[The eastern Ukraine conflict] is not a “civil war” in the sense of “inherent ethnic tensions exploded into a war in a way we always knew they would” as would be the case in the former Yugoslavia, say.
I think that’s wrong, but wrong in an interesting and ultimately informative way!
While diplomats, politicians & journalists at the time did sometimes explain the Yugoslav wars of succession as an outburst of long-standing ethnic tensions, Western scholars regard such tensions as only a minor cause of the wars. (I can dig up a range of quotations to back that up but, as you might be the only person to read this, I won’t bother unless someone asks.)
What did cause the wars? A combination of things: chauvinist nationalisms, struggles between centralist & anti-centralist Yugoslav leaders, economic stagnation, the dwindling credibility of Communism at the end of the 1980s, and yes, deeply rooted ethnic antagonisms to a limited degree. But foremost among the causes was a coalition drawn loosely together by Slobodan Milošević to further Serb nationalism, which included other politicians, intellectuals, militaries, state media, and irredentists in republics adjacent to Serbia.
By manoeuvring actors in the coalition into fighting for them, Milošević and other Serbian politicians helped engineer the wars, first by allowing the Yugoslav People’s Army into Slovenia when Slovenia declared independence, then by arming irredentist Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina and nudging them to secede, generating a pretext to (1) attempt to disarm Croatia and B&H, and (2) send the increasingly Serbified army into Croatia and B&H, all in the guise of peacekeeping.
Why do I delve into all that? Because it actually has an uncanny resemblance to the eastern Ukraine conflict, as I understand it. As in ex-Yugoslavia, people overblow the ethno-linguistic uniformity of the regions involved when seeking to explain the violence. As in ex-Yugoslavia, the leaders of a large republic prop up a rebellion in an adjacent smaller republic. As in ex-Yugoslavia, the fighting seems to involve a mixture of units from a neighbour’s army and small bands of undisciplined irregulars, as opposed to a sweeping war of all against all. As in ex-Yugoslavia, state-controlled media outlets stir the shit and skew their coverage of the conflict.
As best as I can tell as a distant layperson, the eastern Ukrainian conflict indeed isn’t a “‘civil war’ in the sense of ’inherent ethnic tensions explod[ing] into a war in a way we always knew they would” — but neither were the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, and partly for this reason the two conflicts turn out to be surprisingly apposite analogues of each other.
July 2015 edit: changed “sending the Yugoslav People’s Army into Slovenia” to “allowing the Yugoslav People’s Army into Slovenia”; although the Serb-nationalist coalition did not block the army’s entry to Slovenia, it was Ante Marković (the Yugoslav federal prime minister, who was not a member of that coalition and indeed increasingly isolated by it) whoinitiatedthe attempted invasion.
I think that’s wrong, but wrong in an interesting and ultimately informative way!
While diplomats, politicians & journalists at the time did sometimes explain the Yugoslav wars of succession as an outburst of long-standing ethnic tensions, Western scholars regard such tensions as only a minor cause of the wars. (I can dig up a range of quotations to back that up but, as you might be the only person to read this, I won’t bother unless someone asks.)
What did cause the wars? A combination of things: chauvinist nationalisms, struggles between centralist & anti-centralist Yugoslav leaders, economic stagnation, the dwindling credibility of Communism at the end of the 1980s, and yes, deeply rooted ethnic antagonisms to a limited degree. But foremost among the causes was a coalition drawn loosely together by Slobodan Milošević to further Serb nationalism, which included other politicians, intellectuals, militaries, state media, and irredentists in republics adjacent to Serbia.
By manoeuvring actors in the coalition into fighting for them, Milošević and other Serbian politicians helped engineer the wars, first by allowing the Yugoslav People’s Army into Slovenia when Slovenia declared independence, then by arming irredentist Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina and nudging them to secede, generating a pretext to (1) attempt to disarm Croatia and B&H, and (2) send the increasingly Serbified army into Croatia and B&H, all in the guise of peacekeeping.
Why do I delve into all that? Because it actually has an uncanny resemblance to the eastern Ukraine conflict, as I understand it. As in ex-Yugoslavia, people overblow the ethno-linguistic uniformity of the regions involved when seeking to explain the violence. As in ex-Yugoslavia, the leaders of a large republic prop up a rebellion in an adjacent smaller republic. As in ex-Yugoslavia, the fighting seems to involve a mixture of units from a neighbour’s army and small bands of undisciplined irregulars, as opposed to a sweeping war of all against all. As in ex-Yugoslavia, state-controlled media outlets stir the shit and skew their coverage of the conflict.
As best as I can tell as a distant layperson, the eastern Ukrainian conflict indeed isn’t a “‘civil war’ in the sense of ’inherent ethnic tensions explod[ing] into a war in a way we always knew they would” — but neither were the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, and partly for this reason the two conflicts turn out to be surprisingly apposite analogues of each other.
July 2015 edit: changed “sending the Yugoslav People’s Army into Slovenia” to “allowing the Yugoslav People’s Army into Slovenia”; although the Serb-nationalist coalition did not block the army’s entry to Slovenia, it was Ante Marković (the Yugoslav federal prime minister, who was not a member of that coalition and indeed increasingly isolated by it) who initiated the attempted invasion.