Charles William Maynes, "Relearning Intervention," 1995 Charles, William Maynes "Relearning Intervention," Foreign Policy, no. 68 (Spring 1995) One of the most difficult questions in American foreign policy is the use of force--its legitimacy, its utility, its desirability. A run for the White House requires that a candidate address it, and a successful candidate is often not considered a successful president until he actually employs it. But it may be that the nature of the political debate on the use of force will soon change. It may be that the very purpose for which American leaders threaten the use of force has shifted without many people paying much attention. The combination of the Persian Gulf war and the demise of Soviet communism had a profound impact on U.S. discussions of the use of force. For a while it seemed as though the U.S. military had been liberated--or at least many observers implied that it had. The United States, it was suggested, was the world's sole remaining superpower. It could intervene wherever it wished without worrying that global rivals would back the other side and risk escalation into a global conflagration. The Gulf war's demonstration of astounding new technology contributed to the view that the use of force for policy goals was now far more feasible. Soon-to-be secretary of defense Les Aspin noted in a September 21, 1992, speech that in the Gulf war it often took only a few bombs to destroy a target, whereas in Vietnam it required an average of 175 and in World War II, 9,000. A former Defense Department official who calculated casualties after the Gulf war wrote that the experience in Kuwait suggested the possibility of "war without excessive brutality." (See John Heidenrich, "The Gulf War: How Many Iraqis Died?" in FOREIGN POLICY 90.) For many, the vision was intoxicating. America had arrived at its "unipolar moment," according to conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. Aspin predicted that the United States could now develop a military force "flexible enough to do a number of simultaneous, smaller contingencies." As the Clinton administration approached its third year, such widely shared optimism seemed badly misplaced. It is important to understand the reasons: The demise of the Soviet Union did not give the United States the clear international field that was earlier predicted; the new consensus failed to take into account whether the gains derived from the use of force had remained constant--in fact, they have gone down; and it failed to acknowledge that the reasons for using force had changed. Earlier, the purpose was deterrence and ensuring acceptable external behavior. Now, it is increasingly becoming compellence and appropriate internal behavior. A CLEAR FIELD? Although it is true that the United States no longer has the Soviet Union to worry about, it is not necessarily the case that the United States can intervene wherever it wishes without worrying about the involvement of third parties. The U.S. experience in Lebanon should have sobered those inclined to be bellicose. The Reagan administration, believing its own campaign rhetoric about the efficacy of force and the importance of political will, deployed U.S. troops in Lebanon without consideration of Syrian interests. It also believed that the actual use of force would intimidate the opponents of a government it had decided to favor in a vicious civil war. Those costly mistakes led to a humiliating withdrawal 17 months later. Nor, as the crisis with North Korea has demonstrated clearly, does America have a completely free hand in Northeast Asia. There is a limit beyond which Washington cannot push North Korea without worrying about the reactions of communist China, Japan, and South Korea. China has not hesitated to clarify that its alliance with North Korea remains in force. It has threatened to veto proposals for economic sanctions that may come before the Security Council. Japan and South Korea have indicated great unease with a policy that might bring conflict to the peninsula. Along the periphery of Russia, the reaction of the Kremlin is one reason why the U.S. response to Russian peacekeeping efforts in the "near abroad" has been muted, to say the least. In South Asia, any outside military activity must take into account India's reaction. That reality was brought home to Americans when the Nixon administration ordered the USS Enterprise to enter the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Bangladesh crisis. India's strong political reaction made many Americans aware for the first time that India was developing into a serious regional power. Indeed, in most parts of the world except the Western Hemisphere and perhaps the Persian Gulf, there is a regional power whose opposition to U.S. intervention could make the exercise of force much more difficult to carry out successfully unless one assumes that air power alone would be sufficient. So while the disappearance of the Soviet Union is an important consideration in calculating the utility of the use of force, there are other actors whose policies Washington must take into account. Nor does greater precision in delivery of weapons necessarily clear the way for a more ready resort to force. It is not at all certain that others calculate the costs of resistance as U.S. policymakers