Underrating Preventive Diplomacy

Michael S. Lund, a Senior Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace, is researching the requisites of effective post--Cold War preventive diplomacy.

The malaise of U.S. foreign policy is such that academic gadflies now debunk any proposal that sounds suspiciously positive. This knee?jerk negativism infects Stephen John Stedman's superficial critique of "preventive diplomacy," an approach that finds early international responses to avoid potential crises easier than more belated interventions ("Alchemy for a New World Order: Overselling `Preventive Diplomacy,'" May/June 1995). Stedman charges that proponents of preventive diplomacy oversell its potential and naive policymakers are taking the bait. He argues that problems of prescience, policy prescription, and political support mean the "intractable" conflicts "endemic" to the post--Cold War period cannot be averted unless major resources are invested in "situations where risks are high and success is in doubt." Preventive diplomacy, he contends, merely means that "one founders early in a crisis instead of later."

But Stedman caricatures what proponents of preventive diplomacy are saying and exaggerates the extent to which governments are adopting the methods of preventive diplomacy. His selective analysis of worst?case scenarios leads him to misunderstand and thus overestimate the obstacles to implementing it.

HYPE AND HYPOTHESIS

Stedman conjures up a nightmare in which zealous purveyors of preventive diplomacy mesmerize unwitting policymakers into buying a discount antidote for local quagmires that has little potency and hidden side effects. But responsible proponents of preventive diplomacy obviously do not presume "easy solutions to such disasters can be found," advise key players to "do something, anything!" in dealing with incipient conflicts, tout preventive diplomacy as a cure?all with no cost or risk, or assume no value judgments need be made. Stedman not only distorts the views being expressed, he insults policymakers by implying they would fall for such policy nostrums.

Stedman has confused advocacy of a policy slogan with adoption of the substance behind it. Just because "preventive diplomacy" is an inside?the?Beltway buzzword of foreign policy does not mean that early warning and conflict prevention have become official doctrine or standard operating procedure.

WHAT PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY MEANS

The term "preventive diplomacy" refers to actions or institutions that are used to keep the political disputes that arise between or within nations from escalating into armed force. These efforts are needed when and where existing international relations or national politics appear unable to manage tensions without violence erupting. They come into play before a point of confrontation, sustained violence, or military action is reached. In many places and on many issues, preventive diplomacy is already practiced, although not always under that label. Recent examples include the U.S. negotiations with Russia and Ukraine over dismantling their nuclear weapons, U.S. and European pressure on Zaire's President Mobutu to step down, and the Middle East multi?lateral talks over water resource issues.

Stedman claims that while we know the societal conditions that increase the chances of war or state collapse (e.g., poverty, environmental degradation, ethnic and economic divisions, and repressive and corrupt regimes, and so on), murky individual and group decisions make it impossible to predict exactly when and where violence will erupt. But just because political forecasting is not a hard science does not make it a crapshoot. Sudden covert acts, such as a military coup or a terrorist bombing, are very difficult to forecast. But early?warning specialists are making progress in pinning down the probable precipitants of more gradual, public phenomena such as ethnic warfare, genocide, and the breakdown of states. Demonstrations, repressive measures, hate rhetoric, arms buildups, separatist communities forming parallel institutions: these signs one ignores at one's peril.

In Estonia, for example, restrictive citizenship and language laws adopted in 1993 by the newly independent government were perceived by resident Russian speakers--then a third of Estonia's population--as discriminatory and threatening. In view of this group's powerful patron next door, the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and other governmental and private actors acted preventively to reduce tensions, then and there.

WHAT TO DO

Stedman points out the difficulty of knowing what actions to take. But preventive strategy is not the stab in the dark that he implies. His blanket view that post--Cold War ethnic tensions uniformly lead to intractable conflicts is based on a few recent instances where efforts were made to avoid violence yet war ensued: Croatia, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda. One should look at the numerous ethnic and national disputes judged to be potentially destabilizing and violent that were managed in relative peace: Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, the breakup of the Czech and Slovak Republics, Congo's transition from autocracy, Zambia's nonviolent shift toward democracy, and Hungary's moderated relations with its neighbors, among others. Such success stories are virtually ignored in the press, and apparently by academics, too.