Preventive action: Failure in Yugoslavia

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Abstract
Preventive action has been resurrected in the 1990s as a result of the horrors of civil wars, especially in Bosnia and Rwanda. Policy makers and academics have realized that political capital invested in preventive diplomacy can help to avoid or minimize the human and material costs of collective violence. On the other hand the experiences of the Yugoslavian crisis in 1989–92 show that the international community is not able to effectively prevent humanitarian crises. International organizations are too dependent on external constraints, including the interests of their leading members, and their division of labour is too primitive to permit an early and effective action. In addition, the relationships between the means and ends of preventive action are not often formulated in strategic terms. This not only leads to erroneous policies, but may even escalate rather than control violence.

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