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International Political Science

http://ips.sagepub.com/content/16/4/319Theonline version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/019251219501600402

1995 16: 319International Political Science ReviewK.J. Holsti

War, Peace, and the State of the State

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What is This?

- Jan 1, 1995Version of Record>>

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War, Peace, and the State of the State

K.J. HOLSTI

ABSTRACT.Against the tenets of realist literature, the article argues thatthe main source of war in the last half-century is internally-derived, andresides in the nature of post-1945 states. Regional and temporal variationsin the topography of war make suspect realist claims of state similarityand systemic explanations of war. It is not the security dilemma nor theinternational system, but the composition of state legitimacy and thecharacteristic of weak, strong, and failed states which explain war today.Regions populated by strong states, defined in terms of legitimacy, arearenas of peace, and regions ofweak and failed states are a prime locationof war.

War, according to the realist literature in international relations, is a &dquo;dismaying&dquo;(Waltz, 1979: 66), recurrent, and necessary outcome of the operations of anarchicalstate systems. Hobbes and Rousseau were among the first to outline the external

consequences of sovereign statehood, namely, that the means by which states seekto enhance their security in a self-help system necessarily cause insecurity and

ultimately war among their neighbors. Threats to the state are thus externally-derived. I argue that the main source of war in the last half-century resides not in

the anarchical character of the state system, but rather in the nature of post-1945states. The more general claim is that regions populated by strong states, definedin terms of legitimacy, are a necessary condition for peace, and that regions of weakand failed states are a prime location of war.The theoretical platform for this exercise is Kenneth Waltzs claim that states

are similar in the tasks and functions they perform. He acknowledges that they havedifferent capacities to perform them, but otherwise they are comparable.All states,for example, seek survival and all the things that go into the broad concept of thepopulations &dquo;welfare,&dquo; namely education, employment, trade, commerce, and thelike. The essay also relates to Karl Deutschs work (1957) on national and inter-national integration.

It is because the active units of international politics are functionally similar thatthe outcomes of their interactions fall within predictable patterns and recurrence.

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Whatever the unique properties of individual states of their policy-makers, thecharacteristics of the system, as in a market, &dquo;force&dquo; the units to behave in certain

ways. The essential quality of international politics in an anarchical system is there-fore the same, regardless of historical era. &dquo;The texture of international politics,&dquo;writes Waltz (p.66), &dquo;remains highly constant, patterns recur, and events repeatthemselves endlessly. [Events] are marked ... by dismaying persistence, a persis-tence that one must expect so long as none of the competing units is able to convertthe anarchic international realm into a hierarchic one.&dquo;

The most dismaying recurrence of an anarchical system is war. Waltz followsHobbess and Rousseaus argument that the price for creating the state to obtainits domestic advantages is external insecurity and war. He similarly acceptsRousseaus argument that whatever the differing characteristics ofindividual states,they are commonly in a relation of mistrust, insecurity, and conflict, and thusfrequently resort to arms. If the realist theoretical analysis is valid-patterns

&dquo;dismayingly&dquo; repeatingthemselves-we would

expectto see war

occurringwith

somewhat similar frequency regardless of locale and historical context.Most theorists agree that we live in an essentially anarchic system. But the claims

that all units are functionally similar and that the outcomes of interaction are

drearily repetitive are certainly open to critical inquiry. It is not legitimate to argue,as does Waltz, that a theory of international politics is a theory only of the greatpowers. For if the entire system is characterized by anarchy, then the repetitiousoutcomes of wars and balances of power should be observed whenever sovereignstates interact, regardless of their capabilities. To argue otherwise implies that the

great powers are, functionally different from other states, and that there are importantdistinctions, other than capabilities, between the units of an international system.

Neither Rousseau nor Waltz accepts the proposition that unit level differences bringdifferent systemic outcomes. The quality of international life is always the same, andwill remain so as long as the anarchical principle underlies the international system.

But if there are significant variations in the patterns of war and other outcomesbetween different regions and across time, then both the claim for state similarityand for a systemic explanation of war become suspect. The Rousseauistic structuralexplanation of war stands or falls on the claim of similarity of and among units.War was the problem that animated Karl Deutschs life-long work on integration.

It was because of his normative concern with war that he re-directed research to the

conditions of peace. To him, the medium for the peaceful condition was integration-between individuals, communities, and nations. His problematic was to identify thenecessary and sufficient conditions for integration. Lurking behind the work was theassumption that integration is progressive because true communities incorporateconflict-resolving habits and mechanisms that preclude armed conflict. One of the

key indicators of international integration is the absence of plans for or deploymentsof military capabilities toward partners in a &dquo;pluralistic security community.&dquo;While Deutsch agreed that integration is neither a linear process nor inevitable,

his work reflected the Eurocentric and teleological thrust of integration theory inthe 1950s and 1960s. Opposition to integration, fragmentation, and the collapse ofcommunity were not part of his research agenda. Yet, war today is rooted in thelack, or disintegration of, community within states.

The Topography of War Since 1945

Hobbes and Rousseau characterized the relations between European states as a

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&dquo;state of war.&dquo; This did not mean that war was ubiquitous in every neighborhood,but that states always had to be on guard. Or, as Morgenthau put it later, statesare always preparing for war, engaging in war, or overcoming the effects of the lastwar. Even allowing for the possibility that there could be &dquo;islands of peace,&dquo; or shorteras of relaxed tension, the incidence of war in Hobbess and Rousseaus Europewas sufficient to justify their pessimism.Although numbers differ according tovarious studies, the dimensions of the problem are approximately the same. In

previous work (Holsti, 1991), I identified 119 wars among Europes small numberof states between 1648 and 1945, or one war starting on average every 2.5 years.Little wonder that a theorist seeking an explanation would be impressed by the

dreary repetitiveness of conflicts, crises, peace conferences, and more armedconflicts. Wars were a permanent feature of the European landscape. Nor has thesituation improved radically in other locales since 1945. Table I lists a total of 187internal and interstate wars/interventions between 1945 and 1995.

When weadjust

for thelarger

number of states in thesystem, however,

the

incidence of war varies substantially between different historical periods. In the1648-1713 period, for example, the probability of any states going to war in a givenyear was one in forty. For the 50 years since 1945, the risk of involvement in inter-national war or armed intervention for a typical state-assuming an average of 125states in the period-declined to slightly less than one in one hundred. The suppos-edly recurrent outcome of anarchy changes significantly over time.When we break down locales of war, moreover, even greater variations-indeed

anomalies-appear. There has been no interstate war in Western Europe since 1945;none in NorthAmerica since 1913-1915 (American armed intervention in Mexico);in SouthAmerica only the Falklands War-and that was against an extra-regional

power-since the Peru-Ecuador conflict of 1941. Clearly something is not happen-ing in these areas that, according to realist predictions, should be happening.

