United States 

Institute of Pe a c e

C o e rc i ve Pre ve n t i o n

N o r m a t i v e, Political, and Po l i cy

D i l e m m a s

Bruce W. Je n t l e s o n
Peaceworks No. 35

First published October 2000

The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect views

of the United States Institute of Peace.

UN I T E D ST A T E S IN S T I T U T E O F PE A C E

1200 17th Street NW, Suite 200

Washington, DC 20036-3011

Phone: 202-457-1700

Fax: 202-429-6063

E-mail: usip_requests@usip.org

Web: www.usip.org
C o n t e n t s

S u m m a r y 5

A ck n ow l e d g m e n t s 7

1. Introduction: Coercive Prevention 9

2. The Realism of Conflict Prevention 11

3. Coercive Prevention: Argument and Evidence 15

4. Normative Dilemma: Sovereignty as Rights versus

Sovereignty as Responsibility 18

5. The Dilemma of Political Will: How Fixed,

How Malleable the Domestic Constraints? 24

6. Policy Dilemmas: Constituting Credible Coercive

Threats and Wielding Effective Preventive Force 31

7. Conclusion: Difficult, but Possible 36

N o t e s 37

About the Au t h o r 43

About the Institute 45

S u m m a r y

For all that has been procl a i m ed abo ut the import a n ce of preven tive diplom ac y,

the re a l i ty of i n tern a ti onal acti on falls far short . While the first dec ade of t h e

pos t – Cold War era did have some preven tive su cce s s e s , it was more marked (or

m a rred) by missed opportu n i ti e s . Even in su ch “su cce s s” cases as Ko s ovo and East Ti m or,

wh a tever may have been ach i eved was ach i eved on ly a f ter mass kill i n gs , on ly a f ter s core s

of vi ll a ges were rava ged , on ly a f ter hu n d reds of thousands were left as ref u gee s . Ye s ,t h e s e

con f l i cts were stopped from get ting wors e — but they alre ady were hu m a n i t a ri a n

tra ged i e s .

Is this the best we can do? I think not. To be su re , the difficulties must not be undere s ti m a ted , as the preven tive agenda is a form i d a ble on e . It requ i res doing mu ch more to

devel op vi a ble stra tegi e s ; even more fundamen t a lly, it requ i res breaking out of the miscon cepti ons by whi ch we define the realm of the doa bl e . But for re a s ons of both intere s t s

and va lu e s , and from both a U. S . pers pective and a more broadly intern a ti onal on e , it is an

a genda that must be tack l ed .

In this paper I focus on one particular aspect of this agen d a ,n a m ely, the need to take a

h a rder look at “coerc ive preven ti on ,” and parti c u l a rly at the threat or use of m i l i t a ry force

as frequ en t ly nece s s a ry parts of overa ll preven tive stra tegi e s .This is a very different approach from vers i ons of preven tive diplom acy that make its non coerc ive natu re a def i n i n g

p a ra m eter and the use of coerc i on at best a last re s ort .Yet one of the key lessons of t h e

f i rst dec ade of the po s t – Cold War era ,b a s ed on my own work and that of o t h ers , is that

while coerc i on ra rely is su f f i c i ent for preven ti on , it of ten is nece s s a ry.

To make this argument requ i res working thro u gh three fundamental dilem m a s : a 

n o rm a tive one con cerning the legi ti m acy of coerc ive preven ti on with rega rd to cl a s s i c a l

con cepti ons of s t a te soverei gn ty; a pol i ti c a l one of wh et h er dom e s tic con s traints can be

su f f i c i en t ly overcome so as to mobi l i ze the nece s s a ry po l i tical wi ll ; and a pol i c y one of

devising stra tegies for con s ti tuting cred i ble coerc ive threats and wi elding military force

preven tively but ef fectively. Unless these core dilemmas can be miti ga ted , coerc ive preventi on wi ll con ti nue to lack the norm a tive , po l i ti c a l , and policy bases it needs—and at be s t

we wi ll con ti nue to do too little too late to prevent ethnic wars and other de adly con f l i ct s .

The second and third secti ons of the paper provi de the broad con text for what I call the

“re a l i s m” of con f l i ct preven ti on . The usual argument from classical geopo l i tical stra tegi s t s

is that mu ch of the 1990s agen d a ,h owever mora lly com m en d a bl e , fails the basic re a l i s t

c a l c u lus of i n terests (too low ) , costs (too high ) , and opti ons (too few ) .Yet this argument is

s h own to be flawed on its own term s . It undere s ti m a tes the interests at stake ; it overe s tim a tes the costs of acting early com p a red with acting late ; it miscalculates opti ons that narrow rat h er than stay open over ti m e .

The third secti on lays out the arguments and evi den ce for coerc ive preven ti on . Mu ch

of the work on po s t – Cold War preven tive diplom acy focuses on non coerc ive stra tegi e s

and po s i tive indu cem ents to the exclu s i on or at least minimizati on of coerc ive on e s . But 5
the import a n ce of coerc ive stra tegies for con f l i ct preven ti on is su pported by three types 

of evi den ce : its own stra tegic logi c , the import a n ce of coerc ive measu res in cases in wh i ch

con f l i ct preven ti on was su cce s s f u l , and the inadequ acy of coerc ive measu res as a key factor

is explaining cases of f a i lu re .

The fou rth secti on ad d resses the key norm a tive issu e s . One of the main probl ems for

coerc ive preven ti on , given the intra s t a te natu re of the vast majori ty of po s t – Cold Wa r

con f l i ct s , is the pers i s tent preva l en ce of the norm of s overei gn ty as ri ghts over the norm of

s overei gn ty as re s pon s i bi l i ty. However, this con cepti on of s overei gn ty as ri ghts has been

n ei t h er as absolute nor as fixed as is wi dely bel i eved . This is shown histori c a lly as well as

with referen ce to the Un i ted Na ti ons Ch a rter, wh i ch while stron gly affirming the soverei gn ri ghts of s t a tes also provi des norm a tive legi ti m acy and legal basis for the com peti n g

con cepti on of s overei gn ty as re s pon s i bi l i ty.

The fifth secti on , on po l i tical dilem m a s , assesses the dom e s tic con s traints on U. S . po li c y.Almost every stu dy of con f l i ct preven ti on con clu des that wh en all is said and don e ,t h e

main ob s t acle is the lack of po l i tical wi ll . As an ex p l a n a tory statem ent this is largely tru e .

The Un i ted States and other govern m ents have not acted because they have not had the

po l i tical wi ll to do so. If the dom e s tic con s traints that make this so are unch a n ge a ble and

f i xed ,t h en that would be the end of the story. Preven ti on would con ti nue to be sporad i c

and mostly too little too late . Th ere is re a s on to argue, t h o u gh , that the dom e s tic cons traints are not nece s s a ri ly all that fixed , that they have gre a ter po ten tial mall e a bi l i ty than

typ i c a lly is pre su m ed . Ex ten s ive data and analysis are pre s en ted ,i n cluding for the Ko s ovo

c a s e , ref uting the osten s i ble “c a su a l ty ph obi a”of p u blic op i n i on . The role of the med i a

and the CNN ef fect are also ex a m i n ed , as is the role of Con gre s s .

The sixth secti on focuses on policy stra tegies for opera ti onalizing coerc ive preven ti on .

Th ree main stra tegies are discussed : coerc ive thre a t s ,i n ten ded for deterren ce , com pell en ce , and re a s su ra n ce , and how their disti n ct requ i s i tes com p a re with more conven ti on a l

con tex t s ; preven tive pe ace keeping dep l oym en t s , as exem p l i f i ed by the UN force sent in

1993 to Macedon i a ; and uses of force , del i n e a ting a con cepti on of f a i r- but - f i rm stra tegi e s

and adding early re s ort to the usual terms of deb a te bet ween first re s ort and last re s ort .

This paper seeks above all to make the case for the realism of con f l i ct preven ti on . To 

do so requ i res be a ring in mind both the gains to be made from su ccess and the losses

ris ked from failu re . We curren t ly su f fer from being too of ten caught in the middl e . We

s eek to do as little as we can, or at least avoid squ a rely facing up to the issues until they

press them s elves upon us so inten s ely as to be unden i a bl e .We then end up with com m i tm ents that last mu ch lon ger, cost mu ch more , and accomplish mu ch less than prom i s ed .

No won der that not just isolati onists but serious stra tegic thinkers co u n s el doing less. Yet

as argued from the out s et , the interests at stake and the costs of i n acti on are too great for

those arguments to stand up to analys i s .

This means con ti nuing to focus on the norm a tive , po l i c y, and po l i tical dilemmas identi f i ed herei n . Th ey pose form i d a ble but not insu rm o u n t a ble requ i s i tes to su cce s s . Even if

just one or two of the next wave of Bo s n i a s ,R w a n d a s , Ko s ovo s , and East Ti m ors can be

preven ted , that would be a major con tri buti on to making the second dec ade of t h e

po s t – Cold War era more pe aceful and pri n c i p l ed than the firs t . And perhaps we can do

even bet ter than that.

6 Summary
A ck n ow l e d g m e n t s

The aut h or wishes to ex press his thanks and gra ti tu de to the Un i ted State s

Ins ti tute of Peace for providing su ch a sti mu l a ting and su pportive envi ron m en t

for my year as a sen i or fell ow in 1999: in parti c u l a r, I wish to thank Sa lly Bl a i r,

Joe Kl a i t s , Pa tri ck Cron i n , Di ck So l om on , and my fell ow Fell ows . Thanks also to Sa ra

Joh n s on for her able re s e a rch assistance , and to Ni gel Quinney for his skill ed ed i ti n g. I

remain indebted ,i n tell ectu a lly and pers on a lly, to David Ha m burg and Al ex a n der Geor ge

for their vi s i on and leadership in advancing po s t – Cold War con f l i ct preven ti on stu d i e s

and policy deb a te s .

7

O n e

I n t ro d u c t i o n

Coercive Prevention

For all that has been procl a i m ed abo ut the import a n ce of preven tive diplom ac y,

the re a l i ty of i n tern a ti onal acti on falls far short . While the first dec ade of t h e

pos t – Cold War era did have some preven tive su cce s s e s , it was more marked 

( or marred) by missed opportu n i ti e s .1 Even in su ch “su cce s s” cases as Ko s ovo and East

Tim or, wh a tever may have been ach i eved was ach i eved on ly a f ter mass kill i n gs , on ly a f ter

s cores of vi ll a ges were rava ged , on ly a f ter hun d reds of thousands were left as ref u gee s . Ye s ,

these con f l i cts were stopped from get ting wors e — but they alre ady were hu m a n i t a ri a n

tra ged i e s .

Is this the best we can do? I think not. To be su re , one can never be certain that policy X

would have worked in this situ a ti on or policy Y in that situ a ti on . But nor should one simp ly accept asserti ons that nothing else could have been don e , that nothing more or different was vi a ble than the policies as pursu ed . Al t h o u gh su ch know - o u r-limits thinking

of ten goes under the guise of re a l i s m , we must ask what is so re a l i s tic abo ut trying to put

s oc i eties back toget h er after they have been deva s t a ted? Wh ere is the stra tegic wi s dom in

con ti nu a lly doing so little for so long that the “re a l i s ti c” ch oi ces end up being bet ween a

b ad opti on and a worse on e ?

Con f l i ct preven ti on may well be akin to what Wi n s ton Chu rch i ll said abo ut dem ocracy—that it is the worst altern a tive except for all the others . To be su re , the difficulti e s

must not be undere s ti m a ted , the po ten tial not “overs o l d .”2 In deed , the preven tive agen d a

is a form i d a ble on e . It requ i res doing mu ch more to devel op vi a ble stra tegi e s ; and even

m ore fundamen t a lly, it requ i res breaking out of the miscon cepti ons by wh i ch we def i n e

the realm of the doa bl e . But for re a s ons of both interests and va lu e s , and from both a U. S .

pers pective and a more broadly intern a ti onal on e , it is an agenda that must be tack l ed .

In this paper I focus on one particular aspect of this agen d a ,n a m ely, the need to take a

h a rder look at “coerc ive preven ti on ,” and parti c u l a rly at the threat or use of m i l i t a ry force

as frequ en t ly nece s s a ry parts of overa ll preven tive stra tegi e s . (While this paper foc u s e s

pri n c i p a lly on issues invo lving military force , the book that I am working on wi ll take a

broader vi ew of coerc ive preven ti on that inclu des econ omic sancti on s ,d i p l om a tic instrum en t s , and other coerc ive measu res.) This is a very different approach from vers i ons of

preven tive diplom acy that make its non coerc ive natu re a defining para m eter and the use

of coerc i on at best a last re s ort .3 Yet one of the key lessons of the first dec ade of t h e

po s t – Cold War era ,b a s ed on my own work and that of o t h ers , is that while coerc i on

ra rely is su f f i c i ent for preven ti on , it of ten is nece s s a ry.4

To make this argument requ i res working thro u gh three fundamental dilem m a s : a

n o rm a tive one con cerning the legi ti m acy of coerc ive preven ti on with rega rd to cl a s s i c a l

con cepti ons of s t a te soverei gn ty; a pol i ti c a l one of wh et h er dom e s tic con s traints can be

9
su f f i c i en t ly overcome so as to mobi l i ze the nece s s a ry po l i tical wi ll ; and a pol i c y one of devising stra tegies for con s ti tuting cred i ble coerc ive threats and wi elding military force preven tively but ef fectively. Unless these core dilemmas can be miti ga ted , coerc ive preven ti on

wi ll con ti nue to lack the norm a tive , po l i ti c a l , and policy bases it needs—and at best we

wi ll con ti nue to do too little too late to prevent ethnic wars and other de adly con f l i ct s .

It is beyond the scope of this paper to ad d ress all aspects of these dilem m a s . My inten t

h erein is to lay the bases for su ch full er tre a tm en t . In this re s pect the paper is more conceptual than opera ti on a l ,m ore an ef fort to devel op a fra m ework than to fill it out . Th a t

wi ll fo ll ow in the book noted above .

The second and third secti ons of the paper provi de the broad con text for what I call the

“re a l i s m” of con f l i ct preven ti on , to be ju x t a po s ed against trad i ti onal realists on one side

who qu e s ti on the va lue and vi a bi l i ty of con f l i ct preven ti on and against con f l i ct preven ti on

propon ents on the other side who stress its non coerc ive natu re . The fo u rth secti on add resses the norm a tive issues and makes the case for the legi ti m acy of coerc ive preven ti on

as con s i s tent with con cepti ons of s overei gn ty that stress the re s pon s i bi l i ties of s t a tes over

t h eir ri gh t s . The secti on on po l i tical dilemmas assesses the dom e s tic con s traints on U. S .

pol i c y,focusing parti c u l a rly on public op i n i on and its osten s i ble “c a su a l ty ph obi a .”It also

examines the role of the media and the so-call ed CNN ef fect , as well as the role of Congre s s . The last secti on focuses on policy stra tegies for preven tive military force , recogn i zing the difficult requ i s i tes to be met and of fering initial ideas and initi a tives for doing so.

