Frozen conflict

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Geopolitical map of Eastern Europe and adjacent areas (2014) with the zones of the "frozen conflicts" ( Transnistria , Crimea , Abkhazia and South Ossetia (numbers 1–4) as well as Nagorno-Karabakh (shown as a shaded region in Azerbaijan ), Northern Cyprus (lighter area in Cyprus ) and of Kosovo (white area south of Serbia). Israel and the Palestinian territories are also entered.)

A frozen conflict is a situation between states or state-like entities in which a previous violent conflict (usually a military conflict ) has been replaced by a (relative) ceasefire. It is characteristic that “there are hardly any political and only a few social relationships between the conflicting parties with incompatible legal concepts ( territorial integrity of internationally recognized states versus the right of peoples to self-determination )”. A useful criterion is the current absence of massive use of force in order to “solve” the conflict through an armed victory and a new monopoly of power .

Even if final or provisional agreements such as a ceasefire exist, the frozen conflict can "thaw" again as long as international treaties or military conquests are not accepted or tolerated by the population and at least one of the conflicting parties appears to make a new attempt at a revision by war .

In English , “frozen conflict” is also used for long-term territorial conflicts .

Examples

The term is used, among other things, for conflicts that have arisen from the collapse of the Soviet Union , which is particularly true of the Transnistrian conflict . This conflict arose from the fact that an area that previously belonged to the Soviet Union formed a state predominantly inhabited by a Romanian- speaking population ( Moldova ), while the Russian-speaking minority east of the Dniester did not agree with the new power structures in Moldova. Transnistria is not recognized by any UN member state and is de jure part of the Republic of Moldova .

Two “frozen conflicts” in the Caucasus are the territorial dispute between Georgia on the one hand and the breakaway and internationally unrecognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia . In the Caucasus there is another “frozen” conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is supported by Armenia and separated from Azerbaijan . Russia was involved in all three territorial disputes and has supported the separatists ever since. Russia uses these conflicts to maintain its influence in the post-Soviet space and to exert pressure on the governments of neighboring states. In contrast, geographically more distant actors such as the EU have comparatively little interest in these areas and invest little diplomatic attention and resources in solving these conflicts.

The Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea is the subject of a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia. Crimea was occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014 and has been de facto under Russian control since then, although Crimea continues to be recognized internationally as part of Ukraine. Some commentators see the fighting over the Ukrainian local authorities of Donetsk and Luhansk , where the de facto regimes of the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic arose during the course of the war in Ukraine , as a “frozen conflict”. Other commentators, however, reject the name because neither Russia nor Ukraine have come to terms with the status quo and the fighting continues in the areas. In July 2018, Ukrainian President Poroshenko expressed the expectation that the world would understand that this “hot war” in eastern Ukraine with almost daily deaths is not a frozen conflict.

Another example of a protracted territorial conflict is the Korean conflict : North and South Korea claim - although they have been divided for decades on the dividing line of the 38th parallel through the middle of the Korean peninsula - both to represent the entire country politically.

The Hallstein Doctrine and Ulbricht Doctrine were also signs of a frozen conflict with their goal of enforcing the respective claim to sole representation during the division of Germany .

Other examples relate to non-military conflicts and are multinational: this includes the division of natural resources under the Arctic .

A historical example of a war that was interrupted for a long time by a temporary "freeze" is the Eighty Years War between the Netherlands and Spain , which lasted from 1568 to 1648 and was "frozen" between 1609 and 1621 by a twelve-year armistice.

literature

  • Frozen conflicts : special issue by mulitipolar. Journal for Critical Security Research, Issue 1/2017, Potsdamer Wissenschaftsverlag, ISSN  2511-6363 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Egbert Jahn : Peace through the normative power of military force? The South Caucasus after the August War . In: Jochen Hippler , Christiane Fröhlich, Margret Johannsen, Bruno Schoch, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder (eds.): Friedensgutachten 2009 , p. 86f. LIT Verlag Münster 2009, ISBN 3643100876 ( online at Google Books).
  2. ^ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde : Ost-Europa, Volume 57, Issue 11 , p. 112. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , 2007 ( online at Google Books).
  3. ↑ Simon Tisdall: This dangerous new world of self-interested nations . The Guardian. September 22, 2010. Retrieved March 22, 2014.
  4. ^ North and South Korea: A Frozen Conflict on the Verge of Unfreezing? . Isn.ethz.ch. Retrieved March 22, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b Europe: Frozen conflicts . The Economist. November 19, 2008. Retrieved March 22, 2014.
  6. ↑ a b The frozen conflicts of the EU's Eastern neighborhood and their impact on the respect of human rights . European Parliament, April 2016.
  7. ↑ Power politics Russia and the "frozen conflicts" . In: Deutschlandrundfunk , October 15, 2014.
  8. ↑ Hannes Adomeit: The States in the Caucasus . In: Federal Agency for Civic Education , May 2, 2011.
  9. ^ A b S. Neil MacFarlane: Frozen Conflicts in the Former Soviet Union - the Case of Georgia / South Ossetia . In: OSCE Yearbook 2008 , January 2009, p. 25. doi: 10.5771 / 9783845220413-23 .
  10. ^ Emil Aslan Souleimanov, Eduard Abrahamyan and Huseyn Aliyev: Unrecognized states as a means of coercive diplomacy? Assessing the role of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Russia's foreign policy in the South Caucasus . In: Southeast European and Black Sea Studies , October 2017. doi: 10.1080 / 14683857.2017.1390830
  11. ↑ The Ukraine: Power Vacuum Between Russia and the European Union . 2nd Edition. Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8305-3353-5 , p. Iii .
  12. ^ Gero von Randow: Moscow collects frozen conflicts . In: Zeit Online , August 27, 2014.
  13. ↑ Ukraine: permanently incorporated into the Russian Empire . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 20, 2017.
  14. ↑ Taras Kuzio : Special issue: Ukraine between a Constrained EU and Assertive Russia . In: Journal of Common Market Studies . 55, No. 1, 2017, pp. 103-120. doi: 10.1111 / jcms.12447 .
  15. ↑ Fred Kempe: A Conversation with Giorgi Margvelashwili and Petro Poroshenko Minute 3:20