Intervention in ethnic and ideological civil wars: Why one can be done and the other can't

Security Studies

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 62-101

  Kaufmann, Chaim ^a  

^a LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0002086649     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636419608429300     Document Type: Article

References (180)

1. Leslie H. Gelb, "Death and Indecision," New York Times, 26 June 1992;
2. William Pfaff, "The Shame of Bosnia," New York Review of Books, 24 September 1992, 18;
3. Anthony Lewis, "Action or Death," New York Times, 20 November 1992;
4. Peter Schneider, "Serbian Barbarism - and Ours," New York Times, 30 May 1993.
5. "While the war in Vietnam was not unwinnable, no one would consider battling irregular forces in difficult terrain easy. This would also be the case in Bosnia." F. Charles Parker, "Vietnam, Bosnia, and the Historical Record," In Depth 3, no. 2 (spring 1993): 29.
6. "Imposition of a UN protectorate on Bosnia [would be] costly, dangerous, [and] uncertain; it would require decades of military and political presence." Dusko Doder, "Yugoslavia: New War, Old Hatreds," Foreign Policy, no. 91 (summer 1993): 20.
7. See also Henry Kissinger, "Bosnia Poses Another Vietnam-like Quagmire," Houston Chronicle, 21 February 1993;
8. Donald Kaul, "Somalia Becoming Another Vietnam?" Houston Chronicle, 8 October 1993;
9. Stanley Newman, "The 'Freelance' Genocide in Rwanda Cannot be Halted by Outside Intervention," Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 May 1994. Some of the opponents of intervention also argue that there is no moral imperative to rescue victims of distant ethnic conflicts which do not not affect American national security - but this issue can be decided only by political and ethical debate, not by social science.
10. John J. Mearsheimer and Robert A. Pape, "The Answer A Three-way Partition Plan for Bosnia and How the U.S. Can Enforce It," New Republic, 14 June 1993, 22-28;
11. Anthony Lewis, "A Lesson Too Late," New York Times, 4 March 1994;
12. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Morton I. Abramowitz, "Lift the Embargo," New York Times, 20 April 1994.
13. Constructivist theorists of nationalism would disagree. They argue that individual and group identities are flexible, and that ethnicity has no inherent superiority over other identity categories. Important works include Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: Wiley, 1964);
14. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976);
15. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
16. Regardless of how flexible identities may be in calmer times, however, intense ethnic conflict both privileges and hardens ethnic identities. See Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security 20, no. 4 (spring 1996): 140-45.
17. The most important are Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," in Ethnic Conflict and International Security, ed. Michael E. Brown (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 103-24;
18. Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Boulder Westview, 1994);
19. Gidon Gottlieb, Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflict and the Decline of Sovereignty (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993).
20. To avoid discounting fundamentally similar conflicts because of differences in international legal status, "civil" wars are best defined as those among "geographically contiguous people concerned about possibly having to live with one another in the same political unit after the conflict" Roy Licklider, "How Civil Wars End," in Stopping the Killing ed. Roy Licklider (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 9. Thus the Abkhazian rebellion in Georgia and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan are equally properly considered ethnic civil wars.
21. Ethnic conflicts sometimes begin over grievances which could in principle be satisfied within existing state arrangements, such as demands by members of one group for an end to what they see as special political, economic, or other privileges for another group. Some are resolved at this stage. If and when the groups mobilize for violence, however, the conflict becomes a competition for control of the state or its territory as described above. Examples include the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, Hausa resentment of Ibo prominence in official and professional jobs in Nigeria in the mid-1960s, and possibly Slovenian, Croatian, and Serb dissatisfactions over distribution of Yugoslav federal resources in the late 1980s. Ronnie Muck, "The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland," Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 2 (April 1992): 211-30, esp. 213-14;
22. John P. Mackintosh, Nigerian Government and Politics: Prelude to the Revolution (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 556-61;
23. Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1995), 60-101. Religious conflicts may fall in either category. Disputes within a single religious community over the interpretation of the shared religion for social and political issues have dynamics resembling those of secular ideological conflicts. Examples include the conflicts between the relatively secularist Egyptian and Algerian governments and fundamentalist rebels. Conflicts between separate religious communities which do not engage in shared religious discourse, but instead distrust and disdain each others' doctrines and practices, follow the patterns of inter-ethnic conflicts. An example is the conflict in Bosnia among the (ethnically indistinguishable) Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslims. Colonial conflicts (or "wars of national liberation") are best conceptualized as international wars, but also include an important dimension of civil conflict, which may be mainly ethnic, if the colonial power's base of local support consists largely of settlers (as in Algeria) or of local ethnic or religious minorities (such as Catholic Vietnamese in the First Indochina War) or ideological if the colonial power is supported by a significant part of the local ethnic majority (as in the American Revolution).
