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 may be
obtained free of charge from the Commission:
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 715
Washington, DC 20036-2103
Phone: (202) 332-7900 Fax: (202) 332-1919
E-mail: pdc@carnegie.org
For significant assistance in clarifying this essay, the authors express their thanks to Diane Curran, Ben Dunlap, David Hamburg, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steve Miller.
Among the most striking features of the political system at the hinge between the twentieth century and the new millennium is the triumph of the democratic presumption. By "democratic presumption" we mean the belief that the best way to answer the question of who should govern within a state is to hold an open, competitive election in which each citizen has one vote, and to award power to the individual or party who receives the most votes. In 1998, Freedom House counted 117 democracies out of 191 states in the world.1
This presumption's triumph is not universal, as suggested by the Chinese government's December 1998 decision to arrest organizers of a party that proposed to compete with the Chinese Communist Party. Nor is it permanent, as romantic declarations about the "end of history" earlier proclaimed. But its increasing acceptance reflects not only the failure of alternative political systems, but also growing appreciation of the insight expressed by Winston Churchill when he observed that "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
The reasons why democracies, or liberal democracies, have proved more successful in addressing challenges of government internally, among themselves, and between other states and themselves, are lively issues of investigation among students of international politics. Perhaps the most powerful generalization in recent studies of international relations is the "democratic peace" hypothesis. Democracies never (or very rarely) go to war against other democracies.
This essay seeks to contribute to this larger ongoing debate. The specific question we explore is: What are the special roles and responsibilities of democracies in preventing deadly conflict, not only between themselves, but also among other states in the international system? As David Hamburg has observed, the established democracies "are likely to take the lead in formulating international norms of conduct with respect to intergroup relations, the proliferation of highly lethal weaponry, economic development in poorer nations, human rights, and the growth of democratic institutions.. .. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a prime example of the ability of the established democracies to work together.. . ." Hamburg then goes on to ask provocatively: "Could a similar alliance, involving a wider coalition of democracies, be organized to ensure security on a worldwide basis, fuel economic growth with fairness, protect cultural diversity, and foster democratic values?"2 We focus here on the particular roles and responsibilities of democracies not to diminish the significance of other essential actors. Rather, recognizing that democracies wield great power, we explore their commensurate obligation to assume great responsibilities.
At the outset, it may be useful to preview five of our major conclusions about democracies and the prevention of deadly conflict:
1. As one asks which actors have been most important in preventing deadly conflict in the last half century, the answer is clear: the democracies, particularly the larger democracies. This is no accident. It reflects both values and capabilities. States with established practices of tolerance and conflict resolution within their societies are most likely to reflect similar values in international initiatives. Moreover, the leading democracies of North America, Western Europe, and Asia ( Japan and India) have also been the most capable states in the international system.2. If one asks which actors are most likely to take actions to prevent deadly conflict in the decade or century ahead, again the answer would seem to be the ever-widening circle of democracies. They will not be the only important actors, but collectively they are more likely to take action than any other single state, group of states, or international organization. Democracies compose a "community of values," through which policy coordination and convergence are facilitated, and collective action made more likely.3
3. The principal instruments that democracies have used to prevent deadly conflict, and are likely to use in the future, include alliances (NATO, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty); global and regional economic agreements and institutions that promote prosperity through cooperation (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT], the World Trade Organization [WTO], the International Monetary Fund [IMF], and the European Union [EU]); international institutions (for example, the UN); clubs (for example, the G-7, now Summit of Eight, and Council of Europe); promotion of international norms, both core values (for example, human rights) and institutionalized practices (for example, free markets and democracies); and direct interventions (for example, the Implementation and Stabilization Forces [IFOR and SFOR] in Bosnia).
4. The most important obstacle to preventing deadly conflict today is the deficit of collective and individual preventive action, not an excess of illegitimate actions. The democracies have pursued collective abstinence as often as collective action. The states that could act more effectively to prevent deadly conflict have not believed that they have sufficient national interests to motivate them to act.
5. States are most likely to act to prevent deadly conflict when they believe that doing so is in their national interests (as they perceive them). Advocates of more vigorous and expansive prevention must therefore begin with states' current perceptions of their interests in attempting to overcome the existing deficit of will. Democracies, in particular, need to be shown the connection between deadly conflicts and their national interests. Creating and maintaining standing institutional capabilities for action also can enlighten interests and reduce costs of action in a specific situation. The existence of NATO's military capacity made it easier for that "coalition of the willing" to deploy IFOR to stop the killing in Bosnia. Among the most important issues for further research, therefore, are methods for increasing "political will."
