Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York established the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict in May 1994 to address the looming threats to world peace of intergroup violence and to advance new ideas for the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. The Commission is examining the principal causes of deadly ethnic, nationalist, and religious conflicts within and between states and the circumstances that foster or deter their outbreak. Taking a long-term, worldwide view of violent conflicts that are likely to emerge, the Commission seeks to determine the functional requirements of an effective system for preventing mass violence and to identify the ways in which such a system could be implemented. The Commission is also looking at the strengths and weaknesses of various international entities in conflict prevention and considering ways in which international organizations might contribute toward developing an effective international system of nonviolent problem solving.
Commission publications fall into three categories: Reports of the Commission,
Reports to the Commission, and Discussion Papers. Reports of the Commission
have been endorsed by all Commissioners. Reports to the Commission are published
as a service to scholars, practitioners, and the interested public. They have
undergone peer review, but the views that they express are those of the author
or authors, and Commission publication does not imply that those views are shared
by the Commission as a whole or by individual Commissioners. Discussion papers
are similar to Reports to the Commission but address issues that are more time-sensitive
in nature.
Additional copies of this report or other Commission reports may be obtained
free of charge from the Commission, or they may be downloaded from the Commission's
Web site: www.ccpdc.org
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
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Washington, DC 20036-2103
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e-mail: pdc@carnegie.org
Copyright 1999 by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
All rights reserved.
The Ditchley Conference summary and Note by the Director are copyright 1999
by The Ditchley Foundation and reprinted with permission.
01 00 99 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict set out with a clear recognition of the ubiquitous nature of human conflict. Throughout their varied careers in international affairs that took them to all parts of the world, most members sought to manage situations of mass violence at a late stage, often doing so with a weak hand dealt them by governments or international organizations. They therefore felt impelled to ask what might have been done at an earlier stage to prevent conflicts from turning violent in the first place.
Must that fatal threshold be crossed sooner or later in many, most, or all societies? If so, the lethality of the consequences can be expected to increase catastrophically with the spread of killing power and incitement capacity in the formidable high-tech world of the twenty-first century. Aware of these dangers, the commission set out to stimulate preventive thinking, analysis, and innovation on the part of governments, and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations.
How can the international community enhance its current capacities to prevent the deadliest conflicts? Can we recognize serious dangers early enough? Can we help adversaries to understand the risks of violence before they have crossed the Rubicon? Can we help them strengthen their own capacities for conflict resolution? Can we mobilize internationally the intellectual, technical, financial, and moral resources to avert disaster and achieve just outcomes? These are profound worldwide challenges.
The onset of mass violence transforms the nature of a conflict. Revenge motives severely complicate the situation, and resolution and even limitation of conflict are then less likely to be effective. So early intervention in the form of preventive diplomacy or preventive defense is attractive.
The commission puts preventive diplomacy in the context of operational prevention, which is geared to address conflicts when violence is imminent or small scale but still short of massive killing. Such diplomacy includes political, economic, and military tools. It calls for integrated strategies in the use of these tools.
The core premise of preventive diplomacy is that international security is today better served by working proactively to avert outbreaks of large-scale violence, state collapse, terrorism, and weapons proliferation than it is by simply reacting to crises once they have occurred. Preventive diplomacy is defined as the use of proactive, nonviolent measures to prevent political conflicts from erupting into violence and to promote peaceful dispute resolution.
Preventive diplomacy resembles conventional diplomatic practice and uses a similar repertoire of policy tools, including official and Track Two negotiations, mediation, intelligence gathering, and confidence-building measures. However, preventive diplomacy is distinguished by its emphasis on systematic early warning and early response.
We now have a substantial body of studies available on the strengths and limitations of tools such as early warning, sanctions, incentives, mediation, and power sharing as they have been applied in a considerable number of cases. Practically, we also have a better understanding of how to employ these tools.
Preventive defense is becoming an important approach for international conduct since the end of the Cold War. Emphasizing exchanges and collaboration among countries to reduce potential threats, the strategy is modeled on policies after World War II that turned recent adversaries into partners for economic development and interstate peace. To promote cooperative security, preventive defense makes use of exchanges, technical collaboration, and joint military exercises that bring together military officials from different countries to work on problems of common concern in an atmosphere that fosters openness, mutual understanding, and democratic civil-military relations.
In the course of its five-year existence, the commission has had the privilege of fostering and participating in a wide variety of conferences in different parts of the world. Some of these provided an overview of preventive approaches; most focused in considerable depth on one or a few specific approaches. Two of the most stimulating conferences, at Stanford University and the Ditchley Foundation, are summarized in this publication.
The meeting at Stanford had two goals: to explore ways in which the United States could, in cooperation with other nations and international organizations, enhance its capacity to contribute to international peace through preventive diplomacy and preventive defense; and to assess the utility of third-party, particularly U.S., preventive action in reducing the multiple dangers posed by the on-going ethnoterritorial conflict in Kashmir and the incipient nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan. Altogether, this meeting of scholars and expert practitioners provided an assessment of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense. It was stimulating for the agendas of research and policy.
The meeting began with a clarification of the concepts of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense. There was widespread agreement that, theoretically as well as operationally, both of these concepts are still new and evolving. For instance, the first public statement on preventive defense came only in 1996 with William Perry's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, in which he urged U.S. decision makers and military planners to pursue policies that support peace and make war less likely and deterrence unnecessary. Several scholars and policy analysts have since pursued lines of inquiry that have added further analytical and policy content to this concept.
In an effort to draw out the policy implications of these concepts, the conference explored three related questions: whether and how preventive diplomacy and preventive defense differ from diplomacy and defense as traditionally understood; whether, either as policies or as concepts, they may be regarded as distinct from one another; and whether, in the interests of promoting a more coherent and justifiable policy framework, narrower conceptions of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, firmly grounded in U.S. national interests, are preferable to a more expansive vision.
Several presentations considered the policy tools of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense and appraised their effectiveness. Overall, this field has advanced remarkably over the past few years.
There was a widespread consensus that the efficacy of third-party preventive actions depends critically on the sense of legitimacy they elicit, not just from domestic constituencies, but also from the populations directly concerned and the larger international community. Undertaking such actions without due regard for their legitimacy can prove counterproductive to the aims of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, particularly where these actions conflict with established norms of state sovereignty. Rather than prevent conflagration, poorly justified outside actions may provoke resentment and escalate conflict. For the United States, this is complicated by our great economic, military, technological, and political power. This unique circumstance elicits envious resentment and fear in many parts of the world and requires sensitivity on the part of American policymakers. In response, many participants agreed on the desirability of multilateral preventive actions and on the prior attainment of UN Security Council authorization for preventive actions requiring third-party military intervention.
With respect to South Asia, the participants assessed several key issues: the significance of the 1998 nuclear tests for future South Asian security relations in general and for the Kashmir conflict in particular; the prevailing constraints and opportunities for third-party preventive actions; and the specific tools and strategies that may be applied to help forestall the incipient nuclear rivalry and de-escalate tensions in Kashmir.
Most participants thought that U.S. diplomacy can be highly constructive in seeking substantial improvements in India - Pakistan relations. South Asians are now considering the security, economic, and social consequences of nuclear testing. The tests have provided an opportunity for serious negotiations: Since the actions of India and Pakistan threatened the global nonproliferation regime, there is now a legitimate basis for outside diplomacy that did not exist as long as the India - Pakistan conflict was limited to Kashmir. Indeed, since May 1998, the official U.S. - India dialogue has steadily improved, as have direct discussions between India and Pakistan. India has shown a new willingness to put the question of Kashmir on the diplomatic agenda.
The terrain of third-party diplomatic involvement in this instance is exceedingly complex because of India's intense aversion to a third-party role in Kashmir. Nevertheless, the stakes are so high, and U.S. concerns for the well-being of both countries are so strong, that respectful ways of contributing to a problem-solving atmosphere must be sought.
A variety of recommendations were made and these are concisely summarized by Karen Ballentine, the rapporteur. Altogether, her thorough report does much to clarify conceptual and operational aspects of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense in South Asia and elsewhere.
The Ditchley conference--one in the distinguished conference series of the Ditchley Foundation--focused on preventive diplomacy. Participants gave particular attention to the role of regional and global intergovernmental organizations but also to nongovernmental organizations.
The Ditchley conference recognized the fundamental importance of long-term, structural prevention but focused on operational prevention in the face of looming crisis. While acknowledging the continuing danger of interstate war, the discussion dealt mainly with the intrastate violence that has become so prominent in the 1990s. It underscored a growing international interest in finding ways to reduce mass violence throughout the world.
In summarizing this conference, William Zartman highlighted the skills and processes that can make preventive diplomacy effective. These include: seeking collaboration, creating firebreaks to conflict, preparing sticks and carrots, fostering early awareness, formulating principles and regimes, and finding more effective ways to address the sovereignty dilemma. It would be difficult to imagine a more concise statement on this subject than Zartman's summary.
Taken together, the reports of these two stellar conferences open vistas of
great significance for preventing catastrophic violence in the twenty-first
century.
David A. Hamburg
Cochair
Part One Preventive Diplomacy and Preventive Defense
January 15-16, 1999
Stanford University
Stanford, California, United States
Acknowledgments and Conference Goals
On January 15-16 the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project convened a meeting of 30 area specialists, security and conflict resolution experts, and U.S. government officials to consider the challenges of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, with special attention to South Asia. The meeting was hosted by Warren Christopher, former secretary of state, William Perry, former secretary of defense, and David Hamburg, president emeritus of Carnegie Corporation of New York and cochair of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. We wish to thank Deborah Gordon and Lainie Dillon of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and Jane Holl, executive director of the commission, for their invaluable organizational help. We also thank Carnegie Corporation of New York for its abiding support of the commission and the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project.
The meeting had two goals: to explore ways in which the United States could, in cooperation with other nations and international organizations, enhance its capacity to contribute to international peace through preventive diplomacy and preventive defense; and to assess the utility of third-party, particularly U.S., preventive action in reducing the multiple dangers posed by the on-going ethnoterritorial conflict in Kashmir and the incipient nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan. This gathering provided an opportunity to review the state of the art of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense and to help move this scholarly and policy agenda forward. While recognizing the profound complexity of South Asian security dilemmas and the constraints they pose for effective preventive action, the participants focussed their energies on developing practical and reliable strategies to reduce the risk of conflict escalation in the short term and create a more enduring basis of security and cooperation between India and Pakistan.
This report contains a list of recommendations arising from the conference
by which U.S. political and military officials, as well as the nongovernmental,
academic, and business communities may better contribute to a coordinated and
fruitful process of confidence building and conflict resolution, both in this
vitally important region and beyond.
