Were it not for the frequent practice of preventive diplomacy on many levels,
this conflicted world would be a much hostile place than it is. In the current
interest on the prevention of conflict, most authoritatively articulated in
the seminal work of former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali (l992,
l995), the search has turned to new ways of blocking conflict escalation and
managing violence. But much can also be learned from the many ways in which
these goals have been accomplished in the past, particularly through the effective
exercise of negotiation to handle issues before they became problems and problems
before they became violent conflicts. Since conditions and characteristics of
this activity will differ by issue, it is hard to begin with broad generalizations
that cover all the types of conflict where preventive diplomacy may be practiced.
But by examining practices with a focus on the particular methods associated
with particular problems, insights from one issue area can be made available
for use elsewhere.
Thus, unlike most studies of preventive diplomacy, this analysis will focus
on preventive diplomacy by negotiation as practiced in different issue areas,
in the belief that only if the differences as well as similarities among issues
are recognized can these efforts benefit from each other. Also, unlike most
studies of preventive diplomacy, this analysis emphasizes process, not simply
outcomes or even tools, but the way in which tools are and can be used to achieve
outcomes, in the belief that it is no use to identify the Promised Land if one
does not know how to get there. This introduction will examine prevention, negotiation,
and issues, in turn.
Prevention
The most authoritative and comprehensive definition of preventive diplomacy
is Secretary Boutros Ghali's (l995, 45): "Preventive diplomacy is action to
prevent disputes from arising between parties, to preventing existing disputes
from escalating into [violent] conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter
when they occur."
The element of violence has been added to the text to make explicit a characteristic that is inherent in the rest of the UN Secretary-General's Agenda for Peace. So defined, the subject is still very broad. A more restricted version of the definition is necessary, in order to have a subject to analyze. Preventing disputes--here called conflicts--from arising is a tall order and goes back so far into the nature of relations among parties on any given issue that it becomes analytically--if not practically-unmanageable. On the other hand, if attention can be focused successfully on the middle element, then there is no need to be concerned about conflicts' spread. So it is escalation and violence which become the principal targets of preventive action as discussed here.
Despite those who preach "prevention," it is unlikely that conflict can be eliminated from human interaction. Conflict "prevention" or transformation is a worthy goal in the long run, but one that is necessarily subsequent to and dependent on conflict management, the demotion of conflict from the level of violence to that of politics. Conflict prevention alone, in the sense of reducing escalation and violence, is such a daunting challenge that it deserves concentrated efforts and all the attention of this study. The l998 Ecuador-Peru boundary settlement may not in itself have created a new conflict-transforming relationship between the two neighbors, but it was a necessary prelude--a necessary if not sufficient condition--to doing so (Nordquist, in this volume). This is not to say that conflict transformation is a meaningless goal unworthy of effort. To the contrary, conflict once managed cannot stay so unless further attention is devoted to its gradual resolution and eventual transformation into a positive relationship. Thus dealing with conflict does not end with prevention and management, but it does start there.
Two different types of conflict are the subjects of prevention. One is the more commonly referred conflict between parties, also known as distribution or coordination conflict, where the incompatibilities between positions or demands sends the parties searching for the means to prevail over each other. As long as incompatibilities are unpursued or unescalated, parties can hold different positions without impinging on each other. But where their positions block each other and achievement of their goals is important to the parties, they turn to muster the means of pursuit, first political and then violent. For example, cultural differences can exist side by side within the same state, but when they carry implications of sovereignty they invoke an escalation of means to achieve the new expression of the goal (Ayissi, in this volume). The early challenge is to keep the parties satisfied in the expression of their cultural differences without impinging on each other; the challenge in the next phase becomes one of working out ways to achieve as much of the goals as possible, using the various means of concession, compensation, and reframing that are the subject of negotiation analysis, before the search for the means to prevail overcomes the possibility of a common agreement (Hopmann l996; Pruitt & Carnevale l993; Zartman & Berman l982; Walton & McKersie l969). Here the urgency of prevention depends on the cost of escalation compared to the cost of compromise.