hope they will. As advanced countries have repeatedly leamed, in a struggle between the technically sophisticated and unsophisticated, there is often a mismatch in political determination just as large as there is in technical capability. The West in general has a high capacity to kill but a low capacity to die. The equation is often reversed among the targets of the West's wrath. America learned about the differences between capacity and determination in Vietnam, the French learned in Algeria, and the Russians in Afghanistan. And that is the overlooked lesson of U.S. involvement in Somalia. The task the United States set for itself was not infeasible, but the Clinton administration grossly underestimated the price others were willing to pay to stop the U.S. Marines. CIA officials privately concede that the U.S. military may have killed from 7,000 to 10,000 Somalis during its engagement. America lost only 34 soldiers. Notwithstanding that extraordinary disparity, the decision was to withdraw. SHIFTING STRUGGLE For most of history, wars have been a paying proposition. The victor gained land, wealth, or trade. Most of America's wars, in fact, have been over land. Washington was either seeking it or trying to bar others from taking it. The Cold War was different. That war was a struggle over regimes. The Soviets wanted to change America's and America wanted to change theirs. Neither side sought more land, at least after the spoils of the Second World War had been distributed. Rather, each side sought more allies. How can we characterize today's world? Today, despite several serious internal conflicts now raging at various points around the globe, the international system seems structurally stable for the first time since 1815. There are several reasons for the transformation. The first is that none of the great powers seek additional land (though there remain small border disputes, like that between Russia and Japan over the Kurile Islands). Nor does any great power challenge the political legitimacy of the others. Some might say that Russia is a possible exception because so many Russians live in neighboring states and Russia is concerned about their fate. Yet the surprise has been that, thus far, Russia has accepted that its Russian or Russian-speaking brothers and sisters living in the near abroad should become citizens of those countries, even if it insists that neighboring states not discriminate against their Russian speakers and at times urges dual citizenship. China has minor border disputes with its neighbors, but none of them seem non-negotiable. And the decision of the Clinton administration to renew most-favored-nation trading status for China and end the policy link between trade and human rights was an acknowledgement that even if America is not comfortable with China's political system, it does not challenge it. The second reason for the underlying stability in the international structure is that today most major states seek greater power not through external expansion--the historical route--but through internal development. The salient models for other countries are no longer expansionist countries like Great Britain or France during the age of colonialism but nonexpansionist states like Japan, the United States, or some of the Southeast Asian tigers. The ideological crusades are over. The Clinton administration's proclaimed doctrine of democratic enlargement is a hope, not a policy. America today largely tends its own garden, its occasional indignation over human rights violations notwithstanding. So do other great powers. Another reason for the historical discontinuity through which we are passing is that the recent record of states seeking greater power through external expansion is so poor. Argentina failed to seize the Falklands. Iraq failed to seize and hold part of Iran and subsequently all of Kuwait. Libya was forced to relinquish part of Chad. Somalia failed to seize part of Ethiopia. Nor does the negative record on the use of force end there. More powerful states recently attempting to control the internal political structure of key countries through overt force also have failed--the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, India in Sri Lanka, and Israel and Syria in Lebanon. The only "successful" uses of large-scale military force in recent years for political purposes have been the U.S. conquests of Grenada and Panama, and even there press reports suggest that the internal situation is now worse, or no better, than before the intervention. That record of repeated failure in the use of force is in part explained by the inability of conquering states to gain compliance from subject populations. For most of history, when a state conquered a new province, the inhabitants of that province respected the wishes of their new ruler. That practice could even extend into religion-"cuius est regio, illius est religio." But nowhere in today's world does such mass compliance take place. On the contrary, populations struggle on for years, even decades--the Tibetans against the Chinese, the East Timorese against the Indonesians, the Palestinians against the Israelis, the Kashmiris against the Indians. Of course, if states are allowed to carry out the kind of ethnic cleansing or forced integration that has been the norm in past centuries, then