International Mediation in a Fragile World

David Carment, Evan Hoffman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138297074
• eBook ISBN: 9781351583329
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

Contributions to this volume consider the importance of mediation in violent conflict. Practical and applied, this publication will be of interest to scholars, academics, policymakers and practitioners. It was originally published as a special issue of Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.

Mediation roles for large small countries

I. William Zartman^∗

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

In 2011 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly endorsed the notion of mediation, already noted in the Charter (UN Charter n.d., art VI.33), as a primary means of settling disputes; in 2005 the Millennium Summit included emphasis on mediation as one of the ways of preventing conflict escalation, and the Mediation Support Unit was established to enhance the practice. In 2012, the Secretary-General issued a report on Strengthening the role of mediation in the peaceful settlement of disputes, conflict prevention and resolution (UN 2012a), and in September, the UN issued a helpful Guidance for effective mediation (UN 2012b) that summarized in eight points the best practices that scholars and practitioners have developed since the founding of the UN. It is therefore timely, if always appropriate, to take stock of the dynamics of mediation.¹

Peacemaking on the international playground is not a role for everyone, anytime, anywhere. Before addressing the question of the appropriate role for particular actors (the Who question), a review of the What, Why, When and How questions is appropriate. It is generally recognized that parties in a conflict need help, in one way or another. While such help may be needed to enable one party to win, it may then become equally necessary for help to prevent one side from winning, with the result that help ends up meaning assistance to provide an outcome acceptable to the conflicting parties. Thus, third-party roles can mean many things, according to the evolution of the conflict and the interests of the intervener. The concern here is with that part of the spectrum of roles outside of invasive intervention to eliminate one of the parties, and including all other roles designed to provide a solution for both parties.² These roles will be brought together under the term “mediation,” with distinctions of different types and degrees to be drawn later.

What?

Treatments of mediation generally imply a result somewhere between the two parties’ positions, but in fact that “midpoint” can be very variable, as in the general paradigm for any negotiation (Dupont 2006).³ Thus, mediation can be used to arrange the conditions of surrender as long as both parties remain intact, as much as it can help negotiate the conditions of powersharing – in other words, from cohabitation to surrender, but not suicide. More conventionally, mediation can be understood as catalyzed negotiation, in which a third party enables the conflicting parties to conduct the negotiations that they were unable to do by themselves. This understanding is important because there is a fruitless debate over whether mediation is something distinct from negotiation or not; it is clearly a form of negotiation, with the same behavior and concepts involved, but one level more complex because of the triangular relation.

Mediation is a political process of persuasion with no advance commitment from the parties to accept the mediator’s ideas (Bercovitch 2007, Bercovitch et al. 2009). In this respect, it differs from arbitration, which employs judicial procedure and issues a verdict that the parties have committed themselves beforehand to accept, another distinction that is sometimes missed (Bilder 2007). Thus the mediator, however engaged, is different from the parties in that only they have the equalizing power of veto; they need to agree, not only to the outcome at the end but also to the mediator’s entry into the process at the beginning.

In the gamut of peacemaking types – conflict prevention, conflict management, conflict resolution, conflict transformation – mediation is more directly concerned with the middle two goals. The distinctions are standard: conflict management refers to the reduction of the means of the conflict from violence to politics, whereas conflict resolution refers to the elimination of the ends of the conflict (Zartman 2006). Conflict prevention could also be the subject of mediation, as indicated in Pillar 2 of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), whereby third-party states have the responsibility to help other states care for their populations’ welfare and thereby prevent conflict; the third-party role may be present but of least importance in conflict transformation, which removes conflict by building interdependence and cooperation (Ki-Moon 2009).

Conflict management is usually considered a necessary prelude for mediators to conflict resolution, providing a ceasefire or other means of cutting violence so parties can be brought to discuss current issues and not create new ones. Optimally, management measures are part of a package that includes steps toward or about resolution. Examples are Kofi Annan’s attempted mediation in Syria in 2012 or Alvaro deSoto’s more successful mediation in El Salvador in 1990–1992 (deSoto 1999). Cyrus Vance’s renowned mediation in Cyprus in 1964 specifically only sought a ceasefire, with no attempt to move on to the next stage, and predictably it failed at both management and resolution. Conflict management carries within it the promise of a move on to conflict resolution, but there is a trap: management, in reducing violence, reduces the pressure for resolution, and so is inherently unstable. The ceasefires and staged withdrawals in the Sinai in the 1970s, mediated by the United States, were unstable and designed to “fall forward,” until they fell into the Washington Treaty between Egypt and Israel. There are exceptions: the 1994 ceasefire over Nagorno-Karabagh, mediated by Russia, promised resolution but has held since then without resolution, even though attempts at resolution have failed (de Waal 2003, ICG 2009, 2012). Thus, the mediator has its choice of goals, with strategic implications for the choice.

