The signs in this chapter range from the strongest warnings to gentler reminders. 禁(止) ‘forbid’ and 严禁 ‘strictly forbid’ are used for the strongest warning possible. 请勿 ‘please don’t’ may be a tad less strong than 禁止. There are also other verbs of warning such as莫 ‘don’t’, 不得 ‘must not’, and 不可 ‘may not’. The most common reminders include verbs 当心 ‘beware of’, 小心 ‘be careful about’ and so on. To convey a sense of seriousness, the language of warnings and reminders tends to be formal, replete with classical Chinese elements.

Chapter 5 turns to a much bleaker vision of the Anthropocene: the widely shared suspicion that catastrophe is all but inevitable. In this part of the book, I attend to various dystopian visions of our climate-changed world, by first delivering a historical overview according to which the apocalypse's construal in public discourse has recently undergone significant transformations. Dystopias perform one major function in this context - they warn an audience about existential threats that are imminent, but whose true causes still remain concealed from public purview. In the case of climate change, we ought to distinguish more specifically, I suggest, between cautionary and post-cautionary narratives. Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy navigates this divide by probing where grave dangers might erupt from within the status quo, without suffocating the desire for alternative ways of being and living. Atwood’s books are so insightful because they move back and forth between a storyline that traces how the environmental catastrophe came about and another one that unravels the surprising ways in which the surviving humans collaborate with other species to build a common future.

The chapter discusses canon law provisions relating to just punishment of financial–economic infringements by members of the Catholic Church. The aim of penalties in the Church differs from that in civil society: in the Church, punishments are applied to lead the offender through repentance to salvation; in civil society to reintegrate them into the society. The Church does not have power to enforce punishments, which means that a punishment can be applied only to those who accept the power of the Church by their own will. In canonical delicts the offender is bound by his conscience; in civil delicts by the coercive power of the state. Penalties can be used only as last resort. All possibilities are to be exhausted before a real punishment is applied. The principle of gradualism is one of the most important in the salvation of souls. The reverend emphasizes that being lost in pure legalism in the interpretation of the texts would cause the real meaning of canon law to be lost, since all penalties have the purpose that all offices, dignities, ministries, duties should be fulfilled by persons who are suitable.

This chapter focuses on media organisations and journalists as sources of outside-in warnings of conflict. Conflict prevention scholars have touched on media’s role in preventive action, but not studied it in any depth. International political communication scholarship offers few relevant insights about the media as warners, as it concentrates on their role during crises or in the build-up to military interventions and wars. This chapter fills this gap by presenting original empirical research on how and when journalists communicate warnings and under what conditions these warnings may gain traction with officials and decision-makers. Our investigation is theoretically grounded in the persuasion framework of Chapter 2, but we also draw on insights from studies about the media as communicators that are in many ways distinct from other outside-in warners such as NGOs. There are three parallel research lines: (1) textual analysis of media coverage showing how news outlets have warned about eight different crises, (2) analyst surveys, and (3) interviews with foreign correspondents and capital-based foreign news editors, officials and NGO staff. Newspapers were selected according to variation across reach, political orientation and nationality; are from countries committed to conflict prevention (US, UK, France, Germany); and cover the whole political spectrum.

The chapter identifies warnings within the EU foreign policy system related to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and examines the reasons for the differentiated impact among EU decision-makers. The Ukraine case was a strategic surprise to the overwhelming majority of EU policy-makers and posed significant diagnostic problems, but senior ministers within the system were warning their peers on the basis of previous cases, historical analogies, expert knowledge and recent indications of changed Russian intent. However, the persuasiveness of the few and late warnings suffered, first of all, from distraction by external crises coupled with limited bandwidth in the EU, shortages in relevant and reliable intelligence, high resistance against divergent policy predispositions of the warning and, finally, significant suspicions of national biases against key warning sources. The supranational part of the system was almost completely blindsided to geopolitical risk, while the newly established EEAS was partly unable and partly unwilling to persuade the Commission. It is fair to say that the system as a whole acted as an impediment to having a holistic discussion of warning as part of foreign policy discourse.

Rwanda has become the paradigmatic case for a missed opportunity to prevent genocide and human suffering on the largest scale, and subsequent analyses of this case have shaped a significant part of the practical and academic thinking. The chapter contests the dominant argument that Rwanda was a straightforward case for heeding plenty, early and high-quality warnings. It argues that indications need to be distinguished from actual warnings and persuasiveness of warnings needs to be empirically studied rather than assumed. The analysis shows that most sources cited in the literature did not contain an actual warning and gave a more ambiguous picture than is claimed by proponents who argue that lack of political will, not warnings, was the problem. It is suggested that hindsight bias partly explains why the availability of warnings has been overestimated, whereas the diagnostic difficulties in this case were underestimated. Contrary to expectations, persuasive warning communication appears to be no less of a problem for preventive policy as the will and ability to respond. The findings suggest that renewed attention is needed to the challenge of making knowledge, relevance and action claims about impending mass atrocities that are clear and persuasive enough.

The chapter introduces the research puzzle of the study: under what conditions do warnings about impending violent conflict in other states succeed in persuading foreign policy-makers to pay more attention, shift their attitudes and mobilise for preventive or mitigating action? Why are some warnings by some sources noticed and largely accepted, while others are ignored, disbelieved or simply not acted upon? The introduction reviews briefly the literature on the warning–response gap in intelligence and peace studies and makes the case for recasting the problem as one of persuasion. It defines and conceptualises what warnings are, their different claims and varied impact. It argues that only by explaining differences in persuasiveness can prospective warners learn the right lessons. To tackle the questions, the chapter introduces the comparative and longitudinal research design, the methods used and data gathered. The chapter concludes by outlining briefly the structure of the book.

This chapter focuses on the case of the Georgian-Russian War of 2008. It concentrates on the question of which warnings were communicated by whom within the European Union system and how were they perceived in terms of notice, acceptance and mobilisation to act by the EU’s member states as the key decision-makers. It considers not only warnings in relation to South Ossetia, but also those from a few months earlier related to Georgia’s other separatist region of Abkhazia that were in fact to some extent successful. Rather than a classic case of warning failure, the analysis shows considerable variation in impact among member states and between the cases of Abkhazia as compared with South Ossetia. It is argued that these differences are due to the relatively low level of diagnostic difficulty in making knowledge claims, differences in receptivity among member states due to threat perceptions and policy preferences, and source credibility given warners’ respective track records as well as suspicions of national biases. The case confirms that many factors work interdependently in producing different outcomes for warnings over time and highlights that warnings should be considered an integral part of evolving and historically contingent discourses on foreign policy.

Building on the framework developed in Chapter 2, this chapter looks specifically at the factors shaping the persuasive impact of conflict warnings articulated from within selected Western states and IOs, as opposed to warnings from outside sources such as NGOs or news media discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. The chapter is based on a ‘best-case design’ by focusing on six actors – three states and three IOs – all of which have made a clear and strong commitment to conflict prevention and preventive action by policy or mandate. These are the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany and the UN, the EU and the OSCE. We identify the most important factors or combination of factors, but also investigate differences between the six foreign policy systems as well as between types of actors, especially, states and international organisations. We found that their relationships and roles are often more fluid than that and both are affected by broader factors such as pre-existent policies, shared diagnostic beliefs or organisational cultures.