The Banality of "Ethnic War"

The Banality of “Ethnic War” John Mueller On December 7, 1941, as it is commonly put, “the Japanese” attacked Pearl Harbor. No one of course takes this expression literally to suggest that the entire population of Japan, or even a major portion of it, directly participated in the assault. Rather it is understood to mean that some of Japan’s military forces, ordered into action by Japan’s government and perhaps supported to varying degrees by the Japanese population, launched the attack. In discussions of ethnic war, by contrast, such distinctions are often missing. When we say “the Serbs” and “the Croats” are engaged in ethnic war, the implication frequently is that those two groups have descended into a sort of Hobbesian war of all against all and neighbor against neighbor. In this article I assess the violence that took place in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda in the 1990s and argue that the whole concept of “ethnic warfare” may be severely misguided. Speciªcally, insofar as it is taken to imply a war of all against all and neighbor against neighbor—a condition in which pretty much everyone in one ethnic group becomes the ardent, dedicated, and murderous enemy of everyone in another group—ethnic war essentially does not exist. I argue instead that ethnic warfare more closely resembles nonethnic warfare, because it is waged by small groups of combatants, groups that purport to ªght and kill in the name of some larger entity. Often, in fact, “ethnic war” is substantially a condition in which a mass of essentially mild, ordinary people can unwillingly and in considerable bewilderment come under the vicious and arbitrary control of small groups of armed thugs. I consider ªrst the violent conºicts in Croatia and Bosnia. These were spawned not so much by the convulsive surging of ancient hatreds or by frenzies whipped up by demagogic politicians and the media as by the ministrations of small—sometimes very small—bands of opportunistic marauders recruited by political leaders and operating under their general guidance. Many of these participants were drawn from street gangs or from bands of soccer hooligans. Others were criminals speciªcally released from prison for the purpose. Their participation was required because the Yugoslav army, despite years of supposedly inºuential nationalist propaganda and centuries International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 42–70© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 42 John Mueller is Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University. His most recent book is Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). of supposedly pent-up ethnic hatreds, substantially disintegrated early in the war and refused to ªght. A group of well-armed thugs and bullies encouraged by, and working under rough constraints set out by, ofªcial security services would arrive or band together in a community. Sometimes operating with local authorities, they would then take control and persecute members of other ethnic groups, who would usually ºee to areas protected by their own ethnic rufªans, sometimes to join them in seeking revenge. Carnivals of often-drunken looting, destruction , and violence would take place, and others—guiltily or not so guiltily— might join in. Gradually, however, many of the people under the thugs’ arbitrary and chaotic “protection,” especially the more moderate ones and young men unwilling to be pressed into military service, would emigrate to safer places. In all this, nationalism was not so much the impelling force as simply the characteristic around which the marauders happened to have arrayed themselves. To explore the possibilities for generalizing from the Yugoslav experience, I assess very brieºy the extreme case of Rwanda in 1994, when ethnic Hutus engaged in genocidal massacres of ethnic Tutsis. In recent history this is probably the instance in which the Hobbesian all-against-all and neighboragainst -neighbor idea of ethnic warfare is most likely to hold. Nevertheless, even in this case, it seems clear that the main momentum of the killings was carried by a relatively small number of specially trained Hutus who...