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States, Nations, and Regional WarBenjamin Miller aa University of Haifa , IsraelPublished online: 03 Dec 2008.
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SYMPOSIUM
States, Nations, and Regional War
BENJAMIN MILLER
University of Haifa, Israel
Explaining Transitions and Variations in Regional War and Peace Patterns
Questions of regional war and peace have assumed crucial importance in the post-Cold War
era due to the growing salience of regional conflicts with the end of the superpower rivalry
and their potential implications for international stability. The events of 11 September
show, moreover, that the relationship between global security, US national security and
regional conflicts (that is, issues such as the relations between Afghanistan and its neigh-
bors, especially the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan–India
conflict over Kashmir, Iraq and Gulf security, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and challenges
to the stability of Arab regimes) is at least as tight as it was during the Cold War, if not
more so. The result is that the sources of regional conflicts, and regional peacemaking
and resolution of such conflicts, must be addressed not only because of their intrinsic
importance, but also because they bear directly on key issues of international security. A
key point that will be highlighted here is that many of these and other regional conflicts
have a strong ethno-national dimension due to the mismatch between geopolitical bound-
aries in a region and ethno-national affiliations and loyalties there. Major current examples
of ethnic conflicts derived from such an imbalance and escalating to some of the major
regional (and international) crises of our time include: the Kosovo–Serbia conflict, which
started following the breakdown of Yugoslavia; the recent war between Georgia and Russia
over the breakaway ethnic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and the instability
along the Afghan–Pakistan border, where the ethnic Pashto tribes, which straddle this
border, provide sanctuary to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, thus producing major security
problems in both countries with major regional (and international) implications.
A number of recent books have made an important contribution to our understanding of
the great variety of regional orders emerging in the post-Cold War era.1 These works serve
as a useful antidote to purely systemic analyses and especially to the widely assumed
Ethnopolitics, Vol. 7, No. 4, 445–463, November 2008
Correspondence Address: Benjamin Miller, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Email:
Ethnopolitics, Vol. 7, No. 4, 445–463, November 2008
1744-9057 Print/1744-9065 Online/08/040445–19 # 2008 The Editor of EthnopoliticsDOI: 10.1080/17449050802539344
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increasing globalization of world affairs.2 They demonstrate forcefully the centrality of
regional phenomena for understanding key developments in the security field in the
post-Cold War era. However, they fail to develop a coherent theory of regional orders
that would make sense of regional war and peace. The related useful literatures on terri-
torial conflicts,3 enduing rivalries4 and civil and ethnic conflicts5 focus mostly on the
dyadic level rather than on the regional one. Developing a coherent theory of regional
security is the key objective of this article. One of the key components of this theory,
which is particularly highlighted here, refers to the strong linkage between regional
conflicts and the incongruence between the division of a region into territorial states
and the ethno-national identities and aspirations in that region.
In order to develop such a theory, it is necessary to answer two interrelated questions: First,
what are the substantive causes of regional war and peace? Second, are these causes located at
the global/systemic level or the regional/domestic level? In other words, is regional war and
peace influenced more by global developments in great power relations and systemic distri-
butions of power, or by developments in the region and within the regional states? The first
question is related to the debates among competing perspectives in international relations (IR)
theory, which advance different approaches to the causes of war and peace in general, and
regional war and peace in particular. The second question is a restatement of the levels of
analysis problem with regard to regional war and peace. This question refers to the level
of factors affecting regional war and peace, namely the relative influence of global/systemic
versus regional/domestic factors on regional outcomes. International relations theory has not
resolved the debate between the two opposing approaches to this question.6
I argue in this article that neither a single theoretical perspective nor a single level of
analysis can account for the variety of regional war and peace outcomes. Thus, the fact
that dramatic changes have recently taken place in different regions more or less at the
same time following a major international change—the end of the Cold War—shows the
important effects of international factors on regional conflicts. At the same time, the different
directions of these changes, and the great variations across regions in the post-Cold War era
in terms of war and peace, notably between peaceful relations in Western Europe and armed
conflicts in the Balkans and some parts of the Third World (Goldgeier & McFaul, l992),
indicate the significance of regional factors in affecting regional war and peace.
As a result, in order to explain regional transitions and variations in war and peace patterns,
one must integrate a number of major theoretical perspectives and both levels of analysis into
a single coherent theoretical framework. To achieve this goal, I establish causal relations
between different approaches and levels of analysis and different types of regional war
and peace outcome. In other words, I specify which type of phenomenon is best explained
by which causal factor. Thus, the proposed theory first specifies which type of regional secur-
ity outcome is best explained by various global factors and which type of regional outcome
is best accounted for by various regional/domestic causes. Second, the theory assesses the
combined effects of various global and regional/domestic factors on regional orders.
The explanation is based on the introduction of the state-to-nation imbalance or incongru-
ence in a certain region as the key underlying cause of regional war-propensity. I use it in two
novel ways, both in conceptualizing it as a regional cause and in using it to account for regional
outcomes.7 By contrast, the literature uses factors related to this balance as domestic factors to
account for the dyadic phenomenon. Different strategies of addressing the state-to-nation
imbalance (based on global or regional/domestic factors) then produce different types and
levels of regional peace. I distinguish between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ (that is, more or less intense)
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types of regional war and peace, and argue that global factors (that is, the involvement of exter-
nal powers) may at most bring about the less intense cold phenomena (cold war and cold peace),
whereas the more demanding hot outcomes, which constitute the two extremes of the regional
war–peace continuum (hot war and warm peace), depend on domestic/regional causes.
If validated, both logically-deductively and empirically-historically, such a model
should provide a powerful explanation of major regional patterns of war and peace, and
the ability to predict at least the outline of potential future developments in different
regions. Such a theory could also be helpful in evaluating various global and regional
mechanisms for managing regional security.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. The following section presents briefly the
key dependent variable of the article—regional war-proneness.8 The second part intro-
duces the major independent variable—the regional state-to-nation balance and its
relations with demographic and historical factors (the great powers and their effects on
cold war and cold peace will not be discussed here).9 Then some of the key causal linkages
between various dimensions of the state-to-nation balance and regional war-proneness are
presented. The final section sums up some of the key conclusions.