Tables I and 2 provide some data on the location and types of war since 1945.Since so many quantitative studies of war use different data and different criteriafor inclusion, I claim no precision. The data reported here come from a variety ofstandard sources. Other recent studies (Arnold, 1991; Nietschmann, 1987) areunreliable because no criteria for inclusion are indicated, or they are methodolog-ically reliable but somewhat dated (Small and Singer, 1982).

Table I shows the locales of war since 1945.Armed contests have been ubiqui-tous inAfrica, the Middle East, SouthAsia, and SoutheastAsia. There has been nointernational war

(i.e.,two or more armies in armed combat for the purpose of

inflicting military defeat and extracting terms of victory) or massive armed inter-vention in Western Europe and NorthAmerica, and no war between states in South

America since 1941. The figures also show that more than two-thirds of all armedcombat in the world since 1945 has taken the form of civil wars, wars of state

against nation, wars of secession, and major armed uprisings to oust governments.These are internal wars. Nietschmann (1987: 7) suggests an even higher figure: 72percent of all wars were of the national disintegrative rather than the classicalstate-state variety. Both figures are consistent with the argument of this article:most threats to post-1945 states have been internal, not external. The case is evenstronger when we consider that many of the interstate wars and large armed inter-

ventions originated as civil disturbances and wars. Hungary 1956, the DominicanRepublic 1965, and India-Pakistan 1971, are just some of the examples. Indeed, ofthe 187 wars listed in Table 1, only 30 were classical armed combats involving two or more

organized armies of internationally-recognized states. That is an incidence of interstate war

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TABLE 2.Armed Conflicts per State by Region, 1945-1995.

once every 1.8 years-higher than in the seventeenth century, but when we normal-ize for the number of states in the system, a remarkable decline.

Table 2 normalizes the frequency of wars according to the number of states in a

region. We would expect more wars where there are more states, but according torealist predictions, normalized figures should be similar across regions. However,the figures in Table 2 show dramatic differences between regions. War since 1945

has been highly concentrated in the Middle East, SouthAsia, and SoutheastAsia.Internal wars have a different profile. SouthAmerica ranks fourth highest, while

sub-SaharanAfrica and CentralAmerica/Caribbean are well below the average.However we interpret such figures, Western Europe and NorthAmerica are obviousanomalies. SouthAmerica is an anomaly in terms of international war, but comescloser to the profile of other Third World areas when it comes to domestic armedstrife. The overall pattern of war since 1945, then, does not duplicate Europeanpatterns from 1648 to 1945. There has been considerably less interstate war, consid-

erably more war originating from civil disturbances, and war incidence of both typeshas varied widely according to locale.Other artifacts of a

systemof

anarchydo not fare better in

post-1945interna-

tional politics. Duplication of past European patterns would include hegemony-seeking, alliances, balances of power, and arms races, all accoutrements of

European diplomatic history and realist analysis. Hegemony-seeking has beenprominent only in the Middle East and arguably in SouthAsia. It is absent in sub-SaharanAfrica, SouthAmerica, and SoutheastAsia. Formal alliances among ThirdWorld and post-Communist states are conspicuous by their rarity. Today, there isnone in SouthAmerica, SoutheastAsia, Africa, or SouthAsia; they have been promi-nent only in the Middle East. Nor do we find Waltzs ubiquitous balances of power.There is none today in SouthAmerica (Selcher, 1990: 95), Africa, SouthAsia,SoutheastAsia, or the former Soviet Union despite the fact that in each of these

regions there are predominant states (Brazil, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and Russia).If there has been balancing, it has been between regional states and a super-power(e.g., the United States and Pakistan). The argument is unconvincing that the coldwar balance of power makes regional balances unnecessary, since we have not seen

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balancing behavior emerge in those regions since 1989.Again, only in the MiddleEast do we see some duplication of pre-1945 patterns of European behavior. Eventhat common trait of European politics, the border dispute, has been rare inAfrica

(Herbst, 1989), leadingRobert

Jacksonand Carl

Rosberg (1982: 21)to

arguethat

in

... BlackAfrica, an image of international accord and civility and internal disor-der and violence would be more accurate .... It is evident that the recent

national and international history of Black Africa challenges more than it

supports some of the major postulates of international relations theory.

And perhaps most fundamentally, the realists famed &dquo;security dilemma,&dquo; leadingto cycles of competitive arming, does not find empirical corroboration in manyThird World neighborhoods (for evidence, see McKinlay, 1989: ch. 8). Securitythreats, in other words, are primarily domestic rather than external.

These findings suggest that ifwe wish to understand the etiology of armed

conflict in the post-Communist states and the Third World, approaches derivingfrom the European experience and its theoretical rendering in realism and neo-realism may be misplaced and/or irrelevant (Holsti, 1992). Most significantly, thetheoretical assumption of unit similarity may be inappropriate. If we want to under-stand the dismaying regularity of war since 1945, perhaps we should look at thedomestic structures and politics of states, and not at the external environment.

Perhaps Waltzs clear distinction between the principle of hierarchy, which under-lies the internal life of states, and the principle of anarchy, which &dquo;organizes&dquo; inter-national politics, might be amended or reversed. Perhaps the essentialcharacteristic of many post-Communist and Third World states is domestic anarchy,that is, where states as Waltz and Deutsch conceive them do not yet exist, or where

they exist more in name than in fact.This is not to deny that in some areas there are genuine security dilemmas,

complicated sets of external threats and resulting balancing behavior, constructionof deterrents, arms races and even drives for hegemony. One should avoid goingfrom one analytical fallacy-extending realism to the study of conflict in the ThirdWorld-to another. Much of the literature on conflict in the Third World has until

recently been written from a cold war or geopolitical perspective, and it has gener-ally neglected the domestic sources of conflict in these areas. It would be equallyinappropriate to exclude considerations of external threats in the lives of many post-

Communist or Third World states, particularly those in the Middle East, the HornofAfrica, and the Balkans. However, it is the case that the origins of conflict since1945 have derived more frequently from weak statehood, the residues of colonial-ism, and national fragmentation. Many domestically originating conflicts havebecome internationalized through complicated networks of ties between dissidentgroups and external patrons and protectors. The whole process of the internation-alization of domestic conflict needs more study (cf. Heraclides, 1990; de Silva andMay, 1991). But for the historical foundations of post-1945 war we must turn to thebirth of states.

