Ethnic disputes in international politics: Manifestations and conceptualizations

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 25-51

  Zhu, Yuchao ^a   Blachford, Dongyan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF REGINA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNICITY; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; POLITICS;

EID: 33644798649     PISSN: 13537113     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13537110500503844     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. These include Romania, Mauritania, Rwanda-Burundi, Senegal, Togo, Nigeria, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Algeria, Egypt, China, Bhutan, Brazil, Mexico, India, Kosovo, Albania, Greece. Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Tadjikistan, just name a few. See David Carment and Patrick James (eds), The International Politics of Ethnic Conflict (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1997), http://www.carleton.ca/~dcarment/papers/intpolit.html (accessed: 3 Sept. 2004), pp. 1-2.
2. Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 1993), pp. 34-5.
3. The concept of "national self-determination" can indicate demands ranging from autonomous government to total secession. The concept of "secession" usually means a unilateral (not a consensual) process by which a particular group seeks to separate itself from the state to which it belongs and to create a new state. We will particularly examine these two concepts later.
4. Walker Connor, "Nationalism and Political Illegitimacy," in Daniele Conversi (ed), Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 37.
5. Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 22.
6. Connor, 2002, p. 32.
7. Actually, the list of multinational states that have ethnic/national issues which may imply potential disintegration or secession is long. For example, since 1945, there have been the following ethnic dispute cases in non-European states: Tibet and Xinjiang (China), Katanga (Congo), Biafra (Nigeria), Kashmir and East Punjab (India), The Karen and Shan (Burma), Cyprus (Turkey and Greece), Tami Elam (Sri Lanka), South Sudan (Sudan), Somaliland (Somalia), Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), Kurdistan (Iraq and Turkey); also there have been examples of European states: Srpska (Bosnia/Herzegovina), Chechnya (Russia), Kosovo (Serbia-Montenegro), Abkhazia (Russia), Nagorny-Kharabakh (Azerbaijian), Corsica (France), the Basques (Spain), Catalonia (Spain), Faroes (Denmark), Scotland (UK), and the Flemish (Belgium). See James Crawford, "State Practice and International Law in Relation to Unilateral Secession" (Report to Government of Canada concerning unilateral secession by Quebec, 1997), http://www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/ index.htm (accessed: 20 August 2004).
8. Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, Ethnic Conflicts in World Politics, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004), pp. 19-29.
9. See Eric Fischer, Minorities and Minority Problems (New York: Vantage Press, 1981).
10. also, Naomi Chazan (ed.), Irredentism and International Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991).
11. In fact, irredentism leading to national boundary adjustments was the common phenomenon in post-World War I Europe, and Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, and Turkey were involved. See Shalom Reichmanand Arnon Golan, "Irredentism and Boundary Adjustments in Post-World War I Europe," in Naomi Chazan (ed.), 1991, pp. 51-68.
12. But irredenta problems could also occur within a multinational state, e.g. Tibetans live outside China's Tibetan Autonomous Region; see Dimostenis Yagcioglu, "Irredentism: An Inevitable Tendency of Ethnic Nationalism," 2002, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8945/irre.html (accessed: 3 Sept. 2004).
13. Fischer, pp. 340-46.
14. It is worth noting that according to Stephen Krasner, the concept of sovereignty can be understood from four different dimensions: international legal sovereignty, Westphaliajn/Vatellian sovereignty, domestic sovereignty, and interdependence sovereignty. We will discuss various sovereignty concepts later, but what we refer to here is mainly the first three meanings of sovereignty, or "conventional sovereignty." See Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
15. Brendan O'Leary, "Federations and the management of nations: Agreements and arguments with Walker Connor and Ernest Gellner," in Daniele Conversi (ed.), 2002, pp. 154-5.
16. Louis Belanger, Erick Duchesne, and Johnthan Paquin, "Foreign Interventions and Secessionist Movements: The Democratic Factor," Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2005), pp. 440-41.
17. Ann Kent, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. 70.
18. For example, see the U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Julia Taft's statement to the House International Relations Committee: "Since Tibet is not a sovereign state, we do not conduct diplomatic relations with the representatives of Tibet's Government-in-exile. We do, however, maintain contact with a wide variety of representatives inside and outside China with views of Tibet. We also meet with the Dalai Lama in his capacity as a world religious leader and Nobel Prize recipient." (11 March 2003). http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/ea/uschina/taft311.htm (accessed: 10 November 2003).
19. Canadian Press, 12 April 2004.
20. We acknowledge that not every developing country is monolithic on this issue because non-state actors, such as human rights NGOs and other "stakeholders" often intervene in internal and external ethnic issues. But that does not change the fact that the major players in international ethnic disputes are always the states. Hence non-state actors are not the focus of this article, though they are not irrelevant or unimportant.
21. For instance, through the voting result (May 2000) in the UN Human Rights Commission on the U.S. resolution to condemn China's human rights record, especially in Tibet, we find that those who voted for the U.S. resolution are mostly European/North American states: Britain, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Spain and Swaziland; those who supported China by virtue of voting against the resolution were Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Burundi, Congo, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Qatar, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Venezuela and Zambia. All of them are more or less developing states, except maybe Russia. The states who would rather not take sides by abstaining were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Liberia, Mauritius, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia. Interestingly, most of them are Third World democracies, and they are reluctant to openly support either side. See Jane Perize, "U.N. Rights Commission Foils U.S. Effort to Condemn China," The New York Times, 19 April 2000. Also, the recorded vote (Nov. 2001) on draft resolution A.C.3/56/L.43 (The right to development): Almost all European states abstained, and all developing states were in favor of the resolution; re. A.C.3/56/L.64 (Globalization and its impact on the full enjoyment of all human rights); all European and North American states were against and all developing states were in favor of the resolution.
