Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy against Separatists (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) - Softcover

Butt, Ahsan I.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501755218 ISBN 13: 9781501755217

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2021

Synopsis

In Secession and Security, Ahsan I. Butt argues that states rather than separatists determine whether a secessionist struggle will be peaceful, violent, or genocidal. He investigates the strategies, ranging from negotiated concessions to large-scale repression, adopted by states in response to separatist movements. Variations in the external security environment, Butt argues, influenced the leaders of the Ottoman Empire to use peaceful concessions against Armenians in 1908 but escalated to genocide against the same community in 1915; caused Israel to reject a Palestinian state in the 1990s; and shaped peaceful splits in Czechoslovakia in 1993 and the Norway-Sweden union in 1905.

Butt focuses on two main cases―Pakistani reactions to Bengali and Baloch demands for independence in the 1970s and India's responses to secessionist movements in Kashmir, Punjab, and Assam in the 1980s and 1990s. Butt's deep historical approach to his subject will appeal to policymakers and observers interested in the last five decades of geopolitics in South Asia, the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and ethno-national conflict, separatism, and nationalism more generally.

About this title

About the Author

Ahsan I. Butt is Associate Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501755218
• ISBN 13: 9781501755217
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308