partners in preventive action: the united states and international institutions

8/3/2019 Partners in Preventive Action: The United States and International Institutions

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Council Special Report No. 62

September 2011

Paul B. Stares and Micah Zenko

Partners in

Preventive ActionThe United States and International Institutions


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Partners in Preventive Action

The United Statesand International Institutions


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Council Special Report No. 62

September 2011

Paul B. Stares and Micah Zenko

Partners in Preventive ActionThe United Statesand International Institutions


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Foreword viiAcknowledgments ix

Acronyms xi

Council Special Report 1Introduction 3How International Institutions Prevent Conict 6Global Overview of the Principal International Institutions 13Recommendations for U.S. Policy 22Conclusion 28

Endnotes 29About the Authors 35Advisory Committee 37CPA Advisory Committee 38CPA Mission Statement 39

Contents


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vii

Foreword

The unipolar moment, to the extent it ever existed, has now truly passed.The United States is part of a globalized world, in which the ows of

goods, nance, people, and much more connect us to other countries asnever before. But for all the myriad benets globalization brings, it alsomeans that the challenges of the coming decadesbe they generated byresource competition, climate change, cybercrime, terrorism, or clas-sic competition and rivalrycannot be solved or even mitigated by onecountry alone. Countries will need to cooperate on policies that extendacross borders to address issues that aect them all.

In this Council Special Report, CFR scholars Paul B. Stares and

Micah Zenko argue that the United States should increasingly look tointernational institutionsthe United Nations and regional organiza-tions like the European Union, the African Union, and the Associationof Southeast Asian Nationsas partners in conict prevention andpeacemaking worldwide. These organizations can serve as a platformfor developing and enforcing international norms; provide a source oflegitimacy for diplomatic and military eorts; and aggregate the opera-tional resources of their members, all of which can increase the ease and

eectiveness of American peacemaking eorts.The CSR explores the ways these institutions are already contribut-ing to the creation and maintenance of peace, from the UNs conictmonitoring systems to the dispute resolution mechanisms at the Orga-nization of American States and the nascent African Standby Force ofthe African Union, before turning to a series of recommendations onways the United States can improve its interaction with these institu-tions and maximize their potential.

To reduce the risk of conict, the authors write, the United States

should work to expand and institutionalize international norms againstboth intra- and interstate violence. They also suggest that the UnitedStates further eorts toward economic growth and good governance


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in the developing world, both of which reduce the potential for con-ict, and work to institutionalize a limited form of the responsibility toprotect. To head o brewing conicts, the authors recommend closercooperation among the United States and international institutions onconict monitoring and intelligence sharing, coordination on aid dis-bursements, and increasing American representation on and fundingto bodies working in these areas. And where conict has already brokenout, they note, the United States could still enable a rapid response byenhancing international capacity to quickly deploy civilian and militaryassets to new conict zones.

Partners in Preventive Action raises important issues for U.S. poli-

cymakers contemplating a world of increasing complexity at a time ofdecreasing means. It provides a comprehensive look at the conict pre-vention capacity of international institutions and poses thoughtful rec-ommendations on how they can be improved. While there will continueto be a place for independent action, ad hoc coalitions, and formal alli-ances, this CSR successfully argues for the present and future impor-tance of international institutions.

Richard N. HaassPresidentCouncil on Foreign RelationsSeptember 2011

Forewordviii


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ix

This report complements our earlier Council Special Report Enhanc-ing U.S. Preventive Action, published in 2009. We thank CFR Presi-

dent Richard N. Haass and Director o Studies James M. Lindsay orsupporting this project and or providing helpul comments rom itsinception.

As is typical, this report is the product o people giving generously otheir time and expertise rom start to fnish. In particular, we beneftedenormously rom the advisory committee that met on two occasionsand that also individually provided invaluable comments along the way.We would like to single out Nancy Soderberg, who chaired the com-

mittee, along with John Campbell, Michle Grin, David A. Hamburg,Matthew L. Hodes, Kara C. McDonald, Yadira Soto, Joanna Weschler,and Lawrence S. Woocher. In addition, dozens o ocials rom theU.S. government, the United Nations, and several regional organiza-tions provided invaluable insights and recommendations that greatlycontributed to the quality o the report.

Finally, we are grateul to Patricia Dor and Lia Norton in Publica-tions or their terrifc guidance and editing support and to Lisa Shields,

Leigh-Ann Krap Hess, Lucy Dunderdale, and Melinda Brouwer inCommunications and Marketing or working to promote and distributethe report. We also appreciate the contributions o Program AssociateAndrew Lim and Studies Administrator Kate Howell or guiding theCSR through the Studies process, and the tireless logistical, research,and intellectual support o ormer and current CPA sta members EliseVaughan, Rebecca Friedman, Andrew Miller, Stephen Wittels, SophiaYang, and Emma Welch.

This publication was made possible by a grant rom the Carnegie

Corporation o New York. CFR also expresses its thanks to the RobinaFoundation or its support or Micah Zenkos work on multilateral

Acknowledgments


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x Acknowledgments

dimensions of conict prevention. The statements made and viewsexpressed herein are solely our own.

Paul B. Stares

Micah Zenko


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xi

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

AU African Union

CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy

DPA United Nations Department of Political Aairs

DPKO United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Opera-tions

ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States

ESDP European Security and Defense Policy

EU European Union

G8 Group of Eight

G20 Group of Twenty

GCC Gulf Cooperation Council

ICC International Criminal Court

IFI international nancial institution

IMF International Monetary Fund

NATO North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationOAS Organization of American States

OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop-ment

OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

P5 ve permanent members of the United Nations Secu-rity Council

R2P responsibility to protectUN United Nations

USAID U.S. Agency for International Development

Acronyms


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Council Special Report


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3

Introduction

With the U.S. military overstretched after a decade of continuouscombat operations and Washington facing acute scal pressures, the

strategic logic of preventive action to reduce the number of foreigncrises and conicts that could embroil the United States in burdensomenew commitments has never been more compelling.

Yet reducing violent conict around the world is not a task that theUnited States can or should take on alone; the magnitude and com-plexity of emerging challenges to international peace and stability aretoo great and their potential impact too far-reaching. Although large-scale deadly conicts have markedly diminishedinterstate war is rare

and civil wars have declined since the mid-1990sthis trend may notlast. The twenty-rst century poses many dangers: growing frictionbetween rising and established powers, the diusion of deadly tech-nologies (including to nonstate actors), mounting economic and socialpressures aggravated by demographic trends, resource scarcities, andclimate change could all markedly increase the incidence of violentconict. If these threats materialize, no country is likely to be sparedthe consequences; the world is simply too interconnected. Preventing

deadly conict has to be a shared imperative and responsibility.International preventive action oers a solution to this problem. Itcan be pursued through informal ad hoc arrangements or formal mul-tilateral organizations such as the United Nations, various regionalbodies, and international nancial institutions (IFIs). Though manyAmericans remain uninformed or skeptical about the value of interna-tional organizations, particularly in helping to prevent deadly conict,the organizations provide important benets over purely unilateral orinformal eorts. Every U.S. administration since the founding of the

United Nationseven the supposedly unilateralist George W. Bushadministrationhas recognized these benets and utilized interna-tional organizations to promote peace and security.


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4 Partners in Preventive Action

Three critical attributes of international organizations stand out:

They oer an institutional platform for formalizing, extending, andat times enforcing international rules, norms, and regimes that regu-late state behavior and make the international environment moreorderly and predictable. For the most part, the United States hasbeen able to shape and promote international rules and norms thatembody American values and goals.

International organizations endorsements provide an importantsource of legitimacy to diplomatic eorts initiated or supported bythe United States. This backing is especially useful when such eortsinvolve breaching the otherwise sacrosanct principle of noninterfer-ence in the internal aairs of another state. Securing a multilateralorganizations imprimatur helps unlock assistance from the organi-zations member states and can be critical for sustaining domesticsupport.