Two

10 Introduction
Two

The Realism of Conflict Preve n t i o n

The two defining el em ents of coerc ive preven ti on are its focus (the early stages of

a con f l i ct cycle) and its em phasis (coerc ive instru m en t s ) . In its foc u s , coerc ive

preven ti on is a va riant of preven tive diplom ac y, but , as noted earl i er, one that

em ph a s i zes coerc ive over non coerc ive instru m en t s .5 It is similar to the con cepti on of

“coerc ive indu cem en t” as devel oped by Donald Daniel , Bradd Haye s , and Chantal de

Jon ge Oudra a t , but differs in con cen tra ting pri n c i p a lly on preven ti on wh ereas their conceptu a l i z a ti on ex tends ac ross the con f l i ct cycl e ,i n cluding the middle stages of con f l i ct

con t a i n m ent and the latter stages of con f l i ct re s o luti on .6 It is also important to note that

this con cepti on of coerc ive preven ti on has el em ents of both deterren ce — preven ting certain acti ons from occ u rring—and com pell en ce — reversing acti ons alre ady taken . As su ch

it draws on the work of Al ex a n der Geor ge , Th omas Sch ell i n g, and others .7

Before we ad d ress wh et h er coerc ive preven ti on is doa bl e , we have to con f ront the qu e sti on—at least from a U. S . pers pective — of wh et h er it is worth doi n g. This is the realist criti qu e , that mu ch of the 1990s’ a genda has been “s ocial work” or other su ch intern a ti on a l i s t

i dealism that, h owever mora lly com m en d a bl e , fails the basic realist calculus of i n tere s t s

( too low ) , costs (too high ) , and opti ons (too few ) .8 Yet for all its sel f - s tyl ed “re a l i s m ,”t h i s

a r g u m ent is flawed even on its own term s . It undere s ti m a tes the interests at stake ; it overe s ti m a tes the costs of acting early com p a red with acting late ; it miscalculates opti ons that

n a rrow ra t h er than stay open over ti m e .( Al t h o u gh I focus here on the Un i ted State s ,t h e

a r g u m ents have implicati ons for other intern a ti onal actors as well ) .

I n t e rests Undere s t i m at e d

It is agreed that few if a ny of the ethnic and other intra s t a te con f l i cts of the past dec ade

h ave implicated U. S .“ vital intere s t s .”War bet ween major powers has not been a major

ris k .An attack on the hom eland has not been thre a ten ed . Oil or other econ om i c a lly

s tra tegic re s o u rces have not been at stake .What the form er U. S .a m b a s s ador to Som a l i a

said abo ut that co u n try, that it just was “not a cri tical piece of real estate for anybody in

the po s t – Cold War worl d ,”has app l i ed el s ewh ere as well .9 Kos ovo could be argued to have

p a rt ly and indirect ly impinged on vital interests su ch as Eu ropean sec u ri ty, but it was a

s tretch to call Ko s ovo a vital intere s t .

However, this assessment tends to underva lue the interests at stake in su ch cases in

t h ree re s pect s .F i rs t , su ch an assessment is too stati c . Al t h o u gh it may be true that many of

these issues and places have limited intrinsic import a n ce , the more the con f l i cts inten s i f y

the more important the issues and places of ten becom e . In i tial assessments of i n trinsic interests at stake of ten fail to account for the dynamics of s pre ad and escalati on by wh i ch

the risks to the interests of o ut s i de parties become gre a ter. S pre ad and escalati on occ u r 11
t h ro u gh va rious com bi n a ti ons of d i rect “con t a gi on” c a u s ed by physical movem ent of

ref u gees and we a pons to other co u n tries in the regi on , dem on s tra ti on ef fects that even

wi t h o ut direct con t act activa te and escalate other con f l i ct s , and other modes of con f l i ct

d i f f u s i on .1 0 Some recogn i ti on of this dynamic is evi dent in su ch recent U. S . policy doc um ents as the Pen t a gon’s FY 2000 Annual Repo rt: “These events can thre a ten U. S .i n tere s t s

because they may spre ad beyond the parties initi a lly invo lved , incur interven ti on by outs i de powers , or put at risk the safety and well - being of Am erican citi zens in the regi on .”1 1

Former assistant sec ret a ry of s t a te for Af rica Ch e s ter Crocker makes the point even more

s tron gly, arguing that it simply “is not po s s i ble to com p a rtm en t a l i ze the gl obe and wall of f

the stra tegic slu m s . Regi onal crises ex i s t ,t h ey wors en wh en left unatten ded , and they have

a way of i m posing them s elves on the We s tern agen d a .”1 2 Thus the paradox is that even

t h o u gh many of these con f l i cts do not start out invo lving inheren t ly stra tegic loc a l e s ,t h e

d a m a ge to major power and other intern a ti onal interests of ten proves gre a ter than anti c ip a ted because the assessment of the con f l i ct’s limited import a n ce re sults in inacti on or inadequ a te acti on . This is not to reverse to t a lly the assessment of i n terests as limited in su ch

c a s e s , but ra t h er to open up the qu e s ti on for analysis ra t h er than assu m pti on .

Second is that the policy dec i s i on must be based not just on how important intere s t s

a re in an absolute sen s e , but on the propo rti o n a l i ty of the com m i tm ent invo lved rel a tive to

the import a n ce of the intere s t s . Thus a stron ger case may be made wh en the interests at

s t a ke are of l i m i ted import a n ce but the interven ti on requ i res on ly a proporti on a lly limi ted-scale com m i tm ent to be ef fective , than wh en a med iu m - i m port a n ce interest is at

s t a ke but a disproporti on a tely large com m i tm ent is requ i red . It is more import a n t

wh et h er ends and means match than what the absolute va lue of the ends are .

Thi rd , the re a l i s t s’ i n s i s ten ce that interests but not va lues must be the basis for po l i c y

dec i s i ons cre a tes a false dich o tomy.“The disti n cti on bet ween interests and va lu e s ,” a s

S t a n l ey Hoffmann argues,“is largely fall acious . . . a great power has an ‘ i n tere s t’ in worl d

order that goes beyond stri ct nati onal sec u ri ty con cerns and its def i n i ti on of world order

is largely shaped by its va lu e s .”1 3 Such thinking cannot go so far as to become “a univers a list hu m a n i t a rian impulse,”wh i ch , as Ri ch a rd Haass note s ,“ would su rely qualify as a case

of what Paul Ken n edy defines as ‘ i m perial overs tretch .’” But as Haass ack n owl ed ge s ,“n o t

acting entails real co s t s , not on ly for the innocent people who lose their homes or lives or

bo t h , but also for Am eri c a’s image in the worl d .”1 4As for those who then raise the qu e stion of va lues incon s i s ten c y, and ask why preven tive stra tegies are attem pted here but not

t h ere , the answer is that to bring va lues in is not to knock interests out ,that rel a tive assessm ents sti ll need to be made so as to stri ke a balance and avoid om n i - i n terven ti on i s m .

How interests and va lues aggrega te is thus an assessment to be made , not an assu m pti on

to be set .

Costs Ove re s t i m at e d

In a sense po l i c ym a kers are no different from most people in put ting gre a ter wei ght on

i m m ed i a te costs than on anti c i p a ted on e s . It alw ays seems easier to pay tom orrow ra t h er

than tod ay — t hus the su ccess of c redit card s ,t hus the failu res of con f l i ct preven ti on . Th ere

is the ad ded prob a bi l i ty calculus that perhaps the costs won’t have to be paid, the bi ll

won’t come du e ,i f the issue peters out or at least sel f - l i m i t s . But the bi lls have been 

1 2 The Realism of Conflict Prevention
coming du e , and wh en they have it has been with the equ iva l ent of exorbitant interest and

l a te fee s . One stu dy esti m a ted that the costs of con f l i ct preven ti on to out s i de powers in the

Bosnia case would have been $33.3 bi ll i on , com p a red with the esti m a ted $53.7 bi ll i on that

the pe ace keeping and po s tcon f l i ct pe acebuilding actu a lly co s t . Similar disproporti on s

were ex tra po l a ted for other cases: for ex a m p l e , $5 bi ll i on costs for the Ha i ti con f l i ct comp a red with the $2.3 bi ll i on esti m a te for con f l i ct preven ti on ; $7.3 bi ll i on com p a red wi t h

$1.5 bi ll i on for Som a l i a ; and in a case of su ccessful preven ti on , Macedon i a , $0.3 bi ll i on

costs for preven ti on com p a red with $15 bi ll i on had the con f l i ct even re ach ed interm ed i a te

i n ten s i ty let alone high er level s .1 5 Time and aga i n , the costs of w a i ting proved to be mu ch

gre a ter than ex pected , and almost cert a i n ly more than those for preven tive acti on wo u l d

h ave been .

The less qu a n ti f i a ble aspect of costs invo lves the cred i bi l i ty of m a j or powers and intern a ti onal insti tuti on s . Cred i bi l i ty is not just abo ut re s o lve but also abo ut ju d gm ent and the

c a p ac i ty to discern wh en major interests are at stake and wh en they are not.Wh en intern a ti onal actors appear to lack the ju d gm ent to discern that their interests are at stake

a n d / or the wi ll to act wh en they are , the cred i bi l i ty of the actors su f fers .

Options Narrowe d

A form er Croa tian militiaman ref l ected on his own killing of s even ty - t wo civilians and

command of a death camp.“The most difficult thing is to ign i te a house or kill a man for

the first ti m e ,”he stated ,“but afterw a rds even this becomes ro uti n e .”1 6 The ad d i ti on of reven ge and retri buti on to other sources of ten s i on plu n ges a con f l i ct down to a fundament a lly different and more difficult dept h . Certain intern a ti onal stra tegies that may have

been effective at lower levels of con f l i ct are less likely to be so amid inten s i f i ed vi o l en ce .

When that happens a Ru bi con is cro s s ed , the other side of wh i ch re s o luti on and even limi t a ti on of the con f l i ct become mu ch more difficult.

Part of this is the classic probl em for statec raft that the more ex ten s ive the obj ective s ,

the gre a ter and usu a lly more coerc ive are the stra tegies needed to ach i eve them . Preven ting a con f l i ct from escalating to vi o l en ce is a more limited obj ective than ending vi o l en ce

on ce it has beg u n .1 7Ano t h er aspect is that the capac i ty of dom e s tic leaders to bu i l d

“con f l i ct con s ti tu en c i e s” is that mu ch gre a ter wh en they have retri buti on and reven ge 

to invo ke .1 8

Opti ons thus do n ot n ece s s a ri ly stay open over ti m e ; the probl em of ten gets harder

down that road to wh ere it has been kicked . In some re s pects it is no won der that the

Bosnia pe ace keeping force has had to be so large for so lon g. The Ko s ovo pe ace keep i n g

force likewise is unlikely to be wi t h d rawn anytime soon (other than in failu re ) . So wh en

we then tu rn around and find military re adiness probl ems for the U. S .Army as a con s equ en ce of these large - s c a l e ,d rawn - o ut dep l oym en t s , the key implicati on is not that the

com m i tm ents should not have been made in the first place but ra t h er that earl i er acti on

should have been taken wh en the opti ons were gre a ter. Nor should it be a su rprise that the

pol i tical and civic aspects also have taken lon ger, cost more , and su cceeded less than

prom i s ed . Put ting these soc i eties back toget h er is, as Bi ll Za rtman has put it, l i ke “p ut ti n g

hu m pty - du m pty toget h er aga i n .”1 9

The Realism of Conflict Prevention 1 3
Here,too, I do not want to take the argument too far—espec i a lly if coerc ive measu re s

a re to be impo s ed ,t h ere does need to be su f f i c i ent basis for claiming legi ti m acy and establishing thre a t . Yet the claim that the situ a ti on has to get so bad as to be a hu m a n i t a rian crisis or even casus belli is another of the conven ti onal wi s doms to be ch a ll en ged .

Furt h erm ore , in con s i dering their opti on s ,i n tern a ti onal actors need to re a l i ze that wh i l e

t h ey may profess neutra l i ty, by limiting their invo lvem ent to hu m a n i t a rian rescue or simp ly staying out ,t h ere is no “n on po s i ti on” in the sense of no impact one way or the other. If

one party to the con f l i ct assesses that it has the adva n t a ge in military power and other

means of vi o l en ce , so long as the other side cannot count on intern a ti onal assistance to

b a l a n ce and but tre s s , it should be no su rprise that war becomes the opti on of ch oi ce . In

o t h er instance s , the ch oi ce of war is at least in part a preem ptive on e . War is less a con s equ en ce of o utri ght aggre s s ive inten ti ons than a manife s t a ti on of the “s ec u ri ty dilem m a” i n

whi ch warf a re breaks out from mutual insec u ri ties and fe a rs of vu l n era bi l i ties that cred ible intern a ti onal acti on could have assu a ged . In these and other ways , the parties to the

con f l i ct take into account what acti on intern a ti onal actors are likely to take .

In su m , even on its own term s , the realist cri ti que of con f l i ct preven ti on does not hold

u p. The interests at stake are gre a ter than asserted ; it is the costs of w a i ti n g, m ore than the

costs of acting early, that are so high ; and the ava i l a ble opti ons narrow over ti m e . It is conf l i ct preven ti on , not inacti on , that is the more re a l i s tic stra tegy.

Th re e

14 The Realism of Conflict Prevention
Th re e

C o e rc i ve Preve n t i o n

Argument and Evidence

I

n making the argument for the import a n ce of coerc i on as part of con f l i ct preven -

ti on , I am rem i n ded of the cri ti que of Cold Wa r – era deterren ce stra tegy made by

Al ex a n der Geor ge and Ri ch a rd Sm o ke , that one of deterren ce’s fundamental flaws

was its “preocc u p a ti on with threats of p u n i s h m en t” to the exclu s i on of a broader

a pproach “that en compasses the uti l i ty of po s i tive indu cem ents as well as, or in lieu of ,

t h reats of n ega tive sancti on s .”2 0 Much of the work on pos t – Cold War preven tive diplom acy makes the mirror- i m a ge error, focusing on non coerc ive stra tegies and po s i tive

i n du cem ents to the exclu s i on or at least minimizati on of coerc ive on e s . The import a n ce

of coerc ive stra tegies for con f l i ct preven ti on is su pported by three types of evi den ce :

s tra tegic logi c , coerc ive preven ti on su cce s s , and preven tive failu res and the inadequ acy 

of coerc ive measu re s .