24. The discussion here applies specifically to ethnic wars involving high levels of group mobilization and intense violence, as these are the only ethnic conflicts likely to motivate humanitarian intervention.
25. Also, unlike ideological insurgencies, ethnic conflicts are symmetric. Government institutions often split on ethnic lines, or disintegrate, or are captured by one side, with personnel of the other group deserting and perhaps trying to form their own parallel organization. Even where one side gains control of virtually the whole state apparatus, the difference between them and the rebels is still only one of capability, not of kind, and does not change the essentially territorial nature of the conflict. For instance, access to the military assets of the former governments helped the military prospects of the Bosnian Serbs and of the Russians in Moldova. The prospects of the Rwandan Patriotic Front were greatly improved by military experience and equipment gained through involvement in Ugandan internal conflicts.
26. In addition, in ideological civil wars partition of the country is almost always seen as an illegitimate solution by leaders as well as rank and file of both sides, while in ethnic wars often one or even both sides seek partition.
27. See Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict";
28. James Fearon, "Containing Fear The Origins and Maintenance of Ethnic Conflict" (manuscript, 1995); and
29. Barbara Walter, "The Resolution of Civil Wars: Why Negotiations Fail" (manuscript, 1995), both recognize security dilemmas in civil wars, but underrate their territorial nature in ethnic ones, and thus neglect the possibility of a structural solution. Both therefore focus on credible guarantees for the rapid reconstruction of (hopefully impartial) state institutions.
30. Jonathan Hartlyn, The Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);
31. Kenneth Roberts, "Bullying and Bargaining: The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Latin America," International Security 15, no. 2 (fall 1990): 91-98.
32. Recent examples include the repetition of previously unsuccessful rebellions in Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Kashmir, and Burma/Myanmar.
33. The formal political arrangements are not critical; in principle, either partition into separate states or some form of loose regional autonomy or federalism could be workable. For a theory of the determinants of outcomes of ethnic wars, see Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," esp. 152-61.
34. Partial ethnic separation, leaving behind a minority seen as too small to threaten the security of the majority, may improve prospects for secularizing the politics of the rump state, as in the case of India. This is the claim of Paul R. Brass, The Politics of India since Independence, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
35. An alternative way to conceptualize this is that the availability of outside support may give ideologues an advantage in competing for leadership of an ethnic movement.
36. Anthony Pereira argues, based on the 1992 election returns, that the importance of ethnicity in the Angolan civil war is declining, but the inference better supported by the data is that there has been a shift in ethnic alliances, not that the salience of ethnicity is falling. The main shift was that most Chokwe and Ngangela, tribes which had earlier allied with UNITA, voted for the MPLA. Neither the MPLA nor UNITA polled many votes in provinces dominated by the others' core constituency (23 percent and 15 percent respectively). Pereira, "Neglected Tragedy: The Return to War in Angola, 1992-93," Journal of Modern Africa Studies 32, no. 1 (March 1994): 1-28.
37. Michael Fredholm, Burma: Ethnicity and Insurgency (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993);
38. Douglas Blaufarb, Counterinsurgency Era, 128-204.
39. Walker Connor argues that this very often happens even at much lower levels of mobilization, pointing out that separatist sentiment often increases despite improving relative economic status, as among Slovaks in Czechoslovakia and Croats and Slovenes in Yugoslavia. Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 149-52.
40. Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-1992 (Boulder Lynne Rienner, 1993), 178-81;
41. David C. Gordon, Lebanon: The Fragmented Nation (London: Croom Helm, 1980, 143-74;
42. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 21;
43. Sa'ad Jawad, Iraq and the Kurdish Question, 1958-1970 (London: Ithaca Press, 1981), 87-91;
44. Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds in Turkey: A Political Dilemma (Boulder. Westview, 1990), 84-88.
45. Another possible example is the insurgency in Guatemala, which has both Mayan and leftist roots. Susanne Jonas, Battle for Guatemala (Boulder Westview, 1991).
46. A. Pavelic, "How Many Non-Serbian Generals in 1941?" East European Quarterly 16, no. 4 (January 1983): 447-52;
47. Anton Bebler, "Political Pluralism and the Yugoslav Professional Military," in The Tragedy of Yugoslavia: The Failure of Democratic Transformation, ed. Jim Seroka and Vukasin Pavlovic (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), 105-40;
48. Robert J. Donia and John V. A. Fine, Jr., Bosnia-Hercegorina: A Tradition Betrayed (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 145-56.
49. Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning (London: Faber & Faber, 1967), 43-78.
50. Felix V. Gagliano, Communal Violence in Malaysia 1969: The Political Aftermath (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1970).
51. Landmarks in counterinsurgency include Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning;
52. Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf Jr., Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts (Chicago: Markham, 1970);
53. Robert L. Sansom, The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam (Cambridge: MIT. Press, 1970);
54. Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance, 1950 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1977);
55. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986);
56. D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
57. In addition, if resources (often foreign aid) are available, the government may offer economic development to increase the pie for everyone, but development per se may not reduce grievances if it does not redress inequalities. While the Viet Cong promised to redistribute status as well as wealth, after nearly three billion dollars of U.S. economic aid to South Vietnam from 1961 to 1968, the government was still seen as seeking to preserve existing inequalities, albeit at a higher level. Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 201.
58. In South Vietnam before 1968, two-thirds of the rural population were tenant farmers who had to pay an average of 34 percent of their product to landlords, even though the legal maximum was 25 percent, while these same landlords were also often the local officials. Under these conditions Viet Cong land reform programs gained them control of wide areas from 1960 onwards. Only after 1970, when the government also began to implement real land reform, did it begin to recover rural allegiances. Sansom, The Economics of Insurgency, 228-45;
59. Guenther Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 186-89 .
60. Benedict J. Kerkvliet credits credible Philippine government promises to improve rural services and provide real legal relief for landlord abuses with swaying many peasants. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 207, 238-40.
61. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley found that peasant support for guerrillas in several Latin American countries in the 1960s was positively correlated with insecure tenancy arrangements such as sharecropping and negatively correlated with government land reform. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 92-129.
62. Leites and Wolf, in Ribellion and Authority, emphasize population control more, and positive programs less, than other leading analysts, although some authors take an even more extreme position. Douglas Pike argues that guerrillas simply "coerce a passive and generally apolitical peasantry."
63. The Viet Cong Strategy of Terror (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), 3.
64. Mao Zedong, Aspects of China's Anti-Japanese Struggle (Bombay, 1948), 48,
65. quoted in Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 9.
66. In the Malayan Emergency, the rebels assassinated plantation owners, police, and government officials, including the British High Commissioner. On several occasions the government imposed collective punishment on villages in areas where guerrillas had been active, imposing strict curfews tantamount to house arrest. John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Insurgency, 1948-1954 (Boulder: Westview, 1992), 18, 109, 128-29.
67. The government may also offer amnesties and bribes to defecting guerrillas, as in Malaya and the Philippines. Blaufarb, Counterinsurgency Era, 46-47;
68. Anthony J. Joes, Modern Guerrilla Insurgency (Westport: Praeger, 1992), 71-72.
69. On the effects of indiscriminate government and landlord terror in mobilizing recruits for the Huk insurgency, see Kerkvliet, Huk Rebellion, 188-98.
