Debating Partition: Justifications and Critiques
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Centre for International Borders Research Papers produced as part of the project Mapping frontiers, plotting pathways: routes to North-South cooperation in a divided island DEBATING PARTITION: JUSTIFICATIONS AND CRITIQUES Brendan O’Leary Project supported by the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation and administered by the Higher Education Authority, 2004-06 WORKING PAPER 28 DEBATING PARTITION: JUSTIFICATIONS, CRITIQUES & EVALUATION Brendan O’Leary MFPP Working Papers No. 28, 2006 (also printed as IBIS working paper no. 78) © the author Mapping Frontiers, Plotting Pathways Working Paper No. 28, 2006 (also printed as IBIS working paper no. 78) Institute for British-Irish Studies Institute of Governance ISSN 1649-0304 Geary Institute for the Social Sciences Centre for International Borders Research University College Dublin Queen’s University Belfast ABSTRACT BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION DEBATING PARTITION: Brendan O’Leary , BA (Oxon), MA (UPenn, hon), PhD (LSE), is Lauder Professor of JUSTIFICATIONS AND CRITIQUES Political Science and Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Eth- nopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of 15 Political partitions—fresh political borders cut through at least one community’s books, most recently Terror, insurgency and the state, co-edited with Marianne homeland—have been regularly commended to resolve national, ethnic and com- Heiberg and John Tirman (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), Understanding munal conflicts. The strongest five political arguments in their favor are presented in Northern Ireland: colonialism, control and consociation, co-authored with John this article. The neglected question of how partitions may be implemented is also McGarry (Routledge, 2007 ), The future of Kurdistan in Iraq, co-edited with John considered. Then the seven most powerful political arguments of anti-partitionists McGarry and Khaled Salih (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), and The are treated. Partition should only be considered when there is a high degree of con- Northern Ireland conflict, co-authored with John McGarry (Oxford University Press, fidence that genocide or mass expulsions will occur, and its proponents should con- 2004). An Irish citizen, O’Leary is engaged on a long-term comparative and histori- sider that preparing for partition may precipitate the awful outcomes it is nominally cal research project with John McGarry on state strategies confronted with national, intended to prevent. ethnic, religious, linguistic and communal differences. O’Leary has assimilated into writing in American English, though he speaks Irish English. Publication information Revised version of portion of a paper presented at final conference of the Mapping frontiers, plotting pathways: routes to North-South cooperation in a divided island programme, City Hotel, Armagh, 19-20 January 2006, which in turn extended and revised a paper presented at the Keough Conference on Partition and memory: Ire- land, India and Palestine , University of Notre Dame, December 6-9 2001. The program is funded by the Special EU Programmes Body through the Higher Education Authority over the period 2004-06. Acknowledgements I am grateful to J McGarry (as always), to participants at the Notre Dame confer- ence, especially M Burgess, Seamus Deane, J Kipp, M O’Callaghan, and J Smyth; at the Armagh conference, especially J Coakley and L. O’Dowd; and to K Adeney, S Bose, Shelley Deane, A Goldstein, GW Jones, JA Hall, R Kumar, N Kasfir, IS Lus- tick, T Mabry, M Moore, J Nagel, R Smith and S Wolff. MFPP WORKING PAPERS NO. 28, 2006 labeled historicist; “last resort”; net cost-benefit; “better tomorrow”; and the “rigorous DEBATING PARTITION: end”. The distinctive nature of the last of these leads me to describe it as “the fifth argument”. Pleading the fifth is typical of the justifications of partitions that have JUSTIFICATIONS, CRITIQUES AND EVALUATION happened. Brendan O’Leary The historicist argument Historicism, as defined and criticized by Karl Popper (1957), assumes that we can INTRODUCTION know that history is necessarily tending in a given direction. Many partitionists are historicists. They believe that nationalist, ethnic or communal conflicts, once started, Political partition has been defined as a fresh political border cut through at least will end in partition (or worse, genocide). They detect partitionist tendencies in resi- one community’s national homeland. It is thereby distinguished from adjacent but dential, educational and employment segregation, in the formation of nationalist, distinct phenomena, such as secessions which are attempted within existing recog- ethnic or communal parties, and in the overheating of political systems with the de- nized units (O’Leary, 2001: 54; O’Leary, 2005b). Explanations of partitions, both in mands of what WH Auden’s poem on “Partition” satirizes as “peoples fanatically at particular and in general, are recurrent in political science and history (Mansergh, odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods ”. 