Ethnic Unmixing and Civil War*

Chaim Kaufmann's ''Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars" ¹ makes the strongest case available that the best cure for ethnic war is viable territorial defense through partition or substantial regional autonomy, and that, in the wake of ethnic civil wars, attempts to bring security to intermingled ethnic groups by means other than partition or regional autonomy are doomed to failure. The key premises of his analysis are, first, that hypernationalist rhetoric and atrocities are part and parcel of civil war and "harden ethnic identities." This makes cross-ethnic appeals as a solution to civil war likely to fail. Second, he takes as theoretically demonstrated that "intermingled population settlement patterns create real security dilemmas that intensify violence, motivate ethnic 'cleansing,' and prevent de-escalation unless the groups are separated." Therefore, he reasons, "stable solutions of ethnic civil wars are possible, but only when the opposing groups are demographically separated into defensible enclaves." ² As he develops his brief for the separation of populations, Kaufmann systematically addresses several objections to the solution he advocates. All solutions are bad, he concludes, but separation is the least bad, even if least favored by policymakers.