International organizations have signicant operational benets,such as information on and operational access to parts of the world,that may be hard for the United States to obtain independently. Tothe extent that the success of conict prevention initiatives rests oneither extending or withholding certain goods and services to inu-ence the behavior of recalcitrant states, the active involvement ofinternational organizations is often indispensible. Even when it isnot, using an international organizations resources is often morecost-eective for the United States than unilateral action.

While informal arrangements like the Group of Eight (G8) or

Group of Twenty (G20), not to mention ad hoc coalitions of the will-ing, can complement the work of established formal institutions, theylack the legitimacy derived from their standing in international law andtheir broad, sometimes universal, membership. More importantly, withlittle or no sta and infrequent meetings, informal institutions abilityto prevent conict is limited. They do not have the experienced diplo-matic and military capacity of international institutions and frequentlyrequire the United Nations (UN) or regional bodies to mandate and

actually carry out preventive action.By actively improving the ability of the leading international institu-

tions to carry out conict prevention, the United States will have more


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5Introduction

eective partners in instances where it has a major stake and will ndless need for involvement where it does not. That said, U.S. eorts toenhance international capacity for preventive action must be based ona clear-eyed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the leadingmultilateral actors. Before turning to a brief global overview of the lead-ing international institutions, it is important to rst understand howthey help prevent violent conict.


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6

Formal international institutions contribute to the prevention of deadlyconict in ways that are not always easy to demonstrate in a precise

fashion. This is because violent conict can manifest itself in manyforms for many dierent reasons. Eorts to prevent and control con-ict, therefore, typically entail multifaceted policy interventions withresults that may not be immediately apparent or easy to evaluate indi-vidually for their relative eectiveness. Proving that policyy or initiativex averted a conictthat is, prevented an event from happeningulti-mately rests on an irresolvable counterfactual argument. However,from observed changes in the type and incidence of armed conict over

time, as well as more immediate indicators that a particular policy ini-tiative or intervention has helped halt a deteriorating or escalating situ-ation, it is possible to infer the impact of deliberate prevention eorts.To understand better the role of international institutions in preventingviolent conict, it is useful to divide their involvement into three broadcategories: conict risk reduction, crisis prevention, and conict miti-gation measures.

ConlCt R sk ReduCton

There are measures taken to minimize potential sources of instabilityand conict before they arise. They encompass, on the one hand, eortsto reduce the impact of specic threats, such as controlling the develop-ment of destabilizing weapon systems or arms transfers that may causeregional power imbalances; restricting the potential inuence of dan-gerous nonstate actors; and diminishing the possible negative impact of

anticipated demographic, economic, and environmental change. On theother hand, they cover measures that promote conditions conducive topeace and stability. Within states, these include encouraging equitable

How International InstitutionsPrevent Conict


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7How International Institutions Prevent Conict

economic development, good governance, the rule of law, and respectfor human rights, and between them, stability can be enhanced throughrules on the use of force, military and economic cooperation, securityguarantees, condence-building measures, functional integration, andeective arbitration mechanisms, among other things.

International organizations help foster and implement most, if notall, of these risk-reduction eorts. At the most fundamental level, theyset and reinforce basic rules and norms of responsible state behaviorthat make the world less anarchical. The UN Charter is paramount inthis regard. Increasingly, those norms and rules apply to how statesbehave internally toward their citizens. Most notably, the mandate to

protect civiliansoften referred to as the responsibility to protect(R2P) normhas gained increasing traction. From the late 1990sonward, a growing number of UN-sanctioned actions has been explic-itly mandated to protect civilians threatened by mass violence, mostrecently with regard to Libya. All UN member states adoption of theR2P provisions at the 2005 World Summit bolstered the standing of thisemerging norm, which explicitly obliges states to protect their popula-tions from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against

humanity and, moreover, calls on the international communitymeaning the UN and regional organizationsto take collective actionif states fail to do so. Over the same period, the International Crimi-nal Court (ICC), established in 1998 to indict and convict individualsof war crimes and crimes against humanity, has provided a venue forlegal enforcement of R2P. Declarative endorsements of R2P by variousregional organizations and, in the notable case of the African Union(AU), incorporation of it into its founding charter, have contributed

further to its status as an accepted global norm.

Besides these normative advances, international institutions helpfoster political cooperation and economic development that over timebring greater trust and transparency to interstate relations. In partic-ular, their mechanisms for settling disputes peacefully and the incen-tives they provide for collective over individual action have deepenedthe level of functional if not political integration to make interstatewar increasingly irrational and obsolete. The European Union (EU) isclearly the best example of how an international institution has evolved

to make war virtually unthinkable in Europe. A desire for peace andstability undoubtedly provided the prior conditions for the EUs cre-ation, but the increasingly dense set of interdependent relationships it


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engendered has reinforced the underlying imperative. The Organiza-tion of American States (OAS) has also succeeded at creating eectivelegal mechanisms and promoting norms of noninterference that havemade interstate wars rare among member states and prevented theescalation of boundary disputes.

Buttressing these eorts is the role that international institutionsplay in helping constrain the worlds most destabilizing weapon sys-tems through numerous international agreementsnotably theNuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Biological WeaponsConventionwhich by extension lessen the risk of war. These agree-

ments also require international organizations to manage and monitorcompliance.

As violent conict has become largely conned within state borders,international organizations have increasingly turned their attention toreducing the risk factors associated with weak, failing, and ultimatelyviolently unstable states. These include ineectual or corrupt politicaland nancial institutions, feeble economic performance, poor mortal-ity and health indicators, resource scarcities, and inadequate judicial

and police structures. The UN and many regional organizations, as wellas international nancial institutions such as the World Bank, Interna-tional Monetary Fund (IMF), and regional development banks, now allactively promote democratic governance, the rule of law, and sustain-able economic development to lessen the risk of civil conict withoutnecessarily labeling them conict prevention eorts. Because the IFIsare not overtly political organizations, states typically view them asless intrusive and are thus more accepting of IFI monitoring, analytical

functions, and missions.Finally, international institutions contribute in numerous waystoward tackling illicit economic activities, including the drug trade,human tracking, counterfeiting, and the extraction of conict min-erals that can also facilitate armed conict. These eorts have had ademonstrable eect in specic conict-aicted areas, if not yet globally.

C R s s PRe ve n t on

Crisis prevention initiatives are taken in anticipation that relationsbetween two states or the situation within a country could deteriorate


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dangerously and devolve into violent conict. A host of diplomatic,military, economic, and legal measures can be employed preemptivelyto remove or minimize potential triggers of a crisis or alter the deci-sion calculus of the parties to the potential conict. These can includecooperative initiatives (such as diplomatic persuasion and mediation,economic assistance and incentives, legal arbitration, and military sup-port) as well as coercive instruments (diplomatic condemnation andisolation, various economic sanctions, legal action, preventive militarydeployments, and threats of punitive action).

Such early interventions to prevent crises have traditionally not beenthe strong suit of international organizations. Generating the neces-

sary consensus for collective preventive action is hard when memberstates typically have dierent interests at stake and diering assess-ments of the likelihood of violent conict. However, as the UN andsome regional organizations have had to bear the enormous burdensassociated with postconict stabilization and reconstruction, they havequietly increased their eorts in early prevention through discreet dip-lomatic meansthat is, quiet diplomacyand other activities not typi-cally viewed as conict prevention. These preventive eorts have been

eective in several areas.