The other conflict is against nature, where the parties face a common external threat. Such conflicts generally involve public goods or bads (externalities). Basically, the parties should cooperate against the danger, but their degree of cooperation will depend on the degree of threat to each, the degree of benefit, and the degree of cooperation required (Taylor l987). Thus, conflicts against nature can also entail conflicts among parties, but the two differ in regard to the position of the adversary within the conflict. By the same token, conflicts among parties can also involve conflicts against nature, as parties get caught up in the dynamics of escalation that are seemingly beyond their control (sometimes known as intransitive escalation) (Smoke l977; Zartman et al 2000). In this case, they have the same common interest in bringing these dynamics under control as they do when faced with the external threat of global warming, for example. The threat of derailment of a peace process or the threat of natural disasters or security escalations can make opponents allies, even though they may have different degrees of interest in combating the external threat (Sisk, Lang, Goodby and Kremenyuk, in this volume). Here the urgency of prevention depends on the distant costs of the danger compared to the present costs (and benefits) of prevention.
Conflict is not like house fires, an unmitigated evil, and preventive diplomacy is not like firefighting, an unquestioned social good. There are a number of problems and ambiguities in the practice of preventing violent conflict. To begin with, conflict is a universal condition, inevitable, often necessary and sometimes beneficial. It is impossible to exorcize it from human relations, and it is present wherever there are incompatibilities in parties' demands which prevent them from both being accomplished at the same time (Deng et al l997). Establishing priorities, allocating resources, setting standards, creating institutions, and providing for orderly methods of making choices are basic means of handling conflict. Only when such methods are not firmly in place and carefully followed does conflict get out of hand and turn violent. It is the violent expression of conflict that is most properly the focus of preventive diplomacy. When nonviolent means of handling conflicts are not available, or, when available, are not used, negotiations are needed to prevent the conflict from turning to violent means. From this introductory discussion up to this point, it is already evident that not only is negotiation designed to prevent escalation and violence, but it also and often depends on the very threat of escalation and violence to make the parties realize that heightened conflict is more expensive than reducing or restructuring goals.
Thus, paradoxically, intensity may be a prerequisite for the practice of prevention, whether the conflict is between parties or against nature. Ripeness theory indicates that conflicts are managed best (and, it appears, only) when they are at the level of a mutually hurting stalemate (Zartman l983, l989, l999; Touval & Zartman l985). While such mutual perceptions of pain can come at any level in a conflict, they are generally associated with relatively intense conflictual behavior. Trade wars carry normally peaceful commercial competition into pressure tactics to make others hurt (Conybeare l987; Sjöstedt, in this volume); cooperation to control environmental effects comes about when the parties finally become aware of the impending pain of their conflict with nature (and not before) (Gareth & Porter l98x; Chasek l999). Mutually hurting stalemate occurs when the parties perceive that they are suffering in their current deadlock: they cannot ignore the conflict and cannot escalate their way unilaterally to victory at an acceptable cost. Thus, high levels of conflict seem to be required before preventive diplomacy can take hold.
Happily, the experience of reality seems to indicate the contrary, somewhat by default and largely unrecorded. In fact, plenty of conflicts never reach a high intensity level but are managed at a lower level, before much power and commitment are invested in them. The lessons of that reality are not very clear, however. Is resolution reached because a mutually hurting stalemate is perceived at a lower level of investment, or because under some conditions preventive diplomacy is able to work even before such a deadlock is perceived? Since most of the work on preventive diplomacy focuses on cases of high intensity (Jentleson l999), it has not yet been possible to answer the question.
The link, however, seems to lie in escalation, the second defining element in conflicts to be prevented. Even where violence is not the impending characteristic, the prospect of a worsening or damaging cycle of conflict provides the occasion--and potentially the motivation--for negotiations to manage, de-escalate, reduce, and possibly resolve the conflict. Therefore, preventive diplomacy works to prevent escalation of a conflict into levels that threaten damage and call for further retaliation and costly countermeasures. This common characteristic ties the two types of conflict--between parties and against nature--together in regard to prevention.
Thus, the question, "Prevent what?" shades into the further question, "Prevent when?" Negotiations to accomplish preventive diplomacy as defined here need to take place, by definition, before a conflict has entered its violent phase and, by practice, before the resource and process commitment engendered by escalation has developed its own momentum; once those characteristics occur, negotiations are no longer preventive diplomacy but crisis management or something else. It is easy to tell when a conflict has gone beyond the limits of preventive diplomacy, that is, when it has entered the violent or the uncontrolled escalation (or otherwise worsening) phase, but these are the very signs that mark a conflict as serious enough to warrant attention, or at least intervention. If preventive diplomacy means "negotiate early," how does one know when to begin?
