Although previous research has established the diffusion of interstate military conflict as a rare event, few in-depth studies have been made. This article is a modest attempt to specify some of the interaction processes and regional contexts through which interstate conflict diffusion occurs. For this purpose a comparative analysis of individual cases is undertaken with each case consisting of a military conflict and a dispute in its vicinity. An examination is made of the sequence of events related to whether, and how, the military conflict might affect the dispute, transforming it to a new military conflict. The cases are drawn from the same region, Central and South-East Europe, for two different periods, 1919-20 and 1991-92, displaying an extremely high incidence of interstate conflicts. Comparing two hypotheses, one derived from a realpolitik perspective and the other from a linkage approach, it was found that the linkage-related hypothesis is supported in all cases across both periods, whereas the realpolitik-related hypothesis is supported only in a few cases pertaining to one of the periods. The theoretical implication is a linkage perspective which may offer new insights about conflict diffusion among neighboring countries, as it turns attention from their security concerns to the interplay of intra- and interstate relations transcending national boundaries.
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