About the Report

This report originates from the United States Institute of 

Peace’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, which 

conducts research, identifies best practices, and develops 

new tools for anticipating, analyzing, and preventing violent 

conflict. The report argues for an enhanced global focus on 

the prevention of violent conflict relative to more reactive 

approaches. It reviews the state of the conflict prevention

 field in terms of norms and political commitments, 

institutional capacities, and policy-relevant knowledge and 

discusses key challenges ahead.

Lawrence Woocher is a senior program officer in the 

United States Institute of Peace’s Center for Conflict Analysis 

and Prevention. The author thanks Michael Lund for many 

conversations and input that contributed to this report and 

Jonas Claes and Nicholas Howenstein for 

research assistance.

1200 17th Street NW • Washington, DC 20036 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063

Special Report 231 September 2009

© 2009 by the United States Institute of Peace. 

All rights reserved.

Contents

An Old Concept Born Anew 2

A Short Argument for Prevention 3

Assessing Progress 6

Meeting Challenges 13

Recommendations and Conclusion 14

Lawrence Woocher

Preventing Violent 

Conflict

Assessing Progress, Meeting Challenges

Summary

•	 New wars will continue to erupt unabated if greater and smarter efforts are not made to 

prevent them. Current dangers stem from factors such as the rise of unstable regimes, global 

economic turbulence, climate change, and the shift in global power distribution. Preventing 

relapse after wars end is insufficient to prevent most new conflicts, because post-conflict 

recurrences constitute only a minority of all conflict outbreaks.

•	 A wide range of governments—including the United States—and many intergovernmental 

and nongovernmental organizations have made commitments to take serious efforts to 

prevent violent conflicts. In most respects, these commitments represent a more than 

adequate normative foundation and a supportive political environment for the development 

of more robust and effective conflict prevention strategies.

•	 Normative and political progress has not been fully matched with development of institutional capacities in governments and international organizations. Expanded conflict prevention capacities will not necessarily require new offices or institutions, but they will require 

focused attention, resources, and a process to spur action in response to warning signs.

•	 The knowledge required to prioritize and target prevention strategies is fairly well developed. More knowledge is needed to help move beyond a description of the conflict prevention toolbox to using these tools as part of empirically grounded prevention strategies. 

•	 Advancing the conflict prevention agenda will require navigating a series of challenges, 

including the rapidly changing context in which prevention strategies are applied, a set of 

difficult political and institutional factors that militate against vigorous preventive action, 

and the changing role of the United States in the global system.

•	 The first step toward meeting the challenges is to make prevention a “must do” priority—

on equal par with resolving active conflicts and rebuilding post-conflict states. Other steps 

United States Institute of Peace www.usip.org

SPECIAL REPORT
2

include monitoring implementation of existing political commitments to conflict prevention and developing new political strategies to regularize the practice of prevention.

An Old Concept Born Anew

There is no shortage of adages about the merits of prevention. An ounce of prevention 

is worth a pound of cure. A stitch in time saves nine. Prevention is the best medicine. 

Perhaps the unimpeachable logic of these aphorisms should suffice to move governments 

and international organizations to develop robust capacities to prevent violent conflict and 

to deploy them strategically. History, unfortunately, suggests otherwise. Too many wars 

have erupted without significant effort undertaken by parties that might have been able 

to prevent them. Others broke out—at least partly—because efforts to prevent them were 

inadequate or misguided.

The idea that future wars can be prevented before they break out has been around for 

many generations and taken many forms. Indeed, a review of international diplomatic 

history from a conflict prevention lens reveals a great deal of “prevention in practice”—

from the founding of the United Nations in 1945 on the belief that a new international 

institution could help “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” to President 

John F. Kennedy’s deft maneuvering through the Cuban Missile Crisis to avoid war with the 

Soviet Union. While the conflict prevention label is rarely applied to these and other projects, they evince the deep roots of the concept.1

From the optimism that bloomed at the end of the Cold War, conflict prevention was born 

anew. Without the East-West rivalry constraining international action, the bold idea was 

put forward to make prevention of violent conflict a central guiding aspiration of governments’ foreign policies and international organizations’ work. UN secretary-general Boutros 

Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 An Agenda for Peace declared preventive diplomacy as the first pillar 

of the United Nations’ work in peace and security. The pathbreaking work of the Carnegie 

Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and the United States Institute of Peace’s Study 

Group on Preventive Diplomacy followed in the mid-1990s,2 expanding the argument for 

prevention and fleshing out its conceptual terrain. These foundational efforts were in turn 

followed by lively debate, some tragic failures, and less noticed successes. Conflict prevention is now routinely reaffirmed as a goal in multilateral and national forums.

A balanced assessment of progress in preventing violent conflict, however, must 

acknowledge that serious gaps in our understanding and global capacities endure, and in the 

end, practice rarely lives up to rhetorical commitments. Moreover, the international security 

environment has evolved in ways that raise the importance of prevention but simultaneously 

militate against its effectiveness. Repeated calls to “act early,” instill a “culture of prevention,” and above all, mobilize “political will” have been manifestly inadequate. Serious 

strategies to prevent violent conflicts must go further.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to define the notoriously slippery term, “conflict 

prevention.” For present purposes, conflict prevention strategies are defined not by the 

specific actions involved as much as by their goals and the stage of conflict when they are 

implemented. A wide variety of actions can contribute to a conflict prevention strategy—

for example, mediation, confidence-building measures, human rights promotion, capacity 

building, etc. To qualify as conflict prevention, however, these actions must include preventing large-scale violent conflict explicitly among their goals. In addition, only strategies 

used at the front-end of the conflict curve—that is, the phase when disputes have not yet 

produced large-scale violence (figure 1)—should count as conflict prevention. While peacemaking efforts during active conflicts might aim to prevent a conflict from escalating or 

spreading and peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict phases aim to prevent recurrence, there 

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. 

Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, 

promote post-conflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict 

management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with 

knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Board of Directors

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, 

D.C. • George E. Moose (Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor 

of Practice, The George Washington University, Washington, 

D.C. • Anne H. Cahn, Former Scholar in Residence, American 

University, Washington, D.C. • Chester A. Crocker, James R. 

Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign 

Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. • Ikram U. 

Khan, President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, 

Nev. • Kerry Kennedy, Human Rights Activist • Stephen D. 

Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor 

of Law, George Mason University, Arlington, Va. • Judy Van 

Rest, Executive Vice President, International Republican 

Institute, Washington, D.C. • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice 

President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 

Members Ex Officio

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State • James N. Miller, 

Department of Defense • Ann E. Rondeau, Vice Admiral, U.S. 