S t rategic Logic

F i rst is coerc ive preven ti on’s broad stra tegic logic in two re s pect s . One is that most of t h e s e

con f l i cts are fundamen t a lly internal in their dy n a m i c s , bet ween and among ethnic and

o t h er groups within what is or recen t ly was con s ti tuted as a state . As nu m erous stu d i e s

s h ow, and if we look at history, su ch con f l i cts are inheren t ly more difficult to set t l e

t h ro u gh nego ti a ti ons than are con f l i cts bet ween state s . Paul Pill a r ’s 1983 stu dy found 

n ego ti a ti ons su ccessful in on ly 29 percent of i n tra s t a te wars com p a red with 55 percent of

i n ters t a te on e s . Roy Lick l i der ’s stu dy of c ivil wars in the 1945–93 peri od found that on ly

fo u rteen of n i n ety - one cases su cce s s f u lly en ded thro u gh nego ti a ti on s .2 1 These data su pport the point made earl i er: not that coerc i on is su f f i c i ent or even alw ays nece s s a ry, but

ra t h er that non coerc ive met h ods of ten do not su f f i ce and that coerc i on is more nece s s a ry

than many are wi lling to ack n owl ed ge .

The second part of coerc ive preven ti on’s stra tegic logic invo lves recogn i ti on that most

of the con f l i cts that plague the po s t – Cold War world are not just some pri m ordialist playing out of h i s tory but ra t h er the re sult of del i bera te and conscious ch oi ces made by leaders and groups to pursue their interests thro u gh war and other vi o l ent means.2 2 Th e s e

con f l i cts are histori c a lly shaped but not histori c a lly determ i n ed ,t h eir dominant dy n a m i c

not historical inevi t a bi l i ty but ra t h er the con s equ en ces of c a l c u l a ti ons by parties to the

con f l i ct of the purposes served by po l i tical vi o l en ce . It is in seeking to influ en ce this calculus that coerc ive preven ti on has its po ten tial vi a bi l i ty.

These are brutal leaders , but they are not mad m en . Th ey make calculati ons and as su ch

h ave to be seen as ra ti onal in the instru m ental sense of the term . Th ey fo ll ow the same basic calculus as stated broadly by Robert Gilpin that “the ben efits sought by a group and the 1 5
pri ce it is wi lling to pay depend ulti m a tely on the perceived interests of the ruling el i te and

coa l i ti ons in a soc i ety.”Yet as Gilpin also stre s s e s ,t h ere have been nu m erous cases historic a lly “in wh i ch states have foregone app a rent opportu n i ties to increase their power because they ju d ged the costs to be too high .”2 3 The key que s ti ons thus become how to

i n f lu en ce the natu re of the goals sought by su ch leaders — for ex a m p l e , by dampening 

the ex tent and degree of ethnic dom i n a ti on sought—and how to influ en ce the ch oi ce of

s tra tegies for ach i eving them — for ex a m p l e , by shifting aw ay from stra tegies invo lvi n g

mass vi o l en ce and tow a rd more pe aceful on e s . Non coerc ive stra tegies face probl ems bo t h

with lowering the ex pected ach i eva bi l i ty of the goals and with raising the anti c i p a ted

cos t s .As Robert Jervis argues more gen era lly,“a l t h o u gh the instru m ents of d i p l om acy are

adequ a te for realizing some degree of coopera ti on ,t h ey are fra gile and leave the world full

of con f l i ct unless they produ ce or are accom p a n i ed by deeper ch a n ges in what the actors

want and how they con ceive of t h eir intere s t s .”2 4 Coerc ive stra tegies must be a part of

overcoming su ch fra gi l i ty and ach i eving su ch adequ ac y.

C o e rcive Prevention Successes

The case of the 1993 UN preven tive military dep l oym ent in Macedonia is an import a n t

example of su ccessful coerc ive preven ti on .F i rst as a divi s i on of the Un i ted Na ti ons Protecti on Force (UNPRO F O R , as alre ady dep l oyed in Croa tia and Bosnia) and then with its

own mandate and mon i ker as the Un i ted Na ti ons Preven tive Dep l oym ent Force (UNP R E D E P ) ,the dep l oym ent put troops on the ground at a very early stage in the con f l i ct

c ycl e . The pe ace keeping force’s size and mission were limited , but its pre s en ce was fel t . Th e

Nordic co u n tries and Ca n ada took on the bulk of the bu rden for this opera ti on , but the

U.S . troop s , de s p i te being small in nu m ber and con f i n ed to low - risk duti e s , were disproporti on a tely important as “a signal to all those who want to de s t a bi l i ze the regi on ,” a s

s tre s s ed by Pre s i dent Ki ro Gligorov of Macedon i a .2 5

To be su re , as in all cases, the gen era l i z a bi l i ty of the Macedonian preven tive dep l oym ent must be con d i ti on a l . Di f ferent situ a ti ons have to be assessed differen t ly according to

wh et h er preven tive military acti on or the threat thereof is likely to have po s i tive deterren t

a n d / or re a s su ra n ce ef fects or wh et h er it wi ll ex acerb a te the con f l i ct .

Preventive Failures and the Inadequacy of Coercive Measures

A third type of evi den ce is based on cases in wh i ch preven ti on failed and a key re a s on was

the inadequ acy of coerc ive measu re s . Rwanda is a telling ex a m p l e . A strong argument can

be made that a more cred i ble and robust military stra tegy could have con t a i n ed the conf l i ct and preven ted the vi o l en ce from re aching gen ocidal scale. Th ere is no denying the

deep historical roots of the Hutu - Tutsi con f l i ct , but in Rwanda as el s ewh ere historical dispo s i ti on is not to be equ a ted with historical determ i n i s m . This was “p l a n n ed , en co u ra ged

and sys tem a tic gen oc i de ,” as Scott Feil wri tes in his report based on a con feren ce conven ed

by the Ca rn egie Com m i s s i on .2 6 “The vi o l en ce began as the re sult of ch oi ce , and su ch

ch oi ces can be influ en ced .”More spec i f i c a lly,“forces appropri a tely tra i n ed , equ i pped ,a n d

com m a n ded , and introdu ced in a ti m ely manner, could have stem m ed the vi o l en ce in and

a round the capital, preven ted its spre ad to the co u n trys i de , and cre a ted con d i ti ons condu c ive to the ce s s a ti on of the civil war.”2 7

1 6 Coercive Prevention: Argument and Evidence
Th ere are three disti n ct com pon ents to this argumen t .F i rst is the failu re to ef fectively

deter the Hutu ex tremists because of the weaknesses of the Un i ted Na ti ons Mi s s i on in

Rwanda (UNAMIR) from the start . As tri Su h rke and Bru ce Jones see the form a ti on and

dep l oym ent of U NAMIR as a “c ri tical ju n ctu re” that was not taken adva n t a ge of ; and ins te ad , because of its small size ,i n adequ a te equ i pm en t ,n a rrow mission , and high ly circ u m s c ri bed mandate ,U NAMIR became co u n terprodu ctive . This not on ly left it in a very

poor po s i ti on to do anything on ce the gen oc i de was unleashed on April 6, but it made for

a very weak deterrent against the planning in the preceding mon t h s .“A more dec i s ive and

robust dem on s tra ti on of i n tern a ti onal force at that time [UNA M I R’s initial form a ti on ] ,”

Suh rke and Jones con ten d ,“m i ght have re s tra i n ed the ex tremist forces direct ly, and at any

rate sent signals to the ef fect that the intern a ti onal com mu n i ty was fully behind the pe ace

accord s .”2 8

Second is the failu re to act on the warning picked up by UNAMIR in Ja nu a ry 1994

f rom a Hutu inform a n t . Not on ly was the inform a ti on borne out by later even t s , but the

l evel of detail and other aspects of the inform a ti on made it high ly cred i ble at the ti m e .

U NAMIR com m a n der Gen eral Rom eo Dall a i re passed it back to UN He ad qu a rters in a

coded cable and asked for aut h ori z a ti on to take preven tive step s ,i n cluding searching for

and con f i s c a ting the arms caches reve a l ed by the informant (who even provi ded prec i s e

l oc a ti ons for many ) . But UN He ad qu a rters tu rn ed him down : D a ll a i re repe a ted his requests the next month but again was tu rn ed down . The ra ti on a l e , that UNA M I R’s mand a te perm i t ted on ly joint acti on with the Rwandan army or gen d a rm eri e , ep i tom i zed the

core fall acy in the internal logic of the mission .2 9 This could not but have furt h er we a ken ed the cred i bi l i ty of U NAMIR and the Un i ted Na ti ons in the eyes of those planning the

gen oc i de .

Th i rd is the re s ponse to the April 1994 cri s i s . Again requests for stren g t h ening UNAMIR came from Gen eral Dall a i re , but again they were rebu f fed , with the blame shared

by key UN officials and the Un i ted States and other Sec u ri ty Council mem bers .3 0A stu dy

by the Ca rn egie Com m i s s i on dates the closing of the wi n dow of opportu n i ty for an em ergency interven ti on short of m a s s ive force to the last week of Apri l , by wh i ch time mass vio l en ce had spre ad to the co u n trys i de .3 1 Yet one of the re a s ons that the Hutu “c ri s i s

com m i t tee” dec i ded to expand vi o l en ce to the co u n trys i de was “the failu re of the intern ational com mu n i ty to re s pond forcef u lly to the initial kill i n gs in Ki gali and other regi on s .”

Ch oi ces and calculati ons were being made , vi o l en ce was not spre ading just by its own

m om en tu m ; the evi den ce of d ivi s i ons within the Hutu military as cited by Su h rke and

Jones su ggests that “a more determ i n ed intern a ti onal re s ponse against the ex trem i s t s

would have found allies wi t h i n .”3 2 Moreover, t h ere was a nega tive syner gy in the interaction of these flaws , as “ weakness on the gro u n d , in tu rn , became a major argument for

wi t h d rawing the en ti re force on ce wi de s pre ad vi o l en ce eru pted .”3 3

In su m ,t h ere is a broad stra tegic logic to coerc ive preven ti on , as well as case evi den ce

that wh en preven ti on has su cceeded forceful measu res were a key part of the su cce s s ,

and that wh en preven ti on has failed a key re a s on was the lack or inadequ acy of coerc ive

m e a su re s .

Fo u r

Coercive Prevention: Argument and Evidence 17
N o r m at i ve Dilemma

Sovereignty as Rights versus Sovereignty

as Responsibility

The import a n ce of n orms in intern a ti onal affairs is too of ten undere s ti m a ted .

Al t h o u gh they “do not determine acti on ,” as Ma rtha Finnem ore argues, t h ey

“c re a te perm i s s ive con d i ti ons for acti on .”3 4 Norms provi de an intern a ti on a lly

recogn i zed standard against wh i ch policies are measu red and to wh i ch beh avi or is hel d .

Th ey legi ti m i ze intern a ti onal acti on against states or other of fen ders whose acti ons vi ol a te those standard s . Al t h o u gh this alw ays has been true to some ex ten t , it is espec i a lly

true in our current era .Q u e s ti ons of l egi ti m acy seem to be more preva l ent than du ri n g

the Cold War wh en so mu ch came down to the dynamics of su perpower dom i n a n ce and

com peti ti on . Being able to claim the ri gh tness of an acti on does not just affirm ide a l s ,i t

also be a rs upon power and influ en ce .

In this re s pect , one of the main probl ems for coerc ive preven ti on , given the intra s t a te

n a tu re of the vast majori ty of po s t – Cold War con f l i ct s , is the pers i s tent preva l en ce of t h e

n orm of soverei gn ty as ri gh t s over the norm of soverei gn ty as re s po n s i bi l i ty.

The trad i ti onal con cepti on of s overei gn ty as ri ghts attri butes to states ju ri s d i cti onal exclu s ivi ty within their own borders and grants very limited and narrowly con s tru ed bases

of l egi ti m acy for other actors , wh et h er another state or an intern a ti onal insti tuti on , to intervene in any form in what in their terri torial locus are con s i dered dom e s tic affairs .“ No

a gency exists above the indivi dual state s ,”as Robert Art and Robert Jervis wri te ,“ with aut h ori ty and power to make laws and settle dispute s .”The strong em phasis is on the ri gh t s

that come with soverei gn ty,“the com p l ete auton omy of the state to act as it ch oo s e s ,”a s

Abram and An tonia Ha n dl er Ch ayes put it. More parti c u l a rly, in a classic dictum from

Max Weber,“the state is a human com mu n i ty that su cce s s f u lly claims the mon opo ly of

the legi ti m a te use of physical force within a given terri tory.”Not on ly is this very mu ch an

a b s o lute con cepti on , it also is seen as fixed histori c a lly, a natu ral and unch a n ging state of

a f f a i rs .“The logic of s overei gn ty is inherent in the natu re of the state ,”wro te the em i n en t

Bri tish scholar F. H . Hi n s l ey,“and it has become and is likely to remain the defining pri nciple in the po l i tical or ga n i z a ti on of the worl d .”3 5

This con cepti on of s overei gn ty as ri ghts has been nei t h er as absolute nor as fixed as is

wi dely bel i eved ,h owever. In fact , its legi ti m acy has been both functi onalist and rel a tive .

G oing back to the seven teenth cen tu ry and the Tre a ty of We s tph a l i a , we see that while not

a historical acc i dent it was also not a historical cert a i n ty or inevi t a bi l i ty that state sovereignty would em er ge as the or ganizing basis for the intern a ti onal sys tem . Work by 1 8

Four
Hen d rik Spruyt and others shows that there were “com peti tors” to the soverei gn state ,a n d

that it preva i l ed less because of a ny inherent norm a tive su peri ori ty than because of i t s

f u n cti on a l i ty; that is, it bet ter served the po l i tical interests and econ omic and social con d itions of the day.3 6

A historical pers pective also shows how the prevailing con cepti on of s overei gn ty

ch a n ged over ti m e , as with the po s t – World War I Wi l s onian mix of s el f - determ i n a ti on

and co ll ective sec u ri ty. Na ti onal sel f - determ i n a ti on , wh i ch gives preceden ce to the nati ona l i ty of peoples over ex i s ting state bo u n d a ries as drawn by govern m ents (at least in mu ch

of Eu rope ) , repre s en ted an altered con cepti on of h ow the com po s i ti on and bo u n d a ries of

s t a te soverei gn ty were determ i n ed . Nor was there anything given or natu ra lly ord a i n ed

a bo ut this new or ganizing principle—it was promu l ga ted by the powers that were vi ctorious in the war (the All i ed powers) and em bod i ed in the particular intern a ti onal insti tuti on that was their cre a ti on (the League of Na ti on s ) .

With rega rd to the 1945–90 peri od ,m a ny point to Arti cle 2 (7) of the UN Ch a rter as

the em bod i m ent of s overei gn ty as ri gh t s :“ Nothing con t a i n ed in the pre s ent Ch a rter shall

a ut h ori ze the Un i ted Na ti ons to intervene in matters wh i ch are essen ti a lly within the dom e s tic ju ri s d i cti on of a ny state .”To the ex tent that this was true for that peri od , it was because of the functi on a l i ty of the soverei gn ty - a s - ri ghts interpret a ti on .E s pec i a lly in the

con text of a n ti co l onialism and the Cold Wa r, s overei gn ty stri ct con s tru cti onism had a

s trong ra ti onale as an or ganizing principle for maintaining intern a ti onal pe ace and for est a blishing the basic legal equ a l i ty of s t a te s . Also in these con texts the affirm a ti on of t h e

ri ghts of s t a tes was vi ewed as largely con s i s tent with the ri ghts of the indivi duals wi t h i n

those states to sel f - determ i n a ti on and to live free from ex ternal repre s s i on or wors e .