For the last four years, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict has sought to stimulate international scholars and foreign policy officials to think and act preventively. It has been our collective conviction that conflict prevention is both necessary and possible. We are convinced of its necessity because, in the post-Cold War era, the international security environment is characterized by a new generation of intrastate conflicts and new threats of catastrophic terrorism brought on by the combustible blend of regional instability and the wider proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Already, the eruption and escalation of civil and regional wars in the Balkans, Africa, and elsewhere have put us on notice that the paradigm and policy instruments that helped us manage the Cold War are now of limited utility. Likewise, adopting a policy of doing nothing in the face of deadly conflict simply defers the problem to a later date, when the level of destructiveness and the costs of intervening are higher and the risks of action even greater. The world urgently needs a better framework for understanding and coping with violent conflicts, one which places a premium on acting early to prevent them rather than on half-hearted efforts to extinguish fires that already threaten to burn out of control.
During the course of our work, the commission undertook an extensive assessment of the concepts and practices of conflict management and conflict prevention with the purpose of determining which strategies have the greatest potential for averting outbreaks of mass violence and under what sorts of conditions. While the record we surveyed was mixed, we found heartening evidence that where sufficient political, economic, and military resources are properly mobilized for the task, conflict prevention can be successful. Among the many findings detailed in the commission's final report, we concluded that the best practices of conflict prevention rely on well-developed systems of early warning, explicitly provide for resource pooling and burden sharing among a range of diverse actors and agencies, aim at redressing underlying structural problems as well as the proximate causes of conflict, and apply diplomatic and military leverage appropriate to the problem at hand.
Far from offering the last word on this most vital of subjects, the commission has sought to engage others to take up the challenge of prevention, to elaborate a more robust analytical and policy framework while working to make preventive action a routine practice of international policymaking. We have sponsored more than 40 additional publications on various aspects of conflict prevention and hosted numerous meetings around the globe that have focussed on the contributions of an ever-widening circle of people. In so doing, we have attracted the energetic involvement of scholars, international organizations, and nongovernmental actors as well as the governments of Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The idea for convening a meeting specifically devoted to preventive diplomacy and preventive defense owes much to the creative leadership of William Perry and Warren Christopher. As secretary of defense and secretary of state, they experienced firsthand the need for new approaches to the security challenges of the emerging twenty-first century. And it is largely due to their seminal thinking on the subject that people increasingly have come to think of diplomacy and defense in explicitly preventive terms. This said, there is still much conceptual and practical work to be done to transform the nascent promise of these ideas into the sturdy pillars of an emerging paradigm of global security. The primary objective of this meeting, then, was to help move this agenda forward.
We chose to do so by considering the merits of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense as applied to the specific security challenges posed today in South Asia. The manifest urgency of preventing a cataclysm in this region cannot be exaggerated, nor should we ignore the complexity and risk which such a task involves. The rivalry between India and Pakistan has led to outright war already three times in the postcolonial era, twice over the disputed state of Kashmir. It has also fed an indigenous Kashmiri uprising which has cost an estimated 35,000-40,000 lives since 1989. The introduction of the nuclear variable into the already tense India-Pakistan relationship has qualitatively altered the equation of the conflict. By undertaking nuclear tests and unilaterally asserting their claims to nuclear status, India and Pakistan have posed a direct threat to the integrity of the global nonproliferation regime, while sharply escalating the stakes of continued fighting in Kashmir. While regional instability has long attracted international concern, the tests refocused the attention of the United States and the larger international community, offering a powerful stimulus for making determined and creative use of the untapped potential of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense.
Our parallel decision to limit our discussions to U.S. policy toward South Asia was certainly not meant to suggest that conflict prevention should not be an international priority. As stressed in the final report of the Carnegie Commission, the tasks of prevention are simply too diverse and too complex to be the exclusive responsibility of any one institution or nation. By practical necessity, the prevention of deadly conflict is a global, collective, and cooperative enterprise. Our focus on the role of the U.S. instead reflects the undeniable reality of its preeminent political, economic, and military power, in the world at large as well as in South Asia. Quite simply, effective conflict prevention greatly depends on the quality and determination of American leadership.
On this score, however, America's recent performance has been worrisome. Under the corrosive influence of strident neo-isolationist minorities at home, U.S. decisionmakers have been slow to mobilize the support of the generally international-minded American majority behind principled preventive action, claiming instead that their hands are tied by the allegedly entrenched isolationism of their electorates. Thus to some extent, America has neglected the responsibilities that flow from its status as primus inter pares and the support that it owes the international organizations to which it belongs and from which it continues to reap major benefits. There has been a growing reliance on aggressive unilateral actions, dressed often with only a thin veneer of allied consultation. Not only is this approach an inadequate substitute for genuine and sustained multilateral cooperation in the difficult task of preventing deadly conflicts, it carries a high price in terms of America's international credibility. If the United States should find itself unable to bring along its allies to address the international challenges we all face, then there is a greater risk that today's problems will become tomorrow's vital threats.
Clearly, the U.S. capacity for assuming the leading role in cooperative security
is unique. By concentrating our discussion on the role of U.S. preventive diplomacy
and preventive defense in South Asia, it is our hope that this meeting will
provide a considered assessment of the capacity of U.S. civilian and defense
agencies for conflict prevention, while suggesting practical ways that the United
States can contribute to sustained peace and prosperity in South Asia.
Enhancing the United States' Role in Preventive Diplomacy
and Preventive Defense: The Case of South Asia Conference Summary
Karen Ballentine
1. Recommendations
U.S. CAPACITIES FOR PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY AND
PREVENTIVE DEFENSE
In the view of those practitioners present, the United States is in a strong position to undertake preventive diplomacy and preventive defense. Among its other endowments, the United States has a sophisticated intelligence-gathering network and a cadre of diplomats experienced in conflict management. As human rights and democracy have gained broader acceptance around the world, the United States has gained increasing credibility as a major promoter of these ideals and has the combined economic, political, and military strength to make them count. At the same time, however, the United States displays several weaknesses that affect its ability to act preventively. Many of these drawbacks are not technical but political in nature, including the abiding risk aversion of its decisionmakers, the failure to generate stable domestic and international coalitions for proactive diplomacy, and an eagerness to shift the burden for major preventive actions to international organizations that lack the resources and authority necessary for effective implementation.
Most participants agreed that even while U.S. military and civilian institutions
already display some capacity for undertaking preventive diplomacy and preventive
defense, there is considerable room for improvement. They offered the following
recommendations:
Develop Routine Interagency Coordination for Preventive Action. First
and foremost, experience shows that enhancing and sustaining U.S. performance
will require greater interdepartmental communication and cooperation between
the State and Defense Departments, and, where the task is counterterrorism,
between these and the relevant law enforcement and justice agencies. Specifically,
each department was urged to adopt routine procedures for joint policy design
and implementation so as to allow greater involvement by State officials in
preventive defense policies and Defense officials in preventive diplomacy. Here,
the key is policy innovation rather than any wholesale institutional restructuring.
Certain specific programs, such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction
Program, have entailed moderate technical and institutional adjustments. However,
successful policy innovation depends more upon engaging key decisionmakers in
the ideas and practices of prevention than upon any particular institutional
arrangement, especially when--as is the case today--that arrangement is already
generally permissive. Thus, better interagency communication may be facilitated
by assigning key officials an explicit mandate for the prevention of crises
and violent conflict.
Allocate Adequate Resources. Several practitioners described the resource base for U.S. foreign policy today as being in a parlous state. Over the last ten years, the State Department's budget has suffered cutbacks of 50 percent. Scores of diplomatic missions have been closed while others have been left understaffed, ill-equipped and--as the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania gravely dramatized--poorly protected. These closures and cutbacks have reduced the U.S. government's ability to attract the most talented people to diplomatic careers, while also removing the institutional platforms that enable other important agencies, such as Commerce, USAID, and U.S. intelligence, to promote American values and interests abroad.
Similarly, only $1 billion of the $250 billion annual defense budget is allocated
to activities that promote preventive defense. The Department of State's International
Military Education and Training (IMET) Program, which comes closest to fulfilling
the goals of preventive defense, is cut back every year, even though the costs
are relatively modest and the investment a prudent one. Cumulatively, these
resource constraints severely weaken America's stature and influence around
the globe. As many practitioners agreed, solving the resource problem highlights
the need to persuade Congress and the public that sustaining America's positive
and pro-active engagement with the world is a necessity we must afford, not
a luxury we can dispense with.
Mobilize a Constituency for Preventive Diplomacy and Preventive Defense.
Given that the greatest barriers to enhancing America's role in preventive action
are politically rooted, the participants also urged far greater efforts to engage
the active support of the Congress and the public. Since surveys show that most
Americans are not isolationist but cautiously internationalist, there is a potential
constituency to be mobilized. As most citizens' connections to the world are
based on personal and business ties, strategies to tap this latent support should
avoid broad, abstract appeals to globalism and aim at tying pro-active diplomacy
and conflict prevention to their everyday concerns. To engage Congress, the
participants recommended general efforts to build support for prevention, while
emphasizing preventive actions that are non-military, low risk, and aimed at
building a strong infrastructure for peace in troubled regions. Participants
emphasized the importance of regular briefings for congressional leaders so
that they will be well-informed and prepared to deal pro-actively with dangerous,
conflict-prone situations.
The conference participants also suggested a number of specific, interim measures
for improving various aspects of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense:
Improve Early Warning Systems. To ensure a reliable picture of emerging
hotspots and threats, and to enable informed early response, government intelligence
and analysis should be complemented with data collected from additional sources,
such as NGOs and business people. These sources and the information they provide
should be taken seriously into account when making policy recommendations.
Improve U.S. Cooperation with Other International Actors. According
to several participants, the United States has yet to adapt itself fully to
the new realities of the changed international environment. There is a need
to rethink the appropriate balance between multilateral and unilateral policies
and to make more effective use of U.S. membership in international organizations
and alliances to complement U.S. preventive diplomacy and preventive defense.
This need not involve an either/or choice between unilateralism and multilateralism,
but rather a recognition that some preventive tasks are best accomplished unilaterally
and others multilaterally. It is imperative that the United States be cognizant
of the dangers of tasking the UN with military interventions that are beyond
the capacities of conventional multilateral peacekeeping. Instead, the United
States should look to the UN for an authorizing role in military interventions
and for a supporting role in the kinds of preventive activities that UN agencies
perform best, especially conflict monitoring, humanitarian assistance, refugee
management, post-conflict reconstruction, and economic development. Improved
burden sharing and resource pooling would also require strengthening the peacekeeping
and dispute resolution capacities of regional organizations such as ASEAN and
the OAU, while developing more regular procedures for undertaking preventive
actions with other governments in "coalitions of the willing." Finally, the
participants urged the U.S. government to make better use of the skills and
resources provided by other international forums, for example, by helping European
organizations, the G8, the IMF, and the World Bank to incorporate conflict prevention
into their agendas.
Expand Alternative Avenues of Diplomacy. The U.S. government is urged
to encourage and enable private groups to undertake alternative avenues of preventive
diplomacy and conflict mediation. While government fears that private diplomacy
may complicate official efforts are not unfounded, Track Two and private citizen
diplomacy have proven useful to peace processes, especially when official avenues
of negotiation are foreclosed. The U.S. government should explore ways to coordinate
parallel efforts at diplomacy.