The Dependent Variable: Regional War-proneness
I focus on explaining regional hot wars, broadly defined. A hot war is a situation where
there is an actual use of force.10 Regional war-proneness is determined by the frequency
and severity of regional resort to force, both inter-state and civil. Thus, I address recurring
patterns of organized violence, both high and low intensity, in a certain neighborhood in
which there is a high extent of strategic interdependence among the members (states and
non-state actors) of the regional security system.
The Independent Variables
Regional-domestic Causal Factor: The State-to-Nation Balance
The regional state-to-nation balance has two distinctive dimensions. The first dimension
refers to the prevalence in the region of strong or weak states. This is the ‘hardware’ of
state-building. The second refers to the extent of congruence or compatibility between pol-
itical boundaries and national identifications in a certain region. This is the ‘software’ of
nation-building.
The Extent of State Strength (or The Success of State-building11)
This variable refers to the institutions and resources available to states for governing the
polity.12 Weak states lack effective institutions and resources to implement their policies
and to fulfill key functions. Most notably, they lack an effective control over the means of vio-
lence in their sovereign territory and an effective law-enforcement system is absent. Thus,
weak states face great difficulties in maintaining law and order and providing security in
their territory. This, in turn, severely handicaps the economic activity in these states. They
are unable to raise sufficient revenues and to collect enough taxes so as to be able to maintain
an effective bureaucracy and provide even elementary socio-economic and other vital ser-
vices to the population (mail delivery, regular water supply, road network, electricity, edu-
cation, healthcare, etc.). Strong states control the means of violence in their sovereign
States, Nations, and Regional War 447
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territory and possess an effective set of institutions. Tilly (l975) focused on the ability of the
state to coerce, control and extract resources as the key to state-making. Thus, state strength or
capacity can be measured by the ability of the state to mobilize manpower for military service
and to extract financial resources from its society.13 Another very useful measure is per capita
income, which is a useful proxy for state strength (Fearon & Laitin, 2003, p. 80).14
The Degree of Congruence (or The Extent of Success of Nation-building)
This is the extent of congruence between the existing division of a given region into
territorial states and the national aspirations and identities of the people in the region,
specifically the extent to which the current political boundaries in a certain region
reflect the national affiliations of the main groups in the region and their aspirations to
establish states and/or to revise existing boundaries.15 High congruence means that the
regional states (as entities or set of institutions administering certain territories) reflect
the national sentiments of the peoples in the region (that is, their aspirations to live as
national communities in their own states).16 In other words, there is a strong acceptance
and identification of the people in the region with the existing states and their territorial
boundaries. Such an acceptance must not be based only on ethnic homogeneity of the
regional states, but can also be based on civic nationalism.17 Civic nations share cultural
features but are generally multiethnic in their make-up, most notably in the immigrant
societies of the New World (the Americas and Australia), and also in many cases of the
state-initiated nationalism of Western Europe. In other ‘Old World’ societies, however,
nationalism and ethnicity are more closely related and in these regions the danger of
conflict, especially ethno-national conflict, is the most acute.
A state-to-nation incongruence leads to a nationalist dissatisfaction with the regional
status quo. Before I present these challenges, however, two issues must be addressed:
the independent measurement of incongruence and under what conditions incongruence
results in revisionist challenges.
Avoiding Tautology: Measuring the State-to-Nation Incongruence as an Independent
Variable
There are two primary senses in which a region’s geopolitical and national boundaries may
be incongruent in relation to the ethno-national criterion of one state per one nation:
(1) Too Few States: A single geopolitical entity may contain numerous ethno-national
groups. This is the internal dimension of incongruence.
(2) Too Many States: A single ethno-national group may reside in more than one geopo-
litical entity. This is the external dimension of incongruence.
Thus, one potential way to measure the regional state-to-nation balance is by combining
the effects of the following two measures:
. The proportion of states in the region that contains more than one ethno-national group.
. The proportion of states in the region in which the majority ethnic group lives in sub-
stantial numbers also in neighboring and other regional states, either as a majority or
as a minority.
The higher the combined effect of the two measures, the higher the state-to-nation incon-
gruence in the region.18
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Explaining Variance: Demography and History
There might, however, be variations in the translation of the state-to-nation incongruence
to nationalist challenges to the regional status quo. Two key factors—demography and
history—affect the likelihood that this incongruence will be translated to nationalist chal-
lenges to the existing states system. The first factor is demography, or more precisely, the
geographical spread of the ethno-national groups in the region. The second factor is the
history of the state and the nation in the region: which preceded whom, and especially
if some ethno-national groups lost the dominance they once held of the territories they
settle now or in adjacent areas.
Demography
The first sense of incongruence—one state with a number of ethno-national groups—is
more likely to lead to secessionist challenges under the following two conditions:
(1) The settlement patterns of ethnic groups in the region. Concentrated majorities of
ethnic groups (i.e. the members of the group residing almost exclusively in a single
region of the state) are more likely to risk violence to gain independence than other
kinds of settlement patterns such as urbanites, dispersed minorities and even concen-
trated minorities. Thus, the more concentrated ethnic majorities are in the region, the
higher the number of attempts at secession.19
(2) The state is more likely to oppose such endeavors violently if it is a multinational state
that fears a precedent-setting by the secession of one ethnic group that would trigger
secessionist attempts by other ethno-national groups in its territory.20
Thus, the combination of these two conditions, that is, the presence of multinational states
with concentrated ethno-national majorities in a number of regions is likely to lead to
violence, as in Chechnya, whereas the bi-national nature of Czechoslovakia eliminated
the fears that following the secession of Slovakia there would have been other such
attempts. At the same time, the dispersal of the Tatars across Russia led to peace, in
contrast to the civil war that erupted between Chechnya and Russia.21
The second sense of incongruence—of a single ethnic nation residing in a number of
regional states—poses revisionist challenges if at least in one of these states there is an
ethnic majority of this group. It is more likely that such a majority, rather than minority
groups, can mobilize the state’s resources for its nationalist agenda. External incongruence
is also magnified in proportion to the extent of the trans-border spread of the national
groups in the region: the greater the spread, the greater the imbalance. That is, a spread
of a single ethnic nation into five neighboring states creates a greater imbalance in the
whole region than the spread into two states, which might create conflict only between
these two states (even though this conflict might also have regional repercussions).
