When and How Regions Become Peaceful: Potential Theoretical Pathways to Peace

When and How Regions Become Peaceful:Potential Theoretical Pathways to Peace1

BENJAMIN MILLER

Division of International Relations, University of Haifa, Israel

The objective of this essay is to address the following two puzzles. First,what best accounts for the transition from war to peace in differentregions at different times? Second, what is the best explanation for var-iations in the level of regional peace that exists in different regions in aparticular time period? Consider the differences that exist today in theMiddle Eastern, South American, and Western European regions.A theoretical framework is proposed that is intended to integrate theregional and international perspectives on regional peace. It establisheslinkages between different mechanisms that can lead to regional peaceand the emergence of different levels of peace as well as presents threepotential theoretical pathways to peace. An argument is made that theunderlying cause of regional war propensity is the extent of the state-to-nation imbalance in a region. Accordingly, different peacemaking strat-egies produce different levels of peace based on their treatment of thestate-to-nation problem. A distinction is made between the effects ofdifferent approaches to peacemaking and the conditions for their suc-cess. In effect, peacemaking strategies bring about the transition fromwar to peace only if certain conditions exist in the region. The advan-tages and disadvantages of the three mechanisms are illustrated throughthree case studies, each exemplifying a specific strategy and level ofpeace that have resulted from the presence of certain conditions in theregion: the Middle East (a transition to cold peace in the 1990s), SouthAmerica (the evolution of normal peace across the twentieth century),and Western Europe (the emergence of warm peace since the 1950s).

Following the end of the Cold War there was an expectation among students ofinternational relations that regional security would become separated from globalsecurity (see Lake and Morgan 1997), especially from the concerns of the greatpowers. The argument was made that the great powers would no longer be in-volved in an intense competition with each other in all parts of the globe as was thecase during the Cold War. The events of September 11 have shown, however, thatthe relationship between global security, US national security, and regional conflicts

1Some of the research for this essay was done when the author was a Visiting Professor of International Relationsin the Department of Political Science at Duke University and on leave from the Department of InternationalRelations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The author is grateful for the generous financial assistance of theDepartment of Political Science at Duke University, the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa,

the Tami Steimnitz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, and the Israel Science Foundation (founded bythe Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and would like to acknowledge the advice and comments of thefollowing colleagues on earlier drafts: Korina Kagan, Robert Keohane, Dale Copeland, Avi Kober, Hein Goemans,Galia Press-Bar-Nathan, Matthew Randall, Norrin Ripsman, Joe Grieco, Peter Feaver, Jeffrey Taliaferro, Uri Rez-nick, Ben Frankel, Chris Gelpi, Oded Lowenheim, Zeev Maoz, Yoav Gerchek, Boaz Atzili, and Dov Levin as well asthe ISR Editor and the anonymous reviewers for the journal.

r 2005 International Studies Review.PublishedbyBlackwellPublishing,350MainStreet,Malden,MA02148,USA,and9600GarsingtonRoad,OxfordOX42DQ,UK.

International Studies Review (2005) 7, 229–267

(such as the relations between Afghanistan and its neighbors, the Pakistani–Indianconflict over Kashmir, Iraq and Gulf security, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and thechallenges to the stability of Arab regimes) is at least as strong as it was during theCold War, if not more so. The result is that the sources of regional conflict andregional peacemaking, as well as the resolution of such conflicts, must be addressednot only because of their intrinsic importance but also because they bear directly onkey issues of international security.

During the twentieth century, three important regions were transformed fromarenas of frequent violent conflict to more peaceful regions: South America in thebeginning of the century, Western Europe in mid-century, and the Middle East atcentury’s end. These transformations took place at different times during the lastcentury and resulted in very different types and levelsFor qualityFof peace.South America, for example, began to move toward regional peace much earlierthan Western Europe, but in the late 1950s Western Europe reached a much higherlevel of peace than South AmericaFa level of peace that Western Europe hasmaintained ever since. In the Middle East, a vigorous peace process began only inthe early 1990s; the partial peace that resulted is still more fragile and uncertainthan in the other regions, as evidenced by the eruption of hostilities between Israeland the Palestinians during the last several years.

This essay addresses two puzzles. First, what best accounts for the transitionsfrom war to peace in different regions at different times? Second, what is the bestexplanation for variations in the level or quality of peace that exists in differ-ent regions; in other words, what is the reason for the fact that the quality ofpeace existing today in the Middle East, South America, and Western Europe is sodifferent?

In the literature, the causes of war and the sources of peace are usually treatedseparately, but it is not possible to understand transitions from war to peace withoutknowing the sources of regional wars and how different peace strategies addressthem. In effect, in the literature different theories explain different aspects of re-gional peace; these theories are disconnected from each other; and there is nosingle framework that integrates them into a coherent theoretical construct capableof accounting for the variations among regions or, for that matter, for regionaltransitions from war to peace.

The Argument

The purpose of this essay is to offer such an integrated theory by introducing andelaborating a key cause of regional war, a cause that also affects the conditionsunder which certain peacemaking mechanisms are more effective than others. Thiskey cause, and the focus of this essay, is state-to-nation balance (or imbalance, as thecase may be). This construct refers to the lack of compatibility (or agreement, or‘‘fit’’) between the existing territorial division of a region into states and the nationalidentifications of the peoples inhabiting the region. An argument will be made thatit is this state-to-nation balance that is the underlying cause of a region’s war pro-pensity: the greater the extent and scope of the state-to-nation imbalance in aregion, the greater the war propensity of the region. If the state-to-nation imbal-ance in a region is not that acute, the region will be less prone to descend into war.

The degree of state-to-nation imbalance affects the predisposition of a regiontoward war while also conditioning the effectiveness of different peacemakingstrategies. When there is a high state-to-nation imbalance in a region, thepeacemaking strategy which focuses on changing the capabilities of the localantagonists is most effective. This strategy has to do with great power involvementin the region and is carried out most effectively in the form of great powerhegemony or cooperation. If, however, there is a relatively high degree of state-to-nation balance (or, in other words, a low degree of state-to-nation imbalance), then

When and How Regions Become Peaceful230

peacemaking strategies which focus on changing the intentions of the regionalpartiesFrather than their capabilitiesFare more effective. There are two majorregional peace strategies that center on changing intentions: conflict resolution andregional integration. In what follows, we will distinguish between the effects of thepeacemaking strategies and the conditions which favor the success of each strategy.Although different peacemaking strategies may bring about a transition from warto peace, each strategy is successful only if certain conditions exist in the region.The conditions when these three strategies are effective vary considerably. Theconditions are a result of forces operating at three levels:

(1) Global level, that is, there is the presence of a great power hegemon orgreat power concert in the region in question (enabling the strategy ofgreat power engagement);

(2) Regional level, that is, there are strong and coherent states present in theregion (enabling the strategy of conflict resolution);

(3) Domestic level, that is, there are liberal democracies present in the region(enabling the strategy of regional integration).

This essay differentiates among three types of regional peace: cold, normal, andwarm. The global level strategy (or great power strategy) generally only brings aboutcold peace, whereas regional strategies may result in a warmer peace. Specifically,conflict resolution tends to result in normal peace, and integration in warm peace.The reason that the great power strategy can bring about only cold peace has to dowith the way it addresses the situation of state-to-nation incongruence. The greatpower strategy only moderates the manifestations of this incongruence in the region;the strategy is unable to resolve it fully. The result is that peace born of a great powerstrategy cannot be but a cold one. In contrast, strategies that focus on changing theintentions of the actors can bring about higher degrees of peace (normal or warmpeace)Falbeit, only under certain conditions. When such conditions exist, thesestrategies can either directly resolve the outstanding issues in a conflict (a regionalconflict resolution strategy) or transcend them (an integration strategy).

In the first section of what follows, the reader is introduced to the types ofregional peace and a definition of the state-to-nation balance concept as well as apresentation of the three peacemaking strategies. The bulk of the essay presentsregional cases to illustrate the potential theoretical pathways to peace that result(see Table 3 at the end of the essay). Each case exemplifies a specific pathwayleading to a transition toFor fromFa certain level of peace, based on the presenceof certain conditions. The three cases are: (1) the post-Cold War Middle East (a coldpeace emerges with the rise of US hegemony, which replaces the superpowercompetition in the region), (2) South America during the twentieth century (normalpeace evolves in the wake of the strengthening of the regional states), and (3) post-1945 Western Europe (warm peace evolves as a result of the successful regionalliberalization promoted by US hegemony). The proposed theoretical frameworkintegrates the regional and great power perspectives on regional peace by showingthe linkages between different mechanisms for regional peace and the emergenceof different levels of peace.

The Theoretical Framework

The Dependent Variable: Type of Regional Peace

We can compare the three mechanisms for regional peace by analyzing the degreeor level of peace they produce. For comparison purposes, let us distinguish amongthree ideal types, or levels, of peace: cold peace, normal peace, and warm peace.The reader should think of these three types as three degrees denoting the stabilityof the regional peace or security system: at the lowest level is ‘‘cold’’ peace, which is

BENJAMIN MILLER 231

the least stable; the highest level is ‘‘warm’’ peace, which represents the most stableregional security system; at the intermediate level we find ‘‘normal’’ peace. Eventhough there are other typologies of peace (see Kacowicz et al. 2000), this three-wayclassification is particularly useful for our purposes here because it succinctlyconveys not only different degrees of regional stability but also indicates thekey avenues by which conflicts are addressed: management, resolution, and tran-scendence. Moreover, the distinction vividly suggests the corresponding types ofrelations that exist among the regional parties: cold, normal, and warm. The dif-ferences among the three types of peace are presented in Table 1.

Cold peace is a situation in which both war among, and threats to use force by, theregional states are absent. There may be localized low-intensity violence (such ascommunal violence), but it is unlikely to escalate to a region-wide war in the im-mediate future. Regional conflicts are managed, though not settled. In other words,the underlying causes of regional conflict are being moderated and reduced, butthey are far from being resolved. The danger of a return to the use of force stilllooms in the background. There may be formal peace agreements among theparties, but the relations are conducted mostly at the level of governments ratherthan between the societies involved.

Normal peace is a situation in which the likelihood of war is lower than that in coldpeace because most, if not all, of the underlying substantive issues at the root of theconflict have been resolved. War, however, has not been completely excised fromregional politics. Relations among the states have begun to move beyond relationsbetween governments.

Warm peace is a situation in which regional war is no longer thinkable, whateverthe international or regional developments. Even if not all the disputes among theregional states have been settled, the use of force to address them is out of thequestion. This type of peace is characterized by extensive transnational relationsand a high degree of regional interdependence. Indeed, regional conflicts aretranscended by regional cooperative arrangements such as joint economic end-eavors, trade relations, regional institutions, or working on common problems likethe environment.

An Underlying Cause of Regional War Propensity

To go to war, states in a region need both motivation and capabilities. The state-to-nation imbalance provides a motivation for war, making regions in which it ispresent more war-prone than others. The state-to-nation balance refers to the

TABLE 1. Ideal Types of Regional Peace

Cold Peace Normal Peace Warm Peace

Main issues in conflict Mitigated, but notfully resolved

Resolved Resolved ortranscended(rendered irrelevant)

Channels ofcommunication

Onlyintergovernmental

Mostlyintergovernmental;beginning ofdevelopment oftransnational ties

Intergovernmentalplus highly developedtransnational ties

Contingency plansfor war

Still present Possible Absent

Possibility of returnto war

Present Possible Unthinkable


degree of compatibility or agreement between the existing division of a region intoterritorial states and the national aspirations and political identifications of thepeople in the region. A high degree of state-to-nation balance means that there is acompatibility or congruence between the regional states (entities or institutionsadministrating a certain territory) and the national sentiments of the peoples in theregion (that is, their political aspirations of living as national communities in theirown states). In other words, in a situation of high state-to-nation balance, the peoplein the region have a strong identification with the existing states and their territorialmake-up. The result is that the ‘‘demand’’ for states and corresponding ‘‘supply’’are more or less balanced. (On definitions of nation and state, see Gellner 1983:1–7;Connor 1994:90–117; Barrington 1997:712–716; and Lewis 1998:80–81. Barring-ton’s distinction between state and nation is especially useful.)

State-to-nation imbalance or asymmetry exists when there are nationalist chal-lenges to the existing regional state-system. Such challenges may come from withinthe statesFfor example, from subnational ethnic groups that want to secede fromthe state. These challenges may also come from withoutFfor example, from pan-national movements of unification or irredentist-revisionist claims by one state toterritories held by other states. Such claims may be made on grounds of nationalaffiliation with the population or national-historic rights to the territory in question.The secessionists who wish to establish their own state claim that there are too fewstates in the region; the pan-nationalists who aspire to unify existing states arguethat there are too many. The result is that the ‘‘supply–demand’’ ratio of states isunbalancedFeither the demand for states exceeds the supply of states leading towars of secession or the supply exceeds the demand resulting in wars of nationalunification (Mayall 1990; Van Evera 1995). The state-to-nation balance in a certainregion can be measured by assessing the balance of power between the coherentstatus quo states on the one hand and the revisionist states and nonstate politicalmovements (irredentist, pan-national, or secessionist) on the other. The morepowerful all these nationalist–revisionist forces are in relation to the coherent statusquo states, the greater the state-to-nation imbalance, and vice versa.