Adapt the U.S. Military to Preventive Tasks. In the view of several
practitioners, the American military is increasingly undertaking the functions
of peace enforcement. Much of this on-going transformation has occurred on an
ad hoc basis, as a result of U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia and Haiti.
While U.S. forces have performed admirably in this role, according to the U.S.
military's own estimates, peacekeeping operations have proven more taxing than
conventional military missions for which U.S. forces have long been trained
and equipped. For the U.S. military to become a premier peace enforcement force,
there is a need for systematic restructuring in key areas of counterproliferation,
counterterrorism, and peace enforcement. The U.S. capacity for preventive defense
would also benefit from expanded joint military exercises and training. This
would enhance combat readiness for joint operations, and, where new democracies
are involved, would also help consolidate professional and civilian-controlled
militaries.
IMPROVING U.S. PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY AND PREVENTIVE
DEFENSE IN SOUTH ASIA
Given the profound and complex security challenges posed by South Asia today and the constraints to effective third-party preventive actions, the participants emphasized that neither the nuclear issue nor the Kashmir conflict are amenable to quick policy fixes. Accordingly, they urged U.S. policymakers to pursue a realistic, broad-based, and incremental approach of confidence building that makes use of multiple strategies to strengthen the foundations for increased India-Pakistan cooperation. Equally important, they recommended that the United States take advantage of the diplomatic opportunities created by the May 1998 tests to devote more attention to improving its own long-neglected relationship with India. Among the specific measures that might be usefully applied to help both de-escalate the conflict in Kashmir and reduce the nuclear risk, the following were recommended:
On Kashmir
Support Bilateral Diplomacy on Conflict Reduction. Despite the fact
that outside mediation on Kashmir would probably work to India's benefit, while
making Pakistan's support for the "insurgency" less tenable, India stubbornly
refuses third-party involvement. As long as this condition holds, the participants
recommended that the United States avoid any mediation role that would alienate
India. Assuring Pakistan, however, means that the United States must keep Kashmir
on the agenda. Supporting direct India-Pakistan talks meets both requirements.
Many participants cautioned that the United States seek to avoid any action
that would play into Pakistan's characterization of the Kashmir conflict as
a nuclear flashpoint, as this may encourage Pakistan to use nuclear pressure
to pursue its territorial preferences in Kashmir.
Strengthen Conflict Reduction and Confidence-Building Measures at the
Line of Control. The participants recommended several short-term measures
aimed at de-escalating the intense level of artillery exchanges across the line
of control. These included opening direct lines of communication between Indian
and Pakistani militaries, encouraging regular adherence to existing agreements
on troop movements, securing agreement on new rules of engagement to prohibit
targeting of civilian communities at the line of control, and reducing the number
of illegal crossings by mercenary forces. In the medium term, India and Pakistan
should be encouraged to jointly redeploy heavy artillery away from the line
of control and to reduce the number of troops stationed there. These goals could
be accomplished through a variety of verification mechanisms, including regular
visits by NGO, media, and government officials, and daily communication between
brigade and division level officers. Eventually these demilitarizing measures
may open the way for a permanent cease-fire. Given the facts on the ground,
India and Pakistan should be encouraged to relinquish all irredentist claims
and accept the line of control as the permanent international boundary.
Support Trans-Border Cooperative Efforts. The United States should
use its diplomatic leverage to create incentives for increased transborder trade,
commerce, and civilian traffic, thereby helping to develop enduring societal-level
interactions. On both sides, there are already significant business constituencies
interested in expanding the sphere of joint economic activities, including the
development of ecotourism and agribusiness in the Kashmir Valley. The recent
agreements between India and Pakistan on shared water and energy resources show
that these kind of initiatives are also welcome at the official level. Either
directly or through its influence with the international financial institutions
such as the World Bank, the United States could allocate special funds for cooperative
development and enterprise projects, with follow-on investments being made contingent
on successful joint implementation.
Promote Alternative Avenues of Communication and Diplomacy. In view
of the difficulties besetting official diplomatic efforts, the participants
urged greater support for indigenous nongovernmental initiatives, citizen diplomacy,
and Track Two dialogues between India and Pakistan. Expanding these initiatives
would provide further momentum to India-Pakistan cooperation, while also increasing
opportunities for cross-cultural exchange that can help citizens overcome longstanding
mutual suspicions. Past experience suggests that framing discussions in economic
terms of cost and benefit helps to reduce the level of contentiousness while
also appealing to a broader range of people. In practical terms, the United
States should encourage India and Pakistan to liberalize their visa regimes
so that citizens can travel freely without being subjected to intense police
scrutiny.
On Nonproliferation
Promote Multidimensional Nuclear Risk Reduction Measures. The official U.S. effort to reduce the nuclear risk in South Asia requires that India and Pakistan sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, adopt a moratorium on fissile material production, show restraint on missile development, including limiting the number and range of missile delivery systems, and strengthen export controls on nuclear technology and matériel. While consistent with the U.S. position on nonproliferation, most participants believed that Indian compliance is unlikely in the short-to-medium term. It was suggested that these requirements might be more acceptable to India if they were reformulated in terms of adherence to a universal and inclusive international regime rather than to a set of specifically American demands. Participants were virtually unanimous that persuading India to comply with nonproliferation will require the United States also to offer a credible demonstration of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons, perhaps by undertaking strategic de-alert or unilateral reductions of its own nuclear arsenal. While this would not significantly alter current India-Pakistan dynamics, it would help undercut India's claim of nuclear apartheid.
In the view of most participants, the task of nuclear risk reduction requires
additional, complementary measures--in particular, interim efforts to ensure
the safe command and control of Indian and Pakistani nuclear arsenals. As the
U.S. government is constrained by the NPT from undertaking initiatives that
may tacitly recognize India and Pakistan as "nuclear-weapons states," it is
understandably wary of providing technical advice on command and control. It
was therefore suggested that American NGOs play a greater role in promoting
arms control by assisting India and Pakistan in the technicalities of monitoring
and verification and by educating them as to the complexities and risks that
were involved in managing the U.S.-Soviet nuclear rivalry. The NPT notwithstanding,
some participants maintained that the U.S. government could do more by providing
accurate early warning of force deployments and troop movements and by encouraging
India and Pakistan to improve their own capacities for mutual transparency and
verification.
Maintain and Strengthen Parallel Dialogues with India and Pakistan.
Although progress in India-Pakistan relations will be slow and fitful, the participants
urged the U.S. government to maintain close, high-level contacts with Delhi
and Islamabad. They also strongly recommended that these bilateral dialogues--especially
with India--be expanded to include a range of issues beyond nuclear non-proliferation.
Given India's determination to develop its nuclear capacity and America's insistence
on upholding the nonproliferation regime, the nuclear issue will remain a major
source of contention for some time to come. If U.S.-India relations are to improve,
then it is necessary to focus on those areas where there is a commonality of
interests and potential agreement, including trade, commerce, economic development,
and energy.
Support Military-to-Military Exchanges. Participants cited military-to-military
training and exchange programs as one of the most promising avenues for improved
relations between India and Pakistan and between both countries and the United
States. Indeed, the observable hesitancy of the Pakistani military to endorse
nuclear weapons as a guarantee of Pakistan's security was attributed to their
participation in the U.S. Department of State's IMET Program. The participants
lamented the U.S. government's decision to suspend Pakistan from IMET as part
of the sanctions imposed after the May 1998 tests and urged that Pakistan be
readmitted without delay. They also urged a broader military-to-military dialogue
between India and Pakistan that would extend down to field-level officers.
Promote Controls on Conventional Arms. The participants also urged
that the nuclear issue not be allowed to obscure the far more immediate threat
posed by conventional armaments. The U.S. government should work to persuade
India and Pakistan that they have a common interest in reducing the risk not
just of nuclear war but of all war. India and Pakistan have already concluded
a number of agreements regarding the use of airspace and prior notification
of military exercises that could serve as the basis for a more comprehensive
and enforceable set of confidence-building measures, including observer exchanges
during military exercises, expanded hotline systems, and more regular field-level
communications. The United States might also explore the possibility of establishing
a subcontinent-wide formal agreement on pulling back heavy artillery and reducing
conventional force postures, akin to the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE)
agreement. While this would apply especially to reducing the level of violence
in Kashmir, framing it in terms of broader regional security would make it more
politically palatable while also extending the scope of a predictable security
regime.
Develop a Multilateral and Regional Security Approach. Several participants
spoke of the need to place India-Pakistan relations in a wider regional context.
As the nuclear tests have dramatically underscored, there is a need to address
the core issues of strategic well-being in a region that has, since the end
of the Cold War, been left precariously adrift. It is necessary, too, to take
seriously India's security concerns regarding China: as many participants maintained,
Indo-Chinese relations are the key to South Asian stability in the longer term.
It was therefore recommended that the United States support new multilateral
and nondiscriminatory security initiatives for the region, perhaps in the form
of regional confidence-building measures (CBMs) or multilateral military-to-military
meetings. More ambitiously, some suggested the creation of a permanent South
Asian Conference on Disarmament which, like its European predecessor, could
provide an inclusive forum for on-going discussions and an institutional mechanism
for developing and implementing region-wide CBMs.
2. Toward a Framework for Preventive Action
The meeting began with a survey of the state of the field of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense. There was widespread acknowledgement that, theoretically as well as operationally, both of these concepts are still new and evolving. Although the term "preventive diplomacy" was coined by Dag Hammarskjöld in the early 1960s to reflect the need to prevent regional crises from feeding the larger superpower rivalry, it was not until the end of the Cold War and the rash of ethnic and regional conflicts left in its wake that preventive diplomacy gained broader policy relevance. Similarly, the first public statement on "preventive defense" came only in 1996, with William Perry's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, in which he urged U.S. decision makers and military planners to pursue policies that ". . . support peace, mak[e] war less likely, and deterrence unnecessary." While a number of scholars and policy analysts have since pursued several lines of fruitful inquiry that have added analytical and policy content, they have yet to find a robust and definitive intellectual consensus.
Few participants regarded this lack of consensus as grounds for pessimism, however. As one commentator observed, overarching policy frameworks take time to develop. In terms of policy evolution, preventive diplomacy and preventive defense are at a stage analogous to the notion of "deterrence" in 1948; that is, they offer a nascent and promising policy framework but not yet a full-fledged analytical paradigm or operational security doctrine. The promise of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense stems from three factors: their compelling geopolitical rationale, the intuitive and straightforward appeal of their core premise, and the availability of a wide array of policy instruments.
Though well-suited to a bipolar world, the strategic doctrines of deterrence and containment offer little guidance in today's more disordered geopolitical environment. Now intrastate wars outnumber interstate wars, many states are weak or collapsed, and weapons of mass destruction are increasingly available, posing a qualitatively new threat of catastrophic terrorism. Although these diffuse and ambiguous threats do not yet pose serious challenges to U.S. vital interests, many participants believed that they have great potential to do so if left unattended. New approaches are urgently needed to understand these threats and to prevent uncontrollable and destructive spillover.
