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A zero-sum game?

By Sumantra Bose

Events in South Ossetia demonstrate that greater cooperation, at both the global and regional level, is required to prevent the escalation of conflicts between territorial integrity and self-determination

Kosovo's declaration of independence in February 2008 opened up deep divisions in the international state system. This was not fundamentally the result of disagreements of principle over the general issue of self-determination versus the territorial integrity of existing states, or even the particular merits or otherwise of the Kosovo case.

The controversy over Kosovo was driven by competitive geopolitics, at a time when the global political order is in a state of flux. The most vociferous opponent of Kosovo's independence among the world's major states, Russia, took the opportunity-served on a platter by the government of Georgia-to pay back the US and the EU states that supported Kosovo's independence in their own coin by recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008.

A scenario in which disputes over autonomy and sovereignty become weapons of competitive geopolitics has troubling implications, for several interrelated reasons.

First, it makes these disputes even more prone to escalation, and/or less amenable to negotiation and compromise, than they already are. Second, it provides the players in these disputes an incentive to seek to actively exploit wider geopolitical tensions and rivalries to their own advantage, if the difference between success and failure for a state-seeking group is determined by whether or not a major power, or a critical mass of countries led by a major power, provide endorsement and support for their agenda.

The phenomenon is in itself not new-the mainstream Zionist movement in mandatory Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s pursued a strategy of cultivating Great Britain, and the northern part of Cyprus has survived as a de facto separate entity since 1974 with Turkey's protection and patronage.

But the manner in which the Kosovo and South Ossetia crises have unfolded in 2008 has, possibly, raised the matter of struggles between states seeking to maintain territorial integrity and movements seeking to realise separate statehood to an unprecedented level of the geopolitical game.

The enthusiastic endorsement of Kosovo's sovereignty, in particular, leaves the US open to charges of selective morality and double standards. It is, of course, true that the ethno-national community comprising a huge majority in Kosovo insists unanimously on the maximal version of self-determination, and that the February 2008 declaration of independence followed in the wake of a 2007 recommendation of "independence, to be supervised for an initial period by the international community" by the UN special envoy for Kosovo.

However, while such a policy can be applied vis-à-vis a small and vulnerable state like Serbia, it is inconceivable vis-à-vis large and powerful states such as India or China, which also harbour state-seeking movements that cite injustice and oppression.

A policy of highly selective endorsement of claims to self-determination also serves to increase unrealistic hopes among other claimant groups-a possible trigger to exacerbated conflict-and to increase the frustration of those (very few) groups, such as the Palestinians, who do have an unimpeachable case for statehood. As a veteran of the Palestinian national struggle commented last February: "Kosovo is not better than Palestine."

It would nonetheless be a mistake, even in this era of growing multi-polarity, to dismiss or under-estimate the role of the US as the sole global superpower.

In 1999, the dispute over Kashmir led to a limited military conflict between India and Pakistan; in 2002, the two countries again mobilised their armed forces, in another confrontation rooted in the Kashmir dispute. On both occasions, American diplomacy played a constructive role in ending the crises and averting the risk of escalation in a nuclearised subcontinent. That was possible because the US held direct leverage with Pakistan's regime and influence with India's leadership, a unique position not enjoyed by any other external party.

The prospect of realising an equitable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, the festering sore of the Middle East, during the next few years hinges crucially on a purposeful and even-handed American role. And it took a decisive American intervention to push through the settlement-negotiated in November 1995 on an US air force base in Dayton, Ohio-that ended the Bosnian war, the European continent's worst armed conflict since 1945. That intervention followed three years of unfruitful efforts by EU countries and institutions to terminate the Bosnian conflict.

This is not to say that the world needs a global fixer. In fact, most disputes that pit territorial integrity against self-determination can be effectively tackled at the regional level, either with the parties to such a dispute acting in concert to find a compromise, or through a broader network of intra-regional cooperation.

One reason why a senseless civil war such as the one in Sri Lanka, for example, drags on is the absence of a south Asian regional mechanism to aid in finding a settlement (the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, SAARC, is woefully underdeveloped). The Bosnian peace engineered by America is today guaranteed by the European Union, and Bosnia's long-term security lies in the integration of Bosnia and its neighboring states into the EU framework.

Indeed, the Bosnian case shows that even the most difficult dilemmas between territorial integrity and ethno-national self-determination can be managed through compromise solutions. The same applies to Kashmir, where a combination of internal autonomy and power-sharing and external cross-border institutions constitutes a necessary and sufficient solution. Conflicts between territorial integrity and self-determination don't have to be a zero-sum game. The key is less unilateralism and greater cooperation, at both regional and global levels.

Sumantra Bose is professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science