70. The Greek Communist policies of devastating rural villages and kidnapping forced recruits undermined civilian support for their cause. C. M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece, 1941-1949 (London: Hart-Davis, 1976), 267;
71. Shafer, Deadly Paradigms, 200-1.
72. The government can try to offset the disruptiveness of relocation by promising that the new towns will provide improved security, more responsive government, and economic development. For discussions of failed programs in Vietnam and more successful ones in Malaya and the Philippines, see Lewy, American in Vietnam, 107-14;
73. John Maynard Dow, Nation Building in Southeast Asia, rev. ed. (Boulder: Pruett, 1966).
74. Because of the relative military weakness of the rebels at this stage, such liberated zones will necessarily be located in inaccessible regions or cross-border sanctuaries. They are important to prevent excessive government interference with mobilization to prepare for the third stage.
75. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 7-10.
76. Conventionalizing also runs a risk which is usually more the government's problem: namely, inflicting collateral damage on civilians which alienates them from the insurgents' cause.
77. "In the last decade I have walked through hundreds of hamlets that have been destroyed in the course of a battle, the majority as the result of the heavier friendly fire....Indeed, it has not been unusual to have a hamlet destroyed and find absolutely no evidence of damage to the enemy....The destruction of a hamlet by friendly firepower is an event that will always be remembered and practically never forgiven by those who lost their homes." John Paul Vann, Senior Corps Advisor in II Corps Zone, Vietnam, memo, 4 April 1972, cited in Lewy, American in Vietnam, 104.
78. "Winning a military war in Vietnam will be a hollow victory if the country remains politically and economically unstable, for it is under these conditions that a 'defeated' Viet Cong will be able to regroup and begin anew a 'war of national liberation'." Dow, Nation Building, viii.
79. Krepinevich, 264-68; Robert McNamara wrote in 1966 that "The large-unit war...is largely irrelevant to pacification as long as we do not lose it. By and large, the people in rural areas believe that the [government forces] when they come will not stay but that the Viet Cong will....[A] requirement for success of the Rural Development cadre and police is vigorously conducted and adequately prolonged clearing operations by military troops who will 'stay' in the area, who behave themselves decently, and who show respect for the people. The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition (Boston: Beacon, 1972), vol. 2, 595-97.
80. Examples include the ends of the Chinese Nationalist regime, the Batista regime in Cuba, the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, South Vietnam in 1974-75, and Cambodia in 1975.
81. For further discussion see Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions," 140-47, 152-55.
82. Nationalistic history, either traditional or created for mobilization purposes, can also play a role. Stephen W. Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," International Security 18, no. 4 (spring 1994): 23-30.
83. Blaufarb, Counterinsurgency Era, 128-204.
84. After a peace agreement was signed in 1992, some members of certain Hutu opposition parties did explore possible cooperation with the RPF against the government, but these contacts were torpedoed by renewed fighting in 1993. The very few Hutus who actually fought for the RPF were recruited mainly from families who had moved to Uganda decades earlier. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 150-56, 180-86.
85. Edgar O' Ballance, The Civil War in Bosnia, 1992-1994 (New York: St. Martin's, 1995) 29-30.
86. Fred C. Ikle points out that soft-liners in international wars often face the same problem. Ikle, Every War Must End, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
87. Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder (Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books, 1994), 100, 107-13;
88. William McGowan, Only Man is Vile (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1992), 370-80; Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, untitled manuscript, 1996, 61-63.
89. Assimilation did German Jews no good, while political passivity by many Bosnian Muslims, Rwandan Tutsis, or Azerbaijanis in and around Nagorno-Karabakh did not protect them either.
90. Some of the most active Hutu extremists, including Robert Kaluga, the head of the interahamwe, came from groups considered automatically suspect: either children of Tutsi mothers or members of families which had managed to change their identity cards after 1959. Rakiya Omar and Alex de Waal, Rwanda: Death, Despair, and Defiance (London: Africa Rights, September 1994), 11-12;
91. Norman Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of 'Ethnic Cleansing' (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995), 83-84.
92. Terror against one's own group runs serious risks of backfiring only when used to try to enforce mobilization on a community most of whose members are unmobilized and unwilling because they do not see an ethnic threat, or because the military balance versus the opposing community appears completely hopeless, or both. Examples include the Basque separatist movement and the Irish Republican Army. In other words, extremists may not be able to start an ethnic war this way or prevent recognition of final defeat, but they can act with relative impunity during an ongoing war.