22. Carment and James, p. 2.
23. Ibid.
24. Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," in Michael Brown et al. (eds). Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 29-30.
25. David R. Davis, Keith Jaggers and Will H. Moore, "Politicized Communal Groups and International Interactions," in David Carment and Patrick James (eds), 1997 (accessed: 3 Sept. 2004).
26. Belanger et al., pp. 436-8.
27. Carment and James, p. 5.
28. William Safran, "Ethnic conflict and third-party mediation," in Daniele Conversi (ed.), 2002, p. 190.
29. Ron Wheeler, "China and the UN Commission on Human Rights: A Voting Study, 1982-2000," Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, University of Toronto (June 2002).
30. See Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (London: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
31. Rosemary Foot, "Introduction," in Rosemary Foot, John Lewis Gaddis, and Andrew Hurrell (eds), Order and Justice in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 4.
32. Anghei, pp. 310-13.
33. Mark W. Zacher, "The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force," International Organization, Vol. 55 No. 2 (2001), p. 236.
34. Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, "National Self-determination," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 87, No. 9 (1990), pp. 443-6.
35. Karen Parker, "Understanding Self-Determination: The Basics," Presentation to First International Conference on the Right to Self-Determination, 2000, Geneva: United Nations, http:// www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/index.htm (accessed: 20 August 2004).
36. Richard Falk, "Self-Determination Under International Law: The coherence of doctrine versus the incoherence of experience," in Wolfgang Danspeckrruber (ed.), The Self-Determination of Peoples (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002), p. 31.
37. Ibid.
38. See Margaret Moore (ed.), National Self-Determination and Secession (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 5-7;
39. also the chapters of Daniel Philpott, Wayne Norman and Kai Nielsen, respectively.
40. See, e.g. Andrei Kreptul, "The Constitutional Right of Secession in Political Theory and History, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003), pp. 39-100.
41. Donald L. Horowitz, "Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections," in Naomi Chazan (ed.), 1991, pp. 18-19.
42. Falk, 2002, pp.33-4;
43. Allen Buchanan, "Secession, state breakdown, and humanitarian intervention," in Deen K. Chatterjee and Don E. Scheid (eds), Ethics and Foreign Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 191;
44. Patrick Thornberry, "Self-Determination, Minorities, Human Rights: A Review of International Instruments," in Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl (eds), International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2nd edition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003), p. 141.
45. A provision of this UN Resolution 1514 (XV) is invoked as authority for the proposition that "the principle of equal rights and self-determination is not to be applied to parts of the territory of a sovereign State. Such a provision is needed in order to prevent the principle from being applied in favour of secessionist movements in independent States." Leo Kuper, "The Right to Self Determination: Issues Raised," The Prevention of Genocide (1985) http:// www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/index.htm (accessed: 20 August 2004).
46. Tom Farer, "The Ethics of Intervention in Self-Determination Struggles," Human Rights Quarterly No. 25 (2), 2003, p. 404;
47. also, Thornberry, pp. 140-42.
48. Thornberry, pp. 140-41.
49. Crawford.
50. Buchanan, 2003, pp. 189-201.
51. Falk, 2002, pp. 33-4.
52. Ibid.
53. Allen Buchanan, "Democracy and Secession," in Margaret Moore (ed.), 1998, p. 25;
54. also, Buchanan, 2003, pp. 189-211.
55. Buchanan, 2003, pp. 197-8.
56. Ibid.
57. Edward Hallett Carr, Nationalism and After (London: Macmillan & Co, 1945), p. 59.
58. John Hillen, Super Powers Don't Do Windows," Orbis, Spring (1997), p. 257.
59. Paul Treanor, "The Ethics of Secession," Paul Treanor's document index, 1996, http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/secession.html (accessed: 20 August 2004).
60. Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 115.
61. Thornberry, p. 141.
62. Buchanan, 1998, p. 29.
63. Lea Brilmayer, "Secession and Self-Determination: A territorial interpretation," Yale Journal of International Law, 16 (1991), pp. 184-5.
64. Belanger et al., pp. 436-7.
65. If "intervention" refers to the direct or indirect projection of influence, whether by military, economic, or political means, across the frontiers of recognized states, those means can vary from dramatic action to the extreme case of large-scale military intrusion. See The Responsibility to Protect (Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty) Ottawa (December 2001). http://www.iciss.ca/menu-en.asp (accessed 20 August 2004);
66. also see Deen K. Chatterjee and Don E. Scheid (eds) 2003.
67. Farer, p. 393.
68. The Responsibility to Protect.
69. Stephen Krasner, "Sharing Sovereignty: New institutions for collapsed and failing states," International Security, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2004), p. 107.
70. See Christine Chwaszcza, "Secession, humanitarian intervention, and the normative significance of political boundaries," in Deen K. Chatterjee and Don E. Scheid (eds), 2003, pp. 168-88.
71. Safran, p. 185.
72. Farer, p.404.
73. See Georg Sorensen, Changes in Statehood: The transformation of international relations (London: Palgrave, 2001).
74. Robert Cooper, "The New Liberal Imperialism," Observer, 7 April 2002, http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/text4-7-2002-16092.asp (accessed: 20 August 2004).
75. Krasner, 2004, p. 88.
76. Ibid., p. 85.
77. Ibid., p. 108.
78. Kransner, 1999, p. 29.
79. Sorensen, pp. 82-3.
80. Foot, p. 17.
81. Falk, 2002, p. 38.