Write a summary, in no more than 200 words, of the following excerpt adapted from Michael S.

The malaise of U.S. foreign policy is such that academic gadflies now debunk any proposal sounding suspiciously positive. The charge is that proponents of preventive diplomacy oversell its potential, and naive policymakers are taking the bait. It is argued that problems of prescience, policy prescription, and political support mean the "intractable" conflicts "endemic" to the post-Cold War period cannot be averted unless major resources are invested in situations in which risks are high and success doubtful. Preventive diplomacy, the contention runs, merely means that one founders early in a crisis instead of later.

Scaremongers conjure up a nightmare in which zealous purveyors of preventive diplomacy mesmerize unwitting policymakers into buying a discount antidote for local quagmires, one with little potency and hidden side effects. Yet responsible proponents of preventive diplomacy obviously do not presume easy solutions to such disasters can be found, nor do they advise key players to do something, just anything, in dealing with incipient conflicts, tout preventive diplomacy as a cure-all with no cost or risk, or assume no value judgments need be made. Not only do the scaremongers distort the views being expressed but they insult policymakers by implying they would fall for such policy nostrums.

Advocacy of a policy slogan is confounded with adoption of the substance behind it. The fact that preventive diplomacy is a buzzword of foreign policy does not imply that early warning and conflict prevention have become official doctrine or standard operating procedure. The term "preventive diplomacy" refers to actions or institutions that are used to keep political disputes arising between or within nations from escalating into armed force. These efforts are needed when and where existing international relations or national politics fail to manage tensions without violence erupting. They come into play before a point of confrontation, sustained violence, or military action is reached.

The claim is that while we know the societal conditions that stoke the chances of war or state collapse (e.g., poverty, environmental degradation, ethnic and economic divisions, and repressive, corrupt regimes, and so forth), murky individual and group decisions make it impossible to predict exactly when and where violence will surface. But just because political forecasting is not rocket science does not disqualify it. Unheralded acts, such as a military coup or a terrorist bombing, are very difficult to forecast. Early-warning specialists are, though, making progress in pinning down the probable precipitants of more gradual, phenomena such as ethnic conflict, genocide, and the breakdown of states. Demonstrations, repressive measures, hate rhetoric, arms build-ups, separatist communities forming parallel institutions: these signs one ignores at one's peril.

In Estonia, for example, restrictive citizenship and language laws adopted in 1993 by the newly-independent government were perceived by resident Russian speakers — then a third of Estonia's population — as discriminatory and threatening. Mindful of this group's powerful patron next door, the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and other governmental and private actors took preventive steps to allay tensions.

The rub, so the argument runs, lies in knowing what actions to take. But preventive strategy is not the stab in the dark some observers insinuate. The blanket view that ethnic tensions uniformly lead to intractable conflicts is based on a few recent instances where, despite efforts to avoid it, violence has ensued: Croatia, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda. One should look, instead, at the numerous ethnic and national disputes deemed potentially destabilizing and menacing that were actually managed in relative peace: Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, the break-up of the Czech and Slovak Republics, Congo's transition from autocracy, Zambia's non-violent shift toward democracy, and Hungary's moderated relations with its neighbors, among others. Such success stories are virtually ignored. Only two policy options ("little more than talking" or armed force) are mooted, whereas governments and NGOs have resorted to a gamut of measures to influence parties in disputes.

One may well be skeptical that preventive action would save more lives, cost less, and obviate the need for humanitarian intervention. No need, still, to go to the opposite extreme, wherein the financial and political cost of preventing such crises is prohibitive. The logic of conflict escalation is prima facie support for the view that less violent and short-lived disputes offer much greater opportunities for peaceful management by mediators. Issues in those types of disputes tend to be simple and singular, disputants are less rigidly polarized and politically mobilized, fatalities (and thus passions) are low, and communications and common institutions may have survived. Other states or external groups are less likely to have taken sides and may even share an interest in keeping local disputes from burgeoning.

The calculus of deciding whether preventive diplomacy is worth the price must comprehend the costs of alternatives such as mid-conflict intervention and non-involvement. That covers not only lives lost and injuries but also the price of humanitarian relief, refugee aid, and peacekeeping. It should also include the cost of losses in health, education, infrastructure, trade and investment opportunities, and natural resources.

The feeling is that the public will not endorse preventive diplomacy's risks and costs, but the considerations described above cast the issue of "political will" in a different light. Preventive efforts are often much less challenging and more prosaic than cases in which a government must endeavor to rouse the country to expose troops to possible danger abroad. For example, the dispatch of 500 American soldiers to join the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Macedonia was hardly noticed. Were preventive diplomacy to prosper, incipient conflicts would not even reach the desks of the National Security Council, the State Department's upper echelons, and the Pentagon.

Rather than ignore potential crises and threats out of some unexamined theory of their imagined intractability, policymakers might prudently track emerging political disputes around the world and develop policy options for addressing them promptly as opposed to belatedly. That would enable decision-makers to better assess whether they should act, when, with what means, and with whom. As successes mount, the burden of proof will shift to those who would still defend the notion that current wait-and-see policies and practices are best. The stakes in these potential crises are simply too high for such options to be dismissed with cavalier analyses carping on about a few frustrating experiences.