In many ways, this is a puzzling question. Growing attention has been devoted to the question of early warning, in a search for new ways of identifying potentially serious conflicts before they escalate into view and out of control (George & Holl l997; Baker & Weller l998; Davies & Gurr l999; Rupesinghe & Kuroda l998; FEWER l998; Verstegen l999). But early warning suffers from some very contradictory problems. One is overabundance, since intelligence, news and research generate quantities of data that are readily available to those who need them. The other is the absence of early awareness of these warnings, and early action on them. Policymakers are reluctant to make necessary responses, for many reasons. At one extreme lies the ambiguity of clear warning, where advance signals stand out as the necessary and sufficient preludes to crisis. There is a high correlation between violence or danger and their preconditions but a low correlation between early warnings and subsequent violence or catastrophe. At the other extreme lies bureaucratic inertia, the safety in doing nothing in the midst of uncertainty; until the danger of violence or catastrophe becomes certain, it is wisest simply to hold the course. In the absence of unambiguous clear and early warnings, bureaucratic inertia becomes rational.
Yet some warning must have been compelling in the many cases were early prevention was practiced. Furthermore, in many issue areas, the conflict is obvious, either specifically or from the type of situation involved, and the question is whether to pursue it toward a unilateral victory or a cooperative solution. Undelimited or demarcated boundaries, unordered arms races, peace processes without a potential mediator of last resort, commercial competition without a dispute settlement mechanism, transboundary environmental problems without a responsibility norm, and other identifiable situations are problems calling for prevention, constituting their own early warnings. More specific conflicts have their own profile, possible generic to their type of subject. Deeper examination of this question by issue area is needed to bring useful distinctions and lessons to light.
This still leaves the other "when" question, when is it best in the early
life of a conflict to turn to preventive negotiations? Preventing conflict is
impossible, but preventing its expression in escalation and violence is a desirable
goal. This in turn means either settling the conflict by producing a decision
that is accepted as legitimate and final by the parties, such as the series
of decisions that led to German unification, or channeling the conflict into
political expressions until a settlement can be found, such as the series of
decisions that led to the less conclusive process of Yemeni unification. Preventing
escalation is also desirable, although escalation may be necessary to draw the
other party's attention to the need for serious attention or a just solution.
The "orderly armament" agreements that punctuated the Cold War were often preceded
by "shots across the bow" to induce a preventive course by threatening a unilateral
advantage. When in the pre-violence and pre-escalation phases can negotiations
take hold is an important tactical question.
Negotiation
The "action" in the UN definition of preventive diplomacy is also limited in the present discussion to refer to negotiation, direct or mediated. While the Agenda for Peace lists many ways of preventing escalation and violence (Boutros Ghali l995, 46-50) and other studies fill an entire toolbox (Lund l996, l42-63; Lund et al l997, III; Bauwens & Reychler l994), this study will focus on the one but most encompassing method. Negotiation lies at the core of preventive diplomacy, and to the extent that it moves the conflict toward resolution, preventive diplomacy almost always operates through negotiation. It can be carried out either directly by the parties themselves or by a third party through mediated negotiation or, in multilateral settings, by a mixture of the two in which some of the parties serve as mediators among the others. Parties conduct their own preventive diplomacy when they become aware of the need to resolve their conflict by other means than coercion. In that case, they will negotiate directly with the other party to defuse the conflict and seek either a solution or a mechanism for continuing the conflict by political (non-violent) means.
Mediation is simply a form of negotiation in which a third party catalyst is needed to produce negotiations that the parties are unable to perform unaided (Touval & Zartman l985; Kressel & Pruitt l989). In the end, mediated outcomes are negotiated by the parties themselves but the mediator's presence has been important in getting those negotiations started and even in keeping them going. Mediators operate through three roles, depending on the type of blockage that keeps the parties from negotiating directly and the effort needed to overcome it (Zartman & Touval l996). The mediator as communicator carries messages, breaking the communications barrier and acting in the true sense of a catalyst, with no input of its own besides carrying messages. The mediator as a formulator brings in its own ideas, overcoming the parties' inability to see solutions to the conflict and making a non-tangible input into the search for a solution. The mediator as a manipulator makes a contribution to the outcome itself, overcoming the lack of attraction to a solution provided by insufficient payoffs to the parties, either sweetening the pot or imposing sanctions for non-cooperation. Thus, a variety of levels of engagement can be required to conduct preventive mediation effectively.