Regions in which the state-to-nation imbalance is high suffer from the presenceof incoherent or revisionist states. Revisionist states are dissatisfied with the currentregional order on nationalist grounds and are willing to use force to change theterritorial status quo (Schweller 1994). The citizens of incoherent states identifyonly weakly with the state and its territorial identity; even in less than dire cir-cumstances, such states suffer from a high proportion of their population not see-ing the state as expressing their national identity and aspirations (Buzan1991:chapter 2; David 1991; Job 1992; Ayoob 1995; Holsti 1996).

Regions with a high state-to-nation imbalance are prone to wars more than otherregions for three reasons. First, the substantive issues in the conflict emerge alongnational grounds (territorial and boundary problems as well as demographic con-cerns regarding refugees and settlers). As the literature has shown, disputed ter-ritory is a major issue in international conflict (Goertz and Diehl 1992; Vasquez1995; Holsti 1996). The question arises, however, what explains variations in theescalation of territorial conflicts to violence. An argument can be made that if theterritorial issue involves state-to-nation imbalances, the likelihood of escalation ismuch greater than in other kinds of territorial disputes (for example, economic orstrategic conflictsFalthough even such conflicts can be aggravated by state-to-na-tion incongruence, see below). Issues of nationalism and ethnicity tend to be lessdivisible than material issues. Nations derive their identities to a large degree fromparticular places; the control over these places is often essential to maintaining ahealthy sense of national identity (White 2000:10). Thus, state-to-nation problemsarouse strong emotions and passionate ideological commitments that make prag-matic compromise and bargaining more difficult. As a result, domestic politics playsan especially powerful role in constraining the maneuvering room of political

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leaders with regard to such issues. Strong commitments of domestic constituenciesto ethnicity and nationalism generate pressures on, and incentives for, state leadersto maintain hard-line positions and even to go to war (Huth 1999).

Second, acute imbalance provides fertile ground for the exacerbation of othercauses of war such as the security dilemma and power rivalries in the region andalso diversionary-scapegoat warsFthat is, externalization of domestic conflicts(Stein 1993). For example, it is not so much anarchy itself that drives security fearsbut the state-to-nation imbalance that creates insecurity. Such imbalance challengescurrent boundaries and territories and produces a sense that the current regionalorder is temporary; each state has to constantly be prepared to deal with threats tothe order. The result can be destabilizing and lead to an arms race. Indeed, theintensity of a region’s security dilemma may be affected more by the state-to-nationimbalance than by the region’s military balance. Because a high degree of state-to-nation imbalance results in competing territorial and demographic claims, it breedsthe insecurity that can lead to an arms race. Therefore, the degree of state-to-nationbalance mediates between anarchy and the security dilemma. The degree ofbalance conditions the destabilizing effects of the security dilemma and the warproneness of different regions. In other words, when the balance is high, thepressures arising out of the security dilemma are lower and there is less likelihoodthat mutual fears of being attacked and preempted will dominate the relationsamong the states in a region and vice versa (for a partly related argument, seeSchweller 1996). The security dilemma is less likely to lead to war among neighborswho share a state-to-nation balance. War is more likely among states that have ahigh state-to-nation imbalance.

Third, an imbalance produces regional insecurity by spreading transborder in-stability. Incoherent states produce regional instability because they offer targets forintervention to their neighbors, tempted by the possibility of profit and expansionor owing to these neighbors’ insecurity and a fear of the possible spread of insta-bility. A good example is the recurrent intervention of Afghanistan’s neighbors(Pakistan, Iran, Soviet Union-Russia, and the former Soviet republics) into thatstate’s internal affairs, often in support of rival groups, at least partly on the basis ofethnic affiliation. (See Saideman 2001 for a discussion of the tendency of states tosupport the side of an ethnic conflict with which constituents share ethnic ties.) Pan-national forces are particularly prone to intervening in the domestic affairs of otherstates; such intervention is most feasible in incoherent states. Examples include therecurrent interventions of pan-Arab forces, led, for instance, by Nasser’s Egypt, intothe domestic affairs of other Arab states, notably, Jordan and Lebanon. EthnicalliancesFcases in which a majority group in one state is a minority group in aneighboring stateFincrease the likelihood of international conflict (Moore andDavis 1998), because the co-ethnics in one state (the majority group) are propelledby feelings of solidarity with their ethnic kin in a proximate state (the minority).Incoherent states produce secessionist movements that also affect neighbors’ secu-rity. Because of their weakness, these incoherent states may host, even if involun-tarily, guerrilla forces that attack neighboring states or cause refugee flows in theregion (Carment and James 1997; Lake and Rothchild 1998).

Indeed, there is strong evidence concerning the relationships between state-to-nation imbalances and the occurrence of war. The findings of a comprehensiveresearch study (see Holsti 1996) show that apart from the interwar era (1919–1939), issues related to the state-to-nation balance have been more often associatedwith war and armed intervention than any other issue (territorial, strategic, ide-ological, economic, and so on) since 1815. Similarly, in his study of territorial dis-putes in the 1950–1990 era, Paul Huth (1999:53) found that those disputes‘‘involving issues of ethnic irredentism or national unification were the most likelyto develop into enduring rivalries.’’ These ethno-national issues are stronger pre-dictors of a territorial dispute than the strategic location of the territory. In the


post-Cold War era, Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff (1994:xiii) found that ethno-national rivalries were a major cause of all but five of the twenty-two hot wars takingplace around the world in 1993.

Thus, addressing the state-to-nation imbalance may reduce the likelihood of warin a region. How this is done is an important component in each of the peace-making strategies. Indeed, the state-to-nation balance provides a good way to dif-ferentiate among the three strategies.

Three Strategies for Regional Peacemaking

There are two interrelated differences among the three strategies for regionalpeacemaking that were described above: (1) whether they focus on the regionalstates’ capabilities or on their motivations for war, and (2) how each addresses thestate-to-nation problem. Table 2 presents these differences.

The great power strategy does not resolve the state-to-nation problem. It may mod-erate the level of the conflict, but it does not establish balance. Great power mech-anisms, however, can deal effectively with the capabilities of the regional actors. Theregional balance of power depends on external support, especially on arms suppliesby the great powers. By placing limitations on local military capabilities and by con-structing an effective arms control regime, the great powers can constrain regionalactors’ ability to resort to force. This can be successful only if a concert of cooperatingpowers exists or if a stabilizing hegemon is present. If the great powers are com-petitively engaged in the region, the state-to-nation problem will not only not bemoderated, it will be aggravated because the great powers will exploit it to advancetheir goals, leading to a situation of hot or cold regional war (see Miller 2001b).

The regional-domestic approaches are more effective than the great power ap-proach in addressing the motivations of the regional actors. They do so through astrategy of regional conflict resolution, intended to change the motivations directlyrelated to the causes of the regional wars (for example, territorial disputes), orthrough the strategy of integration that transcends the causes of such wars bytransforming the general motivations and capacities of the regional actors regard-ing peace and war.

The regional conflict resolution strategy confronts the state-to-nation question directly byaddressing the outstanding territorial issues in the region. The parties agree not tointervene in the domestic affairs of the other states, respect the sovereignty and ter-ritorial integrity of all states, and resolve conflicts peacefully. The success of the conflictresolution process and the maintenance of a stable normal peace depend on thepresence of strong and coherent states in the region, that is, on the success of state-building and nation-building in the region. The more balanced the state-to-nationbalance becomes and the more conflicts are resolved peacefully by coherent regional

TABLE 2. Strategies for Regional Peacekeeping

Strategy forRegional Peace

Changing Intentionsor Capabilities ofRegional States

Way of AddressingState-to-NationAsymmetry

Level of RegionalPeace

Great power concertor hegemony

Capabilities Asymmetry moderated Cold peace

Regional conflictresolution

Intentions Asymmetry resolved Normal peace

Regional integration Intentions Asymmetrytranscended

Warm peace

BENJAMIN MILLER 235

states, the less likely great power competition will spill over into the region or that it willmatter much in regional outcomes. The inability of the great powers to achieve stra-tegic gains by meddling in regional conflicts makes them less likely to compete; indeed,they may choose to disengage from the region.

The regional integration path transcends the state-to-nation problem by promoting aradical change in the ability and motivation of states to act unilaterally. Warm peace isreached by successful regional integration in which states voluntarily transfer some oftheir sovereign prerogatives to supranational institutions. Democratization and lib-eralization in key regional states are necessary conditions for this type of peace to beattained. During the initial stages of such liberalization, the presence of a great powerhegemon or concert may be necessary because democratization may initially lead togreater instability and ethno-national conflict (Mansfield and Snyder 1996). Follow-ing the completion of the liberalization process, however, the presence or leadershipof the great powers will be less needed, if at all, for maintaining the warm peacecreated in the region. After the warm peace is stabilized, ethnic conflicts are less likelyto lead to violence and to spread regional instability.

A big advantage of the regional-domestic approaches (conflict resolution andintegration) is that they appear to promote normal or warm peace, whereas thegreat power strategy can at best bring about cold peace. Regional strategies are alsoless dependent on the continuing engagement of external powers in the region.The conditions needed for the success of the regional-domestic strategiesFcoher-ent states, liberal democraciesFare demanding, however, and difficult to attain. Inthe absence of these conditions, it seems wise to pursue the great power strategy,even if it leads to more limited or ‘‘cold’’ outcomes. These cold regional settlementsmay, in time, be conducive to the success of the regional-domestic strategies.

The next sections will discuss in more detail the effects of the different mech-anisms on the type of peace and will present historical illustrations for each peace-making strategy.

Global Strategy Leads to Cold Regional Peace

The great power strategy can lead to regional peace, but only if the great powerinvolvement is one of a great power concert or hegemony by one of the great powers(see Miller and Kagan 1997). There are important differences between these two typesof involvement; however, they are broadly similar in their effects on regional peace.

Great Power Involvement under Concert or Hegemony

A concert refers to cooperation among a group of more or less equal great powersin resolving international conflicts, both among themselves and with third parties(Clark 1989:121, 126–127; see also Bull 1977:225; Jervis 1983; Kupchan andKupchan 1991; Miller 1994a). In principle, a concert should include all the greatpowers of the day. Hegemony by one of the great powers is the opposite of concert.Under hegemony, the production of such common goods as peace and stabilityrequires the presence of a single hegemon able and willing to lead (Nye 1990; Levy1991, 1998; Miller 1996). The leader benefits from regional peace and is also ableto shape the regional environment to this end by providing services and benefits tothe small states. These services include different kinds of diplomatic, political, andeconomic support as well as security guarantees, construction of arms control andcrisis prevention regimes, and deterrence and compellence of military aggressors.

Cooperating great powers or the hegemonic power can stabilize a region, pre-vent local wars, and advance regional peace, albeit a cold one. They do so in thefollowing six ways:

(1) Restrain aggressive local clients intent on wars of expansion by imposingdiplomatic, economic, and military sanctions. In a situation of great power


competition for regional influence, a regional state may be offered sup-port by one of the competing great powers; under a concert or hegemony,however, small states do not have such an option (Miller and Kagan 1997).The great powers need not worry about losing clients to their rivals; theclient states have less maneuvering room and cannot escape the greatpower’s restraining pressure.

(2) Reassure local states and reduce their security dilemmas by extending se-curity guarantees to them, preferably manifested in a regional deploy-ment of their troops. The great powers may also construct regionalsecurity and crisis prevention regimes and confidence-building measuresto minimize the likelihood of inadvertent wars. The regional troop de-ployment necessary for effective reassurance is possible under a concertor hegemony because in either situation the powers face no constraintsfrom rival great powers.

(3) Deter and contain potential aggressors. Under a concert or a hegemony,potential regional aggressors do not enjoy the strategic backing of a rivalgreat power that can neutralize and deter other great powers from in-tervening on behalf of their clients in the region. The credibility of thegreat power commitment to ensuring regional stability is high becausethese powers do not face countervailing great powers with which theyhave to contend. Deterrence of regional aggressors or revisionist states is,thus, likely to be effective.

(4) Prevent the use of force by pursuing preventive diplomacy. Preventivediplomacy is more effective when there is a joint action by the great pow-ers or when there is a single power that can exercise moderating pres-sures on the regional parties.

(5) Mediate and reduce the level of regional conflict and, as a result, encourageor impose a cold peace. A hegemon or a concert can help the local statesovercome the difficulties of peacemaking by paying the costs of achievingregional peace through the provision of valuable services as a ‘‘honestbroker.’’ Specifically, the great powers can serve as mediators able to em-ploy powerful pressures and incentives (including economic sanctions oraid) that no other potential mediator can offer. This strategy is ineffectivein a situation in which there are competing great powers because com-petitors will obstruct each other’s attempts to stabilize the regionFespe-cially if one of the great powers supports a revisionist state or a coalition ofrevisionist states in the region.

