INTERVENTION ACROSS BISECTING BORDERS

Case studies of the 1828-9 and 1877-8 Russian interventions in Turkey- in-Europe and of the 1947-8 and 1965 Pakistani interventions in Kashmi r show that revisionist states which intervene in communal strife acro ss nation-bisecting borders do set at considerable cost to their power /security interests despite minimal opportunity for offsetting or last ing gains at the expense of the target state. These interventions cann ot be attributed to miscalculation as revisionist state leaders are aw are of external constraints that limit the possible gains while height ening the risks of intervention. This is contrary to both traditional realist and neorealist theory. The finding is important because it exp licitly demonstrates that nationalism and domestic politics are of cau sal importance in some classes of war that realist theory does not exp lain. Nationalism influences intervention via a three-stage process in which communal/ethnic strife in the target state diffuses across the bisecting border, then mobilizes public opinion and non-state actors i n the revisionist state; finally, it pressures state leaders to adopt hardline policies at adds with their own past policies towards the tar get state. This process model reveals a more complex nexus between dom estic and international politics than conventional second-image models allow for.