Navy; President, National Defense University •

Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute 

of Peace (nonvoting)
3

are unique challenges in preventing the initial onset of large-scale violent conflict that merit 

focused consideration, as will be discussed in this report.

This report proceeds in three parts. First, it discusses the importance of conflict prevention, drawing on analysis of conflict trends and current threats. Second, it assesses progress 

achieved over the last decade toward preventing violent conflict. Third, it concludes by 

analyzing major current challenges to realizing the aspiration of effective prevention and 

making a number of recommendations for meeting these challenges.

A Short Argument for the Importance of Prevention

Few could dispute that responding after the fact to large-scale violent conflicts is second 

best compared with preventing their occurrence—in moral, strategic, and financial terms. 

Beyond these timeless realities, analysis of recent trends in armed conflict and threats on 

the horizon bolster the argument for the importance of prevention.

Persistence of new conflict

Recent analyses of secular trends in global political violence concur on major conclusions: 

the overall level of armed conflict is down significantly since the end of the Cold War, but 

this trend cannot be attributed to effective conflict prevention efforts.

The finding that made headlines—and has been slowly sinking in among the community 

of conflict scholars and peacebuilding practitioners—is that the number of active violent 

conflicts and the lethality of war globally have declined significantly since the early 1990s. 

Though it is undoubtedly difficult to determine the beginning and end of violent conflicts 

precisely, this finding appears to be quite dramatic—by one count, the number of armed 

conflicts dropped from more than fifty in the early 1990s to fewer than thirty in 2003, the 

year with the lowest number of active conflicts since the 1970s.3 

This overall decline in active conflicts could be the result of fewer new conflicts, termination of ongoing conflicts, or some combination of the two. The evidence is clear that the 

decline has resulted entirely from the termination of ongoing conflicts; in other words, “the 

downward trend in conflict is not the result of effective prevention of new conflicts.”4 Thus, 

while the fruits of international peacemaking efforts can be found in the increased number 

of conflicts ending through negotiation in the 1990s, it is harder to discern the overall 

impact of conflict prevention efforts. On average, about four or five new armed conflicts 

begin each year, and this rate has changed little over a period of decades, according to the 

Center for Systemic Peace.5

Figure 1: The Curve of Conflict

PEACE 

INSTABILITY

VIOLENT

CONFLICT

WAR

PEACE

INSTABILITY

VIOLENT

CONFLICT

WAR

increasing

tension

decreasing

tension

full-scale

violence

overt crisis ceasefire

Source: Adapted from Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts, 38.

The rate of new armed conflicts 

has changed little over a period 

of decades.
4

This finding is troubling. Why should the global record of conflict prevention be so much 

less impressive than that of peacemaking, at least by this measure? It would be unfair, 

however, to compare the effectiveness of conflict prevention to that of conflict termination 

or post-conflict peacebuilding, because the international focus and resources devoted to 

these latter objectives has not been matched for prevention. As Andrew Mack of the Human 

Security Project explains, “Conflict prevention is still more an aspiration rather than an 

established practice.”6 Similarly, Joseph Hewitt et al. concluded in Peace and Conflict 2008

that this empirical analysis “underlines the importance of continued effort by policymakers 

and researchers to develop better techniques for conflict early-warning and prevention.”7

Current and future dangers

These historical patterns suggest that new wars will continue to erupt unabated if greater 

and smarter efforts are not made to prevent them. Furthermore, conflict forecasting and 

early warning analyses suggest that several factors may be pushing the world into a new 

period of significant dangers.

Rise of unstable regimes. Empirical analysis indicates that the states that are most likely 

to experience armed conflict are governed by regimes that are neither fully democratic nor 

fully autocratic, but of a mixed character termed “anocratic.” Monty Marshall and Benjamin 

Cole find anocracies “have been about six times more likely than democracies and two and 

one-half times as likely as autocracies to experience new outbreaks of societal wars.”8 This 

finding reinforces longstanding theoretical arguments that, despite the relative peacefulness of established democracies, periods of political opening and liberalization, not strict 

repression, are the most dangerous.9 The steep decline in the number of autocracies 

following the Cold War has produced an unprecedented number of democracies, but this 

decline also carries a downside for global peace: a sharp increase in the number of unstable 

anocracies.10

Global economic turbulence. While poverty does not lead directly to conflict, history suggests that weak or negative economic growth raises the risk of conflict and that sharp economic shocks in already fragile societies can trigger outbreak of conflict. Paul Collier finds 

that a negative point of growth in a typical low-income country roughly equals an increase 

of one percentage point in that country’s risk of civil war over the next five years.11 Edward 

Miguel et al. found economic shocks to be especially dangerous: “A negative growth shock 

of five percentage points increases the likelihood of conflict in the following year by over 

12 percentage points.”12 The current global recession, therefore, raises serious concerns 

about potential violent conflict. For 2009, the International Monetary Fund projects the 

world economy to contract by more than 1 percent and negative growth shocks of between 

three and eight points for the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Central 

and Eastern Europe.13

Climate change. Forecasts of global climate change indicate the greatest impact will be felt 

by societies already struggling with poverty and instability. The U.S. director of national 

intelligence reported to Congress in 2009 that “climate change could threaten domestic stability in some states, potentially contributing to intra- or, less likely, interstate conflict, particularly over access to increasingly scarce water resources.”14 An International Alert report 

concluded, “There are 46 countries—home to 2.7 billion people—in which the effects of 

climate change interacting with economic, social, and political problems will create a high 

risk of violent conflict.”15 This kind of dynamic can already be seen in places such as Darfur, 

where desertification and drought has contributed to tensions between nomadic pastoralConflict forecasting and early 

warning analyses suggest that 

several factors may be pushing 

the world into a new period of 

significant dangers.
5

ists and sedentary farming peoples. While a great deal of work has gone into understanding 

the science of climate change and potential strategies for mitigation, relatively little attention has been paid to assisting vulnerable countries to enhance their adaptive capacities so 

that climatic changes do not lead to violent conflicts. 

