Abstract
This article is an empirical analysis of the cases of preventive diplomacy practiced for conflicts during the post-Cold War era. It focuses on establishing and verifying the hypotheses on the successes and failures of preventive diplomacy. For an analytical framework, it accesses the definition and theory of preventive diplomacy, along with three case studies: denuclearization of the former Soviet republics, civil war in East Timor, and the North Korean nuclear crisis.
This research found that the definition of the concept hardly reflects the reality and has some limitations in its application to empirical study. For this reason, it has taken preventive diplomacy as the PKO activities, which make it possible to easily collect data and clearly identify the beginning of intervention and the number of participating actors. Then it verifies the hypotheses on the successes of preventive diplomacy based on the conflict data over a 10-year period during the post-Cold War era.
For the empirical analysis, this paper selected three of Lund's success factors—timing of intervention, support from major powers, and state autonomy—and added another factor: namely geographical region. The main findings of this paper are as follows: First, timing is a vital factor. PKO intervention was most successful at the latent level of conflict. Second, intervention of major powers is also significant. The intervention of the United States yielded a high rate of success. Third, state autonomy is not a critical factor. Domestic and international conflicts showed no differences in the success of PKO. Fourth, geographical region proved to be an important factor.