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War, Peace, and the State of the State

K.J. Holsti
International Political Science Review 1995 16: 319
DOI: 10.1177/019251219501600402
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319-

War, Peace, and the State of the State

K.J.

HOLSTI

ABSTRACT. Against the tenets of realist literature, the article argues that
the main source of war in the last half-century is internally
-derived, and
resides in the nature of post-1945 states. Regional and temporal variations
in the topography of war make suspect realist claims of state similarity
and systemic explanations of war. It is not the security dilemma nor the
international system, but the composition of state legitimacy and the
characteristic of weak, strong, and failed states which explain war today.
Regions populated by strong states, defined in terms of legitimacy, are
arenas of peace, and regions of weak and failed states are a prime location
of war.

the realist literature in international relations, is a &dquo;dismaying&dquo;

(Waltz,
66), recurrent, and necessary outcome of the operations of anarchical
state systems. Hobbes and Rousseau were among the first to outline the external
consequences of sovereign statehood, namely, that the means by which states seek
to enhance their security in a self-help system necessarily cause insecurity and
ultimately war among their neighbors. Threats to the state are thus externallyderived. I argue that the main source of war in the last half-century resides not in
the anarchical character of the state system, but rather in the nature of post-1945
states. The more general claim is that regions populated by strong states, defined
in terms of legitimacy, are a necessary condition for peace, and that regions of weak
and failed states are a prime location of war.
The theoretical platform for this exercise is Kenneth Waltzs claim that states
are similar in the tasks and functions they perform. He acknowledges that they have
different capacities to perform them, but otherwise they are comparable. All states,
for example, seek survival and all the things that go into the broad concept of the
populations &dquo;welfare,&dquo; namely education, employment, trade, commerce, and the
like. The essay also relates to Karl Deutschs work (1957) on national and international integration.
It is because the active units of international politics are functionally similar that
the outcomes of their interactions fall within predictable patterns and recurrence.

War, according
1979:

to

320

Whatever the unique properties of individual states of their policy-makers, the

characteristics of the system, as in a market, &dquo;force&dquo; the units to behave in certain
ways. The essential quality of international politics in an anarchical system is therefore the same, regardless of historical era. &dquo;The texture of international politics,&dquo;
writes Waltz (p.66), &dquo;remains highly constant, patterns recur, and events repeat
themselves endlessly. [Events] are marked ... by dismaying persistence, a persistence that one must expect so long as none of the competing units is able to convert
the anarchic international realm into a hierarchic one.&dquo;
The most dismaying recurrence of an anarchical system is war. Waltz follows
Hobbess and Rousseaus argument that the price for creating the state to obtain
its domestic advantages is external insecurity and war. He similarly accepts
Rousseaus argument that whatever the differing characteristics of individual states,
they are commonly in a relation of mistrust, insecurity, and conflict, and thus
frequently resort to arms. If the realist theoretical analysis is valid-patterns
&dquo;dismayingly&dquo; repeating themselves-we would expect to see war occurring with
somewhat similar frequency regardless of locale and historical context.
Most theorists agree that we live in an essentially anarchic system. But the claims
that all units are functionally similar and that the outcomes of interaction are
drearily repetitive are certainly open to critical inquiry. It is not legitimate to argue,
as does Waltz, that a theory of international politics is a theory only of the great
powers. For if the entire system is characterized by anarchy, then the repetitious
outcomes of wars and balances of power should be observed whenever sovereign
states interact, regardless of their capabilities. To argue otherwise implies that the
great powers are, functionally different from other states, and that there are important
distinctions, other than capabilities, between the units of an international system.
Neither Rousseau nor Waltz accepts the proposition that unit level differences bring
different systemic outcomes. The quality of international life is always the same, and
will remain so as long as the anarchical principle underlies the international system.
But if there are significant variations in the patterns of war and other outcomes
between different regions and across time, then both the claim for state similarity
and for a systemic explanation of war become suspect. The Rousseauistic structural
explanation of war stands or falls on the claim of similarity of and among units.
War was the problem that animated Karl Deutschs life-long work on integration.
It was because of his normative concern with war that he re-directed research to the
conditions of peace. To him, the medium for the peaceful condition was integrationbetween individuals, communities, and nations. His problematic was to identify the
necessary and sufficient conditions for integration. Lurking behind the work was the
assumption that integration is progressive because true communities incorporate
conflict-resolving habits and mechanisms that preclude armed conflict. One of the
key indicators of international integration is the absence of plans for or deployments
of military capabilities toward partners in a &dquo;pluralistic security community.&dquo;
While Deutsch agreed that integration is neither a linear process nor inevitable,
his work reflected the Eurocentric and teleological thrust of integration theory in
the 1950s and 1960s. Opposition to integration, fragmentation, and the collapse of
community were not part of his research agenda. Yet, war today is rooted in the
lack, or disintegration of, community within states.