(6) Guarantee regional arrangements. The powers in either a concert or ahegemony situation can guarantee a regional settlement and serve as finalarbiters in case of disagreements among the parties. Concerns about thepotential reactions of the powers will motivate the regional parties to liveup to the agreement and its stipulations. If the great powers compete inthe region, one or more may support violators of the regional agree-ments, thus making any regional agreements less likely to be enforced.

As we noted earlier, great power mechanisms by themselves cannot do muchmore than promote cold regional peace. Neither a concert nor a hegemony canresolve the underlying issues in regional conflict.2 Such cold peace is also not likelyto survive changes in the powers’ regional involvement given that such involvement

2It is true that a hegemon may try, with different levels of success, to bring about conflict resolution and, if it is aliberal hegemon, to induce democratization into the region. See the section on Western Europe below. This is alsothe record of the United States in the Balkans in the second half of the 1990s. But the lasting success of thesestrategies, and the resultant warming of the regional peace, depend on the ability and willingness of the regional

actors to build coherent states and nations and to democratize successfully, although a supportive hegemon or aconcert of great powers can be helpful in carrying out these tasks.

BENJAMIN MILLER 237

is subject to changes in domestic support for a long-term and costly regional en-gagement. International political changes may also bring about an end to concert orhegemony. Changes in the global balance of power, for example, may weaken thehegemon, allowing competing powers to support local revisionist states. A concertmight disintegrate into great power rivalry (Mearsheimer 1995; Kagan 1997–1998). In the absence of hegemonic leadership, the great powers may act as freeriders and disengage from regional peacemaking efforts (Miller and Kagan 1997).

The influence of the Concert of Europe on the Balkans provides a useful illus-tration of the relationship between a great power concert and regional cold peace(Miller 2001a; Miller and Resnick 2003). The post-1973 Middle East illustrates therelationship between hegemony and regional cold peace. Pan-national revisionistmovements and subnational-ethnic forces made the Balkans before World War Iand the Middle East after World War II susceptible to conflict and war. The absenceof conducive regional-domestic conditions such as coherent or liberal states pre-vented the resolution of the state-to-nation issues in these regions and made thegreat powers key players in regional conflict management. Great power compe-tition, however, aggravated regional conflicts; only when the great powers formed aconcert, or one emerged as a hegemon, did regional peaceFif only a coldpeaceFbecome possible.

Effects of Great Power Hegemony: US Peacemaking in the Middle East since 1973

The post-World War II Middle East was notorious for a multiplicity of state-to-nation problems, posing tough challenges to the regional state-system. A number ofstateless nations, some of them spread across states (notably the Kurds and thePalestinians) demanded the establishment of their own nation-states. There werealso demands for pan-national unification (most notably pan-Arabism) or for theabolishment of certain states and the integration of their territory into a differentnational framework: Israel in an integrated Arab state or ‘‘Greater Palestine,’’Lebanon and Jordan as part of ‘‘Greater Syria,’’ or Kuwait as part of ‘‘GreaterIraq.’’ Irredentist demands were also commonly made both by the advocates of‘‘Greater Israel’’ and by the Arabs vis-a-vis the post-1967 Israeli occupied territories(the West Bank, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights). Such an acute state-to-nationasymmetry was an underlying cause of a high regional war propensity and madethe achievement of regional peace very difficult. Thus, external powers have be-come essential for moderating the level of the conflict.

However, the global Cold War and superpower competition in the Middle East inthe 1948–1973 period prolonged the Arab–Israeli conflict and made it difficult tomove beyond a regional cold war to cold peace, that is, to reduce the level ofregional conflict (Miller 2001b). Thus, the superpowers had major effects on thepersistence and longevity of the Arab–Israeli conflict; they helped to sustain itthrough the supply of arms and diplomatic and economic support for their re-spective clients. Moreover, this strategic backing of their clients, namely the com-mitment to come to their aid in times of crisis by arms resupply and the issuance ofthreats to intervene when the clients were attacked and the survival of their regimeswas threatened, reduced the costs and risks of continuing the conflict for the clientstates, including by a resort to force.

In the post-1973 period, the United States gradually managed to exclude theSoviet Union from involvement in the Arab–Israeli conflict and to establish a partialhegemony over the region, becoming the common great power patron of Israeland Egypt. US hegemony became more complete with the end of the Cold War andSoviet disintegration (Hudson 1996; Miller 2004) when other Arab parties to theconflict, notably the Palestinians and Syria, lost the possibility of recourse to a rivalsuperpower patron who could shield them from the adverse effects and costs ofopposition to US-led peacemaking efforts.


The United States has played a leading role in cooling the Arab–Israeli conflictsince the 1973 war. US leadership helped moderate the conflict, to initiate an Arab–Israeli peace process, and, more specifically, to establish a cold peace between Israeland Egypt in 1978–1979 (see Touval 1982:chapters 9, 10; Telhami 1990; Ben-Zvi1993; Quandt 1993; on developments in this cold Israeli–Egyptian peace, seeGerges 1995). Following the Gulf War, a more comprehensive cold regional peacewas established, manifested in the Madrid process involving Israel, the Palestinians,Jordan, and most Arab states (Indyk 1992; Quandt 1993; Lieber 1995). It is ex-tremely hard to imagine the progress in the Arab-Israeli peace process made since1973 without the active US mediation and its financial assistance to Israel as well asto the two parties that signed peace treaties with Israel: Egypt and Jordan. The endof the Cold War, the collapse of Soviet power, and the blow inflicted by the UnitedStates to Iraqi military powerFand thus to Arab radicalismFin the Gulf Warchanged the strategic landscape in the region by reinforcing the power of the statusquo players (Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, andIsrael) at the expense of the revisionists (notably, Iraq and Iran), which madepossible the accomplishments in Arab–Israeli diplomacy in the 1990s. The Gulf Wardramatically demonstrated the security dependence of both the Israelis and mostArab states on US military power.

The United States has employed the various strategies available to a great powerfor promoting a transition from a regional war zone to cold peace:

(a) Restraining its client Israel, notably in times of local wars, when itposed a threat to Arab capitals (such as at the end of the 1967 and 1973wars) or when its use of force could have potentially caused an escalationof the conflict (such as during the 1956 war and the Gulf War),and applying diplomatic and economic pressure to induce its modera-tion in the regional peace process, for example, during the reassessmentcrisis in the spring of 1975 (Spiegel 1985:291–305; Ben-Zvi 1993:chapter4). The Ford administration decided to reassess its policy toward Israelfollowing Secretary of State Kissinger’s abortive effort of March1975 to mediate an interim agreement between Israel and Egypt. Thenew policy included several punitive measures in the form of implicitthreats as well as limited sanctions (for details, see Ben-Zvi 1993:97–98).

(b) Reassuring its allies through arms supplies and security cooperation andassistance (to Israel, Jordan, the Gulf states, and post-Camp David Egypt),crucial financial assistance (to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan) and securityguarantees (to the Gulf states).

(c) Coercion of revisionist regional powers by sanctions and use of force. Incontrast to its attitude toward its friends in the region, the United Stateshas imposed economic sanctions and arms embargoes on states perceivedto be hostile toward it as well as its regional interests and the advancementof the peace process; specifically, this has occurred with Iraq, Libya, Iran,and Sudan (Feldman 1996:35). A notable example of the use of a con-tainment strategy toward revisionist powers through the imposition ofdiplomatic and economic sanctions and an arms embargo is the ClintonAdministration’s dual containment strategy vis-a-vis Iran and Iraq (Hud-son 1996:340). When diplomatic and economic means seemed to be in-sufficient for defending its key interests, the United States was willing toresort to military means to maintain regional order. Washington exerciseddeterrence and later compellence toward Iraq in 1990; when both strat-egies failed to prevent aggression, ultimately it was willing to fight anddefeat Iraq in the Gulf War (Herrmann 1994; Craig and George1995:185–186; Miller 2004).

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(d) Preventive diplomacy. Whenever there was an acute danger of a resort toforce, the United States tried to prevent an escalation and stop the fight-ing by exercising moderating pressures on all the belligerents. This ap-plies to the various clashes between the Israelis and their Arab neighborsand with the Palestinians in the occupied territories as well as to thehostilities in Lebanon across the past three decades, involving Israel,Syria, Lebanese militias, and Palestinian guerrillas.

(e) Playing an active mediating role in moderating the level of the Arab–Israeliconflict. Since 1967, successive US administrations have undertaken along series of unilateral diplomatic efforts intended to promote the re-duction of this conflict under exclusive US auspices (Miller 1997). Mostnotable are Kissinger’s unilateral, step-by-step ‘‘shuttle diplomacy,’’ whichproduced the disengagement accords of 1974 between Israel and Egypt(Sinai I, January 1974), and between Israel and Syria (May 1974), and theSinai II interim accord between Israel and Egypt (September 1975);Carter’s mediation of the Camp David accords (September 1978) and theEgyptian–Israeli peace treaty (March 1979); and the diplomatic effortsmade by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Gulf War, culminat-ing in the convening of the Madrid peace conference in October 1991.The Clinton Administration was very active in trying to mediate peaceagreements between Israel and the Palestinians, Jordan, and Syria. Itsucceeded in the conclusion of the 1994 Israeli–Jordanian peace agree-ment, but it failed to promote peace between Israel and its two other Arabneighbors.

(f) Using foreign aid. US economic power has provided it with importantleverage in promoting regional peace both through direct financial as-sistance to key regional players and through the provision of credit andtechnology transfers. Moreover, the central role played by US aid makesany peace agreement between Israel and an Arab party also an accordbetween each party and the United States. The expectation of receivingsubstantial US military and economic assistance was a major motivation forEgypt in the late 1970s and Jordan, the Palestinians, and Syria in the1990s to join the US-led peace process. For Israel, the vast amounts ofannual aid from the United States were crucial compensation for its will-ingness to concede peacefully to the Arabs tangible goodsFoccupied ter-ritoriesFas part of a ‘‘land for peace’’ formula. The continuous USeconomic aid and its military dependence on the United States also pro-vided an important incentive for Egypt to continue to adhere to the peaceprocess even in the face of what it views as Israeli intransigence. Similarly,the Israeli economic–diplomatic–military dependence on the UnitedStates moderates its policy with regard to both the use of force and con-cessions in the peace process.

(g) Moreover, the United States has served, in fact, as the guarantor of theaccords reached between the Israelis and Arabs since 1973 and as a finalarbiter and referee in case of disagreements among the parties about theinterpretation of a settlement. For example, an important component inthe Israeli–Egyptian disengagement agreements in the Sinai in the after-math of the 1973 Yom-Kippur War was the US role in monitoring andverifying the implementation of the agreements, including a US commit-ment to administer early-warning stations in the buffer zone and to con-duct regular reconnaissance flights over the demilitarized area establishedby the accord. In the Camp David accords, the United States was active inthe establishment and manning of the international force that was de-ployed in the Sinai (Mandell 1990; Mandell and Tomlin 1991; Quandt1993).


Even though US involvement has been conducive to the establishment of coldpeace in some parts of the Middle East, peacemaking has not progressed muchbeyond this level because of the severity of the unresolved state-to-nation issues, theideological commitment to them, and the derived domestic political implications.Thus, the threat of war has not disappeared completely from Israeli–Egyptian re-lations (despite the two countries having been at peace since 1979), let alone from theIsraeli–Syrian arena in which there are still many unresolved state-to-nation issuesrelated to the recognition of Israel, the normalization of Syrian–Israeli relations, thelegitimacy of boundaries, and security arrangements. Even in the two Arab states thathave signed peace agreements with Israel (Egypt and Jordan), there are still signif-icant elites who continue to regard Israel as illegitimate and oppose the developmentof transnational relations with it, at least partly because of the lack, thus far, of apermanent settlement of the Palestinian problem in the form of a state for thePalestinian nation. The Israeli–Palestinian peace process has been stalled until re-cently and hostilities have dominated the last several years following an abortiveattempt to reach a final-status agreement. Indeed, most of the state-to-nation issuesin conflict are still hotly disputed, including the demand of the Palestinians to ex-ercise the right of self-determination in all the occupied territories of the West Bank,Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; the construction of legitimate boundaries betweenIsrael and the Palestinians; the future of the Jewish settlements; the status of Jeru-salem; and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. The renewal of the peaceprocess and any future progress is heavily dependent on US mediation as well as itscommitment of diplomatic and economic resources and security guarantees in boththe Palestinian–Israeli and the Syrian–Israeli negotiations.