The core premise of both preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, as expressed in this meeting, is that international security is today better served by working pro-actively to avert outbreaks of large-scale violence, state collapse, terrorism, and weapons proliferation than it is by simply reacting to crises once they have occurred. Preventive diplomacy, according to one participant, is commonly defined as the use of pro-active, peaceful measures to prevent political conflicts from erupting into violence and to promote peaceful dispute resolution. While sharing this basic thrust, preventive defense was presented in more selective terms as "actions taken now to prevent the emergence of threats that specifically implicate U.S. vital interests and which, if left unattended, would make a U.S. military response necessary." Doctrinally, preventive defense has been more clearly--although still provisionally--developed than has preventive diplomacy. Referring again to Secretary of State Perry's seminal statement, one presenter described its three core objectives as follows: 1) to prevent the emergence of existential threats to U.S. interests; 2) to deter those threats that we cannot prevent; and 3) to defeat those threats that we cannot deter, using force where necessary.
In an effort to draw out the policy implications of these concepts, the discussion turned to a consideration of three related questions: whether and how preventive diplomacy and preventive defense differ from diplomacy and defense, traditionally understood; whether, either as policies or as concepts, they may be regarded as distinct from one another; and whether, in the interests of promoting a more coherent and justifiable policy framework, narrower conceptions of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, firmly grounded in U.S. national interests, are preferable to a more expansive vision.
As one participant noted, from the point of view of many practicing diplomats, there is nothing very novel in the term "preventive diplomacy." In operational terms, it appears to differ little from conventional diplomatic practice, and uses a similar repertoire of policy tools, including official and Track Two negotiations, mediation, intelligence-gathering, and confidence-building measures. However, several discussants emphasized that preventive diplomacy is distinguished by its forward-looking and pre-emptive character and its strategic emphasis on systematic early warning and early response. Traditional diplomacy, by contrast, has typically been ad hoc and reactive, more geared to limited crisis management than to a principled program of conflict prevention.
In the view of some discussants, the distinctive features of preventive defense are easier to grasp. Operationally, preventive defense requires a more imaginative use of military resources and a distinctive set of policy tools, some of which are not strictly military in nature. These include military-to-military outreach, training programs on civil-military relations in democratic settings, confidence-building measures, and greater preparedness for peacekeeping and humanitarian contingencies. By way of illustration, the Marshall Plan, whose coordinated policies of engagement, reconstruction, reconciliation, and integration transformed former enemies into stalwart allies, was cited as the most successful example of preventive defense ever undertaken by the United States.
Typically, preventive diplomacy and preventive defense are approached as twin pillars of an integrated security paradigm. Yet, opposing views were expressed on whether preventive diplomacy and preventive defense were best understood as intertwined aspects of a single policy platform or as separate policies, each with its own distinctive logic, agenda, and agency. Citing the examples of the deployment of peacekeeping forces in the Sinai parallel to the Camp David Accords, U.S. diplomatic and military intervention to restore democracy in Haiti, and the use of preventive deployments in Macedonia, one participant argued that, as a matter of practical policy, preventive diplomacy and preventive defense are mutually supportive: the successful implementation of the former necessarily depends on the success of the latter and vice versa. The tendency to view them as two distinct sets of activities belonging to separate institutional jurisdictions is misleading, since there has been a considerable degree of overlap at both the policy and agency levels.
Other discussants maintained that recent U.S. policy offers even more evidence in support of this view. Both the successful denuclearization of Ukraine and the Dayton Accords required an unprecedented degree of collaboration between the U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense in policy design as well as in execution. Moreover, in accomplishing these tasks, both agencies engaged a common set of policy tools, including outreach programs, multitrack mediation, confidence-building measures, sanctions, and incentives. Indeed, several participants believed that this qualitative shift from traditional bureaucratic isolation, even rivalry, to creative interagency partnership is what provides the most telling evidence of the interconnectedness of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, as well as the novelty of the preventive approach in general. This said, these participants agreed that a more sustained consideration and even institutional formalization of the operational division of labor between military and civilian agencies is desirable.
While accepting that there has been a practical change in how U.S. foreign policy is now being made, some participants remained skeptical about the fundamental compatibility of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense. As one analyst observed, there are a number of significant conceptual differences between preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, the full practical implications of which remain unclear. Accordingly, preventive diplomacy, with its emphasis on averting all forms of large-scale conflict and instability, wherever they may occur, has an expansive agenda that encompasses a wide array of issues. In consequence, there is often considerable ambiguity about its precise policy objectives. The literature on preventive diplomacy has been much clearer in detailing the mechanisms and tools of prevention than in laying out the specific threats and challenges that they are intended to prevent. Consequently, a wide range of problems and potential threats--political instability, adversarial military postures, the international arms trade, ethnic cleansing, terrorist attacks, and nuclear proliferation--are often approached in an undifferentiated way, even though each may pose a qualitatively different problem requiring a different response.
In contrast, preventive defense proceeds from a more specific assessment of major threats and is limited to a consideration of only those likely, in the medium-to-long term, to pose direct security challenges to U.S. interests. From the perspective of practical policymaking, it was argued that the more narrow vision of preventive defense makes security objectives more tractable, while allowing a more systematic allocation of attention and scarce resources to areas where they are most needed and can be most effectively deployed.
It was further suggested that these conceptual differences might have important consequences for the ability of the U.S. government to mobilize broader congressional and public support behind preventive policies. In a time when American foreign policy making is hampered by an aggressively isolationist Congress and widespread public uncertainty, and when there are few, if any, clear-cut threats to vital U.S. interests that might help forge a solid domestic consensus, it is more important than ever that policy makers be attuned to the need to design policies with a compelling and easily defensible public rationale. As the participants noted, the task of doing so for preventive diplomacy and defense is complicated by their long-range focus on future contingencies, where the dangers are not always self-evident. While in some specific cases, such as the North Korean or Iraqi weapons programs, the danger seems relatively clear, it is often difficult to marshal convincing evidence that there exist serious threats, that they have been reliably identified, and that the means and costs of addressing them are necessary and appropriate.
With these concerns in mind, some participants took the view that, because it is more narrowly conceived and is more in tune with the conventional "deter and punish" concerns of U.S. defense, preventive defense offers a more compelling and defensible rationale than does preventive diplomacy. They recommended that preventive diplomacy be reconceived along the lines of preventive defense; specifically, that it be firmly and explicitly grounded in a coherent vision of U.S. national interests, aim at clearly specified and limited goals, and avoid appeals to more abstract notions of global security.
While the need for publicly defensible preventive policies was shared by all participants, the assertion that preventive defense is easier to explain to Congress and the public was disputed by several of the practitioners present. They maintained that the record of recent preventive defense policies has been mixed. For example, while Congress has been highly supportive of the NATO Partnership for Peace program, it objected to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program on the grounds that helping dismantle Russian nuclear arsenals, convert defense industries to civilian purposes, and retrain Russian nuclear scientists for other nonmilitary pursuits were not appropriate actions for the military to undertake or for the military budget to support. Preventive defense policies, no less than those of preventive diplomacy, still confront major difficulties when it comes to mobilizing public support.
At the same time, the lack of conceptual and programmatic specificity has
not posed insuperable obstacles to effective preventive diplomacy. In fact,
preventive diplomacy has had a number of important policy successes, from securing
peace agreements in Northern Ireland and Bosnia to peacefully defusing ethnic
and regional tensions in the Baltic states, Macedonia, and Ukraine. From this
perspective, the problem is not that policies of preventive diplomacy have few
inherent selling points, but that they have suffered from poor salesmanship.
Rather than limit the scope and objectives of preventive diplomacy, the proper
response might instead be to focus on strategies that seek to strengthen innovative
leadership and political will, with more determined efforts at constituency
building, public education, and congressional engagement.
Several presentations offered a partial review of the policy tools of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense and an appraisal of what lessons may be learned from the experience of using them. According to one presenter, our scholarly and practical knowledge has advanced dramatically over the past few years. We now have more nuanced and rigorous studies available on the strengths and limitations of tools such as early warning mechanisms, sanctions, incentives, mediation, and power sharing as they have been applied in a wider number of cases. Practically, we also have a better understanding of how to employ these tools with good effect. For example, we know that sanctions policies will be more successful where there is a careful blend of rewards and punishments than where sanctions are pursued alone. This has been borne out in many parts of post-Communist Eastern Europe, where integration into Euro-Atlantic structures has provided a compelling incentive for these governments to extend effective protection to ethnic minorities and to resolve long-held ethnic and territorial claims against neighboring states. Likewise, we have also learned more about the requisites of successful mediation in cases of on-going conflict: specifically, that efforts to strengthen the hand of moderate forces on each side are more successful where accompanied by efforts that isolate and undercut extremist factions that otherwise act as "spoilers" of peace processes.
Regarding preventive defense, the discussion touched upon a number of useful tools and practices, including military-to-military training programs, combined training exercises, joint military missions, various other confidence-building measures, and preventive military deployments. In the view of several discussants, one of the most valuable forms of preventive defense has been direct military-to-military consultation and training. These have included the highly rated International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program, which is administered jointly by the U.S. Departments of State and Defense at the Marshall Center in Germany and the Asia-Pacific Center in Hawaii, and which has introduced dozens of military leaders from Russia and elsewhere to the workings of modern militaries in democratic societies. The assignment of military liaison teams to the defense ministries in newly democratizing countries and the Partnership for Peace program have also contributed to the development of military professionalism, transparency in defense doctrines and budgets, and civilian control. The participation of a Russian brigade in NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia was cited as a very good example of the value of combined-force missions, not only in making the task of postconflict reconstruction in Bosnia easier, but also in promoting mutual understanding and respect between NATO and Russian military professionals.
Considerable attention was paid to an evaluation of preventive deployments providing both assurance and deterrence in conflict-prone regions. Unlike traditional peacekeeping operations in which troops are dispatched only once conflict has given way to cease-fire, preventive deployments are undertaken in an effort to stop conflicts before they start. Citing the pathbreaking success of UNPREDEP in Macedonia--where lightly armed forces wearing the UN blue helmets, acting as both monitors and mediators, have been credited with helping Macedonia avoid the fate of other ex-Yugoslav republics--many participants asked whether this model could be extended to other conflict-prone areas.
While all saw the value of the UNPREDEP mission, some participants remained skeptical of its wider applicability. In particular, they doubted whether the conditions that made UNPREDEP successful--particularly the consent of key local leaders, the absence of armed opposition, and the absence of a direct or imminent threat to UN troops--also obtained in other cases. Underscoring this skepticism, one participant noted that a U.S. preventive deployment failed in Haiti in 1993 because widespread local hostility exposed the political and military vulnerability of a batallion that was unwanted, small, and ill-equipped. Some participants speculated that there would be few opportunities favoring successful preventive deployment in the future.
Others, however, remained more optimistic, arguing that this very discussion
shows that the failures of preventive defense have helped us to gain a more
refined and realistic understanding of the ingredients necessary for future
applications as well as of the proper ways of ensuring and measuring success.