Why?

Mediation is designed to help conflicting parties overcome the obstacles to their agreement to an outcome ending the conflict. It is a risky business. Parties are in a conflict because they think they should be there, and telling them otherwise is generally not welcome. It takes a certain amount of hubris to walk into a conflict and tell the parties to cool it for reasons we know best; Romeo and Juliet is a telling tale about the dangers of mediation before it gets to the lesson about love. A mediator is a meddler, as the phrase goes, and so the mediator must have overriding reasons for getting involved. Furthermore, there is a strong argument for letting the conflict run its course to one side’s victory; the record shows that victory is a more stable outcome than a mediated settlement (Wallensteen 2007, pp. 27–28). Of course, victory is costly, and often the parties are stuck in a costly escalating war or simply an intractable conflict that takes a heavy toll in lives, welfare, development, and relations (Crocker et al. 2005). In the end, a mediator must weigh carefully the cost of the conflict, the cost of mediation if successful or failing, the chances of success, and its own interest and risk in getting involved.

States use mediation as a foreign policy instrument. They seek a reduction (management or resolution) of conflict because it is in their interest. That interest may be merely one of reducing human cost, nothing else, but that reduction usually also has to bring benefits to the mediator for it to enter the fray. Mediating states are likely to seek terms that will increase the prospects of stability, earn them the gratitude of one or both parties, enable them to continue to have a role in future relations in the region, or deny their rivals opportunities for intervention, as well as simply ending the killing. Both defensive and offensive goals can be promoted through mediation, and they often blend together. Mediators act defensively when a continuing conflict threatens their relations with the disputing parties, upsets a regional balance, or provides opportunities for a rival power to increase its influence by playing a role – supportive or mediating – in the conflict, or threaten to escalate and draw in additional parties. Offensive goals include the desire to extend and increase influence, to obtain a particular outcome, to keep a weak party in the game, to increase the benefits of an outcome so that the parties will find enough benefit in an agreement to accept it and hold to it, or to put the mediator in a position to guarantee the resulting agreement or in other ways insure its durability.

The patterns of interest prompting states to mediate have varied in the post-Cold War period. In the 1990s, with the end of the preemptive interest of the superpower rivals in managing proxy conflicts, interest in involvement in foreign war- and peace-making dropped. Actors took advantage of their freedom from foreign constraints and interference to launch into their favorite conflicts, often for internal control of government or for independence from government control. However, external parties – most often developed and mainly “First World” countries – soon felt pulled back into these conflicts, for reasons of interest already given. Humanitarian concerns of public opinion have come to play a more important role in shaping foreign policies than in the past, although the interest excited by turning on the television has rapidly turned into disinterest and turning off the television. A way of responding to a need for peacemaking while lowering its costs and raising its legitimacy is found in collective mediation, where the same reasons and motives for mediation obtain.

To say that mediators have an interest does not mean that they act for venal motives or that they try to drive the conflict in a unilaterally selfish direction. The goal of any mediation, as stated, is to end the conflict and its costliness. But third parties have to choose in which conflicts they are going to be involved, where they can do some potential good and where their goals are simply beyond their reach, and how they can justify to their own public the cost of involvement (or, for that matter, of non-involvement); in other words, they make their own cost-benefit calculations. It is in answering these questions that the question of interest comes in.

When?

Mediation cannot take place and succeed just any time. In a word, the parties must want to be mediated. The important analytical question, then, becomes: What makes the conflicting parties welcome mediation? During the conflict, not only do the parties think they are right in fighting for a right cause, but they also inculcate this feeling and commitment in their followers. Whether the supporters are part of a democratic polity or not, the parties need to have their backing and so they spend some effort to spread the notion that they can achieve a solution to the conflict, unilaterally. As long as they believe they are winning, or are capable of winning, or at least can hold out till the other party gets tired – all forms of a unilateral solution – the conflicting parties are uninterested in third-party involvement. Two conditions are necessary for this attitude to change in favor of mediation.

For a conflict to be ripe for mediation, the parties must see themselves as caught in a stalemate, where unilateral efforts at a solution at a bearable cost are considered blocked, and the stalemate hurts (Zartman 1989, 2000). This perception must be held by both parties, and at the same time, although not necessarily in equal measure or for equal reasons. The condition termed a mutually hurting stalemate (MHS) is a subjective matter; the perception is firmer if it is based on objective conditions, such as cost in lives and money, proven inability to escalate, rising elements of discomfort, etc., but only when the objective elements register subjectively can one say a MHS exists (Zartman and deSoto 2010). A mutually hurting stalemate begins when one side realizes that it is unable to achieve its aims, resolve the problem, or win the conflict by itself; it is completed when the other side reaches a similar conclusion. Each party must begin to feel uncomfortable in the costly dead end that it has reached.

