(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
There is some relationship to the well-being of a state
that has chances of overcoming ethnic disrepair and
the economic downturn that might presage it. This
relates a little bit also to what Dr. Fuller said earlier. It
might also mean that we ought to think twice before
we use sanctions and economic destruction to achieve
our aims in a foreign country. I still feel that, had sanc-
tions not been imposed on South Africa, the democra-
tization process might have taken longer but would
have cost far fewer lives and have had a more satisfac-
tOI'y Ol1tCOl'l'16.
DR. MIKESELL: I would say of all national policies,
the one that is most likely to result in violence is non-
recognition; to say simply, “Ypu don’t exist. Your lan-
guage is merely a dialect. Your religion is a
heterodoxy." It drives people crazy to be told that they
do not exist. It hardly seems conceivable that Musso-
lini’s policy toward South Tyrol would be the model
that the world wants to emulate and, yet, this indeed is
happening all the time. It is the redundancy of this
pathology that I find so depressing.
QUESTION: If this policy of nonrecognition is a key
aggravating factor, can you identify the flip side of
that? Can you put a name on a key ameliorating factor
that is helping to contain that?
DR. MIKESELL: That would involve cases where
there seems to be accommodation, such as the extraor-
dinary examples of Finland, where a minority group
was made a partner from the beginning. In this case,
the Finns anticipated the needs of the Swedish minor-
ity, rather than waiting until the Swedes were shouting
and demonstrating. Unfortunately, there are very few
examples of this enlightened policy.
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268