Description
Starting from the observation that the current wave of conflict prevention efforts rests on the belief that conflicts can indeed be averted, this paper examines the implicit imaginaries of world order in within prevention discourse. Drawing on archival sources, I trace how the notion of preventability points to a Kantian worldview, which understands the human condition as inherently pacifistic and conflicts as frictions in an otherwise functioning global order. An ontogenetic conception of war, in contrast, understands it as an intrinsic part of social and political life. Thus, war is not be averted, but to be harnessed for the creation of order and peace – a conception acquired verisimilitude until its abandonment in the middle of the 20th century. This paper discusses how the conceptions of war as both a destructive as well as a productive force exist within the notion of preventability and proposes a conceptual distinction between prevention as a question of possibility (war can be prevented) and as a question of morality (war should be prevented). Prevention as a question of possibility concerns knowledge production that aims at generating insights into the causes and dynamics of conflicts to anticipate them, exemplified by numerous early warning systems, forecasting models, and structural risk assessments conducted by international organisations, governments, and NGOs. On the other hand, the recurrence of ontogenetic war in the shape of humanitarian intervention and externally-driven state-building after the Cold War points to a selective notion of preventability, according to which prevention only applies to some types of conflict. That is, while the contemporary notion of preventability rests on the belief that all conflicts (in the abstract) can be prevented, it also implies that some are necessary to restore order. Consequently, the contemporary notion of prevention does not pertain to the entirety of wars and conflict, but to specific aspects like war's destructive outcomes, but not its effect of order-making.