Shifts in global power distribution. While interstate wars have been uncommon for many 

years, policymakers should not take a continuation of this trend for granted. There are 

signs that should raise concerns about the risk of violent conflicts that transcend individual 

states. First, major shifts in global power distribution have historically been dangerous 

periods, sometimes sparking great power conflicts, as was the case in the run-up to both 

world wars. Most observers today point to a shift in power from West to East and away 

from the American “unipolar moment,”16 though there is considerable debate about the 

pace and depth of these shifts and the likely outcome. Second, in an increasingly interconnected world, the high degree of global inequality in wealth, freedom, and effectiveness of 

governing institutions may generate significant tensions.17 The possibility of transnational 

conflict in this context is not negligible, whether triggered by nonstate actors with increasing capacity to wreak significant damage or by regimes that seek to revise their place in an 

international system “characterized by relatively small, super-powerful, resource-demanding 

regions and large, weak, resource-producing regions.”18

These trends represent challenges to weak and fragile states, which lack adequate 

legitimacy and/or effectiveness to govern their territories and populations. As complex, 

transnational issues pose increasingly acute governance challenges, more states may find 

themselves unable to manage their problems effectively. In this way, conflict risk factors 

can have an additive if not multiplicative effect, combining to overtax the capacities of 

fragile states.

Yet discernable risks should not be confused with inevitable conflicts. The connection 

between risk factors such as anocratic regime type, economic recession, climate change, 

and global power shifts, on the one hand, and the outbreak of violent conflict, on the 

other, is neither simple nor direct. For example, there is evidence that in the last fifteen 

years fewer anocracies than would be expected have fallen into armed conflict, perhaps 

suggesting that international engagement and support through the democratization process is bearing fruit.19 Similarly, new initiatives to protect fragile states from the impact of 

economic shocks or to help states adapt to new climatic conditions could dampen the resulting conflict risks. Well designed and robust preventive strategies, thus, can insure against 

future dangers.

More than post-conflict relapse

Some have argued that most new conflicts represent the recurrence of old conflicts where 

post-conflict peacebuilding efforts have been absent or failed. If this were true, the focused 

attention that governments and international institutions have paid over the last decade to 

the unique risks that post-conflict states face would be a nearly sufficient—and efficient—

response to the challenge of conflict prevention.

There is no doubt that states emerging from large-scale violence are at elevated risk of 

new or renewed conflict. This increased risk is typically expressed by citing the percentage 

of states experiencing a civil war that relapses within five years of termination—about 25 

percent since 1945 (not 50 percent, as is often mistakenly cited).20 Another way of looking 

at the contribution of post-conflict recurrence to the overall universe of conflict onsets is to 

look at the percentage of all conflict onsets that are relapses. Since 1990, only a minority of 

conflict onsets could be considered relapses of recent conflicts (i.e., those that had ended 

As complex, transnational 

issues pose increasingly acute 

governance challenges, more 

states may find themselves 

unable to manage their 

problems effectively. 
6

no more than five years earlier).21 In fact, of the major episodes of political violence beginning between 2005 and 2008, according to the Center for Systemic Peace—namely, those 

in Pakistan (Baluchistan), Chad, the Central African Republic, Israel-Lebanon (Hezbollah), 

Mexico, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Russia-Georgia, and Kenya—it is hard to argue that many were 

relapses of a recently ended war. It is simply not the case that most wars are recurrences of 

recently terminated wars.

In addition, the current and future dangers described above may very well affect states 

that have not recently emerged from conflict. For example, fewer than half of the world’s 

anocracies as of the end of 2007 were either in conflict or had had a conflict terminate in 

the prior five years.22 And the locations that will bear the greatest negative societal impacts 

from climate change overlap only partially with the recent history of armed conflict. In 

sum, the span of current and near-future risks reaches well beyond states that have recently 

emerged from violent conflict. A focus on post-conflict states to the exclusion of investment 

in and serious thinking about prevention will be inadequate. New prevention strategies will 

be required to avert these potential conflicts.

Assessing Progress

Despite the lack of evidence that conflict prevention efforts have reduced the frequency 

of new conflict onsets, the world has made tangible progress in constructing the building 

blocks of effective conflict prevention. These include strengthening norms and mobilizing 

political support for preventing armed conflict, developing institutional capacities to deploy 

prevention strategies, and accruing knowledge about how to design and implement effective preventive strategies.

Normative and political support

Conflict prevention has steadily migrated from the occasional mention on the margins of 

foreign policy tracts to frequent citations as a fundamental goal. This movement is apparent not only in the UN system, where “peaceful settlement of disputes” is a foundational 

concept, but also among numerous influential governments, regional organizations, and 

civil society groups.

Within the U.S. government, the acceptance of conflict prevention as an important 

objective has paralleled a broad evolution in thinking about U.S. national interests and 

threats to American national security. Policymakers have increasingly recognized the high 

degree of global interconnectedness and the ways in which the United States is affected 

by most conflicts, even those that are distant and seemingly devoid of traditional national 

interests. This appreciation of the relevance of weak states, “nontraditional” threats, and 

parts of the world previously thought to hold little strategic importance to the United States 

has helped spur consideration of the potential to prevent this wider range of conflicts. 

In one of the first major foreign policy speeches of the Obama administration, at the 

Munich Security Conference, Vice President Joe Biden stated, “We will strive to act preventively . . . to stop crises before they start.” The Bush and Clinton administrations, though 

differing in emphasis, both described conflict prevention as an important component of 

their National Security Strategies. President George W. Bush’s 2006 strategy referred to 

conflict prevention in its discussion of addressing regional conflict, citing, in particular, 

promotion of democracy as “the most effective long-term measure for conflict prevention 

and resolution.” President Bill Clinton’s 2000 strategy document declared, “Preventing 

conflict has been a hallmark of U.S. foreign policy under a strategy of engagement.” Similar 

statements can be found in policy documents from many other national governments and 

It is simply not the case that 

most wars are recurrences of 

recently terminated wars.

In one of the first major foreign 

policy speeches of the Obama 

administration, Vice President 

Joe Biden stated, 

“We will strive to act 

preventively . . . to stop crises 

before they start.”
7

international organizations during the same period (see table 1 for examples). 

Preventing armed conflict continues to be endorsed as a fundamental goal in various 

UN forums. The UN secretary-general’s 2006 report to the General Assembly on the subject 

referred to conflict prevention as “one of the chief obligations set forth in the Charter of 

the United Nations” and found that normative progress had been made, as represented in 

thematic resolutions passed without dissent by the General Assembly and the Security Council. In addition, the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, 

which Kofi Annan created to generate a renewed concept of collective security, framed its 

2004 report around “meeting the challenge of prevention” for a range of issues, from interand intrastate conflicts to nuclear proliferation and infectious disease. Lastly, the principle 

of the “responsibility to protect” populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against 

Table 1: Illustrative Normative/Policy Statements on Conflict Prevention

United Nations General Assembly

Calls for strengthening the capacity of the United Nations in order to carry out more effectively its responsibilities for the prevention of armed conflict (Resolution 57/337 [2003], op. par. 13).