The

Topography of War

Since 1945

Hobbes and Rousseau characterized the relations between

European

states as a

321

322

&dquo;state of war.&dquo; This did not mean that war was ubiquitous in every neighborhood,
but that states always had to be on guard. Or, as Morgenthau put it later, states
are always preparing for war, engaging in war, or overcoming the effects of the last
war. Even allowing for the possibility that there could be &dquo;islands of peace,&dquo; or short
eras of relaxed tension, the incidence of war in Hobbess and Rousseaus Europe
was sufficient to justify their pessimism. Although numbers differ according to
various studies, the dimensions of the problem are approximately the same. In
previous work (Holsti, 1991), I identified 119 wars among Europes small number
of states between 1648 and 1945, or one war starting on average every 2.5 years.
Little wonder that a theorist seeking an explanation would be impressed by the
dreary repetitiveness of conflicts, crises, peace conferences, and more armed
conflicts. Wars were a permanent feature of the European landscape. Nor has the
situation improved radically in other locales since 1945. Table I lists a total of 187
internal and interstate wars/interventions between 1945 and 1995.
When we adjust for the larger number of states in the system, however, the
incidence of war varies substantially between different historical periods. In the
1648-1713 period, for example, the probability of any states going to war in a given
year was one in forty. For the 50 years since 1945, the risk of involvement in international war or armed intervention for a typical state-assuming an average of 125
states in the period-declined to slightly less than one in one hundred. The supposedly recurrent outcome of anarchy changes significantly over time.
When we break down locales of war, moreover, even greater variations-indeed
anomalies-appear. There has been no interstate war in Western Europe since 1945;
none in North America since 1913-1915 (American armed intervention in Mexico);
in South America only the Falklands War-and that was against an extra-regional
power-since the Peru-Ecuador conflict of 1941. Clearly something is not happening in these areas that, according to realist predictions, should be happening.
Tables I and 2 provide some data on the location and types of war since 1945.
Since so many quantitative studies of war use different data and different criteria
for inclusion, I claim no precision. The data reported here come from a variety of
standard sources. Other recent studies (Arnold, 1991; Nietschmann, 1987) are
unreliable because no criteria for inclusion are indicated, or they are methodologically reliable but somewhat dated (Small and Singer, 1982).
Table I shows the locales of war since 1945. Armed contests have been ubiquitous in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. There has been no
international war (i.e., two or more armies in armed combat for the purpose of
inflicting military defeat and extracting terms of victory) or massive armed intervention in Western Europe and North America, and no war between states in South
America since 1941. The figures also show that more than two-thirds of all armed
combat in the world since 1945 has taken the form of civil wars, wars of state
against nation, wars of secession, and major armed uprisings to oust governments.
These are internal wars. Nietschmann (1987: 7) suggests an even higher figure: 72
percent of all wars were of the national disintegrative rather than the classical
state-state variety. Both figures are consistent with the argument of this article:
most threats to post-1945 states have been internal, not external. The case is even
stronger when we consider that many of the interstate wars and large armed interventions originated as civil disturbances and wars. Hungary 1956, the Dominican
Republic 1965, and India-Pakistan 1971, are just some of the examples. Indeed, of
the 187 wars listed in Table 1, only 30 were classical armed combats involving two or more
organized armies of internationally-recognized states. That is an incidence of interstate war

323
TABLE 2. Armed

Conflicts per

State

by Region,

1945-1995.

every 1.8 years-higher than in the seventeenth century, but when we normalize for the number of states in the system, a remarkable decline.
Table 2 normalizes the frequency of wars according to the number of states in a
region. We would expect more wars where there are more states, but according to
realist predictions, normalized figures should be similar across regions. However,
the figures in Table 2 show dramatic differences between regions. War since 1945
has been highly concentrated in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Internal wars have a different profile. South America ranks fourth highest, while
sub-Saharan Africa and Central America/Caribbean are well below the average.
However we interpret such figures, Western Europe and North America are obvious
anomalies. South America is an anomaly in terms of international war, but comes
closer to the profile of other Third World areas when it comes to domestic armed
strife. The overall pattern of war since 1945, then, does not duplicate European
patterns from 1648 to 1945. There has been considerably less interstate war, considerably more war originating from civil disturbances, and war incidence of both types
has varied widely according to locale.
Other artifacts of a system of anarchy do not fare better in post-1945 international politics. Duplication of past European patterns would include hegemonyseeking, alliances, balances of power, and arms races, all accoutrements of
European diplomatic history and realist analysis. Hegemony-seeking has been
prominent only in the Middle East and arguably in South Asia. It is absent in subSaharan Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. Formal alliances among Third
World and post-Communist states are conspicuous by their rarity. Today, there is
none in South America, Southeast Asia, Africa, or South Asia; they have been prominent only in the Middle East. Nor do we find Waltzs ubiquitous balances of power.
There is none today in South America (Selcher, 1990: 95), Africa, South Asia,
Southeast Asia, or the former Soviet Union despite the fact that in each of these
regions there are predominant states (Brazil, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and Russia).
If there has been balancing, it has been between regional states and a super-power
(e.g., the United States and Pakistan). The argument is unconvincing that the cold
war balance of power makes regional balances unnecessary, since we have not seen

once

324

behavior emerge in those regions since 1989. Again, only in the Middle
East do we see some duplication of pre-1945 patterns of European behavior. Even
that common trait of European politics, the border dispute, has been rare in Africa
(Herbst, 1989), leading Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg (1982: 21) to argue that

balancing

in
Black Africa, an image of international accord and civility and internal disorder and violence would be more accurate .... It is evident that the recent
national and international history of Black Africa challenges more than it
supports some of the major postulates of international relations theory.
...

perhaps most fundamentally, the realists famed &dquo;security dilemma,&dquo; leading

cycles of competitive arming, does not find empirical corroboration in many
Third World neighborhoods (for evidence, see McKinlay, 1989: ch. 8). Security
threats, in other words, are primarily domestic rather than external.
These findings suggest that if we wish to understand the etiology of armed
conflict in the post-Communist states and the Third World, approaches deriving
from the European experience and its theoretical rendering in realism and neorealism may be misplaced and/or irrelevant (Holsti, 1992). Most significantly, the
theoretical assumption of unit similarity may be inappropriate. If we want to understand the dismaying regularity of war since 1945, perhaps we should look at the
domestic structures and politics of states, and not at the external environment.
Perhaps Waltzs clear distinction between the principle of hierarchy, which underlies the internal life of states, and the principle of anarchy, which &dquo;organizes&dquo; international politics, might be amended or reversed. Perhaps the essential
characteristic of many post-Communist and Third World states is domestic anarchy,

And
to

that is, where states as Waltz and Deutsch conceive them do not yet exist, or where
they exist more in name than in fact.
This is not to deny that in some areas there are genuine security dilemmas,
complicated sets of external threats and resulting balancing behavior, construction
of deterrents, arms races and even drives for hegemony. One should avoid going
from one analytical fallacy-extending realism to the study of conflict in the Third
World-to another. Much of the literature on conflict in the Third World has until
recently been written from a cold war or geopolitical perspective, and it has generally neglected the domestic sources of conflict in these areas. It would be equally
inappropriate to exclude considerations of external threats in the lives of many postCommunist or Third World states, particularly those in the Middle East, the Horn
of Africa, and the Balkans. However, it is the case that the origins of conflict since
1945 have derived more frequently from weak statehood, the residues of colonialism, and national fragmentation. Many domestically originating conflicts have
become internationalized through complicated networks of ties between dissident
groups and external patrons and protectors. The whole process of the internationalization of domestic conflict needs more study (cf. Heraclides, 1990; de Silva and
May, 1991). But for the historical foundations of post-1945 war we must turn to the
birth of states.