In the view of these participants, for preventive deployments to have broader
utility, they must have appropriate rules of engagement. Thus far, however,
there has been a tendency to let the rules of engagement for preventive deployments
be too strictly defined by the Weinberger/Powell doctrine, in particular by
its overwhelming preoccupation with preventing U.S. casualties at all costs
and with securing a clear "exit strategy" beforehand. While these strictures
may be appropriate at times when the United States faces direct threats to vital
interests, they currently hamstring America's ability to undertake preventive
deployments and to sustain credible threats that can deter aggressors. Because
America does not today face major security threats, the presumption that U.S.
military power should only be used to defend vital national interests
categorically disqualifies the use of preventive deployments and makes America's
extraordinary military power virtually irrelevant to the management of the lesser
but still destabilizing security challenges that plague the world today.
The meeting identified several problems that need further exploration. Most important among them were the problem of political will, the strategic dilemmas that new security challenges--particularly those of catastrophic terrorism and intrastate conflicts--pose for third-party action, and the question of the legitimacy of preventive actions.
As one presenter noted, preventive diplomacy places great emphasis on maintaining reliable systems of early warning, including the improvement of routine capacities of intelligence gathering, data analysis, and timely dissemination to relevant decision makers. The record of the last few years suggests that the U.S. capacity for early warning has been more than adequate. The far more critical obstacle to successful prevention has been the periodic failure of decision makers to respond quickly, or sometimes at all. Here, it was argued that the logic of early warning collides head-on with the logic of electoral politics; whereas the utility of early warning demands early response, risk-averse leaders tend to be wary of possible foreign entanglements, and often prefer inaction as the best way of ensuring their domestic political survival. This tendency has resulted in a number of "missed opportunities" in crises and conflicts that may well have been preventable, including the Rwandan genocide. As our collective knowledge of preventive action increases, there will be new possibilities for addressing the issue of political will. While acknowledging that this problem defies easy answers, many participants recommended that much more intellectual and political effort be devoted to analyzing the roots of this problem and devising appropriate responses.
Another enduring problem stems from the strategic challenges posed today for effective third-party, and particularly U.S., preventive action. As one participant observed, the great paradox today is that while the United States has attained global military supremacy, its ability to deter rogue states, neutralize determined terrorists, and prevent civil wars is nonetheless highly circumscribed. Coercive diplomacy and deterrence, strategies well-suited to Cold War conditions, have limited utility today. There is a pronounced imbalance between the increasing demands the U.S. government now makes of its adversaries and its ability to muster a sufficiently credible threat to compel compliance. Part of this problem stems from the constraints posed by extant doctrines of state sovereignty and part from the reluctance of American leaders, especially since the Somalia debacle, to risk using ground troops. The danger, however, is that the failure to design and apply a credible threat sends powerful signals of American irresolution and vulnerability to precisely those adversaries whose aggressive behavior we seek to deter. Maintaining America's global influence in the twenty-first century will require a more careful calibration of the means and ends of policy and a more informed public discussion of the risks and benefits of preventive actions.
There was a widespread consensus that the efficacy of third-party preventive actions critically depends on the legitimacy they elicit, not just from domestic constituencies, but also from the populations directly concerned and the larger international community. Undertaking such actions without due regard for their legitimacy could prove counterproductive to the aims of preventive diplomacy and preventive defense, particularly where these actions conflict with established norms of state sovereignty. Rather than pre-empt or defuse threats, poorly justified outside actions might instead provoke resentment and escalate conflict. For the United States, this problem is complicated by its de facto hegemonic status in world affairs--a status that many others resent and fear--and its insistence on reserving to itself the right of unilateral, pre-emptive attack. Given these realities, several participants asked, what difference is there between preventive defense and preventive war, conventionally understood? How are we to distinguish between preventive actions that genuinely seek the promotion of peace and those that merely mask a traditional pursuit of self-interest? Will not many nations view U.S. efforts at counterterrorism or nonproliferation as just another instance of American bullying? In short, what price does preventive defense have for U.S. standing in the international community? And what price does continued U.S. unilateralism have for the integrity of preventive defense?
In response, many participants agreed on the desirability of multilateral
preventive actions and on the prior attainment of UN Security Council authorization
for all preventive actions that involve third-party military interventions.
Beyond this, however, there was little consensus. Some discussants spoke of
the need to make a clear distinction between a "preventive use of force," on
the one hand, and the "preventive deployment of forces" on the other, noting
that not all preventive deployments require the use of force. Others argued
that the pre-emptive use of force, especially to deter catastrophic terrorism
or to stop imminent attacks on civilian populations, is justifiable, but only
under specific conditions in which the targets are limited, the level of force
is commensurate, and the ancillary destruction is kept to a minimum. Still others
suggested that the question of the legitimacy of preventive actions and the
extent to which U.S. actions are compatible with "neutral" peace promotion are
empirical questions that can only be answered on a case-by-case basis.
3. Preventive Defense and Diplomacy in South Asia
Turning to South Asia, the participants offered an evaluation of the following
issues: the significance of the 1998 nuclear tests for future South Asian security
relations in general and for the Kashmir conflict in particular, the prevailing
constraints and opportunities for third-party preventive actions, and the specific
tools and strategies that may be applied to help forestall the incipient nuclear
rivalry and de-escalate tensions in Kashmir.
THE INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT IN A NUCLEAR CONTEXT
For the majority of those present, U.S. diplomacy is critical for achieving substantial improvements in India-Pakistan relations. In the absence of sustained U.S. involvement, the situation is likely to get worse rather than better. As one regional expert explained, even holding the nuclear variable aside, several other factors could escalate the Kashmir conflict and severely destabilize India-Pakistan relations. To illustrate this point, he compared the present situation to the past three India-Pakistan wars (in 1948, 1965, and 1971), noting that several aspects that formerly had limited the level of destruction no longer appear to obtain. The previous wars were characterized by relatively limited casualties, by predictable--if obsolete--set-piece battle tactics, and by limited firepower. In part, this was due to the material limitations of the Indian and Pakistani militaries, but it also reflected certain shared norms among that generation of Indian and Pakistani military leaders, many of whom had the same (British) training and who subscribed to the same code of military honor. This enabled certain tacit understandings about "agreed-upon limits," captured well in a former Pakistan air marshall's declaration that "gentlemen do not bomb each other's cities."
Today, however, few of these constraints remain. The combination of a move to guerrilla tactics inside Kashmir and weapons proliferation has reduced the element of predictability while also threatening higher civilian casualty rates. Offensive, even pre-emptive, military strategies have become increasingly popular. A new generation of elites who have little or no experience with their counterparts on the other side of the line of control is replacing the cohort of military officials with old-school ties.
Perhaps most worrisome of all, however, is the steady erosion of effective state authority in both India and Pakistan. Many participants concurred that the secular Indian state is in deep decline, eclipsed by the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the militant Hindu nationalism which brought it to power. To be sure, the BJP is not electorally secure, and democratic competition has forced it to moderate its more extreme nationalist policies. It is also far from certain that such a diffuse religion as Hinduism can generate and sustain a coherent political ideology. However, some participants feared that an insecure nationalist government may be even more inclined towards an aggressive foreign policy, if only to shore up its uncertain domestic support. Amidst this polarized and volatile political situation, the Indian state may no longer be a unitary actor capable of effectively controlling all branches of government.
As many participants noted, this is even truer of Pakistan, where intelligence agencies are increasingly autonomous from civilian political control and have begun to pursue their own agenda in Kashmir. Although the Pakistan military has officially withdrawn from political life, a weak and fractious party system, limited experience in civilian or democratic rule, a weak economy, and an upsurge of militant Islam pose severe challenges to political and social stability that a resurgent military could exploit. Frustration with the Pakistan government's lack of progress on Kashmir has also sparked the emergence of Pakistan-based Islamic paramilitary formations who use Afghani-inspired mujahideen tactics in their effort to wrest Kashmir from Indian control.
The nuclearization of India and Pakistan has occurred amidst this growing domestic turmoil as well as within the larger regional security vacuum left by the end of the Cold War. Several participants cautioned that India's decision to undertake nuclear tests in May 1998 should not be viewed as an idiosyncrasy of the BJP leadership or its ideology, nor as a decision that could be reversed once the BJP leaves office. For nearly two decades, India has been steadily engaged in developing a nuclear capacity. In 1995, it was only U.S. intervention that dissuaded Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao from proceeding with his own plans to undertake nuclear tests. At that time, however, he maintained that the question was not "whether" India would develop an operational nuclear capacity but only "when." The timing of the May 1998 tests had as much to do with India's unaddressed security concerns and its frustration with the failure of the nuclear states to use the extension of the NPT to demonstrate progress towards denuclearization as it did with the BJP's election. As one commentator stressed, "this is an Indian bomb; not a BJP bomb."
The participants offered a mixed assessment of both the strategic and political consequences of a nuclear South Asia. On the one hand, the prospect of a viable nuclear deterrent capacity has made India and Pakistan more willing to engage in conventional military options. This finding appears to be supported by the fact that, in the summer of 1998, the level of firing across the line of control in Kashmir was three times higher than it was the previous summer. While senior Indian and Pakistani officials recognize that nuclear weapons make full-scale war impossible, they yet appear to believe that they can launch small-scale probes with little risk of escalation. Given the doubtful capacity of India and Pakistan to ensure adequate command and control of their nuclear stockpiles, there is significant potential for misperception and accident to lead to an unwanted nuclear exchange. It is in this context that continuing hostilities along the line of control may provide a flashpoint for inadvertent nuclear escalation.
On the other hand, the introduction of the nuclear variable has altered the
political and diplomatic terrain in some more hopeful respects. As many South
Asians have now been forced to consider the security, economic, and social consequences
of nuclear testing, there is growing recognition that the future cannot be like
the past. In the view of several participants, the tests have provided an opening
and opportunity for serious negotiations. And precisely because the actions
of India and Pakistan have threatened the global nonproliferation regime, there
is now a legitimate basis for outside diplomacy that did not exist as long as
the India-Pakistan conflict was limited to Kashmir. Indeed, since May 1998,
the official U.S.-India dialogue has steadily improved, as have direct discussions
between India and Pakistan. Most notably, India has shown a new willingness
to put the question of Kashmir on the diplomatic agenda.
CONSTRAINTS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR
U.S. PREVENTIVE ACTION
It was generally observed that the challenges posed by a nuclear South Asia are of enormous complexity and that this complexity poses significant limits on both the options and leverage available to third-party actors, including the United States. While Pakistan has actively sought third-party involvement in an effort to resolve the status of Kashmir, India insists on direct, bilateral negotiations. In addition, India's decision to defy international norms of nonproliferation and undertake nuclear tests was motivated in large part by its security concerns regarding China, its resentment against what its officials have referred to as "nuclear apartheid" on the part of the established nuclear states, and by India's desire to be recognized as a great power. These concerns make India extraordinarily sensitive towards U.S. calls for nuclear restraint, which it views as hypocrisy, and U.S. mediation overtures, which it views as a form of interference. Given this context, a few participants were skeptical that the United States had a constructive role to play, since any solutions that are too closely identified as American are bound to encounter resistance in India. They also expressed concern about possible repercussions should U.S. preventive policies fail.
