There has also been a rise of religious fundamentalism and ethno-religious conflicts such as those in Sudan and Afghanistan are particularly intractable. Colonial diplomats had partitioned territories without paying heed to ethnic and linguistic divisions resulting in many of today's conflicts. The causes of the recent upsurge in ethnic conflicts tended to be the resurfacing of historical hatreds going back many centuries, which had been suppressed by the Soviet Union. The dynamics of such conflicts were fuelled by memories of injustices, often myths. Wilkinson gave a case study on the rise of the KLA in Albania pointing out that there were numerous occasions prior to the outbreak of conflict when it could have been avoided.
Diplomatic costs are miniscule compared to the cost of warfare.
He stressed the need for long-term measures to prevent incitement to ethnic hatred especially the strengthening of democratisation. He examined the dynamics of persecution, extermination and genocide by looking at the psychopathology of paranoia where delusions of persecution and grandiosity take over the mind. Some people have a pervasive mistrust that leads to a malevolent character. The delusional system leads to everything making a negative sense to the paranoid mind such that everything is distorted into an element of a plot against oneself. Such persecutory and grandiose aspects lend themselves most readily to politics.