The su perpower interven ti onism of the Cold War exemplifies what Steph en Kra s n er

c a lls the “or ga n i zed hypoc ri s y ” by wh i ch powerful states have gen era lly abi ded by intern ati onal legal soverei gn ty, meaning the ju ridical recogn i ti on of s overei gn legal status and

rights for all state s , but have not let this stand in the way of t h eir practi ce of re a l po l i ti k .3 7

Nevert h el e s s , the differen ce remains bet ween vi o l a ti ons of s overei gn ty as manife s t a ti on s

of power po l i tics but wi t h o ut a cred i ble claim to pri n c i p l e , and interven ti ons in wh i ch

such a claim can be cred i bly made . Sovi et prem i er Nikita Kh ru s h ch ev ’s Ja nu a ry 1961

“ w a rs of n a ti onal libera ti on” s peech was dre s s ed up in claims of the ju s ti ce and legi ti m ac y

of i n tern a ti onal socialist acti on to free oppre s s ed peoples from neoco l onial dom i n a ti on ,

but in practi ce from the Wa rs aw Pact interven ti ons to Afgh a n i s t a n , the Sovi ets showed little rega rd for the soverei gn ty pri n c i p l e . As for the Un i ted State s , both wh en it didn’t intervene (for instance , Hu n ga ry in 1956 and Czech o s l ovakia in 1968) and wh en it did (for

exa m p l e ,Vi etn a m , Iran in 1953, and Gren ada in 1983), the driving dynamic was re a l po l itik ; claims of principle were more cover than cause. In deed the essen ce of the con trovers y

over the Re a gan Doctrine in the 1980s was its claim that there could be no high er call i n g

than to rid the world of Ma rx i s t - Leninist regi m e s , a claim that caused con cern even

a m ong We s tern allies bec a u s e , as Robert Tu cker wro te , it “ri s ked su bord i n a te[ing] the trad i ti onal bases of i n tern a ti onal order to a particular vi s i on of l egi ti m ac y.”3 8 It is telling in

this rega rd that in the case of Afgh a n i s t a n , wh ere the Sovi ets were the soverei gn ty vi o l a tor,

the Un i ted States had strong su pport at the Un i ted Na ti on s , winning Gen eral As s em bly

a pproval of con dem n a tory re s o luti ons by wi de margins year after ye a r, but in the case of

Normative Dilemma 19
Nic a ra g u a , wh ere the Un i ted States was seen as the soverei gn ty vi o l a tor,Am erican po l i c y

was the su bj ect of repe a ted con dem n a tory re s o luti on s .

Thu s , du ring the Cold War the intern a ti onal com mu n i ty could maintain some cl a i m

to the norm of s overei gn ty as ri ghts even if the major powers acted differen t ly.Yet even

t h en there was a degree of rel a tivi ty. For while stri ct con s tru cti onists are qu i ck to cite Article 2 (7), nu m erous other porti ons of the UN Ch a rter as well as other sources provi de

n orm a tive legi ti m acy and legal basis for the com peting con cepti on of “s overei gn ty as res pon s i bi l i ty.”3 9

This em phasis on the re s pon s i bi l i ties that come with soverei gn ty is fo u n ded at the

most fundamental level on a con cepti on of the indivi du a l , not the state , as the “ri ght and

duty be a ring unit in intern a ti onal soc i ety.”S t a tes have the re s pon s i bi l i ty “at the very least,”

as Francis Den g, Bi ll Za rtm a n , Don Ro t h ch i l d , and co lleagues argue, of “en su ring a certain level of pro tecti on for and providing the basic needs of the peop l e .”4 0 It is to be

s tre s s ed that the ri ghts and re s pon s i bi l i ties con cepti ons of s overei gn ty are not dich o tom o u s , but ra t h er mark out a con ti nuum along wh i ch there are grad a ti ons and con d i ti ona l i ti e s .4 1 Bru ce Cronin provi des some historical and theoretical pers pective on this,

s h owing that ac ross a ra n ge of h i s torical peri ods “the principle of n on - i n terven ti on that is

i m p l i ed in the con cept of s overei gn ty was con d i ti on ed on states ad h ering to specific stand a rds of beh avi or.”He also del i n e a tes su ch diverse precedents as the Con cert of Eu rope

and the League of Na ti on s , wh i ch each in their own way inclu ded in their con cepti ons of

co ll ective sec u ri ty “pro tecti on of s pec i f i ed pop u l a ti on s ,i n s ti tuti ons or po l i tical com mu n ities within state s .”4 2

The UN Ch a rter, as Sec ret a ry - G en eral Kofi Annan has put it,“was issu ed in the name

of ‘the peop l e s’, not the govern m ents of the Un i ted Na ti on s . . . . The Ch a rter pro tects the

s overei gn ty of peop l e s . It was never meant as a license for govern m ents to trample on human ri ghts and human dign i ty. Soverei gn ty implies re s pon s i bi l i ty, not just power.”4 3 Th i s

also comes thro u gh in su ch other provi s i ons of the UN Ch a rter as Arti cle 3, a f f i rming that

“everyone has the ri ght to life ,l i berty and the sec u ri ty of pers on” ; Arti cle 55 that com m i t s

the Un i ted Na ti ons to “prom o te . . . u n iversal re s pect for, and ob s erva n ce of , human ri gh t s

and fundamental freedom s” ; and Arti cle 56 that pled ges all mem bers “to take joint and

s ep a ra te acti on”tow a rd this en d . Even Arti cle 2 (7) needs to be qu a l i f i ed , according to 

Sec ret a ry - G en eral An n a n , with “the important ri der that this principle shall not preju d i ce

the app l i c a ti on of en forcem ent measu res under Ch a pter V I I . In other word s , even nati onal soverei gn ty can be set aside if it stands in the way of the Sec u ri ty Co u n c i l ’s overri ding duty to pre s erve intern a ti onal pe ace and sec u ri ty.”4 4 Fu rt h er affirm a ti ons of t h e

re s pon s i bi l i ties of s overei gn ty are manife s ted in the Gen oc i de Conven ti on , the Un ivers a l

Decl a ra ti on of Human Ri gh t s , and other intern a ti onal covenants that make no disti n cti on

on wh et h er the of fen der is a forei gn invader or on e’s own govern m en t .

Thus as a matter of the ri ghts of groups and indivi duals who con s ti tute state s , the function a l i ty argument now works against a stri ct con s tru cti onist approach to states ri gh t s .

The same holds true for the ef fect on intern a ti onal pe ace and sec u ri ty, for wh i ch the

s pre ad , con t a gi on , and dem on s tra ti on ef fects discussed earl i er mean that intra s t a te more

acc u ra tely ch a racteri zes the initial locus of these con f l i cts than it does the scope of t h eir 

ef fect s .

2 0 Normative Dilemma
Even so, h owever ex p a n s ive many of the pe ace keeping and other interven ti ons aut h orized in the 1990s by the UN Sec u ri ty Council have been , and however affirming of s overei gn ty as re s pon s i bi l i ty (for instance , in the cases of the Iraqi Ku rd s , Som a l i a , Bo s n i a ,

Hai ti , East Ti m or ) ,t h ey have been more re active than preven tive ,s eeking to redu ce or res o lve a con f l i ct that alre ady has wre a ked mass kill i n gs ra t h er than proactively seeking to

prevent a con f l i ct from crossing the Ru bi con to mass vi o l en ce . The crucial issue in con s i dering why more was not done earl i er in cases su ch as Ko s ovo and East Ti m or is the legi ti m i z a ti on of acti on not just to punish an aggre s s or or retu rn ref u gee s , but to prevent the

a ggre s s i on from occ u rri n g, to pro tect the people so that they do not become ref u gees or

c a su a l ti e s .

One main issue that fo ll ows is state con s en t . In the dep i cting of s overei gn ri gh t s –

s overei gn re s pon s i bi l i ties as a norm a tive con ti nuum ra t h er than as a dich o tomy, the qu e sti on of wh et h er state con s ent is a requ i rem ent for intern a ti onal interven ti on is the cri ti c a l

m i d poi n t . This issue has been side s tepped in some cases wh en intern a ti onal actors have

been invi ted in, as with UNPROFOR/UNPREDEP in Macedon i a , for ex a m p l e . Iraq after

the Gu l f War was a case in wh i ch soverei gn ri ghts were su b s t a n ti a lly abri d ged , both wi t h

the pro tecti on of the Ku rds and with the inspecti on ri ghts of the Un i ted Na ti ons Spec i a l

Com m i s s i on on Iraq (UNSCOM), but Ira q’s sign i f i c a n ce as a precedent was limited by its

u n i qu eness as a case. Even so, these and other cases have been part of the increasing use of

Ch a pter VII aut h ori ty under the UN Ch a rter, with its gre a ter mandate for the use of force

and its lack of the requ i rem ent of s t a te con s ent that comes with Ch a pter VI aut h ori z ation s , and for intra s t a te interven ti ons and not just inters t a te on e s .

It is also intere s ting to note that as we su rvey a ra n ge of o t h er policy areas invo lvi n g

s overei gn ty - a bri d ging intern a ti onal acti on , we find a similar trend tow a rd loo s ening the

con s ent requ i rem en t . In arms con trol and non pro l i fera ti on , for ex a m p l e , the con s ent 

requi rem ent is broach ed by the new practi ce of ch a ll en ge inspecti on s , in wh i ch the intern a ti onal aut h ori ty can come in wi t h o ut nati onal perm i s s i on and app ly extant tre a ty provi s i ons and con comitant norms that are to govern state beh avi or on these issu e s . Th e

Intern a ti onal Criminal Co u rt (ICC) has had civil wars bro u ght under its ju ri s d i cti on ;

c rimes against hu m a n i ty can be punished even in the absen ce of w a r.4 5 The World Ba n k ,

trad i ti on a lly con s tra i n ed by its Arti cles of Agreem ent from interfering in the internal po l itics of its mem ber state s , began in 1997 to focus more on internal issues su ch as corru pti on and ef fective govern a n ce and to initi a te and even impose ef forts “to make the state

m ore re s pon s ive to [its own] peop l e’s need s .”4 6

The “ wh o” que s ti on of the degree of l egi ti m acy different intern a ti onal actors can cl a i m

for interven i n g, e s pec i a lly militari ly, also needs to be ad d re s s ed . Sec ret a ry - G en eral An n a n

has been careful to link his su pport for the soverei gn ty - a s - re s pon s i bi l i ty norm to the ro l e

of the Un i ted Na ti ons as the principal if not exclu s ive intern a ti onal actor to claim legi tim acy for su ch interven ti on s . In cri ticizing the U. S . - NATO acti on in Ko s ovo, he stron gly

a s s erted his vi ew that the UN Sec u ri ty Council is “the sole source of l egi ti m acy on the use

of force .”Yet he also ack n owl ed ged the failings of the Sec u ri ty Council to act as it should

in this cri s i s ,n o ting that it failed to “u n i te around the aim of con f ron ting massive hu m a n

rights vi o l a ti ons and crimes against hu m a n i ty on the scale of Ko s ovo”and as su ch was

risking “betray[ing] the very ideals that inspired the founding of the Un i ted Na ti on s .”4 7

Normative Dilemma 2 1
The two aspects of this statem ent bring out both the strength and the weakness of a ns wering “the UN and on ly the UN”to the qu e s ti on of who can interven e .

As the worl d ’s on ly mu l ti l a tera lly universal po l i tical body, the Un i ted Na ti ons po s s e s s e s

a unique role in providing co ll ective legi ti m i z a ti on . No other body or intern a ti onal actor

can claim com p a ra ble legi ti m acy for establishing gl obal norms and for aut h orizing acti on

in their name.Yet by its very natu re the Un i ted Na ti ons also is of ten con s tra i n ed from acting in ways that best serve those norm s . It was not just in the Ko s ovo case that some UN

m em bers have invo ked the soverei gn ty - a s - ri ghts norm as the arti c u l a ted basis for oppo sing an intra s t a te interven ti on a ry acti on wh en in fact this po s i ti on has been mu ch more

b a s ed on parti c u l a ri s tic nati onal intere s t s . The unarti c u l a ted con cern has been abo ut

precedents that might later be used to ch a ll en ge other state s’ practi ces that need to be protected by claims of the sancti ty of s overei gn ty - a s - ri ghts because su ch practi ces are profo u n dly incon s i s tent with soverei gn ty - a s - re s pon s i bi l i ty. This is altoget h er natu ra l

po s i ti oning for any sel f - i n tere s ted state to take , but the ga rb of principle needs to be

s tri pped aw ay, e s pec i a lly wh en the state invo lved is a perm a n ent mem ber of the Sec u ri ty

Council with veto power.

Regi onal mu l ti l a teral or ga n i z a ti ons (RMOs) also have been staking increasing cl a i m s

to norm a tive legi ti m acy for interven ti on ,a l beit more po l i ti c a l - d i p l om a tic than military in

n a tu re . Because of its gre a ter insti tuti onal strength rel a tive to other RMOs and its havi n g

been con f ron ted by the Yu go s l avia con f l i cts and other ethnic con f l i ct s , the Orga n i z a ti on

for Sec u ri ty and Coopera ti on in Eu rope (OSCE) has been parti c u l a rly active . Its Ch a rter

for Eu ropean Sec u ri ty as adopted in Novem ber 1999 affirms the com m i tm ent “to preven ting the outbreak of vi o l ent con f l i cts wh erever po s s i bl e .”It builds on earl i er measu re s

both to affirm the norm a tive basis for su ch OSCE acti on and to furt h er devel op the po l i tical instru m en t a l i ties for doing so.4 8 Si m i l a r, a l beit more limited ,m a n i fe s t a ti ons have occ u rred in other regi on s , as with the Orga n i z a ti on of Af rican Un i ty (OAU) and its

i n i ti a ti on in 1993 of a “ Mechanism for Con f l i ct Preven ti on , Ma n a gem ent and Re s o luti on .”While sti ll working within significant qu a l i f i ers abo ut “the re s pect of s overei gn ty ”

and “con s ent and coopera ti on of the parties to a con f l i ct ,” the regi onal sec u ri ty ef fects of

con f l i cts trad i ti on a lly con s i dered dom e s tic had re ach ed the point that, as Edmond Kell er

p uts it, Af rican leaders felt it nece s s a ry “to seri o u s ly recon s i der the norms of ex ternal interven ti on for the purpose of s ettling dom e s tic dispute s .”4 9 Alt h o u gh these and other

RMOs have yet to fully com p l ete these norm a tive shifts in their acti on s , the point nevert h eless is that the norm a tive shifts are occ u rri n g.

