adopts; as
truthfulness diminishes, the risks posed by the nationalism increase.
43. As Ernst Renan has said, "Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation." Quoted in
Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, p. 12.
44. World War I-era European nationalists provide abundant examples of such self-glorification.
General Friedrich Bernhardi, the German army's main propagandist, proclaimed in 1912 that
the Germans are "the greatest civilized people known to history," and have "always been the
standard-bearers of free thought" and "free from prejudice." Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany
and the Next War, trans. Allen H. Powles (New York: Longmans, Green, 1914, first published in
Germany in 1912), pp. 14, 72. In 1915 German economist Werner Sombart declared that the
Germans were "the chosen people of this century," and that this chosenness explained others'
hostility: "Now we understand why other people hate us. They do not understand us but they
fear our tremendous spiritual superiority." Kohn, Mind of Germany, p. 300-301. Richard Dehmel,
a German writer, proclaimed in 1914: "We Germans are more humane than the other nations;
we do have better blood and breeding, more soul, more heart, and more imagination." Klaus
Schroter, "Chauvinism and its Tradition: German Writers and the Outbreak of the First World
War," Germanic Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (March 1968), pp. 120-135, at 126, emphasis in original.
In Britain Thomas Macaulay wrote that the British were "the greatest and most highly civilized
people that ever the world saw" and were "the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the
causes of political improvement." Paul M. Kennedy, "The Decline of Nationalistic History in
the West, 1900-1970," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (January, 1973), pp. 77-100,
at 81. In the United States Senator Albert Beveridge proclaimed in 1899 that "God . . . has made
us the master organizers of the world.... He has made us adept in government that we may
administer government among savage and senile peoples. . . . He has marked the American
people as His chosen nation . . ." Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist
Expansionism in American History (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1963), p. 308. The Soviet government
continued this tradition after 1918: the standard Soviet school history text of 1948 claimed that
Russian scientists invented the telegraph, steam engine, electric lamp, and the airplane. E.H.
Dance, History the Betrayer: A Study in Bias (Westport: Greenwood, 1960), pp. 67-68.
45. Innocence can be asserted by denying a barbarous action, or by reinterpreting the action to
put a benign "spin" on it. Post-1919 German textbooks illustrate whitewash-by-denial: Weimar
German textbooks denied German responsibility for World War I, falsely claiming that "there
was no wish for war in Berlin" in 1914, and that "today every informed person . .. knows that
Germany is absolutely innocent with regard to the outbreak of the war, and that Russia, France,
and England wanted the war and unleashed it." Dance, History the Betrayer, p. 62. Nazi-era texts
likewise claimed that "England willed the war" in 1914 after having "set Japan on Russia" in
1904. Dance, History the Betrayer, p. 57. Whitewash-by-spin is also common. When Nazi forces
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International Security 18:4 | 28
to rule others ("we are especially virtuous, so our expansion benefits those
we conquer"). They also lead a nation to view others' complaints against
them as expressions of ungrateful malice: ("we have never harmed them;
they slander us by claiming otherwise"). This can produce conflict-spirals,46
as the nation responds to others' legitimate complaints with hostility, in
expectation that the claimant knows its claims are illegitimate and will back
down if challenged. The targets of this hostility, in turn, will take it as further
evidence of the nation's inherent cruelty and injustice. Self-glorifying myth,
if it contains claims of cultural superiority, can also feed false faith in one's
capacity to defeat and subdue others, causing expansionist wars of optimistic
miscalculation.
Other-maligning myth can incorporate claims of others' cultural inferiority,
false blame of others for past crimes and tragedies, and false claims that
others now harbor malign intentions against the nation.47 Such myths supoverran
Norway and Denmark in 1940 the Nazi party newspaper announced the invasion, but
its headline proclaimed "GERMANY SAVES SCANDINAVIA!" William L. Shirer, The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 698n.
