What is it about?
The article studies the record of East Asian conflict prevention by looking at statistics of conflict, conflict fatalities and ending of conflicts and compares it with the development of East Asia's approach to conflict prevention. It finds out that since 1979 East Asia has been exceptionally peaceful: the risk of dying in wars is smallest in East Asia of all parts of the world. It also reveals that East Asia is mainly good at avoiding the intensification of small conflicts into full-scale wars. East Asia is not as good at preventing the onset of small conflicts, and it is not as good at terminating conflicts, bu it is better that it used to before 1980 and better than other regions now at preventing conflict escalation into wars. The article reveals that East Asian success is due to its refusal to accept external military aid in domestic conlficts. Secondly, East Asia is conflict aversive because of its obsession to develop: economic development is difficult if countries are fighting wars. Finally, East Asian countries no longer aim at war victories, i.e. imposition of solutions by using military victories on their oppoents. The article then tests how much global conflict violence is due to the lack of focus on economic development, due to interventions into other countries' conflicts, and imposition of solutions on other countries. The finding is that these failures to follow East Asian recipes of peace is associated with much of war in the world.
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Why is it important?
This study is important as it reveals and identifies why East Asia is so successful in the prevention of conflict. It is also important because it reveals that some of the most used ways of conflict prevention are counter-productive: conflict violence increases when unilateral great powers try to fix internal problems of fragile developing countries. The global effort at fiing political problems first, also gets a rejection from evidence in this study. Using economy as an instrument, in sanctions, boycotts, etc., for pushing forward political reforms tends to lead to poor outcomes from the point of view of ordinary people. Finally, it seems on the basis of evidence in this study, that imposing solutions by means of military force, does not work if the intention is to reduce violence.
Perspectives
Evidence of this study supports the findings of my other research, especially the ones published in Kivimäki, Timo. The Failure to Protect. The Path to and Consequences of Humanitarian Interventionism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019. Kivimäki, Timo. Protecting the Global Civilian from Violence: UN Discourses and Practices in Fragile States. London: Routledge, 2021. It shows a region in the world that has followed the prescriptions of the two mentioned books and thrives. These prescriptions are the following: 1. Focuse on economic development 2. Do not accept external military interference into internal affairs and 3. Do not impose solutions militarily on others Thus, I find it interesting that the global findings I have developed with the help of computer-assisted textual analysis of authoritative texts by the UN and great powers and by comparing approaches that these texts reveal to outcomes in conflict fatalities, can now be verified also by means of a study of a region successful in conflict prevention. Instead of just finding that interventionism, hegemonism and the lack of attention to development are associated with gobal violence, this study now also shows that anti-interventionsim, anti-hegemonism and developmentalism lead to exceptional level of peacefulness in East Asia.
Timo Kivimäki
University of Bath
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Could the East Asian Way of Peacekeeping Be a Recipe for Global Peace?, Journal of International Peacekeeping, June 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18754112-26010001.
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