To what extent do Huntington and Bowen agree (or disagree) on the roots of the Bosnian war?Huntington and Bowen each perceive the source of international conflict in different terms; the former author believes it is due to a clash of civilizations, while the latter believes that it is an effect of nationalism. Nonetheless, there are still points of similarity regarding their opinions as to the root of the Bosnian war. This document hypothesizes that the chief commonality agreed upon by the authors regarding the cause of the Bosnian war is partisanship ambition related to the appropriation of land, and the propagation of values from outside sources that fueled the conflict.

Central to the supporting evidence that both Bowen and Huntington agree that the ambitious tendencies of the respective participants in the Bosnian war (which includes Croatians, Serbs and Bosnians) was responsible for this conflict is the importance each author places upon land, and the expansion of land for those respective groups. Each author states that the participants in this encounter were essentially desiring to claim the same land, and to thereby control the actions (and the very presence) of other groups on that land. Bowen presents the fact that most conflicts between partisan groups hinge upon "getting more power, land, or other resources" (Bowen 1996, 3). In the particular case of the Bosnian war, one of the causes that Bowen cites is the desire of Serbs to claim the territory occupied by the other ethnicities -- namely the Bosnians and the Croatians. The following quotation...

"Serbs drew on memories of short-lived Serb national states to claim their right to expand outward to encompass other peoples" (Bowen 1996, 4), and the land those peoples were on. An analysis of Huntington's essay also reveals his belief that the ambition to expand territory was at the root of the Bosnian conflict. The author states that "at the micro level, adjacent groups along the fault lines between civilizations struggle, often violently, over the control of territory"(Huntington 1993, 27). To properly understand this quotation, it is important to realize that the author stratifies civilizations to include "Western… Islamic" and "Slavic-Orthodox" (Huntington 1993, 24); Croatians, Bosnians, and Sebs each belong to one of these categories. Even more specific to the Bosnian war, Huntington claims that "the struggle between Slavs…on their borders…dates back to the foundation of the Russian state more than a thousand years ago" (Huntington 1993, 34). Clearly, both authors state within their articles that the ambition to claim and control territory was one of the fundamental causes of the Bosnian war.
Additionally, it is interesting to note the degree of importance that each other author ascribes to the ambitions of outsiders in creating the conflict between these three groups in the former state of Yugoslavia. One of the primary tenets Bowen discusses at length within his article is the fact that many armed conflict between different ethnicities is founded…