CIAO Focus highlights a particular topic in the realm of international affairs. This month the focus is on preventive diplomacy.
"Diplomacy failed to deter Russia. Now's the time for a new Cold War." Similar evaluations on the strategic effectiveness and general merit of diplomacy have been made since the start of the war in Ukraine. Pronouncements proliferate about the breakdown of diplomacy, failure of diplomacy, lack of diplomacy, ignorance of diplomacy, and so on. And yet for some analysts, this art still plays a vital role in this conflict and others: "an end to the suffering...can only be achieved through diplomatic engagement... The time to sketch the outlines of a diplomatic solution is now." As the stakes continue to rise, important lessons can be learned from scholarship on preventive diplomacy.
While it remains a contested term, preventive diplomacy is an integral part of broader conflict prevention efforts. First articulated by UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1960, the concept was formulated in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace, which defined it as action "to prevent disputes from arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts, and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur." A report from GSDRC explains the fundamentals of preventive diplomacy, including how it works, how it relates to conflict prevention, and how models for preventive diplomacy have developed. The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, a CIAO partner, has an archive of studies on de-escalation and preventive diplomacy.
Rep.Andy Kim, a former diplomat who worked at the State Department and the National Security Council, reflects on the role of diplomacy in the ongoing war in Ukraine: "to avoid the all-out catastrophe of a regional war or something that goes on for years and years and years...you need to have diplomacy." Preventive diplomacy is still, according to the European Institute of Peace, the most effective way to stop a conflict from intensifying. CIAO users can read their full study below, which concludes:
Today's challenges are global in scope...Preventing the worst scenarios from materializing is existential and will shape global politics and international relations for the rest of the century. It is by far the biggest and most important preventive diplomacy operation in history. We better get it right.
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