ABSTRACT
Elective multiculturalism, as opposed to one that has been acquired or inherited, presumes to positively welcome diversity and difference, and is prepared to socially engineer its society into cultural pluralism. The transition from a stable cultural hegemony to an ideal multicultural society requires an ordered and orderly society, unencumbered by unrestrained separatism and a fragile community. The Kosovo conflict ended with a deal brokered by Russia that preserved the fiction of Serbian sovereignty over multicultural Kosovo. A supposed multicultural threat, to some, is alarmist, inasmuch that multiculturalism might claim to "work" in the New World societies of the United States and Canada, but there is evidence to question this. Nation-states continue to be prepared for threats to their independence and sovereignty. The successful independence movement in East Timor was mirrored in the strongly Islamic province of Aceh at the northern tip of Sumatra.