Similarly, after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979 Leonid Brezhnev admitted the action
but told the Soviet public: "There has been no Soviet 'intervention' or 'aggression' at all." Rather,
Soviet forces were sent to Afghanistan "at its government's request," to defend Afghan "national
independence, freedom and honor." L.I. Brezhnev, "Interview for Pravda, January 13, 1980,"
from SShA: Ekonomika, Politika, Ideologiya, No. 2 (February 1980), trans. Joint Publication Research
Service, in U.S.S.R. Report, No. 75485 (April 14, 1980), p. 3. Japanese imperialists of the 1930s
and 1940s claimed Japan was saving China from the "death grip" of the Comintern, and
liberating Asia from the Western imperialism. Robert J.C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 134; lenaga, Pacific War, pp. 153-154. Earlier a
French textbook proclaimed the philanthropy of the French North African empire-"France is
kind and generous to the peoples she has conquered." Dance, History the Betrayer, p. 44.
46. Thus German whitewashing of German responsibility for World War I helped fuel German
hostility toward Europe during the interwar years, and laid the basis for popular German support
for Nazi foreign policy. On the post-1918 German "innocence" campaign see Holger H. Herwig,
"Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany After the Great War," International Security,
Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1987), pp. 5-44. A good account of Germany's actual pre-1914 conduct is
Imanuel Geiss, German Foreign Policy, 1871-1914 (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).
47. For example, Wilhelmine and Nazi German nationalists often asserted others' inherent
inferiority. Kaiser Wilhelm II declared in 1913: "the Slavs were not born to rule but to serve,
this they must be taught." Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, trans.
Marian Jackson (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), p. 222. Historian Heinrich von Treitschke
thought the English suffered from "cowardice and sensuality," and the French from "besottedness,"
while an earlier German textbook declared France was "a fermenting mass of rottenness."
Snyder, From Bismarck to Hitler, p. 35; Antoine Guilland, Modern Germany and Her Historians
(Westport: Greenwood Press, n.d., reprint of 1915 ed.), pp. 304, 154, quoting an 1876 text by
A. Hummel. Writer Richard Dehmel described an England with "only practical talents but not
'culture'." Schroter, "Chauvinism and its Tradition," p. 125. Later, Hitler thought Russia was
"ripe for dissolution" because it was ruled by the Jews, who were "a ferment of decomposition."
Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Naziism 1919-1945: A History in Documents and
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 29
port arguments for the rightness and necessity of denying equal rights to
minorities living in the national territory, and for subjugating peoples further
afield. These minorities and distant peoples will appear to pose a danger if
they are left unsuppressed; moreover, their suppression is morally justified
by their (imagined) misconduct, past and planned.
Self-whitewashing myths are probably the most common of these three
varieties.48 The dangers they pose are proportional to the gravity of the crimes
they whitewash. If small crimes are denied, their denial is disrespect that
victims can choose to overlook. The denial may even spring from simple
ignorance; if so, it conveys little insult. If great crimes are denied, however,
their denial conveys contempt for the victims' very humanity. The denial
cannot be ascribed to unintended ignorance; if truly great crimes are forgotten,
the forgetting is willful, hence it conveys greater insult. And being
willful, the denial implies a dismissal of the crime's wrongness, which in
turn suggests an ominous willingness to repeat it. As a result, the denial of
great crimes provokes greater hostility from the victims than the denial of
minor crimes.49 Thus Croatian historians and politicians who whitewashed
the Croatian Ustashi's vast murders of Serbs during World War II were
Eyewitness Accounts, Vol. 2 (New York: Schocken, 1988), pp. 615-616. He likewise viewed the
United States, in Gerhard Weinberg's paraphrase, as a "mongrel society, in which the scum
naturally floated to the top," that "could not possibly construct a sound economy." Gerhard L.
Weinberg, "Hitler's Image of the United States," American Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (July
1964), pp. 1006-1021, at 1010.
Wilhelmine German nationalists also falsely accused others of malign intentions. Pan-German
nationalists wove what Hermann Kantorowicz later termed a "fairy tale of encirclement" that
posited a British-French-Russian plot to destroy Germany. See Geiss, German Foreign Policy,
pp. 121-127. Imperial Japanese nationalists likewise saw a mythical anti-Japanese "ABCD encirclement"
by America, Britain, China, and the Dutch, with the USSR and Germany sometimes
thrown in as co-conspirators. See Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, chapter 8, pp. 188-227.
During the Korean War Chinese writers demonized the United States as a "paradise of gangsters,
swindlers, rascals, special agents, fascist germs, speculators, debauchers and all the dregs of
mankind." President Truman and General Douglas MacArthur became "mad dogs," "bloodstained
bandits," "murderers," "rapists," and "savages." At the same time General MacArthur
warned that China "has become aggressively imperialistic, with a lust for expansion." John G.