There was also some uncertainty as to whether the Kashmir conflict was yet ripe for resolution. The minority view was that--given the current volatility of Indian and Pakistani domestic politics--it would be better to refrain from directly addressing the Kashmir dispute at this time. While acknowledging this constraint, most participants maintained that there are several good reasons for the United States to encourage India and Pakistan to begin the process now. For India and especially for Pakistan, maintaining a highly militarized line of control is a substantial drain on resources that might otherwise be available for military modernization and economic development. The building of a nuclear capacity and the sanctions imposed after the tests have only added to this economic burden. There are also growing political costs. Pakistan's preoccupation with Indian-controlled Kashmir has diverted attention away from the considerable domestic challenges posed by the rise of Islamic extremism as well as from the costs to Pakistan's international credibility incurred by its tacit indulgence of international terrorist groups. As casualties mount and as more Islamic mercenary groups infiltrate Kashmir, Pakistan's capacity to influence events on the ground is diminishing still further. In the view of some participants, Pakistan has little to gain and much to lose by further fighting. It was also suggested that India's successful pacification of the Kashmir insurgency and the restoration of local Kashmir government have alleviated India's immediate security concerns in the region to the point that it can now launch a dialogue from a position of confidence.
The participants also considered whether the Kashmir conflict and the nuclear nonproliferation issue are linked, and if so, to what extent. Again, divergent views were expressed. In the view of some, these two issues are unavoidably linked--if only because Pakistan, in an effort to engage U.S. mediation of the Kashmir dispute, has insisted that there can be no progress on nonproliferation until the problem of Kashmir is resolved. Accordingly, any policy that focuses exclusively on nuclear nonproliferation to the neglect of Kashmir risks alienating Pakistan. For the majority of participants, however, the two problems are separable. Whatever linkage that exists between the Kashmir conflict and the nuclear issue is a result of the nuclear tests themselves rather than the motivation behind them. While global reaction to the tests has been sharply focused on violence in Kashmir, the rivalry with Pakistan over Kashmir did not figure greatly in India's decision to go nuclear. From this perspective, a more viable strategy for third-party diplomacy may be the traditional confidence-building approach, whereby the tertiary aspects of disputes are de-linked and addressed separately from the more intractable root causes. In any case, given India's resistance to outside interference on the question of Kashmir, there is limited room for third parties to directly influence that dispute and little point in insisting it be redressed in parallel with non-proliferation.
Even when de-linked from the Kashmir dispute, however, U.S. efforts to promote nonproliferation in South Asia are faced with a stubborn policy dilemma: how to maintain the integrity of the global nonproliferation regime, to which the United States is committed, while also ensuring the safety of the de facto nuclear capacities of India and Pakistan. To accomplish the first goal, U.S. policy has insisted that India and Pakistan disavow nuclear weapons and accept fully the rules of non-proliferation, including adherence to the NPT, the CTBT, the fissile material cutoff treaty, and export controls on sensitive materials and technologies. But U.S. determination to avoid any measure that may, even tacitly, bestow recognition on India and Pakistan as nuclear-weapons states has meant that India and Pakistan are denied technical and other assistance that could ensure the safety and security of their nuclear arsenals.
While understanding the vital importance of the NPT to American national interests, many participants expressed frustration with several aspects of current U.S. policy. First, there was profound skepticism about India's willingness to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and hence about the utility of any policy that did not take this reality squarely into account. Second, it was argued, current U.S. policy offers India few incentives to comply with U.S. nonproliferation preferences. One possibly useful incentive would be to offer India civilian nuclear technology which it badly needs and cannot supply for itself. Doing so would also assuage India's resentment of the U.S. policy of selling this technology to nondemocratic China while denying it to democratic India.
Another, perhaps more fundamental incentive would be for the United States to undertake a credible demonstration of the nuclear self-restraint that it is now demanding of India and Pakistan. As several participants maintained, it is a mistake to approach India and Pakistan in isolation from global progress towards nonproliferation. The United States cannot hope to obtain their compliance to the nonproliferation regime, while insisting on its untrammeled right to determine its own nuclear security. If, as U.S. policymakers have claimed, the United States wants to devalue nuclear weapons as the currency of global prestige and power, then it must set the example. The time is right for the United States to take seriously its obligations under the NPT toward progressive denuclearization. Participants suggested several measures by which this could be accomplished, including unilateral weapons reductions, de-alerting nuclear warheads, or forswearing first-strike options in conventional attacks, as was recently proposed by the German and Canadian governments. In the absence of such a gesture, participants feared that the United States will not succeed in restraining nuclear proliferation in South Asia.
Restoring the integrity of the nonproliferation regime in South Asia will also require the active inclusion of China--Pakistan's primary source of nuclear know-how and India's primary source of insecurity. The participants acknowledged, however, that establishing a China-India dialogue will be very difficult, given the long history of enmity between them and China's utter refusal to take India seriously. Yet, they also believed that the United States could summon greater effort and ingenuity in establishing such a process.
Part Two Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution
December 4-6, 1998
Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: Conference Summary
I. William Zartman
Intrastate conflicts are the characteristic of current world affairs. The controls of the Cold War have been removed without replacement but the fuel (arms, troops, money, ideology) that Cold War protagonists often offered to local conflicts is still available from less manageable sources. The rising phenomenon of state collapse creates a vacuum that sucks in neighbours' involvement. Interstate conflicts also occur, both on their own and as a result of intrastate spillover, and may well return to their former prominence as regional leaders fight out issues of rank and relations between one another.
The responsibility and capability for dealing with these conflicts remains
a matter of state policy, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. New
agencies and powers for the United Nations or regional organizations, including
ready peace-keeping forces, are not near eventualities. Private agencies have
a growing role, not all of it helpful, and at best prepare and support state
action. States, responsibly governed and supportively interacting--that is,
practising "normal politics" and "normal diplomacy"--are the prime agents for
producing policies responsive to incipient conflicts. When they fail, other
states need to consider preventive diplomacy and conflict management--the topic
which our gathering at Ditchley was tasked with debating. This summary seeks
to distil the main elements of our discourse.
There is no doubt that effective preventive diplomacy and conflict management
for conflicts not prevented are frequently practised and are viewed as a good
thing. Yet instances of egregious conflict are allowed to slip through the cracks
in prevention and arrive at the point where they challenge management. Six reasons
for this failure are often advanced. Each has an appropriate response if conflict
resolution is to be achieved.
"It is hard to see a conflict coming so as to take action in time." Conference participants emphasized that early warning abounds. Even if the future date of a crisis may not be able to be identified beforehand, there is plenty of information publicly available about impending conflict situations and even about likely crisis points (except in the UN Secretariat, which is woefully bereft of intelligence and early warning facilities). The real problem is rather one of sorting out likely crises from simply dangerous situations.
Rather than hide behind the problem it is important to work at it, to improve
techniques for identifying turning points and opportunities for positive intervention.
We do not abandon hurricane warnings simply because they do not always precede
hurricanes. Furthermore, an appropriate response to the uncertainty of early
warning is contingency planning. Military preparedness emphasizes contingency
plans; diplomatic readiness can equally benefit from forward-looking scenarios.
If moments of opportunity are not immediately available, third parties can position
themselves--indicate availability, identify goals and values, open communications--in
preparation.
"Resolution by third parties is not feasible, since only parties can manage
their conflicts." While it is understood that third parties cannot remove the
underlying causes and perceptions of conflict, they can undertake and encourage
measures to set the conflicting parties' relations onto a new course. Parties
in conflict need help; they tend to be too absorbed in their conflict to be
able to see and adopt positive-sum exit measures. The historic record shows
that discovering and navigating the path between conflict and resolution usually
requires the services of a third-party pilot. On the way, specific measures
can be taken to reduce the chances of escalation and crisis; if conflict is
the work of political entrepreneurs exploiting a dangerous context, measures
can be envisaged to reduce combustible situations and isolate the pyromaniacs.
"In the post-Cold War world there is no political will for involvement in other peoples' conflicts." While it is undeniable that the disappearance of Cold War interests has removed strategic pressure for engagement in conflict management, the cost of late action and lost opportunities, the pressure of public opinion and the vigilance of a responsible press can redefine the terms of political will. U.S. polls show that the public will support conflict-management intervention abroad if the government articulates a clear strategy and defines its aims. The media and the electorate have a role to play in demanding this type of leadership.
Key Atlantic partners have been badly burned by their experiences in intervention--the French in Rwanda, for instance, the Americans in Somalia (curiously, even more than in Vietnam). Events in Congo/Zaire left both countries confused, and the lack of leverage over Slobodan Milosevic, Sani Abacha, Saddam Hussein, Laurent Kabila, Binyamin Netanyahu and others left the "remaining superpower" even more perplexed in international affairs. Next to the people of these countries, political will has been the greatest casualty of the situation. Faced with intractable conflicts and spoilers Western leaders become risk-averse, unable to take on the problems of rethinking the mission of the military, evaluating the intelligence, mobilizing the resources and springing into the action that prevention and management require.
What makes states willing to take risks for prevention? No doubt a mixture
of calculations--a certainty of impending danger and an interest in reducing
it, a sense of moral obligation and international legitimacy, an awareness of
future opportunity costs, and a belief in an ability to do the job. The decision
to act is caught in a number of commonplace phrases--"it can't go on like this,"
"handle it now or it will come back to haunt us," "this time they've gone too
far," "we can't let this happen," "act before it is too late" or "while we still
have a chance." Thus, the decision rests on feelings about future as against
present certainties--the certainty of impending disaster and the certainty of
present effectiveness--tied together by a moral and interest-based obligation
to act. Lack of will is a state of mind, but it is also a calculation. Press
and public need to work on the first, analysts and activists on the second.
"Preventive diplomacy and conflict management is intervention in the internal
affairs of sovereign states and so is none of our business." While there are
enormous problems in tossing aside time-honoured doctrines of protective sovereignty,
such doctrines are becoming more and more eroded or outmoded, as former UN Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali indicated. The Pinochet affair illustrates a growing international-law
concept of universal jurisdiction; there is increasing attention being paid
to the notion of sovereignty as responsibility, under which sovereign states
are held accountable for the well-being of their citizens and other sovereign
states for assistance in the matter. States large and small (such as the United
States, China, India, Iraq, Algeria, Israel, Singapore and Malaysia), still
assert their immunity to internal interference, but global (UN) and regional
organizations can make such intervention more legitimate. As UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan noted in his July 1998 lecture at Ditchley, "Each of us as an individual
has to take his or her share of responsibility."
"Preventive diplomacy doesn't work because the tools are all flawed." While the means of stopping internal or interstate wars are not always easy or even effective, the findings are more often false negatives than real evidence. The historical record shows not that sanctions do not work, for example, but that leaky sanctions do not work; the policy debate needs to shift from sanctions in themselves to ways of making sure that sanctions are observed. To make prevention and management effective, the focus of analysis needs to be turned from "what" to "when" and "how."