Political

Theory and the Composition of States

European political theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries addressed

the problem of political authority, obligation, and the state without questioning the
bases of the community upon which the state rests. The state of nature in contract

325
was a metaphor to explain the need for governance (particularly during
times of civil disturbance) among atomistic individuals, to outline the benefits it
would provide, and to list the costs it would help avoid. The focus is on sources,
needs and forms. But one searches in vain in Hobbes or Locke to find exactly who
would make the contract among themselves or with a Leviathan. The state of nature
is universal, but the states that result from the social contract are particular. They
are based on some sort of community, but the authors do not outline its entrance
requirements or limits. Hobbes speaks of the commonwealth and Locke of the
nation, but these are assumed rather than defined. During their times, the concept
of nation carried no ethnic meaning; a nation referred to any &dquo;people&dquo; who had
gained political sovereignty (Gazdag, 1992: 13). Only in Rousseau does community
as a social unit begin to appear, this time in the guise of mœurs, rendered as customs
and habits but not ethnicity.
In those philosophers Europe, the community over which there was governance
was a territorial contrivance created through wars, conquests, marriages, and a few
peaceful political amalgamations of previously independent or autonomous units.
Community was based on contiguity. In some places, such as France, England, or
Sweden, there was an ethnic core (cf. Smith, 1989: 352-353). France, for example,
grew originally around areas of the old Frankish kingdom (Paris, the Loire Valley,
and the north) but was fashioned later-largely by force of arms and the extension
of bureaucratic controls-to incorporate the politically unorganized nations of
Bretons, Basques, Alsatians, Occitanians, Catalans, Corsicans, and Flemings as well
as a variety of dukedoms and other traditional political units. At the time of the
French Revolution, one-half of Frances citizens spoke no French, and only about
12 percent spoke it properly. Most of the population in the north and south of the
country could not speak the language at all (Hobsbawm, 1990: 60; on the language
of the Revolutionary regime, see Maugu6, 1979: 46-48). When Italy was unified in
the mid-nineteenth century, only about three percent of the population could speak
standard Italian; a Sicilians speech was incomprehensible to a Milanese. Italian
parliamentarian Massimo dAzeglios quip, &dquo;We have made Italy, now we must
make Italians&dquo; expressed well the sequence of state formation in nineteenthcentury Europe: the state came before the nation. Walker Connor (1990), based on
research into immigration records prior to World War I, has shown that most
European migrants to the United States at the turn of the century had no sense of
being Italian, Ukrainian, Croat, or Slovene, much less Yugoslav. Their identities
were defined in terms of river valleys, villages, and regions.
Eighteenth- and most nineteenth-century European sovereigns, reflecting the
political philosophies of the times, ruled over &dquo;civic,&dquo; &dquo;historic,&dquo; or territorial
communities rather than over &dquo;associational&dquo; (Buckheit, 1978: 4) or &dquo;natural&dquo;
communities (nations based on consanguinity and/or language and religion). The
French &dquo;citizen&dquo; constructed during the Revolution had nothing to do with some
class or ethnic segment of the community. The concepts of patriotism and citizenship were inconsistent with divided loyalties or with special &dquo;rights&dquo; implied in the
modern concept of ethnic minorities or any other special subgroups within the state.
Secessionist and unification movements, such as those in the American colonies,
based their claims on natural law, not on ethnicity, culture, or some other group
attribute. Greek independence in the 1820s was fought for primarily in the name
of religious freedom and local political autonomy rather than ethnic identity, while,
as suggested, Italian unification had everything to do with liberalism and little to
do with the unity of some natural &dquo;people.&dquo; &dquo;Nationhood&dquo; defined in terms of

theory

326
its collateral attributes of history, language, and
arise in Europe until the late nineteenth century-with
Belgium a partial exception. Only then did claims for sovereign statehood in the
multi-national Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires start to be based
upon the cultural and language attributes of ethnic communities (cf. Hobsbawm,
1990: 79, 102). Even then, however, some claims (e.g., by the Hungarians) continued to emphasize the restoration of historic rights rather than the unique distinctiveness of language, culture, or ethnicity.
The conceptual foundations of state legitimacy changed substantially between the
late nineteenth century and the end of World War I. This change was most vividly
reflected in the 1919 peace settlement. The states exclusiveness, once based on
history and territory (contiguity) now became based on culture, language, and
ethnicity (consanguinity). State territory was made to fit around &dquo;natural&dquo; community, while Woodrow Wilsons ethnically-based understanding of self-determination
replaced traditional civic concepts of the state. Even though Wilson did not intend
to apply the principle of self-determination to the victorious powers, most analysts
expected that once national aspirations in the former multinational empires had
been met, a new era of peace would emerge. When Wilson proclaimed that &dquo;no
people must be forced under a sovereignty under which it does not wish to live&dquo;
(quoted in Buckheit, 1978: 62), he was stating that all the turmoil of European
politics caused by nationalist agitation in the decades prior to the Great War could
only be resolved by sovereign statehood for &dquo;peoples.&dquo; Those &dquo;peoples&dquo; were defined
in terms of ethnicity, culture, language, and/or religion.
This change in the basis of state legitimacy was also reflected in the victorious
Allies recognition policies. Three criteria were operative in Paris during 1919: the
&dquo;peoples&dquo; must have expressed a desire for sovereign independence; that expression should have been by democratic means, through constitutions, institutions of
parliamentary government, or plebiscites; and new &dquo;minorities&dquo; must have their
own rights protected through constitutions, treaties, or
League of Nations guaran-

ethnicity-consanguinity-and
economic base did

tees.

not

Wilsons ethnically-based concept of self determination could not, of course, be

applied with precision. Boundary configurations simply could not fit the m6lange of
population distributions. Inis Claude (1955: 13) estimates that even with the &dquo;scientific&dquo; work of the Paris Peace Conference-the attempt to create states on the basis
of &dquo;natural&dquo; communities-25 to 30 million Europeans remained outside those
&dquo;natural&dquo; communities as they were fashioned into new states. They were to become
a source of conflict and war
throughout the 1920s, as well as a pretext for Hitlers
serial aggressions of the 1930s.
The 1919 peace also helped to bring into political vocabulary and policy the
concepts of majority and minority. These emphasize differences-us and themrather than the uniformity, similarities, and bonds that are implied in the concept
of &dquo;patriot&dquo; or &dquo;citizen.&dquo; That formal divisions of populations according to ethnic,
language, and religious attributes can help foster tensions between them was
already recognized in the early twentieth century. Writing in 1907, Lord Acton
noted that...
The greatest

adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory of

nationality. By making the State and the nation commensurate with each other
in theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all other nationalities that
may be within the boundary. It cannot admit them to an equality with the ruling