Stoessinger, Nations in Darkness: China, Russia, and America, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1990), pp. 50-51.
For an example of falsely blaming others for past tragedies see notes 45 and 46 on the German
post-1918 innocence campaign: in making this claim of innocence Germans also blamed others
for starting the war.
48. Conversely, other-denigration is less common than both self-whitewashing and self-glorification,
but is often implicit in self-glorification (others suffer in comparison to the virtuous
self-image: if one's own group is spotlessly virtuous, others look worse by comparison).
49. Moreover, the victims' charg'es will anger the criminal nation, since it believes itself innocent,
hence it views the victims' charges as malicious slander.
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International Security 18:4 | 30
playing with especially powerful dynamite:50 the crimes they denied were
enormous, hence their denial had serious ramifications, feeding Serb hostility
that led to the Serbo-Croatian war of 1991-92. Likewise, the question of
historical responsibility for Stalin's crimes in the former Soviet Union is
especially explosive because the crimes in question are so vast.
Why are myths purveyed? They emanate largely from nationalist political
elites, for whom they serve important political functions. Some of these
functions also serve the nation as a whole, while others serve only the narrow
interests of the elite. Self-glorifying myths encourage citizens to contribute
to the national community-to pay taxes, join the army, and fight for the
nation's defense. These purposes are hard to fault, although the myths
purveyed to achieve them may nevertheless have pernicious side-effects.
Myths also bolster the authority and political power of incumbent elites: selfglorifying
and self-whitewashing myths allow elites to shine in the reflected
luster of their predecessors' imagined achievements and the imagined glory
of the national institutions they control; other-maligning myths bolster the
authority of elites by supporting claims that the nation faces external threats,
thus deflecting popular hostility away from national elites and toward outsiders.
Myths that serve only these purposes injure intercommunal relations
without providing countervailing benefits to the general community.
Although mythmaking is ubiquitous among nationalisms, the scope and
character of mythmaking varies widely across nations. Myths flourish most
when elites need them most, when opposition to myths is weakest, and
when publics are most myth-receptive. Four principal factors govern the
level of infection by nationalist myth:
THE LEGITIMACY OF THE REGIME (or, if the national movement remains
stateless, the legitimacy of the movement's leaders). As just noted, nationalist
myths can help politically frail elites to bolster their grip on power. The
temptation for elites to engage in mythmaking is therefore inversely propor-
50. After Germany and Italy conquered Yugoslavia in 1941 they established a puppet state, the
Independent State of Croatia, under the leadership of the Croatian Ustashi, a nationalist Croat
extremist-terrorist organization headed by Ante Pavelic. Without prompting from the Nazis the
Ustashi then launched a mass murder campaign against other ethnic groups, killing by one
estimate 500,000-700,000 Serbs, 50,000 Jews, and 20,000 Gypsies. Alex N. Dragnich, Serbs and
Croats: The Struggle for Yugoslavia (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992), pp. 96, 101-103. Dragnich
reports that even the Germans were reportedly horrified by the nature and extent of the killings,
and German officials protested to Pavelic (p. 103). On these murders see also Aleksa Djilas, The
Contested Country (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 120-127; he endorses a
smaller estimate by Bogoljub Kocovic of 234,000 Serbs murdered (p. 126). Noting Croatian
denials of the Ustashi's mass murders is Denich, "Unbury the Victims," pp. 5-6.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 31
tional to their political legitimacy: the less legitimate their rule, the greater
their incentive to make myths.
A regime's legitimacy is in turn a function of its representativeness, its
competence and efficiency, and the scope of the tasks that face it. Unrepresentative
regimes will face challenge from under-represented groups, and
will sow myths to build the support needed to defeat this challenge.51 This
motive helped fuel the extreme nationalism that swept Europe in the late
nineteenth century: oligarchic regimes used chauvinist myths, often spread
through the schools, to deflect demands from below for a wider sharing of
political and economic power.52 Corrupt regimes or regimes that lack competence
due to underinstitutionalization will likewise deploy chauvinist
myths to divert challenges from publics and elites. This is a common motive
for mythmaking in the Third World. Finally, regimes that face overwhelming
tasks-e.g., economic or social collapse, perhaps caused by exogenous factors-will
be tempted to use myths to divert popular impatience with their
inability to improve conditions. Thus the Great Depression fueled nationalist
mythmaking in some industrial states during the 1930s.53
These factors correlate closely with the ebb and flow of nationalist mythmaking
through history. Nationalist mythmaking reached high tide in Europe
when Europe's regimes had little legitimacy, during 1848-1914. It then fell
dramatically as these regimes democratized and their societies became less
stratified, which greatly lessened popular challenge to elites.54
THE SCOPE OF THE DEMANDS POSED BY THE STATE ON ITS CITIZENRY. The
more the regime asks of its citizens, the harder it must work to persuade its
51. Such mythmaking has two targets: the public at large, and state instruments of coercion,
which may need special motivation to carry out their tasks.
