During the long period of the Cold War, the scholarly community accumulated much knowledge bearing on the problems of managing conflicts typical of that era. Unfortunately, quite a bit of this knowledge and experience does not fit very well the different challenges to peace that are so prevalent in the post-Cold War era.
The end of the Cold War created a new geopolitical environment and spawned many new types of internal conflicts. Such internal conflicts within states vastly outnumbered the more conventional types of war between states. The dynamics of these internal conflicts and ways of avoiding them did not follow the old rules of the Cold War. As a result, policymakers and scholars alike faced the need to develop new knowledge and to find ways of dealing with such conflicts before they erupted into large-scale violence. For, once large-scale violence occurs, it becomes much more difficult for members of the international community – the United Nations, regional organizations, individual states acting alone or together, and nongovernmental organizations--to muster the political will and the resources needed for effective conflict resolution and peacemaking.
Hence, it is not surprising that much emphasis is being given in recent years to "preventive diplomacy" –the essence of preventive diplomacy being the need not only to acquire early warning of incipient conflicts but also to respond promptly and effectively in order to contain conflicts before they erupt into large-scale violence.
This new emphasis on preventive diplomacy is coupled with efforts to make better use of a variety of techniques for conflict avoidance and conflict resolution, techniques such as mediation, peacekeeping, peacemaking, confidence- and trust-building measures, and unofficial so-called "Track Two" diplomacy.
Many efforts are underway to identify ways of improving the gathering and processing of early warning indicators. However, although efforts to improve warning are important....