Electoral processes/political transitions: Elections and other politicaltransitions are particularly prone to producing violence, as demon-strated in places as diverse as Algeria, Burundi, Kenya, Nepal, Haiti,Sri Lanka, and, most recently, the Ivory Coast. The UN and regionalorganizations like the EU, the Organization for Security and Coop-eration in Europe (OSCE), and the OAS provide pre-electoral

technical assistance and monitoring to help facilitate violence-freeelections and to deter improprieties. Preventive eorts were report-edly successful in recent years in the Solomon Islands (2010); Leso-tho and Madagascar (2009); Ghana, Kenya, and the Maldives (2008);and Mauritania and Sierra Leone (2007). Postelection internationalendorsement of the process can enhance the winners legitimacy orlay the basis for economic or diplomatic penalties for fraudulent elec-tions. Quiet mediation by international organizations representa-tives, often in conjunction with an informal coalition of countries,

can also help dissuade civilian or military leaders from taking extra-constitutional political actions. In 2010, the UNs Oce for WestAfrica successfully encouraged military leaders in Guinea, Togo,


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and Niger to fulll their commitments to transfer power to civilianauthorities. The UN also lends its substantial experience in craftingnew constitutions during tense political transitions, as in Kyrgyzstanfollowing the ouster of its president in 2010.

Ethnic/religious rictions: International actors often work quietly todefuse tensions between dierent ethnic or religious communities orredress the grievances of specic minority groups before they eruptinto violence. A notable example has been the work of the OSCEshigh commissioner for minorities in addressing the discriminationtoward ethnic groups in eastern and central Europea historicalsource of violent unrest and secessionist pressures. Similar preven-tive eorts by the EU and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq havefocused on Kosovo and the city of Kirkuk in Iraqs Kurdish region.

Boundary/territorial disputes: International organizations have longplayed a role in arbitrating land and maritime borders disputes. In2010, the UNs International Court of Justice worked with the UNsOce for West Africa to adjudicate a tense border disputeexac-erbated by the discovery of oil depositsinvolving Cameroon andNigeria. The UNs Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy forCentral Asia has achieved success in resolving water rights issues inthe region. Likewise, the OAS successfully mediated a border disputebetween Belize and Guatemala, while the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN) has served as a broker and observer for thelong-standing border conict between Cambodia and Thailand.With increasing pressure on resources and newly accessible areasopening to exploitation, preventive boundary/territorial dispute res-olution will assume greater importance.

Resource/ood scarcities: International organizations are becomingbetter at anticipating how certain shocks such as price spikes, foodshortages, or natural disasters can trigger political unrest and vio-lence. Both the World Bank and the IMF have recently taken impor-tant steps to stem these developments through such initiatives ascontingent emergency loans and exible credit lines. The UNsWorld Food Program created and operates the Inter-Agency Stand-ing Committee on Humanitarian Early Warning Service, which pro-

vides easily accessible humanitarian early warnings and forecasts forthe natural hazards that often precede food shortages.


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Special investigations: The UN and some regional organizations areincreasingly conducting special investigations of potentially desta-bilizing events in countries where the capacity or impartiality of thegovernment is questioned. Recent examples include the UN inves-tigation into the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime ministerRak Hariri, a joint UNEconomic Community of West AfricanStates (ECOWAS) fact-nding inquiry into the deaths of Ghanaianmigrants in Gambia in 2007, an investigation of human rights vio-lations at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, and an inde-pendent panel of inquiry into the Israeli raid on the otilla of shipscarrying aid to Gaza in 2010.

ConlCt M tgaton

Should earlier preventive eorts fail to have the desired eect or vio-lence erupt with little or no warning, many of the same basic measuresand techniques can be employed to manage and mitigate the crisis.These include eorts targeted at the parties to a conict to facilitate

cooperative dispute resolution and change their incentive structuresto promote peaceful outcomes. Thus steps can be taken to identify andempower moderates, isolate or deter potential spoilers, and swaythe uncommitted. More interventionist measures to protect endan-gered groups or secure sensitive areas through such tactics as observermissions, arms embargoes (or arms supplies), and preventive militaryor police deployments are also conceivable. Of potential equal impor-tance in some circumstances, moreover, are the preventive initiatives to

help contain a relatively localized crisis or ash point to help ensure theconict does not either spread or draw in others. Indeed, containmentmay realistically be the only crisis mitigation option.

The UN and regional organizations have on many occasions carriedout conict mitigation eorts. Being generally perceived as impartialor neutral actors certainly helps in allowing them to broker negotiatedcompromises, oer their good oces, and serve as third-party medi-ators and arbitrators. And, given the collective inuence of their mem-bership, international organizations have advantages in threatening

and imposing coercive measures such as economic sanctions, travelrestrictions, and arms embargoes. They also have the added benet of


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being able to legitimize such actions, something individual states andeven informal coalitions have diculty doing. This is not to suggest,however, that international conict mitigation eorts are uncontro-versial and straightforward. At the UN Security Council, the veto-wielding ve permanent (P5) members eectively determine whichconicts the organization focuses on; not surprisingly, these typicallyinvolve small and medium-sized powers. The same is true of intrastateconicts; cases internal to or involving one of the P5 are generally olimits. A similar dynamic plays out within the principal regional peaceand security organizations, though as the capacities of these organiza-tions grow they are becoming more apt to ll the vacuum created by P5

disagreements.


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13

un ted natons

As the only international organization with a global mandate to pre-vent and resolve armed conict, the UN has the most established set ofarrangements, deployable assets, and qualied personnel for this pur-pose. Since the early 1990s, these capacities have expanded, albeit in ahalting fashion, despite member states reservations about enabling anintrusive UN apparatus. The resulting assortment of informal work-around arrangements is neither ideal nor ecient, but as one 2010ocial report concluded, the UN system does not lack relevant infor-

mation, and substantial progress has been made over the past decadein enhancing United Nations early warning capacities.

Ongoing eorts to make use of this early-warning information aredriven by the UNs Department of Political Aairs (DPA), which pro-duces analytical reports and brieng notes warning of incipient crisesfor its directorthe undersecretary-general for political aairsandtransmits information to the UNs Executive Committee on Peaceand Security. The undersecretary-general also participates in the

secretary-generals policy committee, a cabinet-style decision-makingmechanism that provides strategic guidance to the secretariat. Inaddition, the undersecretary-general can report warnings of potentialconict directly to the secretary-general, who can raise matters infor-mally with Security Council members at monthly working lunches, orformally through the councils scheduled work program.

DPA works closely with the UN Development Program, and in par-ticular its Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery, to manage the UNsinformal interagency coordination mechanismthe UN Framework

for Coordination on Preventive Action (i.e., the Framework Team).Both departments, moreover, are increasingly engaged in early, on-the-ground prevention eorts through their missions overseas. DPA,

Global Overview of thePrincipal International Institutions


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in particular, has recently become more operational, with thirteen eldmissions around the world engaged in a variety of activities involvingelectoral assistance, facilitated dialogues through their good oces,and quiet mediation eorts. In the event of a serious and unexpectedcrisis, both departments have a modest capacity to bolster existingmissions or send ocials on new assignments. In 2006, DPA createdits small Mediation Support Unit of experts and augmented this withits Mediation Standby Team that has been deployed at short notice tobackstop specic negotiations. Funding these eorts remains a peren-nial problem, however, and DPA remains under-resourced, given itsexpanding mandate. More specically, the UNs capacity to support

unanticipated missions remains a serious problem and relies principallyon ad hoc donations from individual countries.