Often the key to effectiveness is a matter of judging timing in circumstances
where both knowledge of appropriate opportunities and the operational ability
to seize them remain uncertain. In both prevention and management the window
of opportunity is frequently very narrow. Situations do not come in standard
types and sizes--another reason for contingency planning and careful positioning.
"Since prevention and management involve other people's problems, there are no resources in time and money to devote to them." While Western governments cannot handle a large number of external crises at the same time, the financial-resource question should be examined in comparison to the costs of handling the problem later when it is worse, more costly, more difficult to handle and more disruptive to our own concerns. "Future opportunity cost" is a concept that needs to be taken into account. The drain on attention can be attenuated by delegating preparation and follow-through to lower levels.
Finally, willingness to engage militarily does not have to be the measure
of commitment; much effective action can be taken short of military involvement,
and the reluctance to commit troops can be used as an incentive to effective
action short of force. French assistance in mediating the Malian Tuareg and
Senegal-Mauritania conflicts did not involve major financial or military commitments;
Norwegian mediation of the Palestine-Israel principles involved few resources
(but some concentrated skills); even the multinational peacekeeping force in
Macedonia is a low-cost activity.
What measures then can be taken, and how and when can they be properly used?
How can we best think about preventing and managing conflict? Rather than thinking
of a toolbox, it is important to bring the tools together around approaches,
and instead think of skills. A number of different approaches present themselves.
Think Collaboration
No single agent is likely to be adequate to the complex task of helping others with their conflicts. Interventions, norm setting and pressures (sticks) are more effective when issued collectively, and most effective when issued by an institutionalized group of which the conflicting party/parties are members, such as a regional organization. Multiple agents should be conceived of as elements in a layered process, always leading to the mediator of next resort. Beyond unilateral action, NGO assistance, state coalitions, regional organizations and finally the UN Secretariat and Security Council comprise the layers. The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement to end (for a while) the Sudanese war was achieved through layered mediation, using in turn the All-African Council of Churches, then the OAU Secretariat, then the emperor. When an institutionalized group does not exist, constituting a "friends" group can provide a useful device for providing pressure and mobilizing knowledge for conflict resolution. The necessary involvement of others entails more transaction costs in attention, communication and coordination, to be sure. But in a number of instances--Cyprus, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Congo, among others--coordinated action and regional involvement are the necessary elements to a solution; and in others--like Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia--coordination and collaboration were key to the progress made.
Beyond resources for intervention lies the need for resources for legitimization, where regional attention and consensus is required. Where regional organizations exist mechanisms for management and shared norms and principles for conduct are potentially available. The OSCE, OAS, ECOWAS, and ASEAN are examples; it is not surprising that the Wars of the Great Lakes in Africa or the Wars of the Yugaslav Succession have taken place in areas not claimed by a functioning subregional organization. Where they exist, regional organizations provide an additional layer between the conflict and the UN; but in the many areas of the world where they are absent or ineffective--East, South and Central Asia, the Middle East, Central Africa, the Balkans--the Security Council is the only institutionalized collectivity available, and it is strained. Where regional organizations and political alliances provide an intermediate layer, their relation to the world organization needs clarifying: need for UNSC authorization can produce delays and inaction, as in Kosovo and Congo-Brazzaville; but lone-rangering runs against global consensus and legitimacy.
NGOs and Track Two diplomacy are rapidly growing as useful adjuncts to government
action, and can often prepare the way for official engagement. They include
the work of humanitarian agencies, advocacy groups and mediation agencies, reconciliation
training projects and democracy promotion, among others. While NGOs have advantages
such as flexibility, information and resources, they are not a substitute for
official action. There are real limits to the privatization of public affairs.
Mercenaries and private security forces represent a dangerous abdication of
responsible state activity, and usually go hand in hand with privatization of
official roles and revenues (contract supply and training for government forces
appears to be on the acceptable side of a thin line). In general, in political,
economic or military matters, private involvement is acceptable only so long
as it is well coordinated with official attentions and does not undermine the
authority of the state, whose absence is often the cause of internal conflict.
Think Firebreaks to Conflict
These can be substantive--as ways of preventing discrimination, repression
or constitutional abrogation--or they can be procedural--as breathing spells
to break the momentum of conflict. Firebreaks include general standards (such
as human-rights requirements for membership or casus foederis triggers
for collective action in regional organizations) and principled assurances (such
as confirmation to Congo, Sudan, or Iraq of international insistence on territorial
integrity). Specific measures could include (a) a report like that of Freedom
House on ethnic discrimination and power concentration in ethnically divided
states; (b) a provision for the UN to be custodian of constitutions, as it is
of treaties, so that a breach would require a response; and (c) an OAU designation
of a coming year as the Year of Boundary Demarcation, so that states could mark
(and where necessary renegotiate) boundaries while they are "cold," and provide
for permeability.
Think Both Sticks and Carrots
Prevention and management involve measures to make the present course more
unpleasant (sticks) and the future alternative more attractive (carrots). Often
functional equivalents--alternative courses to the same goal that do not provoke
conflict--can also be helpful. Sanctions and other sticks are often adopted
because of a need "to do something" (e.g., after Indian and Pakistani nuclear
tests) when in reality engaging in dialogue could be more productive. But economic
incentives and other carrots to prevent conflict are unlikely to be effective
if the root causes (no pun intended) of the conflict are not addressed. A mutually
hurting stalemate (MHS) uses the conflict itself to provide sticks to develop
a perception of ripeness and push the parties toward resolution, but more thinking
is needed about the less well developed concept of mutually enticing opportunities
(MEO) that pull parties out of conflict. The opportunity for Israel and the
PLO to improve relations with the mediator by coming to Madrid in 1991 may be
an example.
Think Inside/Outside Handshake
Preventive and management measures cannot work by imposition, without cooperation
from the parties involved. If parties to the conflict themselves are not immediately
convinced of the need for avoidance or ending of their conflict, regional or
internal allies need to be enlisted. More broadly, prevention and management
is not just the job of the Atlantic partners, practised on a conflict-beset
Third World. The Atlantic partners need to bring Third World leaders into their
values and up to speed in their practices, even if the Atlantic partners can
still be expected ultimately to provide leadership. Third World mediators have
sometimes proved to be skilled in conflict diplomacy (in regard, for example,
to El Salvador, South Africa and the Malian Tuareg) albeit at other times ineffective
(as with Liberia, Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Iraq and Chiapas).
Socialization in prevention and management would not only improve skills, but
also build a base of legitimacy and partnership for others' efforts. Discussions,
like Ditchley conferences, should include some members of conflict areas, so
that the we-they gap is minimized and "they" are made part of "us."
Think Early Awareness and Early Action, Not Just Early
Warning
Early awareness involves a readiness to receive and hear rather than just file the warnings, an emphasis on thinking ahead rather than just putting out fires, and an ability to get the warning to the right agent to be able to identify apt, legitimate and credible responses. The media have an important role to play in preparing early awareness by focusing on warning signs such as human rights violations and by highlighting instances and benefits of conflict prevention. As it is, their intense but fleeting attentions (phase one of the CNN/BBC effect) may galvanize crisis response, but phase two is frequently viewer saturation--"turn off the tube/telly."
While there may be some advantage to be gained from later intervention at a mature moment, when the conflict has first had a chance to work itself out, when options have clarified, and when pressure for settlement is greatest, clear signals and substantial engagement are usually needed early on, before parties' positions have hardened and while escape from a dangerous course is still possible. Such early engagement against Cedras in Haiti or Milosevic in Yugoslavia would have been more effective and economical, both for the intervener and for the conflict-stricken populations.
Early action involves the formulation of contingency plans and scenarios instead
of single strikes, the identification of goals and purposes to be achieved and
not just "successful missions," the exercise of leadership and coalition building
rather than lone-rangering, the calculation of appropriate timing, and the implementation
of mechanisms for future management, continuing attention, and follow-through
rather than letting the issue drop once it is "solved." Of these multiple criteria
of successful policy, two stand out: many operations, including peacekeeping
exercises, do not come with a clear purpose to be accomplished, a committed
goal where one can declare the job done; and, conversely, many operations come
as a response to the initial trigger but do not contain a commitment to remain
engaged throughout the subsequent phases required to make the initial action
effective. A good guideline is: "Stay as long as you must, leave as soon as
you can," but it needs tailoring to each situation.
Think Principles and Regimes
Every conflict prevented or managed contributes to building precedents and principles for dealing with future cases; by the same token, specific interventions and solutions should be principled actions rooted in broader norms and values, taking advantage of previous precedents and principles. This is particularly important in the post-Cold-War era, where standards are uncertain and the endpoint of the transition still unidentified. Standards created by the UN have a high level of legitimacy and are widely saleable. Regional organizations can perform the same function for their members, thus giving them a sense of ownership over their norms; regional norms should not, however, conflict with UN-established standards.
Consensual norms can then serve as the basis of conflict resolution through
the International Court of Justice or regional judicial mechanisms, as well
as through the diplomacy of global and regional organizations. The availability
of appropriate legal machinery is an important factor in preventing and managing
conflict, just as the establishment of consensus standards and regimes helps
channel conflict and identify solutions. Thus, reaffirmation of the OAU "no
boundary change" norm for Africa, "no conquest" for Israel, "no unification
by force" for China, "no independence" for Taiwan are all international standards
that limit the conflicts in question and provide international behavioural standards,
even if not direct solutions. Similarly, the new Law of the Sea, the World Trade
Organization rules and the Comprehensive Test Ban and Non-Proliferation Treaties,
among many others, are instances of regime building that go far to prevent conflict
and to provide management mechanisms when it does occur. Many other areas--boundaries,
human rights, small-arms traffic, among others--are good subjects for similar
treatment.
A full array of tools and tactics, however, does not end the debate. Use of the various measures and strategies is not always obvious and easy; opportunities have been missed in the past for good reasons as well as bad. The whole approach of prevention and management, rather than a simple military-type engagement of good vs. bad against a clear enemy in order to win, involves tensions, trade-offs and dilemmas. Even on the conceptual level it is often necessary to reconcile irreconcilable goods, rather than even pick a "least worst" alternative. Such contradictions include justice vs. reconciliation, where punishment may keep a conflict alive but forgiveness ignores just deserts; "first, do not harm," where inaction is safe but allows greater harm to occur; early vs. late intervention, where early is uncertain but late allows prolonged casualties; or sovereignty as responsibility, where sovereignty is protection from bullies but universal responsibility is internal interference. The debate needs to continue in order to refine the alternatives and narrow the contradictions.
Justice and reconciliation are two elements necessary for settlement. Justice means that those responsible for humanitarian crimes and criminal policies must be punished, lest the wounds of the past continue to fester; reconciliation means forgiveness of those crimes, letting bygones be bygones. In the absolute each eliminates the other. If justice is insisted on as part of a settlement, it may prevent parties at risk from signing; if not, parties may take justice into their own hands. Attempts can be made to square the contradiction, for example by encouraging reconciliation, following atonement, among the general populace, while reserving justice for the leaders; or alternatively by providing safe haven in exchange for early retirement by key leaders; or by establishing postsettlement commissions to handle property claims.
