German Action Plan: Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Peace Consolidation — A Reconceptualization of Security

This Action Plan has succeeded the Comprehensive Concept of the Federal Government on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Peace-Building (2000). Prevention and a comprehensive security concept have long been the basis of German policy, as the White Paper of the Federal Ministry of Defence demonstrates (Bonn: Federal Ministry of Defence, 1994).Google Scholar

The term ‘crisis prevention’ covers early, planned, systematic, and coherent action at various levels of government and society to prevent violent conflicts. Crisis prevention measures aim to reduce the potential for a violent conflict and encourage the establishment of institutions to resolve conflicts peacefully before, during or after violent conflict. The Action Plan refers to civilian crisis prevention, which pursues these aims without the use of military or other means of force (Bundesregierung 2004: X).Google Scholar

In the German text of the Action Plan, the terms ‘Konfliktlösung’, ‘Konfliktbeilegung’ and ‘Konfliktregelung’ — despite their different connotations and slightly varying interpretations — are used synonymously for the English term ‘conflict resolution.’ Conflict resolution aims to achieve a workable compromise or balance of interests that will also permanently prevent a violent escalation of the conflict in question (Bundesregierung 2004: X).Google Scholar

These threats are either caused or exacerbated by fragile states: with their limited control over their territory they are no functioning partners of a still largely state-based system; thus even those crises, which could be contained locally, tend to have regional and even global repercussions. New security strategies recognize and try to address this problem (Council of the European Union 2003; Rice 2003). See also below, with regard to the debate on “the responsibility to protect.”Google Scholar

This budget-based approach is at the heart of Britain’s strategy on conflict prevention, aptly coined as “Investing in Prevention” (Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit 2005).Google Scholar

This is not to say, however, that traditional security policy has become obsolete: Interstate conflicts persist, state security continues to be high on the agenda, and the political control of weapons of mass destruction will remain a key problem in the years to come (Debiel/ Werthes 2005).Google Scholar