Thus, the spread of ethnic Germans in numerous states could be used by Prussia to
pursue the wars of German unification in l863–l871.22 Although under vastly different
circumstances, Egypt’s leader, Nasser, tried to use the Pan-Arabist card in order to unify
the Arabs—spread among almost 20 Arab states—under his leadership. The Pan-Arabist
agenda contributed to great instability in the Middle East, especially during the l950s and
l960s, including the Arab–Israeli wars of l948–1949, l956 and l967 and low-intensity
conflicts between and after these wars.23
States, Nations, and Regional War 449
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History (or, more specifically, the history of state formation and of national independence)
If the state preceded the nation, it is more likely that there is state-to-nation congruence,
and, vice versa, if ethnic nationalism preceded the state, incongruence is more likely. The
state preceded the nation notably in the case of Western Europe, where nationalism was
initiated by the state (Cederman, l997, p. 142; Tilly, 1990), and in the case of the immi-
grant societies in the New World (Walzer, l997, pp. 30–35). In Eastern Europe/Balkans and the Middle East, however, ethnic nationalism had emerged before the
states-system was created following the collapse of the multinational Ottoman and Habs-
burg empires. As many of the new sates’ boundaries did not coincide with the pre-existing
ethnic nations, this has led to a mismatch between states and nations in these regions.
Nationalist challenges are more likely by national groups, which lost the control they
once held of territories in the region, especially if these territories are identified with a
past ‘Golden Age’ of national glory. These territories become major expressions of the
nation’s identity, both past and present (for detailed case studies in Central and Eastern
Europe, see White, 2000). The problem is, however, that owing to changing boundaries
and ethnic demographics over the years, in many cases there are competing nationalist
claims based on ‘history’ vis-a-vis the same territory. Moreover, these claims might
clash with present ethnic distributions. The Land of Israel for the Zionists and Kosovo
for the Serbs are good examples. Thus, the Palestinians constitute a clear-cut ethno-
national majority in the West Bank, which is historically the important part of the Land
of Israel for the Jews, and the Muslim Albanians are the ethnic majority in Kosovo,
whereas the Serbs constitute the minority.
Finally, the translation of a state-to-nation incongruence into violence is influenced by
the history of violence among the competing ethno-national groups. The less credible the
connection between past nationalist violence and present threats, the lower the likelihood
of the eruption of violence, and vice versa. Such a variation might, for example, explain
the more peaceful outcome in the case of the ethnic Hungarian minorities in Romania
and Slovakia in contrast to the intense violence among the ethno-national groups in the
Yugoslav case in the l990s.24
The leaders of these challenges (state leaders or non-state leaders of nationalist groups)
might truly believe in these nationalist causes or manipulate them for their own power pur-
poses because of the popular appeal of these ideas. They will not be able, however, to
manipulate these forces unless there are some popular forces and movements in the
region who subscribe to these beliefs and are committed to act to advance them. Such
forces are going to be stronger the greater the mismatch between the state boundaries
and the nations in the region on the grounds of pre-existing ethnic-national affiliation of
the population or national-historic rights to the territory.
Political Manifestations of Ethno-nationalist Dissatisfaction with the Regional
Status Quo
Key manifestations of the state-to-nation imbalance include the intensity and level of the
presence of each of the following five nationalist challenges in the region: ‘illegitimate
states’; pan-national movements; irredentist-revisionist states; incoherent or ‘failed’
states; and ‘illegitimate nations’. Knowing the figures for each of these components in a
certain region does not allow us to predict the precise likelihood of war. Yet, this knowl-
edge enables us to compare the level of war-proneness of different regions. In addition,
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changes in such figures in a certain region over time allow us to assess the rising or
declining likelihood of armed conflict in the region. In general, the greater the presence
of the preceding indicators in the region, the higher the imbalance.
More specifically, nationalist challenges can be divided into two types: domestic chal-
lenges from within states; and inter-state challenges. Internal incongruence, based on
demography and history, and reinforced by state weakness, produce the domestic chal-
lenges of incoherence, most notably the threat of secession. External incongruence,
based on demography and history and reinforced by state strength, generate the revisionist
challenges, most notably pan-national unification and irredentism.25
Internal Incongruence and State Weakness lead to Challenges of Incoherence
Nations without states (‘illegitimate nations’) or ‘too few states’ in the region refers to sub-
state ethnic groups aspiring for secession from the existing states. Too few states are said
to be present when there are dissatisfied stateless national groups in the region, who claim
their right of national self-determination, and especially demand to secede and establish
their own states. The propensity for such claims will increase if the dominant national
groups in the existing regional states are intolerant of the political, socio-economic and
cultural rights of ethnic minorities. Examples of such dominant groups include the
Sunnis in Iraq (until the US invasion of 2003), the Alawites in Syria (Hinnebusch,
2003), the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, the Thais in Thailand and the Turks in Turkey
(Ayoob, l995, p. 38).26 Such intolerance and ethnic-based discrimination tends to increase
the quest of oppressed ethnic groups to have their own independent states.27 This domestic
challenge to the existing regional states undermines their coherence. Examples of quests
for national self-determination include: the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey; the Tamilis in Sri
Lanka; the Chechens in Russia; and Kashmiris in India (in addition to the irredentist
claim of Pakistan vis-a-vis Muslim Kashmir); Nigeria and the attempt of Biafra to
secede from it in l967–1970; the Philippines and the Moros, Burma and the Karen, and
at least until 2005 Indonesia and the Ache province, among many other cases. Leading
successful attempts at secession are Bangladesh from Pakistan (l971), Northern Cyprus
from Cyprus (l974), Eritrea from Ethiopia (l993) and, more recently, East Timor from
Indonesia (2002) and Kosovo from Serbia (2008).28
Weak or ‘failed’ states are states that lack a monopoly over the means of violence in their
sovereign territory. An effective set of institutions is missing. These states are unable to
extract sufficient military and economic resources from their societies to suppress ethno-
nationalist/separatist challenges. Numerous African states belong to this category as
well as Afghanistan and some post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav republics and other poor
and fragile Third World states from Central America, Asia and the Middle East.29
‘States without nations’ are states that failed to build political communities that identify
with their states as reflecting their political sentiments and aspirations and who accept their
territorial identity. Many Third World countries mentioned in the previous category also fit
here. Yet, states that are relatively strong in their domestic coercive capabilities might also
belong here, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia before their breakdown and poten-
tially also some Arab states such as pre-2003 Iraq and Syria.