As for US willingness to play the role of hegemon in the Middle East, it stemsfrom the intrinsic importance of the region to US interests given the location of vastoil resources there. This produces a US interest in maintaining good relations withthe Arab states. Such an interest conflicts with the US political–ideological–moralcommitment to Israel’s security. The United States tries to reconcile this conflict ofinterests by advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process. US attempts during the ColdWar to construct an Arab–Israeli grand alliance against the supposedly sharedSoviet threat failed because local parties diverged from the great powers by tendingto focus on regional threats rather than on global ones. In contrast to the highlydubious and disputed Soviet threat to the regional states, since its 1990 invasion ofKuwait, Iraqi revisionism has posed a true shared threat to the United States (be-cause of the threat to regional oil resources), Israel, and status-quo Arab states.Thus, the United States was able to lead a multinational coalition, including mostArab states, against Iraq and in the aftermath of its victory to promote the Arab–Israeli peace process.

In recent years, the Gulf coalition has all but fallen apart. Saddam Hussein sur-vived in power after the first Gulf War, thus showing the limitations of US hegem-ony in the region. At the same time, there was growing criticism in the Arab worldagainst what they saw as a ‘‘double standard’’ in the attitude toward violators of UNresolutions. On the one hand, the sanctions were kept in place against Iraq, despitethe hardship they caused to the Iraqi people. On the other hand, the United Statescontinued to support Israel despite its build-up of settlements in the occupiedterritories. In the aftermath of September 11, the US response to these problemsalso seemed double-edged. On the one hand, it sought regime change in Iraq,which was achieved by force in Spring 2003. On the other hand, drawing on thedefeat of the radical elements in the region that had been led by Saddam, it gave anew push to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process through a ‘‘road map’’ developedto guide the resolution of the state-to-nation issues, security arrangements, andpolitical reforms in the Palestinian Authority. This push, which has made onlylimited progress until recently, appears to have been enhanced by the opportunitythat Arafat’s death has provided for a US-led peace process.

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At any rate, the moderates in all camps in the region know that only United Statesleadership of the peace process can maintain the cold peace between Egypt andIsrael and bring about major progress by producing at least a cold peace betweenIsrael and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians through reducing, even if not fullyresolving, the state-to-nation issues between the Arabs and the Israelis.

Regional Conflict Resolution Leads to Normal Peace

The resolution of regional state-to-nation problems, especially their territorialmanifestations, reduces the likelihood of wars in a region. But so long as there areincoherent states in the region, successful conflict resolution is unlikely. Moreover,the presence of strong and coherent states in a region is necessary for the stability ofany peace accords and for reaching and maintaining normal peace in the region foran extended period.

The conflict resolution strategy suggests that rather than relying on externalpowers, the regional parties themselves focus directly on addressing the state-to-nation issues in dispute among them through negotiation and conflict resolution(see Mitchell 1981:275–277; Patchen 1988; Kriesberg 1992; Hopmann 1994; Craigand George 1995:163–179; Zartman and Kremenyuk 1995). More specifically, theparties work on settling the substantive manifestations of the state-to-nation issuesin dispute in the region such as by recognizing all other states in the region,agreeing on acceptable boundaries, resolving territorial conflicts and problems re-garding refugees, and negotiating a fair division of scarce resources like water.

A resolution of these problems lessens the motivations of the regional states forgoing to war and markedly reduces the likelihood of the outbreak of wars in theregion (Kocs 1995). More specifically, successful conflict resolution reduces thelikelihood of the three major types of regional wars mentioned earlier: securitydilemma wars, wars for profit, and diversionary wars. As noted, these wars aremore likely when there is a state-to-nation imbalance. With regard to security di-lemma (or inadvertent) wars, in accordance with the logic of the conflict resolutionstrategy, it is the extent and severity of the unresolved substantive issues that are inconflict that account for regional variations in the intensity of the security dilemma(On the security dilemma, see Jervis 1978; Buzan 1991; Miller 1994b). The extentof the unresolved problems conditions the security dilemma and war proneness indifferent regions. In other words, when there is a high state-to-nation symmetry,and thus the territorial boundaries among the regional states are widely accepted,the intensity of the security dilemma is lower and it is less likely that the mutualfears of being attacked and preempted will dominate the relations among the re-gional states (for a partly related argument, see Wendt 1992; Schweller 1996).Thus, the security dilemma is unlikely to lead to war among any potential neigh-bors. The security dilemma is especially likely when there is a high state-to-nationasymmetry, resulting in sharp territorial disagreements.

Nationalist irredentism provides the substance for wars of profit or expansion,namely, problems regarding boundaries and territory. Nationalists claim territoriesbased on what they believe are historical justifications or the ethnic composition ofthe population in the disputed area. There have been numerous such cases, forexample, in the Balkans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see Weiner1971:669; White 2000) as well as in post-colonial Asia and Africa and pre-WWIIEurope (Weiner 1971:670; Chazan 1991). The resolution of these disputes willdirectly reduce the likelihood of wars of profit.

Diversionary or scapegoat wars are produced by problems regarding domesticillegitimacy and instability, related in many cases to state-to-nation problems. Thesewars reflect an aggressive policy that arises out of domestic political weakness andinsecurity among the ruling elite and is designed to strengthen the elite’s hold onpower (Levy 1989, 1998). Nationalist elites, in particular, are likely to try to rally


their ethno-national group around the flag against another ethnic group. Thus, aresolution of regional disputes will not address this kind of war directly. Yet, diver-sionary wars are also more likely under a state-to-nation imbalance that leads to sharpterritorial disagreements. It is much easier for an insecure elite in an unstable regimeto initiate war in a region in which there is a low rather than a high level of acceptanceof the current borders because such low acceptance provides a ready pretext for war(for an example, see Gagnon 1995). In contrast, the resolution of state-to-nationproblems strengthens local states and increases their domestic stability as a result ofthe reduction in the secessionist problems that have posed a major challenge to rulingelites and have increased their insecurity. Thus, mutual recognition and the accept-ance of boundaries strengthens the regional states not only externally but also in-ternally vis-a-vis their own societies and increases the stability of their political regimes.Consequently, the likelihood of scapegoat wars will also be lower if the territorialmanifestations of the state-to-nation asymmetry are resolved.

State Strength and Conflict Resolution

The relationship between stable and strong states and successful regional conflictresolution is a complex one. Even though regional conflict resolution strengthenslocal states because of the acceptance of their sovereignty and boundaries by theirneighbors, the other side of the coin is that the effectiveness and durability ofconflict resolution is heavily dependent on the prior presence of strong states in theregion. State strength (or coherence) is a different and separate concept from therealist notion of state power or capabilities. It has three main dimensions: (1) theeffectiveness of state institutions, (2) the level of identification of the citizens withthe state, and (3) the strength of the territorial identity of the state, namely, theextent of the acceptance and permanence of its boundaries in the eyes of itsneighbors and domestic groups (Buzan 1991:chapter 2; Ayoob 1995; Holsti 1996).The latter two dimensions are interrelated as well as related to state-to-nationbalance and thus affect regional war propensity because a low level of citizen iden-tification with the state and a lack of firm territorial identity may result in attemptsat secession and border changes that can spillover and involve a number of regionalstates. As a result, these two dimensions are the two most relevant for regional warand peace. In other words, the weaker the regional states on these two dimensions,the greater the state-to-nation problem, the lesser the regional and domestic sta-bility, and the greater the obstacles to effective conflict resolution; conversely, thestronger the states on these two dimensions, the greater the likelihood for suc-cessful conflict resolution and, therefore, for normal regional peace (see Ayoob1995:194–196).

Under state-to-nation asymmetry even elites who are interested in making peaceface serious domestic and external constraints in incoherent and unstable states.Nationalist–ethnic forces oppose making territorial concessions either on demo-graphic grounds (the territories in dispute are populated by ethnic kin) or due tonational–historical–religious attachments to these territories. Nationalists manipu-late such causes against moderate elites who have limited maneuvering freedom inincoherent states. Ambitious politicians use the nationalist–ethnic card to promotethemselves and thus make it difficult to pursue moderate policies. Mobilizationagainst external national–ethnic enemies is a major diversionary tactic for mobi-lizing mass support by political leaders in incoherent states. This is especially thecase in regions populated by states that are considered illegitimate by some of theirneighbors or by peoples who are not seen as qualified to have their own states. Suchstates and peoples provide easy targets against whom nationalist politicians canmobilize their publics (examples include Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab worldmore generally; the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran; Taiwan and China; South andNorth Vietnam; South and North Korea; Russia and Chechnya; and so on).

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A related challenge to the conflict resolution strategy is presented by powerful(although not necessarily domestically coherent) irredentist states that claim to havehistorical–national–ethnic rights to territories belonging to their neighbors. Do-mestic instability in these irredentist states produces additional incentives for ex-ternalizing internal conflicts and for the use of force against proximate states thatare unable to deter such aggressors and defend against them. Weak states, on theother hand, are vulnerable to pressures by other more powerful states that are ableto intervene in their domestic affairs and can make it difficult to pursue moderatepolicies; they are also vulnerable to domestic pressures on the part of secessionistmovements that make it difficult to reach stable peace agreements with neighbors,who may face their own nationalist and ethnic pressures. Examples include thedynamics among Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanonthat occurred during the 1976 Syrian intervention into the Lebanese civil war andthe 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; India and Pakistan and the crisis in Bang-ladesh in 1971 that was, in turn, also related to the Indo-Pakistani conflict overKashmir (Ayoob 1995:47–48).

To sum up, state-to-nation imbalance produces conflict prone regions with deep-seated animosity among neighbors. Such neighbors with a long history of rivalryhave a hard time overcoming a legacy of mutual fear and suspicion by themselves.Moreover, it is difficult for them to resolve conflicts and to agree on issues likeboundaries, on which they have incompatible positions, without external support,mediation, and assurances.

State-Building and Nation-Building

To overcome these obstacles to regional conflict resolution, state-building is nec-essary. Thus, the strategy of conflict resolution may also be called the ‘‘statist’’strategy, because its logic gives priority to strengthening the state and consolidatingits power over separatist groups. This is done by centralizing the instruments ofviolence in the state’s hands (namely, disarming the secessionist groups) and bymaintaining its territorial integrity (Ayoob 1995:182–184). At a minimum, the re-gional states need to be in the process of strengthening their institutional base forattempts at conflict resolution to be effective. This strengthening includes themaintenance of law and order, the development of bureaucracy, taxation, a con-stitution, and the ability to provide socio-economic services to the population(Weiner 1987:59). In order for conflict resolution to bring about a stable peace,such state-building must be followed by a nation-building process, which, if suc-cessful, leads to the identification of the major groups within the state with itsexisting territorial identity and boundaries at the expense of nationalist-revisionistand ethnic-secessionist forces. Nation-building includes the provision for non-ma-terial symbolic functions for the population through such things as a national ed-ucational system and myth-making. These functions may also include thepromotion of a national language and the manipulation of identities so as to forma more cohesive nation. Although many cases of nation-building in the Third Worldhave failed (Connor 1994; Diamond and Plattner 1994:xvi), a recently successfulillustration in the Middle East is the growing national identity in Morocco between1956 and 1999 (Byman 2002:100–124).

In regions populated by institutionally strong and nationally coherent states,conflicts are more likely to be resolved and wars prevented. Greater state coherencemakes it more difficult for pan-nationalist ideologies to penetrate the state and tochallenge pragmatic policies. Coherent states are thus both more stable internallyand less vulnerable to domestic and transnational pressures to adopt hard-linepositions that make a resort to force more likely and peaceful resolution of re-gional conflicts less feasible. In other words, coherent states are more likely toendorse pragmatic international orientations and to behave cautiously according to


cost–benefit (strategic and economic) calculations rather than ideological-emotionalnationalist commitments and sentiments (this is the idea of stateness according toGabriel Ben-Dor 1983). These latter sentiments and symbols make it more difficultto bargain and reach compromise and accommodation than materialist-rationalistconsiderations, which generally indicate that it is more profitable to negotiatepeaceful arrangements than enter into a costly war (Fearon 1995). Coherent statesare also less hospitable to guerrilla or terrorist organizations that conduct armedinfiltrations into neighboring states. Moreover, because secessionist movements incoherent states are in decline, these states are less likely to produce such guerrillaforces. Furthermore, coherent states are less likely to trigger destabilizing refugeemovements across borders or to invite armed intervention by neighbors who arebent on exploiting opportunities for expansion or worried about security threatsfrom secessionist or irredentist elements present in unstable neighboring states. Inthis sense, the formation of coherent states decreases the security dilemma in aregion. It also reduces the motivations of unstable elites for diversionary wars aswell as the motivation and opportunity for wars of profit. All these processes re-inforce the standing of status quo elites who are more able and willing to reachnormal peace based on mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrityand noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states.

