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The author would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation, which funded the research for this article. Ethnic Partition Under the League of Nations: The Cases of Population Exchanges in the Interwar Balkans Erin K. Jenne Chapter 5 I believe that an exchange of populations, however well it were carried out, must impose very considerable hardships, perhaps very considerable impoverishment, upon great numbers of individual citizens of the two countries who are exchanged. But I also believe that these hardships, great though they may be, will be less than the hardships which will result for these same populations if nothing is done. —Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, Chairman of the Territorial and Military Commission under the Lausanne Convention, 1923 The rationale given for the postwar Greco-Turkish population exchange more than eighty years ago foreshadows the contemporary theory of ethnic partition. Partition theory is premised on the notion that societies destroyed by ethnic violence are so riven by hatreds and fears that they cannot be mended. Although the humanitarian costs of ethnic partition are immense and the ethical and moral implications deeply troubling, these disadvantages are far outweighed by the immense benefits of preventing future atrocities that are bound to take place in the absence of supervised partition. In this view, international arbiters are obliged to facilitate the inevitable ethnic unmixing after war in order to minimize the suffering of ordinary people on all sides. The theory of ethnic partition holds that sectarian violence generates such intense security dilemmas on the ground that neither side will disarm because it cannot be certain that the other side will not utilize the resulting window of opportunity to gain a strategic advantage.1 To the objection 1. See Stephen Van Evera,“Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” International Security , Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 5–39; and Barry R. Posen, “Military Responses to Refugee Disasters,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer 1996), pp. 72–111. The term “security dilemma” refers to the paradoxical situation where one side arms 118 | rethinking violence that it is impossible to devise territorial borders that will perfectly separate warring groups, partition theorists counter that border adjustments can be supplemented with population transfers to ensure that ethnic boundaries are aligned with political borders. Although scholars have assessed these claims by examining the consequences of postwar partition across a large number of cases,2 this work has focused primarily on border adjustment and state creation. Partitioning through population transfers has received less attention as a technique for resolving entrenched conflicts—a curious omission considering the centrality of this tool for achieving complete separation.3 This oversight is at least partly due to the fact that there are few cases of postwar population transfers after 1945, and this method is unlikely to enjoy a revival under current international norms. It is possible , however, that policymakers will revisit this technique in the future if it is believed necessary for consolidating peace following internecine con- flict. For this reason, an exploration of the record of population transfers is highly opportune. This chapter represents a first attempt to assess the effectiveness of partition through population transfers as a method of conflict management . To conduct a fair test, I have selected cases where population transfers were explicitly undertaken to resolve nationalist conflict. The post–World War I Balkan exchanges meet this criterion because they were justified as the best means of preventing the reemergence of ethnic violence —both within and among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. International mediators believed that by aligning ethnic and political borders, the demographic security dilemmas might be resolved and the incentives for kin-state intervention eliminated. Also, consistent with the recommendations of partition advocates, the Balkan exchanges aimed to achieve comprehensive ethno-territorial partition. Although not perfect, the GrecoBulgarian and Greco-Turkish exchanges produced as near to a complete partition as might reasonably be expected in the real world. The transto defend itself against external attacks, inducing others to arm in response. This leads the first side to arm still further, yielding an arms spiral that ultimately renders all sides less secure. I lay out the security dilemma logic in further detail below. 2. Nicholas Sambanis,“Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature,” World Politics, Vol. 52 (July 2000), pp. 437–483; Thomas Chapman and Philip G. Roeder, “Partition as a Solution to Wars of Nationalism: The Importance of Institutions,” American Political Science Review, Vol...

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