Besides these essentially political capacities, the UN can also autho-rize the deployment of military forces for preventive (as distinct frompeacekeeping) missions. It has done so only once, however, with theUN Preventive Deployment Force to the former Yugoslav Republic ofMacedonia from 1992 to 1999 to deter spillover from the conicts inBosnia and Kosovo. Though a useful precedent, a rare conjunction of

circumstancesP5 unanimity, the acquiescence of a small host coun-try, and the availability of UN forces nearbymade this possible.Whatever limited capacity the UN had to deploy forces quickly ended,moreover, with the termination of its Standby High-Readiness Brigadein 2009.

euRoPe

Among regional organizations, the capacity for preventive action varieswidely. Europe, which has the EU, the OSCE, and NATO, possesses themost extensiveindeed redundantset of multilateral capacities. Ofthe three, the OSCE has the most inclusive membership, with fty-sixstates spanning a region from Vancouver to Vladivostok. In additionto monitoring conventional force levels and activities among memberstates, the OSCE helps democratic institution building, promotes andsafeguards minority rights, monitors elections, helps secure sensitive

borders, and assists with security-sector reforms.As an instrument for crisis prevention and crisis management,

however, the OSCE has signicant structural deciencies that have


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15Global Overview of the Principal International Institutions

hindered it from playing a signicant role despite its declared inten-tions and array of diplomatic mechanisms. In particular, the need forunanimity among member states has stymied rapid collective action onsensitive matters, as during the August 2008 crisis in Georgia, whereRussia eectively blocked the OSCE from playing an active role, and inthe delayed response to deadly ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan inJuly 2010. Recommendations amending the organizations decision-making rules to allow for greater initiative by senior ocials in crisiscircumstances were rejected at the most recent OSCE summit.

Unlike the OSCE, the EUs conict prevention role extends beyondits member states and has become one of the central goals of its externally

directed Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Since adopt-ing the Program on the Prevention of Violent Conict by the EuropeanCouncil in Gteborg in 2001,the EU has established a variety of specialinitiatives and institutional mechanisms for this purpose. These rangefrom foreign assistance programs intended to reduce the underlyingrisk of conict through economic development and institution buildingin specic countries, particularly in Africa, to the Instrument for Sta-bility, a short-term emergency assistance program for states in crisis.

The EU also maintains its own watchlist of countries at risk of violentconict. Following the adoption of the European Security and DefensePolicy (ESDP) in 2003, its capacity to deploy political and military mis-sions for crisis management purposes has steadily grown. To datethere have been twenty-four crisis management operations, with thir-teen ongoing as of June 2011. These include police missions in Bosniaand Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Palestinian territories, and Afghanistan;rule of law missions in Kosovo and Iraq; and a monitoring mission in

Georgia.

All are led by EU special representatives who can be dou-ble-hatted to oversee both military and diplomatic missions.Reforms introduced by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty are designed, in

theory, to improve the EUs crisis responsiveness and institutionalexibility. The fragmented responses to the democratic uprisingsin North Africa and the Middle East demonstrated, however, thatmember states will act faster and sometimes at odds with the consen-sus positions agreed to by the EU in Brussels. A new position, the highrepresentative for foreign and security policy (who also serves as vice

president of the commission), has been created, and parts of the com-mission and council secretariat have been amalgamated to form theEuropean External Action Service. The Lisbon Treaty provides the


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high representative with considerable latitude to initiate foreign policyproposals, set the agenda of important EU bodies, including the For-eign Aairs Council (which he or she will chair), and convoke extraor-dinary meetings [of the EUs council] on emergency matters. TheLisbon Treaty establishes new procedures to provide rapid access tothe EU budget and create a start-up fund of member state contributionsoutside the EU budget. Both procedures can nance urgent initiativesunder the CFSP and, in particular, preparatory activities for ESDP mis-sions. Decisions can be made by qualied majority voting, with the highrepresentative authorized to disperse the funds.

In parallel with the development of a civilian expeditionary capabil-

ity, the EU has also developed rapidly deployable military forces. Twobattle groups are theoretically capable of deployment on ve to tendays notice for conict prevention missions (preventive deployments,embargoes, counterproliferation, and joint disarmament operations).To date, three wholly military ESDP missions have been deployed:Operation Artemis to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2003,Operation Concordia to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2003, and EUFORChad/Central African Republic, which lasted from October 2007 until

it was supplanted by a UN mission in March 2009.

latn aMeRCa

The Organization of American States has made important stridestoward playing a more active preventive role, even though its char-ter does not formally mandate it to do so. Its principal contributions

to regional peace and stability relate to the promotion of democraticprinciples (through the Inter-American Democratic Charter and theResolution 1080 mechanism that allows for violators to be condemnedand isolated) and human rights (primarily through the Inter-AmericanCommission on Human Rights that regularly issues reports of abuses).Both activities exert a powerful normative inuence throughout aregion long blighted with coups and other extra-constitutional crises.Moreover, after being moribund for most of the Cold War, the OASsvarious international dispute settlement mechanisms (principally the

secretary-generals good oces and use of special missions) havealso successfully mediated territorial disputes involving Guatemala andBelize, Honduras and Nicaragua, and Guyana and Suriname.


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OAS members, however, remain protective of the principle of non-intervention in internal disputes without host nation consent. Notsurprisingly, therefore, OAS ocials have been ambivalent to supportnorms like R2P and, at times, even the concept of conict prevention,preferring instead the more consensual-sounding term peacebuilding.Its role in managing various ongoing internal conicts in Latin Americahas consequently been relatively modest. Currently, the OAS has someanalytical capabilities to warn of both internal instability and interstatedisputes, but unless a member state appeals to the OAS PermanentCouncil and there is consensus to act, such warnings go unheeded.Even when the will to act exists, the OASs resources for mediation

missions are limited. Should peaceful preventive measures fail, theOAS has no deployable military or police forces within the region,though member states contribute to UN peacekeeping and specialpolitical missions. How the OAS evolves to ll some of these gaps willalso depend on the development of a rival regional organizationtheUnion of South American Nationsthat excludes the United States.Some members see this organization as becoming the premier politi-cal mechanism to resolve disputes, as demonstrated during the 2010

Colombian-Venezuelan crisis.

asa

The principal regional organization in Asia, the ASEAN, adheres tothe same core principles as the OAS with regard to noninterventionand consensus-based decision-making. These principles are enshrined

in the organizations Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and the 2008ASEAN Charter, which commits signatories to settle their disputespeacefully, including refraining from threats to use force. Unlike theOAS, however, ASEAN has done little to promote or uphold othernormative principles conducive to stable peace, notably democraticgovernance and human rights. It has no electoral assistance or moni-toring capabilities and few dispute resolution mechanisms or dedicatedresources to facilitate mediation. The ASEAN Charter allows dispu-tants to request the chair or secretary-general to act in an ex ocio

capacity, to provide good oces, conciliation or mediation. The cur-rent secretary-general has also tried to set a precedent by oering hisservices as a mediator, but so far he has been rebued. In particular, the


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secretary-general has made repeated, unsuccessful eorts in the pastthree years to resolve the Thai-Cambodian border dispute that eruptedin June 2008. Plans to develop a rudimentary conict early-warningsystem as part of an expanded operational role for the secretary-generaland the ASEAN Secretariat may never happen.

Elsewhere in Asia, the situation is even less developed. The SouthAsia Association for Regional Cooperation has no pretensions of play-ing a conict prevention role other than by providing a regular venue forstate leaders in the subcontinent to discuss their dierences. The sameis true for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of central Asianstates, though it is more security oriented in promoting cooperation on

counterterrorism, border security, and even collective military action.As for Northeast Asia, no dedicated subregional organization exists,nor does one look likely anytime soon.

the M ddle e ast

Preventive eorts in the Middle East remain impoverished. Other

than its rhetorical commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes,some capacity for mediation, and a venue for dialogue among lead-ers in the Middle East, the Arab League plays virtually no signicantrole. Indeed, the leagues well-known March 2011 resolution on Libyarequested that the UN Security Council fulll its responsibilities,but made no requirements of its own member states to attempt toresolve the conict in Libya. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)has historically been used only for functional collaboration that indi-

rectly beneted regional stability.