Section 1 of this essay offers six starting points that define the boundaries of this large and unwieldy topic, as we conceive it. Section 2 steps back to consider the big picture and offers three hypotheses about preventing deadly conflict on the eve of the twenty-first century. Section 3 provides an overview of the incidents of deadly conflict in the past century and addresses the questions of where such conflicts have arisen and what actions have been taken or could have been taken to prevent deadly conflict. It discusses deadly conflict under three headings: nuclear conflict, interstate conflict, and intrastate conflict. Section 4 addresses directly the question of democracies' responsibilities. Have democracies shown themselves to be more successful at avoiding war than other states? What are the special responsibilities, competencies, and handicaps of democracies? Section 5 concludes our review by returning to the critical question of "political will" and explores ways of bridging the gap between current democracies' willingness to act to prevent deadly conflict, on the one hand, and the more robust program of preventive action proposed in this essay, on the other.
This essay addresses six fundamental questions dealing with the definition of conflict prevention, causes of the last fifty years of relative peace, the current status of preventive action, obstacles to prevention, national interest and prevention, and productive approaches to prevention.
In academic terms, we ask what is the "dependent variable?" "Deadly conflict" is defined as organized violence that kills large numbers of individuals. It includes war between states and war or genocide within states. But in using this shorthand, most thoughtful proponents of this objective do not seek peace at any price. "Prevention of conflict" includes an unstated, and often unacknowledged, measure of "justice" and "freedom." Consider China's program that is successfully "preventing deadly conflict" in Tibet today. It succeeds by effectively suppressing basic rights of the Tibetan population. Nowhere does Tibet appear as a successful case of preventing deadly conflict-nor should it. Until recently, President Slobodan Milosevic pursued a similar approach to preventing deadly conflict in Kosovo. Serbian authorities denied basic rights to the 90 percent of the population who are Albanians. The outbreak of violence in March 1998 shows that such policies are not only unjust, but also unsustainable.
The tension between "order," on the one hand, and "freedom" and "justice," on the other, is one of the oldest themes in political theory. In an oft-quoted one-liner, President John F. Kennedy declared: "We seek not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom."
Why has the second half of the twentieth century been relatively more peaceful, and seen fewer deaths from conflict, than the first half of the century, or most other recent half centuries? The causes of what John Lewis Gaddis has called "the long peace" are multiple and complex.4 Key among these has been the role played by democracies, led principally by the United States, in building an international system for preventing conflict. The lessons of World War I, failures of the interwar period, and horrors of World War II led wise statesmen in the United States and Europe to adopt programs for investing financially, politically, and morally in the reconstruction of Europe and Japan as democracies allied with a United States that upheld the international status quo. Opposition to Soviet-led Communist expansion backed by a willingness to pay the price of peace through strength successfully deterred potential Communist aggression against key states of the "free world." Over time free societies demonstrated their superiority in producing prosperity and freedom that citizens desired.
In today's world, is there too much prevention by actors who lack legitimacy, have mixed motives, or exhibit other undesirable characteristics? Or is the problem too little prevention because most actors seek to avoid responsibility and point at scapegoats? Some fear most an excess of unilateralism or a new multilateral crusade intervening in other states to prevent, or stop, deadly conflict. The UN Charter's enthronement of Westphalian state sovereignty, prohibitions against interference in internal affairs, and establishment of international legal norms against aggressive or colonial interventions by states claiming to act on behalf of some higher calling-all are hard-earned achievements in the long history of war and imperial domination. On the other hand, as one looks to the century ahead, the larger problem in our view is a deficit of action: collective and individual.
Should we worry more about illegitimacy, or about inaction? Obviously, both matter. But it appears to us that the larger and more fundamental problem is collective abstinence. The end of the Cold War has decoupled conflicts in the developing countries from the traditional security interests of the major powers. Even in the most extreme case of incontestable evidence of preventable genocide, for example, in Rwanda in April-June of 1994, and prospective genocide in the Great Lakes region thereafter, who was prepared to act? We take this as an indictment of self-proclaimed "civilized" states-one that cannot be contemplated for long without most people concluding that something is fundamentally wrong. As one of us has previously observed: "If an international order based on the concept of pax consortis is the only viable alternative to the disruptive disorder of disintegration, then more thought must be given to mechanisms needed to put that philosophy into practice, so that states may not pursue their own narrowly defined self-interests to the detriment of the common interests of the international community."5 Whoever has the capacity and values to prevent deadly conflict should be made to feel greater obligation to fulfill commitments already made (e.g., in signing the Genocide Convention, and joining the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE]) and thus be held more accountable.
One can identify three types of obstacles to effective action:
(1) Lack of intelligence and early warning: insufficient warning, information, and analysis.
(2) Lack of resources: absence of the capability to prevent deadly conflict because the problems are intractable, or intractable with current technology and resources.
(3) Lack of interest/motivation: no entity with the capabilities cares enough to pay the costs to take preventive actions that could be effective.