93. Alain Destexche, "The Third Genocide," Foreign Policy, no. 97 (winter 1994/95), 3-17. Extremely high levels of intermarriage among multiple groups, as in the United States, can blur boundaries, but usually occurs only in societies with very low ethnic rivalry.
94. Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 257-59.
95. Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations, 106.
96. Signs may include physiognomy, posture, dress, ritual mutilation, diet, habits, language or accent, occupation, region or neighborhood within urban areas, or certain possessions. In many situations one such indicator might not be conclusive, but often several filters can be employed at once. "[An] assimilated group may remain distinguishable enough by cultural or religious markers - even when its members do not choose to use such markers to build communal consciousness - for it to be singled out as a scapegoat." Paul R. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Sage, 1991), 35.
97. Tone Bringa, Being Muslim The Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 27.
98. Ruza Petrovic, "The National Composition of Yugoslavia's Population," Yugoslavia Survey 33, no. 1 (1992), 3-24;
99. Petrovic, "The Ethnic Identity of Parents and Children," Yugoslavia Survey 32, no. 2 (1991), 63-76;
100. Dusan Breznik and Nada Raduski, "Demographic Characteristics of the Population of FR Yugoslavia by Nationality," Yugoslavia Survey 34, no. 4 (1993), 3-44.
101. Destexche, 'Third Genocide," 8.
102. Bringa, Being Muslim, xvii, 238.
103. Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia, 57.
104. Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia, 59.
105. Radio Milles Collines, April 1994, cited in Alain Destexche, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 32;
106. Human Rights Watch, Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 5.
107. U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Civil War in Iraq (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1991), 7-9;
108. Fredholm, Burma, 90-92.
109. Edgar O'Ballance, Civil War in Bosnia, 1992-1994 (New York: St. Martin's), 39-41, 57.
110. Even if it must do so outside the country, as the R.P.F. in Uganda before April 1994. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 90-92, 114-20.
111. When part of an ethnic homeland is defensible and part is not, a mix of operational styles may be used. The Karens in Burma have successfully defended enclaves in inaccessible areas of southeastern Burma, but guerrilla efforts in the Irrawaddy delta have been repeatedly crushed by the Burmese Army. Fredholm, Burma, 99-118. Similarly, in the first year of the war in Chechnya, the Chechens were able to defend only some of the most mountainous parts of the country, and so have resorted to terror operations to try to coerce the Russians into abandoning the rest.
112. See Nafez Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee (Beirut Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978).
113. O'Ballance, Civil War in Bosnia, 49-51.
114. Che Guevara's effort to mobilize Bolivian peasants against landowners and the government, for example, did not take account of the fact that substantial land reform had already taken place. As Robert Lamberg observes: "What was Che going to offer these peasants, still more land they could not use?" In 1947 the Malayan Communist Party initially sought to build an uprising around unionized urban workers, but failed. The Viet Cong, by contrast, did not appeal on the basis of Marxist or Maoist principles but concentrated on nationalism, land reform, and government corruption. Robert F. Lamberg, "Che in Bolivia: The Revolution that Failed, Problems of Communism 19 (July/August 1970): 25-37, esp. 30;
115. Sam Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Westport: Greenwood, 1993), 65-67;
116. Blaufarb, Counterinsurgency Era, 96.
117. Some argue that it is possible for insurgents to win with an inherently unattractive ideology and little political legitimacy if they are disciplined enough. See Leites and Wolf, Rebellion and Authority.
118. Shafer, Deadly Paradigms, 120-22.
119. In Vietnam, the Phoenix Program was successful in eliminating or intimidating many National Liberation Front supporters, but monthly quotas for "neutralizations" assured that many innocents were also killed, while corrupt operatives widely used it as a means of extortion. Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (New York: Morrow, 1990), 13. For their part, the Viet Cong assassinated and abducted thousands, but tried never to leave any instance unexplained, publishing leaflets or posters explaining the "traitor's" guilt.
120. Blaufarb, Counterinsurgency Era, 103-27;
121. Shafer, Deadly Paradigms, 268;
122. Sansom, Economics of Insurgency, 238-39.
123. Joes, Modern Guerrilla Insurgency, 68-70.
124. Massacres can also generate opposition in funding countries to continuation of aid, as did the killing of more than 700 people by Salvadoran troops at El Mozote in 1981. The internal as well as external consequences led the commander of Army forces in the eastern part of the country, Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrossa, to reform his troops' operational methods, which he did so successfully that by 1983 the rebels felt under pressure to assassinate him. Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (New York: Vintage, 1993), 142-52.
