In the wake of the cold war, the international community has faced a sudden increase in regional conflicts. While the likelihood of large-scale wars between major powers has significantly decreased, smaller-scale regional and ethnic conflicts have proliferated, presenting a new challenge to strategists and policymakers around the world. Today, the need to strengthen peacekeeping mechanisms and to prevent and resolve conflicts is a major item on the international agenda.

In this volume, five Japanese international relations experts examine such topics as UN reform for the enhancement of preventive diplomacy capabilities; post-conflict peacebuilding; the principle of self-determination and ethnic conflict; the impact of forced displacement of populations on conflict prevention efforts; reconceptualizing security communities and power-sharing for preventing conflict; and the connection between human rights, democratization, and preventive diplomacy. By analyzing the international community's responses to conflicts in such locations as the African Great Lakes region, the Balkans, Myanmar, and Cambodia, the authors draw lessons for managing regional conflict through preventive diplomacy.

Contributors include Akizuki Hiroko (Asia University, Japan), Hoshino Toshiya (Osaka University, Japan), Kikkawa Gen (Kobe University, Japan), Miyawaki Noboru (Matsuyama University, Japan), and Shoji Mariko (Keiai University, Japan).