the seizure of land from a neighbor can turn out to be a rational decision. That is what the issues of settlements in the West Bank or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia have been all about. But if ethnic cleansing or forced integration is not possible, then one of the principal objectives of war disappears, because today, unlike yesterday, subjugated populations are not compliant. SEVEN CATEGORIES OF FORCE Today, there appear to be seven distinct categories for the possible use of force by the United States: * meeting alliance obligations * promoting counterproliferation * protecting key allies threatened with internal disorder * protecting individual Americans * supporting democracies abroad * interdicting drugs and countering terrorism * assisting peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Ironically, the last, peacekeeping, is by far the most needed, yet it is the task that the United States is the least prepared to undertake. As a result, the United States suffers from a mismatch between capabilities and requirements. Meeting Alliance Obligations In theory the United States is obligated through treaties to protect most of Latin America, much of Europe, and a good part of Asia against external attack. The fact is that none of America's allies, except possibly South Korea, are threatened with attack. The Russian threat in Europe will not reappear for years even in the worst scenario. Because of draft-dodging, the Russian army may soon end up with more officers than enlisted personnel. Weapons procurement has been cut to a fraction of Cold War levels. The poor Russian military performance in Chechnya is revealing. Russia would need at least a decade to reestablish its internal cohesion before it could threaten America's treaty allies with a conventional conquest. Nor does nuclear blackmail remain a serious worry. Blackmail must have a purpose. As long as the two superpowers engaged in a gLobal struggle for influence, the United States had to worry that the Soviet Union would use nuclear blackmail to push European states into a neutral or pro-Soviet stand. But Russia has become a "normal" country seeking normal foreign policy objectives--security and economic development. It is difficult to imagine Russia's threatening France with a nuclear strike in order to gain trade privileges. It is true that the United States must worry about new nuclear states such as India, Israel, Pakistan, and perhaps North Korea, but none of those states have global ambitions. With the possible exception of India, none even have regional ambitions. Most have acquired nuclear weapons in order to combat the overwhelming military or demographic challenges of their neighbors. What about other security threats to the United States? Say, sub version in Latin America? In the Western Hemisphere, the Cuban/Soviet threat has ended. Not only has Cuba lost the support of Moscow, which enabled Cuban officials to develop a continental or even transcontinental reach, but the country has lost its allure as an alternative model. There is no immediate security threat to the treaty allies of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Now, the purpose of threatening the use of force is not deterrence but compellence. There is one clear security threat for the United States today. It is in Asia. North Korea's apparent nuclear ambitions together with America's treaty commitment to South Korea create an explosive situation. America has 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea. The United States is anxious to prevent North Korea from developing a major nuclear weapons program and has signed a sweeping agreement with North Korea to provide it with safer nuclear energy technology in return for North Korean abandonment of its nuclear weapons program. The inevitable difficulties in implementing this complicated agreement with a suspicious, well-armed opponent pose the most pressing crisis in the world for the United States, but it exists in part because recent administrations have allowed partisan politics at home to prevent the United States from looking out for its own security interests. It is preposterous that the United States should have to assist in the land defense of a country (South Korea) that is twice as populous and 10 times as rich as its northern brother. But ever since Jimmy Carter reversed his campaign pledge to remove U.S. troops from Korea, which was probably premature, the American ground commitment to South Korea has been politically inviolate. Clinton even went so far when he was in South Korea to tell that country's legislators that U.S. troops would remain in South Korea as long as the South Korean people "want" as well as "need" them. Once the current crisis is past, the United States should step back from this foolish statement, which places too much of the initiative in Seoul's hands, and press South Korea to assume, over time, full responsibility for land defense with the United States progressively fulfilling its treaty obligation through air and sea power. Indeed, over the longer run there is now only one area of the world where the United States must be ready to fight a land war virtually unassisted by the states in the area, and that is the Persian Gulf. None of the states there will be prepared to confront Iraq or Iran