125. "To gain victory, the revolutionary movement did not need to be 'good' or 'effective' by any absolute standard; it needed only to be better than the government" Race, War Comes to Long An, xv.
126. Douglas J. Macdonald, Adventure in Chaos: American Intervention for Reform in the Third World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 44-73. MacDonald advises that aid should be limited and disbursed slowly in return for specific reforms, and he credits (181-84) such an approach by the United States with assisting political reform in the Philippines in 1952-53, although he assigns Magsaysay's independent military reforms a decisive role in generating the political capital which allowed pro-United States politicians to survive attacks as foreign puppets.
127. William E. Odom, On Internal War: American and Soviet Approaches to Clients and Insurgents (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 58-59.
128. The rebels in the Greek Civil War, the Malayan Communist Party in the early phases of Malaysian insurgency, and the North Vietnamese in 1972 all paid for conventionalizing too soon. Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 48, 54-55;
129. John O. Iatrides, "The Doomed Revolution: Communist Insurgency in Postwar Greece," in Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End, ed. Roy A. Licklider (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 214-15;
130. Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 74-75.
131. Shafer, Deadly Paradigms, 198.
132. Examples include North Vietnam (and NVA-controlled areas of Laos and Cambodia) for the Viet Cong, Pakistan for the Afghan rebels, and Honduras for the Nicaraguan Contras. Conversely, the United States successfully deterred Yugoslav and Bulgarian help to the Greek Communists, but could neither deter nor interdict North Vietnamese aid to the Viet Cong. The U.S. Seventh Fleet prevented outside aid to the Huk rebellion in the Philippines.
133. The only case where direct intervention may be viable is to depose a regime which is so discredited that almost everyone in the country would accept even foreigners to get rid of it, as in Haiti in 1994.
134. In some measure, the presence of foreign troops shifts the nature of the war from ideological to anti-imperial, making it easier to mobilize the population against the invaders.
135. "The Americans deploy a force on an operation. Now, the enemy does not confront you. But he harasses you every night to give the impression that all the people around you are hostile....And there are also villages in the area. The V.C. make you nervous to the point that you lose your patience and you say 'I want to be finished with this.'" General Lu Mong Lan (former commandant, R.V.N. Command and General Staff College), "Countertenor," in Al Santoli, To Bear any Burden (New York: Button, 1985), 155.
136. On the definition and uses of "critical" cases, see Harry Eckstein, "Case Study and Theory in Political Science," in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 1, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), esp. 86-92.
137. William Colby, Lost Victory (New York: Contemporary Books, 1989).
138. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 190-93.
139. Colby, Lost Victory, 363.
140. Even Colby admits that it would have been better to let President Diem sink or swim in 1963 than intervene so massively in Vietnam. Lost Victory, 366-67.
141. Blaufarb, Counterinsurgency Era, 271, 277;
142. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 193-95.
143. The urban population increased from 15 percent to 65 percent by 1974, and South Vietnam had to import rice, which it had formerly exported. Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 177, 290-91.
144. Even the 1972 offensive, although decimated by U.S. B-52s, did achieve permanent territorial gains.
145. In 1992 Azerbaijan president Ayaz Mutalibov was forced to resign for not escalating the war for Nagorno-Karabakh. Although the war was lost, in negotiations in 1995-96 Azerbaijani president Aliev has continued to insist on retaining formal sovereignty - and has been attacked at home for not taking an even tougher stand. "Three Peace Missions," New York Times, 10 March, 1992;
146. Economist Intelligence Unit Country Report: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, 1st quarter 1996, 32.
147. Frank Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin: Rebel to Statesman (New York: Putnam, 1979), 256-61.
148. Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 174-75, 295-99. Bruce Jones suggested to me that the relative youth (decades) of Hutu ethnic identity, together with North-South Hutu clan divisions, may have reduced willingness to fight. Even such drastic failure, however, did not change the nature of the conflict from territorial to "hearts and minds;" although in an ideological insurgency we would certainly expect most Hutus to welcome as liberators any better-behaved force, instead, each time RPF forces advanced, in 1990-91, in early 1993, and finally in 1994, virtually all Hutus in the affected areas fled.
