DEFINING IRREDENTISM AS A SECURITY PHENOMENON

Irredentism as an inevitable element of expansionistic strategy still remains a fascinating concept and a subject of research in political science and security intelligence to boot. The subject of this paper is the origin of irredentism as a security phenomenon, the analyses of its numerous transformations and the resilience of this phenomenon in all country legal systems. The specific attention has been appointed to typology of irredentism alongside the goal of identifying the irredentist strategies throughout history until today, accompanied by an aspiration to identify the current potentially irredentist countries. Expansionistic doctrine cannot be observed as an internal affair of a country, but it is a generator of international crises, potentially growing into regional and further into global conflict. Analysing numerous theoretical views in this field, the authors’ intention has been to verify the structural characteristics of irredentism together with the initial partakers of conflicts alongside irredentist


INTRODUCTION
Irredentism is a complex, synchronized strategy which is jointly realized by the individuals, groups, political decision-makers and institutions from national and international level with a goal to unify all the territories where the members of one nation live into a unique, undivided political entity. Due to its distinctiveness and mobilizing ef-fects which it fabricates to the internal structures, as well as to the international community, irredentism is a fascinating security phenomenon on multiple levels. For creating such a joint national politics, many nations experienced an international community condemnation, but even the possibility of an open conflict would not stop their intention NBP • Journal of Criminalistics and Law Vol. 25,No. 2 to fi ght for the ancient ethnic territories to which the members of their people claim the right either on a legitimate or an assumed historical right. Th erefore, the expansionistic politics oft en creates a multi-layered, specifi c bond between the parent state and the individuals together with the groups from both sides of the border, and greatly asserts nationalism in its radical form, also motivates the bearers and the followers of irredentist strategies to make the ultimate sacrifi ce in order to achieve the supreme goal, i.e. to unify all kinsmen into one country. Th e primary goal of this paper relates to the analysis of irredentism, identifi cation of its causes, nature and manifestation forms, which helps us to establish adequate typology of this complex phenomenon. Taking into account the fact that irredentist ideas create strong nationalist mobilization, and represent a factor that strengthens national unity, they potentially produce a serious security threat and generate a multi-level security challenge.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has become much more economically, politically and culturally interdependent, but economic inequalities have intensifi ed globally, which has significantly infl uenced ideological-identity, religious, national and ethnic diff erences producing international security instability. In the past decades, we have witnessed ethnic diff erentiation on numerous grounds, but we have also oft en witnessed the interference of other states and military coalitions in the internal aff airs of sovereign and internationally recognized states, which is the basis of potentially tragic irredentist policies. Regardless of the dramatic eff ects which it causes to the internal aff airs of a country, the relations of that country with neighbouring ones, but also the eff ects it can cause on a wider, regionally-global plan, irredentism is an unspecifi c occurrence in the international politics. However, this expansionistic strategy deserves a scholar attention, bearing in mind the fact that staggeringly high percentage of modern countries, in greater or lesser percentage of its population, contains one or more national minorities which hold a certain amount of confl ict potential inspired by the secessionist and expansionistic aspirations. How can we defi ne irredentism? Th e previous studies of the domestic authors have not given much attention to this phenomenon, which was mainly observed in the context of the complex discordant relations between the Serbs and the Albanians in the territory of Kosovo. On the other hand, the foreign publications have acknowledged the security signifi cance of this occurrence, and the numerous authors, trying to defi ne irredentism, have delved into the fi elds of security intelligence, alongside international relations, but also into the fi elds of sociology, political science and psychology, which gives the irredentism multidisciplinary characteristics. Taking into the account the fact that the research authorities both in domestic and foreign publications have defi ned diff erently this multi-layered occurrence, it is important to emphasize that the majority of the researchers are united in the attitude that when it comes to irredentism there are several key partakers -apart from the ethnic groups with the irredentist potential, the existence of the "host state" and the "parent state" is essential. Th e "host state" refers to the country which is inhabited by the members of the certain ethnicity with the irredentist potential, i.e. the members of the people who aspire to leave the current country to unify with the members of their own people, who are usually the majority in the neighbouring country. On the other hand, the "parent state" represents the subject of the international law, which expresses the attention to merge the territory inhabited by its kinsmen with manifested secessionist potential and refuses to acknowledge the current state's authority on the questionable territory. Th erefore, when defi ning irredentism it is essential to bring this phenomenon into a correlation with other numerous phenomena, such as the right to self-determination, revisionism, annexation, and especially with occurrence of secessionism, which alongside its manifestations is the closest to irredentist strategy. In numerous publications the parent state is oft en called "kin-state" or "homeland-state", and these terms mostly serve as a more accurate defi nition of the country which tends to have the historical and ethnic bonds with the separatist-irredentist group in the other, most likely neighbouring country.

