Putting out fires when they are just starting. Building capacity to help others deal with problems in non-violent ways. The international community needs attitudes, insights, institutions, and resources to implement a farsighted, proactive approach of assistance, cooperation, and education for countries in trouble. Many will welcome such an approach, even if ambivalently. For the small number of countries that are intransigent toward outsiders, mired in hatred, and controlled by tyrants, the international community should continually seek to draw them into the community of nations, while containing and deterring as necessary with forceful means.
Foresight is necessary to prevent conflict.
The international community should take the initiative to assist countries in acquiring the necessary attitudes, concepts, skills, and institutions for resolving internal and external conflict. It should be proactive in helping them build the political and economic institutions of democracy. In offering such help, the international community will need to engage moderate, constructive, and pragmatic leaders who are committed to humane and democratic values. While such leaders exist all over the world, their situation is often precarious. The international community can assist these leaders by providing a support network, which will, over the long run, help build institutions capable of meeting basic human needs and coping with conflicts that arise in the course of human interactions.