When major powers claim to be the legi ti m a te “ wh o,”a con cern is ra i s ed by many in

the intern a ti onal com mu n i ty that norm a tive claims are being used as guises for power

po l i ti c s . While con cerns abo ut manipulati on and precedents need to be ad d re s s ed , so too

do con s equ en tialist con cerns abo ut ach i eving acti on capable of defending va lu ed intern ational norm s . In the Ko s ovo case, while UN aut h ori z a ti on would have been a prefera bl e

s o u rce of l egi ti m ac y, it was high ly unlikely to have been fort h coming at all , and su rely not

exped i ti o u s ly. Th ere was a ten s i on here bet ween process and ef f i c ac y, and from a con s equ en tialist pers pective con s i dera ti ons of ef f i c acy have their own legi timizing wei ght so

l ong as acti ons taken have genuine con s i s tency with the norms in whose name the acti on

2 2 Normative Dilemma
is being taken . This does run risks of rel a tivi ty, wh i ch need furt h er analysis and devel opm en t . I pose the argument here in that spiri t .

In su m , h owever the who qu e s ti on is worked out , given the intra s t a te natu re in wh o l e

or in part of the vast majori ty of m a j or po s t – Cold War con f l i ct s , the cen tral point is the

n eed for a con cepti on of s overei gn ty that also ref l ects the re s pon s i bi l i ties that come wi t h

the ri gh t s . The scope of a state’s ri ght to soverei gn aut h ori ty is not uncon d i ti onal or norm a tively su peri or to the ri ght to sec u ri ty of the po l i ty. Un til and unless this con cepti on of

s overei gn ty as re s pon s i bi l i ty gains gre a ter intern a ti onal legi ti m ac y, i n tern a ti onal con f l i ct

preven ti on stra tegies wi ll con ti nue more of ten than not to be too little, too late .5 0

F i ve

Normative Dilemma 2 3
The Dilemma of Political W i l l

How Fixed, How Malleable the Domestic

C o n s t ra i n t s ?

Almost every stu dy of con f l i ct preven ti on con clu des that wh en all is said and

don e , the main ob s t acle is the lack of po l i tical wi ll . As an ex p l a n a tory statem ent this is largely tru e . The Un i ted States and other govern m ents have not

acted because they have not had the po l i tical wi ll to do so. If the dom e s tic con s tra i n t s

that make this so are unch a n ge a ble and fixed ,t h en that would be the end of the story.

Preven ti on would con ti nue to be sporadic and mostly too little, too late . Th ere is re a s on

to argue, t h o u gh , that the dom e s tic con s traints are not nece s s a ri ly all that fixed , that they

h ave gre a ter po ten tial mall e a bi l i ty than typ i c a lly is pre su m ed . I focus on the U. S .c a s e ,

focusing parti c u l a rly on public op i n i on and its osten s i ble “c a su a l ty ph obi a ,” with som e

a n a lysis also of the role of the media and the CNN ef fect as well as the role of Con gre s s .

The “Pretty Prudent Public”: Questioning the

C o n ventional Wisdom about Casualty Phobia 

It is conven ti onal wi s dom that the Am erican public wi ll not su pport com m i tm ents that

risk casu a l ti e s , and that even if i n i tial su pport exists it wi ll co llapse under the wei ght of t h e

f i rst casu a l ties incurred . This is attri buted to the con ti nuing hangover of the “Vi etn a m

tra u m a” as rei n forced by the “Somalia tra u m a .” Key dec i s i ons made in nu m erous cases in

the 1990s (for ex a m p l e , Bo s n i a ,R w a n d a , Ko s ovo, East Ti m or) on wh et h er or not to use

U.S .m i l i t a ry force , and if so what stra tegy that acti on should fo ll ow, took the Am eri c a n

p u bl i c’s casu a l ty avers i on as a hard and fast prem i s e . Al t h o u gh no bel i ef is more ingra i n ed

these days , it is a high ly simplistic and inacc u ra te on e .

We need to start with a clear understanding of the “Vi etnam tra u m a” f rom wh i ch the

Am erican public has been said to have su f fered for so lon g. From the late 1940s to the late

1960s the Cold War con s en sus largely def i n ed Am erican public op i n i on . In tern a ti on a l i s m

preva i l ed over isolati onism—65 percent to 8 percent in a typical po ll . Su pport for NATO

was 80 percen t . Con t a i n m ent was ra n ked nu m ber two among all nati onal obj ective s , dom e s tic policy inclu ded . And wh en the Un i ted States first sent troops to Vi etnam in 1965,

on ly 24 percent con s i dered this a mistake . The ex peri en ce in Vi etnam dra m a ti c a lly

ch a n ged this pattern . By 1971, 61 percent con s i dered the Vi etnam War a mistake . More

gen era lly, the public had become mu ch less intern a ti onalist and mu ch more isolati on i s t .

Its ranking of the import a n ce of con t a i n m ent as a nati onal obj ective dropped from second to seven t h . The percen t a ge of people wi lling to use Am erican troops to defend We s tern Eu rope—a solemn com m i tm ent we made in signing the NATO tre a ty — p lu m m eted

Five

24
f rom 80 percent to 39 percen t .Su pport for troops to fight a com munist revo luti on in our

own hem i s ph ere was even lower, down from 73 percent to 31 percen t .

The term “tra u m a”implies severe re acti on , even cl i n i c a lly so. Al t h o u gh this ch a racteriz a ti on was true in certain ways , it was misleading in two re s pect s .F i rs t , it hardly was irrati onal or prec i p i tous for the Am erican public to stop su pporting a war that was going as

b adly as Vi etn a m , and abo ut wh i ch its leaders from both parties and over more than on e

adm i n i s tra ti on had been so du p l i c i tous and dishon e s t .“ It was difficult to fault the Am erican peop l e ,” as one Am erican military of f i cer later wro te ,“ wh en ,a f ter that long a peri od

of active en ga gem en t , the Joint Ch i efs of S t a f f could on ly of fer more of same for an indef in i te peri od with no assu ra n ce of even tual su cce s s .”5 1

Secon d ,a l t h o u gh the sense of trauma did last for some ye a rs immed i a tely after Vi etn a m , by the early 1980s it was beginning to wear of f . Op i n i on po ll data show the begi nning of a “post po s t - Vi etn a m”peri od and the em er gen ce of what el s ewh ere I have call ed

the “pret ty pru dent publ i c ,” a pattern in public op i n i on of su pporting some uses of force

but opposing others ,n ei t h er as tri gger- h a ppy as some would have liked nor as gun-shy as

s ome fe a red .5 2 The pattern was based on a disti n cti on bet ween two types of principal po licy obj ectives for wh i ch force was being used : re s training aggre s s i on and remaking govern m en t s . To the ex tent that the Am erican people perceived the principal obj ective of

coerc i on as re s training aggre s s ors who were thre a tening the Un i ted State s , its intere s t s , or

its all i e s ,t h ey were more likely to su pport the use of force than wh en the principal obj ective was to en gi n eer internal po l i tical ch a n ge , as in many Th i rd World interven ti ons du ring the Cold Wa r.5 3 The underlying albeit usu a lly unarti c u l a ted logic was that the

a n ti a ggre s s i on obj ective both had a gre a ter sense of i n tern a ti onal legi ti m acy and was on e

for wh i ch military force was more likely to be ef f i c ac i o u s .

It was not that casu a l ties ever were taken ligh t ly but that the wi ll i n gness to accept casua l ties va ri ed with the principal obj ective for wh i ch force was being used . This differen tia ted pattern held true for a nu m ber of l i m i ted - force cases in the 1980s, and was espec i a lly

s trong for the 1990-91 Gu l f Wa r. Nor was su pport for the Gu l f War stri ct ly a functi on of

the low casu a l ties actu a lly incurred . In i tial su pport at 78 percent was high er than su pport

for Vi etnam ever was (that is, pre - body bag levels) and de s p i te what were very grave concerns abo ut the risks of s ending two hu n d red thousand troops to su ch a vo l a tile regi on as

the Mi d dle East and against an en emy su ch as Saddam Hu s s ei n . Yet one po ll on the eve of

the ground war showed su pport being su s t a i n ed at very high levels even in anti c i p a ti on of

as many as five thousand casu a l ti e s .5 4

A fo ll ow - on stu dy I did of 1990s cases, n ow including hu m a n i t a rian interven ti on cases

as well ,s h owed the public to be “s ti ll pret ty pru den t .”5 5 Hum a n i t a rian interven ti ons actua lly started with ex tra ord i n a ri ly high levels of su pport , as seen in the early stages of the Somalia case. Al t h o u gh these interven ti ons fell prec i p i to u s ly because of the Somalia deb acl e ,

as with Vi etn a m ,t h ere was nothing irra ti onal or unstably re active abo ut not su pporting a

policy wh en it appe a red that the nati on’s leaders lacked a stra tegy. Some studies argue that

h ad Pre s i dent Cl i n ton re s pon ded to the Mogad i s hu deb acle with a firm and determ i n ed

ret a l i a tory stra tegy, p u blic su pport would have been there .5 6 Be that as it may be , we did

s ee in en suing cases su ch as Rwanda that while never rising back to the 70 percen t - p lu s

l evels accorded to the early Somalia mission , su pport did rebound som ewhat from its 

The Dilemma of Political Will 2 5

Som a l i a - trauma lows as the public wre s t l ed with the implicati ons of i n acti on in the face

of gen oc i de . In a po ll taken short ly after the ei gh teen U. S .s o l d i ers were kill ed in Mogad i s hu , 90 percent of re s pon dents agreed that “ we can never hope to solve the Som a l i s’

po l i tical probl ems for them and so should ‘bring our boys hom e .’”Yet in the Rwanda cris i s , just six months later, while sti ll relu ctant to make a troop com m i tm en t , 56 percent favored finding a way to do som et h i n g.

Around the same time the crisis with North Korea over its devel opm ent of nu cl e a r

wea pons was coming dangero u s ly close to war. If c a su a l ty ph obia was as ch ronic as it is so

of ten said to be , and given mem ories of the Korean War and images of the North Kore a n

l e aders h i p, p u blic op i n i on should have been even less su pportive of m i l i t a ry acti on than

in Somalia and Rwanda. But po lls showed an avera ge plu ra l i ty su pportive of the use of

force (47 to 45 percen t ) . Forty - s even percent is not all that high in absolute term s , but it

was ach i eved even though Pre s i dent Cl i n ton never ex p l i c i t ly advoc a ted taking military action and thus lacked the 5–10 percent “bu m p”that usu a lly comes from pre s i den tial cues

and the ra lly - round-the-flag ef fect . The key was that this case very mu ch fit the obj ective

of re s training aggre s s i on .

In the case of Bo s n i a , su pport flu ctu a ted gre a t ly. Su pport for air stri kes avera ged 45 to

50 percent in early 1993 but decl i n ed over ti m e , in part because of f a ll o ut from Som a l i a

and in part because of the dissen sus in Wa s h i n g ton as to wh et h er the mission was doa bl e

or even in the U. S .i n tere s t . Even then there were some spikes in su pport in re s ponse to

even t s , as after the Febru a ry 1994 Sa ra j evo market massac re . Some flu ctu a ti on also was a

f u n cti on of h ow po lling qu e s ti ons were ph ra s ed . This Bosnia case was very mixed in that

a ll three types of obj ective s — re s training aggre s s i on , prom o ting internal po l i tical ch a n ge ,

and ren dering hu m a n i t a rian assistance — were invo lved . One of the intere s ting su bp a tterns was that qu e s ti ons that cast the use of force in terms of hu m a n i t a rian obj ectives 

received high er su pport (56 percent) than those that linked the use of force to internal pol i tical ch a n ge (34 percen t ) .5 7 Part of the probl em in the Bosnia case was that po l i c ym a kers

could not sep a ra te these obj ective s . Thus the Bosnia case, while not as stri ct ly re active and

ph obic as the casu a l ty - avers i on thesis dep i ct s , does speak to the con s traints that are there .

The data from Ko s ovo are espec i a lly intere s ting in this rega rd . While by no means 

prep a red to give overwh elming su pport to interven ti on in Ko s ovo, the public was mu ch

m ore incl i n ed to su pport the use of force , i n cluding ground troops and despite po s s i bl e

c a su a l ti e s , than the Cl i n ton ad m i n i s tra ti on assu m ed .F i g u re 1 shows that su pport for air

s tri kes avera ged abo ut 57 percent and stayed fairly ste ady de s p i te the ups and downs of

the war ef fort and the media covera ge . Even as far back as October 1998, an NBC/Wa ll

S treet Jo u rnal po ll found 47 percent in favor of air stri kes com p a red with 40 percent oppo s ed . It also is important to note that although air stri kes pose fewer risks to U. S .m i l i t a ry

pers on n el than do ground campaign s , the public ex pected some U. S . c a su a l ti e s ; for ex a mp l e , the same April 6 CBS/New York Times po ll that found 58 percent su pport for air

s tri kes also found 84 percent of re s pon dents ex pecting casu a l ti e s .

The Dilemma of Political Will 2 7
Table 1 shows more ambiva l en ce for ground troop s , but in my vi ew the ex tent of su pport is what is most sign i f i c a n t . In i tial su pport is low (Ma rch 25, 3 0 ) ,i n c reases fairly

qu i ck ly (April 5–13), t h en declines (April 16, 26) before going back up (May 16). It should

be no su rprise that initial su pport was so low given that Pre s i dent Cl i n ton was telling the

Am erican people that ground troops were not nece s s a ry and indeed not even “on the

t a bl e .”The fact that su pport incre a s ed as mu ch as it did in early to mid-April thus seem s

s i gn i f i c a n t . Not on ly was there no pre s i den tial cue ef fect to provi de a bump up in approva l , but the pre s i dent was actu a lly advancing a different opti on .We then see som e

bouncing around in late April and into mid-May, ref l ecting uncert a i n ty and con cern but

s ti ll at levels of su pport that would have been a base on wh i ch to build had the ad m i n i stra ti on dec i ded to send ground troop s . We also see a slight plu ra l i ty in favor of gro u n d

troops in the overa ll avera ge .

In ad d i ti on to the non c a su a l ty ph obia that can be inferred from the ground troop s

d a t a ,t a ble 2 pre s ents answers to some qu e s ti ons that asked direct ly abo ut this issu e . Here

too my ex pect a ti on is that the rel a tive sign i f i c a n ce of these nu m bers is gre a ter than thei r

a b s o lute level s . To be su re ,t h ey do not show levels of su pport as high as those du ring the

Gul f Wa r, but this is to be ex pected since even the stron gest su pporters of the Ko s ovo war

would not com p a re its stakes to those of the Gu l f Wa r. S ti ll , we see more su pport for the

use of ground troops than oppo s i ti on to it in four of the five po ll s .

This is not to say that the U. S .p u blic wi ll ever be eager to use force and risk casu a l ti e s .

But it is to say that there is no en du ring Somalia syndrome among the publ i c .5 8 In deed ,

p u blic op i n i on is more del i bera tive and less re active than of ten dep i cted . De s p i te the low

l evels of i n form a ti on the public has, and de s p i te the low levels of a t ten ti on it pays to forei gn affairs , the Am erican public comes ac ross as “pret ty pru den t” in its ju d gm ents abo ut

wh en , wh ere , and why to use military force .