THE ORIGIN OF IRREDENTISM AND ITS "LONG-LASTING" CHARACTER
Even though an aggressive expansionistic politics is present ever since humans have started to unify into the organized political communities, terminological defi nition of unifi cation of all kinsmen into a distinctive international legal subjectivity occurred in the second half of the 19 th century. Th e origin of irredentism as a movement is connected to the Italian nationalistic thinkers, who continued the heritage of Risorgimento, a culturological and political movement to unify Italy which lasted throughout most of the 19 th century. Namely, the fi rst ever to use this term was Matteo Imbriani, the founder of the nationalistic organization better known as "Association for the Unredeemed Italy" (Associazione pro Italia irredenta), which was founded in 1877 with the goal to unify all the territories inhabited by Italians into one common country, using the national euphoria aft er the fi nal Italian unifi cation. In the article "Italian Italy" -L'Italia degli Italiani (Janković, 2014: 227), Imbriani is particularly focused on "unredeemed brothers", i.e. the kinsmen who remained beyond the borders of the parent state aft er the forming of Italy as a country, and he brought the concept of the "unredeemed" directly together with the territories which were, at that time, inhabited by the members of the Italian people and located in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following its founding principles "Association for the Unredeemed Italy" primarily commended absorption of the "unredeemed territories" Istra, Dalmatia, Trentino, together with the cities Tirol, Trieste, to the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, previously separating these territories from Austro-Hungarian Empire. Considering that all the nationalistic leaders of the Kingdom of Italy called the above mentioned regions and cities terra irredenta ("unredeemed territories"), the name irredentism denotes every doctrine envisioned with the goal to unite ethnically, geographically and historically immediate parts of population of the neighbouring countries into one common political frame (Chazan, 1991: 1 to a wider purpose on an international level, and even today it is used to defi ne the activity of the individuals, groups and countries who have a tendency to bring back the ethnic kinsmen who are "stranded on the wrong side of the border" (Horowitz, 2003: 10). Regardless the national ethos which was presented through expansionistic activities on the individual, but also institutional level, the concept of irredentism swift ly became declaratively forbidden by the offi cial Italy, which was forced to do that aft er it joined the military alliance founded in 1882 under the name of the Triple Alliance, which, apart from Italy, consisted of Austria-Hungary and Germany. According to such external political orientation, Italy was offi cially able to disregard its own expansionistic politics, therefore all the organizations which would appoint to the irredentist strategy in their name were disengaged and among them was Associazione pro Italia irredenta, which formally ceased functioning the same year. However, the new Italian nationalistic organizations of diff erent names soon emerged, but they were almost identical when it comes to ideology of the political orientation, and the role of the Italian expansionistic politics bearer befell the organization Pro Patria -the Homeland Association, founded in Trento in 1885. Th e authorities in Austria-Hungary Empire forbade them to act during 1890, and the very next year the National League was founded (Lega Nazionale), which carried out its irredentist activities through the legal forms of manufacturing and cultural societies, sports associations, etc. (Cattaruzza, 2017: 