The other element, equally subjective, is the perception that the other side will join in a search for a bilateral solution. That perception is not necessarily of a specific outcome but rather the impression that both sides are willing to look for a joint solution and have given up the illusion that each can impose its solution unilaterally. This perception is called a way out (WO), and it is the complement to the MHS, which pushes the parties into negotiations; the WO pulls them toward a joint solution. These two elements are the necessary but insufficient conditions for a mediation to take place. They are insufficient because they create a situation that needs to be seized, by the mediator if not by the parties themselves. A ripe moment is not self-implementing; it only provides an opportunity that needs activation. If the moment is not ripe, mediation will not work; if it is, and the parties themselves do not seize it, mediation is necessary.

However, this does not mean that the potential mediator has to sit by passively and wait for ripeness to occur. If it is strongly motivated by the needs and interest already discussed but MHS and WO do not obtain, the potential mediation has an even more important and difficult challenge to accomplish: it must ripen the situation. Mediation plays upon the parties’ perceptions of having reached an intolerable situation. Without this perception, the mediator must persuade the parties that breaking out of their deadlock is impossible. Indeed, the mediator may even be required to make it impossible. Thus, deadlock cannot be seen as a temporary stalemate, to be easily resolved in one’s favor by a little effort, a big offensive, a gamble, or foreign assistance. Rather, each party must recognize its opponent’s strength and its own inability to overcome that strength, as well as the cost of staying in the stalemate. If it does not see this on its own, it needs the potential mediator’s help in doing so, just as it needs the mediator’s assistance if it does not see the possibility of reaching a joint solution. That is why subjectivity and perception are so important to the process of mediation; they give the potential mediator the possibility of cultivating ripeness and then using it. It must develop the shared perception that “things can’t go on like this” (Zartman 1987, pp. 285).

How?

The first part of the answer on how mediation is conducted involves entry as a mediator in a conflict (Maundi et al. 1998; Crocker et al. 1999). Parties accept mediation because they, like mediators, expect it to work in favor of their interests. The most obvious motive is the expectation that mediation will gain an outcome more favorable than the outcome gained by continued conflict – that is, a way out. The parties also hope that mediation will end a costly conflict and produce a settlement when direct negotiation is not possible, or will provide a more favorable settlement than can be achieved by direct negotiation. The adversary may have a similar assessment, but it may also accept and cooperate with the mediator if it feels that rejection might cause even greater harm – for example, damaging relations with the would-be mediator, decreasing the chances for an acceptable negotiated outcome, or prolonging a costly conflict. The parties may also accept mediation in the hope that the intermediary will reduce the risks and bear the costs entailed in making concessions, protecting their image and reputation as they move toward a compromise. They may also believe a mediator’s involvement implies a guarantee for the final agreement, thus reducing the danger of violation by the adversary.

Since this reasoning in accepting mediation must be symmetrical – that is, it must obtain on both sides, even though not necessarily involving the same interests – entry is a delicate matter. One party’s acceptance of mediation may be sufficient reason for the other to refuse it. Furthermore, since entry depends on ripeness, the mediator must achieve entry to ripen before it can achieve entry to mediate. Obviously, the two stages are not as clearly differentiated as the concepts (a common difference between concept and reality) but in fact overlap, illustrating the complexity and delicacy of the whole mediation process.

In the process of setting up and conducting mediation, mediators use three modes to marshal the interests of all the involved parties toward a mutually acceptable solution to the conflict: communication, formulation, and manipulation, in order of intrusiveness. Since mediation is helping the parties to do what they cannot do by themselves, each of these three modes refers to a different level of obstacle to the conduct of direct negotiations. When conflict has made direct contact between parties impossible, thereby preventing the parties from talking to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Making a difference: mediation for middle powers
• 1 Mediation roles for large small countries
• 2 A responsibility to talk: mediation and violence against civilians
• 3 Preventive diplomacy, mediation and the responsibility to protect in Libya: a missed opportunity for Canada?
• 4 Finland: a non-traditional peacemaker
• 5 Conflict resolution in Cyprus: the absence of committed leadership
• 6 Towards full spectrum conflict prevention: the international peace and prosperity project in Guinea-Bissau
• 7 Patterns of diplomatic peacemaking
• 8 Interviews with 3 former Canadian ambassadors regarding their previous mediation efforts
• Conclusion: The way forward
• Index