Political Theory and the Composition of StatesEuropean political theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries addressedthe problem of political authority, obligation, and the state without questioning thebases of the community upon which the state rests. The state of nature in contract

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theory was a metaphor to explain the need for governance (particularly duringtimes of civil disturbance) among atomistic individuals, to outline the benefits itwould provide, and to list the costs it would help avoid. The focus is on sources,needs and forms. But one searches in vain in Hobbes or Locke to find exactly whowould make the contract among themselves or with a Leviathan. The state of nature

is universal, but the states that result from the social contract are particular. Theyare based on some sort of community, but the authors do not outline its entrance

requirements or limits. Hobbes speaks of the commonwealth and Locke of thenation, but these are assumed rather than defined. During their times, the conceptof nation carried no ethnic meaning; a nation referred to any &dquo;people&dquo; who hadgained political sovereignty (Gazdag, 1992: 13). Only in Rousseau does communityas a social unit begin to appear, this time in the guise of murs, rendered as customsand habits but not ethnicity.

In those philosophers Europe, the community over which there was governancewas a territorial contrivance created

through wars, conquests, marriages,and a few

peaceful political amalgamations of previously independent or autonomous units.Community was based on contiguity. In some places, such as France, England, orSweden, there was an ethnic core (cf. Smith, 1989: 352-353). France, for example,grew originally around areas of the old Frankish kingdom (Paris, the Loire Valley,and the north) but was fashioned later-largely by force of arms and the extensionof bureaucratic controls-to incorporate the politically unorganized nations ofBretons, Basques,Alsatians, Occitanians, Catalans, Corsicans, and Flemings as wellas a variety of dukedoms and other traditional political units.At the time of theFrench Revolution, one-half of Frances citizens spoke no French, and only about12 percent spoke it properly. Most of the population in the north and south of the

country could not speak the language at all (Hobsbawm, 1990: 60;on the language

of the Revolutionary regime, see Maugu6, 1979: 46-48). When Italy was unified inthe mid-nineteenth century, only about three percent of the population could speakstandard Italian; a Sicilians speech was incomprehensible to a Milanese. Italianparliamentarian Massimo dAzeglios quip, &dquo;We have made Italy, now we mustmake Italians&dquo; expressed well the sequence of state formation in nineteenth-century Europe: the state came before the nation. Walker Connor (1990), based onresearch into immigration records prior to World War I, has shown that mostEuropean migrants to the United States at the turn of the century had no sense ofbeing Italian, Ukrainian, Croat, or Slovene, much less Yugoslav. Their identitieswere defined in terms of river

valleys, villages,and regions.

Eighteenth- and most nineteenth-century European sovereigns, reflecting thepolitical philosophies of the times, ruled over &dquo;civic,&dquo; &dquo;historic,&dquo; or territorialcommunities rather than over &dquo;associational&dquo; (Buckheit, 1978: 4) or &dquo;natural&dquo;communities (nations based on consanguinity and/or language and religion). TheFrench &dquo;citizen&dquo; constructed during the Revolution had nothing to do with someclass or ethnic segment of the community. The concepts of patriotism and citizen-

ship were inconsistent with divided loyalties or with special &dquo;rights&dquo; implied in themodern concept of ethnic minorities or any other special subgroups within the state.Secessionist and unification movements, such as those in theAmerican colonies,based their claims on natural law, not on ethnicity, culture, or some other group

attribute. Greek independence in the 1820swas

fought for primarily in thename

of religious freedom and local political autonomy rather than ethnic identity, while,as suggested, Italian unification had everything to do with liberalism and little todo with the unity of some natural &dquo;people.&dquo; &dquo;Nationhood&dquo; defined in terms of

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ethnicity-consanguinity-and its collateral attributes of history, language, andeconomic base did not arise in Europe until the late nineteenth century-withBelgium a partial exception. Only then did claims for sovereign statehood in themulti-national Ottoman, Russian, andAustro-Hungarian empires start to be basedupon the cultural and language attributes of ethnic communities (cf. Hobsbawm,1990: 79, 102). Even then, however, some claims (e.g., by the Hungarians) contin-ued to emphasize the restoration of historic rights rather than the unique distinc-tiveness of language, culture, or ethnicity.The conceptual foundations of state legitimacy changed substantially between the

late nineteenth century and the end of World War I. This change was most vividlyreflected in the 1919 peace settlement. The states exclusiveness, once based on

history and territory (contiguity) now became based on culture, language, andethnicity (consanguinity). State territory was made to fit around &dquo;natural&dquo; commu-nity, while Woodrow Wilsons ethnically-based understanding of self-determination

replacedtraditional civic

conceptsof the state. Even

though Wilson didnot

intendto apply the principle of self-determination to the victorious powers, most analystsexpected that once national aspirations in the former multinational empires hadbeen met, a new era of peace would emerge. When Wilson proclaimed that &dquo;nopeople must be forced under a sovereignty under which it does not wish to live&dquo;(quoted in Buckheit, 1978: 62), he was stating that all the turmoil of Europeanpolitics caused by nationalist agitation in the decades prior to the Great War couldonly be resolved by sovereign statehood for &dquo;peoples.&dquo; Those &dquo;peoples&dquo; were definedin terms of ethnicity, culture, language, and/or religion.

This change in the basis of state legitimacy was also reflected in the victoriousAllies recognition policies. Three criteria were operative in Paris during 1919: the

&dquo;peoples&dquo; must have expressed a desire for sovereign independence; that expres-sion should have been by democratic means, through constitutions, institutions ofparliamentary government, or plebiscites; and new &dquo;minorities&dquo; must have theirown rights protected through constitutions, treaties, or League of Nations guaran-tees. -

Wilsons ethnically-based concept of self determination could not, of course, beapplied with precision. Boundary configurations simply could not fit the m6lange ofpopulation distributions. Inis Claude (1955: 13) estimates that even with the &dquo;scien-tific&dquo; work of the Paris Peace Conference-the attempt to create states on the basisof &dquo;natural&dquo; communities-25 to 30 million Europeans remained outside those&dquo;natural&dquo; communities as

theywere fashioned into new states.

Theywere to become

a source of conflict and war throughout the 1920s, as well as a pretext for Hitlersserial aggressions of the 1930s.The 1919 peace also helped to bring into political vocabulary and policy the

concepts of majority and minority. These emphasize differences-us and them-rather than the uniformity, similarities, and bonds that are implied in the conceptof &dquo;patriot&dquo; or &dquo;citizen.&dquo; That formal divisions of populations according to ethnic,language, and religious attributes can help foster tensions between them wasalready recognized in the early twentieth century. Writing in 1907, LordActonnoted that...