However, in May 2011, the GCCmade repeated, though ultimately unsuccessful, eorts to mediate anagreement between Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and opposi-tion leaders, which would have granted Saleh immunity from prosecu-tion had he left oce within thirty days.

AfricA

In Africathe most conict-prone region in the worldinstitutional

development has improved markedly in recent years, although it fallsshort in important areas. In addition to the continent-wide AU, mul-tiple subregional organizationsnotably ECOWAS, the South Africa


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Development Community, the Inter-Governmental Authority onDevelopment, and the Economic Community of Central AfricanStateshave all committed themselves to the goal of conict preven-tion and initiated related programs. The African Union has increasinglyemphasized norms that actively promote peace and stability in Africa.Whereas the AUs predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, wasfounded on principles of mutual noninterference amid African statesnewly independent of colonialism, the AU began a transition of non-indierence toward humanitarian disasters and violent conict withinthe territory of member states. Recognizing the ongoing scourge ofarmed violence, the AU assumed a leadership role in addressing con-

icts in its own neighborhood. The Constitutive Act of the AfricanUnion expresses respect for borders and sovereignty and upholds non-interference by any Member State in the internal aairs of another. Italso arms the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pur-suant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances,namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity as well asthe right of Member States to request intervention from the Union inorder to restore peace and security.

The AU has also strongly endorsed the norm against unconstitu-tional political change in Africa, even permitting its Peace and Secu-rity Council the right to call on members to impose sanctions. Todate, the AU has called for sanctions three times. First, in May 2009,the AU sanctioned Eritrea for its assistance to Islamic militants ghtingto overthrow the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia, whichcaused Eritrea to withdraw from the AU. Second, in October 2009, theAU sanctioned the military junta that took power in a coup in Guinea.

Finally, the AU barred the Ivory Coast from participating in the organi-zation from December 2010 until April 2011, during an internal powerstruggle when then president Laurent Gbagbo refused to step downafter losing an election. Acting independently, or in conjunction withthe AU, several African subregional organizations can also imposesanctions, with ECOWAS consistently being the most aggressive atdoing so.

To buttress the AUs overall conict prevention goals, various insti-tutional capacities are being developed. The Continental Early Warning

System was created in 2002 to report potential threats to the chairper-son of the Commission of the AU, and in turn the organizations Peaceand Security Council so that it can recommend timely action. The


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leading subregional organizations have also begun developing conictearly-warning systems of varying degrees of eectiveness. The AUhas two primary dispute resolution mechanisms for conict risk reduc-tion and crisis mitigation. The rst is the Panel of the Wise, consistingof ve respected African personalitiesone from each subregionalorganizationwith a broad mandate to advise and support the Peaceand Security Council and chairperson of the commission. The panelhas undertaken ve fact-nding and mediations missions, includingplaying an active role in the successful mission in Kenya in 2008. Thesecond are ad hoc high-level groups that have a poor track record withfailed missions in Darfur in 2009 and Libya in 2011.

Finally, in 2003 the AU endorsed the concept of the African StandbyForce to conduct a range of military missions, including observationand monitoring . . . peace support . . . intervention in a Member State inrespect of grave circumstances [and] preventive deployment, whenmandated by the Peace and Security Council within the frameworkof the UN Charter. The Standby Force aspires to include ve mul-tidisciplinary brigadesone provided by each African subregionalorganizationand be able to deploy anywhere on the continent

within thirty days for peacekeeping missions, ninety days for com-plex peacekeeping operations, and fourteen days for interventions ingenocide situations where the international community does not actpromptly.

Although these considerable strides toward operationalizing pre-ventive action in Africa should be lauded, their practical eect hasbeen minimal. Even with the principle of non-indierence to politicalinstability and violent conict within member states enshrined in the

AUs constitutive act, member states have not embraced R2P, a stancethat will likely harden in light of the Libya intervention. Moreover, theAUs ability to implement its peace and security norms is hamperedby the dynamics of the organization that operate by consensus. SomeAfrican leaders pay lip service to AU principles while actively blockingthe more interventionist inclinations of others. Meanwhile, the newcapacity-building initiatives are struggling to gain traction. The under-resourced Panel of the Wise is often ignored by the commission or thePeace and Security Council. In light of its low prole and competing

bodiessuch as the AU high-level groups and the Nelson Mandelaconvened Eldersthere is deep concern within the AU that the panelwill become irrelevant.


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Similarly, the AUs Military Sta Committee, which was estab-lished to manage and implement the goals set for the Standby Force,has made some initial steps in developing a common doctrine andguidelines for training and evaluation, but it has limited institutionalcapacity to do strategic planning, deploy soldiers, and conduct peace-keeping operations. Most important, the Standby Force requires out-side funding as well as airlift and ground transport equipment for anycrisis management situation. Furthermore, the development of theve African subregional brigades is progressing at an uneven pace,with the ECOWAS Standby Force showing the most promise. Thus,the Standby Force failed to meet its goal of being operational by June

2010, and it now aims to have rapid deployable capability by 2012and full operational capability by 2015. Because the Standby Forcecannot yet deploy as a unit, AU member states provide the vast major-ity of the twenty-three thousand peacekeepers and police ocers sup-porting the joint AU/UN hybrid operation in Darfur and commandthe ten thousand African soldiers and police deployed in support ofthe AU Mission in Somalia.


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22

Formal international institutions provide important benets to theUnited States as it seeks to avoid the most serious risks associated

with regional instability and conict. The Obama administration hasrepeatedly underscored the imperatives of international cooperationand taken important steps to become a more active player in multilat-eral organizations, especially in the United Nations. However, if theUnited States is to harness the benets of international cooperationfor addressing its conict prevention priorities, it must do so morestrategically and systematically. In short, the United States must under-take a deliberate eort to enhance the global architecture for preven-

tive action. Architecture in this sense refers to the institutions, regimes,operating procedures, and capacities of the numerous internationalorganizations described above. The United States should pursue thisgoal in the three broad areas of preventive actionconict risk reduc-tion, crisis prevention, and conict mitigationrecognizing that theycan overlap and, more important, act in mutually reinforcing ways.

gl obal R sk Re duC t on n t at ve s

The United States must continue to buttress the essential principles ofworld order enshrined in the UN Charter while supporting other emerg-ing norms that regulate the use of force. The proscription of interstateaggression for territorial aggrandizement is universally accepted, butthe parameters of permissible acts of anticipatory self-defense remainindistinct and may become more contested as states feel pressured torespond preemptively to emerging security threats that pose unaccept-

ably high risks to the livelihoods of their citizens. Such pressures arealready evident from several (overt and covert) counterproliferation andcounterterrorism operations that have been carried out in recent years.

Recommendations for U.S. Policy


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23Recommendations for U.S. Policy

It is not hard to imagine how the imperatives to act against suchthreats will grow in the future with the global diusion of deadly tech-nologies, particularly to nonstate actors. Similar pressures to use forceor intervene militarily could also conceivably grow in the face of otherthreats that stem from mass migration, the outbreak of deadly pan-demics, and irresponsible environmental behavior. Dening preciselywhen anticipatory self-defense is permissible is beyond clear legal for-mulation; attempts to do so may have the unintended consequenceof weakening existing charter-based rules. But just as the legality andlegitimacy of humanitarian intervention has grown through the pro-gressive endorsement of state behavior for this purpose, basic princi-

ples governing anticipatory self-defenseparticularly as they relate tonecessity and proportionalitymay become acceptable in the future.Waiting for events to drive this process is risky, however, and thus theUnited States should quietly encourage debate in multilateral forumsabout how to reconcile the growing imperatives to act preemptivelywhile maintaining the core foundations of international order.