Stateless refugees, who claim the right of return to their previous homes. They continue
to see their previous place of residence as their national homeland from which they were
unjustly evicted by force or had to leave under dire circumstances such as war. These
States, Nations, and Regional War 451
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refugees are not integrated to an alternative political community in the state in which they
currently reside and continue to see their stay as temporary. This applies, for example, to
various victims of the ethnic cleansing in the recent wars in Yugoslavia during the l990s,
such as Bosnians, Croats, Serbs and the Kosovar Muslims in addition to the Palestinians.30
External Incongruence and State Strength Lead to Revisionist Challenges
When the second condition of external or trans-border incongruence is present, one could
expect challenges to the territorial integrity of other states, which include pan-national
movements of unification or irredentist-revisionist claims to territories held by other
states on the grounds of national affiliation of the population or national-historic rights
on the territory.
More specifically, there are three patterns of trans-border incongruence:31
(1) Majority–Majority: The presence of two or more states with a shared ethnic majority
raises the likelihood of attempts at national unification led by revisionist states.
Shared majority leads to conflicts derived from competing claims to leadership of the
ethnic nation made by the elites of each state (Woodwell, 2004, p. 200), and to
attempts at national unification, including by coercion, based on the claim that there
are ‘too many states’ in relation to the number of nations. The non-revisionist states
are likely to resist the coercive unification by the revisionist state. Supra/pan-national
forces (such as Pan-Germanic, Pan-Arabism or Pan-Slavism) challenge the legitimacy
of existing states in the region and call for their unification because they all belong to
the same ethnic nation. Such movements are especially dangerous to the existing
regional order if they are championed by strong revisionist states.32
The presence of such revisionist forces generates the ‘illegitimate state’— a state whose
right to exist is challenged by its revisionist neighbors either because in their eyes the
state’s population does not constitute a distinctive nation that deserves a state of its
own or its territory should belong to a neighboring nation on historical grounds. Examples
include: the illegitimacy of Taiwan in the eyes of China; South Vietnam in the eyes of
North Vietnam; South Korea in the eyes of North Korea; Northern Ireland as part of
the UK from the viewpoint of the Irish national movement; individual Italian and
German states in the eyes of Italian and German nationalists in the nineteenth century;
and individual Arab states in the eyes of Arab nationalists, specifically, in different
periods, Kuwait (challenged by Iraq), Lebanon (challenged by Syria), Jordan and Israel.33
The likelihood of the emergence of pan-national forces and illegitimate states increases
when the division of a single ethnic nation into a number of states is done by force
through a military conquest by a rival regional state (supporting a competing national
movement) or imposed by imperial powers.
(2) Majority–Minority: The presence of a state with an ethnic majority and neighbor(s)
with the same ethnic minority increases the likelihood of attempts at irredentism by
the former state vis-a-vis the territories populated by the minority.34 The ‘irreden-
tist-revisionist state’ claims territories held by other states on the grounds of national
affiliation of the population or national-historic rights to the territory.35
This type culminates in ‘the Greater State’ (‘Greater Germany’, ‘Greater Syria’,
‘Greater Israel’, ‘Greater Serbia’, etc.). The expansionist efforts of this type of state
are likely to be opposed by the neighbors and thus lead to conflict. Owing to the
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importance states attribute to their territorial integrity, such conflicts can escalate to
violence. The likelihood of irredentism increases if political boundaries in the
region cross ethnic nations so that a sizable portion of the ethnic nation is beyond
the boundaries of the state that claims to represent this group or is dominated by it.
Ethnic alliances—cases in which a majority group in one state is a minority group
in a neighboring state—increase the likelihood of international conflict (Moore &
Davis, l998) where the co-ethnics in one state (the majority group) are propelled by
feelings of solidarity with their ethnic kin in a proximate state (the minority). As a
result, the state hosting the trans-border minority feels threatened by the majority
state.36 Likewise, this trans-border minority, sensing greater chances of success due
to this solidarity, is more likely to be emboldened and to attempt (or be subverted
to) an armed rebellion. Such situations may lead to intended or unintended escalation.
Similarly, irredentism is more likely to emerge if there are territories beyond the
boundaries of the state to which there has been persistent and intense historical attach-
ment as the homeland of the nation, where it was born and had glorified accomplish-
ments.37 The key point for our purposes is not whether this is an objective historical
account or whether it is based on national myths. What matters is that large groups of
people believe in such an historical attachment and are ready to fight for it, although it
is probably also based on some historical facts.
The international opposition to coercive changes of boundaries in the post-l945 era
has, however, led to a growing support in secession of the ethnic kin as a partial sub-
stitute for irredentism.38 Moreover, the trans-border minority itself might prefer seces-
sion to irredentism owing to the political interests of its leadership or to the
unattractiveness of the putative irredentist state because of its authoritarian regime,
economic backwardness or low prestige (Horowitz, l991, pp. 16–18).
A subset of irredentism refers to settlers—a nationalist group that resides beyond
the state boundaries and advocates, with the support of irredentist groups back home,
the annexation to the homeland of the territories that they settle. This advocacy is in
many cases against the wishes of at least a large share of the residents in these
territories who are from a different ethno-national group and thus oppose this
annexation. Illustrations include the Germans in Eastern Europe, the Protestants
in Northern Ireland, and the French settlers in Algiers in addition to the post-l967
Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories and ethnic Arabs in the
Kurdish part of Iraq.