United Nations Security Council

Expresses its determination to pursue the objective of prevention of armed conflict as an integral part of 

its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security (Resolution 1366 [2001], 

op. par. 1).

African Union

The objectives for which the [African Union] Peace and Security Council is established shall be to . . . anticipate and prevent conflict (Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the 

African Union, July 2002, 5).

European Union 

Preventing threats from becoming sources of conflict early on must be at the heart of our approach (“Report 

on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy, Providing Security in a Changing World;” S407/08, 

Brussels, December 2008, 9). 

G8

The international community should act urgently and effectively to prevent and resolve armed conflict (“G8 

Communiqué Okinawa 2000,” July 2000, para. 72).

Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict

GPPAC calls for a fundamental change in our approach towards violent conflict, and believes that a shift 

from reaction to prevention can save lives and reduce destruction (GPPAC, “Vision, Mission and Guiding 

Principles,” www.gppac.net/page.php?id=1539).

Indonesia

Too much attention and energy has been spent on resolving conflicts, but still not enough on preventing 

them. Ultimately, it is much better to prevent a conflict from breaking out, rather than curing it once it happens. Preventing conflict costs much less in terms of human lives, political energy, and economic resources 

than resolving it (President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Third International Conference of Islamic Scholars, 

Jakarta, July 2008).

Sweden

Conflict prevention shall be an integral part of our foreign and security policy (Preventing Violent Conflict: A 

Swedish Action Plan [Stockholm: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1999], 9).

United Kingdom

We will make greater efforts to address conflict before it turns or returns to violence. This means tackling 

underlying causes of conflict through our development work and supporting political and social processes 

that manage conflicts peacefully (Preventing Violent Conflict, Policy Paper [London: Department for International Development, 2007], 14).

United States of America

We will strive to act preventively, not preemptively to avoid wherever possible a choice of last resort between 

the risks of war and the dangers of inaction. We will draw upon all the elements of our power—military and 

diplomatic; intelligence and law enforcement; economic and cultural—to stop crises before they start (Vice 

President Joe Biden, Munich Conference, February 2009).
8

humanity, and ethnic cleansing was endorsed at the 2005 World Summit. From its inception 

in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 

to the latest debates about operationalization in the UN system, consensus on the “responsibility to prevent” has been wider and deeper than on when the responsibility to protect 

could justify coercive interventions.

In addition to the United Nations, other intergovernmental organizations have made 

official policy statements in support of conflict prevention in recent years. For example, the 

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance 

Committee, which represents thirty major donor countries, adopted a policy statement in 

1997 on conflict, peace, and development cooperation, emphasizing the primacy of prevention. Several regional organizations—including the European Union, the African Union, 

the Economic Community of West Africa States, the Organization of American States, and 

the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—have made official policy statements about their commitment to preventing conflict in their regions and, in some cases, 

beyond. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF), a 

group including both ASEAN member states and actors from outside the region, such as the 

United States and European Union, adopted the ARF Concept and Principles on Preventive 

Diplomacy in 2001.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have steadfastly pushed conflict prevention 

toward the center of political discussions among governments. Perhaps the best illustration 

is the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), which is composed 

of several hundred individual organizations across the globe. Among other things, GPPAC 

organized a conference at the United Nations in 2005 that brought together more than 900 

participants from 118 countries in the shared belief that the international community must 

shift from reaction to prevention. 

In most respects, these developments represent a more than adequate normative 

foundation and a supportive political environment (at the level of general rhetoric) for the 

development of more robust and effective conflict prevention strategies.

Institutional capacities

Normative and political progress have not been fully matched with requisite development 

of institutional capacities in governments, international organizations, or NGOs. There has 

been some forward motion, but it has too frequently been accompanied with reversals or 

plans that have not come to fruition. Institutional capacities for prevention continue to lag 

noticeably behind those for peacemaking and post-conflict peacebuilding. Conflict prevention capacity does not necessarily require new offices or institutions. In fact, mainstreaming 

conflict prevention into the foreign policy apparatus of governments and the operation of 

international organizations may ultimately be more effective and sustainable. Nevertheless, 

prevention strategies do require focused attention, resources, and a process to spur action 

in response to warning signs.

Within the U.S. government, perhaps the most significant new institutional development 

related to conflict prevention in recent years actually stems from the growing focus on postconflict stabilization. In 2004, the State Department created the Office of the Coordinator 

for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS), and President Bush issued a national security 

directive (NSPD-44) to promote better planning and coordination for post-conflict initiatives. NSPD-44 mandates S/CRS to coordinate “interagency processes to identify states at 

risk of instability” and lead “interagency planning to prevent or mitigate conflict.”23 The 

legislative authorization of S/CRS, which followed in 2008, generally refers to places that 

are “at risk of, in, or are in transition from, conflict or civil strife,” thus including prevention 

Normative and political 

progress have not been fully 

matched with requisite 

development of institutional 

capacities in governments, 

international organizations, 

or NGOs.
9

in S/CRS’s mandate. By all accounts, however, S/CRS’s conflict prevention efforts have been 

less central to its operations than its efforts to establish a Civilian Response Corps for stabilization and reconstruction situations, and post-conflict activities in general. The Obama 

administration is likely to further define the role of S/CRS and other agencies with respect 

to conflict prevention, so the ultimate impact of this institutional innovation for conflict 

prevention remains to be seen.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long worked in 

numerous conflict-affected and high-risk countries. In recent years USAID has expanded 

its efforts to ensure that all of its programs are conflict sensitive and address conflict 

risks through U.S. foreign assistance. In 2003, USAID created an Office of Conflict Mitigation and Management with a mandate to lead the agency’s efforts to analyze sources of 

conflict, mainstream conflict sensitivity, and develop new tools and capacities to address 

conflict issues. In 2005, USAID adopted a policy on Conflict Mitigation and Management 

that declared these to be priority areas for USAID assistance and a Fragile States Strategy 

that outlined an approach to assistance that addressed these states’ unique development 

challenges. USAID produces regular lists of at-risk and fragile states that should help prioritize and tailor preventive strategies. A reform of the U.S. foreign assistance framework 

in 2006, however, did not recognize the need for conflict prevention strategies as distinct 

from support for states currently in or emerging from conflict. If current efforts toward more 

fundamental reform of U.S. foreign assistance succeed, this gap might yet be filled.

