International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   The initial post-Cold War epoch in international relations seems to have ended much as it began: with a major geopolitical shift, triggered in large measure by the forces of nationalism. Twenty years ago, nationalist mobilization helped fell the Soviet superpower and end the epoch-defining East–West rivalry, while ethnic conflict rearranged borders, and peoples, across the post-communist regions in its aftermath (on nationalism and the USSR's collapse, see Suny 1993 ; on Czechoslovakia's dissolution, see Kraus and Stanger 2000 ; on the Yugoslav breakup, see Ramet 2002 ). But after these initial shocks, most international relations scholars saw a region that was generally on a path toward political stabilization and international integration. This belief was reflected in the predominance of research on democratization and civil society, privatization and economic transition, and integration with the EU (with most viewing the 1999 Kosovo War and the province's subsequent secession not as a harbinger of continuing ethnic strife, but merely as “unfinished business” from the early 1990s). Yet now, nearly two decades after communism's collapse, a simmering ethnic conflict in Georgia has sparked another major geopolitical shift. And this was not just another “leftover” secession, but one that set off a violent war with an increasingly nationalist Russia, ... log in or subscribe to read full text