“Ethnic†and “sectarian†conflicts are not caused by ethnicity or religion. To avoid future episodes we need early warning systems and intervention in societies undergoing rapid and destabilizing economic and political transitions.

December 1994 saw the Russian military launch an assault on Grozny, capital of the obscure Caucasian autonomous republic of Chechnya, in an effort to put an end to its pretensions to national independence. Three years earlier, in 1991, a renegade Chechen general in the Russian Army, Djokar...