Empire collapse seeds ethnic cleansing

When multi‑ethnic empires like the Ottoman state break down, the resulting scramble for new national borders and authority often produces organized campaigns of population removal or genocide as competing elites try to consolidate homogeneous states. Simon Sebag Montefiore uses the late Ottoman era and the Three Pashas’ policies (Armenian and other mass killings) to show how wartime imperial dissolution incubates violent nation‑building. — Framing ethnic cleansing as a structural outcome of imperial collapse reframes modern conflicts in the Middle East (and elsewhere) as legacies of state collapse, shifting policy focus from short‑term interventions to long‑term governance and transitional justice strategies.