327

State, because the State would then cease to be

national, which would be a contradiction of the principle of its existence.
According, therefore, to the degree of humanity and civilization in that dominant
nation which constitutes the

claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are exterreduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of dependence (Acton, 1907: 192-193).

body which
minated,

or

As we will see, this was a prescient observation, but perhaps less relevant in the
world of Western Europe with which Acton was familiar than to many of the post1945 states.
Europes states thus came to be based on two fundamentally different foundations of legitimacy: historic-civic (e.g., France, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark) and
&dquo;natural&dquo; (Finland, Hungary, and the Baltic and Balkan states). In the former, the
state molded the modern territorial nation, and in the latter the nation (as defined
and even created by elites) helped create the state. In 1919, pre-existing &dquo;natural&dquo;
communities simply made a claim for a higher status, that is, for sovereign statehood (Smith, 1986: 240-244).
Two hybrid states, based neither on civic nor &dquo;natural&dquo; foundations, also emerged
from World War I: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. We are now seeing the results.
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were the creations of diplomats, not the results of
long historical processes or of the upgrading of some &dquo;natural&dquo; community to
sovereign statehood. They were fictions that not even seventy years of history or
the iron rule of communist regimes could transform into some degree of civic or
&dquo;natural&dquo; community. This is exactly the problem faced by many contemporary
post-socialist and Third World states.

State-creation after 1945

meeting of the new United Nations General Assembly in 1945, 42

governments sent delegates; today, it has more than 180 members. There has been
no similar explosion of states in the history of the Westphalian system. If we are
to gain an understanding of the etiology of war in the post-Communist and Third
Worlds-that arena of armed conflict that is largely ignored in Waltzs and
Deutschs analyses-we should start by looking at the birth of states rather than at
the principle of anarchy that underlies the relations between them.
Using the two traditional European criteria of state legitimacy-&dquo;civic&dquo; and
&dquo;natural&dquo;-it is clear most of the post-1945 states met neither at the time they
achieved independence. Their claims for statehood were based primarily upon a
negative-anti-colonial or anti-Soviet-rather than on the positive achievements of
a historical community and its citizenship or on the &dquo;natural&dquo; bonds formed through
history, consanguinity, language, and/or religion. If Europes post-1918 states were
national communities upgraded to states, most post-1945 states remain &dquo;nationsto-be.&dquo; Many derive their legitimacy, &dquo;from the circumstances of their origins in
deliberate acts of creation-by aliens for alien purposes&dquo; (Smith, 1983: 125).
The new states were mostly the successors of colonial entities which, as we know,
had little to do with historic or &dquo;natural&dquo; units. The standard depiction of their
territorial origins is that of a bureaucrat or diplomat in London, Berlin, Paris, or
St. Petersburg drawing straight lines on maps, ignorant of the topographical,
natural, or population characteristics of the territories being claimed or bartered.
The colonial units usually incorporated all sorts of ethnicities, nations, religions,
At the first

328

languages, and commercial patterns into a single administrative zone, or they tore
apart previously integrated societies into separate units (Iraq and Kuwait, for
example). The colonial powers also shifted populations indiscriminately, thus creating multi-ethnic societies where they had not existed before. Fiji, Trinidad, Hawaii,
and Guyana are prominent examples. The numerous and diverse purposes of
colonization---commercial exploitation, slaves, religious proselytization, international status, strategic interests, and great power rivairy-bore no relationship
whatsoever to the creation of &dquo;states.&dquo; Indeed, most colonial regimes explicitly
sought to avoid building the foundations of statehood. According to Migdal (1988:
141), &dquo;British imperial officials ... considered far too extravagant building a
colonial state strong enough to either bypass indigenous forces altogether or absorb
them into a single system of rules.&dquo; Imperial officials ruled primarily through the
co-option and subsidization of &dquo;strongmen&dquo; (clan leaders, religious officials, caudillos, and the like), thus leaving the successor political units with highly fragmented
systems of social control. Colonial authorities made no attempt to encourage a sense
of national consciousness, much less ideas of individual or group rights. Quite the
opposite: their task was to exploit resources through forced or cheap labor. This
required racist ideologies (except in some cases among French colonialists), and
according to Worsley (1964), a process of psychological exploitation or &dquo;infantilization,&dquo; described by Fanon (1961) as colonization of the personality. These hardly
constitute solid foundations for modern statehood.
The idea that the polyethnic/communal fictions called colonies could someday
become independent states emerged only after World War I. By the 1950s it had
become the standard wisdom in &dquo;national (a misuse of the term) liberation&dquo; idealogy and in United Nations rhetoric. Colonial jurisdictions created for multiple nonstate purposes were somehow to become carbon copies or prototypes of the
European territorial states that had created them.
When leaders of national liberation movements spoke of &dquo;self determination&dquo;if they used that term at all-they hardly did so in the name of a &dquo;people,&dquo; because
no such &dquo;people &dquo;-meaning a &dquo;natural&dquo; comrnunity-existed. There were, rather,
congeries of communal-religious groups, ethnicities, tribes, clans, lineages, and
pastorals who wandered freely. Lacking &dquo;natural&dquo; communities or a national history
of uniqueness which might legitimate their claims to statehood, they had to rely on
the territorial creations and concoctions of the colonialists to define their hopedfor communities. In Crawford Youngs words (1983: 200):
anticolonial nationalism found inconvenient the notion that cultural affinities were a necessary basis for exercising [the right of self-determination]. A
shared condition of oppression and alien rule was the essential cause of revolt .
Thus the particular colonial territory was the necessary framework for
challenging foreign hegemony. Nationalists, in seeking united support of all
inhabitants of a given territory to sanction the independence demand, embraced
the colonial entity itself as the defining basis for the &dquo;people&dquo; to whom selfdetermination should apply.
...

...