32-33). During the fi rst decades upon the unifi cation of Italy, the Italian irredentism experienced a range of transformations, but it remained a constant in the national foreign politics until the end of the World War II. Th at is why the several authors from the former Yugoslavia, like Dragovan Šepić (Šepić, 1963), warned us on a "tough continuity of irredentist ideas" (Bertoša, 1989: 36) in Italy, which was renewed during the fascist dictatorship, and the same author points out the "constants and transformations" (Šepić, 1974; Šepić, 1975) of the phenomenon in the Italian expansionistic politics. Th erefore, it is wrong to observe the Italian irredentism only as a country's expansion during the World War II (the territorial expansions in Albania, Dalmatia, Slovenia, etc.), but also the roots and causes for its longevity certainly need to be connected to the period of the Italian unifi cation, even in several decades before this occasion, i.e. the beginning of Risorgimento. Th e expansionistic politics between the two World Wars did not directly exploit the concept of irredentism, but according to all its manifestations it is unambiguously clear that the matter in question was the classic irredentist strategy. Th e main bearers of an aggressive foreign politics of that era (apart from fascist Italy) were Horthy's Hungary and the Nazi Germany. Th e Hungarian nationalists, in the fi rst decades aft er the Great War ended, gathered around the idea of revisionism, blaming the Treaty of Trianon for the unjust borderlines of their country, and the highlight of this ethnocentric politics were the so called "Vienna Arbitrations" in 1938 and 1940, by which Hungary mostly came back to its pre-Trianon borders. Th e Nazi doctrine of the Th ird Reich was similar to Hungarian revisionism, and it was based on the Hitler's interpretation of the "habitat" (Lebensraum), the concept which had been used in the decades of the imperialistic politics of the German Empire at the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the  (Mommsen & Osterhammel, 1987: 312). Weber thought the post-war German country can evade the loss of the signifi cant part of its territories only if German people and the political leadership succumb to the revolutionary and irredentist strategies, and therefore left for the younger generations to preserve Th e German Empire (so called "the Second Reich").
In the Nazi bible "My Struggle" (Mein Kampf), Hitler used the idea of the "habitat" in order to justify the future expansionistic politics of the Nazi Germany, and therefore, as one of the key conclu-sions he states that "the foreign politics of a people's state needs to provide the existence of a race within a country, on this planet, in a way that between the number and the exponential growth of people on the one hand, and the size and the benefi ts of a soil on the other hand create healthy, life sustainable, natural relation" he adds "only suffi ciently large space on this planet guarantees freedom for people's fi ghts" (Smiljanić, 2011: 418).
Hitler ascended the concept of Lebensraum up to the level of the ultimate ideological principle of his movement, and emphasized that the nationalistic party "has to, regardless the "traditions" and prejudices, fi nd the courage to gather our people and their strength in order to advance towards that street, which from today's confi nement of the habitat emerges this people to a new soil and therefore they are forever relieved of the danger to perish on this land or as a slaved people accommodate others (Ibid: 420). Th e fatal politics of the Th ird Reich, which was founded by Hitler, led the great German nation into the largest confl ict in the history of the mankind, and the epicentre of this doctrine defi nitely was the aggressive national foreign politics.

