The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict
Main Points:
End of the Col War has coincided with increased nationalist, ethnic, and religious conflict in Eurasia
Serbs and Slovenians, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims
What are the causes of the varying intergroup relations?
Ancient hostilities is not a good enough explanation
Posen using the classic realist concept of the Security Dilemma to form his article
Using it to analyze the “special conditions that arise when groups of people suddenly find themselves newly responsible for their own security”
Once a group is required to provide its own protection, it must ask questions of their immediate neighbors…
Are they a threat?
Will that threat grow or reduce overtime?
Can we do anything about that threat?
Security Dilemma will be used to analyze the break-up of Yugoslavia and relations between Russia and Ukraine
The collapse of imperial regimes is more or less the same thing as emerging anarchy
The disappearance of a sovereign (Hobbesian Realism) leaves in its wake numerous ethnic, cultural, and religious groups that are now responsible for their “problem of security”
The problem arises because these groups usually lack the attributes of statehood legitimacy
The Security Dilemma according to Posen:
“What one state does to enhance its own security causes reactions that, in the end, can make one less secure”.
All states will fear betrayal
Actions taken that a state views as strengthening its own defenses will often seem offensive and threating to another state
Distinguishing Offensive and Defensive military capabilities
If offensive operations are more effective than defense, states will choose they offensive if they wish to survive
This creates incentives for states to strike first whenever war appears likely
Imperial collapse, or the loss of the sovereign, makes offensive and defensive capabilities indistinguishable
When the group national identity or “groupness” is more cohesive and strong…the combat power of military
End of the Col War has coincided with increased nationalist, ethnic, and religious conflict in Eurasia
Serbs and Slovenians, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims
What are the causes of the varying intergroup relations?
Ancient hostilities is not a good enough explanation
Posen using the classic realist concept of the Security Dilemma to form his article
Using it to analyze the “special conditions that arise when groups of people suddenly find themselves newly responsible for their own security”
Once a group is required to provide its own protection, it must ask questions of their immediate neighbors…
Are they a threat?
Will that threat grow or reduce overtime?
Can we do anything about that threat?
Security Dilemma will be used to analyze the break-up of Yugoslavia and relations between Russia and Ukraine
The collapse of imperial regimes is more or less the same thing as emerging anarchy
The disappearance of a sovereign (Hobbesian Realism) leaves in its wake numerous ethnic, cultural, and religious groups that are now responsible for their “problem of security”
The problem arises because these groups usually lack the attributes of statehood legitimacy
The Security Dilemma according to Posen:
“What one state does to enhance its own security causes reactions that, in the end, can make one less secure”.
All states will fear betrayal
Actions taken that a state views as strengthening its own defenses will often seem offensive and threating to another state
Distinguishing Offensive and Defensive military capabilities
If offensive operations are more effective than defense, states will choose they offensive if they wish to survive
This creates incentives for states to strike first whenever war appears likely
Imperial collapse, or the loss of the sovereign, makes offensive and defensive capabilities indistinguishable
When the group national identity or “groupness” is more cohesive and strong…the combat power of military