These explanations have gained in sophistication to the point that no self-respecting analyst today would ascribe violence to "ancient ethnic hatreds," a phrase that was often applied to the Balkan wars just a decade ago.

Instead, economists talk about how greed and natural resources fuel violence, reducing rapacious governments and marauding rebels to rational economic actors. Political experts prefer to highlight the need for good governance. If Tolstoy was alive today, his classic novel would be called, not "War and Peace," but "Resource-based Conflict and Accountable Public Policy."

What all these analysts miss is the unpredictable political nature of conflict itself. Left unexamined are the questions of how and why politicians decide whether or not to stir up or harness popular angst, and the process by which violence subsequently takes on a dynamic of its own.

As Claire Metelits of Washington State University notes, over-deterministic analyses imply that insurgents have "little if any agency." This is convenient for academics and policymakers who, instead of worrying about combatants' real and complex political motivations, try to predict their behavior on the basis of socio-economic indicators. 

Governments and international organizations are very fond of these indicators, as they can be used to build up early warning rosters of places that are likely to fall into war. The best known of these early warning lists is the Fund for Peace's "Failed States Index." In fairness, the index plays an important role raising public awareness of weak countries and tries to include political factors as well as socio-economic ones. But it's hard to pinpoint the specific political issues that can spark violence. Last year, the index ranked Kyrgyzstan below neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in terms of conflict risk. But for reasons that still perplex most outsiders, Kyrgyzstan has tumbled into bloodshed. 

In the mid-1990s, Stanford University's Stephen John Stedman called conflict prevention, "alchemy for a New World Order." It still feels like an extremely dubious science.

It is also difficult to translate macro-level risk analyses into direct crisis diplomacy when things go bad. It's one thing to know that a country has deteriorating public services or an uneven distribution of spending on ethnic groups. But it's another to know which ministers control that spending, and how to twist their arms to alter their budgetary plans.

To do that, you need more traditional diplomatic and political skills: direct local leverage, a network of old friends and a reasonable sense of where important skeletons are buried. 

But this points to new problems. In days gone by, the American, British or French ambassador in an unstable country often had all of the above. If they didn't, they frequently had a friendly spy who did.

That's no longer the case. Today, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian officials often have better leverage and contacts. And by now, any autocrat worth his salt has learned how to play the big powers off against each other. The Sudanese government, for instance, has cordial relations with both Western intelligence agencies that worry about Islamist terrorism and Chinese oil firms.

In the future, resolving looming conflicts will more often than not involve convening highly complicated -- and inherently unstable -- coalitions of governments to put pressure on potential combatants. Regional organizations, like the African Union and Organization of American States, also have leverage. But who will do the convening?

Sometimes, the U.S. will still take the lead, or else regional powers will do so. But in many cases, the competing interests involved in a crisis will preclude a single state from orchestrating mediation. In such instances, the task of leading talks -- or backing up local actors with better political contacts to do so -- may fall to a much-maligned actor: the United Nations.

This is, in fact, already the case in a lot of conflict zones. In recent years, a small group of well-connected U.N. officials have played a huge role in conflict prevention, although their efforts have often been overshadowed by the organization's large-scale peacekeeping missions.

Examples range from Nepal, where U.N. mediators helped forge peace in 2006 after 10 years of war, to West Africa, where the head of the U.N.'s regional office, Saïd Djinnit, has helped damp down conflicts in Guinea, Mauritania and Niger. And contrary to the common impression that the U.N. only helps in second-tier conflicts, its advisory mission in Iraq has won U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's plaudits for its role in facilitating Arab-Kurdish talks.

The U.N. can no more act alone than can major powers: It could not have played a role in Nepal without India's approval, or have done anything in Iraq without U.S. support. The U.N. has also developed close relationships with the African Union and Africa's sub-regional economic organizations, without whom it would lack a foothold in many trouble-spots.

The U.N.'s ability to act is also limited by budgetary constraints. Officials often track emerging conflicts from New York. A 2009 report by the NYU Center on International Cooperation found that the U.N. political officer for Iran last visited the country in 1974.

Far-sighted U.N. political staff would like to restructure the way they do business, putting more officials in regional offices. Cost-conscious member states worry about the price, and fear that far-flung mediators will be hard to keep an eye on. 

First-class personnel are also in short supply, a particular problem in high-risk missions like Iraq. But the case for having more conflict experts close to actual and potential trouble-spots is undeniable. They can work with real politicians, not indicators. And in a multipolar environment, the U.N. may be the best outfit to deploy those experts.

The alternative is to devise ever more complex matrices for predicting the next civil war from afar, and then giving a sad shrug when some overlooked hotspot blows up.

**Richard Gowan and Bruce D. Jones are the authors of "Back to Basics: The U.N. and Crisis Diplomacy in an Age of Strategic Uncertainty" (Center on International Cooperation, July 2010), which is available here.