52. Regime illegitimacy provides the largest motive for elite mythmaking when the state cannot
rule by pure force: mythmaking is then the elite's only means to preserve its rule. The proximate
cause of mythmaking can therefore sometimes be found in the decline of the state monopoly
of force, not the decline of elite legitimacy. This was the case in Europe in the nineteenth
century: nationalist mythmaking rose with the rise of mass armies and popular literacy, which
diminished the capacity of the state to govern by pure coercion. Elites were therefore forced to
resort to persuasion, hence to mythmaking. (Mass literacy in this context proved a doubleedged
sword for newly-literate publics. Literacy enabled mass political mobilization by spreading
social knowledge and ideas; this led to popular empowerment, but literacy also made publics
easier to control from above, by enabling elites to purvey elite-justifying myths through the
written word; this limited or reduced popular power.)
53. Making a similar argument, although casting it in somewhat different terms, is Snyder,
"Nationalism and the Crisis of the, Post-Soviet State," pp. 14-16.
54. On the decline of nationalistic history in Europe since the world wars see Kennedy, "Decline
of Nationalistic History in the West."
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International Security 18:4 | 32
citizens to fulfill these demands; this increases its temptation to deploy
nationalist myths for purposes of social mobilization. Regimes at war often
use myths to motivate sacrifice by their citizens and to justify their cruelties
against others.55 These myths can live on after the war to poison external
relations in later years. Mass revolutionary movements often infuse their
movements with mythical propaganda for the same reason; these myths
survive after the revolution is won.56 Regimes that are forced by external
threats to sustain large peacetime military efforts are likewise driven to use
myths to sustain popular support. This is especially true if they rely on mass
armies for their defense.57 Finally, totalitarian regimes place large demands
on their citizens, and use correspondingly large doses of myth to induce
their acquiescence.
DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CRISIS. In societies suffering economic collapse, mythmaking
can take scapegoating form-the collapse is falsely blamed on domestic
or international malefactors. Here the mythmaking grows from increased
receptivity of the audience: publics are more willing to believe that
others are responsible when they are actually suffering pain; when that pain
is new and surprising, they search for the hand of malevolent human agents.
Germany in the 1930s is the standard example.58
THE STRENGTH AND COMPETENCE OF INDEPENDENT EVALUATIVE INSTITUTIONS.
Societies that lack free-speech traditions, a strong free press, and free
universities are more vulnerable to mythmaking because they lack "truth
squads" to counter the nationalist mythmakers. Independent historians can
provide an antidote to official historical mythmaking; an independent press
is an antidote to official mythmaking about current events. Their absence is
a permissive condition for nationalist mythmaking.59 Wilhelmine Germany
55. See, for example, Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and the War in the Third Reich
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 106-178, describing the myths purveyed by the
Nazi regime to motivate its troops on the Eastern Front.
56. Advancing this argument is Stephen M. Walt, "Revolution and War," World Politics, Vol.
44, No. 3 (April 1992), pp. 321-368, at 336-340.
57. For this argument see Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power."
58. This hypothesis is widely accepted but has not been systematically tested; more empirical
research exploring the relationship between economic downturns and scapegoating would be
valuable.
59. The existence of a free press and free universities does not guarantee that myths will be
scrutinized; these institutions also require a truth-squad ethos-a sense that mythbusting is
among their professional missions. This ethos is often missing among university faculties, who
frequently pursue research agendas that have little relevance to the worries of the real world.
