Divided We Stand: A Typology of Strategies

to Deal with Cleavages in the Armed Forces

 

The Center on American and Global Security is pleased to announce our next talk in cooperation with SPEA:

Divided We Stand: A Typology of Strategies to Deal with Cleavages in the Armed Forces

Professor Hendrik Spruyt
April 19 at 5:30 p.m.
Woodburn Hall 120

Hendrik Spruyt is the Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations and Director of the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University.

The number of national communities far outnumbers the number of territorial states. Thus, while each state seeks to exercise a monopoly of force within its borders, it must reconcile different, and sometimes conflicting, identities of ethnicity, clan, tribe, race, and region. The talk highlights how multi-ethnic states in the past, and contemporary fragile states have tried to forge a national security apparatus in divided societies.

The diversity of strategies that central governments use or have used to try to redress the problem is bewildering. Consequently, we need to first typologize the various strategies that might be deployed to ameliorate the problem facing composite polities--polities that are socially divided with such groups having their own means of violence. We will then briefly highlight the logic of choosing particular strategies, as well as their consequences.