The CNN Effect: Ove r rat e d

A rel a ted miscon cepti on is the attri buti on of ex a ggera ted power over public op i n i on and

po l i tical con text to the news med i a , as most of ten repre s en ted by the Ca ble News Net work

(CNN) and its re a l - ti m e ,a ll - t h e - time gl obal capac i ty to put breaking events on tel evi s i on .

Referen ce of ten is made to the CNN ef fect wh ereby tel evi s i on covera ge initi a lly raises public aw a reness of a crisis so as to bring su ch great pre s su re on officials that they prec i p i t a te

m i l i t a ry interven ti on too qu i ck ly and with too little fleshing out of s tra tegy. On the back

end ,n ega tive covera ge of c a su a l ties or other major policy disaster can fuel a steep en o u gh

d rop in public su pport to make the po l i tical pre s su re too mu ch to bear wi t h o ut a wi t hd rawal or other major policy shift even if prem a tu re or unwi s e . However, a l t h o u gh the effect of CNN and other new tel ecom mu n i c a ti ons tech n o l ogies is not to be den i ed , it also is

not to be ex a ggera ted .

2 8 The Dilemma of Political Will
Warren Strobel , a journ a l i s t , provi des one of the most insigh tful analyses of this dyn a m i c .S trobel ’s main point is that the power of the media is invers ely rel a ted to how well

gro u n ded the policy itsel f i s .

It is true that U.S. government policies and actions regarding international conflict are

subject to more open public review than previously in history. But policymakers retain

great power to frame events and solicit public support—indeed, CNN at times increases

this power. Put another way, if officials do not have a firm and well-considered policy or

have failed to communicate their views in such a way as to garner the support of the

American people, the news media will fill this vacuum (often by giving greater time and

attention to the criticisms or policy preferences of its opponents).5 9

S trobel bases his argument on two of the cases so of ten cited as prima facie evi den ce for

the CNN ef fect ,Somalia and Bo s n i a . His re s e a rch inclu ded over one hu n d red intervi ews

with sen i or po l i c ym a kers from the Bush and Cl i n ton ad m i n i s tra ti on s ,m i l i t a ry of f i cers

and spo ke s pers on s ,j o u rn a l i s t s , and others . He ack n owl ed ges that “CNN and its bret h ren

h ave made leadership more difficult,”and that it is tel evi s i on’s inherent natu re as a vi su a l

m ed ium to “feed on con f l i ct , wh et h er po l i tical or phys i c a l , em phasizing the ch a ll en ge to

po l i c y.”But his em phasis is clear and well su pported :“Wh en policy is well gro u n ded , it is

less likely that the media wi ll be able to shift of f i c i a l s’foc u s . Wh en policy is cl e a r, re a s ona bly con s t a n t , and well com mu n i c a ted , the news media fo ll ow officials ra t h er than lead

t h em .”6 0

C o n g ress: Formidable, but Not Fixed, Constra i n t s

There is no do u bt abo ut the form i d a bi l i ty of the con s traints impo s ed by Con gress wh en it

comes to most uses of force . But these con s traints should not be taken , as they so of ten

a re ,to be so fixed as to be largely pro h i bi tive of s tra tegies su ch as coerc ive preven ti on .

Th ree points are key in this rega rd .

F i rst is that on issues of use of force Con gress of ten stops short of going so far as to exp l i c i t ly bl ock the pre s i dent from acti n g. It of ten cri ti c i zes the acti on ,s eeks to con d i ti on

and limit it, con demns it rh etori c a lly — but ra rely does it try to flatly pro h i bit the pre s i den t

f rom using force wh en he has dec i ded to do so. On Bo s n i a , for ex a m p l e , in Decem ber

1 9 9 5 , fo ll owing the signing of the Dayton Accord s , Con gress impo s ed con d i ti ons and

m ade ex ten s ive cri ticisms but stopped short of bl ocking U. S . troops from being part of

the NATO dep l oym en t . So too on Ko s ovo, Con gress has thre a ten ed to impose a wi t hd rawal of U. S . troops but has not actu a lly done so. This is not to say that su ch acti ons are

i n s i gn i f i c a n t , on ly that they are not pro h i bi tive . Po l i tical capital is requ i red to manage

such po l i ti c s , but they can be managed if a pre s i dent is su f f i c i en t ly determ i n ed .

Second is that, as the preceding analysis of p u blic op i n i on and the CNN ef fect showed ,

the underlying po l i tics also have some play in them . Pu blic op i n i on is not as knee - j erk oppo s i ti onal to uses of force , and the CNN ef fect is less driving and determ i n a tive , than so

of ten assu m ed . This is con s i s tent with the stu dy by Steve Ku ll and Mac De s t l er on how

Con gress has been “m i s re ad i n g”the public in many re s pects on forei gn policy since the

end of the Cold Wa r.6 1 Moreover, t wo types of groups that of ten are pro - i n terven ti on have

The Dilemma of Political Will 2 9
become more assertive players in pre s su re group po l i ti c s . One type is non govern m en t a l

or ga n i z a ti ons (NGOs), wh i ch at a minimum are forces against inacti on and inatten ti on to

hum a n i t a rian con cern s . The other type is made up of et h n i c , rel i gi o u s , and racial gro u p s ,

wh i ch , as manife s t a ti ons of the increasing divers i ty of the Am erican peop l e , trace thei r

roots to parts of the world in wh i ch many of these con f l i cts are occ u rri n g.

Th i rd is the con ti nuing impact that strong pre s i den tial leadership can have . For all that

has occ u rred in U. S . forei gn policy over the last three dec ade s , it remains the case that

Am ericans look to their pre s i dents first and foremost for leadership on intern a ti onal aff a i rs . Congress has its ro l e , po l i ti c a lly and con s ti tuti on a lly, and indeed is of ten loo ked to

for leadership wh en pre s i dents fail or otherwise fall short . But determ i n ed pre s i dents often are the differen ce bet ween fixed and unyi elding dom e s tic con s traints and those that

while form i d a ble can be made som ewhat less con s tra i n i n g.

S i x

30 The Dilemma of Political Will
Po l i cy Dilemmas

Constituting Credible Coercive Threats and

Wielding Effective Preventive Fo rc e

Given then that there is a norm a tive basis for coerc ive preven ti on and that the

po l i tical con s traints are som ewhat mall e a bl e , the next qu e s ti on con cerns the

policy requ i s i te s . Th ere should be no do u bt that these are difficult requ i s i tes to

m eet , and that threats or uses of force that do not meet them risk incurring major co s t s

of a nu m ber of k i n d s .

U.S . policy has begun to ad d ress this dilemma more over the past few ye a rs ,a l beit sti ll

not su f f i c i en t ly sys tem a ti c a lly. The Pen t a gon’s 1997 Quad rennial Defense Revi ew (QDR)

i n clu ded “s m a ll er-scale con ti n gency opera ti on s” in its “f u ll spectrum of c ri s e s .”Sm a ll erscale con ti n gency opera ti ons were def i n ed as

operations [that] encompass the full range of joint military operations beyond peacetime engagement but short of major theater warfare, and include: show-of-force operations, interventions, limited strikes, noncombatant evacuation operations, no-fly zone

enforcement, peace enforcement, maritime sanctions enforcement, counterterrorism

operations, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.6 2

Fo ll ow - on Pen t a gon reports have built som ewhat on the QDR, but sti ll not nearly to the

ex tent that doctrine and stra tegy have been devel oped at the conven ti onal and stra tegi c

l evel s . So too on the intera gency and civilian side s ,a s , for ex a m p l e , with PDD-56 (“Ma na ging Com p l ex Con ti n gency Opera ti on s” ) , wh i ch while su b s t a n ti a lly improving capac ities for hu m a n i t a rian assistance and pe ace keep i n g, s tops well short of s tra tegies of

com p a ra ble coord i n a ti on for coerc ive and other early - acti on preven tive stra tegi e s .

To be su re , these are not just issues for U. S . po l i c y. Th ey also bear on the Un i ted Nation s , on NATO, on the Eu ropean Un i on’s sec u ri ty and defense initi a tive s , and on other

regions (for ex a m p l e , Af rica and the Af rica Crisis Re s ponse In i ti a tive ) . My intent herein is

gen eral analyti c , not actor- s pec i f i c ; it is to iden tify and to begin to del i n e a te the three maj or forms that preven tive military stra tegies take : coerc ive thre a t s , preven tive pe ace keep i n g

dep l oym en t s , and early uses of force .

C o e rcive Threats

Th reats to use military force may have one or more of the fo ll owing obj ective s : deterri n g

the target from taking certain pro s c ri bed acti on s , com pelling the target to cease furt h er

su ch acti on s , re a s su ring the target that taking su ch acti ons is not nece s s a ry, a n d / or indu cing the target to take other pre s c ri bed acti on s .O n ly threats that carry the cred i bi l i ty that

Six

31
t h ey wi ll be acted on (wi ll) and that they wi ll impose su f f i c i ent costs to tip the target’s calc u lus (capabi l i ties) have any ch a n ce of h aving coerc ive impact . This invo lves both “s t a n di n g” c red i bi l i ty in terms of the sen der ’s gen eral rep ut a ti on for possessing the wi ll and

c a p ac i ty to del iver on its thre a t s , and “s i tu a ti on a l ”c red i bi l i ty rega rding the particular case

at hand.

One of the deb a tes in the Ko s ovo case has been wh et h er more cred i ble threats co u l d

h ave preven ted the war from occ u rri n g. Co u n terf actual qu e s ti ons su ch as this are of

cou rse impo s s i ble to answer unequ ivoc a lly, a l t h o u gh as we show in our Ca rn egie Comm i s s i on stu dy, well - su b s t a n ti a ted ,h i gh ly plausible arguments can be made .6 3 In the

Kos ovo case the argument traces back long before Ma rch 1999 or even the October 1998

Ram bo u i ll et proce s s ,a ll the way back to the ori ginal threat made in Decem ber 1992 by

Pre s i dent Bu s h ,w a rning Mi l o s evic that if he started doing in Ko s ovo what he alre ady was

doing in Bo s n i a , this time the Un i ted States and NATO would re s pond more qu i ck ly and

m ore firm ly. However, a l t h o u gh re s t a ted a nu m ber of times du ring the Cl i n ton ad m i n i stra ti on , this warning was not ef fectively rei n forced in practi ce .F i rst to close the deal wi t h

Mi l o s evic on the Dayton Accords and then as part of the bargaining with him at va ri o u s

s t a ges of t h eir implem en t a ti on , pre s su re abo ut Ko s ovo kept being su bl i m a ted to Dayton -

Bosnia and other de s i gn a ted high er pri ori ti e s . Th ere was some va l i d i ty to this trade - of f ,

but on ly som e . To have taken this approach as far as was done revers ed the levera ge in

Mi l o s evi c’s favor, in ef fect let ting him know that he could repe a tedly play the Dayton -

Bosnia card to pro tect himsel f on Ko s ovo. Th ere is a basic ten et of proporti on a l i ty that

must be ad h ered to in seeking accom m od a ti on with aggre s s ors ,n a m ely, to keep the term s

of the deal balanced and not to be so fixated on the issue at hand to cede to them too

much ground on other assoc i a ted issu e s . That ten et was severely vi o l a ted in this case.6 4

Nor should we stri ct ly accept the argument that Mi l o s evic was inheren t ly undeterra bl e

on Ko s ovo because of its cultu ra l - h i s torical sym bo l i s m ,i deo l ogical uti l i ty, and differen t

terri torial status as part of Serbia proper. Again it is one thing to ack n owl ed ge con s tra i n t s

and pre s su re s , but another to impute immut a bi l i ty to them . It was not that cred i bl e

t h reats failed to bu d ge Mi l o s evic on Ko s ovo ; it was that they were not genu i n ely tri ed .6 5

Threats that were made were not con s i s tent or forceful en o u gh to be cred i bl e .Again this

was true well before Ra m bo u i ll et . Mi l o s evic had been stepping up his aggre s s i on and repre s s i on thro u gh o ut 1998. The Con t act Group had made to u gh demands on him in

Ma rch on ly to water these down and stretch them out in the en suing weeks and mon t h s .

NATO did undert a ke some shows of force in its June air exercises over Albania and Macedonia and its August air- ground-sea exercises in Al b a n i a . But the processes of get ting firm

s t a tem ents thro u gh the North At l a n tic Council and get ting NATO started on planning

and mobi l i z a ti on were difficult and drawn out ,u n derc ut ting the cred i bi l i ty of NATO’s

overa ll po s tu re . As for the Un i ted Na ti on s , a re s o luti on that finally passed the UN 

Sec u ri ty Council in October stated on ly that “acti on may be needed ”and lacked the now -

c u s tom a ry “all nece s s a ry step s”cl a u s e — even the milder “a ll appropri a te step s” ph ra s i n g

that had been in the draft re s o luti on was del eted .

This was not for the lack of e a rly warning or calls and plans for to u gh er acti on . In Ju n e

and Ju ly 1998, for ex a m p l e ,t wo special reports by the Balkans Working Group of t h e

Uni ted States In s ti tute of Pe ace del i n e a ted a series of s teps “that draws on the full ra n ge of

3 2 Policy Dilemmas
pol i ti c a l , econ omic and military instru m en t s” in order “to get in front of the curve on

Kos ovo,rat h er than lagging behind as it has to date .”6 6 Even these reports were late as the

Kos ovo Liberati on Army (KLA) had em er ged by then as the rad i c a l i z a ti on of the Ko s ova r

Albanian cause, i n f l i cting its own vi o l en ce and repre s s i on . This was a classic case of w a i ting too lon g. Before the KLA ga i n ed this gre a ter cen tra l i ty in early 1998, m ore modera te

and pe aceful leaders su ch as Ibrahim Ru gova had dom i n a ted the Ko s ovar Albanian side

and po s ed less ambiva l ent ch oi ces for a We s tern policy based on preven ting vi o l en ce and

u pholding the ri ghts of the Ko s ovar majori ty while pro tecting the ri ghts of the Serb 

m i n ori ty.

It thus should be little won der that it took the actual initi a ti on of air stri ke s — of w a r —

for Mi l o s evic to begin even to bel i eve that the Un i ted States and NATO were seri o u s .Too

little had been done to cre a te cred i ble coerc ive threats in the months and ye a rs leading up

to Ma rch 24, 1 9 9 9 .

Preventive Pe a c e keeping Deploy m e n t s

A U.S . Army stu dy defines preven tive dep l oym ents as “the dep l oym ent of m i l i t a ry force s

to deter vi o l en ce at the interf ace or zone of po ten tial con f l i ct wh ere ten s i on is ri s i n g

a m ong parti e s .”67 To be su ccessful a dep l oym ent must be done in a way that has impact

on the ground and conveys a determ i n ed message . Am ong the requ i s i tes for su ch an ef fect

a re that that the dep l oym ent be implem en ted qu i ck ly; that its mandate inclu de the aut h ori ty to use force if n ece s s a ry, not just for the troop s’ s el f - pro tecti on but con s i s tent wi t h

the obj ectives being pursu ed and the re a l i ty of the con f l i ct ; that the nu m ber of troops be

suf f i c i en t ly large to make this mandate cred i ble and doa bl e ; that the troops be adequ a tely

a rm ed to fulfill their mandate ; that there be a unified com m a n d ; and that there be 

effective coord i n a ti on with diplom a tic and po l i tical actors and initi a tive s ,i n cluding 

with NGOs.