"Do not harm" is a wise maxim to remember, but like any purported absolute, it is relative in human conditions. Any intervention has its risks and some damage is likely; it has to be weighed against the harm already taking place. Otherwise, no-harm becomes a counsel for inaction. But the injunction rightly warns against demonstrative displays of disapproval which have no relation to a positive goal and make no contribution to changing the situation for the better. Policy evaluations need to consider the effects of failure as well as success, and to look at the long-term as well as immediate consequences of intervention.
Early intervention and prevention is always better, and is the mark of "normal politics" and "normal diplomacy" as they are frequently practised. Happily, Rwanda and Cambodia are unusual cases; Abachas and Mobutus do die (under whatever circumstances); and preemptive diplomacy to bring independence to Namibia, stability to Macedonia, food to drought-stricken southeast Africa and law to the sea does succeed. Yet once the preventive barrier has been crossed, conflicts may have to ripen a good deal before options can be clarified and narrowed, events build pressure for settlement, and closure appears to be the best alternative. What is most important is that missed early opportunities not be taken as a cause for despair, or unripe later situations as an excuse for inaction. Conflict situations need monitoring for action since, early or late, opportunities are often brief but attention to them needs to be sustained.
Sovereignty as protection and sovereignty as responsibility are two dangerous
doctrines, with great merits to counterbalance their defects. The first, the
conceptual basis of the international system for the past three and a half centuries,
is designed to allow a country to rule itself and to protect small states from
bullies. But it also allows rulers to mismanage their affairs and slaughter
their citizens if they wish. The second, newly advanced, is designed to hold
rulers accountable for their treatment of their citizens and to give them help,
invited or uninvited, in meeting their obligations. But it can also be misused
to subject the weak to the wishes of the strong and the few to those who can
mobilize the many. Preventive diplomacy needs to invoke the second while respecting
the first meaning of sovereignty. Intervention becomes necessary in egregious
cases, but the ultimate rights of people to be themselves, rule themselves,
and establish their own systems of accountability need to be protected.
Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: A Note
by the Director
Sir Michael Quinlan
Our conference--enriched by the opportunity to draw on the work of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict--recognised the long-term importance of structural, cause-removing approaches to averting conflict. But our prime focus was upon the operational aspects of prevention and limitation when outbreak loomed or happened. Our discussion mostly concentrated, moreover, upon the intrastate category of conflict which had increasingly commanded public attention in the post-Cold War years. We nevertheless accepted salutary reminder both that the inter-intra distinction was sometimes blurred, and that classical interstate disputes and consequent risks of war, even if general reasons could be discerned for their diminishing incidence, had by no means dependably disappeared from the scene, and so must continue to engage preventive attention.
The past decade had seen both successes and failures in prevention. We were uncomfortably aware that the former were both harder to prove and less able to command media attention, and we wondered inconclusively whether more might be done--for example in the UN setting--to note and celebrate them. Reward in some currency attractive to political leaders might be a valuable stimulus. But inescapably the failures and their costs would still make the big headlines.
The theme of early action resonated through our discussions. Delay raised costs of almost every sort; it made eventual rebuilding and reconciliation harder; it increased the risk that as conflict deepened, extremist leaders--for whom conflict or stark victory/defeat choice was almost a raison d'être--would come to the fore and would prove to be the only available interlocutors. We noted, too, the unwisdom of regarding military action as a last resort to be tried when everything else had failed; for all that this fitted the diplomatic mindset of many UN members, it risked underusing a valuable pre-emptive instrument and condemning armed forces to operate too often in near-desperate situations where the concrete and realistic objectives their exploitation needed were hard to formulate in adequate operational terms.
But we acknowledged that it was easier to call for early action in general terms than to embark upon it in particular situations. Good and timely information was a cardinal need, and more might be done to acquire and disseminate it. For example, nations might be encouraged to pass intelligence more fully and systematically to the United Nations, which might itself extend its fact-finding efforts; and it might be possible to draw more extensively on the observation and experience of nongovernmental organisations, who often had local access which governments could not readily match. Even where conflict-risk situations had longstanding structural roots, there were often specific indicators that could be looked for and detected, such as the mobilising of combative public opinion through deliberate choice by leaders, or the amassing of arms. The assembly of information had, however, to be partnered by proper capability to analyse and understand it in what were often complicated settings remote from the ordinary understanding of "Western" governments. The bull-in-a-china-shop risk was real, as more than one recent experience suggested.
It was, moreover, one thing to have a strong and well-founded sense that there was trouble ahead, and often quite another to have evidence in a form and of a status adequate to trigger action by outside governments which, whether for good reasons or bad, usually felt a strong initial inclination against intervening. Usable early warning had to relate to action practically desirable or feasible. That consideration illustrated the limitations of over-reliance on the undoubted assets of NGOs--they were of varied purpose, skill and accountability; by no means all would welcome any role alongside governments; and they could not always be free from distorting motivation. Decisions on intervention, and on what information might justify it, must ultimately lie with governments.
The reluctance of governments engaged us recurrently. Some of us were sceptical of the concept of "political will" as a distinct commodity; the key factors were perhaps the early recognition of strong interest in preventing or confining a particular conflict, and leadership in conveying that recognition to publics and parliaments. We recognised, however, that there were important resource constraints both in the UN and in many nations--not just in the availability of money or matériel, but also, for example, in the ability to devote high-level attention and to cope with simultaneous demands.
The concept of legitimacy in intervention much exercised us, in respect both of the basis for action and of who should undertake it. As to the basis, there was a continual tension between the concept of national sovereignty and that of universal human rights, and some key countries had reasons of their own for not wanting to see the balance swing generally from the former towards the latter. But there had in practice been a tilt in recent years, as instances and informal case-law accumulated, with an undercurrent towards a sense of global community, universal standards and worldwide jurisdiction. This was symbolised for some by recent developments on an International Criminal Court, though we heard comment that the impact of the court might prove more positive in preventing (by deterrence) than in resolving conflict. (This last point reflected an issue remaining contentious in our debate--the question whether, as arguably in South Africa and Northern Ireland, there might in the ending of conflicts have to be some trade-off between peace and perfect justice.) Some participants hoped that the content of international law could be deepened in regard to the protection and collective rights of minorities, so often a prime issue in conflict-risk settings.
Who had the right to act? The United Nations, for preference, most of us thought, even though we acknowledged the awkwardness that the United States--much the best-endowed and most effective actor--harboured more reservations than most about any wholesale dependence on the UN either to authorise or to lead action. The drawbacks of bureaucratic rivalry and complexity still beset the UN in some degree, but competence, coordination and confidence were improving. We were reminded of the limitations (albeit sometimes overstressed) arising from veto power in the Security Council; there were avenues around this, but they were not always readily open. Both for this and for more positive subsidiarity-type reasons, the capability of regional organisations to act should be respected and, where it was weak, fostered.
We talked in broad terms about strategies for preventive action--beginning with a salutary reminder that solutions had to be particular and tailor-made. One-size-fits-all, or the overneat application of perceived analogies from the past elsewhere, were recipes for disaster. Effective strategies would usually need to be multifaceted, combining both coercion--almost always an unavoidable aspect, if only in potential--and reassurance. Key elements would often include interrupting cycles of violence, establishing firebreaks, and filling spaces and intervals with positive remedial activity, preferably involving indigenous and not just external participation and solution-finding responsibility. We heard, partnering all this, vigorous criticism of the search for predetermined (and, still worse, pre-timetabled) "exit strategies"; intervention, whatever its form, must be prepared for patience and endurance.
The instruments potentially available were of diverse kinds. Political action, even if it might seem to lack concrete leverage, could often play a part. Though media attention sometimes concentrated upon the imperviously intransigent, many states--or communities within them--minded lack of recognition, ostracism, condemnation or exclusion from desired associations (like the Council of Europe, the Organisation of American States or the Commonwealth). Such associations, at least where (as was not always the case) they were built on some substantial commonality of interest and values, could have useful leverage, and it would be advantageous wherever practicable to systematise--even perhaps make in some degree routine and automatic--their monitoring of conflict-threatening features. The surveillance and contact work of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, despite its resource limitations, offered an encouraging illustration of what might be done.
We touched more briefly upon economic and military instruments. The effect of economic sanctions was often hard to predict or to measure and their humanitarian cost worrying, but they were sometimes an unavoidable component of pressure. More positively, the international financial institutions could sometimes contribute valuably, for example, by making grants or loans for development conditional upon collaboration between adversaries. On the military side, we recalled the need, if international cooperative effort in intervention was to be effective, for common standards in training, equipment, procedures and--crucially but not always readily--rules of engagement and command channels. We observed with some unease the practical difficulty--alongside the obvious desirability of broad participation--of adequate burden-sharing when key elements of military power were in the hands of relatively few countries (and those not always most disposed towards international engagement, or historically most acceptable in the relevant theatres). Enhanced or better-directed effort on a wider basis, to reduce the world's dependence and demands upon the United States, seemed necessary; but it was not clear, in political realism, how it would be forthcoming. We were uncomfortable about the apparently growing use of mercenaries; they could be useful, no doubt, and might even in some settings be the only force available, but it was then essential that they be still subject ultimately to public authority and be politically accountable.
The problem of legitimacy, earlier noted, beset not only the matter of who could intervene but also with whom they could do so--who were valid parties to solution seeking? In many intrastate problems the recognition of minorities as entitled to a distinct voice was--at least for the governing majority--precisely what was in dispute, and intervening mediation, however sincerely pacific its intent, could not appear wholly neutral. The management of minority-related conflict bulked large throughout our discussions, for scarcely any trigger of conflict was more powerful than a sense among a significant minority, whether ethnic or religious, that they were being discriminated against or denied identity. Outside efforts towards reconciliation could sometimes contribute usefully by placing before disputants--and, importantly, involving them as fully as possible in pursuing--a wider, more flexible and more need-specific range of options, constitutional or cultural, than such black-and-white outcomes as capitulation, secession or subordination.
We should have liked to find more time to discuss the contribution of religious and business leaders--respectively, sometimes valuable and usually thin, according to brief observations--and the role of the media. References to the media's effect as intensifiers or even precipitators of crisis were balanced by comment that the "CNN" factor was usually overrated and that to cast the media in any role other than that of providing public information would be misconceived.
Our conference overall renewed our awareness of the acute difficulty of many
conflict situations--key actors might not truly want any resolution, or key
populations might simply have lost any desire to live together, for example.
But there nevertheless came through our discussions a sense of widening recognition
of global interest and responsibility in reducing conflict, matched by a gradual
increase in the understanding of instruments available and in readiness and
competence to use them. We doubted whether it would be practicable to formalise
any official list of "at-risk" situations to help focus and prioritise international
action, but timely sensitivity to them was improving. We were sure that heightened
effort both to monitor the present and to understand and disseminate the lessons
of the past would reap dividends in the future.
This report reflects the director's personal impressions of the conference.
No participant is in any way committed to its content or expression.
Appendixes: Agendas and Conference Participants
Appendix A: Conference on Preventive Diplomacy and Preventive Defe