OVERVIEW
Chapter 1 discusses relevant theoretical issues in greater depth, using a modest amount of academic terminology. Then, Part I, comprised of Chapters 2 through 5, argues that the interaction between Serb nationalism, which pushed Serbian officials to promote Bosnian ethnic cleansing, and Western recognition of Bosnian sovereignty, which prohibited Serb cross-border activity, created two distinct institutional settings: a Bosnian frontier and a Serbian core. The core was Serbia, senior partner in the new rump Yugoslavia, [18] while the frontier was Bosnia, situated to the west of the newly created international border. Bosnia became a frontier in 1992 because the new, Muslim-led Bosnian government was enfeebled, and the new Bosnian Serb entity, later known as Republika Srpska, was just emerging. As a result, the eastern and northwest parts of Bosnia were largely controlled by local Bosnian Serb fighters working with roving, semi-private paramilitaries from Serbia proper. Both were
Chapter 3 includes a discussion of one of the most hotly debated issues of the Bosnian war, the links between the Belgrade government and ethnic Serb fighters in Bosnia. Human rights activists and journalists have made considerable efforts to prove Belgrade's connection to Serb forces in Bosnia, a task complicated by the dearth of relevant documentation. These intensive legal investigations, however, have helped obscure the broader sociological importance of Serbia's clandestine links. The lack of public chains of command-and-control between Belgrade and Bosnia indicate the extent to which Belgrade's cross-border activities were driven underground by Western recognition of Bosnia's sovereignty. Covert linkages allowed Serbia to remain involved in Bosnia, but ensured that the region was not officially Serbia's responsibility. Once forced into an underground, illegitimate social space, ethnic Serb fighters encountered new opportunities and constraints. Secrecy helped them conduct ethnic cleansing in defiance of state and international norms, but illegitimacy prevented them from laying official claim to their conquests once the fighting ended.
Chapters 4 and 5 test my argument by examining patterns of nationalist violence inside the Serbian core. Here, the Serbian political elite's responsibilities for human rights abuses were clear and the setting was more heavily institutionalized. During the early part of the 1990s, when the Bosnian war was at its height, the state prevented Serbian paramilitaries in Kosovo, the Sandžak, and Vojvodina from using Bosnia-style methods against non-Serb populations. As Chapter 5 explains, however, Kosovo's institutional setting changed in 1998–99 from ghetto to frontier through a combination of Kosovo Albanian and international actions. The result was a full-scale Serbian ethnic cleansing effort.
In Part II, Chapters 6 to 8 discuss the emergence of the Palestinian ghetto and patterns of Israeli violence, including its 1988 policing campaign in the West Bank and Gaza. The introduction to Part II briefly surveys the rise of radical Jewish nationalism in the late 1970s and 1980s, while Chapter 6 traces the emergence of a Palestinian ghetto enclave during those same years. Palestinian militants tried and failed to disrupt Israel's ghetto-formation policies through armed rebellion, and then also failed to gain international recognition of their sovereignty. Chapter 7 analyses Israel's ghetto policing tactics, while Chapter 8 probes two alternatives