(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
repugnant to a pluralistic society such as the United
States. Ultimately, instability is not caused by demo-
cratically expressed claims by individuals and
national communities but by the denial of these
claims.
The above solutions should be categorically rejected.
Other policy prescriptions offer more traditional solu-
tions. In the name of stability, the Realpolitik school
calls for working within the existing state system. The
so-called Sonnenfeld Doctrine of the mid-1970s, in
effect, accepted the status quo in Europe; that is,
spheres of American and Soviet influence. The propo-
nents of this school emphasize Principles 3 and 4 of
the Helsinki Final Act, respectively the inviolability of
frontiers and respect for territorial integrity. What they
fail to recall is that the Helsinki Final Act is a care-
fully balanced document based on centuries of sad
European history. Using time-honored Jesuitical logic,
the Helsinki drafters declared that “all principles are
equal.” The first Helsinki principle, for example, notes
that “frontiers can be changed by peaceful means and
agreement. Thus the United States recognized the
peaceful unification of Gennany in 1990 and the
peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Wilsonian model, on the other hand, stresses the
promotion of ethnic rights through national self-deter-
mination. It has certain academic allure. However, as
much as European statesmen paid lipservice to this
ideal at Versailles, it was more honored in the breech
than the observance in the interwar period. Moreover,
carried to its discouragingly logical conclusion, this
model, like Russian nesting dolls, might well lead to a
state structure composed of increasingly small (and
untenable) states—Yugoslavia divided into five or six
states; Bosnia divided into three states; or the Soviet
Union divided into 15 states, Russia (or Georgia)
divided into x states, ad infinitum.
From Marx to Milosovic
For many the collapse of the Soviet Union represented
the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy.
Marxist-Leninism had been thoroughly discredited
as a method of-organizing society. Moreover, for the
first time in over 400 years, no major power sought
hegemony in Eastern Europe. With visions of a new
Marshall Plan, the nations of Central and Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union understandable,
if naively, believed that the West would willingly open
its doors——and coffers—to their former adversaries.
Despite rhetorical sympathy, this has not been the
case. Perhaps it was inevitable, but new (and age-old)
problems—ethnic strife, ultranationalism, and mas-
sive migration—quickly replaced Soviet Commu-
nism as the primary threats to Europe. When the walls
came down in the East, economic and other barriers
were erected in the West. European governments,
beset by recession, worried more about halting the
westward flow of goods and people than about inte-
grating the economies of the East into the European
Community.
Adrift between EEt_?aEd West, the countries of the
former Warsaw Pact perceive themselves in a politi-
cal, economic, and security vacuum. And dema-
gogues, often seeking ethnic scapegoats, plow fertile
fields of public discontent. Without a sense of being
part of a larger community—govemed by accepted
rules of behavior—neo-Communist and ethnic nation-
alist may once again set the rules.
The Nation-State and Ethnic Rights
What type of state structure can best protect the ethnic
groups of Europe? The European nation-state has
been both the traditional protector and persecutor of
indigenous ethnic groups. Historically, both Germany
and Russia have assumed a special responsibility for
their ethnic counterparts wherever they might live.
(Even today, Germany grants automatic citizenship to
all ethnic Germans.) These same nation-states, how-
ever, have a melancholy history regarding the treat-
ment of'other minority ethnic and religious groups. By
the same token, the decline of the nation-state, partic-
ularly in the East, can also lead to increased ethnic
tensions, as we have witnessed in the former Yugosla-
via. If the traditional nation-state system has often
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268