Needed: A Preventive Strategy

This new strategy should be based on preventive diplomacy. The first step toward implementing a workable preventive strategy is to abandon the notion that the United States and its closest allies can go it alone. Last December's US/British air raids on Iraq and the current NATO policy in Kosovo were both firmly grounded in this dangerous delusion. Avoiding consultations with the UN Security Council on the use of force is not only questionable as a matter of international law but it often leads to hastily crafted, ill-conceived policies.

In the long term the best option for dealing with ethnic conflict and civil strife is to strengthen UN peacekeeping capabilities and come up with clearer ground rules for delegating peacekeeping and conflict prevention to broad-based regional organizations like the Organization of African Unity and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a fifty-five-member body that includes Russia. This will entail spending some money, but the sums involved are a small fraction of the costs of going to war.

For example, the United States could pay its outstanding UN dues for the price of just one B-2 bomber, which, at $2.1 billion per plane, is the most expensive aircraft ever built. And the OSCE, which had human rights monitors on the ground in Kosovo prior to the current NATO air campaign, has a budget of $112 million per year, roughly the cost of a few days of airstrikes on Belgrade. Daniel Plesch and Julianne Smith of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) have suggested that a bulked-up OSCE could sponsor Civilian Intervention Units that could "intervene before military action is necessary." In their view, sending in NATO to deal with Kosovo is like sending in a police SWAT team after a riot has broken out, while an OSCE-based monitoring and peacekeeping force would be the foreign policy equivalent of community policing--which has a far higher rate of success in curbing crime.

Ultimately, the international community needs to find a way to advance the long-neglected calls of analysts like Brian Urquhart, former Undersecretary General of the UN, for the development of a standing UN peacekeeping force, which would replace the current ad hoc system that requires the Secretary General to seek commitments on a case-by-case basis. A number of innovative mechanisms have been proposed for financing such a system, ranging from Sherle Schwenninger's call to fund this through a modest tax on international financial transactions [see "How to Save the World: The Case for a Global Flat Tax," May 13, 1996] to Nobel laureate Oscar Arias's suggestion for a global demilitarization fund that would be built up by taking a small percentage of the military budgets of UN member states. As for the widespread concern that the UN or other multilateral agencies "don't act rapidly enough" in a crisis or lack the political will to act forcefully when needed, former US ambassador to Germany Jonathan Dean is crafting a proposal that would give the UN Secretary General the authority to deploy peacekeeping units of limited size immediately when the situation calls for it, with a proviso that the Security Council vote on the continuation of the operation within a few weeks of the initial deployment.

Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, the admirals and generals should abandon the outmoded strategy of developing the capability to fight two major regional conflicts at once, in favor of preparing for one major conflict plus peacekeeping. Training and weapons systems could thus be tailored to the kinds of conflicts US forces are most likely to be involved in, rather than adapting cumbersome cold war weapons and warfighting tactics to the more difficult and delicate art of keeping the peace.

Another essential tool of a cooperative strategy for reducing global violence is an International Criminal Court with the authority to prosecute individuals for genocide and other crimes against humanity. Given the appropriate support from the major powers, a functioning criminal court could act as a deterrent to acts of genocide. It would also provide an alternative means of punishing wrongdoers such as Slobodan Milosevic. The Clinton Administration has opposed the establishment of a strong international court because of resistance from the Pentagon, which is afraid that some of its personnel might be dragged before such a tribunal in the wake of some future conflict.

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