Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty

A work entitled Nation Against State could be expected to address religion, culture, language, and the roots of nationalism. I wish to advise the reader that this book turns in a different direction; it develops instead innovative approaches for contending with brutal conflicts waged in the name of nationhood. The prevailing doctrines of statecraft currently invoked in efforts to check these conflicts evolved in an age when the scourge of war arose between states rather than within them. The basic conflicts that now threaten international peace have little in common with those that arose during the heyday of fascism and communism, when the nation-state reigned supreme. The dominant norms of international law and diplomacy are ill adapted to coping with the kind of strife that has erupted in Yugoslavia and in the Caucasus and that could become common elsewhere in Eurasia.

In six case studies aimed at specialists, experts on international relations look closely at the history and development of recent crises that provoked international intervention. James B. Steinberg traces the basis for each of two contradictory views of the war in former Yugoslavia: either the international community should do much more in such civil conflicts, or such situations are too intractable to be solved by outsiders. Looking at the civil war in Liberia, David Wippman observes that if intervention by the regional group ECOWAS does not succeed, it will serve those who argue that the United Nations should take a role in such conflicts. Offering evidence of incompetence in the U.N.'s relief and diplomatic efforts in Somalia, Jeffrey Clark argues that U.N. agencies must be held more accountable or such debacles will recur in places like Mozambique. In an overview of intervention strategies, Damrosch, who teaches law at Columbia University, suggests credibly that economic sanctions and arms embargos should be evaluated on how they meet two criteria: mitigating violence and targeting the perpetrators of wrongdoing. Illustrations not seen by PW.
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