European territorial colonies, many of which had nothing at all to do with

&dquo;natural&dquo; communities or ancient states, were nevertheless to be the basis of the
new countries. The problem was that in most cases the country remained a dream
rather than becoming a reality. Unlike Europes centralizing monarchies of the
sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the gulf between the territorially-based postcolonial state and the plethora of its constituent nations, communities, and ethnic

329
groups cannot be

easily reconciled in a democratic age. Marriages, armed conquest,

and forced integration or assimilation are not policies easily sustained under the
eyes of a human rights- and sovereignty-inspired international community.
Like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, many of the post-1945 states began as
fictions. It is for this reason, in part, that Robert Jackson (1991) has called these
entities &dquo;quasi-states&dquo; and that Anthony Smith (1986: 244) has claimed even more
pessimistically that &dquo;the history-less are destiny-less.&dquo; They owe their creation more
to the international community than to their own artificial communities. Many
received international recognition before they had met either the traditional criteria of statehood (a defined territory, skills and organizations to administer a permanent population, and capacity to enter into treaty relations), or the 1919 criteria
based on &dquo;natural&dquo; community. They entered the international club, in other words,
by virtue of their status as colonies rather than through their achievements as
fledgling states. Thus their essential but very difficult task is to create nationsand in some cases states-where none existed before.
These comments do not imply that states or quasi-states came into being only as
a result of European imports. In many areas of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East,
states long pre-dated colonialism, and some of them had geographic delimitations
roughly approximating colonial boundaries (cf. Neuberger, 1986: 43). But most post1945 states were congeries of pre-colonial units, and many European administrations partitioned older political structures between two or more colonies.
We should not assume that there is some automatic or pre-destined trend to
&dquo;real&dquo; statehood, meaning a close concordance between the government apparatus,
civil society, and the &dquo;nation.&dquo; Some former quasi-states-Malaysia, Singapore,
Egypt, and the Maghreb countries (except Libya)-have arrived at a semblance of
strong statehood. Trinidad and most other Caribbean countries have a pronounced
and perhaps untypical record of political strength (Thorndike, 1989). Ukraine has
an ancient history and a distinctive language. But other countries have disintegrated or collapsed (Lebanon, Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda). Most post-1945 states are
somewhere in between, meaning that their future remains problematic and that
many will end up as cases on the United Nations agenda.
These comments suggest that some new states have mixed characteristics of
anarchy and hierarchy. Waltz (1979: 114-116) considers this possibility but rejects
it on theoretical grounds. No matter how much &dquo;anarchic&dquo; behavior appears within
states, they are still organized on hierarchical principles. Any state that is unable
to provide for its own defense, that tolerates highly armed political groups within
its territory, and that uses excessively predatory or suppressive means to bridge the
gap between the state and its nation(s), can hardly be based on hierarchical (mutual
dependence) relations. If on a prolonged basis the state cannot provide a minimum
level of public security, as is the current case in Somalia, Liberia, or Rwanda, it
does not contain the &dquo;stuff of a state despite having flags and an ambassador at
the United Nations. The principle of hierarchy, characterized by a division of labor,
is the hallmark of the state, according to Waltz. But in Myanmar, for example, how
can we speak of a division of labor when the army owns and runs the organized
economy, when its members systematically plunder national wealth for private
profit, when significant proportions of the population do not accept the legitimacy
or the authority of the government (they deny the principle of hierarchy), and when
most private commerce and exchange take place outside government purview and
supervision? It is difficult to see how such countries are functionally similar to
Denmark and Japan, for example. This suggests that we can expect them to be the

330

locale of armed combat, the arenas of civil and secessionist wars, many of which
will become internationalized to some extent. Contrary to the Rousseau-Waltz
thesis, then, the security problematic for such states is primarily internal, not external (Korany, 1986; Ayoob, 1991; Holsti, 1992). The main rationale for the armed
forces of many Third World and post-socialist states is not the fear of external
coercion or aggression, but the fear of internal rebellion (cf. Ball, 1988: 393; EkweEkwe, 1990: 154). The poor fit between state and nation-the major legacy of
colonialism-is the essential source of wars in the Third World and, more recently,
in the residues of collapsed communism. As Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe (1990: 155) has
noted, &dquo;It is a cruel irony that six million Africans have had to die in the past twenty
years [since the early 1970s] in conflicts that center principally on whether or not
one African nation or another should belong to states created strategically by
European imperialism to exploit the people and their resources.&dquo;
One of the main tasks of the military in Third World countries in fact has been
to &dquo;integrate&dquo; diverse communities into the states post-colonial territorial domains.
From their perspective, they are involved in &dquo;nation-building.&dquo; From the perspective of groups such as the southern Sudanese, Karens, Tamils, Mizo, Nagas,
Omoros, and dozens of others, the task of the states military is to appropriate their
lands and resources and to destroy their identity, ways of life, and local forms of
governance (Nietschmann, 1987: 7-14; Odhiambo, 1991: 292-298).
Ekwe-Ekwes statement above summarizes the fundamental dilemma of many new
states. In it is encapsulated the conflict between the principle of a states territorial
integrity and the principle of self-determination (Neuberger, 1986: 106). The
attempts to create &dquo;nations&dquo; where none existed before drive secessionist and irredentist movements, most of which take a violent form under the rubric of the inherent
right of self-determination. Without a nation, a state is fundamentally weak. But in
attempting to build strength, usually under the leadership of an ethnic core, minorities become threatened or excluded from power. This is the foundation of the &dquo;insecurity dilemma&dquo; of most new states. It is the source of most wars in our age.

Characteristics of

Weak, Strong, and Failed States

of the post-Communist regions, then, the

In the Third World, as in some

relevant
anarchy does not lie primarily in the relations between states, but is a common
domestic characteristic. Barry Buzan has made the important distinction between
weak and strong states. The distinction-it is actually a dimension-does not lie in
military strength, but in socio-political cohesion.
Anarchic states possess neither a widely accepted and coherent idea of the state
among their populations, nor a governing power strong enough to impose unity
in the absence of political consensus. The fact that they exist as states at all is
largely a result of other states recognizing them as such, and not disputing their
existence (Buzan, 1989: 17).

Further up the ladder of cohesion

are

those

states

whose governments rule effec-

tively because they have power, but whose authority relies essentially upon the
goodwill of various kinds of &dquo;strongmen&dquo; who are the de facto rule-makers and value
allocators among a variety of ethnic, clan, class, functional, or communal social units
(cf. Migdal, 1988: 31-39). Then there are states with &dquo;mixed&dquo; characteristics, followed
by strong states whose political life rests on a synthesis or integration of state, society,
and nation(s). The critical variable is the degree of a states legitimacy-which is not

331

be confused with the popularity of a government. Buzans dimension does not

extend far enough, however. The opposite of a strong state is not a weak state, but
a failed or collapsed one.
to

Weak States
Numerous indicators of strength and weakness are found in different combinations;
their interplay remains largely unexplored. Weak states contain various combinations of the following characteristics:
1.

2.

3.

