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| Author: | David A. Hamburg, Cornell University Medical College |
|---|
2004
Council on Foreign Relations
By David Hamburg
The Crisis Prevention Approach
In the 1980s, the world was in great danger—the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the intense American response precipitated a severe exacerbation of the Cold War. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the scientific community, as well as some diplomats and military and political leaders, gradually came to recognize the unique potential and critical importance of the crisis prevention approach. In-depth conferences of scholars and political leaders in Washington, Moscow, and Havana provided deeper understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the most dramatic and dangerous event of the Cold War. They revealed the risk of catastrophe more fully than ever before. In a nuclear confrontation the likelihood of irretrievable error is great, given a setting of terrible pressure for instant decision-making and the difficulty of controlling far-flung, high-tension operations.
Crisis prevention puts its focus on finding ways to decrease the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons. In the depth of the Cold War, the approach did not assume a rapid improvement in the relationship between the United States and the USSR, nor did it assume a great decline in the stockpile of nuclear weapons. It simply assumed that each nation could recognize that a nuclear confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis is too difficult to manage safely time after time.
The main points in the crisis prevention approach can be stated concisely:
1. Avoid nasty, unpleasant surprises. For example, upgrade the hotline for rapid use to clarify an unsettling event.
2. Agree in advance on “rules of the road” to deal with sensitive and potentially explosive situations. The “Incidents-at-Sea” agreement, for example, is a model for highly professional military-to-military contact.
3. Clarify vital interests in touchy situations. A policy of holding regular regional consultations covering different areas of the world gradually evolved and turned out to be useful.
4. Strengthen institutional mechanisms, e.g., create nuclear risk reduction centers that provide professional exchange of information and ideas on a regular basis regarding issues that could readily become highly dangerous, such as unanticipated missile tests.
The Nunn-Lugar program of cooperative threat reduction was formulated as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. It provided for the joint dismantling of Soviet nuclear weapons, fully safe securing of nuclear materials, and the reduction of other proliferation risks in and around the former Soviet Union. This program was a remarkable example of translating research into policy through collaborative efforts between scientists, scholars, and policymakers. This is still a crucial program, the world’s most important protection against use by terrorists of weapons of mass destruction. One of its major achievements was the complete denuclearization of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. In recent years, this program has been adopted by the Group of Eight [Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States], thereby expanding its scope.
The crisis prevention approach has led to broad international interest in confidence-building measures. They can now be applied to each region of the world. This is one of the valuable lessons we have learned from the immense dangers of the Cold War. More generally, it has turned our attention to the great mission of preventing mass violence altogether.
Preventing Deadly Conflict in the Twenty-First Century
Many opportunities for preventing violent conflict do exist, but they have usually been missed at enormous human, social, and economic cost. The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict emphasized two major means of preventing deadly conflict: (1) preventive diplomacy, conceived in a strong, proactive way and (2) international cooperation for democratic development in both its political and economic aspects.
Preventive Diplomacy
The international community should not wait for a crisis. There should be systematic, ongoing programs of international help – offered by governments, intergovernmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. These can build the capacity of groups to address grievances early and effectively without violence, establish permanent mechanisms for sorting out conflicts peacefully before they become explosive, and build fair, effective governance and decent intergroup relations.
Important recent studies converge on key points of preventive diplomacy. These publications send a to-whom-it-may-concern message to the international community: to governments, intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations of many kinds, and leaders in different sectors. They constitute useful guidelines for strengthening preventive diplomacy, and are reflected not only in a variety of publications, but also in recent initiatives of the UN, regional organizations, and various governments.
International Cooperation for Democratic Socioeconomic Development and Peace
Democratic traditions evolve in ways that build ongoing mechanisms for dealing with conflicts. Democracies seek ways to deal fairly with conflicts and resolve them below the threshold of mass violence. This is a difficult process. There are failures and the transition from a closed authoritarian society to a fully viable, open, democratic society can be stormy. This means that emerging democracies often need international help (e.g., mediation) in turbulent transitional times. But democratic institutions offer the best framework for dealing justly and peacefully with the frustrations and aspirations of humanity.
There are effective means for the peaceful promotion of democracy internationally. For new, emerging, and fragile democracies, it is valuable to strengthen their political and civic infrastructures through international cooperation, e.g., assistance in establishing political parties, an independent judiciary, and universities. This involves technical assistance, financial aid, and human solidarity across borders to build the requisite processes and institutions, including widespread education of publics about the actual workings of a democracy. Strengthening democratic institutions is a long, complex, and sensitive process; so international cooperation is necessary to provide both adequate resources and sustained help to achieve democratic consolidation. It is too much for any one country or any lone international organization.
The article by Uffe Ellemann-Jensen on this website gives an excellent example of success in preventing deadly conflict through a wise combination of preventive diplomacy and democracy-building – all in the context of international cooperation.
Economic improvement of an equitable sort is vital to sustaining democratic development. During the past half-century we have learned important lessons from the successes and failures of socioeconomic development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
When developing countries slide down a slope of despair and degradation, they can become 1) breeding grounds for infectious diseases, even global pandemics; 2) incubators for hatred, violence, and terrorism; 3) sources of accelerating environmental damage; and 4) sources of massive refugee flows. Creative efforts to foster constructive development of poor countries are not only a matter of decent humanitarian values but also of enlightened self-interest for the entire world. What guidelines help in equitable socioeconomic development?
1. The immense power of science and technology can be brought to bear on development throughout the world.
2. The best context for bringing this about is the creation of democratic societies that strongly protect human rights and foster equitable market economies and free intellectual inquiry.
3. The establishment of democracies can make a major contribution in fulfilling the promise of this approach, utilizing both public and private sectors to stimulate and cooperate in international efforts for socioeconomic development.
4. Human resources are central to the task of upgrading development opportunities in the future. Children and families must have a decent start: preventive health care, basic education, families of workable size, and adequate nutrition. It is essential that the sciences be brought to bear on ways to meet these fundamental requirements, including education in science to foster participation in the modern global economy.
5. Altogether, the essential ingredients for development are knowledge, skill, and freedom. Knowledge is mainly generated by research and development; skills by education and training; freedom by democratic processes and institutions. The established democracies can extend a friendly helping hand to foster these ingredients of development.
Learning to Live Together
Humanity has reached a situation in which those who retain ancient harsh attitudes and hateful beliefs can acquire destructive powers that dwarf those of our ancestors. Can we raise our children for constructive, pro-social human relations rather than for hatred and violence? This is one of the central challenges of our time. A fruitful conjunction of developmental and social psychology with educational research can provide the foundation for a humane, democratic, and safe course of child and adolescent development, ultimately helping to protect humanity. Research-based knowledge of human conflict and the paths to mutual accommodation can become a universal part of education, conveying both the facts of human diversity and our common humanity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David A. Hamburg is co-chair of the Social Medicine & Public Policy Program at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College. He is president emeritus at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he served as the Corporation’s eleventh president from 1982 to 1997. A medical doctor, Hamburg has a long history of leadership in the research, medical, and psychiatric fields. He was a member of the United States Defense Policy Board with Secretary of Defense William Perry and co-chair with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. He was a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School’s department of social medicine. Dr. Hamburg received the Foreign Policy Association’s 2004 Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (its highest award), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award of the United States).
He is the author of Today’s Children: Creating a Future for a Generation in Crisis (1992); No More Killing Fields (2002); and Learning to Live Together (2004).
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