for the foreseeable future; and in the wake of the most recent Gulf war, the United States has assumed the role of regional gendarme, a role it cannot abandon until the regimes in Tehran and Baghdad either fall or radically change policies. Counterproliferation The "Defense Counterproliferation Initiative" is an important policy priority of the Clinton administration. Clearly, with the end of the Cold War and of the Soviet-U.S. nuclear standoff, the most pressing long-run issue in international security for the United States is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These could be the great equalizers of international relations, robbing the United States of the benefits of being the sole remaining superpower. If Libya, for example, had a handful of deliverable nuclear weapons, the entire diplomatic relationship between Washington and Tripoli might be transformed. Tripoli probably could not seriously threaten the United States, but it could threaten allies so that the United States would have to treat the Libyan regime with greater respect than it does now. The same could be said about a number of other states that are hostile to the United States. Would nuclear weapons be more dangerous in the hands of Third World states than in those of the great powers? The principal assumption behind much counterproliferation concern is that the answer is yes, but the breakup of the Soviet Union should give pause. Nonetheless, the possession of nuclear weapons by new states would necessarily reduce the margin of U.S. power in the world. There is also the fear, whether valid or not, that a Kim Il Sung or Iranian ayatollah might not care about the fate of his own country or people and would someday decide to use a nuclear weapon against the United States or one of its allies in a fit of irrationality. And, of course, the more widespread nuclear weapons become, the greater the risk of an accident or seizure of weapons by some outlaw or terrorist group. In short, in the post-Cold War period, any U.S. administration will have a very strong nonproliferation policy. The issue is what one can realistically do about the issue of proliferation in a military sense. States have learned from the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear facilities--which was only temporarily successful because it merely persuaded the Iraqis to move their program underground. Now all potential proliferants understand that they must not expose their programs to preemptive attack. In addition, according to most experts, a military answer in Korea is difficult. As Peter Rodman, former deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs in the Bush administration, pointed out in a November 1993 conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "In the case of North Korea, the use of strikes is complicated by the difficulty of locating the right targets or preventing devastating retaliation by the North Koreans. Some people I respect, who are relatively hawkish on the issue in general, say that the military options are no good." Very senior Pentagon officials confirm that the North Koreans possess deeply protected artillery that could devastate Seoul in the event of war. In a December 1993 briefing to the press, Pentagon officials hinted that American preemptive strikes against North Korea, similar to those of Israel against Iraq in June 1981, were being considered. But in March 1994, Ashton Carter, the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, stated that those who believed that Washington might bomb nuclear facilities of potential proliferants had "misunderstood" Washington's intentions. This author is not in a position to know the administration's true intentions. It is known that the administration is pressing ahead with efforts to develop special weapons that can penetrate the kind of concrete bunkers that are used to house nuclear facilities. Certainly, the United States will continue to keep open military options, however unpromising now, for a preemptive strike in the cause of counterproliferation. It will also continue to work on developing theater antiballistic weapons that could disarm a potential proliferant. But at this point a sensible nonproliferation policy would seem to rely more on diplomacy than force. The United States cannot police an uncooperative world. It is in the American interest to strengthen the nonproliferation regime in all its aspects, increasing the incentives for compliance while reducing the benefits from violation. Working for a comprehensive nuclear test ban, extending the nonproliferation treaty, and implementing the compromise with North Korea involving recognition and trade in exchange for a freeze in its nuclear weapons program seem better ways to serve U.S. interests than any early use of force to further the nonproliferation cause. Protection of Key States Threatened with Internal Disorder Some states in the world are so important to the United States that Washington would at least consider the use of military power to preserve the status quo domestically as well as internationally. Former secretary of defense James Schlesinger has suggested that the U.S. relationship with the Saudi Kingdom is now comparable in importance to the U.S. relationship with Germany. Although the United States has no treaty obligation to protect