AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME AND GONE?
The world seems to be getting more dangerous. Terrorism and the ‘war on terrorism’ are straining relations between Muslims and the West. Despite interstate wars being in decline, five attacks by a state on another have occurred in the new century.
Competition for oil and other essential natural resources makes inter-state wars over territory, viewed as a thing of the past (John Mueller, 1989), more imaginable. Confrontations over nuclear weapons have arisen with North Korea and Iran. Longstanding arms control regimes are unraveling. Further intra-state conflicts could erupt, as closed regimes face violent oppositions; fledgling democracies destabilize; and post-conflict countries fall back into war (Gurr and Marshall, 2005). Trends such as environmental degradation, climate change, population growth, chronic poverty, globalization, and increasing inequality risk future conflicts (e.g., CNA, 2007).Facing such threats, governments and international bodies could be pursuing how to prevent escalation of emerging tensions into wars, thus avoiding the immense human suffering and problems that wars always cause, both for the countries involved and the rest of the world.1 Compared to the huge costs of war, the costs of preventing it are dramatically less.2 Many people are convinced the horrific human costs of the current Iraq War were avoidable. Statistical research on third-party diplomacy also supports the belief that acting before high levels of conflict intensity is better than trying to end them (Miall, 1992: 126; Berkovitch, 1986, 1991, 1993).3 To try to head off more future conflicts seems possible, moreover, for armed conflict has declined since the end of the Cold War, in part because of an ‘extraordinary upsurge of activism by the international community that has been directed to conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding’ (Human Security Report, 2005: 155).4 Indeed, conflict prevention is now official policy in the UN, the EU, the G-8, and many states (Moolak, 2005: G-8). It has been tried in places where the risk of conflict was present but they were averted, such as SouthAfrica, Macedonia, the Baltics, Crimea, and the South China Sea.5 In short, prevention is not simply a high ideal, but a prudent option that sometimes works (cf.
Jentelson, 1996; Zartman, 2001: 305f; Miall, 2007: 7,16,17).Given the evidence that inaction is wasteful and preventive labors can bear fruit, international actors could be collecting and applying what has been learned from recent experience to manage the tensions around the world from which future conflicts will emerge: mitigating sources of terrorism and extremism; averting genocides and other mass atrocities; buttressing fragile governments; reducing weapons of mass destruction; alleviating competition over oil and water; and defusing inter-state rivalries such as China- Taiwan and among the major powers. Yet these actors show little interest in building on recent accomplishments to reduce the current risks (e.g., the deterioration of Zimbabwe and possible renewed war between Ethiopia and Eritrea).6 Why this apparent gap exists between the promise of conflict prevention and its more deliberate pursuit is the puzzle this chapter seeks to unravel.7 The following sections seek to get beyond conventional answers by examining three facets of conflict prevention that define its current status: concepts, activities, and impacts. The conclusion sums up the state of the art and offers ideas to advance it.