Whether the parties themselves see the need for preventive diplomacy and carry out negotiations directly, or whether a third party is needed to sensitize them and to mediate the conflict, three elements are involved in moving the contestants away from violence and escalation. These elements are stakes, attitudes and tactics. They have no special sequence to each other; indeed, all are involved at the same time. Nor do they as yet carry many well-defined effects or even hypotheses to guide investigation or practice. Therefore the study of preventive diplomacy as negotiation moves into new analytic territory as the examination of various issue areas identifies propositions and characteristics of their own on the basis of components of the process. The emphasis in this examination is on process, defined here as the way in which stakes and attitudes are changed and tactics are used to achieve preventive results.
Stakes are the ostensibly "objective" elements in the conflict, although, in fact, like all objects they are the subject of perceptions. Stakes are what matters to the parties, the costs and benefits that each faces as the particular issue is handled early rather than later. In preventive diplomacy, negotiators must change the stakes or the parties' perception of stakes, moving the issue from a negative- or zero-sum to a positive-sum situation. Stakes must be presented in such a way as to no longer pose an "I pay, what do I get?" or "You win, I lose" type of situation; each of the parties must be seen to gain something out of an agreement, overcoming to some degree the incompatibility (conflict) inherent in both or multiple parties' holding on to their positions. These positions tend to be positive wants or absolute gains: When parties want the same things, or at least things whose attainment is blocked by the other party's wants, prevention of collision, escalation, and violence requires raising the resources or scaling down the demands.
Stakes can be changed from negative- or zero-sum to positive-sum in only one of three ways (Pruitt & Olczak l995, p 67): through differential evaluation of the items so as to permit tradeoffs between items differently valued by the respective parties (Homans l96l, p 62; Nash l950); by reframing the issue so as to permit competing solutions and joint payoffs (Walton & McKersie l965; Raiffa l982); or by providing side payments or new benefits in order to enlarge the outcome and allow for additional tradeoffs or different goals. Trading economic for political payoffs in the unification of Germany and Yemen, redefining the Peru-Ecuador boundary conflict as a joint development issue, and providing economic incentives for Russia in German reunification are examples of each. Thus, conflicts arise because there is not enough of an item or items to go around to the satisfaction of the claimant parties, and conflicts can be prevented by either providing more items or by changing the parties' perception of those items available. There are so many other examples, many of which are cited in the following issue studies, that it is sometimes surprising to see the lack of inventiveness in those conflicts that escalate past obvious solutions.
But positions may also be negative or relative, when what one party wants is not something in and of itself but simply the denial of what the other party wants. Such conflicts are much more difficult to handle since, in the terms they are posed, the addition of new or perceivedly new stakes does nothing to address the conflict. The only thing to do, other than inducing a change of heart on its merits (similar to reframing, above), is to use new stakes to buy the opponents off of their positions (similar to side payments, above). But both reframing and bribing require a change in attitude on the part of the opponent, beyond mere perceptions. Much current international relations theory focuses on demands for relative gains as the basis of conflict, and emphasizes the importance of maintaining relationships among the parties, even in conflict, as a counterweight to demands of denial (Stein & Pauly l994).
As indicated, parties may be able to deal with issues of stakes directly or, if not, will be dependent on the efforts of third-party mediators. Differential or additional tradeoffs and reframing of stakes can well be within the power of the parties themselves; side payments for additional tradeoffs depend on available resources, but differential tradeoffs and reframing involve perceptions of existing stakes rather than introduction of new stakes. If the willingness to reframe or to trade is not present within the parties, it needs to be generated by the mediator, acting above all as a formulator to propose new ways of viewing the stakes in the conflict. If the stakes are insufficient to provide acceptable outcomes to both parties at the same time, even with new perceptions of those stakes, then the mediator is required to act as a manipulator, providing side payments of its own along with other positive and negative incentives to head off the conflict. In this situation, it is often relations with the mediator which provide the material for reconciliation and conflict prevention, more than relations between the parties directly. When the preventive effort is multilateral, some of the parties themselves tend to play this mediating role.
