From the 1998 Journal of International Security, Chaim Kauffman gives something of a defense of population transfer (aka ethnic cleansing) as reducing violence. I haven’t actually read it yet, but his case studies that critics tend to bring up are Ireland, India, Palestine and Cyprus.
Hat-tip to Zachary Latif.
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September 12, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Reminds me of Jerry Muller’s “Us and Them” from 3 years ago in Foreign Affairs. The original article is firewalled (though it can be found with a little browsing), but here’s a lengthy response in the same magazine and his brief rejoinder is at the end.
September 14, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Reminds me of this on the nebulous claims of the “diversity” or “homogeneity” of various places, although papers I link to there did come up with a sort of measurement to use as a correlate with various outcomes.
September 18, 2011 at 9:13 am
There’s a slight difference between agreed-upon population transfer and ethnic cleansing. That mr. Kauffman wishes to defend the latter as well as the former is interesting. I see he also has creative ideas on how to partition more states in the Middle East in order to save the people from themselves and create peaaaace. Hee hee.
September 18, 2011 at 10:23 pm
Didn’t read the link, but I think our game is a bit more nuanced than “reducing violence”.
September 18, 2011 at 10:24 pm
If someone was simply asking whether something reduces conflict in the future, both voluntary and coerced cleansing can do the job (the eastern volkdeutsch are an example where we all basically accept that the result was for the best that it was ugly in the making).
H.A, you must have posted your comment just a second before mine. I don’t know what “our game” is, but managing violent conflict is an interesting enough topic in its own right.
September 25, 2011 at 4:53 am
Well my game is persistence, not managing violent conflict as diversion.
September 26, 2011 at 12:02 am
Ok.