(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
Summary of General Discussion
DR. POULSEN: I would like to elaborate on one of
the points that Dr. Murphy made about ethnic mobili-
zation and socioeconomic status as they relate to terri-
toriality. Dr. Murphy referred to the ability of the
Serbs to mobilize themselves on the basis of their
envy and resentment toward the Slovenes and Croats,
who are much more economically developed. Ethnic
group mobilization can work in the reverse as well,
when more developed regionsresent the flow of
resources to poorer regions. For example, the Croatian
identity that developed since the l960s certainly origi-
nated, in part, because this group was the productive
part of Yugoslavia and the Croatians felt that the reve-
nues they generated were being wasted in Serbia and
in the southern pans of the country. One can point to a
similar situation in Spain where the separatist feelings
that exist among the Basques and the Catalonians
come, not because they lack resources, but, again,
because they reside in the most productive part of
Spain—on a per capita basis-.-and their productivity
goes to the benefit of non-Catalonian and non-Basque
regions. 1
DR. MURPHY: That is an important point. I tried to
allude to this after saying there was Serbian resent-
ment of Croats and Slovenes because of the dispropor-
tionate share of tourism-related revenues that they
receive. The key to understanding socioeconomic pat-
terns in terms of relative location, which is the way I
framed it, is not simply to think that a map of socio-
economic well-being necessarily tells us something
about ethnicity, but rather to think about socioeco-
nomic well-being in relation to how it is understood
and interpreted. Whether you are well off or poor, the
key issue is whether you feel like your well-being is
threatened-—a feeling of marginalization. That is what
is important in considering patterns of socioeconomic
differentiation.
QUESTION: Both the speakers have presented some
very tantalizing concepts that I think would fit well
into a strategy of conflict prevention, which I hope we
talk a little bit about in the next two days. I would like
to ask Dr. Murphy to say something about conflict res-
olution. Once people have decided to use guns to
readjust these territorial boundaries and once that
dynamic is engaged in places like Bosnia, what can
the geographic discipline tell policymakers that can
help us as we attempt conflict resolution—-especially
in cases where the conflicts are violent?
DR. MURPHY: Conflict resolution is clearly one of
the most important issues that we have to deal with. It
is difficult to answer that briefly in a way that gets
beyond generalities. Nevertheless, let me say a few
things.
Understanding the issues of territory, scale, and loca-
tion is necessary to make sensible and intelligent pro-
posals to ameliorate existing conflicts.
First of all, conflict resolution requires an understand-
ing, in part, of the strategies that are likely to be
employed by the participants. This, in turn, requires an
understanding of how participants understand and per-
ceive territory. I think it is actually fairly clear why the
Serbian military has pursued aggression in particular
areas. It is further clear why that is happening in terms
of basic strategic concerns. An understanding of
underlying territorial motives and objectives, I think,
is helpful in formulating any kind of response to
something like the current conflict in the Balkans.
Another issue that it is necessary to understand in
terms of conflict resolution is that of scale. One must
be cognizant of the impact of a particular proposal for
resolving conflict. An important question that needs to
be asked is, “What does this solution mean for Bos-
nia?” “What does it mean for the larger Islamic
world?”
But third, and most important, is the need to have a
clear understanding of a region’s territorial and ethnic
realities. Conflict resolution implies some kind of plan
to create a stable situation. I made some comments
about the inefficacy of the Vance-Owen plan. I made
them because the plan and other plans that have been
articulated for the division of Bosnian tenitory into
monoethnic regions fail to take into consideration sev-
eral fundamental territorial and ethnic realities-one
of which is that, for all the usefulness of the general-
ized ethnic map of the country, it hides as much as it
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268