Attitudes are the subjective element in conflict, coloring the black-and-white portrayals of stakes. Two very different attitudinal problems are involved in preventive negotiations, depending on whether the conflict is among parties or against nature, but these different problems are nonetheless closely connected. Preventive diplomacy in interparty conflict involves the alteration of parties' attitudes from conflictual to accomodative, in regard both to the other party and to the conflict itself. Conflictual attitudes regard the opponent as the enemy, an evil adversary to be beaten; both zero-sum perceptions and denial of benefits to the enemy are involved. Such attitudes are the motor of escalation and violence and the major barrier to the prevention of escalation and violence in conflicts among parties.
Accommodative attitudes regard the problem as the enemy and the opponent as an ally in overcoming it; positive-sum perceptions and legitimate demands are involved. In fact, accommodation means a shift from conflict among parties to conflict against nature, as parties unite their efforts to prevent the impending threat. Here, a different--indeed, contrary--attitudinal problem is posed, the problem of consciousness-raising or awareness-creating concerning the threat, and the attitudinal difficulty is not demonizing but complacency. Both demonizing and complacency hinder cooperation to prevent escalation and violence.
These extremes are presented as stereotypes and caricatures with important caveats. Conflictual attitudes may not be as strongly hostile as described, particularly when relationships hold the parties together despite their dispute. Indeed, the importance of relationships is reinforced beyond their objective existence by their effect in overcoming demonizing or over-adversarial attitudes. Nonetheless, such extreme attitudes too easily take over in the heat of the interaction--and in both directions. Border, territorial and ethnic disputes quickly move from objective geographic stakes to subjective enemy perceptions; even in conflicts against nature, awareness is the challenge but parties aware of the dangers of global warming, ethnic explosion, arms races, or offensive alliances can quickly turn to demonizing those who drag their feet (doubtless for personal benefit!) against collective measures. As is well noted (Rubin, Pruitt & Kim l994), demonizing is a natural tendency but it makes conflict prevention more difficult; complacency is an inertial state that makes conflict prevention impossible. .
Thus, new stakes can be piled on as incentives and tradeoffs but if attitudes toward the problem or conflict and toward the other parties are not changed, the objective elements will simply not be seen. As long as accommodation is regarded as surrender, the opponent as unworthy and untrustworthy, the opposing demands as illegitimate and ill-intentioned, and the danger of escalating costs and violence ill-founded and exaggerated, preventive diplomacy is bound to fail, whatever the objective compatibility of demands over stakes may be. It was the change in the attitudes of the South African government and opposition toward each other and the collision course of their policies, of the two Yemeni half-states toward each other, of the former Cold War protagonists toward the definition of NATO, and of the world community toward the dangers of global warming that allowed for preventive diplomacy to deal with their conflicts and problems. And if the preceding examples are less than perfect in their results, that too illustrates the effect of incomplete changes in attitudes on the changes of cooperation. Left alone in their conflict, the parties may not be able to see a way out; unconvinced of the unclear and distant danger, they will not be motivated to cooperate. Such situations often require the ministrations of a mediator to enable parties to respond to efforts to communicate and formulate solutions. Attitude change becomes a separate target for efforts and a separate element for analysis, as a condition for successful negotiation. It is clear from the following issues-area examinations that changes in stakes alone will not provide the basis for preventing negotiations; attitudinal change is necessary.
Attitude change involves several dimensions of sequencing (Walton & McKersie l965, chs VI & VIII). It can occur either separately from discussions on stakes, as a precondition to a positive-sum consideration of outcomes, or concomitantly with consideration of stakes, so that consideration of outcomes becomes a vehicle and an illustration for changes in attitudes. The latter is probably both more likely and more difficult. As a result, attitude change can occur unequally among the parties, with one party adopting a problem-solving attitude (first) and then working to convince the other party to drop either its complacent or its confrontational attitudes and come to the same problem-solving approach. Such disjointed change is likely to occur whether preventive diplomacy is practiced bilaterally or through mediation, and it poses all the problems of the Toughness or Negotiator's Dilemma that are inherent in any negotiation (Zartman l978; Lax & Sebenius l986). It is important not to assume that the Toughness Dilemma only occurs in the prevention of confrontational conflicts among parties from escalating, as seen for example in the negotiations over divided states examined by Choi in this volume. Even where the attitudinal problem is one of complacency over preventing conflicts against nature, those who want action face the same negotiating problem in dealing with the complacency of those who oppose action, as seen for example in the negotiations over state disintegration or global warming analyzed by Hopmann and Lang in this volume.