The greatest adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory ofnationality. By making the State and the nation commensurate with each otherin theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all other nationalities that

may be within the boundary. It cannot admit them to an equality with the ruling

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nation which constitutes the State, because the State would then cease to be

national, which would be a contradiction of the principle of its existence.

According, therefore, to the degree of humanity and civilization in that dominant

body which claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are exter-

minated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of depen-dence (Acton, 1907: 192-193).

As we will see, this was a prescient observation, but perhaps less relevant in theworld of Western Europe with whichActon was familiar than to many of the post-1945 states.

Europes states thus came to be based on two fundamentally different founda-tions of legitimacy: historic-civic (e.g., France, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark) and&dquo;natural&dquo; (Finland, Hungary, and the Baltic and Balkan states). In the former, thestate molded the modern territorial nation, and in the latter the nation (as definedand even created

by elites) helpedcreate the state. In 1919,

pre-existing&dquo;natural&dquo;

communities simply made a claim for a higher status, that is, for sovereign state-hood (Smith, 1986: 240-244).Two hybrid states, based neither on civic nor &dquo;natural&dquo; foundations, also emerged

from World War I: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. We are now seeing the results.Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were the creations of diplomats, not the results oflong historical processes or of the upgrading of some &dquo;natural&dquo; community tosovereign statehood. They were fictions that not even seventy years of history orthe iron rule of communist regimes could transform into some degree of civic or&dquo;natural&dquo; community. This is exactly the problem faced by many contemporarypost-socialist and Third World states.

State-creation after 1945

At the first meeting of the new United Nations GeneralAssembly in 1945, 42governments sent delegates; today, it has more than 180 members. There has beenno similar explosion of states in the history of the Westphalian system. If we areto gain an understanding of the etiology of war in the post-Communist and ThirdWorlds-that arena of armed conflict that is largely ignored in Waltzs andDeutschs analyses-we should start by looking at the birth of states rather than atthe principle of anarchy that underlies the relations between them.Using the two traditional European criteria of state legitimacy-&dquo;civic&dquo; and

&dquo;natural&dquo;-it is clear most of the post-1945 states met neither at the time theyachieved independence. Their claims for statehood were based primarily upon a

negative-anti-colonial or anti-Soviet-rather than on the positive achievements ofa historical community and its citizenship or on the &dquo;natural&dquo; bonds formed throughhistory, consanguinity, language, and/or religion. If Europes post-1918 states werenational communities upgraded to states, most post-1945 states remain &dquo;nations-to-be.&dquo; Many derive their legitimacy, &dquo;from the circumstances of their origins indeliberate acts of creation-by aliens for alien purposes&dquo; (Smith, 1983: 125).The new states were mostly the successors of colonial entities which, as we know,

had little to do with historic or &dquo;natural&dquo; units. The standard depiction of theirterritorial

originsis that of a bureaucrat or

diplomatin

London, Berlin, Paris,or

St. Petersburg drawing straight lines on maps, ignorant of the topographical,natural, or population characteristics of the territories being claimed or bartered.The colonial units usually incorporated all sorts of ethnicities, nations, religions,

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languages, and commercial patterns into a single administrative zone, or they tore

apart previously integrated societies into separate units (Iraq and Kuwait, for

example). The colonial powers also shifted populations indiscriminately, thus creat-ing multi-ethnic societies where they had not existed before. Fiji, Trinidad, Hawaii,and Guyana are prominent examples. The numerous and diverse purposes ofcolonization---commercial exploitation, slaves, religious proselytization, interna-tional status, strategic interests, and great power rivairy-bore no relationshipwhatsoever to the creation of &dquo;states.&dquo; Indeed, most colonial regimes explicitlysought to avoid building the foundations of statehood.According to Migdal (1988:141), &dquo;British imperial officials ... considered far too extravagant building acolonial state strong enough to either bypass indigenous forces altogether or absorbthem into a single system of rules.&dquo; Imperial officials ruled primarily through the

co-option and subsidization of &dquo;strongmen&dquo; (clan leaders, religious officials, caudil-los, and the like), thus leaving the successor political units with highly fragmented

systems of social control. Colonial authorities madeno

attemptto

encouragea sense

of national consciousness, much less ideas of individual or group rights. Quite theopposite: their task was to exploit resources through forced or cheap labor. This

required racist ideologies (except in some cases among French colonialists), andaccording to Worsley (1964), a process of psychological exploitation or &dquo;infantiliza-tion,&dquo; described by Fanon (1961) as colonization of the personality. These hardlyconstitute solid foundations for modern statehood.

The idea that the polyethnic/communal fictions called colonies could somedaybecome independent states emerged only after World War I. By the 1950s it hadbecome the standard wisdom in &dquo;national (a misuse of the term) liberation&dquo; ideal-

ogy and in United Nations rhetoric. Colonial jurisdictions created for multiple non-

state purposes were somehow to become carbon copies or prototypes of theEuropean territorial states that had created them.When leaders of national liberation movements spoke of &dquo;self determination&dquo;-

if they used that term at all-they hardly did so in the name of a &dquo;people,&dquo; becauseno such &dquo;people &dquo;-meaning a &dquo;natural&dquo; comrnunity-existed. There were, rather,congeries of communal-religious groups, ethnicities, tribes, clans, lineages, andpastorals who wandered freely. Lacking &dquo;natural&dquo; communities or a national historyof uniqueness which might legitimate their claims to statehood, they had to rely onthe territorial creations and concoctions of the colonialists to define their hoped-for communities. In Crawford Youngs words (1983: 200):

... anticolonial nationalism found inconvenient the notion that cultural affini-ties were a necessary basis for exercising [the right of self-determination].Ashared condition of oppression and alien rule was the essential cause of revolt .... Thus the particular colonial territory was the necessary framework for

challenging foreign hegemony. Nationalists, in seeking united support of allinhabitants of a given territory to sanction the independence demand, embracedthe colonial entity itself as the defining basis for the &dquo;people&dquo; to whom self-determination should apply.