1997a; Fraser, 1984; Hasan, 2002). This paper, by contrast, asks not what parti- tions are, nor why they take place, but rather focuses on the arguments that are Historicism shapes argument because it is seen as both informed and realistic. That used to justify them. It begins by examining the range of arguments that have been partition is inevitable, or is already happening, that facts have already been estab- advanced to justify partition, describes the characteristic methods of partitionists, lished “on the ground”, are assumptions that may persuade policy makers that the and reviews the principal anti-partitionist arguments. process should be speeded up to reduce the pain involved. In 1993 two advocates of the partition of Bosnia and of “populations transfers”, John J Mearsheimer and Robert A Pape, maintained that “transfer is already occurring. … The only question JUSTIFICATIONS OF PARTITION is whether it will be organized, as envisioned by partition, or left to the murderous methods of the ethnic cleansers” (Mearsheimer and Pape, 1993). Similarly, in 1998, The arguments which follow evaluate the merits of the partitionist case. Particular an exponent of partition argued that “ethnic wars always separate the warring com- attention is paid to the methods proposed to achieve partitions. The typical critical munities”, so it is not a question of “whether the groups will be separated but how” response to partition proposals and consequences are then considered. The evi- (Kaufmann, 1998: 123). It is a tempting argument, especially when extensive clean- dence and the arguments suggest that anti-partitionists are more realistic, politically sing is afoot by militias, paramilitaries or police, but it cannot be a knock-down ar- prudent and wise. Throughout, the temptation to caricature is avoided, though there gument in the absence of evidence that all segregation—voluntary or forced—leads are some easy targets, because some appear to make a habit of arguing for parti- inevitably to the break-up of states. tion amid any heated ethnic conflict. For example, Lord Carrington advocated the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa; and the UK journalist Anatole Lieven has argued for the partition of both Chechnya and Kosovo. But, just as no- The “last resort” argument one is a relentless advocate of divorce at the slightest hint of disagreement between The “last resort” thesis, unlike the first, explicitly acknowledges that alternative poli- couples, equally there are no truly relentless partitionists who argue for the partition cies and strategies exist to manage or resolve national, ethnic or communal con- 1 of a national homeland at the slightest hint of ethnonational or group conflict. flicts. It suggests that these alternatives should be attempted before partition is con- Rhetoric, according to Aristotle, is argument deployed when, uncertain of our prem- sidered. It maintains that partition should be pursued to avoid genocide or large- ises, we must persuade one another to take some course of action. Uncertainty cer- scale ethnic expulsions (outcomes universally acknowledged to be the worst possi- tainly characterizes the typical situations in which partition (or re-partition) is pro- ble outcomes). This argument is a version of “triage” in public health: let us cut posed. where we can to save what can be saved. So what are the most powerful partitionist arguments for regulating or resolving eth- Recent academic arguments sometimes make the triagist case through quasi- 2 nonational and communal antagonisms? In order, these arguments may fairly be formal development of what is called the “security dilemma” (for example Jervis, 1978; Posen, 1993; Kaufmann, 1996a, 1996b, 1998). It is suggested that in condi- tions of emergent anarchy, for example when an empire or a regime is collapsing, a 1 Those who reject marriage and the state are not partitionists, but rather “anogamous” and anarchist. security dilemma may emerge among ethnic groups akin to that of individuals in a 2 That is arguments made in defense of partitions of multinational polities. Parallel appraisals of arguments Hobbesian state of nature. One community, distrustful of another, will take action to are underway on secessions, national liberations, pluralist federations, and consociations (e.g. McGarry and enhance its security, which will enhance the insecurity of the other communities, O’Leary, 2005, O’Leary, 2005a). MFPP WORKING PAPER NO. 28 -2-