The problem is that state-building and especially nation-building are difficult toaccomplish in regions with a state-to-nation imbalance, where many states are weakand lack a firm territorial identity (a situation often manifested in the presence ofnational-ethnic minorities that claim to exercise the right of self-determination,establish their own states through secession, or are annexed to a contiguous statedominated by their ethnic kin, who, for their part, favor irredentism). Examplesshowing the struggles of minorities for self-determination include the Kurds, theKashmiris, the Igbos, the Sri Lankan Tamils, and the Southern Sudanese (Halperinand Scheffer 1992; Diamond and Plattner 1994:xv; Gurr 2000:289–342). Thistension is especially severe in the Third World and the Balkans due to the arti-ficially drawn post-colonial boundaries of the states and the arbitrary allocation ofpeoples and territory to states (Jackson 1990; Buzan 1991; Job 1992; Ayoob1995:48; Holsti 1996). Numerous post-colonial states are either composed ofdistinct and sometimes hostile ethnic groups or previously homogenous ethniccommunities that have been divided between two or more states duringdecolonialization. Most regimes in Africa and in the Middle East have faced ma-jor domestic legitimacy problems because they preside over artificial colonial con-structs that are quite vulnerable to internal challenges. Thus, most new ThirdWorld states have faced problems of either secession or irredentism soon afterindependence (Buzan 1991; Ayoob 1995:34–35; Holsti 1996). Irredentist conflictsinclude those between Iran and Iraq over the Shatt-al-Arab; Afghanistan and Pak-listan over Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province; and Ethiopia and Somalia overthe Ogaden. States that have faced the problem of seccession include, notably,Nigeria and the attempt of Biafra to secede from it in 1967–1970; Sri Lanka and theTamil secessionist struggle in recent decades; the Philippines and the Moros; andBurma and the Karen. Leading successful attempts at secession are Bangladeshfrom Pakistan in 1971, Northern Cyprus from Cyprus in 1974, and Eritrea fromEthiopia in 1993 (Carment and James 1997:194–231).

These problems are aggravated by the exclusionary policies of ethnic discrim-ination and economic exploitation of the dominant ethno-national groups intent onmaintaining their control over the political and economic systems and the militariesin numerous states (Weiner 1987:35–36, 40–41). Consider, for instance, the Sunnisin Iraq, the Alawites in Syria (Hinnebusch 2003), the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, theThais in Thailand, and the Turks in Turkey (Ayoob 1995:38). At the same time, thepossibilities of state-building by internal or external coercion, as well as by economicbribes, is constrained by the economic and military weaknesses of the central

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authorities in many states. Such weaknesses have produced high economic andsecurity dependence on the Western powers who, in turn, have exerted pressureagainst violent policies and massive violations of human rights, thus making it evenmore difficult to build states through coercion (Ayoob 1995).

As this discussion suggests, the difficulties involved in state-building pose severeproblems for the conflict resolution strategy. This strategy depends on strong states,but when there is a state-to-nation imbalance, state-building becomes much harderto do. In other words, state-building is least feasible when it is most needed.

One possible solution to this problem is provided by democratization because ademocratic regime can be very helpful in strengthening the state in the long run,especially if there is a strong identification of the population with the state as aresult of the political rights that democratization bestows on the citizenry. Moreover,democratization can reduce ethnic-based discrimination. Yet, for the short run,democratization in weak states may further weaken the state and bring about itsdisintegration. For this reason, the conflict resolution/state-building strategy givespriority to consolidating state power over domestic groups at the expense of, and asa prerequisite for, democratization. Thus, regional integration/liberalization andregional conflict resolution/state-building constitute distinct and competing ap-proaches to regional peacemaking. A possible way to make them complementary isin the framework of an integrated-gradual approach to regional peacemaking thatis discussed at the end of this essay.

Effects of State-Building and Conflict Resolution: Twentieth-Century South America

Nineteenth-century South America was an area of chronic war and armed inter-vention, for example, the war of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay against Paraguayin 1865–1870 (Lynch 1993:40–46); the Pacific war among Chile, Bolivia, and Perufrom 1879 to 1883; and armed conflicts over boundaries between Brazil and itssouthern neighbors: Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay (Seckinger 1984; Kacowicz1996:19; D’Agostino 1997:52; Fraser 1997:158). But since 1941 there has been nointerstate war in the region.3 Moreover, as Holsti (1996:chapter 8) suggests, in thetwentieth century this region has become a no-war zone in which mutually peacefulrelations and nonviolent modes of conflict resolution are the norm. Indeed, ArieKacowicz (1998) has called it a zone of ‘‘negative peace.’’ Except for North America,South America has been the most peaceful region in the world in the twentiethcentury. The region has shown a marked inclination toward peaceful conflict set-tlement as compared to other regions, for example, by frequently using arbitrationprocedures and subscribing to a number of multilateral treaties. No regional statehas disappeared or has been born as a result of violence during the twentiethcentury, and there have been only a few minor territorial changes in the region.Thus, South America as a whole has moved during the twentieth century toward anormal peace, even if an incomplete one. But in a comparative regional perspec-tive, the number of territorial conflicts that were resolved peacefully in SouthAmerica remains unique (Kacowicz 1994:265–294, 1998; Holsti 1996:156).

Thus, in contrast to the continuous domestic instability in most countries of theregion, regional stability in South America (most notably in the Southern Cone) hasbeen strengthened since the end of the nineteenth century due to a process ofconflict resolution.4 The normative basis for the peaceful settlement of the vastmajority of border disputes in the region was established through the common

3The only two wars among South American states during the twentieth century were the Chaco war betweenBolivia and Paraguay in 1932–1935 and the war between Peru and Ecuador in 1941, although military clashesbetween the latter pair of states also took place in 1981 and 1995.

4This South American peace has not extended to Central America, where the level of regional stability has beenmuch lower than in the South.


recognition of the principle of uti possidetis, according to which the South Americanstates accepted the colonial boundaries as their post-independence internationalfrontiers (see Ireland 1938; Child 1985; Kacowicz 1998). These same states alsoaccepted the norms of the sovereign equality of states and of nonintervention intothe domestic affairs of sovereign states. The Estrada Doctrine in 1930 held that if aparticular government controlled population and territory, it deserved to be ac-corded diplomatic recognition and no normative evaluation or criterion should beapplied (Fraser 1997:160).

Necessary Conditions: Growing State Coherence and State-to-Nation Balance

A major explanation for the emergence of this normal peace in South America isthe growing state strength and coherence in the region during the twentieth cen-tury. This is especially true with regard to the territorial identity of the states inSouth America. This evolution stands in contrast to both the state weakness in theregion during the nineteenth century and the domestic illegitimacy of numerousregimes, which lasted at least until the recent wave of democratization in the 1980s.

South America was better disposed than Europe to enjoy peace relatively earlybecause the state-to-nation balance there was more symmetrical from an earlierstage. Such symmetry reflected the emergence of territorially based, nonethnic (orcivic) nationalism, and the relative weakness of both ethnic-subnational secessionistforces and pan-national revisionism. Benedict Anderson (1991:50–63) writes aboutthe early emergence of national identities (‘‘nation-ness’’) in South AmericaFwellbefore most of EuropeFwhich were compatible with the territorial boundaries ofthe colonial administrative units that became independent states (see also Connor1994:79).

In contrast to the Balkans and the Middle East, state formation in South Americanearly always preceded the formation of the nation. The nation was thus formedaccording to state boundaries. With the few exceptions of nonintegrated indige-nous populations in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, ethnic conflicts were missing.5 Theemergence of a relatively high state-to-nation congruence can be explained by thecombined effect of two factors. On the one hand, as part of the New World, SouthAmerica is composed of immigrant societies that abandoned their ethnically basedterritorial-national roots and aspirations in the Old World of Europe. On the otherhand, the European colonizers suppressed those elements of the societyFthe in-digenous populations in the New World of the AmericasFwho had distinctivenational territorial attachments that diverged from the colonial boundaries.

Even though pan- and subnationalism and their destabilizing effects were muchweaker in South America than in Europe, nineteenth century South Americanstates were still relatively weak and incoherent, and thus most boundaries were notclearly defined with some states seizing territories belonging to their neighbors.Argentina, for example, was highly fragmented during most of the nineteenthcentury (see Merquior 1987; Lynch 1993). There was no effective central govern-ment whose authority was accepted by all. Monopoly over the use of force wasabsent: every city and province had its own militia, and different war-lords (Cau-dillos) had their private militias. Also absent were a central constitution, a commonjudiciary, and a central education system apart from that of the Catholic Church.The period was characterized by a continuous struggle between the hegemonicattempts of Buenos Aires and the aspirations of the provinces for autonomy andindependence from the center. During the 1870s, there was both intensive fightingbetween the white settlers and the Indians along the frontier and armed conflicts

5As Gurr (1993) has shown, the proportion of ethnic, irredentist, and transnational grievances is the lowest in

South America as compared to all other regions on the globe. The exceptions are ethnic cleavages within Guyanaand Surinam (Kacowicz 1998:106).

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between the different regions and the Caudillos. Indeed, the incoherence of theArgentinean state, together with the weakness of its neighboring states at that time,made the region conducive to wars. Thus, the weakness of Argentina brought aboutthe intervention of its neighbors into its territory, especially Brazil but also forcesfrom Uruguay and Paraguay (Shumway 1991:169–170). Moreover, state weak-nesses generated diversionary wars such as the participation of Argentina in the waragainst Paraguay (Shumway 1991:237–240).

Only since the 1880s has political stability begun to prevail through the dom-inance of the center over the provinces (Gallo 1993; Kacowicz 1996:19). This su-periority was based first of all on the national army gaining a monopoly over the useof force and on disarming the militias. State coherence was augmented by an ex-pansion of central administrative-judicial control into the provincesFa processsupported by an impressive economic growth in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. Moreover, the elites succeeded in constructing a common Ar-gentinean identity and in creating unifying national myths. Even though there wereconflicts between liberal and nationalist variants of such myths and sharp ideolog-ical disagreements about political and socio-economic affairs, all the populationshared a collective Argentinean identity, including a common territorial identityregarding the nature of the state (Shumway 1991).

This development was also true for other states in the region. Thus, in thetwentieth century, the territorial integrity of the states in South America has becomemore firmly established, and there has been an increase in state strength andcoherence in the region. Citizens may have been alienated from particular gov-ernments, as many were before the democratization of the 1980s, but they gen-erally accepted and defended the overall identity of their states, including the states’territorial integrity and dimensions. Despite a variety of domestic grievancesFincontrast to other Third World statesFdisaffected domestic groups in South Amer-ican states have not sought secession as a solution to their problems. Rather, thedegree of citizen identification with their states has progressively strengthened(Holsti 1996:173–175). National governments in South America have also refrainedfrom embracing pan-nationalist revisionist ideologies. An especially important fac-tor in the evolution of normal peace is that the most powerful state in the region,Brazil, has been a status quo state and has not entertained expansionist aspirations(Calvert 1969:39–40).

Even though state incoherence in South America is lower than in most otherregions, state-making has been less successful than in Europe (despite what anumber of elites and militaries would have liked, Chile most obviously). This me-dium level of success in state-building, however, could have been a cause of peace.South American states avoided the instability generated by weak states in the ThirdWorld, while refraining from the excessive resort to force of the strong Europeanstates, whose surplus of resources led to the eruption of World War I. Anothermajor difference involves nation-building. Because of the German question that layat the heart of Europe and its multinational empires like Austro-Hungary, themismatch between state and nation was much greater in Europe than in SouthAmerica. This contributed to excessive nationalism and major wars in the OldWorld, including the Wars of German Unification in the nineteenth century andWorld War II.

Neither the change from the nineteenth century war-prone South America to amuch more peaceful region nor the comparative differences between South Amer-ica and other regions can be explained by the great power factor of US hegemony.First, South America has been a secondary arena for all the great powers (Kacowicz1996:20; Fraser 1997:160–161) in comparison with Asia, the Middle East, and Eu-rope. Even US engagement in the region, especially strategically, has been muchmore limited than in the US sphere of influence in Central America. In contrast tothe numerous military interventions in the latter region, the United States has not


intervened militarily in South America and even clandestine interferences (as inChile in the early 1970s) have been rare.6 In the absence of a credible and per-sistent threat of intervention, it is difficult to see the United States as a hegemon inSouth America (in contrast to Central America). Had US hegemony been the majorcause of regional peace, recent changes would supposedly have had destabilizingeffects on the region, because US influence in South America has been steadilydeclining in the last thirty years with the rise of regional powers such as Brazil,Argentina, and Venezuela and the consolidation of international links betweenSouth American states and Europe, Japan, and the former Soviet Union (see Pastor1992; Kacowicz 1996:19–20, 1998:67). And yet, not only has peace in South Amer-ica persisted, but it has become warmer in recent years despite these changes.Indeed, the character of the regional peace goes beyond externally produced coldpeace in that most substantive issues in conflict among the regional states have beenresolved rather than merely mitigated or reduced. As noted earlier, the achieve-ment of such a level of peace is beyond the capabilities of external powers.

