Understanding Ethnic Conflict : The International Dimension

The completely updated new edition of this groundbreaking text provides students with a clear analytical framework for understanding ethnic conflicts and how they affect international relations. This text surveys theories of nationalism and ethnic conflict and tests their applicability to a number of contemporary cases: the more confident nationalism of Putin's Russia, the intensification of ethnic war in Sri Lanka, and the struggle to change the face of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia, to name just a few. After a look at the sources of nationalist conflict in a country, each case study then asks how the international system reacted. Taken as a whole, the book examines how successful the international system has been in managing the many ethnic conflicts that erupted after the Cold War. The conclusion of the new edition focuses on the dilemma facing U.S. foreign policy makers as the Bush administration begins: whether and where to intervene to combat ultra-nationalism and promote liberal internationalism.

Ray Taras is professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans Rajat Ganguly is Lecturer in the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England