Diapsora communities fight hardest while kin-state governments simultaneously support and restrain them.

Evidence

The stakes of the other parties to the conflict are not identical with those of primary level participants. The most devoted and wholehearted support for the primary level parties normally comes from diaspora communities who intensely identify with the cause of their kin and become “more Catholic than the Pope.” The interests of second and third level governments are more complicated. They also usually provide support to first level participants, and even if they do not do so, they are suspected of doing so by opposing groups, which justifies the latter supporting their kin. In addition, however, second and third level governments have an interest in containing the fighting and not becoming directly involved themselves. Hence while supporting primary level participants, they also attempt to restrain those participants and to induce them to moderate their objectives. They also usually attempt to negotiate with their second and third level counterparts on the other side of the fault line and thus prevent a local war from escalating into a broader war involving core states. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 756

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A nuanced structural model of how ethnic conflict layers three tiers of participants with divergent incentives, where support and restraint coexist — worth sitting with as a lens on any ethnic war.