THE MODERN USE OF THE TERM IRREDENTISM
Nevertheless the irredentism occurs as a security phenomenon in the Italian nationalistic circles in the second half of the 19 th century, the shaping of the irredentist strategies (observed by the academic community of today), appeared even in the post-revolutionary France, in other words together with the birth of the nation as a concept. Th e national ethos, which defi ned the European politics of the 19 th century, had brought the fi rst wave of irredentism along with the Italian and German expansionistic politics, and this early phase of the irredentist strategies was ended with the World War I. Th e comprehension of irredentism between the wars and its defi nition was modifi ed under the infl uence of the self-determination doctrine of a nation which was introduced by the US president Woodrow confl ict with devastating consequences. Th e post-war irredentism was formed as a direct consequence of the colonial system's downfall, and the confl icts inspired by the irredentist legacy were mainly moved to Africa and Asia, where the withdrawal of the colonial forces created numerous problems, especially closely connected to the disputable territory divisions, where the borders of the newly formed countries would not match the ethnic redistribution on the African continent (Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia) and in Asia (the Kurds expansionistic politics, Cashmere, etc.). Th e irredentist period that occurred at the end of the last century brought this phenomenon back to the European Continent, directly as a consequence of the Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav federation, and the unresolved territorial aspirations even today represent the cause of the numerous frozen confl icts in the post-USSR and post-Yugoslavia territories. Th e direct military interventions in the last decade of the 20 th century were the most common way of regulating the confl icts in the countries of the so called "Th ird World" (41%, or 368 of 904 interventions were armed confl icts), and they were performed by the signifi cant partakers of the international scene accompanied by the neighbouring countries with signifi cantly smaller military potential; the strategies of the diplomatic involvement were realized in 36% of the cases (323 of 904 interventions), while the economic power was conducted in almost half less compared to the military interventions (in total 23% cases of foreign interventions -213 of 904 interventions) (Khosla, 1999(Khosla, : 1150(Khosla, -1151. Although, in the current political science and security literature, the very concept of a state sovereignty is increasingly relativized, therefore question justifi ably arises as to whether states are entering a phase of "post-sovereignty" (Jovanov, 2015: 150), during the last decade of the 20 th and the fi rst two decades of the 21 st century the current irredentism questions were reshaped, and the great number of the new ones emerged regarding expansionistic politics and analysis of irredentism as a security concept. Th e broad spectre of doubts regarding this phenomenon was related mostly to the recognition of the cause by which the certain individuals, groups and even states participate in conducting political violence on a foreign country's territory, then in the motives of the political subjects who in the certain situations intervene in foreign confl icts, while in another similar situation they do not partake, and also there is a tendency to confi rm whether the irredentist strategies are infl uenced by the internal political opportunities or the climate of an international level? Alongside with that, there are many questions related to the infl uence of the foreign interventions to the intensity of ethnic confl icts (Paquin & Saideman, 2008), while the certain researchers have tried to provide the answers to the following questions: why are certain countries more likely to engage in international disputes which possess an irredentist potential; why is the international legislature that regulates the third party engaging modes being ignored by certain countries, while being respected by the other international subjects; what are the essential reasons for specifi c countries to avoid mediation, and therefore insist on a belligerent resolve of ethnic tensions; and fi nally, what are immediate causes of the increases in aggressive foreign aff airs of the states that are directly engaged to the escalation of the irredentist confl icts (Carment & James, 2000). Irredentism has defi nitely NBP • Journal of Criminalistics and Law Vol. 25, No. 2 Malbašić, Z., Trbojević, M. (2020). Defi ning irredentism as a security phenomenon been recognized as a concept of "turning jointly group identity into political streams" (Fuzesi, 2006: 67), and on that account there rose the need for its multi-layered terminological defi nition. Th ere are countless modern defi nitions of irredentism, and most of the researchers of this segmented phenomenon start by separating the basic elements which are contained by every expansionistic politics. Firstly, as an object of analysis one must take a demeanour of an individual, groups or political movements gathered around the idea to unify all the members of the same ethnic group into one complete, inseparable political community. In the same manner, irredentism in most of the cases is observed as an anti-state concept which is based on redefi ning the state borders which were internationally acclaimed, and that shift is usually conducted violently, with an extensive implementation of an institutionalized and non-institutionalized political violence. Furthermore, irredentism as an essential segment of the expansionistic doctrine has always been a synchronized activity of a group, which craves unifi cation with its ethnic kinsmen and the