"national antagonism and violence are often the product, rather than the cause, of population transfers, and that ethnic cleansing is the prelude to a brutal peace"

http://www.thenation.com/article/171484/brutal-peace-postwar-expulsions-germans#

A Brutal Peace: On the Postwar Expulsions of Germans

Tara Zahra 

November 27, 2012   

Douglas concludes by calling the expulsions a “tragic, unnecessary, and, we must resolve, never to be repeated episode in Europe’s and the world’s recent history.” But, of course, the tragedy of ethnic cleansing has been repeated many times over since 1945. To this day, the phrase “nation building” is used interchangeably with “state building” in the Western press, conveying the impression that democratic states are built on the foundation of ethnically homogenous nations. While the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, did not explicitly endorse ethnic cleansing—and, in fact, contained provisions to protect minority rights—they brokered a peace by allocating sovereign territories to Serbs, Croats and Muslims. This, in turn, ratified the ethnic cleansing that had already occurred, reinforcing the assumption that homogeneous nation-states are a precondition for stable democracies. That presumption continues to shape foreign policy, and to find support among serious scholars. In reality, the historical record has shown that national antagonism and violence are often the product, rather than the cause, of population transfers, and that ethnic cleansing is the prelude to a brutal peace.