Eorts to constrain the abuse of force by states within their terri-tories has clearly advanced through miscellaneous international legal

instruments that hold their leaders accountable and, more gener-ally, through progressive UN actions in support of the R2P principle,including most overtly in Libya. Many statesincluding powerfulonesare clearly uncomfortable with the invocation of R2P principlesin light of its justication for coercive humanitarian intervention inLibya. The United States should endorse a narrower concept of R2Pthan was applied in Libya and put greater emphasis on earlier nonmili-tary preventive action to avoid later, more costly military interventions

that inevitably roil international relations among the great powers.

Insupport of this, the United States should provide voluntary contribu-tions to enhance the analytical and response capacity of the joint specialadviser for the prevention of genocide/R2P oce, which has providedearly and accurate warnings of sources of violent conict. At the sametime, the United States should consider joining the ICC and expand itsdiplomatic and informational support to it. In the near term, the Obamaadministration should push to overturn the 2001 law that prohibits pro-viding material assistance to the ICC.

Just as important as reducing the overall risk of conict is promot-ing the normative basis of democracy, good governance, and economicfreedom. The empirical evidence linking progress in these areas to


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peaceful relations between and within states is irrefutable. Robustmultilateral institutions strengthen such norms through declarationsand resolutions that provide legitimacy and encouragement to domes-tic civil society groups, as well as through the naming and shaming oftransgressors that can become the basis for punitive action. Though thework of some international bodies, like the UN Human Rights Council,has at times been a sham, persistent engagement by the United Statesin relevant forums is preferable to walking away because it has allowedthe United States to inuence proceedings and improve matters fromthe inside. The UNs universal membership and corresponding broadlegitimacy make it a particularly important instrument in the mainte-

nance and evolution of desirable global norms. Yet the composition ofthe UNs governing corethe Security Councilno longer equitablyreects the distribution of power in the world today and will be increas-ingly viewed as illegitimate. The United States must work to reform theSecurity Councilboth its membership and its operation rulestoensure that it remains relevant and representative. Other global institu-tions that play a similar if more indirect role, such as the major IFIs, facea similar challenge. They too must be reformed or risk irrelevance.

Beyond eorts to strengthen normative principles, the UnitedStates should also endeavor to reinforce multilateral arrangementsgoverning use of the so-called global commonsareas beyond sover-eign jurisdiction such as the oceans, outer space, cyberspace, and thepolar regionswhere the risk of international competition is likely togrow in the coming decades as a result of climate change, technologicaladvances that make these areas more accessible, and growing commer-cial pressures to exploit them.

gl obal C R s s PRe ve n t on n t at ve s

The United States should encourage and support the growing involve-ment of multilateral organizations in anticipating and forestallingsources of instability and conict before they erupt. This approachhas been evident in the work of the OECDs Development AssistanceCommittee, as well as within the leading IFIs as they increasingly make

their guidance and assistance programming more sensitive to such dan-gers. The World Banks 2011 World Development Report argues thatthis reorientation must go further and lays out a comprehensive set of


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recommendations for refocusing assistance to be more responsive incrisis situations. Using its inuence within the bank, the United Statesshould support this and similar eorts at the IMF.

Closer U.S.-EU coordination of conict preventionrelated for-eign assistance should also be pursued. The United States and theEU provide a huge proportion of OECD development aid yet do notadequately coordinate programs with respect to the specic goal ofcrisis prevention. The annual U.S.-EU summit is a logical opportunityto take collective stock of such short-term assistance needs that canthen be pursued through the existing U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) mission to the EU and the EU delegation to

the United States. Similar initiatives to avoid duplication or workingat cross-purposes should be pursued with donors at other multilateralorganizations as well.

Another objective should be to improve cooperation between theUnited States and the UN. First, the United States should help the UNand leading regional institutions carry out early warning and analysisof instability and potential armed conicts. The United States has themost comprehensive intelligence collection and analysis system in the

world. Using only open-source intelligence, the U.S. intelligence com-munity should collaboratein particular with the EUin producingassessments of areas of potential instability to prioritize policymakersnear-term contingency planning. In addition, the State DepartmentsBureau of Intelligence and Research Humanitarian Information Unitshould share its open-source conict maps and socioeconomic report-ing with early-warning units at the OSCE, AU, and OAS. Finally,despite calls for greater UNregional organization cooperation, early-

warning stas at the UN and within these organizations note that thereis no formal sharing of information, even for joint political or peace-keeping missions. Where possible, the United States should fund link-ages in collecting information and sharing early-warning analyses.

On a diplomatic level, the United States should continue to increaseits representation at major regional organizations, specically in theAU and African regional economic communities. It was only in 2009and 2011, respectively, that the State Department sent its rst residentambassadors to the AU and ASEAN. Only through presence within

the secretariats of these organizations can the United States appreci-ate their concerns, inuence day-to-day activities, and help shape workplans. It is also much easier to respond in a timely manner when more


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substantial diplomatic, humanitarian, and even military support isrequired.

Finally, and most important, the United States should increase itsnancial assistance to the UN and regional organizations for activitiesthat help avert conict. The United States already provides signicantsupport to international organizations, funding 22 percent of the UNand 60 percent of the OAS regular budgets. Regular budgets, however,are hostage to maintaining the existing and underperforming infra-structure of most organizations. Small voluntary contributions, how-ever, can support specic preventive programssuch as the $2 millionthat created the UNs special representative on sexual violence and con-

ict in 2010and come with more rigorous oversight. Congress shouldprovide voluntary funding on a competitive basis to international orga-nizations through the State Departments international aairs budget.A competitive pool of $50 million to $100 million would have a directand immediate impact on enhancing preventive capacity within eachof the organizations described earlier. Metrics for assessing voluntaryfunding should include the absorptive capacity of the organization toeectively utilize it and the prioritization scheme also described. The

competitive bidding system utilized by the independent and broadlypopular Millennium Challenge Corporation is one model.

An obvious candidate for targeted voluntary contributions is theconict prevention work of the Department of Political Aairs at theUN. Its request for greater funding between 2011 and 2013 is modest,but it could yield high returns for the United States. Similar eortsto support electoral assistance programs at the UN and major regionalorganizations fall into the same category.

gl obal C on l C t M t gat on n t at ve s

The United States can contribute to the international mitigation ofconict in two ways: by enhancing relevant organizations capacityto respond promptly to crises and by providing timely operationalsupport to these organizations during crises. With regard to the rstcategory of initiatives, the United States should help the UN (princi-

pally DPA) and regional organizations improve their ability to aug-ment eld missions or mount new operations (fact-nding missions,commissions of inquiry, mediation support) at short notice. This can


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be achieved through targeted voluntary contributions of the kind out-lined earlier.

Although authorization for deployments of military and policeforces during crises remains challenging, the Libyan intervention dem-onstrates that it remains a viable preventive option. Moreover, the pres-sure to use force preventively with international sanctions could growas norms evolve. Rather than openly enhance the international capac-ity for such missions, which would meet international resistance, theUnited States should instead continue to augment more traditionalpeacekeeping capacity that by nature can be easily used in a preven-tive context. Various programs already exist to do this but more can be

reoriented, particularly toward training and equipping. Just by releas-ing nonlethal Pentagon stockpiles, the United States could ll criticalequipment needs for armored personnel carriers, utility helicopters,and aerial reconnaissance, which have been missing from the UN/AUmission in Darfur for ve years. Again, greater cooperation with theEU and NATO on this issue should be pursued.

With regard to the second category of assistance, the United Statesshould enhance its readiness to contribute support in emergency situ-

ations. Congress should authorize the Obama administrations pro-posed $50 million Global Security Contingency Fund, which wouldbe operated by a joint State Department, USAID, and Department ofDefense sta, to disburse rapid security assistance funding in the faceof unforeseen emergent challenges. The U.S. intelligence communityshould also increase the intelligence it shares with the UN regardingthreats to deployed peacekeepers and sta. UN Department of Peace-keeping Operations (DPKO) ocials have noted that such threat intel-

ligence was too late, too vague, and too ad-hoc for adequate warning.There needs to be an institutionalized U.S.-DPKO mechanism forsharing more descriptive intelligence at an earlier stage. One possibilityis for the director of national intelligence to designate a U.S. militaryocial, who is presently seconded to serve at the UN, as the conduit forintelligence sharing with DPKO.


