POLITICS: Preventing Wars Far Less Costly than its Aftermath

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2001 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Wednesday pooh-poohed the argument that governments worldwide have few political incentives to put resources into conflict prevention.

The Secretary-General lamented the fact that governments have been complaining that the United Nations is asking them to spend “precious resources today for something that may or may not bring results tomorrow”.

“Yet, I must say I am not satisfied with this argument. If peace requires long-term preparation and expenditure that may not be popular, so does war,” he said.

The Secretary-General said that – globally – governments somehow find the 800 billion dollars they earmark each year on their defence forces. But in most cases, he added, these governments hope they will not have to use the monies allocated for their military every year.

“Surely, they could spend at least a fraction of this on policies designed to make war less likely? And surely, they could do more to get at the root causes, if they really wanted to?”

Addressing the Foreign Policy Association in New York Wednesday, Annan also said that preventing war is far less costly than dealing with its aftermath.

That is true in material terms, he added, but what is far more important is that millions of human lives could have been saved, which would otherwise be wastefully and prematurely destroyed.

“If only we could have prevented the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, tens of thousands of young men and women would now be alive, starting families and contributing to the development of their country, instead of being buried where they fell on the battlefield, or facing a life blighted by hideous wounds.”

Former US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who led a Security Council delegation to the Horn of Africa two years ago, described the Ethiopian- Eritrean war as one of the worst in Africa.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees described the conflict as the “world’s largest war” because it involved 250,000 soldiers, tens of thousands of casualties and over 60,000 civilians were displaced.

Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria, the UN’s Special Representative who originally mediated the dispute, said it was “the most devastating war in Africa” – in terms of the number of people killed.

Despite its severity, the Ethiopian-Eritrean war was “relatively benign” by recent standards, in so far as its victims were mainly soldiers, Annan told the Foreign Policy Association.

The typical victims of today’s wars are even more innocent and vulnerable than those young men and women were. They are unarmed civilians, with a high proportion being women and children, he added.

Brian Urquhart, a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, said that “like all preventive action, private diplomacy has a major public relations problem, because if it is successful nobody will ever hear about it”.

“Put simply, a resolved conflict is not news. Only conflicts that you fail to resolve are news,” Urquhart said.

Annan quoted Urquhart as having once said that Annan spends more than 50 percent of his time on one type of preventive diplomacy or another.

“I am afraid I don’t clock in my hours of work and bill them to different clients, as a modern manager should. But you can take it from me that Brian knows what he’s talking about.”

Annan said preventive diplomacy tends to come late in the day to stop violence from erupting. By then, people have taken up entrenched positions or strategies and are often too angry or proud to retreat. “We need to start sooner.”

The second biggest obstacle to prevention lies in the attitudes of member states. States threatened by conflict frequently refuse to admit that they have a problem or to accept external assistance. And many states that would be well placed to assist are reluctant to intervene, he said.

“The first group, like patients in denial, fail to see the problem and are offended by offers of help. The second either do not see the danger that problems afflicting their neighbour might also spread to them, or are unwilling to confront their neighbour with unwelcome, but necessary pressure and advice.”

“If we are to establish a true culture of prevention,” he said, “we need to cultivate a sense of neighbourhood that would overcome both these sources of reluctance.”

So, the primary responsibility for preventing conflicts lies with member states themselves. “If governments do not want help, or are unwilling to give priority to their citizens’ well-being, there is little the United Nations can do,” he warned.