Saudi Arabia from external attack or internal disorder, President Ronald Reagan on October 1, 1981, did state that the United States would "never" let Saudi Arabia be come another Iran: "There is no way that we could stand by and see that taken over by anyone that would shut off that oil." American policy during the Gulf war confirmed that, whatever the treaty obligations might be, the United States would use force if necessary to protect the Saudi Kingdom against external aggression. America may even be prepared to take military action to prevent internal change if a sensible option for the use of force seems available. There are other states in the world that the United States, if it had the option, might consider using military force to protect even without treaty obligations. The United States has invested close to $100 billion in support of the Middle East peace process. The overthrow of the Egyptian government by Islamic forces would be a diplomatic setback for the United States comparable to the downfall of the Shah of Iran. Particularly with the memory of that setback in mind, the United States could be expected at least to consider using military power to help an imperiled Egyptian government if any option made sense. Of course, the Gulf countries should be added to that list. Since the Gulf war, the United States has become the defender of the status quo in the area. Washington certainly would react in the case of external aggression. What it would or could do in the case of an internal uprising is less clear. There are other countries, such as a number of key states in Central and Eastern Europe, that the United States might judge sufficiently important to consider some form of military response if internal developments threatened to bring to power a government hostile to the United States. But the strong likelihood is that in the end Washington would do nothing of a significant military nature. The ideal model for assisting an ally faced with internal disorder would be President George Bush's decision to save the Aquino regime in the Philippines by ordering U.S. aircraft to fly over Manila on December 1, 1989, in an implicit threat to those threatening to overthrow the government. The effort was low key and successful. No Americans died and few were even at risk. But it is doubtful if military intervention would be as successful in the other countries of special concern to the United States. It is even doubtful that the United States could carry out a similar operation in the Philippines today. When Bush gave his order, the United States still had military personnel stationed on Philippine soil. In addition, the United States enjoyed a positive reputation among the Filipino people. In most of the cases in question, the United States enjoys little or no advantage in terms of military intervention. It is revealing that when the Saudi monarch was threatened by religious riots in Mecca in 1979, the king drew on French commandos to help him restore order. Allowing Americans in the Holy City was seen as too risky. So while it remains true that there are several countries of sufficient geopolitical interest for American officials to consider using force to preserve the status quo, a hard look at the realities suggests that U.S. options are few. Support for Democracies Abroad When U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright delivered the Clinton administration's position on the "Use of Force in a Post-Cold War World" before the National War College on September 23, 1993, she mentioned four problems that might require the use of force: the spread of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, ethnic violence, and the fall of democracy. She specifically mentioned Haiti as an example of the last. Among the democracies abroad with which the United States has no formal security ties but that might well attract American forces in its defense is Israel. United by democratic values and intimate intergovernmental and societal ties, the two countries are as close to the status of allies as it is possible to be without the formal designation. Indeed, the lack of that formal designation continues because there are unbalanced advantages and disadvantages to the current arrangement. The lack of a treaty arrangement frees Israel from the obligation to consult with the United States about its own military actions. That deprives the United States of the ability to stop actions it op poses but also spares it the obligation to confront Israel publicly when the interests of the two countries diverge. But the administration has suggested a grander commitment to democracy. Its off-and-on-again approach to Haiti has suggested that it is prepared in some circumstances to use force to reestablish democracy in a country where it has been overthrown. In Presidential Decision Directive 25, one justification for the dispatch of U.N. or other peacekeeping troops is the restoration of democracy. No doubt, if a viable military option existed, America would intervene to protect democratic forces in Mexico against an authoritarian alternative if that alternative threatened to become anti-American. But a review of U.S. policy toward Haiti suggests that, official rhetoric notwithstanding, the United States will be very reluctant to use force to restore democracy to