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28

These various recommendations to enhance the architecture of formalinternational institutions for preventive action represent an ambitious

agenda. As such, they cannot possibly be accomplished quickly. A sus-tained commitment will therefore be necessary to achieve the antici-pated benets. This will not be easy, given the prevailing doubts aboutthe role of many international organizations that will likely grow moreacute as Washington looks to tighten its belt. Overcoming this skepti-cism will require continued advocacy at the highest levels of the U.S.government. It will also require similar commitments from other lead-ing players in the international community in order to avoid percep-

tions that the United States bears this burden alone. While dicult, itis important that the Obama administration and Congress adopt theserecommendations to avoid further commitment of military forces,nancial and humanitarian aid, and diplomatic attention to violent con-ict and instability in regions that directly aect U.S. interests but arerarely eectively resolved.

Conclusion


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29

. Paul B. Stares and Micah Zenko, Enhancing U.S. Preventive Action (New York: Councilon Foreign Relations Press, 2009).

. For denitions of these three categories, see Enhancing U.S. Preventive Action, pp. 78.. Ian Johnstone, Normative Evolution at the UN: Impact of Operational Activities, inBruce D. Jones, Shepherd Forman, and Richard Gowan, eds., Cooperating or Peaceand Security: Evolving Institutions and Arrangement in the Context o Changing U.S.Security Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 202.

. For an assessment of the R2P norm see Matthew C. Waxman, Intervention to StopGenocide and Mass Atrocities (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2009),pp. 1011.

. Johnstone, Normative Evolution at the UN: Impact of Operational Activities, pp.19395.

. See Congressional Research Service Memorandum to Senate Foreign Relations

Committee, Peacebuilding Background and Questions, May 27, 2010, p. 11.. See United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Elections and Conict Prevention:

A Guide to Analysis, Planning and Programming, http://www.undp.org/publications/Elections_and_Conict_Prevention.pdf.

. Interviews with UN Department of Political Aairs/UNDP ocials.. Michle Grin, Rapid Political Response: A View from Turtle Bay, working paper,

Stanley Foundation Strategy for Peace Conference, October 1517, 2009.. For an assessment of UN early-warning capacities, see Micah Zenko and Rebecca R.

Friedman, UN Early Warning for Preventing Conict, International Peacekeeping,vol. 18, no. 1, February 2011.

. UNGA, Report of the Secretary-General: Early warning, assessment and the respon-

sibility to protect, July 14, 2010, p. 4. The UN also established a special adviser forthe prevention of genocide with responsibilities to warn the public of impending massatrocities and convene an urgent meeting of key undersecretaries-general to identifya range of multilateral policy options.

. See UNGA, Prevention of armed conict: Report of the Secretary-General, June 7,2001.

. UN Department of Political Aairs, Policy Coordination: The Executive Committeeon Peace and Security; Rama Mani, Peaceful Settlement of Disputes and ConictPrevention, in Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws, eds., The Oxord Handbook(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 315; UN, In Larger Freedom: TowardsDevelopment, Security and Human Rights for All, Report of the Secretary-General,

March 21, 2005, p. 47.. The Framework Team consists of representatives from twenty-two agencies and

departmentsthough only ve or six are active participants. It meets in plenary threeor four times a year and convenes expert reference group meetings twice a month todiscuss countries or thematic issues.

Endnotes


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30 Endnotes

. See Theresa Whiteld, New Arrangements for Peace Negotiation, in Bruce D.Jones, Shepard Forman, and Richard Gowan, eds., Cooperating or Peace and Security(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 22746.

. The OSCE has no institutionalized conict risk assessment/watch list system becauseit has no mandate to monitor events either within or beyond the territorial limits ofits member states. The seven-person OSCE Situation/Communications Room in theConict Prevention Center in Vienna produces a twice-daily compilation of open-source reports and internal communications from OSCE eld missions for seniorocials. These are also shared with the EU and NATO SITCENs under a reciprocalarrangement. The Situation/Communications Room has also developed an SMS-based system to warn senior ocials of breaking news. Similarly, the OSCE has noauthority to carry out contingency planning for potential missions. The OSCE hasinstitutional mechanisms to respond to emergency conict-related situations andresolve them peacefully, including the Berlin Mechanism, whereby states are obliged

to provide information within forty-eight hours following a request from anothermember for clarication of an evolving situation; the Valletta Mechanism, which laysout procedures for the peaceful resolution of disputes; and the OSCE Convention onConciliation and Arbitration. Only the Berlin Mechanism has been implemented.OSCE Secretariat, Summary of OSCE Mechanisms and Procedures, June 2008.

. In response to rising tensions in Georgia, a group of OSCE ambassadors weredispatched to Georgia in July on a fact-nding mission. Once hostilities erupted, thechairman-in-oce (the OSCEs most senior permanent ocial) engaged in personalshuttle diplomacy in the region and an additional twenty military monitoring ocers(out of eighty authorized) were sent within days to bolster the OSCE mission inGeorgia. Russia, however, vetoed continuation of the mission in December 2008. See

Statement by OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin De Brichambaut at the SixteenthOSCE Ministerial Council meeting, Helsinki, December 4, 2008.

. See After the Astana Summit: More Questions than Answers, Policy Brief No. 9,Center for Strategic and International Studies and Institute for New Democracies,December 17, 2010.

. Reinhardt Rummel, The EUs Involvement in Conict PreventionStrategy andPractice, in Jan Wouters and Vincent Kronnenberger, eds., Conict Prevention: Is theEuropean Union Ready? (Brussels: TMC Asser Press, 2004); and Emma J. Stewart, TheEuropean Union and Conict Prevention, Kiel Peace Research Series, vol. 12, 2006.

. EU Programme on the Prevention of Violent Conict, 2001. This states that the Euro-pean Union through this programme underlines its political commitment to pursueconict prevention as one of the main objectives of the EUs external relations. Itdistinguishes between long-term structural prevention to reduce the risk of insta-bility and conict in weak and fragile statesprincipally through foreign assistanceprogramsand short-term preventive diplomacy to manage crises and halt theoutbreak of conict. The EUs 2008 annual report on its conict prevention activitiesfurther distinguishes systemic prevention measures to reduce the risk of instabil-ity through global regulatory regimes aecting, among other things, the exploitationof natural resources, climate change, organized crime, weapons of mass destruction(WMD) proliferation, and the transfer of small arms and light weapons.

. European Commission, Annual Report rom the European Commission on the Instru-

ment or Stability in 2009, September 28, 2010. The amount of funds disbursed for crisisresponse as part of the IfS budget has increased from 93 million in 2007 to 132 mil-lion in 2009. The IfS also has a long-term component focused primarily on counteringWMD, proliferation, terrorism, and a pre-crisis and post-crisis capacity-buildingcomponent.


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31Endnotes

. The watch list is created using a combination of quantitative and qualitative method-ologies with inputs from DG-Relex as well as the EUs Joint Situation Center, whichmonitors day-to-day events around the world, and the Intelligence Division of the EUs

Military Sta (EUMS), which is tasked with assessing current and emerging areas ofinstability. Information for the watch list and other related assessments comes frommultiple sources: intelligence inputs from member states, reports for EU delegations,EU special representatives in the eld, and also the European Satellite Center. As aresult of partnership agreements, the EU also exchanges information with the UN andOSCE and other international bodies. NATO, however, reportedly contributes littleof value to the EU SITCEN, which is the source of some frustration. Major GeneralJoo Nuno Jorge Vaz Antunes, Developing an Intelligence Capability,Studies in Intel-ligence, vol. 49, no. 4, 2005, pp. 6570.