Even though a normal peace has evolved in South America during the last cen-tury, until recently it did not go much beyond an interstate peaceful resolution ofterritorial disputes. However, in the last few years a process of upgrading thenormal peace and the evolution of warm regional peace has begun in the SouthernCone of South America. This warming of the regional peace follows the recent waveof democratization and liberalization there. The major manifestations of this proc-ess are increased economic interdependence and the enhancement of economicand political integration, notably, the emergence of a regional Common Market:Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay (Schmitter1991:108–121; Holsti 1996:175–180; Kacowicz 1998; Solingen 1998). There is alsogrowing cooperation with regard to common transborder problems such as theenvironment and drug trafficking. This rising regional cooperation and integrationstands in complete contrast to the failure of previous attempts at economic coop-eration and integration, which collapsed when the domestic regimes in SouthAmerica were authoritarian (Schmitter 1991:115–116).

Regional Integration Produces Warm Peace

Partly in response to the difficulties inherent in the conflict resolution approach inregions with an acute state-to-nation imbalance, the third approach prescribes thatthe best strategy to achieving regional peace is not to focus on the substantive state-to-nation and related territorial issues in conflict between the parties, but rather totranscend them through regional integration. In other words, the best way to reachpeace is by establishing effective regional institutions for collective security andarms control, regional economic integration, and cooperation on other issues ofcommon concern such as the environment. More specifically, the leading theory ofintegration, neofunctionalism, suggested that growing interdependence would leadto the establishment of supranational institutions. These institutions, led by tech-nical elites and international bureaucrats, would initially deal with the managementof ‘‘low politics’’ types of problems. But the rising complexity of interdependenceand the self-sustaining process of institution-building would eventually lead to the‘‘spillover’’ of the regional integration to the domain of ‘‘high politics.’’ Thus,regional institutions would have increasing jurisdiction over the preexisting na-tional states. This would result in a transfer of loyalties from the nation-states andthe redefinition of collective identities toward a regional identity. The key exampleof this phenomenon is the regional integration that has occurred in Western Eu-rope under the framework of the European Union (Haas 1958, 1964; Lindberg

6Thus, President Theodore Roosevelt confined his amendment to the Monroe Doctrine to the Caribbean Basinalone (see Kagan 2000:chapter 5).

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1963; Lindberg and Scheingold 1971; for a useful overview, see Hurrell 1995:59–61).

Another method of strengthening peace according to the integrative approach isby creating a regional community through advancing transnational contacts amongthe regional societies and nongovernmental groups and encouraging people-to-people ties through social communication, tourism, and cultural exchange(Deutsch 1957; for a recent constructivist analysis, see Adler and Barnett 1998).This approach differs markedly from, and goes much beyond, the governmental,state-to-state character of the regional conflict resolution strategy. Indeed, regionalintegration and transnational contacts might be seen by nonliberal, nationalist elitesas posing a threat to the independence and autonomy of their states, which is amainstay of regional peace according to the conflict resolution/state-building ap-proach. In contrast to the focus of the conflict resolution/statist approach on thestrict preservation of state sovereignty and on noninterference in the domesticaffairs of other states as a prerequisite for peace, the integration strategy is based onsignificant compromises of state sovereignty and on the transfer of authority fromthe states to supranational institutions, leading to joint decision making and thepooling of sovereignty (Keohane and Hoffmann 1990:276; Kupchan 1998).

Some of the supposed effects of regional integration on the emergence of warmpeace are:

(1) Politically: joint decision making and pooling of sovereignty diminish thecapacity of national governments to act unilaterally, including in the areaof war and peace, especially vis-a-vis the other members of the commu-nity. At the same time, a certain degree of freedom of action remains vis-a-vis third parties.

(2) Economically: interdependence makes it very difficult for the individualstates to act alone and limits their independent war-making ability. In-terdependence increases mutual prosperity and thus also the stakes ofmany key groups and the public-at-large in the continuation and inten-sification of economic relations rather than their disruption by war. In acost-benefit calculation, territorial gains are not worth the loss incurred bythe disruption of economic interdependence (in addition to the costs ofthe war itself). As a result, even if the integration starts in ‘‘low politics’’areas (economics or the environment), over time there will be a spilloverto ‘‘high politics’’ (security and foreign policy) (Russett and Starr1992:384).

(3) Sense of community: common supranational institutions, strong economicties, and intensive transnational interactions in the areas of culture, tour-ism, and commerce lead to the construction of a sense of community andshared identity at the expense of exclusionary and aggressive nationalism.Thus, it becomes unimaginable that the members of the community willfight each other along national lines.

Necessary Conditions: Prevalence of Liberal Democracy

Although rarely explored explicitly, liberal democracy is a necessary, even if notalways sufficient, condition for successful regional integration (Schmitter 1991:114;Hurrell 1995:68–69). Thus, the neofunctionalist approach to regional integrationpresumed without stating it explicitly that the states undergoing integration would bepluralist democracies. This is because the core integrating mechanism of the neo-functional approachFthe autonomous action of specialized interest groups pressingfor further integration in order to capture greater economic benefitsFcan onlyoperate in a liberal democracy (Schmitter 1991:114; Hurrell 1995:59). Moreover,


liberal democracy can mitigate the aggressive and destabilizing aspects of nation-alism. When national self-images are closely related to democratic norms, nation-alism may in fact support democracy by advancing identification with civicinstitutions (Snyder and Ballentine 1996:11). Such identification will, in turn, in-hibit the appearance of virulent forms of ethnic nationalism; in fact, democracy andmoderate civil nationalism are mutually reinforcing.

There is a qualitative difference between democracies and authoritarian regimeswith respect to integration, because the latter type of regime is in itself a majorobstacle to regional integration. These regimes tend to suppress or distort nego-tiations among transnational interest groups and to assert their passionate defenseof national sovereignty as the major source of domestic legitimacy (Schmitter1991:115). A major reason for the necessary connection between democracy andregional integration can be deduced from democratic peace theory. Only amongliberal democracies is the security dilemma sufficiently reduced to allow the states tosurrender a part of their sovereignty without the fear that today’s partner maybecome tomorrow’s enemy. As a result, democracies are relatively more willing toconcede voluntarily some sovereignty to a supranational authorityFon the con-dition that all the states involved in the integration process are fellow democracies.Even then, the concession of sovereignty will initially be quite limited; the process ofintegration is likely to be very lengthy and painstaking; and reversals are possible.Thus, despite numerous obstacles, regional integration is more successful in liberal-democratic Europe than in regions populated, at least partly, by authoritarian re-gimes such as in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. A similar logic can explain, asalready noted, why after the democratization wave in the 1980s, regional integra-tion became more effective in South America than in earlier periods when most ofthe regional states were not liberal democracies.

In effect, the cornerstone of the liberal approach is democratization; all the otherelements (free market economies, regional institutions and integration, and trans-national ties) only ensure warm peace will occur when the regional states are liberaldemocracies (see Keohane 1989; Baldwin 1993; Zacher and Matthew 1995; Doyle1997; Moravcsik 1997; Russett and Oneal 2001). The great advantage of the liberalstrategy is manifested in the empirical record of liberal-democratic states not fight-ing each other.7 Even if some substantive issues remain unresolved among liberaldemocracies, they do not resort to force to resolve them but use peaceful meansonly; as a result, the security dilemma among them declines drastically. Conse-quently, stable warm peace can be established in a region populated by liberaldemocracies.

The shortcoming of this approach is that for this strategy to work, all the majorregional states have to become stable liberal democracies. But we know that suc-cessful democratization entails demanding political and socio-economic prerequi-sites (Huntington 1991; Shin 1994). A major precondition for a stable democracy isthe existence of a strong state in the sense defined above, namely a state that wentthrough a successful state-building and nation-building process (Rustow 1970;Rothstein 1992; Ayoob 1995:195). Therefore, one of the obstacles to successfuldemocratization is national incongruence that often leads to intense ethnic conflicts.Such conflicts are especially likely in severely divided societies (Horowitz 1994:37)that lack strong political institutions (Snyder 2000; for an overview, see Diamondand Plattner 1994:xiv–xxii). Examples from the last 15 years include Armenia,Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Russia, Sri Lanka, and theformer Yugoslavia (Mansfield and Snyder 1996, 2002; Snyder 2000). Yet, these areprecisely the places in which the supposedly pacifying effects of democratization are

7For explanations and critiques of this phenomenon, see Bruce Russett (1993); Michael Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven Miller (1996); and Michael Doyle (1997: part 2).

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most needed, not only because of the domestic ethnic conflicts that are present, butalso because of the likelihood of the spillover of such conflicts into broader regionalconflicts as a result of the spread of ethnic groups across the rather porous bordersthat exist in many regions, especially in the Third World (see Diamond and Plattner1994:xxviii; Ayoob 1995).

Another major problem with the liberalization strategy is that, as observed ear-lier, in the short term democratization may increase domestic instability and pro-vide insecure elites with incentives to pursue the scapegoat strategy by initiatingdiversionary wars against their neighbors. Indeed, Edward Mansfield and JackSnyder (1996, 2002:303–309) have shown that at least until all the regional statesbecome full-blown liberal democracies, the process of democratization itself mayencourage the use of force and thus aggravate regional conflicts. This state of affairsis especially, though not only, true when there is a considerable state-to-nationimbalance in the region as, for example, in the cases of Prussia and the Wars ofGerman Unification in 1862, 1864, and 1871; Serbia and the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913; and Pakistan and the 1965, 1971, and 1999 wars with India.

Democratization can increase the identification of citizens with their state andconsequently strengthen regional states in the long run. However, a related negativeeffect of democratization in the short term is that in fragmented societies, notably insome parts of the Third World, the post-Soviet region, and the Balkans, it may notsolve social cleavages but may rather exacerbate existing ethnic problems (De Nevers1993; see also Paris 1997) and may even embolden ethnic minorities to seek self-determination and secession (Chipman 1993; Ayoob 1995:182; Holsti 1996; Kaplan2000). One major route to democratization is federalismFdecentralization of polit-ical power along territorial lines. In weak states, a loose federal system may reinforceseparatist forces by guaranteeing them assets they can employ for the secessionistcause such as local police forces and government revenues. This argument is high-lighted by Holsti (1996:184–185) who cites the cases of Congo, Chad, and Sudan andby Svante Cornell (2002) who focuses on ethnic minorities in the Caucasus.

In other cases, democratization may weaken moderate, status quo regimes andelites that are the key to regional peace processes, making it more difficult for themto make concessions to long-time adversaries. Through an appeal to nationalist andreligious emotions, a domestic opposition can use these concessions against themoderate elites and undermine their political base of support. Consider as anexample the coalition of right-wing parties and Jewish settlers in the 1990s thathelped undermine (together with insufficient Arab moderation and Palestinianterrorist actions) the moderate Israeli governmentsFled by Rabin, Peres, andBarakFthat were willing to make concessions to the Palestinians. Democratizationmay also bring to power radical forces that oppose regional reconciliation, forexample, Fundamentalist Islamic forces in the Middle East.

Thus, democratization can bring about the disintegration of the regional states,the intensification of ethnic and regional conflicts, or both. If there is a stark choicebetween maintaining the territorial integrity of the state and democratization, stateelites are bound to prefer the former over the latter (Ayoob 1995:182–184).8 At thesame time, the historical record shows that in the absence of democratization, theother liberal prescriptions such as economic interdependence, free trade, and re-gional institutions may not be sufficient by themselves to ensure regional peace(Mearsheimer 1990, 1995, 2001:362–372).

As a result, an argument can be made that in the absence of minimum state-to-nation symmetry and of strong and coherent states, liberalization may not enhance

8Mohammed Ayoob (1995:182) cites Myron Weiner’s (1987) observation that even in India, the most consistentlydemocratic major Third World state, ‘‘if need be, the center would exercise all the force at its command to prevent

secession even if it meant a suspension of democratic rights.’’ Ayoob adds that the events of recent years in Punjaband Kashmir show the validity of this argument.


peace and may even destabilize the region, at least in the short run. Minimalsuccessful state-building and nation-building are required to make possible thepacifying effects of integration based on the compatibility of liberal states.

Consequently, the major challenge presented by the liberalization strategy is howto dampen the negative effects that the democratization process creates in theshorter term, before arriving at stable liberal democracies and warm peace in thelonger term. In addition to a prerequisite of a certain degree of successful state-building and nation-building, one possibility for solving this dilemma is by com-bining the liberalization strategy with the strategy of great power involvement. Thegreat power hegemon or a concert of powers might prevent regional wars andmaintain cold peace, thus allowing the liberalization process to develop and ripeninto warm peace. Such was indeed the road to peace in post-1945 Western Europe.

Regional Integration: Post-1945 Western Europe

In comparison with South America, Europe was both much more of a war zoneuntil World War II and had suffered more from state-to-nation problems than theNew World. Europe was the major war zone in the international system until 1945.Most great powers were European, and they competed among themselves forpower, hegemony, security, and influence on the continent and with regard tooverseas colonies. The European region’s state-to-nation asymmetry affected manyof the key rivalries and armed conflicts on the continent during the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries, including the two world wars, the wars for German and Italianunification, the competing nationalist-irredentist claims of Germany and France vis-a-vis Alsace-Lorraine, pan-Slavic aspirations and struggles for self-determination inEastern Europe and the Balkans leading to World War I, and German demands fornational unification in Central and Eastern Europe producing tense crises beforeWorld War II.