European territorial colonies, many of which had nothing at all to do with&dquo;natural&dquo; communities or ancient states, were nevertheless to be the basis of the

new

countries. The problemwas

that in most cases the country remaineda

dreamrather than becoming a reality. Unlike Europes centralizing monarchies of thesixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the gulf between the territorially-based post-colonial state and the plethora of its constituent nations, communities, and ethnic

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groups cannot be easily reconciled in a democratic age. Marriages, armed conquest,and forced integration or assimilation are not policies easily sustained under the

eyes of a human rights- and sovereignty-inspired international community.Like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, many of the post-1945 states began as

fictions. It is for this reason, in part, that Robert Jackson (1991) has called theseentities &dquo;quasi-states&dquo; and thatAnthony Smith (1986: 244) has claimed even more

pessimistically that &dquo;the history-less are destiny-less.&dquo; They owe their creation moreto the international community than to their own artificial communities. Manyreceived international recognition before they had met either the traditional crite-ria of statehood (a defined territory, skills and organizations to administer a perma-nent population, and capacity to enter into treaty relations), or the 1919 criteriabased on &dquo;natural&dquo; community. They entered the international club, in other words,by virtue of their status as colonies rather than through their achievements asfledgling states. Thus their essential but very difficult task is to create nations-

andin some cases

states-wherenone

existed before.These comments do not imply that states or quasi-states came into being only asa result of European imports. In many areas ofAfrica,Asia, and the Middle East,states long pre-dated colonialism, and some of them had geographic delimitationsroughly approximating colonial boundaries (cf. Neuberger, 1986: 43). But most post-1945 states were congeries of pre-colonial units, and many European administra-tions partitioned older political structures between two or more colonies.We should not assume that there is some automatic or pre-destined trend to

&dquo;real&dquo; statehood, meaning a close concordance between the government apparatus,civil society, and the &dquo;nation.&dquo; Some former quasi-states-Malaysia, Singapore,Egypt, and the Maghreb countries (except Libya)-have arrived at a semblance of

strong statehood. Trinidad and most other Caribbean countries have a pronouncedand perhaps untypical record of political strength (Thorndike, 1989). Ukraine hasan ancient history and a distinctive language. But other countries have disinte-grated or collapsed (Lebanon, Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda). Most post-1945 states aresomewhere in between, meaning that their future remains problematic and that

many will end up as cases on the United Nations agenda.These comments suggest that some new states have mixed characteristics of

anarchy and hierarchy. Waltz (1979: 114-116) considers this possibility but rejectsit on theoretical grounds. No matter how much &dquo;anarchic&dquo; behavior appears withinstates, they are still organized on hierarchical principles.Any state that is unableto

providefor its own

defense,that tolerates

highlyarmed

political groupswithin

its territory, and that uses excessively predatory or suppressive means to bridge thegap between the state and its nation(s), can hardly be based on hierarchical (mutualdependence) relations. If on a prolonged basis the state cannot provide a minimumlevel of public security, as is the current case in Somalia, Liberia, or Rwanda, itdoes not contain the &dquo;stuff of a state despite having flags and an ambassador atthe United Nations. The principle of hierarchy, characterized by a division of labor,is the hallmark of the state, according to Waltz. But in Myanmar, for example, howcan we speak of a division of labor when the army owns and runs the organizedeconomy, when its members systematically plunder national wealth for privateprofit, when significant proportions of the population do not accept the legitimacyor the authority of the government (they deny the principle of hierarchy), and whenmost private commerce and exchange take place outside government purview andsupervision? It is difficult to see how such countries are functionally similar toDenmark and Japan, for example. This suggests that we can expect them to be the

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locale of armed combat, the arenas of civil and secessionist wars, many of whichwill become internationalized to some extent. Contrary to the Rousseau-Waltzthesis, then, the security problematic for such states is primarily internal, not exter-nal (Korany, 1986;Ayoob, 1991; Holsti, 1992). The main rationale for the armedforces of many Third World and post-socialist states is not the fear of externalcoercion or aggression, but the fear of internal rebellion (cf. Ball, 1988: 393; Ekwe-Ekwe, 1990: 154). The poor fit between state and nation-the major legacy ofcolonialism-is the essential source of wars in the Third World and, more recently,in the residues of collapsed communism.As Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe (1990: 155) hasnoted, &dquo;It is a cruel irony that six millionAfricans have had to die in the past twentyyears [since the early 1970s] in conflicts that center principally on whether or notoneAfrican nation or another should belong to states created strategically byEuropean imperialism to exploit the people and their resources.&dquo;One of the main tasks of the military in Third World countries in fact has been

to

&dquo;integrate&dquo;diverse communities into the states

post-colonialterritorial domains.

From their perspective, they are involved in &dquo;nation-building.&dquo; From the perspec-tive of groups such as the southern Sudanese, Karens, Tamils, Mizo, Nagas,Omoros, and dozens of others, the task of the states military is to appropriate theirlands and resources and to destroy their identity, ways of life, and local forms ofgovernance (Nietschmann, 1987: 7-14; Odhiambo, 1991: 292-298).

Ekwe-Ekwes statement above summarizes the fundamental dilemma of many new

states. In it is encapsulated the conflict between the principle of a states territorial

integrity and the principle of self-determination (Neuberger, 1986: 106). Theattempts to create &dquo;nations&dquo; where none existed before drive secessionist and irreden-

tist movements, most of which take a violent form under the rubric of the inherent

right of self-determination. Without a nation, a state is fundamentally weak. But inattempting to build strength, usually under the leadership of an ethnic core, minori-ties become threatened or excluded from power. This is the foundation of the &dquo;insecu-

rity dilemma&dquo; of most new states. It is the source of most wars in our age.

Characteristics of Weak, Strong, and Failed States

In the Third World, as in some of the post-Communist regions, then, the relevantanarchy does not lie primarily in the relations between states, but is a commondomestic characteristic. Barry Buzan has made the important distinction betweenweak and strong states. The distinction-it is actually a dimension-does not lie in

military strength, but in socio-political cohesion.

Anarchic states possess neither a widely accepted and coherent idea of the state

among their populations, nor a governing power strong enough to impose unityin the absence of political consensus. The fact that they exist as states at all is

largely a result of other states recognizing them as such, and not disputing theirexistence (Buzan, 1989: 17).

Further up the ladder of cohesion are those states whose governments rule effec-

tively because they have power, but whose authority relies essentially upon thegoodwill of various kinds of &dquo;strongmen&dquo; who are the de facto rule-makers and value

allocators amonga

variety of ethnic, clan, class, functional, or communal social units(cf. Migdal, 1988: 31-39). Then there are states with &dquo;mixed&dquo; characteristics, followedby strong states whose political life rests on a synthesis or integration of state, society,and nation(s). The critical variable is the degree of a states legitimacy-which is not

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to be confused with the popularity of a government. Buzans dimension does notextend far enough, however. The opposite of a strong state is not a weak state, buta failed or collapsed one.

