‘Ethnic Unmixing’ and the Quest for Stability in the Balkans
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200105600306 |
| Author | T.K. Vogel |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
T.K.
VOGEL
'Ethnic
unmixing'
and
the
quest
for
stability
in
the
Balkans
These
difficulties
[ofpeacemaking]
are
made
more
acute
by
the
fact
that
the
things
we
have
to
think
about
are
so
unreal
to
us.
We
are
feeding
on
maps,
talking
ofpopulations
as
ifthey
were
abstract
lumps,
and
turning
our
minds
to
a
scale
unheard
of
in
history.
To
how
many
of
us does
the
word
Slovak
convey
the
picture
offathers
and
mothers
and
chil-
dren,
of
human
beings
with
habits
and
personalities
as
inti-
mate
as
our
own?
Even
to
highly
cultivated
people
the
word
Slovak
probably
calls
up the association
of
'light
pink
patches
with diagonal
shading'
somewhere
in
bewildering
Austria-
Hungary.
Walter
Lippmann'
TWO
CONTRADICTORY TRENDS
have
dominated
the
political
history
of
twentieth century
Europe:
the absolute
evil
of
mass
extermination
and
faith
in
the correctibility
of
human
conduct.
The
killing
of
1914-
18
was
followed
by
a
settlement
that
mixed
revenge
with
a
utopian
International
Centerfor
Migration,
Ethnicity
and
Citizenship,
New
York.
The
author
would
like
to
thank
Phil
Triadafilopoulos
and
an
anonymous
reviewer
fbr
helpful
comments
on
an
ear-
her
draft.
Parts
of
this
article
werepresented
at
a
conference
on
ethnic minorities,
Humboldt
Universio•
Berlin,
June
2001.
1
Walter Lippmann,
The
Stakes
of
Diplomacy
(New
York:
H.
Holt
1915),
9-10.
INTERNATIONAL
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Summer
2001
T.K.
VogeL
belief
in the
perfectibility
of
social
interaction
and
offered
institutions
designed
on that
basis.
The
unprecedented,
engineered
annihilation
of
entire
peoples
in
the
194
0s
prompted
the
proscription
of
behaviour
that
even
under
conditions
of
industrial
mass
warfare
seemed
an
out-
rage
against
mankind.
These
crimes
against
humanity
occasioned
the
regulation
and
codi-
fication
of
norms
whose
validity
was
held
to
be
universal
and
did not
depend
upon
specific
social,
cultural,
or
political settings.
The
affirma-
tion
of
universal
human
rights,
the
proscription
of
wholesale
slaughter,
the
right
to
self-determination
of
peoples,
and
the
de-legitimization
of
war
as
an
instrument
of
policy
were
the principles
enshrined
in
the
post-war
settlements
of
1918
and
1945
and
in
the
institutional
arrangements
set
up
to
preserve
them;
they
seemed finally
to
triumph
with
the end
of
the communist
domination
of
eastern
Europe
in
1989.
Yet
the
twentieth
century ended in
massacre
and
expulsion once
again.
In
a
fitting
conclusion to
the
post-19
4
5
vision
of
human
rights
and
its failure
to
secure
enforcement, the horrors
of
the
wars
ofYugoslav
succession
occurred
in
full view
of
a
'powerless'
Europe.
The
question,
however,
remains:
is
the
human
rights
revolution
-
and
the
triumph
of
associated
values,
institutions,
and
policies
-
only
an illusion?
The
clash
between
violent particularism
and humanistic
universal-
ism
with
all
its
contradictions
has
been
especially
pronounced
in
the
Balkans.
The
region
has
served
as
an arena for
broader
pressures
and
processes,
most prominently
the
ascendancy
of
nationalism
as
a
guid-
ing principle
of
moral,
social,
and
political
organization.
But
national-
ism
ran
up
against
a
stubborn
persistence
of
linguistic,
religious,
and
ethnic
diversity,
and the
Balkans
became
the
primary battleground
between
diversity
and
the modernizing
forces
of
homogenization.
In
Europe
more
generally,
the period
leading
up
to
the
First
World
War
was
characterized
by
a
project
that
matched nationalizing
states
to
peoples
and
territories.
2
Frequently,
peoples
were
caught
between
unbending
nationalism
and
territorial
realities:
as
the
weakest
link in
the chain,
they bore the
brunt
of
the
staggering cost
accrued
in this
sec-
ular
project. Where
no
match among
state,
population, and
territory
existed,
it
had
to
be
created
and
enforced; where
assimilation
proved
2
On
'nationalizing
states,'
see
Rogers
Brubaker,
Nationalism
Reframed:
Nationhood
and the National
Question
in
the
New
Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University
Press
1997).
482
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