The deportation of millions of Germans from Eastern Europe, the imposeddivision of Germany, and Soviet control over Eastern Europe following World WarII helped reduce or at least manage the national, especially the German, problemon the continent, although the problem was not fully resolved. Western Europe didnot focus, however, on direct conflict resolution of state-to-nation problems, even ifsome of these issues were addressed successfully. Western Europe transcended thestate-to-nation issues through regional integration to generate a warm peace.

The first major Western European supranational institution was the EuropeanCoal and Steel Community, established in 1951 through the initiative of thenFrench foreign minister, Robert Schuman, with the explicit goal of limiting theindependent war-making ability of the Western European states, most notably theformer archenemies France and Germany with only the secondary goal of con-tributing to economic welfare (Russett and Starr 1992:379). One of the majormotivations for Schuman’s initiative was the worsening Franco-German relations atthe time, mainly due to the Saar problem (Gerbet 1996:66–70). The Saar waseconomically linked to France and politically autonomous from Germany, but thelatter refused to recognize its separation from the Federal Republic. The Frenchwere particularly anxious about the progress of German economic and politicalrevival and the calls for German rearmament. Schuman’s idea was not so much tofocus directly on addressing the bilateral issues in conflict between France andGermany, but rather to transcend them by a reconciliation of Germany within atransformed European framework. Indeed, the integration of coal and steel madepossible new relations between France and Germany and gave France the leadingrole in the building of a European Community, the driving force of which was goingto be Franco-German. More specifically, in the context of integration, it is easier fordemocracies to transcend territorial issues. Thus, France returned the Saar regionto Germany following the outcome of a referendum in which 67 percent of the

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region’s population expressed its will to return (Freymond 1960; Hurst 1990:394–400).

The next major step in Western European integration was the establishment ofthe Common Market or the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, latertransformed into the European Community (EC). This institution had broad sup-ranational authority, notably to eliminate barriers to trade within the communityand to make possible a free movement of capital and people among the memberstates, thus fulfilling Jean Monnet’s vision of binding the economies and eventuallythe people of Western Europe inextricably by economic union, making war un-thinkable (Russett and Starr 1992:379).9 After a slow-down in the integrationprocess between 1967 and 1985, it regained momentum with the successful ne-gotiation and ratification of the Single European Act in the mid-1980s (Keohaneand Hoffmann 1991; Wallace 1995).

Beyond a certain point of stabilization, a warm peace among liberal democraciesshould stand on its own. Thus, even though the US presence is still very importantfor the security of the Western European states (Art 1996), the contention here (asopposed to realist predictions, see Mearsheimer 1990; Sheetz 1996) is not to expectthat a potential US military disengagement from Europe or even the reduction inits presence following the disappearance of the Soviet threat will dramatically affectthe warm peace in the region. On the contrary, the tendency in recent years, in theaftermath of the end of the Cold War, has been the reinforcement of the WesternEuropean warm peace and the deepening of regional integration. This tendency ismanifested in the December 1991 Maastricht Treaty, the creation of a single cur-rencyFthe euroFin 1999, the agreement to enlarge the Western European Union(WEU), the Schengen Group of eight (originally five) countries attempting to movemore rapidly toward common policies on policing and border controls, and theFranco-German ‘‘Eurocorps’’ with its stated aspirations to create the nucleus for afuture European army.

Indeed, following the NATO air war over Kosovo, the European Union decidedin late 1999 to construct its own European security force of 60,000 troops (Fitchett1999:4; Whitney 1999:5). In effect, the Kosovo conflict demonstrated the dual faceof European security in the post-Cold War period. On the one hand, it showed theEuropean military inferiority in relation to the United States and the military de-pendence of the Europeans on the United States in coping with external threatsrelated to ethnic conflicts such as those in the Balkans. At the same time, the Kosovocrisis exerted pressure on the Europeans to further upgrade their security coop-eration, even if it is still questionable how fast and how effectively they will im-plement their new commitment toward increased integration in the security field.10

Necessary Conditions: Liberalization under US Hegemony

For the integration strategy to be effective, all key states in a region have to beliberalized, which was the case after World War II in Western Europe. Moreover,US hegemony was crucial in the early stages of the transition from war to warmpeace. In fact, the primary historical example demonstrating the influence of liberaldemocracy on the success of regional integration and the emergence of warm peaceamong liberal states is the warm Western European peace established in the af-termath of World War II. Such a warm peace could not have developed had the

9For a succinct analysis of Western European integration within a broader European and international context,

see William Wallace (1995). Jean Monnet, a French official, was a leading advocate and founding father of WesternEuropean integration in the early 1950s.

10For a skeptical analysis of the foreign-defense policy aspects of the European Union’s recent draft Constitution,

see Robert Lane Greene (2003:8). Still, the draft Constitution shows the progress made in European integrationover the years, even though serious challenges remain (Bowley 2004:1).


major Western European states not been liberal democracies, with West Germanyundergoing a forced democratization during the allied occupation. Indeed, thelevel of supranational integration has remained limited in all nondemocratic re-gions outside the liberal democratic Western Europe. Although US hegemony overthe region was crucial for the initial establishment of peace in Western Europe inthe late 1940s and early 1950s, it was unable by itself to produce a normalFletalone warmFpeace.

The initial post-World War II Western European peace was made possible by theUnited States playing a pacifying role as a benign hegemon (Joffe 1984:88; Hurrell1995:48), which was, in turn, an outgrowth of the common Soviet threat to theUnited States and to Western Europe (Lundestad 1990:57; Buzan 1991:220–221;Gaddis 1992:26–27; Wallace 1995; Gerbet 1996:58). Without the facilitating greatpower factor of US leadership, peace among the West European states might nothave developed, as the strained French–German relations in the late 1940s andearly 1950s suggest. In the late 1940s, these relations were close to producing a coldwar between the two. Immediately following World War II, France’s greatest fearwas a resurgent Germany that might once again challenge the legitimacy of thepolitical and territorial order in Europe. Such a danger was to be prevented byGermany’s dismemberment and demilitarization, coupled with French control overthe Rhine. Moreover, the French demanded control over German resources, es-pecially with regard to its production of coal and steel (Geraud 1947:33; Freymond1960:6). Yet, the dynamics of the Cold War and France’s own weakness induced achange in France’s ‘‘German’’ policy. This did not mean, however, that the Frenchattitude toward Germany changed abruptly. When it became clear that Francecould no longer afford attempts to balance, or contain, Germany, other optionswere developed.

The combined effect of US hegemony and the common Soviet threat produced atransition in 1950 from cold war to cold peace. The former saw France trying todismember Germany, keeping it weak and powerless, whereas the latter saw thetwo states accepting each other’s existence and reaching formal agreements, despitethe presence of unresolved, substantive conflicts and a high degree of mutualinsecurity.

The French foreign policy choices exemplify the salience of superpower influ-ences with respect to European dynamics in that period. In 1954, France did notjoin the European Defense Community, which excluded the United States andBritain, because in that framework France would have been left essentially alonewith its former archenemy (Joffe 1984:69–73, 1987:chapter 5; Gillingham 1991:250; Gerbet 1996:72–75). In contrast, US and British membership in NATO pro-vided guarantees against potential German aggression. On the whole, the UnitedStates has played a crucial role in regional conflict reduction in Western Europe byhelping reassure West Germany and its neighbors of each other’s peaceful inten-tions, thus reducing the regional security dilemma in a once volatile region. Be-cause the United States undertook the role of security provider to the Europeans,the latter did not have to take care of their own security. This resulted in a drasticweakening of the security dilemma among these countries, enabling a separationbetween high politics and low politics. The Europeans could focus on economicissues, especially with regard to mutual or absolute gains in this domain, becausethe US security umbrella weakened the concern about relative gains among them.

The global factor of US hegemony was insufficient, however, by itself to producethe warm peace that has gradually emerged in Western Europe since the late 1950s.The liberal democratic nature of the West European states was necessary to up-grade the cold peace and turn it into the warm peace of the European Communityand the European Union through the strategy of regional integration.

Accordingly, the domestic liberalization of formerly authoritarian Western Eu-ropean states, especially in West Germany, in the post-World War II era was critical

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for the evolution of the warm peace by permanently removing the traditionalcauses of war on the continent, notably state-to-nation issues (Buzan et al.1990:107–115; Van Evera 1993:206–211). Especially critical in this respect is thedecline of revisionist ethnic nationalism after it was discredited in WWII and itsreplacement in Germany by the conception of the ‘‘nation of its citizens’’ (Lepsius1985:58–62). Such a conception of nationalism was conducive to the emergence ofliberal democracy and to an acceptance of the territorial status quo (thus Germanyaccepted its losses in the East) as well as to peaceful conflict resolution (such as inthe dispute with France over the Saar region in the West). The US security um-brella facilitated this evolution and allowed it to take place. Moreover, the UnitedStates induced the democratization and social reform process in West Germany inthe immediate aftermath of World War II (Smith 1994). But the socio-economicprerequisites for democracy had to be present in West Germany (and also in Italy)for democratization to succeed. The United States also spurred European integra-tion by direct encouragement and pressure (Beloff 1963:28; Ikenberry 1989:388–389; Treverton 1992:chapter 4; Hurrell 1995:48; Gerbet 1996:60); but for high-level integration to be successful, economic as well as political compatibility werenecessary. Indeed, a key prerequisite for joining the EU is a functioning democracy.

Charles De Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher have shown that there can be pow-erful opposition to integration even among democracies. Yet, it is difficult to im-agine the regional integration in Western Europe without the factor of liberaldemocracy; it reduced mutual fears to the point of making the regional stateswilling to give up a part of their sovereignty and set up supranational institutions.These, in turn, helped build institutionalized procedures for peaceful conflict res-olution. Such developments have conspired to make a return to violent conflict inWestern Europe unthinkable.

The Logic of An Integrated-Gradual Approach

There is a trade-off between the regional and the great power strategies for ad-vancing regional peace. Although the regional-domestic strategies are more desir-able than the great power strategy in that they are conducive to higher levels ofregional peace, they are often less feasible because state-to-nation problems arehard to resolve and liberalization depends on demanding prerequisites. In contrast,although the great power strategy is more feasible (to the extent that the necessaryconditions are present), this mechanism is unable by itself to go beyond cold peaceand produce higher levels of peace. Yet, as noted previously, the great powerstrategy may fulfill an important role when combined with the liberalization strat-egy for achieving warm peace. The two regional-domestic strategies are also dis-tinctive, and there are trade-offs and contradictions between them, notably withregard to strengthening or democratizing existing states and the role of govern-ments versus transnational actors in the peacemaking process. The conflict reso-lution/statist approach focuses on maintaining the norm of noninterference in thedomestic affairs of other states. In contrast, the liberalization strategy acknowledgesthe necessity of subordinating this traditional international society norm to theemerging transnational norms of democratization and human rights, which areseen as the most effective guarantees of a lasting peace (Baker 1996:563–571).

Although the three levels of peace have been described as analytically distinct,they may also be regarded as successive stages in a regional peace process, witheach stage facilitating the next one. Thus, great power involvement (either in theform of concert or hegemony) is conducive to a cold regional peace in which thestate-to-nation issues in conflict and the problems of regional legitimacy have beenmoderated or reduced but are still far from being fully resolved. This conflictreduction may strengthen the regional states at the expense of pan- and subna-tional forces as a result of two major developments. The first one is that the aid


provided by the great powers as an inducement for participation in the peaceprocess increases the resources at the disposal of the local states, which they can usefor state-building. Such aid also increases the states’ ability and willingness to pre-vail over domestic-secessionists and external pan-national challenges to their states,using both sticks and carrots. Moreover, the external aid increases the support ofdomestic constituencies in the regional peace process due to the economic benefitsassociated with it. Similarly, the growing stability in the region attracts new invest-ments and may bring about an economic boom, thus broadening the domesticcoalitions supporting accommodation.

The second development is the decline in the political power and popular appealof revisionists and nationalists as the peace process progresses and various nationalproblems (related to territorial claims) are reduced and there is an increased senseof mutual security under the reassuring great power security umbrellaFa factorthat also contains the power of revisionist states. Thus, nationalist forces inside thestates that are taking part in the peace process are marginalized, and their power toobstruct these processes declines because the external enemies are less threateningand the substantive state-to-nation components of the conflict are in the process ofbeing reduced. For example, as refugees are resettled, there is a decline in thesupport for the guerrilla or terrorist organizations that have challenged state co-herence in the region; freedom of access to holy nationalist-religious sites reducesthe claim to control them exclusively. Growing segments of the public see the issuesin a more pragmatic light as security and economic state interests rather than asemotionally laden nationalist symbols on which compromise is neither feasible nordesirable. This progress may encourage and allow the local elites to show the nec-essary flexibility needed to proceed toward the resolution of the disputed state-to-nation issues and their territorial manifestations and, in turn, to allow for the es-tablishment of normal peace.