The ends or purposes of governance are contested. The clash between

fundamentalist and secular Muslim forces reflects such divisions. The
lines separating the state from civil society (which itself is poorly articulated and organized) are blurred and contested, further exacerbating
regime legitimacy and often resulting in state coercion and predation (cf.
Hawthorn, 1991: 31).
There are two or more nations or, as Gurr and Scarrit (1989: 375) call them,
&dquo;differentially treated communal groups&dquo; within the state. What is more
significant than the profusion of ethnic/communal groups, however, is that
one or more are commonly constructed as minorities rather than as equals.
The distinction is important. A nation has a common history, ethnic and
language ties, and often a territorial and economic base. It does not see itself
as a &dquo;minority&dquo; until it has been so defined in the context of an &dquo;outside&dquo;
state or by some other group. As Nietschmann (1987: 4) points out, the
concept of minority is used by the state, not by the nation, and is usually
the intellectual basis justifying various forms of exclusion, appropriation, or
repression. It is often the state itself that categorizes groups and establishes
&dquo;different rules of the game ... for defining groups, legitimizing certain ones
and declaring others out of bounds&dquo; (Bienen, 1989: 139). Following the
conventional state-biased terminology, Gurr and Scarrit (1989: 380) define
minorities as &dquo;groups within larger politically-organized societies whose
members share a distinctive collective identity based on cultural and ascriptive traits recognized by them and by the larger society&dquo; (for a somewhat
different rendering, see Connor, 1978: 388). The significant quality is the
&dquo;social perception that [various] traits or combination of traits set the group
apart&dquo; (Gurr and Scarrit, 1989: 381). Gurr and Scarrit identify 99.countries
that have such minorities &dquo;at risk.&dquo; Twenty-eight states in Africa contain 72
groups &dquo;at risk.&dquo; Those groups comprise almost 45 percent of the total
population. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the proportion
of the population &dquo;at risk&dquo; is 24.3 percent and in Asia, 18.3 percent.
The government apparatus is &dquo;captured&dquo; or held by one group, which
systematically excludes others. If the state is based on the guaranteed
structural predominance of a single group, we can all it an &dquo;ethnocracy.&dquo;
Its strategies for dealing with &dquo;minorities&dquo;-and sometimes it is numerical minorities excluding majorities-range from expulsion (Uganda,
Myanmar) through forced integration-colonization (Sudan) to various
forms of systematic exclusion (Myanmar, Iraq, Sri Lanka) and even to
ethnocide (Rwanda). (For a discussion of the strategies, see Rothchild,
1986; for the European experience, see Maugu6, 1979: ch. 5, and Coakley,

1992.)

332

The government is &dquo;captured&dquo; by a family or clan for the primary purpose

of personal enrichment (Nicaragua under the Somozas, Haiti under the
Duvaliers, the Philippines under Marcos, the Central African Republic
under Bokassa, Somalia under Barre, etc.). Following its leaders, the
bureaucracy operates primarily through patron-client relations and
systematic corruption; governing groups use state capabilities and
resources primarily for personal enrichment. Zaire is a contemporary
example. This type of regime may be more appropriately entitled a

4.

&dquo;

5.

6.

&dquo;kleptocracy.&dquo;
Major communal or ideological groups or nations identify with, or are
loyal to, external states and/or societies (e.g., the Kashmiris toward
Pakistan during the 1950s; the Somalis in Kenya in the 1970s; the Turkish
Cypriots; some Shiia in Lebanon, etc.); or significant segments of the
population owe primary or exclusive loyalty to primordial groups (cf.
Jackson, 1987).
The state is incapable of delivering basic services or providing security
and order for the population (India after partition, Lebanon, Somalia, and
Afghanistan today). In these cases, there is indeed a Hobbesian state of

7.

8.

nature within the state.

The government relies primarily on violence, coercion, and intimidation
to maintain itself in power, often targeting nations/minorities or ideological groups (e.g., Iraq under Hussein, Myanmar) in order to gain support
from other groups.
Most fundamentally, the state lacks legitimacy. Its inhabitants &dquo; ... do
not readily regard their rulers as providing a legitimate authority, and
state power does not rest on a secure foundation of popular belief in the
right of rulers to rule&dquo; (OBrien, 1991: 145).

In Michael Manns (1986: 109-136; cf. Thomas, 1989) terms, the weak state is high
in despotic power, but low in infrastructural power. It can rule through coercion,
but it has no deep roots within civil society.
This list is suggestive, not exhaustive. Other characteristics are also relevant (cf.
Korany, 1986: 553-556). However, it contains important elements, and can also
serve as a basis of comparison with the slow and often violent process of state-formation in early modern Europe.

Strong States
Strong states
as

contain characteristics

opposite

of those found in weak states,

as

well

others.
1.

The ends and purposes of government have become settled, founded on

a significant ideological consensus. Politics are thus &dquo;de-passioned&dquo;
(Brenner, 1992). They revolve primarily around technical issues and priorities rather than purposes and creeds. In most modern industrial societies,
for example, there is a consensus that the purpose of governance is to
help provide &dquo;the good life&dquo; for the individual through the means of the
welfare state. The division between the state and civil society is established-and mostly honored-through constitutional guarantees and less
formal &dquo;rules of the game.&dquo; Broadly speaking, ruling authorities and/or
state institutions enjoy a high level of legitimacy if not always popularity.
&dquo;

333

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Most social

groups-ethnic, religious, language, and the like-have been

successfully assimilated, or have achieved protection, equality, or selfdetermination through autonomy, federalism, or other special devices.
Sovereign statehood through secession no longer constitutes a major goal
of constituent nations/minorities. Ideological, religious, and other groups
operate freely and participate in the political process.
Territorial frontiers have become legitimized and sanctified through
numerous treaties and in multilateral instruments. The spatial dimension
of state jurisdiction is not contested domestically or externally, and norms
against forceful revision (e.g., the Helsinki Final Act) hold.
Governors change through regularized procedures. It is impossible for one
group or social sector to hold power permanently, and no group faces
systematic persecution or denial of civil liberties and political office.
Major state organizations such as the military remain under effective
civilian control.
The mores of governance preclude personal enrichment through political
activity. In Michael Manns terms (1986: 109-136), the modern industrial
state is low on despotic power, but high on infrastructural power. The
roots of the state lie deeply within (and sometimes intrude upon) the civil

society.
Pomian (1991), in a parallel analysis, has suggested categories of horizontal and
vertical integration to measure the strength of statehood. A state is horizontally
integrated when its territorial base is essentially uncontested; borders are recognized and considered legitimate both within and outside the country. Vertical
integration implies that a state is able to handle social conflicts and to allocate
values without having to resort to violence; no social group is systematically
excluded from governance.