(3) Minority–Minority: A shared ethnic minority among contiguous states might result
in a status quo orientation of these states. At any rate, this pattern makes it easier
for states to act based on realpolitik calculations because they are less constrained
by domestic/nationalist considerations related to a certain ethnic majority. On the
one hand, states might take advantage of a restive minority in a neighboring state
and support the minority in order to weaken that state. For example, Iran supported
the Kurdish insurgency against the Iraqi government in the early l970s. On the
other hand, the domestic/emotional commitment of a state to an ethnic minority
is much weaker than to a group that is the majority in the state and thus an irreden-
tist orientation is unlikely. Moreover, neighboring states might occasionally
cooperate in suppressing common minorities that challenge their territorial integ-
rity and pose a problem to regional stability. Thus, Iraq and Iran and also Turkey in
some periods collaborated against the quest of the Kurdish minorities in their
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countries for self-determination, which threatened the territorial integrity of all of
them.
Figure 1 presents the causal relations between incongruence and violence. It particularly
underlines the role of demography and history as antecedent conditions that affect the
impact that the independent variable is likely to have on producing nationalist challenges
to the status quo and thus on the likelihood of violence.
Based on these manifestations, we can distinguish between different regions, both
whether they suffer from a state-to-nation imbalance in general and with regard to the
two dimensions of the balance. South America and Western Europe have currently
lower state-to-nation imbalances than most other regions. Thus, phenomena such as ‘ille-
gitimate states’, strong pan-national movements and the ‘Greater State’ are almost non-
existent, although some weak states are present in South America and a few ‘illegitimate
nations’ exist in Western Europe.39 Among the regions with a high state-to-nation imbal-
ance, Africa is notable for a low state coherence due to the combination of internal incon-
gruence and state weakness. The Middle East and North-East Asia have, however, high
extents of nationalist revisionism due to the combination of state strength and external
incongruence.
Regional Effects of the State-to-Nation Imbalance
The two dimensions of the state-to-nation incongruence are interrelated and mutually rein-
forcing. To the extent that a revisionist state calls for the subordination of the regional
states to a larger movement or authority, or advocates irredentist claims to the territories
of neighboring states, it also undermines the internal coherence and the domestic legiti-
macy of the other regional states, especially if domestic groups within these states
respond to the revisionist calls out of ethno-nationalist commitment.40 Both settlers and
refugees undermine state coherence and encourage ethno-nationalist revisionism. Conver-
sely, nationally incoherent and domestically unstable and illegitimate states invite aggres-
sion and intervention by strong revisionist neighbors, and also ‘export instabilities’41 to
neighboring states. Thus, domestic attempts at secession and border changes are likely
to ‘spillover’ and involve a number of regional states. Such spillovers may occur
through a migration of refugees who seek shelter in neighboring states from the instability
and turmoil within the incoherent state, or by the incoherent state hosting armed groups
with secessionist or irredentist claims that infiltrate adjacent states. Terrorist groups
may also take advantage of such states. Such hosting may be involuntary and result
from the incoherence and weakness of the host state. Revisionist states, on the other
hand, may host such groups by choice, in order to undermine their neighbors’ domestic
order.42 Moreover, irredentist sentiments concerning one national group can be ‘conta-
gious’, diffusing to other groups and states in the region.43
To sum up, the state-to-nation balance in a certain region exercises important effects on
the balance of power between the status quo states on the one hand and revisionist states
Figure 1. The causal chain between incongruence and violence
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and non-state political movements (irredentist, pan-national or secessionist) on the other.
The greater the state-to-nation imbalance, the more powerful the nationalist-revisionist
forces are in relation to the status quo forces in the region, and vice versa. Under a
state-to-nation imbalance, the supply–demand ratio of states is unbalanced; either the
demand considerably exceeds the supply, leading to wars of secession, or the supply far
outnumbers the demand, resulting in wars of national unification.
The State-to-Nation Imbalance as an Underlying Cause of RegionalWar-propensity
The state-to-nation imbalance increases the power of revisionist-nationalist ideologies (and
the states that sponsor them) in the region and lowers the level of state coherence (because
of the growing power of secessionist national groups within states, especially weak ones).
The more powerful the nationalist-revisionist forces and the lower the level of state coher-
ence in the region, the higher the regional war proneness. Hypernationalist-revisionist
states are dissatisfied with the existing regional order and if they are powerful enough,
they may be willing to use force and to initiate irredentist wars in order to change it.
State incoherence creates strong pressures by dissatisfied ethnic minorities for secession.44
Irredentism, based on ethno-national (demographic and/or historical) claims, generates
regional instability by posing a threat to the territorial integrity of neighbors and thus
increases the security dilemma in the region. Secessionism brings about domestic wars,
thus producing opportunities for external intervention by neighbors motivated by profit
or fear that the others will gain at their expense if they do not intervene first. A current
example is the Russian intervention in Georgia supposedly to protect the breakaway
ethnic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Even if the Russians are only using the
ethnic issue to advance their national interests (e.g. to pre-empt NATO expansion into
their neighborhood), the state-to-nation imbalance in Georgia made such an intervention
easier than would have been the case if Georgia had been a coherent state (Russia also
uses the Western intervention in another major case of state-to-nation imbalance—
Kosovo—as legitimizing their intervention supposedly under comparable circumstances).
The likelihood of intervention would increase considerably if there were trans-border
ethnic ties in the region (Saideman, 2001). Strategic interdependence among regional
actors may transform such interventions to regional wars. A recent example is from the
Great Lakes region in Africa—the intervention of the neighboring states in the civil war
in Congo (Quinn, 2004). Leaders of incongruent states may also use diversionary wars
to strengthen their hold on power. This will especially be the case if these leaders suffer
problems of legitimacy, at least partly because of the national incongruence of their
state. Indeed, low domestic legitimacy affects war-proneness by providing a tendency
to scapegoat, which may also spread mutual insecurity in the region.45
Two of the major outputs of the state-to-nation imbalance—ethno-national revisionism
and incoherent states—reinforce each other’s destabilizing effects on regional war-prone-
ness. The situation is especially destabilizing when the strong and incongruent states
become revisionist, guided by irredentist or pan-national ideologies (or are using such
ideologies in their own interests). Such ideologies are fed by the incoherence of the
regional states and weaken them further by appealing to dissatisfied domestic elements.