A discussion that remains valuable is Robert S. Lynd, Knowledge For What? The Place of Social
Science in American Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939). A recent discussion is
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 33
illustrates: the German academic community failed to counter the official
myths of the era, and often helped purvey them.60
Several conclusions follow from this discussion. Democratic regimes are
less prone to mythmaking, because such regimes are usually more legitimate
and are free-speech tolerant; hence they can develop evaluative institutions
to weed out nationalist myth. Absolutist dictatorships that possess a massive
military superiority over their citizens are also less prone to mythmaking,
because they can survive without it. The most dangerous regimes are those
that depend on some measure of popular consent, but are narrowly governed
by unrepresentative elites. Things are still worse if these governments are
poorly institutionalized, are incompetent or corrupt for other reasons, or face
overwhelming problems that exceed their governing capacities. Regimes that
emerged from a violent struggle, or enjoy only precarious security, are also
more likely to retain a struggle-born chauvinist belief-system.
Conclusion: Predictions and Prescriptions
What predictions follow? These hypotheses can be used to generate forecasts;
applied to Europe, they predict that nationalism will pose little risk to peace
in Western Europe, but large risks in Eastern Europe.
Most of the nationalisms of the West are satisfied, having already gained
states. Western diasporas are few and small, reflecting the relative homogeneity
of Western national demography, and Western minorities are relatively
well-treated. The historic grievances of Western nationalities against one
another are also small-many of the West's inter-ethnic horrors have faded
from memory, and the perpetrators of the greatest recent horror-the Germans-have
accepted responsibility for it and reconciled with their victims.
The regimes of the West are highly legitimate, militarily secure, and economically
stable; hence chauvinist mythmaking by their elites is correspondingly
Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic
Books, 1987), pp. 112-237. On this problem in political science see Hans J. Morgenthau, "The
Purpose of Political Science," in James C. Charlesworth, ed., A Design for Political Science: Scope,
Objectives, and Methods (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1966),
pp. 63-79, at 69-74. German academics also cooperated with official German myth-making after
World War I; see Herwig, "Clio Deceived."
60. A good survey of German historiography of this era is Snyder, German Nationalism, chapter
6 (pp. 123-152). An older survey is Guilland, Modern Germany and Her Historians. Also relevant
are John A. Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (London:
George Prior, 1975), chapter 1 (pp. 7-26); and Snyder, From Bismarck to Hitler, chapter 3 (pp. 25-
35).
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International Security 18:4 134
rare. The West European nationalisms that caused the greatest recent troubles,
those of Germany and Italy, are now clearly benign, and the conditions
for a return to aggressive nationalism are absent in both countries. Outsiders
sometimes fear that outbreaks of anti-immigrant extremism in Germany signal
the return of German fascism, but the forces of tolerance and decency
are overwhelmingly dominant in Germany, and the robust health of German
democracy and of German academic and press institutions ensures they will
remain dominant. As a result nationalism should cause very little trouble in
Western Europe.
In the East the number of stateless nationalisms is larger, raising greater
risk that future conflicts will arise from wars of liberation. The collapse of
Soviet power shifted the balance of power toward these nationalisms, by
replacing the Soviet state with weaker successor states. This shift has produced
secessionist wars in Georgia and Moldova, and such wars could multiply.
The tangled pattern of ethnic intermingling across the East creates large
diasporas. Eastern societies have little tradition of respect for minority rights,
raising the likelihood that these diasporas will face abuse; this in turn may
spur their homelands to try to incorporate them by force. The borders of
many emerging Eastern nations lack natural defensive barriers, leaving the
state exposed to attack; some borders also lack legitimacy, and correspond
poorly with ethnic boundaries. Some new Eastern regimes, especially those
in the former Soviet Union, lack legitimacy and are under-institutionalized,
raising the risk that they will resort to chauvinist mythmaking to maintain
their political viability. This risk is heightened by the regional economic crisis
caused by the transition from command to market economies. Evaluative
institutions (free universities and a free press) remain weak in the East,
raising the risk that myths will go unchallenged. The Soviet regime committed
vast crimes against its subject peoples; this legacy will embitter relations
among these peoples if they cannot agree on who deserves the blame.61
61. The emerging nations of the former USSR now stand knee-deep in the blood of Stalin's
victims, and in the economic ruin that Bolshevism left behind. If every nation blames only
others for these disasters, civil relations among them will be impossible: each will hope to
someday settle accounts. Civil relations depend, then, on a convergence toward a common
history of the Bolshevik disaster. Things would be best if all converged on a version that blamed
the Bolsheviks-who, having vanished, can be blamed painlessly. (Bolshevism would then
usefully serve as a hate-soaker-its final, and among its few positive, functions in Soviet history.)
