This article provides a critical examination of recent attempts by International Relations theorists to apply the security dilemma concept to the intra-state level to explain the outbreak of ethnic violence and war. It critiques the work of Barry Posen, Stuart Kaufman and Erik Melander. In doing so, the central claim of the article is that a specifically Butterfieldian interpretation of the concept is required if the security dilemma is to manifest its greatest explanatory value; where conflict between the parties involved is directly the product of misperception. It demonstrates how in failing to employ such a conception, Posen, Melander and Kaufman's work either completely neglects or fails to address satisfactorily what is arguably the essence of the security dilemma; what Butterfield came to describe as a `tragedy'. The article thus concludes that the application of the concept in terms of the former Yugoslavia is for the most part untenable.
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