Failed States
States fail
1.

2.

central authorities. The clan chiefs of Somalia and the PLO in Lebanon
prior to the Israeli invasion of 1982 are examples.
An external power wields effective authority or influence within the territory of the state and has the coercive capacity to resist pressures from the
legal authorities. Syria in Lebanon and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan
are

3.
4.

It_ is

collapse

when

of the

following characteristics prevail:

There are one or more armed &dquo;mini-sovereigns&dquo; within the state. They
have effective rule-making capacity and are armed sufficiently to resist
or

one or more

examples.

Communities war against each other and the central authorities do not
have the capacity to end the slaughter. Rwanda in 1994 is an example.
A state is incapable of providing minimal security for the ordinary tasks
of life-commerce, transportation, agriculture, and communication-to
proceed. These tasks must be performed by outsiders, as has been done
by the United Nations in Somalia, or by local warlords.

important

to

emphasize

that these characteristics constitute ideal types of

&dquo;weak,&dquo; &dquo;strong,&dquo; and &dquo;failed&dquo; states. Most states, most of the time, can be placed
in various positions on a continuum, the ends of which are the ideal types. States

334

along the continuum toward greater strength or weakness. Few

completely approximate the &dquo;strong&dquo; state-the position of
and
&dquo;gastarbeiter&dquo;
refugees in Germany, some Quebecois in Canada, and Basques
in Spain suggest significant deviations. There are equally few pure &dquo;kleptocracies&dquo;
or &dquo;ethnocracies.&dquo; The main point is that those states that are located toward the
&dquo;strong&dquo; part of the continuum are sites of peace, while those tending toward the
over

West

time also

move

European

&dquo;weak&dquo;

or

states

&dquo;failed&dquo; parts

The Character

of States

are

sites of war.

and War

states are a necessary condition for peace. Today, a fundamental source of

international conflict is anarchy within states. Peace in Western Europe or North
America since 1945 cannot be explained, as have most realists (cf. Waltz, 1979;
Gaddis, 1987; Mearsheimer, 1990), solely by the cold war, nuclear weapons,
American hegemony, or balances of power. Western Europe is also more than a
society of states (Bull, 1977) or a &dquo;mature anarchy&dquo; (Buzan, 1983: 96-101). Peace
Between the Western industrial countries, I suggest, comes primarily from the fact
that there has been peace within each of its constituent units. Anarchy, although
being altered through the European Union, has remained the organizing principle
for the mutual relations of the North American and European states. Yet, in contrast
to a Rousseauistic or Waltzian prediction, war has not recurred (cf. Deutsch, 1957).
Europe, North America, and to a lesser extent South America are anomalies, but
very significant ones. If the principle of anarchy-a constant property between
states-has not changed, and if systemic characteristics such as balances of power
are not to be found in
many regions of the world, then the explanation of the significant variation in war incidence must lie in characteristics within states.
It follows that regions populated by large numbers of weak and/or failing states
will be zones of war, areas of high incidence of both internal and interstate armed
conflicts, while regions containing large numbers of states of medium strength will
be no-war zones. There may be frequent militarized crises, arms competition, and
ad hoc alliance-making, but the incidence of internal wars will be relatively low,
and the incidence of interstate wars negligible. South America since the early
twentieth century fits this profile. Finally, regions containing a predominance of
strong states will be &dquo;pluralistic security communities,&dquo; where both internal and
interstate wars will be almost unthinkable. Western Europe since 1945, North
America since the 1920s, and the South Pacific region concentrated on Australia
and New Zealand, fit this pattern (cf. Buzan, 1989: 23; Kacowicz, 1994).
A competing theory, the theory of the &dquo;democratic peace,&dquo; has gained many
adherents and empirical support since first enunciated by Montesquieu and Kant.
Many of the characteristics listed in the &dquo;strong&dquo; state category duplicate
democratic political structures and procedures, but the category also highlights
relations between groups within the state, state-group relations, the legitimacy of
established boundaries, and a consensus on the ends of governance. It takes more
than periodic elections, multiple parties, and civil liberties to make a strong state.
Democratic institutions are just part of the story, albeit an important part. The
democracy-peace theory is not sufficient, however, because as the South American
anomaly suggests, there have been zones of international peace where there has
been little or no democracy (Holsti, forthcoming).
In the case of the Third and post-Communist worlds, the absence of alliances,
balances of power, and other indicators of a classic anarchic system (the Middle

Strong

335

East is a significant exception), combined with the recurrence of war, also suggests
that the fundamental sources of armed conflict lie within rather than between
states. Despite flags, UN membership, and other symbols of sovereignty, many Third
World and post-Communist states are significantly-and perhaps functionallydifferent from those in Western Europe, North America, and most of South
America. Many governments, for example, do not have the purpose of providing
&dquo;the good life&dquo; for their citizens. Their primary purpose is to provide the good life
for one segment of the society, whether a clan, an ethnic or religious group, a
family, or an organization such as the army .
Waltzs concepts of anarchy and hierarchy are ideal types, and for reasons of
theoretical parsimony, simplifying assumptions have to be made. But if my argument
carries weight, then we really have two worlds of world politics, one populated by
strong states, the other by weak and failed states. The characteristics of relations
among the former differ significantly from those of the latter. This can be shown
empirically using many different indices. If all states were the same, as Waltz
suggests, then we should not observe such significant differences in the outcomes of
relationships. There should be wars, balances of power, hegemons, and arms races
just as much in Europe, North America, and South America as anywhere else in the
world. Yet this is not the case. In the Third and post-Communist worlds, we find the
recurrence of war, but balances of power and hegemony-seeking except in the Middle
East are rare. In summary, if we wish to look for the sources of war in these areas,
we should jettison many of our traditional analytical devices whose origins lie in
European history (Korany, 1986; Holsti, 1992). The study of the state, ethnicity, and
comparative politics provides a better theoretical and methodological platform.