Absent that, things would be better if the successor nations agree on how to allocate blame
among themselves.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War 135
The Eastern picture is not all bleak. The main preconditions for democracy-high
levels of literacy, some degree of industrial development, and the
absence of a landed oligarchy-exist across most of the East. As a result the
long-term prospects for democracy are bright. Moreover, the East's economic
crisis is temporary: the conditions for prosperous industrial economies (a
trained workforce and adequate natural resources) do exist, so the crisis
should ease once the market transition is completed. These relatively favorable
long-term prospects for democracy and prosperity dampen the risk that
chauvinist mythmaking will get out of hand.62 The fact that the new Eastern
states managed to gain freedom without violent struggles also left them with
fewer malignant beliefs, by allowing them to forgo infusing their societies
with chauvinist war propaganda. The power and ethnographic structures of
the East, while dangerous, are less explosive than those of Yugoslavia: historic
grievances and military power coincide less tightly-there is no other
Eastern equivalent of Serbia, having both military superiority and large historical
grievances; and ethnographic patterns create less imperative for a
diaspora-rescue operation by the state most likely to attempt such a rescue,
Russia.
62. However, in the East's heterogeneous interethnic setting democracy is a mixed blessing: if
it takes a strict majoritarian form it can produce majority tyranny and the oppression of minorities,
as it has in the past in Northern Ireland and the American Deep South. To produce civil
peace in a multi-ethnic setting, democracy must adopt non-majoritarian principles of powersharing,
like those of Swiss democracy. On this question see Arend Lijphart, "Consociational
Democracy," World Politics, Vol. 21, No. 2 (January 1969), pp. 107-125; Arend Lijphart, Democracy
in Plural Societies: A Com?lparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Arend
Lijphart, Demnocracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consenslus Government in Twenty-One Counltries
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Arend Lijphart, "The Power-Sharing Approach," in
Joseph V. Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnlic Societies (Lexington, Ma
Lexington Books, 1990), pp. 491-509; Kenneth D. McRae, "Theories of Power-Sharing and
Conflict Management," in Montville, ConIflict an1d Peacemalakinig, pp. 93-106; Jurg Steiner, "PowerSharing:
Another Swiss 'Export Product'?" in Montville, Conflict and Peacem7laking, pp. 107-114;
Hans Daalder, "The Consociational Democracy Theme," World Politics, Vol. 26, No. 4 (July 1974),
pp. 604-621; Kenneth D. McRae, ed., Conlsociational Democracy: Political Accommn0odation in Segmented
Societies (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974); and Vernon Van Dyke, "Human Rights
and the Rights of Groups," American Journal of Political Scienice, Vol. 18, No. 4 (November, 1974),
pp. 725-741, at 730-740. See also James Madison, "The Same Subject Continued . . ." (Federalist
No. 10), The Federalist Papers, intro. by Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library,
1961), pp. 77-84, which addresses the danger of majority tyranny and remedies for it; Madison
discusses the risks that arise when "a majority is included in a faction" (p. 80) and the dangers
of tyranny by "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" (p. 77). Also
relevant is Robert M. Axelrod, Conjflict of Interest: A Theony of Divergent Goals with Applicat
Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1970), whose theory of winning coalition membership explains why
majoritarian rules distribute power unequally in deeply divided societies.
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International Security 18:4 136
All in all, however, conditions in Eastern Europe are more bad than good;
hence nationalism will probably produce a substantial amount of violence in
the East over the next several decades.63
What policy prescriptions follow? The Western powers should move to
dampen the risks that nationalism poses in the East, by moving to channel
manipulable aspects of Eastern nationalism in benign directions. Some aspects
of Eastern nationalist movements are immutable (e.g., their degree of
intermingling, or the history of crimes between them). Others, however, can
be decided by the movements themselves (e.g., their attitude toward minorities,
their vision of history, and their willingness to reach final border settlements
with others); these can be influenced by the West if the movements
are susceptible to Western pressure or persuasion. The Western powers
should use their substantial economic leverage to bring such pressure to bear.