Conversely, weak or incoherent states are especially destabilizing if there are strong revi-
sionist tendencies in the neighboring states, which may drive them to intervene. The recent
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dynamics of a resurgent and revisionist Russia invading an incoherent Georgia—where its
breakaway provinces seceded on ethno-national grounds with strong Russian support—
demonstrate the interrelationships between the key dimensions of the regional state-to-
nation imbalance and their mutually reinforcing destabilizing effects.
The state-to-nation imbalance is an underlying cause of regional wars. It makes certain
regions more prone to wars than others due both to the emergence of substantive issues of
conflict (territories and boundaries) and to the enhancement of the security dilemma and
power rivalries in the region (that is, the search for power and profit by expansionist revi-
sionist states) under the conditions of state-to-nation imbalance. These power and security
factors highlighted by the realist school are the proximate causes of specific regional
wars.46 The balance of power, the offense/defense balance and security fears determine
when the basic regional predisposition for war will lead to actual wars, in other words,
they provide the opportunity rather than the basic motivation for war.47 Namely,
without their presence the underlying state-to-nation problems may not be translated
into a specific war, but in the absence of a high degree of state-to-nation imbalance,
power drives and security fears are less likely to take place and to lead to a resort to
large-scale violence among neighbors.
Conclusions
(1) Ethno-national conflict is a much more important source of regional conflict and vio-
lence than what the major streams of IR theory—notably realism and liberalism—
would lead us to expect.48
This is because issues of nationalism and ethnicity tend to be less divisible than
material issues. Nations derive their identities to a large degree from particular
places and territories, and the control of these is often essential to maintaining a
healthy sense of national identity.49 Thus, state-to-nation issues arouse strong
emotions and passionate ideological commitments that make pragmatic compromise
and bargaining more difficult.50 As a result, domestic politics plays an especially
powerful role in constraining the maneuvering room of political leaders on these
issues. A strong commitment of domestic constituencies to ethnicity and nationalism
generates pressures on and incentives for state leaders to maintain a hard line and even
to go to war.51 Owing to the strong passions and domestic incentives produced by a
state-to-nation imbalance, such an imbalance is likely to challenge the conventional
realist logic of balance of power theory and deterrence. Highly motivated actors
might initiate violence even if they are weaker in the overall balance of power.
With regard to liberalism, it is true that democracy, with power-sharing or federal
arrangements, may mitigate the state-to-nation problem. Yet, under a state-to-nation
imbalance, democratization can also aggravate the problem, at least initially (see
Miller, 2007, chapter 8; for a related argument see Mansfield & Snyder, 2005), or
the state-to-nation imbalance may make it harder to establish democracy in the first
place (Horowitz, l994).
(2) The extent of the state-to-nation imbalance explains variations in war-propensity
among different regions.
The model proposed here is able to explain empirical variations among different
regions such as the high war-proneness of the regions with high state-to-nation imbal-
ance and strong ethno-national sentiments such as the Middle East, the Balkans, South
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Asia and East Asia in contrast to the peacefulness of regions with relatively low
state-to-nation imbalances and strong civic nationalism such as South America
during most of the twentieth century and post-l945 Western Europe.52 The model
can also account for the evolution of warm peace in South America during the
twentieth century due to a relatively effective state-building in the strongest states
in the region. This process helped to create a state-to-nation balance in conjunction
with the national congruence in the region (based on civic nationalism in immigrant
societies and marginalization of the indigenous population).
(3) The state-to-nation imbalance and issues related to it explain a substantial number of
regional wars in the last 200 years or so, though surely not all of them, but more than
most other explanatory factors.
The theoretical model presented here is relevant for explaining different levels of con-
flict in different time periods and regions. Thus, the theory’s purview is not limited to
conflicts of the Cold War era (such as the Arab–Israeli wars or issues related to
German unification) or even of the post-Cold War period (such as the wars in the
former Yugoslavia and former Soviet Union). It extends equally well to major
earlier conflicts such as the Wars of German Unification in the nineteenth century
and the Balkan Wars that preceded World War I. Similarly, the theory is relevant
for explaining the French–German nationalist rivalry over Alsace-Lorraine.
(4) The model can also explain the concentration of key crises in the contemporary inter-
national system such as the East Asian conflicts between China and Taiwan and in
Korea. Both of these cases involve demands for ethno-national unification based on
the claim that there are ‘too many states’ in relation to the number of nations, as
was earlier the case with the war in Vietnam. The Indo-Pakistan conflict is another
case of state-to-nation conflict revolving around Pakistan’s irredentist demands vis-
a-vis India’s Kashmir.
(5) Variations in the components of the state-to-nation imbalance explain different types
of regional war, for example, strong states that are externally incongruent tend to be
revisionist, whereas internally incongruent weak states are more likely to face seces-
sionist challenges and civil wars. Shared ethnic majority is more likely to lead to con-
flicts over unification, whereas majority–minority in adjacent states may result in
attempts at irredentism.
(6) War must not erupt necessarily in every case in which there is a state-to-nation imbal-
ance, but such an imbalance is potentially destabilizing and it is conducive to manip-
ulations by leaders and states, who are acting in their own power interests.
(7) The eruption of war partly depends on the regional balance of power, although the
systemic environment is very important for the management of state-to-nation con-
flicts: great power disengagement and especially competition aggravate the
problem, whereas great power hegemony and cooperation mitigate it.53 The global
factors on their own can at best bring about cold peace. Warm peace is also indepen-
dent of the continuing stabilizing engagement of external powers in the region. Yet,
the domestic-regional prerequisites for warm peace, especially successful state/nation-building or democratization leading to liberal compatibility, are very demand-
ing and hard to reach in many regions. For this reason, great power hegemony or
concert can be critical in advancing peaceful regional settlements,54 even if only
cold ones, in regions in which there are intractable state-to-nation conflicts that the
regional actors have a hard time resolving on their own without external assistance.
