Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats

7. Managing Civil Violence and Regional Conflict

170 FAILED STATES ARE BOTH cause and manifestation of a breakdown in international order. States that cannot maintain the rule of law or provide for the well-being of their citizens are closely associated with civil violence and amplify the risk of transnational threats such as terrorism and deadly infectious disease. Civil violence often crosses borders and draws regional and international actors into its vortex. Today’s cases— Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Sudan—demonstrate the consequences: lives lost, futures diminished, regional rivalries inflamed, and the credibility of international institutions cast into doubt. A sea change has taken place in international views and policies toward civil wars and fragile states. When violence erupts, international mediators are expected to produce peace agreements. When peace agreements are signed, peacekeepers are expected to implement them. This expansion in mediation and peacekeeping has achieved important successes in countries around the world, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and East Timor. The current demand for peacekeepers has reached an all-time high— an estimated 180,000 individuals are currently serving in more than 20 conflicts.1 The growth of peacekeeping during the last decade, however, has stretched its capacity to the breaking point. In addition, this growth has not been accompanied by effective peacebuilding, creating the risk of squandering this investment. MANAGING CIVIL VIOLENCE AND REGIONAL CONFLICT SEVEN 07-4706-2 ch07 Jones 12/15/08 11:11 AM Page 170 At the same time, popular expectations about what international actors should do to stop civil violence have increased. This is directly related to demands that states exercise their sovereignty responsibly and live up to their own stated commitments to protect victims caught in the maelstrom of mass atrocity. It could be argued that peacekeeping has reached high tide and will now recede. Today’s level of United Nations (UN) deployments is higher than the organization’s previous record, but that record came during the war in Bosnia, when the United Nations was discredited and its deployments plummeted. Serious failures in Lebanon or Darfur—or other major centers of UN forces in Africa—could result in a similar loss of credibility and an associated retreat. Likewise, the pressures on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Afghanistan might cause alliance leaders to conclude that they should not venture beyond Europe. The African Union’s (AU) Sudanese and Somali trials might erode its appetite for future missions. The scale of today’s peacekeeping operations does not guarantee that they will survive, and they could be reversed rapidly. The consequences would be extremely damaging to international security and U.S. interests. A severe reduction of peacekeeping in Africa would permit recently concluded and semidormant wars to restart, guaranteeing humanitarian disasters. It would also undermine the gradual but unsteady progress toward building lasting security institutions in Africa to address future conflicts. Retreat from Lebanon could destabilize moderate governments in the Middle East, and open new havens for terrorist groups. A major setback in Afghanistan would signal that even if they work together, the United Nations and NATO cannot sustain a major operation in support of a fragile state. In this chapter, we assess the threat and evaluate current international performance. The UN Security Council and its operational organizations loom large in this analysis. Not only have the past several years highlighted the importance of the legitimacy Security Council action provides, facts on the ground show that the United Nations is ever more critical to an effective response. We then focus on four issues: improving the capacity of international actors to prevent civil violence and better mediate conflicts ; solidifying and enhancing peacekeeping capabilities; substantially enhancing the ability of the international system to help weak states build MANAGING CIVIL VIOLENCE AND REGIONAL CONFLICT 171 07-4706-2 ch07 Jones 12/15/08 11:11 AM Page 171 the capacity to govern, especially in the area of the rule of law (both to prevent conflict, and to recover from it); and improving the response to large-scale atrocities. Implementation of these proposals would not only enhance international conflict management, but would also help to achieve counterterrorism and counterproliferation objectives. THREAT ASSESSMENT Civil wars have declined dramatically since the end of the cold war. From a 1993 peak, by 2005 there were roughly 40 percent fewer civil wars.2 By the best measures of intensity and by measures of consequences (number of...