Tactics are the third component of preventive diplomacy negotiations, as involved in any negotiations facing the Toughness Dilemma. Despite the crucial importance of tactics in negotiation, there has been too little systematic attention given to the subject and particularly to an identification of its basic parameters; concern with tactics dominates most business treatments of negotiation but without any unifying conceptual dimensions (Karrass l970; Nierenberg l973). Essentially, tactics can be seen to involve three elements: timing, terms and toughness (Lax & Sebenius l986). Tactics can be defined as doing the right thing at the right time, and so concern the art of persuasion and induced attitude change that is so important to negotiation. In preventive diplomacy, persuasive arguments for reconsideration of stakes and for changing attitudes need to be presented at a time and in a manner to capture attention and alter behavior.
Persuasion can be expressed in a number of terms--in relation to altered goals or to altered means of achieving the same goals, in relation to higher values or to the narrow outcomes of the conflict, in relation to costs or to benefits, in relation to one's own goals or to the opponents, among others (Petty & Cacioppo l98l; Clavel l99l). Doubtless the choice of terms of persuasion is situation-dependent, defined in terms of issue or again timing. A better understanding of effective tactics seen as timing and terms of persuasion, and of the situational determinants of that effectiveness, will enable a better practice of preventive diplomacy.
While many of the artifices of presentation and persuasion are matters of packaging, the essentials of the "right thing" involve the basic dilemma in negotiations over when to be tough and when to be soft, that is when to hold firm, thus increasing the chances of achieving one's demands but decreasing the chances of reaching agreement, and when to make concessions, that is increasing the chances of reaching an agreement but decreasing the chances of achieving one's demands (Lax & Sebenius l986; Bartos l978). Again, there are a number of ways of analyzing the Toughness Dilemma, which remains a dilemma--that is, unsoluble--in the absence of intervening variables (Zartman l998). One set of intervening variables is situational. The decision to be tough or soft can be analyzed as depending on whether a party sees itself in a symmetrical or asymmetrical situation of power (Zartman l997) or in a Prisoner's (PDG) or Chicken Dilemma Game (CDG) (Snyder & Diesing l977) or inside or outside a bargaining range, among others; much more analysis is required in all cases.
Another set of intervening variables is processual. Analysis of turning points in negotiation indicate that parties make concessions in the process of approaching an agreement until they reach a point when serious stakes are uncovered and when an evaluation of the cost of further concessions compared with the value of an impending agreement need to be considered; such a moment of crisis involves a toughness decision, resulting in either rupture or a return to negotiations (Druckman l986). Since these questions are applicable to any negotiation, negotiation for preventive diplomacy joins questions still unanswered in theory or in practice about the normal and normative conduct of reconciliation.
But in that case, how does negotiation as preventive diplomacy differ from any other type of negotiation? Part of the answer is that all negotiation has similar characteristics, as noted, and prevention is merely the subject: Preventive diplomacy can learn from everything that is being discovered in the deeper study of negotiation (Hopmann l996). And by the same token, all negotiation (or diplomacy) is preventive, forestalling worse outcomes and presenting an alternative to violence, whether prospective or occurring. These similarities are not to be dismissed but built upon.
But beyond that there is a crucial difference. Preventive negotiation is pitched forward, anticipating not only its own consequences but also its own necessity. Most negotiations occur under the pressure of crisis or opportunity, when "it can't go on like this" or "a window just opened up" (Zartman & Berman l982, 45-68). Why should parties turn to negotiations, or let a mediator in, if they do not "need" to? Preventive negotiations have no hurting stalemate behind them and no sharply defined window of opportunity in front of them. They need to justify their outlays of time and effort by some very uncertain opportunity costs; they are neither fire brigades nor fire insurance but merely timely housecleaning of firetraps when there are a million other more pressing things to do, amid a myriad present fires to put out. Preventive must create its own opportunities, its own justification, and its own pressures, since the absence of these elements as preconditions does not mean that they are dispensable; it only means that they have to be created, along with appropriate outcomes.