In our view, the predominant factor in states' failure to act is lack of interest and motivation. The principal obstacle to actions that would prevent deadly conflict in ways that respect justice is that the states that have the capacity to act effectively do not judge their national interests sufficiently engaged to move them to act. While statesmen frequently seek to hide behind claims about a lack of knowledge or warning, Rwanda demonstrates otherwise. After all the major states knew about the genocide, none of the entities with the capacity to make a difference cared enough to act.6 As General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of UN forces on the scene, observed: for want of 5,000 troops, 500,000 civilians were killed.7 In sum: in our view, the predominant problem is the deficit of a will to act. Actors with the capacity to take preventive actions should be challenged to live up to their self-conceptions as civilized states.
What is the best predictor of states' willingness to undertake and sustain actions to prevent deadly conflict? Our answer: perceived national interests as traditionally defined-direct impact on the state's survival or the well-being of its own citizens.8 As one reviews internal conflict in Albania, Bosnia, and Haiti, and considers which states felt the greatest concern, it is no surprise that the United States acted in Haiti, Germany in Bosnia, and Italy in Albania.
The states most likely to muster the will to act typically have other interests beyond preventing deadly conflict. Consider the conflicts along Russia's border in Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Transdniester. Who in the current international system is prepared to act? Only the state that has evident national security interests: security along borders; the well-being of citizens living in these emerging states; economic and strategic interests in these territories; a fear of these border areas being influenced by other parties-for example, Turkey or militant Islam; and geopolitical advantage and influence. Such activity leaves Russia open to accusations of "neo-imperialism," of which there is no doubt a trace in some of Russia's actions. But as one compares the level of deadly conflict in Tajikistan with that of Afghanistan (after the Soviet Union withdrew entirely), one must note that in the latter case no other entities have been willing to act to prevent deadly conflict.9
The gap between the most modest agenda for preventing conflicts in peripheral areas, on the one hand, and current conceptions of states' interests and citizens' consciousness of their interests, on the other, is already yawning. Thus, any proposal for a more ambitious agenda for preventive action that fails to address current conceptions of interests risks appearing to be a worthy but unrealistic exhortation. An alternative approach would begin with the interests of states (as currently conceived) and ask how these may be better mobilized, stretched, and enlightened to promote actions that would provide second- or third-best agendas for action in preventing deadly conflict. For example, in imagining conflict prevention in Africa, a "realist" might start with France's traditional, though declining, willingness to act in Francophone Africa and ask whether or how it might be possible to bring these impulses within some more legitimizing framework, as U.S. actions in the Western Hemisphere were in Haiti. A similar approach could be applied to Nigeria's interventions in other African countries. Such an effort might disturb some "idealists" who would propose only universal initiatives to which all states would in principle make equivalent contributions, but starting with self-interested action is preferable to no action at all.
A related effort might point out the interests of states in preventing deadly conflict, even in distant places. For example, distant conflicts, it can be argued, foment terrorism that can directly affect any state's security; breed health pandemics; eliminate business opportunities or destroy resources; cost countries billions in reconstruction paid for by the World Bank, foreign aid, and humanitarian assistance groups; corrode the emerging norms and rules of law of civilized society that contribute to other states' prosperity and peace; and challenge the great powers to fulfill their responsibilities.10 A case composed of such components is unlikely to be as compelling as a clear and present danger to a state's survival or its citizens' well-being. But "enlightened" self-interest reaches beyond immediate, direct consequences to longer-term, more complex efforts. Moreover, particularly for the established democracies, who at this point in history enjoy significant advantages in resources and capabilities, even "realists" recognize that "beyond the basic objective core, there are further layers of interests-and interpretations of interests-constructed in ways that reflect more subjective choice and creativity."11 Efforts that heighten civilized individuals' sense of outrage at genocide or other atrocities could therefore motivate citizens to stretch states' traditional conceptions of national interests to provide a basis for more robust preventive action.
In the current setting, the greatest challenge is to stretch the imagination and understanding of leaders around the world to a larger, more enlightened sense of their national interests in preventing deadly conflict. The success of the Clinton administration in persuading a skeptical Congress and American public to commit American peacekeepers in Bosnia, and then to extend their mandate, demonstrates that, however difficult, this is not impossible.
From what avenue can the challenge of preventing deadly conflict in ways that respect justice be approached most productively? We believe that analysis should begin with specific challenges and tasks to be undertaken. In addressing these challenges, we ask: Who has the capacity to act? Who could be motivated to act? Finally, we consider: What would be the effects of the specific actions?
This suggests a simple conceptual framework, sketched in Table 1. It consists of four columns: challenges; key actions; potential actors; and likely effects. For identified challenges, what actions would prevent deadly conflict with justice? Who could take the action? What would be the effects? For example, in controlling nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, what specific actions can be taken? (e.g., indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]); by whom? (e.g., both states possessing and states forgoing nuclear weapons); and with what effects? (e.g., limiting access to weapons that can kill massively).
For each of the arenas of deadly conflict, scholars can ask: What actions by which actors in the last fifty or one hundred years have had the desired effect of preventing deadly conflict with justice? That same group could be asked to analyze: What actions by which actors are most likely to prevent deadly conflict, with or without justice, in the decade or quarter century ahead?