PREDICTING FUTURE CONFLICTS
My initial explanatory framework was developed in the mid-1990s, some years before Serbia's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. When the Serbian repertoire shifted in 1998 and 1999, however, its trajectory was consistent with my explanation. As Serbia had demonstrated early on in the Sandžak and Vojvodina, it would not resort to ethnic cleansing in territories under its empirical and juridical sovereignty, nor would it permit paramilitary freelancing. As the Bosnian case demonstrated, however, the most radical tenets of Serbian nationalism were bound to emerge in areas where Serbian power was least secure. As Kosovo moved from center to the margins of Serbian state power, the danger of outright destruction mounted. When NATO launched its air war in March 1999, therefore, Serbia's ethnic cleansing effort was, unfortunately, to be expected. Kosovo was on the verge of escaping Serbian domination, the West had turned against Serbia, and international human rights sensitivities no longer mattered. When NATO resolved to send no ground troops to physically protect Albanian civilians from Serbian assault, the Bosnian tragedy repeated itself once again. This time, however, the West was more committed to reversing ethnic cleansing, and Kosovo's refugees did eventually return home. Their homes and lives had been shattered, but reconstruction was a real possibility.
Israel's recent interventions in the West Bank and Gaza are also consistent with this book's explanatory framework. The 1993 Oslo declaration of principles created islands of Palestinian sovereignty, and these expanded as Israel withdrew from a handful of densely populated towns, as well as some 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. Oslo, in other words, had begun to reverse Palestine's ghetto status. As Palestinians increasingly moved to the margins of Israel's zone of control, however, the threat to their physical security worsened. When the second Palestinian uprising erupted in fall 2000, the implications of their transformation from ghetto to frontier became clear. Today, Israeli commandos mount shoot-to-kill raids in regions controlled by the Palestinian authority, missiles strike Palestinian towns, and helicopters use machine guns