Weak States

Numerous indicators of strength and weakness are found in different combinations;their interplay remains largely unexplored. Weak states contain various combina-tions of the following characteristics:

1. The ends or purposes of governance are contested. The clash between

fundamentalist and secular Muslim forces reflects such divisions. The

lines separating the state from civil society (which itself is poorly articu-lated and organized) are blurred and contested, further exacerbating

regime legitimacy and often resultingin state

coercion and predation (cf.Hawthorn, 1991: 31).2. There are two or more nations or, as Gurr and Scarrit (1989: 375) call them,

&dquo;differentially treated communal groups&dquo; within the state. What is more

significant than the profusion of ethnic/communal groups, however, is thatone or more are commonly constructed as minorities rather than as equals.The distinction is important.A nation has a common history, ethnic and

language ties, and often a territorial and economic base. It does not see itselfas a &dquo;minority&dquo; until it has been so defined in the context of an &dquo;outside&dquo;state or by some other group.As Nietschmann (1987: 4) points out, theconcept of minority is used by the state, not by the nation, and is usuallythe intellectual basis justifying various forms of exclusion, appropriation, or

repression. It is often the state itself that categorizes groups and establishes&dquo;different rules of the game ... for defining groups, legitimizing certain onesand declaring others out of bounds&dquo; (Bienen, 1989: 139). Following theconventional state-biased terminology, Gurr and Scarrit (1989: 380) defineminorities as &dquo;groups within larger politically-organized societies whosemembers share a distinctive collective identity based on cultural and ascrip-tive traits recognized by them and by the larger society&dquo; (for a somewhatdifferent rendering, see Connor, 1978: 388). The significant quality is the&dquo;social perception that [various] traits or combination of traits set the group

apart&dquo; (Gurrand

Scarrit,1989:

381).Gurr and Scarrit

identify99.countries

that have such minorities &dquo;at risk.&dquo; Twenty-eight states inAfrica contain 72groups &dquo;at risk.&dquo; Those groups comprise almost 45 percent of the totalpopulation. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the proportionof the population &dquo;at risk&dquo; is 24.3 percent and inAsia, 18.3 percent.

3. The government apparatus is &dquo;captured&dquo; or held by one group, whichsystematically excludes others. If the state is based on the guaranteedstructural predominance of a single group, we can all it an &dquo;ethnocracy.&dquo;Its strategies for dealing with &dquo;minorities&dquo;-and sometimes it is numeri-cal minorities excluding majorities-range from expulsion (Uganda,Myanmar) through forced integration-colonization (Sudan) to various

forms of systematic exclusion (Myanmar, Iraq, Sri Lanka) and even toethnocide (Rwanda). (For a discussion of the strategies, see Rothchild,1986; for the European experience, see Maugu6, 1979: ch. 5, and Coakley,1992.)

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4. The government is &dquo;captured&dquo; by a family or clan for the primary purposeof personal enrichment (Nicaragua under the Somozas, Haiti under theDuvaliers, the Philippines under Marcos, the CentralAfrican Republicunder Bokassa, Somalia under Barre, etc.). Following its leaders, the

bureaucracy operates primarily through patron-client relations andsystematic corruption; governing groups use state capabilities andresources primarily for personal enrichment. Zaire is a contemporaryexample. This type of regime may be more appropriately entitled a

&dquo;kleptocracy.&dquo;&dquo;

5. Major communal or ideological groups or nations identify with, or are

loyal to, external states and/or societies (e.g., the Kashmiris towardPakistan during the 1950s; the Somalis in Kenya in the 1970s; the Turkish

Cypriots; some Shiia in Lebanon, etc.); or significant segments of the

population owe primary or exclusive loyalty to primordial groups (cf.

Jackson, 1987).6. The state is incapable of delivering basic services or providing securityand order for the population (India after partition, Lebanon, Somalia, and

Afghanistan today). In these cases, there is indeed a Hobbesian state ofnature within the state.

7. The government relies primarily on violence, coercion, and intimidationto maintain itself in power, often targeting nations/minorities or ideolog-ical groups (e.g., Iraq under Hussein, Myanmar) in order to gain supportfrom other groups.

8. Most fundamentally, the state lacks legitimacy. Its inhabitants &dquo; ... donot readily regard their rulers as providing a legitimate authority, andstate power does not rest on a secure foundation of popular belief in theright of rulers to rule&dquo; (OBrien, 1991: 145).

In Michael Manns (1986: 109-136; cf. Thomas, 1989) terms, the weak state is highin despotic power, but low in infrastructural power. It can rule through coercion,but it has no deep roots within civil society.

This list is suggestive, not exhaustive. Other characteristics are also relevant (cf.Korany, 1986: 553-556). However, it contains important elements, and can alsoserve as a basis of comparison with the slow and often violent process of state-forma-tion in early modern Europe.

Strong States

Strong states contain characteristics opposite of those found in weak states, as wellas others.

1. The ends and purposes of government have become settled, founded ona significant ideological consensus. Politics are thus &dquo;de-passioned&dquo;

&dquo;

(Brenner, 1992). They revolve primarily around technical issues and prior-ities rather than purposes and creeds. In most modern industrial societies,for example, there is a consensus that the purpose of governance is tohelp provide &dquo;the good life&dquo; for the individual through the means of the

welfare state. The division between the state and civil society is estab-lished-and mostly honored-through constitutional guarantees and lessformal &dquo;rules of the game.&dquo; Broadly speaking, ruling authorities and/orstate institutions enjoy a high level of legitimacy if not always popularity.

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2. Most social groups-ethnic, religious, language, and the like-have beensuccessfully assimilated, or have achieved protection, equality, or self-determination through autonomy, federalism, or other special devices.Sovereign statehood through secession no longer constitutes a major goalof constituent nations/minorities. Ideological, religious, and other groupsoperate freely and participate in the political process.

3. Territorial frontiers have become legitimized and sanctified throughnumerous treaties and in multilateral instruments. The spatial dimensionof state jurisdiction is not contested domestically or externally, and norms

against forceful revision (e.g., the Helsinki FinalAct) hold.4. Governors change through regularized procedures. It is impossible for one

group or social sector to hold power permanently, and no group faces

systematic persecution or denial of civil liberties and political office.5. Major state organizations such as the military remain under effective

civilian control.

6. The mores of governance preclude personal enrichment through politicalactivity. In Michael Manns terms (1986: 109-136), the modern industrialstate is low on despotic power, but high on infrastructural power. Theroots of the state lie deeply within (and sometimes intrude upon) the civilsociety.

