The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

30 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL O ften when talking to survivors of violence in burned-out villages or bullet-pocked cement-block urban neighborhoods, we couldn’t help thinking: “This would be easier if we had been here earlier.” Both of us have been involved in stabilization operations for years but have often wished for a time machine Getting Preventive Stabilization On the Map David C. Becker is a retired FSO who spent more than 16 years designing and managing programs in five conflict countries on two continents. He also served as a political adviser to the Commander of U.S. Transportation Command. After retirement in 2011, he headed a research program on humanitarian and stabilization technologies at the National Defense University. Lt. Col. Steve Lewis is a civil-military planner for U.S. Southern Command, with experience in conflict countries in Asia and Latin America. The authors thank Drs. Danielle Stodilka and Wal- ter Dorn for their contributions to this article and the seminar that inspired it. Two practitioners discuss the challenges of conflict prevention in the modern age. FOCUS ON PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY BY DAV I D C . BECKER AND STEVE L EWI S so we could go back and help mitigate the problems before they became crises. The cost of violent conflict and instability is incredibly high, both in terms of human life and resources wasted. The United Nations estimates that the average cost of a civil war is $65 bil- lion. The benefits of prevention are also significant. A United Nations report estimates that every $1 spent on prevention saves $10 in recovery costs. Prevention of violent conflict is not just common sense and fiscally sound; it is also U.S. policy, as outlined in the current National Security Strategy. Why then, if prevention saves money and lives, and is official U.S. govern- ment policy, do we have such a poor record of preventing violent conflict and stability? This question was the focus of the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Training and Education Workshop that drew a group of stabilization veterans, including the authors, to Carlisle, Penn- sylvania, last April. Sponsored by the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI), the workshop is an annual three-day event. This year, the group of about 50 practi- tioners formed six workgroups to discuss various components of stability. Our group of 10 focused on how to get ahead of the cruel curve of conflict and spiraling violence before it eventu- ally draws the attention of the world and pulls outside nations