key political elements in the parent state which support unification, consequently, the usual subject of analysis is a uniformed behaviour of the observed subjects from both sides of the border. Finally, the focus of the researchers is on the very objective of irredentism, which represents the essential element to distinguish irredentism from separatism, as it is the most related occurrence. Th at is to say, the primal intention of irredentist partakers in an expansionistic strategy is not to gain its own statehood, which is the main intention of separatism, but the focus is on incorporating of a territory which is separated from the existing country into the neighbouring country largely inhabited by its ethnic kinsmen. Along with identifying the primary elements of irredentism, the researchers are mainly focused on the set of samples which create the climate in which the expansionistic doctrine with all its complex occurring embodiments emerges. Hence Saideman and Paquin postulate the ethnicity as a primal source to ethnic confl icts, and therefore conclude that separatism and expansionistic politics are the consequences of the strong ethnic bonds and ethnic confl icts built inside a country, but also the ethnic relations among cross-border kinsmen (Paquin & Saideman, 2008). Saideman defi nes expansionistic doctrine as "seemingly irrational foreign policies" (Saideman, 1998: 87), and adds that irredentism is the biggest threat to safety in Europe after the downfall of the communism. Th is author signifi es irredentism as a product of selfi sh ambitions of political leaders, who, in order to strengthen their own internal political positions, reach to irredentist rhetoric, therefore neglecting the norms of an international community. On the other hand, Th omas Ambrosio has joined the internal and the external causes trying to comprehend the basis of the confl icts inspired by expansionistic pretences, thus concluded that the political leaders in this kind of situations are faced with both the pressure from the local nationalist, but also with the warnings of the international partakers which can grow into an open international confrontation. Ambrosio, therefore, highlights that the rigidity or the fl exibility of the environment is a signifi cant element in creating a domestic irredentist climate, so the expansionistic ethnic politics is directly linked to an affi rmative, or a restrictive attitude of an international community, when it comes to this matter. Th is author has pointed out that the irredentism has not been given an adequate research attention in a long time, mostly because the ethnic confl icts have been experienced as inner-state, and not as an international problem, and adds if these ethnic confl icts were analysed from the international system point of view, that was done through secessionism and not through irredentism. Furthermore, he concludes that for a long time irredentism has been in the interlude between the research that focused on the ethnic confl icts and those researches that focused on the confl icted international aff airs. As the main reason for this misleading practice he points out the long and dominating realistic approach in the relations between the countries, which denied the infl uence of nationalism and ethnicity in general to the international relations, and ethnic sentiments were observed solely as the means to animate and mobilize the domestic population of the nationalistic orientation in order to strengthen the position of the country at an international level (Ambrosio, 2001). Unlike Th omas Ambrosio, who acknowledges the activities in international community as a trigger to escalation and de-escalation of irredentist strategies, Chazan (Chazan, 1991) and Gagnon (Gagnon, 1994/95) accept the absolute importance of internal relations and the domestic politics while creating expansionistic strategies. Brubaker expands the set of causes for the appearance of irredentism, and advocates the thesis that the success of secessionist-irredentist strategies depends on the so called "triple bonds": activities of the group aiming for separation, activities of the country which the group inhabits (homeland state) and activities of a parent state which the separatists wish to unite to (Brubaker, 1996: 4). He names the phenomenon of irredentism "homeland nationalism" (Brubejker, 2003: 293), in other word nationalizing, expansionistic nationalism which is logically turned on the outside, beyond the borders of the existing country, and the parent state in an irredentist confl ict he observes as an "external national homelands" (Brubaker, 1996: 4). Th is author gives irredentism a particular attention, and analyses it as a consequence of redefi ning nationalism, i.e. creating nationalistic discourse behind the former "Iron Curtain" in the years aft er the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
Observing irredentism as a security phenomenon in the last decades of the 20 th century, the majority of authors were linking this concept to Africa and Asia, i.e. to the post-colonial confl ict legacy in the numerous countries on these two continents, but at the end of the last century the irredentist confl ict was definitely perceived in the wider region in the Balkans, respectively in South-eastern Europe (the Albanian and Croatian problem in the former Yugoslavia, the Hungarian expansionistic irredentism in Romania, etc.) (Horowitz, 2000: 281). One of the fi rst authors who tried to point out the confl icting potential of ethnicity in inner-state, but also international confl icts was Donald Horowitz. Th is researcher also established the clear distinction between the two most common forms of territorial corrections under the infl uence of ethnicity -between irredentism and secessionism. According to him, the foundation of secessionism lies in the