a friendly country. The Clinton administration did send troops to occupy Haiti and as of early 1995 the operation has gone much better than most observers expected, but congressional opposition to U.S. military action in Haiti has remained robust even though the Haitian government agreed to allow the U.S. troops to land unopposed. In light of congressional views, it is difficult to imagine how the executive branch can build a national consensus for a lengthy occupation of Haiti, yet that is what seems to be required. And if Washington finds it so difficult to act in Haiti, which is so close to U.S. shores and the source of thousands of unwanted refugees, it is unlikely to act elsewhere to "restore democracy." Beyond a very small circle of states, the use of force to restore democracy is going to be primarily through U.N. or other types of peacekeeping, and Presidential Decision Directive 25 makes it clear that U.S. participation in United Nations peacekeeping will be minimal. Protecting Individuals and Countering Drugs and Terrorism There will always be a military requirement for the United States to protect its citizens overseas. Approximately 2.5 million Americans live abroad, of whom nearly 100,000 reside outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries where they can count on protection from the local government. But even in non-Western countries American citizens must depend on the local police. They cannot expect the Marines to help in more than a handful of situations. Criminal acts of terrorism will be another concern of the U.S. military. But except on rare occasions where the U.S. government can trace a pattern of terrorist actions back to an accountable state--as Washington believes it has been able to do with Libya--there is no large-scale military response to terrorism. Good intelligence and police work are more important than military force. Peacekeeping and Peace Enforcement Ironically, the greatest requirement for the use of American force is in the one area where the United States is most skittish--namely peacekeeping and peace enforcement. There has been a veritable explosion of intrastate conflicts in recent years. According to U.N. figures, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 82 conflicts have broken out around the world. But only three of those have been interstate. Seventy-nine were civil wars. And of the three interstate wars, Bosnia and Nagorno-Karabakh are regarded by many as civil wars. In most of the internal conflicts one can imagine a constructive role for outside mediation and observation if not peace enforcement. Yet the recent evolution in U.S. policy has made it more and more unlikely that America will play a constructive role in that area. The United States by some estimates will be spending more for defense in the coming four years than the rest of the world combined. Yet Washington's real defense needs do not seem to require that effort unless America wishes to become much more directly involved in curtailing intrastate ethnic strife and civil war. In that regard, the position of the Clinton administration and the Congress on peacekeeping is scarcely reassuring. The early rhetoric suggested that the United States had a major interest in trying to intervene to manage such conflicts. But the recent Presidential Decision Directive 25 is greatly watered down from earlier versions and adopts criteria so restrictive that they would seem to bar the kind of U.N. force that has successfully monitored the ceasefire on the Golan Heights. Yet that very modest directive is facing major resistance in Congress, which has been hesitant to fund new peacekeeping operations. Both branches of government have been so timid about peacekeeping that using U.S. ground troops in NATO for European peacekeeping is ruled out unless they operate in circumstances that eliminate all risk. It is difficult to see how the United States is going to remain a European power if it refuses to participate in the one form of military activity that is the most needed in Europe today. THE ISSUE OF COMPELLENCE Yet even if the greatest need for U.S. forces is peacekeeping and peace enforcement in intrastate conflicts, that fact by itself does not help policymakers decide when it is appropriate and when it is not appropriate for the United States to intervene in ethnic disputes. What are the differences between interstate conflict and intrastate conflict that U.S. policymakers should understand before they consider the use of force? For most American decision makers, the relevant paradigm for the use of force is the Cold War, with whose rules and regulations they are most familiar because they were similar to those of previous interstate conflicts. According to this paradigm, accountable governments maneuver around one another using the tools of diplomacy and deterrence. Each side attempts to influence the other through a series of veiled or open threats. Each side rationally calculates the odds and usually remains "deterred." Military power in steadily increasing amounts seems highly relevant to the conduct of policy because there is little danger that the weapons might be used; yet if deterrence fails, the more weapons the better. No effort is made to influence internal behavior. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine how quickly the Cold War would have become a hot one had either Moscow or Washington threatened to use force to change the internal political order in either country--for instance, to end the Gulag or force immediate equal rights for black Americans. Does that model for the use of force fit the situations American decision makers face today in places like Bosnia or Georgia or Somalia? Generally speaking, those conflicts do involve intrastate struggles. Statesmen are trying to change internal behavior, not external behavior. They often are not dealing with clearly accountable actors. Nor are the actors always rational. It was not rational for General Mohammad Farah Aidid to resist American demands at such a high price. But he and his people were willing to pay the price. It has not been rational for the Bosnian Serbs to carry out many of their actions, but the bitter memory of World War Il, when so many Serbs died at the hands of Croats and Muslims, has driven them into a frenzy. It is not rational for Armenians to ethnically cleanse Azeris from Nagomo-Karabakh because it will prolong the war, but the outside world has little influence on the Armenian leadership. In traditional interstate conflicts, the number of rational and accountable leaders on each side can be identified and is limited. A handful of officials at the top are able to give orders and have them obeyed. These officials order troops to fight and they order troops to lay down their arms. Usually, the troops follow orders. That fact dramatically influences the way that the international community orchestrates its efforts at preventive diplomacy or humanitarian aid. The United Nations, regional organizations, and neighboring states attempt to pressure the small circle of accountable leaders to persuade them to follow a conciliatory policy. Those efforts may or may not be successful, but no one doubts where pressure must be directed. That is what Washington has been trying to do in North Korea. But who are the real leaders in Bosnia or Haiti or Somalia? Can the Bosnian Serb leaders successfully order their troops to cease fighting? Can the Bosnian government command Muslim soldiers to stop struggling to return to homes from which they were driven by force? In fact, in many intrastate conflicts, popular passions make elite compromise difficult. Conflicts become less a matter of calculation at the top than of mass emotion at the bottom. Leaders may rise up to exploit those emotions, but the kind of leadership they display resembles a man running ahead of a stampeding herd who maintains that he is in charge. He may be able to lead the herd to move to the right or the left but he cannot halt it. If he turns around to stop it, he will be trampled. In intrastate conflicts, religious or ethnic hatred is often so strong that dialogue becomes virtually impossible. The opposing side is unfortunately viewed as almost subhuman. Extermination of the heretic, expulsion of the outsider is declared to be God's work or a patriot's duty. It is suggested that if the other side prevails, one's own side may well disappear. Only one way of life is likely to survive. In such situations, all individuals, old or young, male or female, are identified as combatants. The Indians in the American West knew that the arrival of an unarmed farm family was in effect a declaration of war. It was the advance troop of a larger army to follow that would make the traditional Indian way of life impossible. Several centuries ago in Ireland, the Catholic inhabitants may well have viewed Protestant settlers as an even greater threat to the welfare and security of the Catholic Irish than the British soldiers who protected those settlers. The settlers represented another way of life that would suppress or even eradicate their own. The struggle was therefore to the knife. Modern ethnic and religious conflicts regrettably have not lost this savage character. Palestinians and Israeli settlers on the West Bank or various ethnic groups in Bosnia struggle like the ancient Irish and for many of the same reasons. Each outsider, no matter how young or infirm, is seen as a mortal danger. That is the rationale for "ethnic cleansing," which has persisted throughout history. Another characteristic of internal conflicts is that each side seeks total victory. Surrender is almost always unconditional. Victory for one means oblivion for the other. There is therefore a desperate quality to civil wars that makes them particularly hard to control once they start. In such struggles, when accountable actors do step forward and adopt unpopular positions, they often find that their own lives are in danger. The United States suffered terribly from its civil war, but it did have the good fortune that when one side prevailed, the losing army was commanded by a leader who could order his troops to cease fighting and gain compliance. Robert E. Lee deserves his reputation for greatness because he told his generals it was time to stop fighting and restore the nation. In many other civil wars such calming advice is not given or is not accepted. The leaders of the Irish up rising during and after World War I knew it was risky to seek a compromise with the British. Michael Collins, the Irish guerrilla leader, presciently stated that he had signed his own death warrant when he agreed to leave the six most northern counties under British control. He was assassinated eight months later. The Palestinians over the years have eliminated leaders who threatened to compromise with Israel. Today, Yasir Arafat may be in danger. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Bosnia suffer in part because it is difficult to identify accountable actors. There are too many who claim to be accountable but cannot deliver their people. Those who truly try may be pushed aside or eliminated. It is instructive that in Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic is not the most extreme proponent of Serbian nationalism. Since the main problem in the world today is not interstate aggression but ethnic or civil conflict, how can we deal with it? There are three options for the international community when a civil, ethnic, or religious war breaks out: victory by the stronger party, compelling all parties to compromise by the introduction of outside force, or an attempt to encourage power-sharing. Letting the stronger side win is often the most effective option. It is, in fact, the option the international community traditionally has taken. Compellence is required, however, if outside powers are not prepared to see the stronger side win. Deterrence is unlikely to work precisely because the goal of the international community is to change internal behavior, not external behavior. Such an effort requires either peacekeeping or peace enforcement. In short, it entails risks. If the two sides acquiesce in the peacekeeping force, a ceasefire can be frozen in place and the risks are relatively low. An example is the U.N. peacekeeping force in Cyprus. If the two sides do not agree to the deployment, then a form of U.N. or other protectorate must be established and the risks begin to rise. Overall, compellence by military force is a daunting task that neither the international community nor the United States will often be willing to undertake. But if the task is never undertaken, then the international community is really saying that allowing the stronger to prevail is its only effective option. It is saying that there are no geopolitical consequences to internal change resulting from ethnic conflict that are sufficiently grave to merit the use of force. The 79 conflicts the U.N. secretariat has identified must simply be allowed to burn out. A third option is power-sharing. But it must be recognized that parties in conflict usually will be reluctant to accept power-sharing until some rough balance of power has been achieved through either their own efforts or outside pressure. That is what happened in South Africa, when that country abandoned apartheid. There was no way to get a peaceful solution in South Africa except through power-sharing. Calling for winner-take-all democratic elections cannot solve such ethnic conflicts. Indeed, elections may even trigger conflict, as in Bosnia, where the West foolishly encouraged a referendum on independence that the Serb population boycotted. Other approaches to ethnic conflict besides compellence must be explored. Ethnic problems in places like the Crimea or Kosovo cannot be solved with the approaches now under discussion. Secession in either case will bring on war. Ukraine will not permit Crimea to secede, and Serbia will not permit Kosovo to join Albania. But efforts to improve the human rights of Russians in Crimea or Albanians in Kosovo are also unlikely to work. Success in enhancing their rights is unlikely ever to be enough. To avoid permanent crisis, new, previously untouchable concepts like dual citizenship or shared sovereignty need to be introduced into the dialogue. To avoid recurring conflict, the international community must also encourage closer economic and political ties among key states in the regions of conflict. In the case of Ukraine and Russia, fear of encouraging a restoration of the Soviet Union has prevented the West from encouraging closer ties between the two republics. But since neither will ever be allowed into the European Union and Ukrainian nationalism seems too strong to permit reabsorption in a Moscow-dominated polity, encouragement of closer ties seems prudent--both to prevent conflict and to improve the welfare of both countries. The Balkans seem even more resistant to peaceful solutions, but if the states there are to rise above the narrow confines of exclusionary and destructive nationalism, some form of Balkan confederation will be needed. The outside world could help by funding regional infrastructure projects that would improve life in all the countries in question. As expensive as those may be, they will be much cheaper than the continued costs of conflict in the area. So far the established democracies have two unpalatable options in dealing with ethnic conflict. They can remain aloof and seem politically impotent, or they can become militarily engaged and risk embarrassing failure. A third path will require much bolder and more creative diplomacy than the world has seen so far in the post-Cold War period. CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES is the editor of FOREIGN POLICY. He presented an earlier version of this paper to the Aspen Strategy Group. COPYRIGHT 1995 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace COPYRIGHT 1995 Information Access Company