In parallel, the U.S. Defense Department has begun to invest more heavily in noncombat operations, including so-called Phase Zero or shaping operations. Though these terms 

originated in the idea of shaping the battlespace in advance of “dominating activities,” they 

have come to refer more generally to military activities designed to “shape” pre-conflict 

security environments to advance U.S. interests and prevent conflicts. The Defense Department’s growing prevention orientation is most evident in statements and activities of the 

Southern Command and the newly created Africa Command (AFRICOM). Officially opened for 

operation in October 2008, AFRICOM departs from other U.S. regional combatant commands 

in its integration of civilian officials in its decision-making structure and explicit focus on 

conflict prevention. According to AFRICOM’s 2009 Posture Statement, its “primary effort is 

building African security capacity so our partners can prevent future conflict and address 

current or emerging security and stability challenges.”24 It is much too early to evaluate 

the extent to which AFRICOM may be a useful innovation for preventing conflict, but the 

centrality of conflict prevention as opposed to war fighting for a regional combatant command is evidence of a significant shift in thinking. 

At the intergovernmental level, there are signs of progress—if sometimes halting—

toward enhancing capacity for conflict prevention. The UN Development Programme created 

a Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in 2001, which has become an active center of 

technical assistance and development-oriented projects to build local capacities to prevent 

conflict. The UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action is a useful coordination 

mechanism, but with less than a handful of dedicated staff and supported by voluntary 

contributions, it does not represent much new capacity. The UN Peacebuilding Commission 

(PBC), created in 2005, was originally conceived as a mechanism to coordinate policy and 

support fragile pre-conflict as well as post-conflict states. But in intergovernmental negotiations, member states left little space for the PBC to engage in prevention beyond immediate 

post-conflict contexts, reflecting sensitivities that preventive action could amount to interference in internal affairs.25 In a more positive development, the UN Department of Political 

Affairs gained support from the General Assembly in late 2008 to significantly enhance its 

capacity—adding forty-nine new posts—largely focused on conflict prevention. 
10

Modest progress is discernable in other intergovernmental bodies as well. The World Bank 

has launched work streams focused on both fragile and conflict-affected states and, more 

recently, violence prevention strategies (encompassing criminal and domestic violence as 

well as violent armed conflict). The European Union continues to develop its early warning 

and rapid reaction capacities and in 2006 created the Instrument for Stability, a financial 

instrument funded at 225 million euros for 2009–11 that enables Brussels to channel development assistance in a matter of weeks to head off emerging crises.26 Over the last several 

years, the African Union and African subregional organizations have begun to establish 

institutional architecture for early warning and conflict prevention but remain relatively 

young and resource-strapped.

Perhaps most impressive is the tremendous growth in the capacities of NGOs working 

in conflict prevention over the last decade. For example, the International Crisis Group—

whose tagline is “the international conflict prevention organization”—has grown from a 

small shop of Balkans and Central Africa experts in the mid-1990s into a truly global organization of some 130 staff members producing reports on more than sixty conflict situations, 

though fewer than half of these are “pre-conflict” situations.27 In addition to analysis 

and advocacy, more and more NGOs have become engaged directly in conflict prevention 

efforts through citizen diplomacy and other kinds of on-the-ground projects. For example, 

with support from a private donor, a group of independent experts has since 2004 engaged 

government and opposition leaders in Guinea Bissau in an effort to reduce risks of conflict 

there. This initiative has recently coalesced into a project called Before, which aims to apply 

this preventive model to other countries. In the wider field of development, human rights, 

and humanitarian relief, there has been increasing attention to the ways in which actions 

by NGOs can inadvertently exacerbate conflict, if conflict issues are not appropriately factored into program design. The use of “do no harm” and other conflict analysis and impact 

assessment methods have become fairly routine—one illustration of efforts to mainstream 

conflict prevention.

Knowledge

Beyond broad political support and adequate institutional capacity, effective conflict 

prevention requires knowledge about when, where, and how to design and implement 

appropriately tailored strategies for each unique case. At the strategic level this means, 

first, knowing when and where to invest limited conflict prevention resources based on the 

estimation of risks and potential for positive influence. Second, it requires knowledge about 

which tools in the conflict prevention toolbox to use in different situations and stages,and 

in what combination. Third, at the operational level, practitioners need to know how to use 

various conflict prevention tools to greatest effect.

The knowledge required to prioritize and target prevention strategies is fairly well developed. A great deal of scholarship in the last decade has advanced our understanding of the 

causes, risk factors, and conditions that predispose states to violent conflict—especially 

civil wars. Forecasting models, such as those developed by the Political Instability Task 

Force, perform very well at sorting states into high-, medium-, and low-risk categories. As 

with even the best expert judgment, these models cannot ensure against all strategic surprises. But they can be helpful in focusing prevention resources on the highest risk states.

Given there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to emerging conflicts, designing an effective conflict prevention strategy requires deeper analysis of the key actors, drivers of conflict 

and potential mitigating factors, and possible triggers of escalation or moments of opportunity. Numerous methodologies have been developed to facilitate this kind of systematic 

conflict assessment or analysis—not to estimate relative risks so much as to understand 

Effective conflict prevention 

requires knowledge about when, 

where, and how to design 

and implement appropriately 

tailored strategies for each 

unique case. 
11

the conflict dynamics to inform policy and program planning. Examples include the U.S. 

government Interagency Conflict Assessment Framework, the World Bank’s Conflict Analysis 

Framework, and DFID’s Strategic Conflict Assessment.

The core challenge for risk assessment/forecasting models and detailed conflict assessment methods is ensuring that these analyses are taken into consideration in targeting and 

designing a preventive strategy. This challenge goes well beyond questions regarding the 

current state of knowledge and tools to questions about institutional design, incentives, 

and professional practices.

Most fundamentally, perhaps, is the question of which conflict prevention strategies, 

tools, or instruments are likely to be most effective given a unique conflict setting. While 

much of the discourse surrounding conflict prevention implies the key is simply to “do it,” 

decision-makers typically have a range of specific options when considering a prevention 

strategy. Analysis of past experience and the logic of different prevention tools and strategies should inform these choices or else policymakers will be forced to improvise entirely, 

which might in turn reduce the likelihood of investing in prevention in the first place and 

the positive effects of efforts undertaken. Without imagining that conflict prevention is 

primarily a scientific or technical process, one can assume a degree of similarity from case 

to case that merits an attempt to glean and apply knowledge about the likely effectiveness 

of different approaches.