Specifically, the Western powers should condition their economic relations
with the new Eastern states on these states' conformity with a code of
peaceful conduct that proscribes policies that make nationalism dangerous.
The code should have six elements: (1) renunciation of the threat or use of
force; (2) robust guarantees for the rights of national minorities, to include,
under some stringent conditions, a legal right to secession;64 (3) commitment
63. Nationalism is also likely to produce substantial violence in the Third World, largely because
a high nation-to-state ratio still prevails there; hence many secessionist movements and wars of
secession are likely in the decades ahead. A discussion of the policy issues raised by this
circumstance is Halperin, Scheffer, and Small, Self-Determination in the New World Order; for a
global survey of current self-determination movements see ibid., pp. 123-160.
64. Minority rights should be defined broadly, to include fair minority representation in the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the central government. The definition of minority
rights used in most international human rights agreements is more restrictive: it omits the right
to share power in the national government, and includes only the right to political autonomy
and the preservation of minority language, culture, and religion. See Edward Lawson, Encyclopedia
of Human Rights (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1991), p. 1070; on the neglect of minority
rights by Western political thinkers, see Vernon Van Dyke, "The Individual, the State, and
Ethnic Communities in Political Theory," World Politics, Vol. 29, No. 3 (April 1977), pp. 343-
369.
When should minority rights be defined to include the right to secession and national independence?
Universal recognition of this right would require massive redrawing of boundaries
in the East, and would raise the question of Western recognition of scores of now-unrecognized
independence movements worldwide. One solution is to recognize the right to secede in
instances where the central government is unwilling to fully grant other minority rights, but to
decline to recognize the right to secede if all other minority rights are fully recognized and
robustly protected. In essence, the West would hold its possible recognition of a right to secede
in reserve, to encourage governments to recognize other minority rights. A discussion of the
right to secession is Vernon Van Dyke, "Collective Entities and Moral Rights: Problems in
Liberal-Democratic Thought," Journal of Politics, Vol. 44, No. 1 (February 1982), pp. 21-40, at
36-37. Also relevant is Halperin, Scheffer, and Small, Self-Determination in the New World Order.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War 137
to the honest teaching of history in the schools,65 and to refrain from the
propagation of chauvinist or other hate propaganda; (4) willingness to adopt
a democratic form of government, and to accept related institutions-specifically,
free speech and a free press;66 (5) adoption of market economic policies,
and disavowal of protectionist or other beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies
toward other Eastern states; and (6) acceptance of current national borders,
or agreement to settle contested borders promptly though peaceful
means. This list rests on the premise that "peaceful conduct" requires that
nationalist movements renounce the use of force against others (element 1),
and also agree to refrain from policies that the hypotheses presented here
warn against (elements 2-6).
Hypothesis 1.4 (see Table 1) warns that the risk of war rises when nationalist
movements oppress their minorities; hence the code requires respect for
minority rights (element 2). Hypothesis 11.6 warns that divergent beliefs
about mutual history and current conduct and character raise the risk of war;
hence the code asks for historical honesty and curbs on official hate propaganda
(element 3). Hypothesis II.6.a warns that illegitimate governments
have a greater propensity to mythmake, and hypothesis II.6.d warns that
chauvinist myths prevail more often if independent evaluative institutions
are weak; hence the code asks that movements adopt democracy (to bolster
legitimacy) and respect free speech and free press rights (to bolster evaluation)
(element 4). Hypothesis II.6.c warns that economic collapse promotes
chauvinist mythmaking; hence the code asks movements to adopt market
reforms, on grounds that prosperity requires marketization (element 5). Hypothesis
IJ.3.b warns that the risk of war rises if the borders of emerging
nation states lack legitimacy; hence the code asks movements to legitimize
their borders through formal non-violent settlement (element 6).67
65. States should not be asked to accept externally-imposed versions of history in their texts,
since no society can arbitrarily claim to know the "truth" better than others. But states could be
asked to commit to international dialogue on history, on the theory that free debate will cause
views to converge. Specifically, they could be asked to accept the obligation to subject their
school curricula to foreign criticism, perhaps in the context of textbook exchanges, and to allow
domestic publication of foreign criticisms of their curricula. Schemes of this sort have a long
history in Western Europe, where they had a substantial impact after 1945. See Dance, History
the Betrayer, pp. 127-128, 132, 135-150. This West European experience could serve as a template
for an Eastern program.