Normal peace is conducive to domestic liberalization of the regional states. As arecent study (Thompson 1996) shows, democratization in Scandinavia and NorthAmerica was preceded by the achievement of normal peace, which quelled therivalry among the states for regional hegemony. International threats reinforce thepower of antidemocratic forces in the domestic politics of states involved in pro-tracted conflict. The antidemocratic elements controlling the state use the externalthreats to justify limits to political freedom inside the state, supposedly to not un-dermine the internal unity vis-a-vis the external enemy. In contrast, a moderationin the level of external threats reduces both the necessity and the pretext forrepressing democratic opposition (Gurr 1988). Such an environment is also con-ducive to a growing trust among the regional states, allowing for the establishmentof regional institutions and the development of transnational relations and, as aresult, the evolution of warm peace.

It is possible to illustrate how the idea of a gradual progress toward a warm peacecan be implemented, for example, in the Middle East, using all three peacemakingstrategies successively. However, the reader should remember that such an imple-mentation is going to be an uphill battle because there are still strong forces thatincrease the state-to-nation asymmetry in the region: nationalist-irridentist claimson both sides, which advance competing proposals regarding boundaries and ter-ritories but, in fact, reinforce the political appeal of each other. As was suggestedearlier, these forces include Israeli settlers in the occupied territories and theirsupporters; Palestinian refugees who claim the right of return to Israel proper; andcompeting nationalist-religious elements struggling over the future of Jerusalem.

With this caveat in mind, let us proceed with the illustration. In the first stage, theUnited States can help in resolving the Palestinian problemFa major source ofinstability in the regionFby brokering a negotiated agreement on the establish-ment of a Palestinian state. Such a hegemonic-brokered settlement will probablyonly produce a cold peace. Yet, a clear-cut political separation between the two

BENJAMIN MILLER 257

parties (Israel and the Palestinians) is likely to reduce the points of potential clashamong them. US security guarantees and reassurances to both sides would benecessary to diminish their mutual fears and security dilemmas. The United Statescan also play an important role in monitoring the implementation of the agreementby both sides. The temporary deployment of a US-led NATO force in the Pales-tinian territories is the most credible mechanism for separating the two antagonistsand for providing an umbrella for an Israeli withdrawal while the Palestinians buildtheir institutions (Friedman 2002:8).

Over time, a normal peace may evolve to the extent that the demarcation ofrecognized boundaries and mutual recognition will confer legitimacy on each stateby the public of the other side. Having a state of their own will increase the Pal-estinians’ stake in the status quo (due to fears of what they can lose if they behaveaggressively) and reduce the appeal of the revisionist-irredentist forces, leading, inturn, to a reciprocal decline in the power of the revisionists inside Israel. Thefulfillment of the national aspirations of the Palestinians is likely also to diminish thepower of radical pan-Arabists and Islamists in the region given that fighting forthe stateless Palestinians has ostensibly been one of their main causes.

The Palestinian state, for its part, will have to disarm the remaining revisionistforces and, thus, establish a strong and coherent state that has a monopoly overthe means of violence inside its territory. Such a monopoly will reduce terroristactivities against Israelis and, in turn, increase their support for the peace process.The Palestinian state will also have to build effective institutions and create thecapacity to deliver social and economic services, increasing its domestic legitimacy.External powers will need to play an important role in providing aidFboth fi-nancial and expertiseFfor these purposes. But the success of this institution-building will eventually depend on the political and economic system of the Pal-estinians. Such a success is likely to help absorb many Palestinian refugees into theirown state and thus moderate their claim for exercising the right of return to Israel.Addressing the refugee problem will remove a major revisionist source of regionalinstability. In the early stages of the state-building, an immediate full-blowndemocratization might be too premature and even have destabilizing consequences.However, as soon as the institution-building reaches a certain level of maturity,liberalization, encouraged by the hegemon, has the possibility of producingthe conditions for a warm liberal peace, including some degree of economicintegration.

Conclusions

Table 3 summarizes the proposals that have been made in this essay with regard tothe Middle East, South America, and Western Europe by presenting the combinedeffects of the three key factors (the state-to-nation balance, great power engage-ment, and democracy) on regional war and peace in these regions and the pathwaysto peace.

This essay has established linkages between three mechanisms for regionalpeacemaking and three types of peace. No less important, the essay has specifiedthe conditions necessary for the effectiveness of these potential pathways topeace. One of the mechanisms is global (great power intervention in the form ofeither a great power concert or hegemony) and two are regional-domestic (regionalconflict resolution and regional integration). The regional-domestic strategies aremore desirable because they can bring about higher levels of peace, namely, normalpeace (by conflict resolution among strong and coherent states) or warm peace(through integration but only if it takes place among liberal democracies).The great power strategy can produce, at best, only a relatively low level of peace,that is, cold peace. Yet, the great power mechanism can be useful to the extent that


the regional strategies are not feasible. In some important regions this might bethe case.

For example, the Middle East is not ready yet for a Western European style ofregional integration leading to warm peace due to the weakness of all the liberalfactors in the region (especially the absence of liberal democracies, but also ofinternational institutions, economic interdependence, and transnational ties). Thus,former Israeli Prime Minister Peres’ (1993) idea of a ‘‘New Middle East’’ is pre-mature. Moreover, in the short term, democratization in the Middle East may bedestabilizing because it may weaken status quo elites and regimes and bring topower radical Islamic fundamentalist forces. Thus, it might also be undesirable forthe purpose of promoting regional peace.

At the same time, despite some considerable progress made in the Middle Eastpeace process during the 1990s, the regional actors have had a hard time resolvingthe regional state-to-nation problems on their own. There are still powerful na-tionalist-irredentist forces both in Israel and in the Arab world. There are alsostrong subnational forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq that challenge the stability ofthese states and make them incoherent. In such states, the regimes face powerfulnationalist and ethnic opposition, which constrains their ability to resolve conflictsfully and to establish normal peace with ex-enemies. Yet, so long as US hegemonyover the region prevails, there is a window of opportunity for the establishment of aregional cold peace, which may, in turn, facilitate progress toward normal peace,that is, settling the substantive state-to-nation issues in dispute between Israel andthe Arabs like sovereignty, boundaries, settlements, refugees, Jerusalem, and otherterritorial questions. Such a resolution will enhance the legitimacy of the regional

TABLE 3. Summary of the Causes of Peace in Three Regions

RegionState-to-NationBalance

Great PowerEngagement

Are KeyStates LiberalDemocracies

State ofRegionalWar/Peace

Pathway toPeace

Middle East1945–1990 Imbalance Competition No Hot/cold war1991–2003 Imbalance Hegemony No Cold peace US hegemony

Western EuropePre-1945 Imbalance Competition No Hot/cold warPost-1945 More balanced

(decline ofGerman ethnicnationalism;expulsion ofGermans fromEastern Europe,though Germanystill divided until1990)

Hegemony Yes From coldpeace towarm peace

From UShegemony tointegration bydemocracies

South AmericaNineteenthcentury

Nationallycongruent butweak states

Competition No Hot/cold war

Twentiethcentury

Nationallycongruent andstrong states

Competition No (thoughdemocratizationsince 1980s)

Normal peace Conflictresolution bystrong/congruentstates

BENJAMIN MILLER 259

order, strengthen local states, and reduce markedly the danger of war. Resolutionof the Palestinian refugee problem, for example, would diminish the reservoir ofnew recruits to guerrilla and terrorist organizations and, in turn, reduce Israelisecurity fears and increase its willingness to make concessions. A comprehensivesettlement of the Palestinian problem would reduce the opposition in the Arabworld to the establishment of normal peace with Israel. In the longer term, regionalconflict resolution and normal peace are favorable for the evolution of democra-tization and economic interdependence in the region, and thus for a gradualemergence of a warm peace in a ‘‘New Middle East,’’ even if very slowly and withmany ups and downs.

Similar to the Middle East, an active engagement of the great powers is crucial forstabilizing another region with acute state-to-nation problems: the Balkans. Such astabilization started to take place under supposed US hegemony in the late 1990s,although it might be more accurate to view the great power involvement in thatregion as a concert because of the heavy engagement of the Europeans and theUnited Nations in addition to the United States.

The case of South America shows that the presence of relatively strong, coherentstates and a relatively high degree of regional state-to-nation compatibility enables asuccessful process of conflict resolution to generate a normal peace, even if not aperfect one. Democratization under these conditions brings about a more successfulregional integration than among authoritarian states and, as a consequence, agradual emergence of a warm peace. Western Europe demonstrates that democ-racy is indeed the key for effective integration and the emergence of warm peace.But it also shows that a benign hegemon may be needed in the early stages to play acrucial role in the evolution of warm peace by facilitating the transition of formerarchenemies like France and Germany to peaceful and cooperative partners. In-tensive engagement by a hegemon in Europe in the post-World War II period wasmore critical than in twentieth century South America in making possible the dra-matic transition from a long history of hot and cold wars to a warm peace, with onlya relatively brief intermediate stage of normal peace. In South America, in contrast,the evolution of normal peace proceeded slowly over a long period of time, en-compassing almost the whole century. In the Middle East, however, due to thelengthy period of hot and cold wars and the severe problems of state-to-nationimbalances, intensive hegemonic involvement is essential to sustain a cold peace,making possible the evolution of the conditions for a normal peace. Yet, both theSouth American and the Western European cases show that beyond a certain pointit is up to the regional parties, rather than to global powers, to move the relations toa normal, let alone a warm, peace.

Agenda for Future Research

Future research should examine the theoretical pathways to regional peace pre-sented here in other regional settings such as various parts of Africa and Asia, theBalkans, and the Caucasus. These studies should further examine the distinctiveeffects of each of the factors addressed in this essay as well as their combined effect.Scholars should explore regions in different historical periods but also take a com-parative case approach to a set of regions at the same point in time. The latterapproach allows one to control for history, polarity, dominant technologies, andso on.

More specific studies could investigate the effects of the key factors described inthis essay in the following ways:

(1) Great Power EngagementFOne possibility is to examine all post-1945 re-gions as well as earlier distinctive eras according to the type of great powerengagement, exploring whether regions under great power hegemony


have, indeed, been more peaceful than those under great power compe-tition or disengagement. A key challenge would be to try to identifywhether there are any conditions under which hegemony or cooperationproduce higher degrees of peace than what is defined in this essay as coldpeace. Do such conditions hold even in cases of state-to-nation imbalancesand in the absence of democracy in all key states? And, under what con-ditions can regions reach cold peace in the absence of great power he-gemony or cooperation?

(2) State-to-Nation BalanceFConsider an investigation of the relations be-tween the state-to-nation balance and regional stability in all post-1945regions. Is a certain level of state-to-nation balance a prerequisite forwhat is defined here as normal peace? Are weak and nationally incon-gruent states able to maintain stable peace over time or do they facemajor challenges from instability that, even if initially domestic (forexample, civil wars), can have transborder-regional effects? Do statesthat succeed in state-building and nation-building serve as a stabilizingforce in a region? In this context, there is an important role for specialistsin comparative politics to collaborate with students of internationalrelations in identifying which states and regions have been more success-ful in these tasks so we are able to examine to what extent variations instate- and nation-building affect regional stability. There is a need tocontrol for economic factors and to investigate the causal relationsamong economic prosperity, state-to-nation imbalance, and violence: isthe real problem the poverty of states or the state-to-nation imbalance?For example, will China and India become more satisfied as they getricher and become more amenable to peaceful resolution of the key state-to-nation conflicts of Taiwan and Kashmir, or will the likelihood of warincrease in the absence of resolution of these conflicts as these states growricher and accumulate more power? If these conflicts are resolved, willChina and India be less likely to resort to violence even if they havemore power as the theoretical framework presented in this essay wouldexpect?

(3) DemocratizationFIs democratization able to overcome the destabilizingeffects of the state-to-nation imbalance, or will it only aggravate the prob-lems associated with such imbalances? Another area in which collabora-tion between those studying comparative politics and internationalrelations would pay off is in the examination of the effects of hegemonicliberal great powers on democratization in the development of regionalpeace. Since the third wave of democracy started about three decades ago(Huntington 1991), we have a rich record of states that have gonethrough democratization and, thus, a fruitful arena in which to do re-search. An interesting region in which to explore many of these questionsas well as the logic of the gradual integrated approach suggested earlier isthe Balkans, stabilized in the late 1990s by Western military interventionthat was followed by steps to resolve outstanding state-to-nation issues aswell as to move the resulting countries toward democratization. What arethe effects of these changes on the degree and level of regional peace, andwhat are the causal relations between conflict resolution and democra-tization? The evolving situation in Iraq also provides us with a place to testthe relations among the key variables discussed here (hegemonic inter-vention, state- and nation-building, and democratization) and their effectson domestic and regional peace. Thus far, the Iraqi case shows some of theopportunities but also the limitations on the ability of a hegemon to de-mocratize and pacify a state with major internal and external state-to-nation imbalances.

BENJAMIN MILLER 261

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When and How Regions Become Peaceful: Potential Theoretical Pathways to Peace

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