149. Norman Cigar, The Right to Defence: Thoughts on the Bosnian Arms Embargo (London: Alliance, 1995).
150. S. B. Spies, Methods of Barbarism? Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the Boer Republics, January 1900-May 1902 (Pretoria: Human & Rousseau, 1977), 211-44.
151. In principle there is a third option: enemy guerrillas could try to infiltrate directly through the front. If the advancing intervention force maintains a dense front, however, the risk of being detected and engaged by superior firepower would be prohibitively high. Further, even if a guerrilla band got behind friendly lines it would find no free co-ethnic population to support it.
152. Some weapons were supplied by Turkey, but small numbers and fear of Greek Cypriot reaction prevented the community from developing much capability.
153. There was a slight bias toward the north of island. This was not the worst possible demography, which would be thorough intermixing within villages and neighborhoods throughout the country, as in Rwanda. Thus an attempt to separate the Hutus and Tutsis, if either UNAMIR or the French had attempted it, would have been more difficult than the task which faced the Turkish Army.
154. The worst communal violence since 1974 occurred in 1996, when protests led to two deaths. "Cyprus violence Awakens World to 22-year old Crisis," Inter Press Service, 16 August 1996.
155. In 1964 the Turkish Air Force actually bombed Greek Cypriot forces. A UN peace-keeping mission from March 1964 onward did not prevent conflict because the peace-keepers were not authorized to use their weapons except in self-defense. From 1964 to 1968 many Turkish settlements were under de facto siege. Tozun Bahcheli, Greek-Turkish Relations since 1955 (Boulder Westview, 1990), 170.
156. The intervention almost universally condemned internationally, and led to a U.S. arms embargo on Turkey which lasted until 1978; the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, established in 1983, remains unrecognized by anyone except Turkey. In later negotiations the Turks offered to return some territory in return for a new constitution providing for regional autonomy, but the Greek Cypriots refused.
157. I owe much of the design of this table to Teresa Lawson.
158. For a careful argument that impartial intervention is unfeasible and undesirable in any type of conflict, see Richard K. Betts, "The Delusion of Impartial Intervention," Foreign Affairs 73, no. 6 (November/December 1994): 20-33.
159. One or both of these happened to the UN in the Congo in 1961-63, the United States in Lebanon in 1983, the Indian forces in Sri Lanka in 1987-89, and the UN in Somalia. Fear of becoming embroiled in heavier combat quickly reduced the first UN mission in Bosnia to near passivity, without avoiding either Muslim distrust or occasional combat with the Serbs. The Russian Fourteenth Army in Moldova, nominally neutral although initially seen as favoring the Transnistrian Russians, has since come into conflict with them. Freedman, "Why the West Failed," surveys some of the twists in the UN crooked path in Bosnia; on Moldova, see Charles King, "Moldova With a Russian Face," Foreign Policy, no. 97 (winter 1994/95), 106-20.
160. Almost no one in the West, for instance, advocated assisting either side in the 1991-92 Croatian-Serb conflict.
161. If the Muslims were capable of defending themselves unaided, the question of intervention in Bosnia might not have arisen; certainly it would have sparked less interest. There can be exceptions if one side's hands are relatively clean and the other's filthy. In spring 1994 military intervention to accelerate the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or to provide protection for Tutsis in areas not yet reached which the RPF had not reached, might have saved tens or even hundreds of thousands. Destexche, "Third Genocide," 9.
162. In principle the client might try to increase its territorial demands as the intervention improves its military position, but in practice the intervening powers will hold decisive power over the client as its source of both present and future economic and military support; further, the intervening powers will be de facto occupying their client.
163. This point and the one above are made in Mearsheimer and Pape, "The Answer."
164. IFOR commanders in Bosnia have been concerned about the security of their troops in Serb-controlled localities. "Target for Hostage-Takers: UN Unit," New York Times, 17 July 1996.