rejection of the members of the ethnic group on a territory where they form the majority to acknowledge the government of the country they live in. On the other hand, irredentism is a synchronized activity of political deci-sion-makers in a group with secessionist pretences and a parent state which is inclined to adjoin a disputable territory inhabited by its kinsmen (Horowitz, 2000b: 182-183). Apart from that, Horowitz suggests that these two phenomena need to be analysed together since, very oft en, they have an alternative relationship, so he concludes that the ethnic confl icts inspired by secessionist-irredentist legacy are one of the primal reasons for the slow democratic processes in the numerous countries of Africa and Asia, but also on Post-Soviet territories and Eastern Europe (Horowitz, 1993: 35). Particularly, he points out that the innumerable irredentist movements have emerged as a direct consequence of the certain countries forming, and therefore, the great percentage of the similar movements has appeared also as a result of the long-term political tensions and open confrontations in the multi-national communities. Domestic literature recognizes the concept of irredentism, but mainly through the limited prism of Serbian-Albanian complex ethnic relations. Dragan Simeunović identifi es irredentism as a segment of national policy, and points out that the creation of a nation-state is "the materialization of a national political dream" and that "the source of confl ict is the defi nition of national territory as a state territory" (Simeunović, 1995: 47). Th is author directly connects irredentist eff orts with the outbreak of the confl ict, and indicates that "the reason for war is greater if it is possible to free the members of one's nation who live in another nation-state" (Simeunović, 2009: 83). He claims that the disintegration of multi-ethnic federations is a signifi cant cause of confl ict, because the expansionist eff orts of the new nation-states are mainly based on the attitude that "ours is where the smallest part of our nation lives" (Simeunović, 1995: 48). Simeunović concludes that the nation-state indeed survives nevertheless the globalist announcements about its end, and despite the fact that it has been phenomenologically and usefully written off (Simeunović, 2015: 3).

TYPOLOGY OF IRREDENTISM
Considering that irredentism has established itself as a phenomenon which in its basis contains "the bilateral and simultaneous pursuit by both parent state and its ethnically kindred brethren in a foreign state of ethno-territorial retrieval across inter-state borders" (Fuzesi, 2006: 18), the basic classifi cation is necessary, together with recognizing its types and common forms. Taking into account countless classifi cation criteria, the most common is the division to classical, common type of irredentism (which is manifested within an ethnic group that desires to separate itself from a host state in order to attach to a country which is mainly inhabited by their kinsmen (homeland), and whose aspirations are supported by a neighbouring country which conceives the same idea of unity of nation in one country) and irredentism sui generis (which appears in the cases when the members of one ethnos are scattered around several countries, and therefore they do not have a homeland which could intensify and synchronize the common idea of unifi cation If we observe irredentism as a consequence of political crisis and confl icts, together with social and political turmoil on a national, regional and global scale, it is possible to divide it into post-confl ict, post-war, post-revolution, post-colonial, etc. but according to a similar, solely territorial criterion, we can distinguish African, European (Basque irredentism as a separate subtype), Latin American and Asian irredentism (with the Kurdish sui generis irredentism). When we observe irredentism as a cause of a specifi c political behaviour, i.e. when we analyse it based on the types of consequences it produces, we speak of the irredentism that generates institutional and of the one which induces non-institutional political violence.
Finally, taking into consideration the time it took for irredentism to appear and its metamorphosis during the 20 th century, irredentism can be classifi ed into: 1) early irredentism (refers to those common forms of an expansionist strategy which occurs in numerous European countries, from the moment it formed in independent Italy and the founding of "Associazione pro Italia irredenta" organization in 1877 until the end of the Great War), 2) interwar period irredentism (practiced in the period between Paris Peace Treaty and the beginning of the World War II, whose major characteristic is the synthesis with revisionist strategies of the European nations that were defeated in the World War I -Hitler's Th ird Reich and Horthy's Hungary), and 3) modern irredentism (and its common forms aft er the ending of the World War II until today, with a specifi c emphasis to post-colonial and post-Cold War irredentism).  Malbašić, Z., Trbojević, M. (2020). Defi ning irredentism as a security phenomenon CONCLUSION It is evident that by the expansion of the scientifi c knowledge of irredentism and its identifi cation as an essential element of countless international crises and confl icts, there is also the need to develop a typology of this complex phenomenon, and its positioning in security-political sphere as one of the basic roots of instability on a regional and global level. Th erefore, this paper's idea has been to bring security repercussions of irredentism closer to national academic and security community, and to place it where it certainly deserves to be, i.e. not to observe the expansionist strategy narrowly when it comes to Albanian-Serbian relations, which has been the situation so far.