66. These democratic governments should adopt consociational power-sharing rules, not majoritarian
rules; otherwise ethnic minorities will be denied equal political power (see footnote
62.)
67. Such a code could be applied more widely, and serve as the basis for an international regime
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International Security 18:4 138
The Western powers should enforce this code by pursuing a common
economic policy toward the states of the East: observance of the code should
be the price for full membership in the Western economy, while non-observance
should bring exclusion and economic sanctions.68 This policy should be
married to an economic aid package to assist marketization, also conditioned
on code observance.
The Bush and Clinton administrations have adopted elements of this policy,
but omitted key aspects. In September 1991, then-Secretary of State
James Baker outlined five principles that incorporate most of the six elements
in the code of conduct outlined above (only element 3-honest treatment of
history-was unmentioned), and he indicated that American policy toward
the new Eastern states would be conditioned on their acceptance of these
principles.69 During the spring and summer of 1992 the administration also
proposed a substantial economic aid package (the Freedom Support Act) and
guided it through Congress.
However, Baker's principles later faded from view. Strangely, the Bush
administration failed to clearly condition release of its aid package on Eastern
compliance with these principles. It also failed to forge a common agreement
among the Western powers to condition their economic relations with the
Eastern states on these principles. The principles themselves were not elaborated;
most importantly, the minority rights that the Eastern states must
protect were not detailed, leaving these states free to adopt a watered-down
definition. The Bush administration also recognized several new Eastern
governments (e.g., Azerbaijan's) that gave Baker's principles only lip service
while violating them in practice.70 The Clinton administration has largely
on nationalist comportment; a nationalist movement's entitlement to international support
would correspond to its acceptance and observance of the code.
68. The Western powers should also offer to help the Eastern powers devise specific policies to
implement these principles, and offer active assistance with peacemaking if conflicts nevertheless
emerge. Specifically, Western governments and institutions should offer to share Western ideas
and experience on the building of democratic institutions; the development of political and legal
institutions that protect and empower minorities; the development of market economic institutions;
and the best means to control nationalism in education. (On this last point an account
is Dance, History the Betrayer, pp. 126-150.) Finally, if serious conflicts nevertheless emerge, the
West should offer active mediation, as the United States has between Israelis and Arabs.
69. For Baker's principles see "Baker's Remarks: Policy on Soviets," New York Times, September
5, 1991, p. A12. Baker reiterated these principles in December 1991; see "Baker Sees Opportunities
and Risks as Soviet Republics Grope for Stability," New York Times, December 13, 1991,
p. A24. Reporting Baker's conditioning of American recognition of the new Eastern governments
on their acceptance of these standards is Michael Wines, "Ex-Soviet Leader Is Lauded By Bush,"
New York Times, December 26, 1991, p. 1.
70. See "Winking at Aggression in Baku" (editorial), New York Times, February 14, 1992, p. A28.
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Hypotheses on Nationalism and War | 39
followed in Bush's footsteps: it continued Bush's aid program, but omitted
clear political conditions.71
There is still time for such a policy, but the clock is running out. A policy
resting on economic sticks and carrots will be too weak to end major violence
once it begins; hence the West should therefore move to avert trouble while
it still lies on the horizon.
71. In April 1993 the Clinton administration forged agreement among the Group of Seven (G7)
states (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the United States) on a $28 billion
aid package for the former Soviet Union, and Congress approved a substantial aid package in
September 1993. See Serge Schmemann, "Yeltsin Leaves Talks With Firm Support and More
Aid," Nezv York Times, April 5, 1993, p. 1; David E. Sanger, "7 Nations Pledge $28 Billion Fund
To Assist Russia," New York Times, April 16, 1993, p. 1; Steven Greenhouse, "I.M.F. Unveils
Plan for Soviet Lands," Nezv York Times, April 21, 1993, p. A16; and Steven A. Holmes, "House
Approves Bill Including 2.5 Billion in Aid for Russians," New York Times, September 24, 1993,
p. A6. The aid was conditioned on Eastern moves toward marketization, but political conditions
were omitted. President Clinton did declared that "we support respect for ethnic minorities,"
and "we stand with Russian democracy" as he announced the American aid pledge. Schmemann,
"Yeltsin Leaves Talks." However, press accounts do not mention explicit political con-
ditions.
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