States, Nations, and Regional War 457
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Indeed, the inclusion of systemic factors can allow the model to account for the
transitions within regions such as the emergence of cold peace in the Middle East
in the post-Cold War era and in the Balkans during the Cold War period. It can
also account for the environment under which a shift towards warm peace was
made possible in Western Europe in the post-l945 era and in Eastern Europe in the
post-Cold War period.55 Yet, the warming of the regional peace and its maintenance
eventually depend on the regional parties and the way they resolve or transcend
the state-to-nation issues.
Finally, the present framework helps to overcome the divide between domestic/civil and
international conflicts by focusing on the state-to-nation balance in different parts of the
world as affecting the hot outcomes of hot war and warm peace. Nevertheless, the cold
outcomes of these conflicts are affected by variations in the type of great-power engage-
ment in these regions.
Notes
1. See, most notably, Buzan (l991), Job (l992), Wriggins (l992), Ayoob (l995), Holsti (l996), Maoz (l997),
Lake & Morgan (l997), Solingen (l998), Kacowicz (l998), Lemke (2002) and Buzan & Weaver (2003).
For works sharing the regionalist theme but not dealing only with security, see Fawcett & Hurrel (l995)
and Holm & Sorensen (l995). See also Katzenstein (l996, 2005).
2. For an overview of the literature on globalization and citations, see Clark (l997). See also Buzan &
Waever (2003).
3. Holsti (l991), Vasquez (l993), Huth (l996), Goertz & Diehl (l992b) and Diehl (l999).
4. Goertz & Diehl (1992a) and Huth (l999).
5. For recent works, see Walter (2003) and Toft (2002/3).
6. For an overview of this debate, see Miller (2007, chapter 1).
7. The closest is Van Evera (l995), who uses the term ‘the state-to-nation ratio’. I develop further the partly
related concepts of the ‘state-to-nation balance’ and ‘congruence’ and use them, in conjunction with the
effects of the great powers, to create a coherent account of variations in regional war and peace.
8. For the full continuum of the typology of the dependent variables (hot war, cold war, cold peace, and
warm peace), see Miller (2007, chapter 2).
9. The issue of the great powers is discussed at length in Miller (2007, chapters 2, 5 and 6). The evolution of
warm peace is also not addressed here (see Miller, 2007, chapter 2, 7, 8 and 9).
10. The Correlates of War Project suggests no less than 1,000 battle deaths from all sides as a part of the
definition of war. See Small & Singer (l982, pp. 38, 54); see also Vasquez (1993, pp. 21–29). Yet a
strict adherence to such a precise figure is unnecessary in a qualitative study such as this one. Accord-
ingly, one might refer to the phenomenon I investigate here in the more loose terms of ‘armed conflict’,
‘hostilities’ or ‘organized violence’ in addition to hot war.
11. On state-building, see Migdal (l988) and Ayoob (l995).
12. On institutionalization as a key to political development, see Huntington (l968). See also Nettl (l968),
who developed the concept of ‘stateness’—the institutional centrality of the state; for a recent review
of stateness, see Evans (l997). The relations between stateness and regional conflict are developed by
Ben-Dor (l983).
13. See Gause (l992, p. 457), and the references he cites therein.
14. See also the indicators in Rotberg (2003), especially pp. 4–22.
15. This section draws especially on Van Evera (l995). See also Mayall (l990), Buzan (l991), Brown (l993,
l996), Brown et al. (l997), Cederman (l997), Gottleib (l993), Holsti (l996), Kupchan (l995) and Hoff-
mann (l998).
16. On the definition of state and nation, see Akzin (l964), Gellner (l983, pp. 3–7), Connor (l994, pp. 90–
117), Smith (2000, p. 3), and especially Barrington (1997, pp. 712–716), who emphasizes ‘the belief in
the right to territorial self-determination for the group’ as a central part of the definition of a ‘nation’,
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which is central for distinguishing nations from other collectivities. Although many groups hold common
myths, values and symbols (including ethnic groups), nations are unified by a sense of purpose: control-
ling the territory that the members of the group believe to be theirs. As Gellner suggests, ‘nationalism’ is
‘a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (l983, p. 1).
Thus, nationalism is the active pursuit of control by a national group over the territory that it defines as its
homeland. As a result, every nationalist movement involves the setting of territorial boundaries (Barring-
ton, l997, p. 714), and national conflicts must involve disputes over territory to be truly ‘national’. Key
works on nationalism include Gellner (l983), Anderson (l991), Smith (l986, 2000) and Hobsbawm (l990)
(these works are cited, for example, in Smith (2000) and Suny (l999–2000, p. 145). See also Breuilly
(l993).
17. In contrast to Van Evera (l995), who focuses on ethnic nationalism, I accept that nationalism can be
either ethnic or civic. Civic nationalism focuses on citizen identification with the nation-state at its
current territorial boundaries as opposed to a loyalty based on subnational or trans-border ethnic ties,
which may challenge the existing boundaries. In ethnic nationalism, based on lineage and common
ancestry, the nation precedes the state (the ‘German model’), whereas in the civic version, the state pre-
cedes the nation (the ‘French model’). See Brubaker (l992). On the distinction between ethnic and civic
nationalism, see Smith (l986) and Greenfeld (l992). For a useful overview, see Kupchan (l995, chapter 1.
18. For example, in region A there are ten states. Seven of them are multinational, and in eight of them there
is at least one majority ethno-national group that also resides in other regional states. In region B there
are also ten states, out of which six are multinational, whereas in only two of the regional states does a
majority national group live that also inhabits other states in the region. The combined state-to-nation
measure for region A is 7þ8/10¼15/10; the combined state-to-nation measure for region B is 6þ2/10¼8/10. Thus, the state-to-nation imbalance is much higher in region A than in region B.
19. On the effects of settlement patterns on the inclination, legitimacy and capacity of ethnic groups to
secede, see Toft (2002/3). See also Gurr (2000, pp. 75–76).
20. See Toft (2002/3, pp. 95–96) on the importance of precedent-setting logic. See also Walter (2003).
21. See Toft (2002/3, pp. 104–114).
22. For an overview, see Williams (2001, chapter 3).
23. See Miller (2007, chapter 4).
24. Brubaker (l998, pp. 282–283) and Csergo & Goldgier (2004).
25. On secession and irredenta, see Weiner (l971), Horowitz (l985, chapter 6, l992); Mayall (l990, pp. 57–
63), Chazan (l991) and Carment & James (l997).