Policy Implications
If the analysis has some plausibility, then our conceptions of international organizations and of the constitutive principles of international practice need re-examination. It is important to recall that the fundamental principles underlying
organizations such as the United Nations are Westphalian. The principles of
sovereign equality, of non-interference, and of territorial integrity which are the
foundations of most contemporary international organizations are important
protective devices for the small and weak against external predators. Imagine how
many countries would have shared the fate of Kuwait in July 1990 were not the
principles of sovereignty and independence among the most sacred of the society
of states. This is one reason why in the last three centuries we have witnessed the
birth of so many states, and the demise of so few. The sanctity and mystique of
statehood remain strong.
Yet, since most of the threats to weak states are internal rather than external,
how can international organizations act when their chief mandate is to maintain
international peace and security? The Somalian situation brings this question to the
forefront. Should the UN attempt to take over the functional tasks of a state when
the indigenous rulers cannot perform them? Should its purpose be to resuscitate
quasi-states that have fallen into chaos and warlordism? Or should the international
community develop new forms of trusteeship, giving itself the very long range and
costly task of creating a genuine civic society in a milieu where it is lacking? Can
the international community create strong states?
What sorts of norms should guide the efforts of international organizations in
their peace-keeping and peace-making tasks? Should the purpose, other than

336

stopping the killing, be to reconstitute states that are largely fictional or to promote
the Wilsonian idea of &dquo;natural&dquo; self-determination? These are not abstract
questions. Where peace-keeping missions have been unable to help bring ethnic
reconciliation-as is the case of Cyprus-should they continue to drain the coffers
of the United Nations and contributing governments in the expectation that
another twenty or thirty years of non-warfare may lead to an eventual restoration
of the prewar situation? Or should the international community recognize that
perhaps the most viable principle of legitimacy is statehood based on some
&dquo;natural&dquo; community? If so, would it not make more sense, for example, to accept
the fact of a Turkish Cypriot state? The peace being worked out for Bosnia, as much
as it may be a cause for future strife, implicitly takes the anti-Deutsch position that
it is better to separate peoples than to try to integrate them. But this challenges
the liberal faith (and pre-twentieth-century practice in most multi-national
empires) that a society can incorporate many groups on the basis of equality and

civility.
The
absurd

problem with the ethnic &dquo;solution,&dquo; of course, is that it can be taken to

lengths. If, as Gurr and Scarrit suggest, the world has more than 250 minorities/nations at some degree of risk, then we could well expect claims from most of
them for sovereign statehood. We would then have, let us say, another 200 states
added to the present 185. Most of them would have authoritarian rule (Etzioni,
1992) and be non-viable economic entities, but at least for the time being the
passion for &dquo;identity,&dquo; &dquo;international recognition,&dquo; and a &dquo;place in the sun&dquo; would
be satisfied. The economic fragility of many of these &dquo;states&dquo; would ultimately force
them to find new modes of political integration.
It is

unlikely, however, that governments in most Third World countries will

sympathize with the Wilsonian conception of state legitimacy, for to do so would
invite an increased incidence of secessionist pressures and greater external scrutiny
of their domestic politics. If United Nations-sponsored peace arrangements, as in
Bosnia, sanction all sorts of partitions and new states, all based on the doctrine of
consanguine self-determination, very few governments in the Third World would be
immune from the claims of their own constituent groups to upgrade their status to
sovereign statehood.
Many Third World and post-Communist countries live a precarious existence in
their post-colonial guise. There is a competition-often lethal-between the forces
of &dquo;state-building&dquo; and the forces of fragmentation and autonomy, those nations
and groups that have their own histories, identities, strategies for survival, and
localized systems of rule-making. They often take up arms for their &dquo;rights,&dquo; or for
self-protection against predators, including their own governments (cf. Gurr, 1993).
Governments, on the other hand, have their own agendas of &dquo;national integration,&dquo;
&dquo;nation-building,&dquo; and eradication of &dquo;communists&dquo; and &dquo;terrorists,&dquo; or anyone else
who gets in the way. Civil wars are the result; a significant proportion of them
become internationalized and foreign intrusion usually prolongs the contest of arms.
Until today, the international community has shown only mild sympathy for the
forces of secession. Third World states, in particular, jealously guard their concept
of sovereignty and (colonial) territorial integrity. Their interpretation of the right
of self-determination adheres strictly to a non-Wilsonian conception of the bases of
state legitimacy. It is a concept that must be applied to a territory-the colonyand not to particular groups within it. Self-determination was achieved, according
to the Organization of African Unity, in the act of &dquo;national liberation&dquo; against
colonialism, and that

act

is to

apply

for all time. It is irreversible and non-amend-

337

&dquo;self-determination&dquo; for the Kashmiris,

Punjabis, Sikhs, Karens, Chins, Tamils, Ibos, Baganda, and all the rest. United
Nations Resolution 1514, the &dquo;Declaration on the Granting of Independence to
Colonial Countries and Peoples,&dquo; clearly states the prevailing doctrine: &dquo; ... any
attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national [sic] unity and the
territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles
of the Charter of the United Nations.&dquo; It is in part because of this interpretation
of state legitimacy that, despite the myriad of secessionist movements since 1945
(but excluding the collapse of the Soviet Union) there have been only four peaceful secessions (Anguilla, Singapore, Mayotte, and Slovakia) and four successful
violent secessions (Pakistan, Eritrea, Slovenia, and Croatia). It is thus one of the
ironies of twentieth-century history that Wilsons concept of self-determination,
which was supposed to be a pathway to peace, has become a major justification for
war and has resulted in national and international &dquo;pandaemonium&dquo; (Moynihan,
able. There

can

be

no

such

thing

as

1993) .
The tenets of realism and geopolitical analysis have blinded us to the continuing
search for politically effective communities. This has been a major source of international instability for more than a century. In some areas the search has led to
peace, but the record of war since 1945 indicates that the European territorial state
has not been a successful prototype for many non-Western communities. The war
between nations and the state continues unabated in many parts of the world, and
presents numerous intellectual and moral challenges for both academics and the
institutions of the international community.

Note
1.

This characterization is representative of many Third World and former Soviet republics.
They had no pre-colonial pedigree of statehood. Significant exceptions include India, the
Maghreb countries (except Libya), Egypt, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, Lesotho,
Botswana, the Baltic states, and Ukraine. Some small island colonies also had forms of statehood prior to Western colonization. In the remainder, there were various forms of statehood, but they did not approximate colonial or contemporary state boundaries.

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Biographical Note
KJ. HOLSTI, of the University of British Columbia,

has published extensively in the

field of international relations. His most recent books are Peace and War: Armed
Conflicts and International Order, 1648-1989 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and
War, the State, and the State of War (forthcoming, 1996). He is a past editor of the
International Studies Q,uarterly, and has served as president of both the Canadian
Political Science Association and the International Studies Association. ADDRESS:
Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6T 1 Z 1.