In this paper, we have pointed out that irredentism contributes to complex national and political polarization, both in the countries aff ected by irredentist aspirations and in the countries hoping for territorial benefi ts aft er the successful completion of the irredentist campaign. It is also noticeable that irredentist confl icts carry a signifi cantly greater destructive potential in regard to ideological confl icts, mostly because ethnic relatives are idealized and oft en perceived as family members, and not only as the members of a group who share a common ethnic cultural heritage. Th is attitude towards cross-border relatives also produces a specifi c type of ethnic security dilemma, so that a more intense feeling of closeness generates an increased existential threat from members of a rival ethnic group with whom the same living space has been shared for centuries, and imposes political violence as a justifi ed means of struggle. For the last century and a half, irredentism has experienced many transforma-tions, but undoubtedly important component of an expansionist strategy is its persistence, regardless of the forms of political structure and programme orientation of political parties and coalitions which were at the head of the countries with irredentist potential. Even though the classic bloc division has ended on the international level, where many assumptions about deescalating confl icts on a global level were created about, during the last decades we have witnessed the explosions of ethnic confl icts and separatist-irredentist aspirations worldwide, then unveiling religious, ethnic and nationalistic diff erences as fundamental genesis for confl icts which cannot be pacifi ed nationally, but only through implementing wider international communities and large military coalitions. Bearing in mind that irredentism is one of the most direct ways by which an ethnic bond of cross-border kinsmen infl uences the occurrence of political violence, in this paper, there is a need to commence a typology of anti-state phenomenon, hopefully to identify more easily so called "irredentist state", i.e. those states that tend to exploit ethnic tensions in the neighbourhood for its own political, ethnic, territorial and similar benefi ts. It is important to mention that irredentism is an exquisite consistent ideological weapon, so the idea of a stately-legal unity of all kinsmen prevailed in numerous states regardless of the form of their political and social structure, global political situation and the infl uence of international institutional arrangements. By establishing a typology of irredentism, we have tried to point out that irredentism is present even in democratic and autocratic societies, but also in the republics and the monarchies, and the irredentist ideas emerged NBP • Journal of Criminalistics and Law Vol. 25, No. 2 in both unitary states and those with federative political structures, so one cannot specify the model of a country which is suitable for the birth and development of a violent state expansion. Irredentism is a continuous process, whose duration is not limited by a mandate of one government or a dynasty in power, but is deeply rooted into the minds of ethnic kinsmen, wherever the members of that people have residence. We have witnessed that expansionist politics is a constant in political actions of certain states during the range of decades or even centuries, and that the expansion and the designation of these ideas is particularly visible during times of crises, through distinctive regional and global confl icts, and radical changes of social and political structures internationally. Irredentism is one of the potentially most dangerous and the most extreme ways in which ethnic bonds between kinsmen on the both sides of the border can infl uence the occurrence, escalation and manifestation of inner-state and international confl icts. Ethnic polarization as an element of an ethnic identity in this case is a direct consequence of a high level connection among cross-border kinsmen, and not merely psychologically, but on specifi cally institutional level. Th e sense of nurturing the shared history, but also the romanticized assumption of a common future has brought numerous confl icts in the last few decades and centuries, and the expansionist doctrine will be an inevitable component in aggressive strategies of potentially irredentist countries in the years to come. Finally, this type of expansionism from the international community's point of view is the least desirable manner of territorial border adjustments, but the frequent occurrence of irredentist ideas, certainly point to the fact that there is no ideal, sufficiently righteous border division which could adequately satisfy all the parties involved in an irredentist confl ict.