Pomian (1991), in a parallel analysis, has suggested categories of horizontal andvertical integration to measure the strength of statehood.A state is horizontallyintegrated when its territorial base is essentially uncontested; borders are recog-nized and considered legitimate both within and outside the country. Vertical

integration implies that a state is able to handle social conflicts and to allocatevalues without having to resort to violence; no social group is systematicallyexcluded from governance.

Failed States

States fail or collapse when one or more of the following characteristics prevail:

1. There are one or more armed &dquo;mini-sovereigns&dquo; within the state. Theyhave effective rule-making capacity and are armed sufficiently to resistcentral authorities. The clan chiefs of Somalia and the PLO in Lebanon

priorto

the Israeli invasion of 1982are

examples.2. An external power wields effective authority or influence within the terri-

tory of the state and has the coercive capacity to resist pressures from the

legal authorities. Syria in Lebanon and the Soviet Union inAfghanistanare examples.

3. Communities war against each other and the central authorities do nothave the capacity to end the slaughter. Rwanda in 1994 is an example.

4. A state is incapable of providing minimal security for the ordinary tasksof life-commerce, transportation, agriculture, and communication-toproceed. These tasks must be performed by outsiders, as has been doneby the United Nations in Somalia, or by local warlords.

It_ is important to emphasize that these characteristics constitute ideal types of&dquo;weak,&dquo; &dquo;strong,&dquo; and &dquo;failed&dquo; states. Most states, most of the time, can be placedin various positions on a continuum, the ends of which are the ideal types. States

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over time also move along the continuum toward greater strength or weakness. FewWest European states completely approximate the &dquo;strong&dquo; state-the position of&dquo;gastarbeiter&dquo; and refugees in Germany, some Quebecois in Canada, and Basquesin Spain suggest significant deviations. There are equally few pure &dquo;kleptocracies&dquo;or &dquo;ethnocracies.&dquo; The main point is that those states that are located toward the&dquo;strong&dquo; part of the continuum are sites of peace, while those tending toward the&dquo;weak&dquo; or &dquo;failed&dquo; parts are sites of war.

The Character of States and War

Strong states are a necessary condition for peace. Today, a fundamental source ofinternational conflict is anarchy within states. Peace in Western Europe or North

America since 1945 cannot be explained, as have most realists (cf. Waltz, 1979;Gaddis, 1987; Mearsheimer, 1990), solely by the cold war, nuclear weapons,

American

hegemony,or balances of

power.Western

Europeis also more than a

society of states (Bull, 1977) or a &dquo;mature anarchy&dquo; (Buzan, 1983: 96-101). PeaceBetween the Western industrial countries, I suggest, comes primarily from the factthat there has been peace within each of its constituent units.Anarchy, althoughbeing altered through the European Union, has remained the organizing principlefor the mutual relations of the NorthAmerican and European states. Yet, in contrastto a Rousseauistic or Waltzian prediction, war has not recurred (cf. Deutsch, 1957).Europe, NorthAmerica, and to a lesser extent SouthAmerica are anomalies, butvery significant ones. If the principle of anarchy-a constant property betweenstates-has not changed, and if systemic characteristics such as balances of powerare not to be found in many regions of the world, then the explanation of the signif-

icant variation in war incidence must lie in characteristics within states.It follows that regions populated by large numbers of weak and/or failing states

will be zones of war, areas of high incidence of both internal and interstate armedconflicts, while regions containing large numbers of states of medium strength willbe no-war zones. There may be frequent militarized crises, arms competition, andad hoc alliance-making, but the incidence of internal wars will be relatively low,and the incidence of interstate wars negligible. SouthAmerica since the earlytwentieth century fits this profile. Finally, regions containing a predominance ofstrong states will be &dquo;pluralistic security communities,&dquo; where both internal andinterstate wars will be almost unthinkable. Western Europe since 1945, North

America since the 1920s, and the South Pacific region concentrated onAustraliaand New Zealand, fit this pattern (cf. Buzan, 1989: 23; Kacowicz, 1994).A competing theory, the theory of the &dquo;democratic peace,&dquo; has gained manyadherents and empirical support since first enunciated by Montesquieu and Kant.Many of the characteristics listed in the &dquo;strong&dquo; state category duplicatedemocratic political structures and procedures, but the category also highlightsrelations between groups within the state, state-group relations, the legitimacy ofestablished boundaries, and a consensus on the ends of governance. It takes morethan periodic elections, multiple parties, and civil liberties to make a strong state.Democratic institutions are just part of the story, albeit an important part. Thedemocracy-peace theory is not sufficient, however, because as the SouthAmerican

anomaly suggests, therehave been zones of

international peace where there hasbeen little or no democracy (Holsti, forthcoming).In the case of the Third and post-Communist worlds, the absence of alliances,

balances of power, and other indicators of a classic anarchic system (the Middle

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East is a significant exception), combined with the recurrence of war, also suggeststhat the fundamental sources of armed conflict lie within rather than between

states. Despite flags, UN membership, and other symbols of sovereignty, many ThirdWorld and post-Communist states are significantly-and perhaps functionally-different from those in Western Europe, NorthAmerica, and most of South

America. Many governments, for example, do not have the purpose of providing&dquo;the good life&dquo; for their citizens. Their primary purpose is to provide the good lifefor one segment of the society, whether a clan, an ethnic or religious group, a

family, or an organization such as the army .Waltzs concepts of anarchy and hierarchy are ideal types, and for reasons of

theoretical parsimony, simplifying assumptions have to be made. But if my argumentcarries weight, then we really have two worlds of world politics, one populated bystrong states, the other by weak and failed states. The characteristics of relations

among the former differ significantly from those of the latter. This can be shown

empirically using manydifferent indices. If all states were the same, as Waltz

suggests, then we should not observe such significant differences in the outcomes of

relationships. There should be wars, balances of power, hegemons, and arms races

just as much in Europe, NorthAmerica, and SouthAmerica as anywhere else in theworld. Yet this is not the case. In the Third and post-Communist worlds, we find therecurrence ofwar, but balances of power and hegemony-seeking except in the MiddleEast are rare. In summary, if we wish to look for the sources of war in these areas,we should jettison many of our traditional analytical devices whose origins lie in

European history (Korany, 1986; Holsti, 1992). The study of the state, ethnicity, and

comparative politics provides a better theoretical and methodological platform.

Policy ImplicationsIf the analysis has some plausibility, then our conceptions of international organi-zations and of the constitutive principles of international practice need re-exami-nation. It is important to recall that the fundamental principles underlyingorganizations such as the United Nations are Westphalian. The principles of

sovereign equality, of non-interference, and of territorial integrity which are thefoundations of most contemporary international organizations are importantprotective devices for the small and weak against external predators. Imagine how

many countries would have shared the fate of Kuwait in July 1990 were not the

principles of sovereignty and independence among the most sacred of the societyof states. This is one reason why in the last three centuries we have witnessed thebirth of so many states, and the demise of so few. The sanctity and mystique ofstatehood remain strong.