26. On the exclusionary policies of dominant ethno-national groups in the political, military and economic
domains, see Weiner (l987, pp. 35–36, 40–41).
27. Buzan (l991, chapter 2) distinguishes between two types of multinational state: imperial and federal. In
the federal state no single nation dominates (such as Switzerland, Canada and Belgium), whereas the
imperial state uses coercion to impose the control of one nation over others (such as Austria-Hungary
or the Soviet Union). As multinational states, both types of state are potentially vulnerable to nationalist
pressures to secede. In the case of the imperial, its stability depends on the ability of the dominant nation
to maintain its control as a strong state. The federal state constitutes, however, a middle category
between deeply divided and well-integrated societies (Horowitz, l994, p. 37). Although ethnic groups
have strongly held political aspirations and interact as groups, several favorable conditions have moder-
ated the effects of ethnic conflict, among them, the emergence of ethnic issues late in relation to other
cleavages and to the development of parties, so that party politics is not a perfect reflection of ethnic
conflict. Among these states are Switzerland, Canada and Belgium—all, significantly, federations.
These are also called consociational (Switzerland and Belgium) or semiconsociational (Canada) democ-
racies—a power-sharing arrangement among ethnic groups (Lijphart, l977; Walzer, l997). In deeply
divided societies, such as Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, the moderating conditions are absent. This
issue is also discussed in Miller (chapter 8 and in the conclusions).
28. For a comprehensive list of seccessionist attempts, see Gurr (2000). For a list of all secessionist and irre-
dentist crises, l945–l988, see Carment & James (l997, pp. 215–218).
29. For a useful index of the failed states and an updated and comprehensive ranking of 60 failed countries,
see Foreign Policy (July–August 2008, pp. 64–68). See also the discussion and references in Miller
(2007, chapter 2).
30. On the demand for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, see Miller (2007, chapter 4).
31. See also Woodwell (2004).
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32. On revisionist versus status quo states, see Wolfers (l962, pp. 18–19, 96–97, 125–126), Schweller
(l994, l996 (which includes citations to other works who make similar distinctions in note 31,
pp. 98–99), l998, pp. 22–24, 84–89). See also Kupchan (1998) and Buzan (l991, chapter 8). On aspiring
revisionist regional powers in the post-Cold War era, see Job (l997, p. 187).
33. The Middle Eastern cases are discussed at length in Miller (2007, chapter 4).
34. On other types of relation in this triangle, see Brubaker (l996).
35. Irredentist conflicts include those between: Iran and Iraq over the Shatt-al-Arab; Afghanistan and Paki-
stan over Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province; Ethiopia and Somalia over the Ogaden; Pakistan and
India over Kashmir; Serbia with Croatia and Bosnia in the l990s; and the post-Soviet conflict between
Armenia and Ajrabijan on Nagorno-Karabach. For a list of all irredentist (and also secessionist) crises,
l945–l988, see Carment and James (l997, pp. 215–218).
36. For a recent empirical study that shows a significant increase in dyadic conflict when two states share an
ethnic group and an ethnic majority exists in at least one of the states, see Woodwell (2004).
37. For a variety of examples, see Smith (2000, pp. 67–68).
38. See Chazan (l991), Saideman (2001) and Woodwell (2004, p. 201). For examples of states that preferred
to support a secession of their ethnic kin rather than irredentism because of realpolitik considerations, see
Horowitz (l991, p. 15); but at least some of these cases can be explained based on the minority–minority
pattern discussed later.
39. See Appendix A in Miller (2007, pp. 422–424).
40. Although in some cases such a response might be motivated also by ideological conviction (or due to
economic/political bribes and military assistance offered by the revisionist states), ethno-nationalist
response is likely to have especially destabilizing effects on regional security because of the challenges
it poses to the existing boundaries, as stipulated earlier.
41. In Lake’s (l997) terms, such effects constitute security externalities or trans-border ‘spillovers’.
42. For a useful overview of both irredentism and the secession challenge, see Mayall (l990, pp. 57–63).
43. With respect to war, several empirical studies have shown evidence of such ‘contagion’ or ‘diffusion’ at
an intra-regional, rather than inter-regional level. See Geller & Singer (1998, pp. 106–108) for an
overview.
44. On the connections between secession and irredentism, see Horowitz (l992).
45. For an overview of recent works on diversionary wars, see Levy (l998, pp. 152–158).
46. On the distinction between underlying and proximate causes of war, see Lebow (l981), Vasquez (l993,
pp. 293–297) and Van Evera (l995).
47. For recent works on the offense/defense balance and the security dilemma, see Lynn-Jones (l995),
Glaser (l997), Van Evera (l998) and Glaser & Kaufman (l998).
48. See Miller (2007, chapter 1).
49. White (2000, p. 10); Toft (2003).
50. On the role of emotions in ethinc conflict, see Peterson (2002).
51. For studies that show that ethnic/national claims are major sources of territorial conflicts, see Mandel
(l980), Luard (l986, pp. 421–447, especially pp. 442–447), Holsti (l991, especially pp. 140–142,
144–145, 214–216, 274–278, 280, 308), Carment (l993), Carment & James (l997), Huth (l996,
pp. 108–112, l999, pp. 53–57), White (2000) and Woodwell (2004).
52. Although German unification continued to pose a challenge to stability until l990, systemic factors
outside the purview of the model—bipolarity and mutually assured destruction—stabilized the relations
between the two parts of Europe during the Cold War. The expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Eastern
Europe after l945, however, reduced German irredentism towards this region.
53. For an elaborate discussion of the effects of the type of great power engagement on regional war and
peace, see Miller (2007, chapters 2, 5 and 9).
54. See Kolodziej & Zartman (l996).
55. See Miller (2007, chapters 5, 6 and 8).
References
Akzin, B. (1964) State and Nation (London: Hutchinson).
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edition
(London: Verso).
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Ayoob, M. (1995) The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).
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