Preventing Violent Conflict

The prospects for peace had never been greater than immediately after the Cold War. However, these initial hopes were soon shattered by the instabilities and conflicts which followed the economic and social breakdown of the Soviet Union. Violent conflicts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have ever since constituted a security risk demanding the highest priority for the whole of Europe. Taking this into account it was necessary not only to consider security policies such as conflict management, but also to place more weight on the use of conflict prevention. Some security relevant institutions such as the OSCE have already adopted this idea and have made conflict prevention a focal point of their activities. In a joint project the Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, together with financial support by the Volkswagen Foundation, addressed the problems of conflicts prevention. In this volume, which focuses on the Baltic and Transcaucasus regions, the first set of results are presented. Another volume assessing the prevention of other conflict regions is going to follow.