165. On other occasions Indian forces were accused of standing by while Tamil forces attacked Sinhalese civilians, but in these incidents too there was no confusion about the community membership of anyone involved.
166. Accepting this would have been inconvenient, since at the same time that the Indian Peace-Keeping Force was attempting to disarm the Tamils it was also supposed to be protecting them against the Sri Lankan government.
167. Pape, Bombing to Win. Pape studied surrender decisions by independent states, and it could be argued that an intervention in an ethnic civil war might face disorganized and decentralized resistance. While this would multiply the number of decision centers, and some might hold out longer than others, the same coercive pressure would be felt by all of them.
168. Nazzal, Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, 65-101, describes the operation of this process in the Northern Galilee in 1948.
169. Elevated death rates in relief or refugee camps are usually due to one of four conditions: 1) inadequate commitment of resources; 2) refugees who arrive in a weakened condition due to famine conditions in the surrounding area; 3) interference by armed forces or bandits who prevent aid from getting through; or 4) actual armed attacks on refugee camps Future intervention in ethnic conflicts could avoid the first, help to relieve the second, if present, and prevent the third and fourth.
170. This also means that the pace of the advance may have to be restrained; blitzkrieg-style operations should not be used against enemy-populated areas.
171. For instance, the massacre of several hundred Palestinians by Israel's Christian allies near Beirut in 1982 triggered the largest political demonstration in Israeli history, led to the resignation of the IDF chief of staff and calls for the resignation of the cabinet, strained Israel's relations with the United States, and blackened Israel's reputation globally.
172. Rules for marginal cases, such as mixed families, will have to be decided in consultation with the client. "Third' communities" not involved in the war should be allowed to stay (and in any case should not be forced into the enemy state).
173. This approach was used in the 1920s Balkan population exchanges. Joseph B. Schectman, The Refugee in the World: Displacement and Integration (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1963).
174. As the Arabs' commitments were not in 1949, nor the Greek Cypriots' in 1974.
175. Rump states secured this way include Israel, South Korea, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, although the latter two involve small permanent force deployments by the guarantor.
176. There is a fourth possibility, elements of the client side might kill members of their own group, hoping the enemy will be blamed; such accusations were made against the Bosnian Muslims. A conventionalized approach to military intervention limits this, because once the interveners are on the ground in sufficient force to establish a clear front line and rear area, opportunities to do this undetected are eliminated. Attempts at such "frames" before the intervention begins or during its opening days, however, cannot be ruled out.
177. It is worth noting that the 1971 war resulted not from Indo-Pakistani state rivalry or Hindu-Muslim religious conflict but from Pakistani-Bengali ethnic conflict. Indian intervention resolved the conflict by enabling the independence of Bangladesh, which was followed by exchange of most of the (small to begin with) Pakistani and Bengali minorities in the other country. Indo-Bangladeshi relations have been generally friendly, while Indo-Pakistani relations at least grow no worse; they have been less violent. War between Pakistan and Bangladesh is, of course, impossible. This case had perhaps the best possible geography for partition.
178. Geoffrey Blainey points out that at the start of war the sides generally have divergent views of their relative power, while wars end when their estimates converge. The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1973). Thus there are three dangers here. If the division is relatively equal, the military balance must be also; hence the recognition by many that a stable Bosnian settlement requires militarily strengthening the Bosnian government. Second, a side which gets less land but believes that it is not inferior in strength is likely to try the issue again later. In the Israeli War of Independence, Israel got most of Palestine, including most of the urban centers and arable land valued by both sides, while the Arabs believed that their defeats were due to unlucky circumstances and avoidable mistakes, not inherent military weakness. Most observers agree that the recent progress toward settlement has occurred in large part because the Palestinians have realized that they can never hope to defeat Israel militarily. Finally, even a side which receives little territory must be able to defend it, or at least to impose prohibitive deterrent costs, lest the stronger side at some point decide to attack preventively to forestall a future power shift. This issue should be considered in the design of a Palestinian state.
179. Barry Posen has pointed out to me a possible pitfall here, if the simple fact of outside intervention allows the opponent to maintain a belief that the settlement does not reflect the "real" balance of power.
180. Inter Press Service, 7 September 1994.