Advancing Preventive Diplomacy in a Post-Cold War Era: Suggested Roles for Governments and NGOs

Since the unifying filter of superpower relations has been removed, the international community has been floundering in the face of proliferating internal conflicts everywhere. Global spending on armaments has declined but those least able to afford them – Sub-Saharan Africa and east Asia – are buying more. In today’s conflicts, 90% of casualties are civilians.

Countries experiencing conflict have more famine and disease than elsewhere and worsening conflict leads to massive movements of refugees and displaced people. These are costly in human and international terms.

Internal conflict means squandering money and resources on relief that might otherwise underwrite improvements to infrastructure and development generally. Stagnant and decreasing aid budgets are having larger proportions diverted to humanitarian responses to conflict situations.

The stakes are high in the game of prevention, but as yet there is no clear idea of how to go about it. What is obvious is that ad hoc responses are recipes for disaster, and we can no longer afford not to spend money on effective prevention including early warning, emergency preparedness, conflict resolution and training in conflict resolution. With hope fading for a revitalised United Nations, Rupesinghe sees the only way forward as a strategic alliance between governments, humanitarian agencies and development agencies.

Rupesinghe gives a brief overview of recent trends and research in relation to conflicts, reviews prospects for advancing preventive diplomacy and suggests options for actions by governments and NGOs.

His thesis is that the international edifice is powerless to stop internal conflict because it is bound by the paramountcy of state sovereignty woven during the Cold War. The proliferation of internal conflicts means that traditional approaches have and will continue to fail. A new strategic vision is needed to prevent war by bringing concerted action to bear at all levels of the international community.