It also means that the less frequently studied occasions for negotiation not under crisis become more salient. These include situations when new multilateral solutions have to be invented to replace no longer acceptable or outmoded ones, when a new outcome or exchange of outcomes is needed that can only be created jointly, when new orders or regimes need to be created for the routinized handling of problems or old orders or regimes need to be reaffirmed (Zartman & Berman l982, 42-86). Negotiations in such situations are generally problem-solving exercises, "cold" diplomacy as opposed to Henry Kissinger's dictum to treat crises only when they are hot, and therefore the parties and mediators have a greater control of the timetable.
Nonetheless, at one end of the process, this consideration returns the problem
to that of seeking entry points and justifications, and in the normal situations
of power asymmetry, to questions of who initiates preventive negotiations--the
stronger party to dominate or the weaker to avoid domination (Keohane &
Nye l989; Zartman & Rubin l999)? At the other end, it also poses the problem
of closure, since no crisis dogs the proceedings. As John Cross (l969, l3) has
written, "If it did not matter when the parties agreed, it would not
matter whether or not they agreed at all." Preventive diplomacy has its own
characteristic challenges that much negotiation theory does not yet address.
Issues
The consideration of these three components--stakes, attitudes, and tactics--allows an analysis and evaluation of the practice of preventive diplomacy through negotiation along its basic dimensions, but it leaves a large terrain of experience to cover. Rather than treat the playing field as flat and featureless, this project divides it into issue areas, following the notion that preventive diplomacy may be practiced differently according to the subject matter. Eleven issue areas will be treated: boundary problems, territorial claims, ethnic conflict management processes, divided state unification, state disintegration, cooperation disputes, trade wars, transboundary environmental disputes, global natural disasters, global security disasters (armaments and alliances), and, for contrast, labor disputes where lessons in internal relations can be transferred to the inter-national field. Through comparisons, cross-fertilizing results can be uncovered, resulting in better analysis and improved practice of preventive diplomacy.
To set the stage for the deeper analysis by chapter, the stakes and prevention goals in each issue area need to be identified. Boundary conflicts concern the location of lines separating states, in dispute either because they are imprecisely located (undelimited or undemarcated) or because their location is contested. Such disputes can be settled by careful negotiations involving guiding principles and specific trade-offs, but left untended, they have a conflict-generating potential that can lead to hostile relations even to the point of war between neighbors. Beyond the location of lines, territorial disputes involve larger parts of states claimed by neighbors for reasons of security, identity, or prosperity. Negotiations involve shifting the nature of the claim from territorial possession to some lesser form of concern (such as cultural preservation or political autonomy) but again, if left unshifted, claims can permanently sour relations, provide occasions for escalation, and eventually lead to war.
Divided state unification concerns restoration of the integrity of a state artificially separated, usually for external powers' purposes, through restoration of the overarching national identity which both parts claim and through renunciation of the ideological justifications for their separate existences. Unless one half physically conquers the other, that unification must be negotiated in order to provide the conditions for reintegration of the two territories and populations, and to prevent the necessarily hostile relations from turning, by design or by accident, into hostilities. The reverse process, the disintegration of formerly united (generally compound) states, can be accomplished gently, by negotiating the terms of separation and the distribution of assets, or violently, by war over the same items which negotiations would prevent.
Peacemaking processes and cooperative conflicts provide two limiting extremes to preventive diplomacy. Peacemaking processes dealing with ethnic conflicts that have not been prevented face a situation where continuation and even escalation of the violence are the alternative to a negotiated settlement. Here a revival of conflict escalation and violence is the object to be prevented. Peacemaking efforts seek to achieve the same goal by providing a transition to a new permanent regime through the management or settlement agreement. Such efforts come at the very end of the preventive spectrum but with characteristics quite similar to efforts at the beginning. In cooperative conflicts, the regime for handling relations and problems already exists, but conflicts arise to test its effectiveness and strength. Such conflicts among friends can escalate to strain and destroy friendly relations, escalation that timely negotiations would prevent, even though violence may usually not be likely. Similar to cooperative disputes are trade wars, where a trade regime between countries is disrupted by a dispute over the flow of goods covered by the regime. Negotiations restore the regime, in original or altered state, to prevent an escalation of retaliatory measures that threaten to damage relations and even destroy the regime.
Transboundary disputes and global natural disasters generally concern environmental problems of pollution, resource scarcities, and accidents, either on a bilateral or global scale. Allocation disputes over sources, responsibilities, effects, and payments may involve regime-building and may be simply punctual, but their effects, if unmanaged, could escalate into serious damage to the environment, the parties and their relations. which negotiation would seek to prevent.
