After the end of the Cold War crisis-ridden transformation processes and the escalating conflicts both in and outside Europe confronted even those states which were not directly involved with new challenges. Many saw themselves exposed to dangers through developments in their near or distant neighborhood to which they now had to respond because the traditional forces of order no longer relieved them of the task. One consequence of this was that states in whose policies such questions had never played a role suddenly had to decide whether – and in what manner – to get involved in serious (and often violent) conflicts in other states. In regional and international organizations, as well as alliances and groups of states, too, the topic of intervention played an appreciably more important role.

During the East–West conflict the leading powers had reserved the right to unilaterally intervene in the internal affairs of countries in their respective bloc and virtually monopolized the topic of intervention, explicitly as in the case of the Brezhnev doctrine (which in 1968 postulated the limited sovereignty of socialist states), or de facto as in the case of the USA. After 1989 medium sized and smaller states too found themselves compelled to develop a position on the question of sovereignty-limiting interventionism in other countries. The unilateral interventionism of the great powers was superseded by a multilateral interventionism.

What was understood by intervention at first was above all military intervention. Given the intensity and character of the main conflicts – for example, the one in the Balkans – this is not surprising. However, it soon became clear that military means were not enough for ending or regulating conflicts and for the lasting prevention of violence, and that a broad palette of non-military instruments was required which, according to the classic division of responsibilities, belong to foreign, security, and development policy.

Actors that until quite recently operated in strict separation have worked out new forms of joint strategic development and coordination. These are certainly impressive innovations, as we gather from Günther Maihold’s article. However, he warns that in this process development policy may become overstretched. Through its “securitization” it ultimately runs the risk of losing resources and political influence.

An at least equally impressive innovation are the new methods being used, above all in the context of development cooperation, in an attempt to prevent, deal with, and overcome conflicts together with civil actors and by civil means. The present issue of INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND SOCIETY draws attention to these new conflict-sensitive toolkits of civil peace consolidation. Their aim, as Weller and Kirschner emphasize, is not to completely prevent, expel, or render conflicts impossible, but rather to fence them in institutionally in such a way as to prevent their violent resolution.

Thania Paffenholz examines civil approaches to dealing with conflicts in practice, in particular Aid for Peace, in whose development the author was involved, and which has been adopted by a number of important development agencies. Natascha Zupan, head of FriEnt, the Working Group on Development and Peace (to which the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development [BMZ], implementing organizations, and researchers belong), emphasizes that the development of new kinds of conflict-sensitive instruments, including specific planning and management tools, is already sufficiently advanced to enable the evaluation of project activities in conflict regions from the standpoint of their efficiency and importance. Advocates of the new civil approaches to dealing with conflicts were guided by the simple but important insight that actors can also cause harm. Mary Anderson has applied this idea methodically as the “do-no-harm principle” and has developed an analytic toolkit which takes a critical look at the unintended consequences of cooperation at the project level. If international aid strengthens one of the conflicting parties, or if it cannot prevent resources from being used for buying arms, it does more harm than good.

The articles by Adebajo and by Wadle and Schukraft focus on conflicts and security problems with traditional military connotations. They analyse the progress made towards an African security architecture and the European contribution. In serious war or civil war situations in which strategies of conflict prevention and peace keeping have failed, attempts at de-escalation have not been a success, and the actors have aided and abetted the proliferation of violence, conditions must first be created for the application of civil instruments for dealing with conflicts. If such interventions take place collectively and are oriented towards multilateral regulation, conflicts which arise through unilateral intervention are minimized.

In addition to the main issue, Michael Dauderstädt and Marika Lerch look at the problems of democracy promotion; Armin Schäfer examines the asymmetries of the European integration process; and Carsten Wieland shows how Islamic fundamentalism draws on the ethnicisation of politics.