The omnipresent conflict prevention toolbox metaphor is useful (table 2) but significantly limited in this context. Its main merits are in highlighting an array of specific instruments that may be available to different actors to help reduce the risk of violent conflict. 

But we should recall that to build a piece of furniture, a full toolbox must be paired with a 

blueprint describing when to use a hammer, a saw, or a screwdriver, plus knowledge about 

how to use each of these tools effectively. Likewise, the conflict prevention toolbox is of 

limited utility without knowledge about when and how to use different tools. More fundamentally, however, the toolbox metaphor fails to capture the complex, dynamic, and political nature of conflict and its prevention. Unlike wood, potential combatants are strategic 

political actors, anticipating and responding to others’ actions in hard to predict ways, in 

contexts where small changes can have disproportionately large consequences, all the while 

balancing the utility of violence against their interests and other options—often making 

mistakes and miscalculations.

Moving from toolbox to strategy requires asking questions such as

•	 What mix of diplomatic/political, economic/social, legal/constitutional, and military/

security tools are most effective in different types of situations?

•	 In what circumstances are cooperative vs. coercive measures most effective? How should 

these be sequenced?

•	 How can structural and operational prevention strategies be made complementary?

•	 How much more effective are multilateral preventive strategies than unilateral ones, if 

at all?

The empirical literature offers surprisingly little that would help decision-makers or their 

advisers respond to these and similar policy-relevant questions. What insight can be drawn 

tends to come from studies of individual cases or subclasses of conflict (e.g., succession 

disputes), making it difficult to apply lessons more broadly. Lessons derived from cross-case 

comparisons are frequently so abstract that they provide little practical, strategic guidance 

(e.g., act early, coordinate actions, sustain long-term commitment). Furthermore, some 

conventional lessons may not stand up well to efforts by strategic actors to thwart them—

for example, following a “ladder of conflict prevention” from cooperative to increasingly 

coercive measures can assure potential spoilers that costly or painful actions are far off or 

The toolbox metaphor fails to 

capture the complex, dynamic, 

and political nature of conflict 

and its prevention.
12

unlikely to be taken if outsiders perceive cooperative measures may still work or if a conflict 

escalates rapidly. Even while recognizing that historical analysis will, at best, provide advice 

that will need to be adapted to a specific contemporary case, this is an area meriting further 

attention. Future studies should be framed more sharply around policy-relevant questions, 

articulate explicit hypotheses, compare multiple cases selected to maximize insight on key 

questions, and use more sensitive measures of success than “conflict” or “no conflict” (e.g., 

quantitative measures of conflict risk; extent of low-level violence; intermediate indicators 

that preventive actions are mitigating structural conflict causes, enhancing local conflict 

management capacity, and/or shaping conflict dynamics positively).

Yet conflict prevention should not be held to a higher standard of knowledge than 

other activities in international politics. Knowledge about the effectiveness of different 

means to achieve virtually every significant international political objective—for example, 

counterterrorism, poverty alleviation, democratization, environmental protection, etc.—is 

scant, disputed, and imperfect. The appropriate response to this situation is not paralysis 

or abandonment of important goals, but action based on the best available knowledge and 

assiduous efforts to expand the knowledge base. 

In addition to empirical analysis, scenario exercises, “red team” reviews, and “war gaming” different prevention strategies in different hypothetical contexts can also generate 

insight that will benefit policymakers. Likewise, strategic frameworks, such as the one 

developed by the United States Institute of Peace,28 can serve as tools for thinking systematically about how to design and implement a prevention strategy in a given situation—

neither a one-size-fits-all template nor pure improvisation.

Knowledge at the operational level is no less important for achieving strategic goals. 

Most conflict prevention practitioners will not have the latitude to make decisions about the 

overall shape of the strategy. But whether they are engaged in an economic development 

Table 2: The Conflict Prevention Toolbox

Political/diplomatic tools

•	 Mediation

•	 Good offices

•	 Political assistance

•	 Recognition/normalization 

•	 Fact-finding/observer missions

•	 Dispute resolution mechanisms

•	 Crisis management systems

•	 Public diplomacy/pressure

•	 Threat/use of diplomatic sanctions

Legal/constitutional tools

•	 Constitutional reform 

•	 Formal power sharing mechanisms 

•	 Human rights monitoring

•	 Police, judiciary, corrections assistance/training/

reform

Economic/social tools

•	 Conflict-sensitive development assistance

•	 Intergroup dialogue

•	 Restrictions on illicit financial flows

•	 Conditional incentives/inducements

(debt relief, trade preferences, investment)

•	 Threat/use of targeted economic sanctions 

Military/security tools

•	 Security guarantees

•	 Confidence-building measures 

•	 Security sector reform

•	 Military observer missions 

•	 Arms embargos

•	 Preventive military/police deployment 

•	 Threat of force/deterrence 

Sources: Adapted from Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, Preventing Genocide (Washington, D.C.: 

2008), 61; Creative Associates International, Inc., “A Toolbox to Respond to Conflicts and Build Peace,” 

www.caii.com/CAIIStaff/Dashboard_GIROAdminCAIIStaff/Dashboard_CAIIAdminDatabase/resources/ghai/

toolbox.htm; and Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts, 203–05.

Yet conflict prevention should 

not be held to a higher 

standard of knowledge than 

other kinds of activities in 

international politics.
13

project, human rights promotion, security sector reform, or dialogue and mediation, these 

practitioners are ultimately the means by which a conflict prevention strategy is conveyed. 

For some of these activities (e.g., mediation), the linkage to conflict risk is fairly direct, so 

the issue is mainly to carry out the activity in a competent fashion. For other activities that 

might be part of a prevention strategy (e.g., promoting political party development), the 

connection to conflict risk is less direct. The key question is how to execute them in a way 

that not only accomplishes the immediate aim but also reduces the risk of conflict and/or 

builds local capacity to manage conflict peacefully.

There is evidence that conflict prevention practitioners of all kinds have become more 

professional over time, learning lessons from experience and fine-tuning their techniques. 

Most of this learning has been informal, however, which is problematic for a field marked 

by high staff turnover, rapidly changing contexts, and very high stakes. All organizations in 

this field—governments, international organizations, and NGOs—should invest more heavily in evaluating past efforts, establishing regular mechanisms for after-action review, and 

integrating lessons learned into current and future practice.

Meeting Challenges

The broad political support for conflict prevention described above provides a context for a 

determined leader to forge more substantial institutional capacities and make prevention a 

core strategic tenet. The dangers and costs of waiting to respond once conflicts erupt will 

provide continuing impetus for this kind of move, and more progress is certainly possible. 