L i ke the Macedonia case, the East Ti m or case is one in wh i ch a preven tive dep l oym en t

force could have made a hu ge differen ce . Th ere was plen ty of e a rly warn i n g. In April 1999,

du ring nego ti a ti ons bet ween the Un i ted Na ti ons and the In donesian govern m ent over the

i n depen den ce referen du m ,l ocal militias backed by the In donesian army kill ed more than

forty - f ive ref u gees seeking shel ter in a chu rch com po u n d . Th en , even on ce the agreem en t

was sign ed , the anti - i n depen den ce militias inten s i f i ed their vi o l en ce and other inti m i d ati on .And by the eve of the August 30 vo te ,a bo ut ten thousand militi a m en ,i n cluding two

thousand heavi ly arm ed irreg u l a rs ,h ad “f l ooded ”East Ti m or.6 8

The main re a s on that the Un i ted Na ti ons did not insist on a preven tive dep l oym ent as

p a rt of the referen dum agreem ent goes back to the soverei gn ty - a s - ri ghts norm .Yet the

s overei gn ri ghts argument was even we a ker in this case than in the Ko s ovo case, given that

Indonesia had sei zed East Ti m or thro u gh military inva s i on and occ u p a ti on . Moreover,

f acing a severe financial crisis and needing major assistance from the intern a ti onal commu n i ty, In donesia did not ex act ly en j oy strong levera ge . It did have the levera ge of t h e

debtor in the gl obal reverbera ti ons of its econ omic probl em s , and the levera ge of the pol i ti c a lly weak in the con cern abo ut not pushing tem pora ry pre s i dent B. J. Ha bi bie too hard

and too far. S ti ll ,t h ere were plen ty of s tra tegies for pushing on this issue yet pack a ging it

in ways to make a preven tive dep l oym ent more po l i ti c a lly accept a ble within In don e s i a .

Policy Dilemmas 3 3
A preven tive dep l oym ent thus was doa ble but wasn’t don e . The Un i ted Na ti ons mu s t

c a rry some of the blame for this. De s p i te the hard lessons of Bo s n i a ,R w a n d a , and 

el s ewh ere , and notwithstanding Sec ret a ry - G en eral An n a n’s strong affirm a ti ons of t h e

s overei gn ty - a s - re s pon s i bi l i ty norm , too little wei ght was given to the risks of l i m i ted 

acti on and there was too mu ch wi ll i n gness to be “h opef u l .”6 9 Re s pon s i bi l i ty also lies wi t h

the Un i ted State s , wh i ch was immers ed in Ko s ovo and nei t h er provi ded the su pport

within the Un i ted Na ti ons that Annan needed nor asserted its levera ge within its bi l a tera l

rel a ti onship with In don e s i a .

Can we say def i n i tively that a preven tive dep l oym ent force would have en su red that the

mass vi o l en ce did not occur? Of co u rse not. But a strong case can be made for the likel ih ood that it would have been ef fective . Had the force been dep l oyed early en o u gh (for ins t a n ce , as part of the May 5 agreem ent on the referen dum) and with a firm mandate ,i t

would have carri ed su b s t a n tial cred i bi l i ty and would have had su f f i c i ent time to put a

s trong pre s en ce in place on the gro u n d . This could have had a deterrent ef fect on the militias and army forces planning the vi o l en ce . And if deterren ce failed , the force would have

been prepo s i ti on ed to re s pond qu i ck ly to the first outbreaks of vi o l en ce . East Ti m or was

not an undeterra ble or non preven t a ble situ a ti on . No do u bt there would have been som e

vio l en ce but not likely on the scale that occ u rred while the intern a ti onal com mu n i ty

d i t h ered .

Early Uses of Fo rc e

Just as other conven ti onal wi s doms have been ch a ll en ged in this paper, so too should we

que s ti on the con ten ti on that force be used on ly as a last re s ort . The argument also has

been made by Jane Ho ll that “pre s erving force as a last re s ort implies a lock s tep sequ en cing of the means to ach i eve forei gn policy obj ectives that is undu ly inflex i ble and rel ega te s

the use of force to in extrem i s ef forts to salva ge a faltering forei gn po l i c y.”7 0 Force ra rely if

ever should be a first re s ort , but at times it needs to be more of an early re s ort .

Part of the dilemma here is the need to ad a pt trad i ti onal noti ons of “ i m p a rti a l i ty.”Imp a rti a l i ty is rel a tively stra i gh tforw a rd in genu i n ely hu m a n i t a rian situ a ti ons—as in 

re s ponding to starva ti on ,d i s e a s e , and displacem ent caused by natu ral disasters—and in

genuine pe ace keeping situ a ti ons—meaning those in wh i ch the parties have agreed that

t h ere is a pe ace to be kept and all parties need to be re a s su red that they wi ll not be disadva n t a ged if t h ey abi de by the pe ace . But wh en the parties are sti ll in con f l i ct , what does it

mean to be impartial? To app ly the same stri ctu res to both side s , even if these stri ctu re s

l e ave one side with major military adva n t a ges over the other? To coerce nei t h er side ,i rres pective of wh i ch one is doing more kill i n g, s eizing more terri tory, com m i t ting more war

c rimes? In su ch situ a ti ons it is a “delu s i on ,” as Ri ch a rd Betts says , to think that absolute

i m p a rti a l i ty should be the standard .7 1 “ In some cases,” as Adam Roberts also makes the

poi n t ,“ i m p a rti a l i ty may mean not imparti a l i ty bet ween the bell i geren t s , but imparti a l i ty

in carrying out UN Sec u ri ty Council dec i s i on s . . . . The UN may, and perhaps should, be

to u gh er with one party than another or give more aid to one side than another.”7 2

The guiding requ i s i tes for seeking this balance should be along the lines of what I call a

“fa i r- but - f i rm stra tegy.” On the one hand, the parties to the con f l i ct must have con f i den ce

in the fairness of i n tern a ti onal third parti e s , with fairness def i n ed as a fundamental 

3 4 Policy Dilemmas
com m i tm ent to a just re s o luti on of the con f l i ct ra t h er than partisanship for or spon s orship of one or the other party to the con f l i ct . But fairness is not nece s s a ri ly to be equ a ted

with imparti a l i ty if the latter is def i n ed as a refusal to act even if one side en ga ges in gro s s

and wanton acts of vi o l en ce or vi o l a ti ons of ef forts to prevent the inten s i f i c a ti on or spre ad

of the con f l i ct . The parties to the con f l i ct must know that coopera ti on has its ben efits and

that those ben efits wi ll be fully equ i t a bl e ; the parties also must know that non coopera ti on

has its con s equ en ces and that the intern a ti onal parties are prep a red to en force those cons equ en ces differen ti a lly as warra n ted by who does and does not do wh a t . In this rega rd ,

f a i rness and firmness go toget h er sym m etri c a lly.

It is important to rei tera te that this focus on the use of force is inten ded to get at this

com pon ent of preven tive stra tegy for analytic purpo s e s , but does not imply that the use of

force is the sole or even principal part of what needs to be a com preh en s ive and co h eren t

s tra tegy. Thus in the Croa tia and Bosnia cases there is a point to be made by those su ch as

Warren Zi m m erm a n , the last U. S .a m b a s s ador to Yu go s l avi a , who sees the failu re of t h e

Uni ted States and NATO to re s pond to the Serbian shelling of Du brovnik in October

1991 as a crucial missed opportu n i ty.

Not only would the damage to the city have been averted but the Serbs would have been

taught a lesson about Western resolve that might have deterred at least some of the

aggression in Bosnia. As it was, the Serbs learned another lesson . . . that there was no

Western resolve, and that they could push as far as their power would take them.7 3

As Susan Woodw a rd ri gh t ly stre s s e s , su ch claims need to be held well short of e s t a bl i s h i n g

a su f f i c i ent con d i ti on , that other con comitant and fo ll ow - on com m i tm ents also were nece s s a ry and wi t h o ut wh i ch su ch acti on could have ex acerb a ted the con f l i ct .7 4 Overe s ti m a ting the uti l i ty of e a rly uses of force can even be worse than undere s ti m a ting it. But

u n dere s ti m a ting it has con s equ en ces as well .

The Kos ovo case also is rel evant here with rega rd to the cri ti que of the U. S . - NATO

s tra tegy as too limited a use of force . One el em ent of the cri ti que is that the air stri ke s

m oved too slowly to inclu de certain stra tegic target s ;a n o t h er con cerns ground troop s

h aving been so ex p l i c i t ly taken of f the table at the out s et . The shift in late May and early

June back to thre a tening ground troops is wi dely con s i dered to have been a crucial factor

in forcing Mi l o s evic to con cede . Aga i n ,o t h er factors su ch as the shift in Russian diplom acy also were cru c i a l . Not having to face the threat of ground troops soon er both redu ced the actual de s tru ctive threat Mi l o s evic and his army faced on the ground and

d i luted the cred i bi l i ty of the message of re s o lve that was being sent to him.7 5

None of this means anything along the lines of “dec i s ive force” as meant in the Powell

Doctri n e . The danger, t h o u gh , of a pproaches that hone too cl o s ely to minimalist tactics of

“not too mu ch”or “ just en o u gh”is that the military capabi l i ties provi ded wi ll be insu f f ic i ent in a material sense and that the message conveyed wi ll undermine ra t h er than enh a n ce cred i bi l i ty. The accom p a nying statem ents may be to u gh , but if the actual military

com m i tm ents made are minimalist, the percepti on is likely to be of a com m i tm ent made

relu ct a n t ly and therefore with qu e s ti on a ble wi ll to see it thro u gh .

Policy Dilemmas 35
S eve n

C o n c l u s i o n

Difficult, but Po s s i b l e

This paper seeks above all to make the case for the realism of con f l i ct preven ti on .

To do so requ i res be a ring in mind both the gains to be made from su ccess and

the losses ri s ked from failu re . In my vi ew, we curren t ly su f fer from being too

of ten caught in the middl e . We seek to do as little as we can, or at least avoid squ a rely facing up to the issues until they press them s elves upon us so inten s ely as to be unden i a bl e .

We then end up with com m i tm ents that last mu ch lon ger, cost mu ch more , and accomplish mu ch less than prom i s ed . No won der that not just isolati onists but serious stra tegi c

t h i n kers co u n s el doing less. Yet as argued from the out s et , the interests at stake and the

costs of i n acti on are too great for those arguments to stand up to analys i s . Con f l i ct preven ti on stra tegies of doing more and soon er tru ly are the best opti on — or the least bad

option in the Chu rch i llian sen s e .

This means con ti nuing to focus on the norm a tive , po l i c y, and po l i tical dilemmas identi f i ed herei n . Th ey pose form i d a ble but not insu rm o u n t a ble requ i s i tes to su cce s s . Even if

just one or two of the next wave of Bo s n i a s ,R w a n d a s , Ko s ovo s , and East Ti m ors can be

preven ted , that would be a major con tri buti on to making the second dec ade of t h e

po s t – Cold War era more pe aceful and pri n c i p l ed than the firs t . And perhaps we can 

do even bet ter than that.

N o t e s

3 6
1. That these were missed opportunities, and not just unpreventable occurrences, is strongly

corroborated in the study I edited for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly

Conflict, Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post–Cold

War World (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999).

2. This was the criticism of much of the early work on preventive diplomacy by Stephen John

Stedman, “Alchemy for a New World Order: Overselling ‘Preventive Diplomacy,’” F o r e i g n

Affairs 74 (May-June 1995): 14–20. 

3. Kofi Annan, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, United Nations

General Assembly, Official Records, Fifty-fourth Session, Supplement No. 1 (A/54/1),

September 1999, 4.

4. Bruce W. Jentleson, “Preventive Diplomacy: Analytical Conclusions and Policy Lessons,” in

Jentleson, Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized, 3 4 0 – 3 4 4 .

5. For definitions of preventive diplomacy, see Michael S. Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A

Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press,

1996), 37; Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Preventing Deadly Conflict

(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997), especially

chaps. 1–4. 

6. Donald C. F. Daniel and Bradd C. Hayes with Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, Coercive Inducement

and the Containment of International Crises (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of

Peace Press, 1999), 21–22.

7. Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2d ed.

(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994); Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion

(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991); Alexander L. George and

Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1974); Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven,

Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966); and The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1963).

8. Michael Mandelbaum, “Foreign Policy as Social Work,” Foreign Affairs 75 (January-February

1996), 16–32.

9. Washington Post, September 4, 1995, A43. 

10. Stuart Hill and Donald Rothchild, “The Contagion of Political Conflict in Africa and the

World,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 30 (December 1986): 716–735; Stuart Hill, Donald

Rothchild, and Colin Cameron, “Tactical Information and the Diffusion of Peaceful Protests,”

in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A.

Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). 61–88.

1 1 . William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to the President and the Congress,

January 2000, http://www.dtic.milexecsec/adr 2000 , 2.

1 2 . Chester A. Crocker, “A Poor Case for Quitting: Mistaking Incompetence for

Interventionism,” Foreign Affairs 79 (January-February 2000): 184. 3 7

N o t e s
1 3 . Stanley Hoffmann, “In Defense of Mother Theresa: Morality in Foreign Policy,” F o r e i g n

A f f a i r s 75 (March-April 1994): 172; see also Hoffmann, “The Politics and Ethics of Military

Intervention,” S u r v i v a l (winter 1995-96): 29–51. 

1 4 . Richard N. Haass, “What Do We Do with American Primacy?” Foreign Affairs 7 8

(September-October 1999): 45. 

1 5 . Michael E. Brown and Richard N. Rosecrance, eds., The Costs of Conflict: Prevention and Cure

in the Global Arena (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 225.

1 6 . Chris Hedges, “Croatian’s Confession Describes Torture and Killing on a Vast Scale,” N e w

York Times, September 5, 1997, A1.

1 7 . Schelling, Arms and Influence; George and Simons, Limits of Coercive Diplomacy; G e o r g e ,

Forceful Persuasion.

1 8 . Ken Menkhaus and Louis Ortmayer, “Somalia: Misread Crises and Missed Opportunities,” in

Jentleson, Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized.

1 9 . I. William Zartman, “Putting Humpty-Dumpty Together Again,” in Lake and Rothchild,

International Spread of Ethnic Conflict.

2 0 . Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and

Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), especially chap. 21.

2 1 . Paul Pillar, Negotiating Peace (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983); Roy

Licklider, ed., Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End (New York: New York University

Press, 1993).

2 2 . This point is stressed by the Carnegie Commission in Preventing Deadly Conflict; and in

Jentleson, Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized.

2 3 . Robert Gilpin, War and Change in International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1981), 51.

