June 2004
Vol. X, No. 2
A War Averted
The UN's experience in Macedonia shows that preventive action can make a difference.
Can violent conflicts be prevented and contained, like epidemics caught in the early stages, or are they like earthquakes, unpredictable eruptions that the international community is helpless to stop? As Yugoslavia crumbled and then imploded in waves of ethnically inspired violence, one province, Macedonia, made the transition to independence without disaster, thanks in large part to the efforts of the United Nations. Henryk J. Sokalski led the UN Preventive Deployment Force in Macedonia from 1995 to 1998. At a forum held at the Institute in mid-November to launch his book, An Ounce of Prevention: Macedonia and the UN Experience in Preventive Diplomacy, he gave an insider's account of those critical years, when a small UN deployment force held off the chaos from neighboring Balkan states. "The UN drew a thin blue line around Macedonia and proved that, under the right circumstances, prevention can succeed," said Sokalski.
Read more about: An Ounce of Prevention |
Critical to the UN's success was its three-pronged approach, Sokalski said. First, it monitored the border areas, particularly in the north and west, and reported any developments that could pose a threat to the country. Second, by its presence it deterred threats from such external sources as Serbia and prevented clashes that might otherwise have occurred between Macedonian and other forces. And third, it contributed to the maintenance and stability of law and order in the republic. Perhaps most impressively, the UN accomplished these feats with a force that numbered, at its peak, only in the low hundreds, with soldiers drawn from Scandinavia and the United States.
Three lessons emerge from the Macedonian experience, Sokalski said. First, prevention can make a difference. The deployment of a small force prevented the Balkan tragedy from spilling over into Macedonia. Second, such an intervention need not be a threat to national sovereignty. In this case, the UN was invited into Macedonia by the government itself. Third, the UN works best when it partners with others—in this case, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Also speaking at the forum were Michael Lund, senior specialist for conflict and peace building at Management Systems International; Bruce Jentleson, director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University; and Johanna Mendelson-Forman, senior program officer at the UN Foundation. Harriet Hentges, executive vice president of the Institute, served as moderator.
While there was broad agreement that the UN's work in Macedonia was a success, there was no corresponding agreement on whether this experience would turn out to be a precedent or merely an exception. Lund noted that the idea of conflict prevention was a long time in coming to fruition. Ten years ago, he said, conflict prevention was an idea in search of a strategy; now, he said, it is a strategy in search of an application. The reason interventions are so rare, he said, is that it is hard to find the conjunction of circumstances—not least, permission from opposing parties—that made the Macedonian experiment a success. Jentleson said that preventive action was a "pay now or pay later" proposition, like changing the oil in your car before the engine seizes up. "Prevention is possible, difficult, and necessary," he asserted.
Other Institute Resources:
- Event Audio Archive
- An Ounce of Prevention (Sample Chapter)