Success will require navigating a series of challenges, some emanating from new developments, others coming from enduring stubborn foils.

Changing context

It is puzzling that with all of the changes in the global political and security environment 

since World War II, the rate of new violent conflicts has fluctuated so little over the last 

six decades. Nevertheless, the seemingly accelerating pace of global change, with the 

number of actors and factors that affect war and peace proliferating, poses new challenges 

to conflict prevention strategies. If the current and future global context is truly more 

complex than the past, it may require major changes in mindsets and strategies. Complex 

systems are marked by their unpredictability, lack of consistent cause-effect relationships, 

and paradoxically, adaptability and sensitivity to small perturbations. Policymakers and 

practitioners alike may need to think differently about how to design and implement effective strategies to prevent violent conflict in this context. For instance, they may need to 

pay even more heed to the potential for unintended consequences and adopt approaches 

designed specifically for working in complex systems—such as the probe, sense, respond 

approach29—instead of strategies driven by rational-action models.

Enduring political and institutional factors

Though the global political and security environment constantly evolves, important features 

of political decision making in governments and international organizations appear largely 

fixed. Most of these predictable aspects of the way political leaders make decisions militate 

against robust preventive efforts. Despite broad political commitments to conflict prevention, perceived national interests sometimes lead governments to policies designed to help 

one party prevail in a conflict rather than to help avert or resolve conflict. Yet multiple 

political challenges remain even when there are no major interests to weigh against conflict 

prevention. For example, leaders in countries at high risk of conflict are typically reluctant 

The broad political support for 

conflict prevention provides 

a context for a determined 

leader to forge more substantial 

institutional capacities and 

make prevention a core 

strategic tenet.

Yet multiple political challenges 

remain even when there are no 

major interests to weigh against 

conflict prevention. 
14

to seek help from outsiders in managing potentially violent conflicts, especially if they are 

internal. Political leaders of third-party states can be expected to discount the costs and 

benefits of conflict or its prevention quite steeply when risks primarily affect residents of a 

faraway country rather than the citizens of their own country. Likewise, politicians elected 

on two- or four-year electoral cycles will tend to exhibit extremely short time horizons so 

that it is difficult to persuade them to pay small costs now to avoid potentially large costs 

at an uncertain future date. Furthermore, political incentives for preventive actions can be 

hard to find because prevention—as opposed to reactive approaches—typically lacks the 

tangible results that political leaders seek to impress their constituencies. Lastly, political 

leaders are notoriously overloaded and therefore driven by necessity to manage current 

crises to the neglect of important but less urgent concerns. This issue is all the more pronounced because pre–violent conflict situations rarely attract significant media attention, 

which can lead policymakers to perceive an imperative to respond. 

Changing role of the United States

On top of these factors, the current political dynamics in the United States complicate 

investment in prevention, even while these dynamics underscore the case for its importance. To say that U.S. resources are overstretched hardly begins to capture the current 

constraints. Commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader Middle East include not 

only large numbers of troops, limiting the range of military actions that can be taken or 

plausibly threatened elsewhere, but also a significant proportion of U.S. diplomatic attention and operational civilian assets. These wars are likely to leave a long shadow of aversion 

to foreign entanglements in the body politic. At least as important, the financial crisis of 

2008 and the poor long-term budget position of the U.S. government will make it harder 

and harder to justify any spending that is not perceived to have a direct, tangible linkage 

to the security and well-being of American citizens. Lastly, the American position in the 

world has changed. Even if the United States desires to engage in prevention, its influence and credibility may be diminished relative to the recent past. This may require more 

creative thinking about how coalitions of states with overlapping but distinct interests and 

diverse capabilities—as well as NGOs—can work together most effectively to prevent future 

conflicts.

Recommendations and Conclusion

More than a decade ago, Bruce Jentleson wrote that preventing conflict was “possible, 

difficult, necessary.”30 Each of these points is even truer today than when Jentleson first 

argued them. Analysis of historical trends in armed conflict and the existence of discernable risks of new conflicts on the horizon lend strong support for the third point—that 

conflict prevention is necessary. The review of progress over the last decade revealed quite 

dramatic advances in rhetorical and declaratory support for conflict prevention, but less 

impressive development of the institutional mechanisms that would enable governments 

and international organizations to employ preventive strategies effectively. There is also 

significant room for further improvement in expanding and applying the knowledge on key 

policy-relevant questions related to prevention. 

The analysis in this report leads to several broad recommendations. Governments, international organizations, and NGOs should

•	 recalibrate the balance of policy attention given to conflict prevention, peacemaking, and 

post-conflict peacebuilding. As shown, more effective prevention strategies will be necessary 
15

to extend the reduction in violent conflict globally. The first step to meeting this challenge 

is to make prevention a “must do” priority—on equal par with resolving active conflicts 

and rebuilding post-conflict states—and to devote attention and resources accordingly.

•	 monitor implementation of existing political commitments to conflict prevention. There 

is little utility today in debating whether preventing violent conflicts should be on the 

international agenda. Clear commitments to prevention are on the books of leading governments, intergovernmental organizations, and NGOs. Reminding political leaders and 

working-level officials of these commitments and highlighting gaps between promise and 

practice when they arise should promote accountability.

•	 bolster institutional capacities for prevention. The specific shape of preventive capacities will 

differ by institutional context, but two core elements apply generally. First, governments 

and intergovernmental organizations alike need better structures and processes for regular 

analysis of conflict risks and decision-making about appropriate preventive actions. Second, 

they need more robust and flexible standing capacity to undertake prevention strategies of 

all types—from constitutional reform to mediation to deterrent military deployments.

•	 expand knowledge on conflict prevention to help move from toolbox to effective strategies. 

The more scholars can provide practical guidance to decision-makers about the shape of 

strategies most likely to prevent violent conflicts, the more we can expect leaders to choose 

these options. Touting a set of tools is not enough. Empirical research, after-action reviews, 

scenario exercises, and simulations should be designed to inform the central questions of 

strategy development—for example, what measures, in what combinations, and in what 

sequence are most likely to prevent large-scale violent conflict in different types of situations?

•	 develop new political strategies to regularize the practice of prevention. Advocacy for conflict 

prevention too often relies on calls to our leaders’ better angels and seems to wish away 

the many reasons that they may be reluctant to take preventive actions. Actors at national, 

regional, and global levels need to think more realistically and more creatively about the 

politics of prevention. This means accepting the fixed factors that militate against effective 

preventive action while looking for opportunities to reduce other impediments. For example, more systematic use of conflict assessments can nudge decision-makers toward more 

robust preventive strategies without altering their fundamental political motivations.