2 4 . Robert Jervis, “Realism, Neo-Liberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate,”

International Security 24 (summer 1999): 61.

2 5 . Michael G. Roskin, “Macedonia and Albania: The Missing Alliance,” P a r a m e t e r s ( w i n t e r

1993–94): 98; Carnegie Commission, Preventing Deadly Conflict, 6 4 .

2 6 . Scott R. Feil, Preventing Genocide: How the Early Use of Force Might Have Succeeded in

Rwanda (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Commission for Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1998).

Among the evidence Feil cites is the view of senior American military officers on the ground

in the summer of 1994 that “the sophisticated and prepared political infrastructure that

orchestrated the violence in Rwanda is not to be underestimated” (note 5, p. 52).

2 7 . Ibid., 3.

2 8 . Astri Suhrke and Bruce Jones, “Preventive Diplomacy in Rwanda: Failure to Act or Failure of

Actions?” in Jentleson, Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized, 2 4 7 .

3 8 Notes
2 9 . Ibid., 257–258; Charles Truehart, “UN Alerted to Plans for Rwanda Bloodbath,” W a s h i n g t o n

Post, September 25, 1997, A1, A28; Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow

We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar, Straus, and

Giroux, 1998).

3 0 . See United Nations, Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations

during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, December1999, http://www.un.org/News/ossg/

rwanda.report.htm (accessed December 17, 1999).

3 1 . Feil, Preventing Genocide, 22. 

3 2 . Suhrke and Jones, “Preventive Diplomacy in Rwanda,” 259. See also Alison Des Forges, L e a v e

None to Tell the Story (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999). The viability of a late intervention is questioned by Alan J. Kuperman, “Rwanda in Retrospect,” Foreign Affairs 7 9

(January-February 2000): 94–118. Kuperman argues that even a force of 13,500 troops could

have reduced the death toll by only 25 percent. Even if his analysis is accurate regarding what

a late intervention could have achieved, the first two points made herein remain on the inadequacy of the earlier coercive measures; in this respect, Kuperman’s argument ends up further

underscoring the importance of acting early and steadily.

3 3 . Suhrke and Jones, “Preventive Diplomacy in Rwanda,” 250.

3 4 . Martha Finnemore, “Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,” in The Culture of

National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 158.

See also Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1996). 

3 5 . Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis, International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary

I s s u e s (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 2; Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes, eds.,

Preventing Conflict in the Post-Communist World: Mobilizing International and Regional

O r g a n i z a t i o n s (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1996), 60; and Joseph A. Camilleri

and Jim Falk, The End of Sovereignty? The Politics of a Shrinking and Fragmented World

(Brookfield, Vt.: Elgar, 1992), 24.

3 6 . Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1994), 155; J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, “The State and the Nation: Changing

Norms and the Rules of Sovereignty in International Relations,” International Organization 4 8

(winter 1994): 107–130; Janice E. Thomson, “State Sovereignty in International Relations:

Bridging the Gap between Theory and Empirical Research,” International Studies Quarterly 3 9

(June 1995): 213–234. 

3 7 . Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1999).

3 8 . Robert W. Tucker, Intervention and the Reagan Doctrine (New York: Carnegie Council on

Religion and International Affairs, 1985), 13. 

3 9 . For development of this concept, see Francis M. Deng, Sadikei Kimaro, Terence Lyons,

Donald Rothchild, and I. William Zartman, Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management

in Africa (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1996).

4 0 . Ibid., 28.

Notes 3 9
4 1 . James N. Rosenau, “Sovereignty in a Turbulent World,” in Beyond Westphalia: State

Sovereignty and International Intervention, ed. Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 195. 

4 2 . Bruce Cronin, “Changing Norms of Sovereignty and Multilateral Intervention,” in C o l l e c t i v e

Conflict Management and Changing World Politics, ed. Joseph Lepgold and Thomas G. Weiss

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 159–160.

4 3 . Kofi Annan, “Intervention,” Ditchley Foundation Lecture 35, 1998, 2. See also Annan, R e p o r t

of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, September 1999.

4 4 . Annan, “Intervention.”

4 5 . Ruth Wedgwood, “Fiddling in Rome,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 6 (November-December 1998):

22. 

4 6 . John Stremlau, People in Peril: Human Rights, Humanitarian Action, and Preventing Deadly

Conflict, Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (New York:

Carnegie Corporation, 1998), 16.

4 7 . United Nations, “Secretary-General Says Renewal of Effectiveness and Relevance of Security

Council Must Be Cornerstone of Efforts to Promote International Peace in Next Century,”

United Nations Press Release SG/SM/6997, May 18, 1999. 

4 8 . Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, “Charter for European Security,”

Istanbul summit, November 1999, http://www.osce.org (accessed January 27, 2000). See

also P. Terrence Hopmann, Building Security in Post–Cold War Eurasia, Peaceworks no. 31

(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, September 1999).

4 9 . Edmond Keller, “Transnational Ethnic Conflict in Africa,” in Lake and Rothchild,

International Spread of Ethnic Conflict. 

5 0 . For views that concur on some points and disagree on others with my discussion here, see the

papers from the Pugwash Study Group on Intervention, Sovereignty, and International

Security (Pugwash Meeting no. 252, December 1999), available at http://www.pugwash.org

5 1 . Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1986), 270. 

5 2 . Bruce W. Jentleson, “The Pretty Prudent Public: Post Post-Vietnam American Opinion on

the Use of Military Force,” International Studies Quarterly 36 (March 1992): 49–74. 

5 3 . Exceptions were cases such as Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 in which the high support in polls taken after the invasions reflected the “halo effect” of success. No pre-polling was

done for Grenada; for Panama pre-polls showed only 32 percent support.

5 4 . Jentleson, “Pretty Prudent Public,” 68. 

5 5 . Bruce W. Jentleson and Rebecca L. Britton, “Still Pretty Prudent: Post–Cold War American

Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (August 1998):

3 9 5 – 4 1 7 .

4 0 Notes
5 6 . James Burk, “Public Support for Peacekeeping in Lebanon and Somalia: Assessing the

Casualty Hypothesis,” Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 1 (1999): 53-78; Peter Feaver and

Christopher Gelpi, “The Civil-Military Gap and the Use of Force” (paper presented at the

Triangle Institute for Security Studies [TISS] conference, Chapel Hill, N.C., July 1999).

5 7 . Public opinion’s flexibility to framing is not infinitely elastic, however. President Ronald

Reagan, his “Great Communicator” skills notwithstanding, tried this on Nicaragua but never

could persuade the public to see the conflict as other than an internal political one, and so

support stayed consistently low.

5 8 . See also the findings in the study by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (Duke–UNC

Chapel Hill), as discussed in Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, “A Look at Casualty

Aversion,” Washington Post, November 7, 1999, B3. 

5 9 . Warren P. Strobel, “The Media and U.S. Policies toward Intervention: A Closer Look at the

‘CNN Effect,’” in Managing Global Chaos, ed. Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osler Hampson

with Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 358.

6 0 . Ibid., 373–374.

6 1 . Steven Kull and I. M. Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism

(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999).

6 2 . U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review, 1997, http://www.defenselink.

mil:80/pubs/qdr/sec.3/html , 6.

6 3 . For discussion of this kind of counterfactual methodology, see my first chapter in Jentleson,

Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized; for examples, see many of the case studies. 

6 4 . I make a similar argument regarding U.S. relations with Iraq in the 1980s and develop the

analysis further of strategies of accommodation in my book With Friends Like These: Reagan,

Bush, and Saddam, 1982–1990 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), especially chap. 5. 

6 5 . See also Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo

(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000), chaps. 1 and 2.

6 6 . Kosovo Dialogue: Too Little, Too Late, Special Report (Washington, D.C.: United States

Institute of Peace, June 1998), 7; see also Kosovo: Escaping the Cul-de-Sac, Special Report

(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, July 1998).

6 7 . U.S. Army, Peacekeeping Institute (Carlisle Barracks), Fundamentals of Peace Operations,

chap. 1, p. 1, http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usacs.../pki/doctrine/fm 100-23/

fm 100_3.html .

6 8 . Steven Mufson and Colum Lynch, “East Timor Failure Puts UN on Spot,” Washington Post,

September 26, 1999, A1.

6 9 . I b i d .

7 0 . Jane E. Holl, “We the People Here Don’t Want No War: Executive Branch Perspectives on

the Use of Force,” in U.S. and the Use of Force, Aspen Strategy Group (Queenstown, Md.:

Aspen Institute, 1995), 124 and passim.

7 1 . Richard R. Betts, “The Delusion of Impartial Intervention,” Foreign Affairs 73 (NovemberDecember 1994).

Notes 4 1
7 2 . Adam Roberts, “The Crisis in UN Peacekeeping,” in Managing Global Chaos, ed. Crocker and

Hampson with Aall, 315. Justice Richard Goldstone, prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal

for the former Yugoslavia, felt that the same approach should apply to war crimes prosecutions. “Being evenhanded in my opinion doesn’t mean one for you and one for you and one

for you. Being evenhanded means treating similar atrocities in a similar way”; see Tom

Gjelten, Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent’s View, Report to the Carnegie

Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1998), 13.

7 3 . Warren Zimmerman, “The Last Ambassador: A Memoir of the Collapse of Yugoslavia,”

Foreign Affairs 74 (March-April 1995): 13–14. 

7 4 . An important part of Woodward’s argument also is that even 1991 was late for prevention,

that more and different policies needed to have been pursued at least since the mid-1980s.

Susan L. Woodward, “Costly Disinterest: Missed Opportunities for Preventive Diplomacy in

Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1985–1991,” in Jentleson, Opportunities Missed,

Opportunities Seized, 1 6 9 – 1 7 2 .

7 5 . Daalder and O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly.

42 Notes
About the Au t h o r

Bruce W. J e n t l e s o n is director of the Terry Sa n ford In s ti tute of Pu blic Policy and

profe s s or of p u blic policy and po l i tical scien ce at Du ke Un ivers i ty. In 1993–94, Jen t l e s on

s erved on the State Dep a rtm ent Policy Planning Staff as special assistant to the director.

In 1987–88, while a Council on Forei gn Rel a ti ons intern a ti onal affairs fell ow, he served as

a forei gn policy advi s er to Sen a tor Al Gore .

His publ i c a ti ons inclu de nu m erous arti cles as well as seven boo k s , most recen t ly

American Fo rei gn Pol i c y: The Dyn a m i cs of C h o i ce in the Twen ty - f i rst Cen tu ry (W. W.

Norton ,2 0 0 0 ) , and Oppo rtu n i ties Mi s sed , Oppo rtu n i ties Sei zed: Preven tive Di plomacy in

the Po s t – Cold War Wo rl d , a proj ect of the Ca rn egie Com m i s s i on on Preven ting De adly

Con f l i ct (Rowman and Littlef i el d ,1 9 9 9 ) .

Pri or to going to Du ke , Jen t l e s on was profe s s or of po l i tical scien ce at the Un ivers i ty of

Ca l i forn i a – D avi s ,d i rector of the UC Davis Wa s h i n g ton Cen ter, and Wa s h i n g ton re s e a rch

d i rector of the UC In s ti tute on Global Con f l i ct and Coopera ti on (IGCC). He also has

been a sen i or fell ow in the Jen n i n gs Ra n do l ph fell owship program of the Un i ted State s

Ins ti tute of Pe ace , a guest scholar at the Broo k i n gs In s ti tuti on , and the rec i p i ent of

awa rds and fell owships from the Na ti onal Scien ce Fo u n d a ti on , the Am erican Council of

Lea rn ed Soc i eti e s , and the Social Scien ce Re s e a rch Co u n c i l .

He holds a Ph.D. f rom Corn ell Un ivers i ty, a master ’s degree from the Lon don Sch oo l

of E con omics and Po l i tical Scien ce , and a bach el or ’s degree also from Corn ell .

About the Institute

4 3

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by Congress to promote research, education, and training on the peaceful management and resolution of international conflicts. Established in 1984, the Institute meets its

congressional mandate through an array of programs, including research grants, fellowships, professional training, education programs from high school through graduate school, conferences

and workshops, library services, and publications. The Institute’s Board of Directors is appointed

by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

Chairman of the Board: Chester A. Crocker

Vice Chairman: Max M. Kampelman

President: Richard H. Solomon

Executive Vice President: Harriet Hentges

Board of Directors

Chester A. Crocker (Chairman), James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign

Service, Georgetown University

Max M. Kampelman, Esq. (Vice Chairman), Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson, 

Washington, D.C.

Dennis L. Bark, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University 

Stephen J. Hadley, Esq., Shea and Gardner, Washington, D.C.

Theodore M. Hesburgh, President Emeritus, University of Notre Dame

Zalmay Khalilzad, RAND Corporation, Washington, D.C.

Seymour Martin Lipset, Hazel Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University

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Tufts University

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Paul G. Gaffney II, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy; President, National Defense University

J. Stapleton Roy, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research

Walter B. Slocombe, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)

4 5

About the Institute
OF RELATED INTEREST

Many other publications from the United States Institute of Peace address issues of relevance to coercive

prevention in particular and conflict prevention in general.

RECENT INSTITUTE REPORTS INCLUDE:

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Anara Tabyshalieva (Peaceworks No. 28, June 1999)

Montenegro—and More—at Risk (Special Report, January 1999)

Nagorno-Karabakh: Searching for a Solution, by Patricia Carley (Peaceworks No. 25, December 1998)

Kosovo: Escaping the Cul-de-Sac (Special Report, July 1998)

Kosovo Dialogue: Too Little, Too Late(Special Report, July 1998)

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Coercive Inducement and the Containment of International Crises, by Donald C. F. Daniel and

Bradd C. Hayes with Chantal de Jonge Oudraat (1999)

Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World, edited by Chester A. Crocker,

Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (1999)

NATO Transformed: The Alliance’s New Roles in International Security, by David S. Yost (1999)

Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques, edited by I. William Zartman and

J. Lewis Rasmussen (1997)

Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy, by Michael S. Lund (1996)

Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, edited by Chester A. Crocker

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Territorial Conflicts and Their Resolution: The Case of Ecuador and Peru, by Beth A. Simmons (No. 27,

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The Quest for Democratic Security: The Role of the Council of Europe and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Heinrich

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Nagorno-Karabakh: Searching for a Solution, by Patricia Carley (No. 25, December 1998)

Removing Barricades in Somalia: Options for Peace and Rehabilitation, by Hussein Adam and Richard

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Muddling toward Democracy: Political Change in Grassroots China, by Anne F. Thurston (No. 23,

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Preventing Genocide in Burundi: Lessons from International Diplomacy, by Stephen R. Weissman

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Greek-Turkish Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy: Cyprus, the Aegean, and Regional Stability, by Tozun

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U.S. Responses to Self-Determination Movements: Strategies for Nonviolent Outcomes and Alternatives to

Secession, by Patricia Carley (No. 16, July 1997)

Creative Approaches to Managing Conflict in Africa: Findings from USIP-Funded Projects, edited by David

R. Smock (No. 15, April 1997)