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