The benefits of ethnic war - Understanding Eurasia's unrecognized states

Within international relations, discussions about how civil wars end have f ocused mainly on the qualities of the belligerents (ethnicity commitment to the cause) or on the strategic environment of decision making (security di lemmas). Work in sociology and development economics, however, has highligh ted the importance of war economies and the functional role of violence. Th is article combines these approaches by examining the mechanisms through wh ich the chaos of war becomes transformed into networks of profit, and throu gh which these in turn become hardened into the institutions of quasi state s. The first section offers a brief overview of current research on civil w ar endings. The second section outlines the course of four Eurasian wars an d identifies the de facto states that have arisen after them: the republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (in Azerbaijan), the Dnestr Moldovan republic (in Moldo va), and the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (in Georgia). The thir d section analyzes the pillars of state building in each case: the politica l economy of weak states, the role of external actors, the mythologizing fu nction of cultural and educational institutions, and the complicity of cent ral governments. The concluding section suggests lessons that these cases m ight hold for further study of intrastate violence.