Preventing violent conflict is, indeed, difficult, and the challenges to advancing the 

prevention agenda are formidable. But they are not insurmountable. Consistent deployment 

of effective conflict prevention strategies is possible. The stakes demand that international 

actors move determinedly toward the day when this possibility is a reality.

The first step to meeting this 

challenge is to make prevention 

a “must do” priority—on 

equal par with resolving active 

conflicts and rebuilding postconflict states—and 

to devote attention and 

resources accordingly.
Notes

1. Michael S. Lund, “Conflict Prevention: Theory in Pursuit of Policy and Practice,” In Conflict Resolution Handbook, eds. 

Jacob Bercovitch and I. William Zartman (London: SAGE, forthcoming 2009), 287–321.

2. In 1993, at the request of the State Department, the United States Institute of Peace convened an eminent group 

of diplomats, policy analysts, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations to explore whether and how 

the United States could most effectively conduct a strategy of early warning and preventive action. Michael Lund, 

the project director, consolidated and extended the work of this Study Group on Preventive Diplomacy into the book 

Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace 

Press, 1996). 

3. Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2008,” Journal of Peace Research (July 2009): 577–87. 

By factoring in the severity of conflicts, Monty Marshall and Benjamin Cole estimate the general magnitude of global 

warfare has dropped by more than 60 percent from its peak in the 1980s to its lowest level since 1960. See Monty 

G. Marshall and Benjamin R. Cole, “Global Report on Conflict, Governance, and State Fragility 2008,” Foreign Policy 

Bulletin (Winter 2008): 3, www.systemicpeace.org/peace.htm (accessed July 31, 2009).

4. J. Joseph Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, and Ted Robert Gurr, “Executive Summary” in Peace and Conflict 2008

(Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008): 12, www.cidcm.umd.edu/pc/ (accessed July 31, 2009).

5. “Measuring Systemic Peace,” Center for Systemic Peace, www.systemicpeace.org/conflict.htm (accessed July 31, 

2009).

6. Andrew Mack, “Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline” (Coping with Crisis Working 

Paper, International Peace Academy, March 2007), 16, www.ipacademy.org/asset/file/146/CWC_Working_Paper_

POLITICAL_Violence_AM.pdf (accessed July 31, 2009).

7. Hewitt, Wilkenfeld, and Gurr, “Executive Summary,” 12.

8. Marshall and Cole, “Global Report on Conflict 2008,” 6.

9. For example, in the mid-nineteenth century, Alexis de Toqueville wrote in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution,

“Experience teaches that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform 

itself.” See also Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War 

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

10. Marshall and Cole, “Global Report on Conflict 2008,” 5.

11. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 20.

12. Edward Miguel, Shanker Satyanath, and Ernest Sergenti, “Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict,” Journal of Political 

Economy 112, no. 4 (2004): 727.

13. International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook: Crisis and Recovery (April 2009 and July 2009 update), 10, 

www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/update/02/index.htm (accessed July 31, 2009).

14. Dennis C. Blair, “Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on 

Intelligence,” February 12, 2009, 42, www.dni.gov/testimonies/20090212_testimony.pdf (accessed July 31,2009).

15. Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict: The Links between Climate Change, Peace, and War

(London: International Alert, 2007), 3, www.international-alert.org/publications/pub.php?p=322 (accessed July 31, 

2009).

16. Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 70 (1990): 23–48. 

17. Monty G. Marshall and Jack Goldstone, “Global Report on Conflict, Governance, and State Fragility 2007,” Foreign 

Policy Bulletin (Winter 2007), www.systemicpeace.org/peace.htm (accessed July 31, 2009).

18. Ibid.

19. Marshall and Cole, “Global Report on Conflict 2008,” 5.

20. Astri Suhkre and Ingrid Samest, “What’s in a Figure? Estimating Recurrence of Civil War,” International Peacekeeping

14, no.2 (April 2007), www.cmi.no/publications/publication/?2599=whats-in-a-figure (accessed July 31, 2009). 

21. About 36 percent of conflict onsets from 1990 to 2007 occurred in states where a conflict had ended no more than 

five years prior, based on calculations using the Center for Systemic Peace’s dataset on “Major Episodes of Political 

Violence 1946–2008,” www.systemicpeace.org/warlist.htm (accessed August 12, 2009). Using the Uppsala Conflict 

Data Program Conflict Termination dataset, the equivalent figure is about 48 percent for all conflicts but drops to 

about 30 percent when examining only conflicts with at least 1,000 battle-related deaths.

22. Computed using the Polity IV Project dataset (version 2007) in combination with the Center for Systemic Peace’s 

“Major Episodes of Political Violence 1946–2008” dataset.

23. The White House, National Security Presidential Directive 44, December 7, 2005, www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/

nspd-44.html (accessed July 31, 2009).

24. U.S. Africa Command (U.S. AFRICOM), 2009 Posture Statement (March 2009), 11.

25. Lawrence Woocher, “Peacebuilding and Prevention,” WFUNA Reform Forum (June 2006). wfunauna.civiblog.org/

blog/_archives/2006/6/26/2057643.html (accessed July 31, 2009). 

26. European Union, Regulation (EC) No 1717/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council Establishing an 

Instrument for Stability, November 15, 2006.

27. International Crisis Group, “About Crisis Group,” March 2009, www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=208&l=1 

(accessed July 31, 2009).

28. The United States Institute of Peace’s Strategic Framework for Preventing Violent Conflict can be found at www.usip.

org/files/resources/preventing_violent_conflict_framework.pdf (accessed July 31, 2009).

29. David Snowden’s Cynefin framework helps leaders determine the prevailing operative context so that appropriate 

decisions can be made. In complex contexts (i.e., where the relationship between cause and effect can only be 

perceived in retrospect), decision-makers should “probe” or take action, and afterward “sense” the results of their 

action on the system and then “respond” by fine-tuning their actions. David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, “A 

Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review (November 2007).

30. Bruce W. Jentleson, “Preventive Diplomacy and Ethnic Conflict: Possible, Difficult, Necessary,” in The International 

Spread of Ethnic Conflict, eds. David A. Lake and Donald S. Rothchild (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1998), 293–316.

United States 

Institute of Peace

1200 17th Street NW

Washington, DC 20036

www.usip.org

An online edition of this and related 

reports can be found on our Web site 

(www.usip.org), together with additional 

information on the subject.