. EU Common Security and Defence Policy, Overview of the Mission and Operationsof the European Union, March 2011, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/eeas/security-

defence/eu-operations.aspx?lang=en.. For more details, see European Common Security and Defence Policy, The Civilian

Aspects of Crisis Management, EU Council Secretariat, August 2009.. Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing

the European Community, Lisbon, December 13, 2007.. See A More Coherent and Eective European Foreign Policy? A Report o the UK

Federal Trust or Education and Research, February 2009, pp. 1213.. Since adopting the Petersberg Tasks in 1992, the EU has expanded the spectrum of

missions it has collectively committed to perform using military means if necessary.The Lisbon Treaty further renes these tasks to include joint disarmament operations. . . military advice and assistance tasks . . . conict prevention and peace-keeping tasks

. . . peace-making and post-conict stabilisation and also to contribute to combatingterrorism by supporting third countries . . . in their territories (article 28B, paragraph1). Responsibility for maintaining these national and multinational constituted battlegroups are rotated every six months within the EU. See EU Factsheet at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/Battlegroups.pdf.

. OAS, IACHR Annual Report 2008, Chapter III: The Petition and Case System,2009. The IACHR also maintains eight rapporteurs for thematic issues, who publishwarnings of violations within OAS member states. In addition, the commission canrefer cases to the autonomous Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which hasissued far-reaching provisional measures for action by member states, including incases of extreme gravity and urgency. See OAS, American Convention, Article 63(2).

. The OAS has two early-warning and assessment units within its Secretariat of PoliticalAairs Department of Sustainable Democracy and Special Missions (DSDME).Developed in 2006, the rst provides intrastate warning for countries at risk ofpolitical crisis. A small unit of analysts collects information and produces reportsbased on twenty political, social, and economic indicators, or accelerators, for eachcountry. In addition to collecting data on these indicators, the unit holds informalDelphi groups, or focus groups, in countries of concern with academics, corporateexecutives, and members of the media and civil society. The main intrastate warningproducts created are weekly and monthly reports, as well as biannual country-specicreports. A second and separate early-warning unit within DSDME covers potential

interstate conicts. Reporting from both units is shared only with the director forDSDME, the Secretariat of Political Aairs, and the secretary-general. Warnings ofpotential intrastate or interstate conicts do not trigger contingency planning or otherspecic preventive activities. Interviews with OAS sta; and Andres Serbin, TheOrganization of American States, the United Nations Organization, Civil Society,


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and Conict Prevention, Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Econmicas ySociales, March 2009. There is a mandated dispute resolution mechanism used duringcrises through the Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Aairs, held in

order to consider problems of an urgent nature and of common interest to the memberstates of the Organization of American States. See Meetings of the Consultationof Ministers of Foreign Aairs, http://www.oas.org/en/about/meetings_foreign_aairs.asp. According to OAS ocials, this has proven too slow and ineective for themost pressing issues, as foreign ministers can only convene after a member state hasappealed to the Permanent Council and the council votes to permit a meeting.

. In practice, the secretary-general selects special representatives on a periodic basis forOAS mediation eorts, either independently or when mandated by the PermanentCouncil. The Secretariat maintains no formal roster of former diplomats orgovernment ocials to call upon, and there is no dedicated mediation support capacityto support OAS-mandated mediation. Senior ocials, and country or thematic

experts from the Secretariat for Political Aairs, however, are routinely called upon toprovide technical and political support to OAS mediation eorts or special missions.Interviews with OAS sta; Serbin, The Organization of American States, the UnitedNations Organization, Civil Society, and Conict Prevention, pp. 712.

. Over the past ve years, ASEAN has entered into a number of agreements that promotegreater integration and transparency in areas such as economic development, energysecurity, and education. In November 2007, at the Thirteenth ASEAN Summit, theheads of state put forth the long-term goal of creating an ASEAN Community by2015 to consist of three components: the ASEAN Economic Community, which aimsto promote economic integration through internal free trade; the ASEAN PoliticalSecurity Community, which aspires to promote political development in adherence

to the principles of democracy, the rule of law and good governance, respect for andpromotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms as inscribed inthe ASEAN Charter; and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, whose primarygoal is to contribute to realizing an ASEAN Community that is people-centered andsocially responsible with a view to achieving enduring solidarity and unity among thenations and peoples of ASEAN. In 2009, the Secretariat published a framework andwork plan for achieving an ASEAN Community by 2015. ASEAN, Roadmap or anASEAN Community: 20092015, 2009.

. ASEAN, The ASEAN Charter, Article 23, adopted by all member states in 2008.. Interviews with UN sta and regional experts. For plans to create an early warning

system, see ASEAN, ASEAN Political-Security Blueprint, June 2009, p. 9.. For a useful essay on the problems and prospects for multilateralism in Asia, see Evan

A. Feigenbaum and Robert A. Manning, The United States in the New Asia, CouncilSpecial Report No. 50 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2009).

. Council of the League of Arab States, Repercussions of Current Events in Libya andthe Arab Position Thereupon, March 12, 2011.

. For a comprehensive assessment of the role of the Arab League and GCC for conictmediation see Marco Pinfari, Nothing But Failure? The Arab League and theGulf Cooperation Council as Mediators in Middle Eastern Conict, Crisis StatesResearch Centre Working Paper No. 45, London School of Economics, March 2009.

. AU, Foreword, Meeting the Challenge o Conict Prevention in Arica: Towards the

Operationalization o the Continental Early Warning System, 2008, p. 2.. AU, Constitutive Act of the African Union, Article 4, July 11, 2000.. Ibid., Article 23; AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security

Council of the African Union, Article 7(g), July 9, 2002.. AU, Protocol Related to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council

of the African Union, Article 12, July 9, 2002. The CEWS aims to consist of two


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33Endnotes

components. The rst is the twenty-four-hour Situation Room located within thePeace and Security Directorates Conict Management Division in Addis Ababa. TheSituation Room has a sta of thirteen and serves as the point of contact between the

commission and member states, African Regional Economic Communities (RECs),and NGOs. It also collects data from open sources, AU eld missions, and RECs forindicators of potential or ongoing conicts, which is then screened and disseminatedto analysts within the Peace and Security Council. See European Union delegation tothe AU, Inside the African Union Situation Room, October 2009, pp. 1617.

. The most developed is the ECOWASs Early Warning and Response Network(ECOWARN). Situated in the Oce of the Commissioner for Political Aairs, Peaceand Security, ECOWARN consists of four subregional zonal bureauslocated inBenin, Burkina Faso, Liberia, and Gambiathat collect and evaluate data based onninety-four conict indicators, primarily from open sources and NGOs but also fromsome member states, and an Observation and Monitoring Centre at the ECOWAS

Commission in Abuja that produces analytical warning reports. See The ECOWASConict Prevention Framework, January 1, 2008; and Organization for EconomicCooperation and Development, SWAC News, April-May 2009, pp. 24. IGADoperates an early-warning system in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Ugandathe Committeeon Early Warning and Responsefocused primarily on pastoralist conicts. ECCASoperates the Early Warning Mechanism of Central Africa. The framework forharmonizing the early-warning units of the subregional organizations with the AUsCEWS failed to become fully operational by its goal of 2009. See AU, Framework forthe Operationalization of the Continental Early Warning System as Adopted by theGovernmental Experts Meeting on Early Warning and Prevention, December 1719,2006.

. AU, Protocol Related to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of theAfrican Union, Article 11, July 9, 2002.

. Ibid., Article 13.. AU, Policy Framework for the

partners in preventive action: the united states and international institutions

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