One of the regrets of my career is that I was developing the ethnic security dilemma concept the same time as Barry Posen, who published his in Survival in 1993. As I prepared for my comprehensive exams in 1991 in IR and Comparative Politics, I focused on ethnic politics for the latter exam. I wrote papers that developed the IR concept for ethnic politics, got nice comments from my profs, but moved on to the dissertation. I should have tried to publish the piece–I would have scooped Posen.
Why talk about it now? Well, one lessons is that publishing good ideas in grad school might just help one’s job market outcomes–I spent three years on the market and ended up in a less desirable spot. If I had that pub, who knows?
More importantly, I have been forever frustrated since because Posen’s view of the ESD is a pretty military one–that it is all about translating the security dilemma to the civil war battlefield. So, he ends up arguing that intermixing provides temptations to pre-empt, which leads to group competition which leads to spirals and violence. The policy implication of this is to separate groups–partition or something short of it, so that groups are not tempted. The problem is that groups that are quite concentrated, that are not intermixed, are not deterred by their vulnerability. Highly intermixed groups have to worry and may be deterred by their vulnerability. Indeed, in many of the classic ESD cases, outside actors have to be brought in to trigger the violence (see John Mueller’s stuff).
My view of the ESD was a political one–that competition was not for terrain and neighborhoods but for control of the government. Why? The greatest threat to any group is the coercive apparatus of the state. Genocide is committed mostly by governments who have most, if not a monopoly, of the means of coercion.
Why am I thinking about this this week? I was preparing for my Contemporary International Security class. One reading focuses on the surge in Iraq and seeks to explain what caused the decline (temporary as it clearly now is) of violence. Four arguments are in play: that the US surge worked on its own, that the Anbar Awakening (Sunnis turning against extremists in their own group) worked on its own, synergy between the two (the authors’ argument), that violence declined because the ethnic security dilemma was resolved via ethnic cleansing.
That is, no more ethnic insecurity due to intermixing as violence was aimed at creating homogeneous neighborhoods. The article does a great job of showing that violence was not related to intermixing, that the creation of homogeneity did not lead to less violence but to changes where violence occurred. That the homogeneous neighborhoods served as bases for aggressive actions, not for defensive ones.
Anyhow, I am always glad to see some evidence that I might have been right long ago. And, yes, I did publish pieces of my view of the ESD in various spots along the way, but it was a bit late to influence how others view it. So, the more popular version continues to shape how people think about ethnic conflict.
Which proves the old academic saying: if you snooze, you lose.
Thanks for the post Steve, I find these little bits of history very interesting.
I just wanted to ask two questions. First, what do you think of the work by Paul Roe (2002) who, like you, argues that in ethnic conflicts territory may not be the principal concern. But unlike yourself he attributes to concerns over ‘societal security’ meaning the preservation of a particular collective identity and the religious, linguistic, and other cultural practices that entails?
Second, what are your thoughts on the contemporary widening/deepening debate over the security dilemma? There are a number of traditionalist (read neorealist) who express concern over widening the referent of the dilemma to beyond interstate conflict (Tang, 2009; Booth and Wheeler, 2008). On the other hand we are increasingly seeing research pop up around ‘energy security dilemmas’, ‘cyber security dilemmas’, ‘human security dilemmas’, and so on. Do these reconceptualizations do irrevocable damage to Herz, Butterfield, and Jervis’ original idea or do they offer useful frameworks to understand difficult political challenges?
First question is easier than the second. It has been a while since I read Roe, but my focus is on the government–that the competition is political for control of the state since it is the government that greatly shapes the political implications of identity–can you get a job, are you discriminated against housing/economy/etc, can you practice your religion, can you speak your language, how does the education system work, etc. But I can see how one could argue that societal security can shape which politicians succeed–a bit of a chicken and egg problem. But I place my bets on the politics.
Second question is harder since I have not read as much of that stuff. To me, the key is the tragedy in the dilemma–situations where an effort to improve one’s security decreases that of others. Does improving one’s energy security increase the insecurity of others? Depends, as American energy independence weakens Saudi power, but does it threaten their ability to secure themselves? I don’t think so. But some might argue. It, of course, depends on what one means by security and that opens heaps of doors. I prefer my concepts less stretched. So, I stick with the core logic and go from there. I do think the concept can travel but one has to be clear about the limits of the new applications.
Great post as usual Steve. The timing of the post is fantastic too as Vera Mironova and Sam Whitt recently published their findings from a field experiment conducted in Kosovo on the impact of proximity on inter-group relations. In their research they find that “in the aftermath of violence, proximity appears to amplify solidarity with the in-group but also increases empathy toward former adversaries.” Confirming your perspectives on the issue.
https://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9503661&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S2052263014000189