Global security conflicts are a prime subject for preventive diplomacy involving regimes, where runaway competition in arms races and alliance races has often led to crisis and catastrophe. A major category of security relations involves arms control negotiations, which are designed to prevent the much-discussed escalatory effects of arms races and their propensity to end in war. "Orderly armament," more than disarmament, is negotiated in order to obviate the results of disorderly armament. Alliances are also regimes covering each of the sides in global security relations, but alliances are also well-known for their propensity to escalate and cause violent conflict. Negotiations provide for "orderly alliance interaction," creating regimes among regimes, lest expansion of alliances or frictions where they rub together cause heat and explosions.
In all this, there is much to learn from labor negotiations, where collective bargaining and conflict management regimes usually already exist, but where negotiations are frequently needed to prevent conflict from escalating into costly strikes and violence. But labor relations are also involved in conflicts over domestic allocation systems and in the establishment of new sets of internal rules and relationships, established to prevent incidental conflicts from arising or to facilitate within-system conflict management.
At this stage, some preliminary characteristics of preventive diplomacy through negotiation are already noticeable. First, preventive diplomacy requires pro-active initiatives rather than simply putting out fires. In familiar terms of negotiation analysis, this means a sustained effort of diagnosis of the issue area to identify problems before they become conflicts and to come up with solutions in the form of formulas for negotiation. The description of this activity is banal, but it is so far from the usual approach to foreign policy situations that it is striking. Many issue areas are strewn with conflicts waiting to happen, where some preemptive attention to potential causes--unmarked boundaries, ethnic discrimination, impermeable separations and constraining unifications, unchecked pollution, dumping and tariff initiatives, new arms technologies, changes of government in exposed allies, among other destabilizing conditions--can catch "precancerous conditions" before they turn into cancers. Some of these are ongoing conditions, which continue unnoticed until aggravated; others are new destabilizing changes which call for a reaction and set escalatory cycles into motion. Each is its own early warning, one by its existence and the other by its occurrence. Issue area studies can tell more about the nature and effects of each.
Second, preventive diplomacy generally requires either the creation or the maintenance of regimes--routinized or institutionalized ways of dealing with a particular type of problem (Hasenclever, Mayer & Rittberger l996). It is important to note that the focus of preventive diplomacy is not regimes per se, but the process of creating, using and repairing them through negotiation, akin to Anstey's systems change and systems management. To say that regimes are the solution to conflict is merely to pose the problem, which is how to use regimes to handle challenges or exceptions to them and how to establish the solution when it does not exist. If a regime does not exist (yet), it is either because the problem has not yet become endemic enough to require an institutionalized response or because the conflicts of interest engendered by the problem have prevented an institutionalized response from crystalizing. If a regime already exists, the conflict either needs to be brought in under it (or one chosen among competing regimes) or it has to be revised to deal with the conflict--the problem has to fit the regime or the regime changed to fit the problem. How preventive negotiations are carried out depends first on identifying which of these four types of situation exists.
Third, the key to the initiation and success of preventive negotiations is the mutual perception that the costs of early action are outweighed by the averted costs of future conflict. There are four elements to this calculation: an awareness to begin with that there is a calculation to be made, a sense of costs of present action, an estimation of future costs of a continued and worsening (escalating) conflict, and the creation of immediate benefits of present action. The second is continually present (even, paradoxically, without the first). Efforts to promote preventive diplomacy therefore need to concentrate on the first and last two elements, the need and opportunity for an initiative, the costs of inaction, and the provision of action payoffs now, not later.
The first is an awareness problem, requiring an identification of the types of opportunities that exist and the easiest ways to go about exploiting them. The third involves a more complicated calculation, since it pits current real costs against future discounted estimates, with an unending horizon that stretches beyond the term of the current incumbents. In addition to a discount factor, there is also a probability factor, since continuation, worsening , and escalation are not certain (Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky l982). Until there is a better sense of that probability, which can only be developed by a comparative study of preventive diplomacy by issue areas, it will be impossible to break the face-off between opponents of a preemptive demarche who claim a worsening eventuality is unlikely against proponents who feel it is likely. The last item involves the creation of immediate opportunities, to buy a constituency into the preventive action. Identifying these ingredients is the ultimate challenge of this study.
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