CONCLUSION
What seems to emerge from our report is, first, that we now have fairly solid evidence as to the characteristics of the states, their rivals, their region, and the global system, and the extent to which these sets of factors help account for the incidence of international war.
As already suggested, that knowledge largely tells us what kinds of structural conditions and behaviors increase the probability of armed conflict. The research priorities that emerge, then, are the need to go into greater empirical detail and perhaps even further disaggregation of the moves and countermoves of states in conflict, as they shuffle beyond the exit ramps that might get them off the road to war. One element here that certainly requires more attention is the kinds of mechanisms that would inhibit excessive reliance on escalatory moves, and would make less costly conciliatory and compromising moves. In this context, we would certainly benefit from an expanded attention to the kinds of institutions, regimes, and norms that could be quite constructive in this regard. One might say that those of us in the conflict resolution enterprise have given insufficient research attention to the possibilities of governance, with particular attention to third party responsibilities. That is, those of us who still - at this late stage - have much confidence in diplomatic bargaining and negotiation in the absence of credible supra-national institutions that can appreciably modify the incentives and disincentives of the protagonists. We need to give greater attention to the possibility that international institutions may hold better promise than currently thought in the prevention or negotiation of armed conflict.
An obvious conclusion from much of the literature introduced in this chapter is that protagonists should not be relied upon to resolve conflicts themselves.
At the very least, we should emphasize the need to partially insulate our diplomats from the domestic actors who will initially seek to sabotage efforts toward compromise and conciliation. There will almost always be the internal elements who seek political advantage via charging the incumbents with “giving away the store” or capitulation to “the enemy.” One option is for the contending parties to engage professional agents or parties who will negotiate on their behalf (Singer, 1965) and insulate them from the destructive efforts of one's domestic “hawks.” Equally important are those increasingly available UN or regional organization peace-making and peace-keeping units, which are sometimes able to intervene before an interstate rivalry gets out of control.Then there is the early warning role entrusted to the UN Secretary General under Charter. Article 97 encourages him to bring to the Security Council threats to the peace or breaches of the peace, but while the latter are readily recognizable, the former always remain ambiguous and controversial. Thus, we need a major research investigation into the juncture at which a dispute, rivalry, or confrontation approaches the point at which the odds of a peaceful settlement are dangerously low. A number of preliminary studies are assembled in: Early Warning Indicators in World Politics (Singer and Wallace, 1979), and Indicators in World Politics: Timely Assurances and Early Warning Indicators (Singerand Stoll, 1984).
Thus, the promotion of international organizations on both the global and regional level is needed. In this vein, it should be positive news that the United Nations has seen a six-fold increase since 1998 in the number of soldiers and military observers it deploys around the world, but the onus of peacekeeping operations has not fallen solely on the shoulders of the UN; NATO, the European Union, and the African Union have some 74,000 soldiers trying to restore peace and stability in troubled countries.
Even other regional organizations such as MERCOSUR, ASEAN, and the SAARC have begun to shift away from a purely economic focus to one that also focuses on regional stability. As both global and regional organizations begin to grow and take on the tasks of conflict management, it is essential that they give due focus to establishing better norms, institutions, and practices.These institutions should also use early warning indicators in order to locate where war is most likely to break out. By knowing where war is more likely, regional and global organizations might then be able to provide the exit ramps of war before the paths of the actors are set. This will require not only more research in third-party involvement and its relationship to conflict amelioration but also a better understanding of the early warning indicators of war; as of yet, there has been a promising start made on both these fronts but more needs to be done. For example, recent findings bear out the long ago observation by Morgenthau about how important it is to understand the incentives and constraints under which an adversary is operating. In the Cuban missile crisis, the Americans understood that Khrushchev could not withdraw his missiles from Cuba without a clear American commitment to not invade that island and a less explicit commitment to phase out US missiles in Turkey. On the other hand, in the case of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, recent findings show that the USA was relatively unaware of and indifferent to the commitments and constraints under which Sadaam Hussein was operating. Further, recent studies show how the Bush administration made no serious effort to appreciate the consequences of disbanding the Iraqi army and police. Delving into the quantitative literature, we find that the very moves and countermoves that characterize the escalation of international conflict should provide plenty of ammunition for those of us whose preoccupation is with the management and resolution of such conflict.