Yet, since most of the threats to weak states are internal rather than external,how can international organizations act when their chief mandate is to maintaininternational peace and security? The Somalian situation brings this question to theforefront. Should the UN attempt to take over the functional tasks of a state when

the indigenous rulers cannot perform them? Should its purpose be to resuscitatequasi-states that have fallen into chaos and warlordism? Or should the international

community develop new forms of trusteeship, giving itself the very long range and

costly task of creating a genuine civic society ina

milieu where it is lacking? Canthe international community create strong states?What sorts of norms should guide the efforts of international organizations in

their peace-keeping and peace-making tasks? Should the purpose, other than

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stopping the killing, be to reconstitute states that are largely fictional or to promotethe Wilsonian idea of &dquo;natural&dquo; self-determination? These are not abstract

questions. Where peace-keeping missions have been unable to help bring ethnicreconciliation-as is the case of Cyprus-should they continue to drain the coffers

of the United Nations and contributing governments in the expectation thatanother twenty or thirty years of non-warfare may lead to an eventual restorationof the prewar situation? Or should the international community recognize thatperhaps the most viable principle of legitimacy is statehood based on some&dquo;natural&dquo; community? If so, would it not make more sense, for example, to acceptthe fact of a Turkish Cypriot state? The peace being worked out for Bosnia, as muchas it may be a cause for future strife, implicitly takes the anti-Deutsch position thatit is better to separate peoples than to try to integrate them. But this challengesthe liberal faith (and pre-twentieth-century practice in most multi-nationalempires) that a society can incorporate many groups on the basis of equality and

civility.The problem with the ethnic &dquo;solution,&dquo; of course, is that it can be taken toabsurd lengths. If, as Gurr and Scarrit suggest, the world has more than 250 minori-ties/nations at some degree of risk, then we could well expect claims from most ofthem for sovereign statehood. We would then have, let us say, another 200 statesadded to the present 185. Most of them would have authoritarian rule (Etzioni,1992) and be non-viable economic entities, but at least for the time being thepassion for &dquo;identity,&dquo; &dquo;international recognition,&dquo; and a &dquo;place in the sun&dquo; wouldbe satisfied. The economic fragility of many of these &dquo;states&dquo; would ultimately forcethem to find new modes of political integration.

It is unlikely, however, that governments in most Third World countries will

sympathize with the Wilsonian conception of state legitimacy, for to do so wouldinvite an increased incidence of secessionist pressures and greater external scrutinyof their domestic politics. If United Nations-sponsored peace arrangements, as inBosnia, sanction all sorts of partitions and new states, all based on the doctrine of

consanguine self-determination, very few governments in the Third World would beimmune from the claims of their own constituent groups to upgrade their status tosovereign statehood.

Many Third World and post-Communist countries live a precarious existence intheir post-colonial guise. There is a competition-often lethal-between the forcesof &dquo;state-building&dquo; and the forces of fragmentation and autonomy, those nationsand groups that have their own histories, identities, strategies for survival, andlocalized systems of rule-making. They often take up arms for their &dquo;rights,&dquo; or forself-protection against predators, including their own governments (cf. Gurr, 1993).Governments, on the other hand, have their own agendas of &dquo;national integration,&dquo;&dquo;nation-building,&dquo; and eradication of &dquo;communists&dquo; and &dquo;terrorists,&dquo; or anyone elsewho gets in the way. Civil wars are the result; a significant proportion of thembecome internationalized and foreign intrusion usually prolongs the contest of arms.

Until today, the international community has shown only mild sympathy for theforces of secession. Third World states, in particular, jealously guard their conceptof sovereignty and (colonial) territorial integrity. Their interpretation of the rightof self-determination adheres strictly to a non-Wilsonian conception of the bases ofstate

legitimacy.It is a

conceptthat must be

appliedto a

territory-the colony-and not to particular groups within it. Self-determination was achieved, accordingto the Organization ofAfrican Unity, in the act of &dquo;national liberation&dquo; againstcolonialism, and that act is to apply for all time. It is irreversible and non-amend-

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able. There can be no such thing as &dquo;self-determination&dquo; for the Kashmiris,Punjabis, Sikhs, Karens, Chins, Tamils, Ibos, Baganda, and all the rest. UnitedNations Resolution 1514, the &dquo;Declaration on the Granting of Independence toColonial Countries and Peoples,&dquo; clearly states the prevailing doctrine: &dquo; ... anyattempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national [sic] unity and theterritorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principlesof the Charter of the United Nations.&dquo; It is in part because of this interpretationof state legitimacy that, despite the myriad of secessionist movements since 1945(but excluding the collapse of the Soviet Union) there have been only four peace-ful secessions (Anguilla, Singapore, Mayotte, and Slovakia) and four successfulviolent secessions (Pakistan, Eritrea, Slovenia, and Croatia). It is thus one of theironies of twentieth-century history that Wilsons concept of self-determination,which was supposed to be a pathway to peace, has become a major justification forwar and has resulted in national and international &dquo;pandaemonium&dquo; (Moynihan,

1993) .The tenets of realism and geopolitical analysis have blinded us to the continuingsearch for politically effective communities. This has been a major source of inter-national instability for more than a century. In some areas the search has led to

peace, but the record of war since 1945 indicates that the European territorial statehas not been a successful prototype for many non-Western communities. The war

between nations and the state continues unabated in many parts of the world, and

presents numerous intellectual and moral challenges for both academics and theinstitutions of the international community.

Note

1. This characterization is representative of many Third World and former Soviet republics.They had no pre-colonial pedigree of statehood. Significant exceptions include India, the

Maghreb countries (except Libya), Egypt, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, Lesotho,Botswana, the Baltic states, and Ukraine. Some small island colonies also had forms of state-hood prior to Western colonization. In the remainder, there were various forms of state-

hood, but they did not approximate colonial or contemporary state boundaries.

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Biographical Note

KJ. HOLSTI, of the University of British Columbia, has published extensively in thefield of international relations. His most recent books are Peace and War:ArmedConflicts and International Order, 1648-1989 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) andWar, the State, and the State of War (forthcoming, 1996). He is a past editor of theInternational Studies Q,uarterly, and has served as president of both the CanadianPolitical ScienceAssociation and the International StudiesAssociation.ADDRESS:

Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.,Canada V6T 1 Z 1.