Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies

Charles Webel, Johan Galtung, Charles Webel, Johan Galtung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134154807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia militare e marittima

This major new Handbook provides a cutting-edge and transdisciplinary overview of the main issues, debates, state-of-the-art methods, and key concepts in peace and conflict studies today.

The fields of peace and conflict studies have grown exponentially since being initiated by Professor Johan Galtung half a century ago. They have forged a transdisciplinary and professional identity distinct from security studies, political science, and international relations.

The volume is divided into four sections:

• understanding and transforming conflict
• creating peace
• supporting peace
• peace across the disciplines.

Each section features new essays by distinguished international scholars and professionals working in peace studies and conflict resolution and transformation. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and political positions, the editors and contributors offer topical and enduring approaches to peace and conflict studies.

The Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies will be essential reading for students of peace studies, conflict studies and conflict resolution. It will also be of interest and use to practitioners in conflict resolution and NGOs, as well as policy makers and diplomats.

Part 1
Understanding and transforming conflict

3
Negotiation and international conflict

Fen Osler Hampson, Chester A. Crocker and Pamela R. Aall

Prior to the Second World War, interstate conflict was the predominant form of organized violence in international relations. During the Cold War and the period that has followed it, intrastate violence and intercommunal conflict have replaced interstate violence as the principal form of conflict in international relations. However, what is striking about the international conflict trends is that over the past two decades the number of civil wars, measured by their frequency and aggregate levels of violence, has been on the decline. This trend is now welldocumented in a large number of studies, including, most recently, the Human Security Report (Mack 2005) of the Liu Institute of International Studies at the University of British Columbia. What is also borne out in these studies is that many of these conflicts – Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Mozambique, the conflict between North and South Sudan, El Salvador, Guatemala, the border dispute between Peru and Ecuador, and now perhaps the conflict in Aceh – have been settled or ‘resolved’ through a process of negotiation, upsetting a longstanding, post-Westphalian trend where wars traditionally ended when one party defeated the other on the battlefield. And even in those cases of those perennial conflicts – Israel–Palestine, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Mindanao, and Korea – that are still on-going, negotiations between the warring parties have rarely been off the table.

In terms of war termination, there are two trends to explore. The first is the apparent decline in the outbreak of wars. There is obviously a need to explore the factors or forces that are shaping and influencing these international conflict trends in order to understand better why some conflicts are diminishing and whether or not this tendency will continue (Marshall and Gurr 2005).¹ The second trend is the growing interest in negotiated settlements, which is the area that this paper will explore. The objectives of this paper are as follows: (1) to discuss why warring parties in recent years have increasingly turned to the ‘negotiation option’ – usually with the assistance of third parties, including third-party mediators – in order to settle their differences; and (2) to explore some of the different approaches to the study and practice of negotiation in the burgeoning conflict management literature.

The negotiation option

First, it must be said that the preference for the negotiation option in the settlement of violent international disputes is one that has taken place against a backdrop marked by a growing preference for international negotiation as the principal means for dealing with international disputes on a wide range of issues. This is partly due to a stronger understanding of the processes of interest-based negotiations, a method of structuring negotiations toward a ‘win-win’ solution in which both parties reach a satisfactory agreement on issues critical to each (Fisher et al. 1991). At the same time, globalization processes have brought states and the societies that inhabit them into increasingly close proximity – a proximity characterized by a growing density of interactions that cross the economic, commercial, social, cultural and political spheres of life. As the frequency and depth of these interactions has grown, so too has the potential for conflicts of interest, beliefs and values. Generally speaking, in matters of ‘low politics’ – that is to say the politics of trade, investment, natural resources, the environment, economic policy and so forth – these conflicts have been resolved through processes of informal dialogue and negotiation directed at identifying new norms, rules and procedures that will govern future interactions while lowering transaction costs (Keohane 1984; Keohane and Nye 2000).

The rapid growth in the number of international institutions in the twentieth century, which accelerated after the Second World War with the founding of the United Nations and a host of regional and sub-regional institutions and arrangements, has also given further impetus to international negotiation processes, especially multi-party and multi-issue negotiations which have taken place within the formal multilateral and rule-bound settings of these institutions (Hampson 1989; Kremenyuk 1991; Umbricht 1989). The obvious importance states attach to these somewhat ritualized bargaining processes is also reflected in the sizeable cadre of professional international negotiators who are to be found not just in foreign ministries, but also in the many different functional departments and agencies of national governments that now deal with cross-border issues.

Although adjudication, arbitration and various judicial means are frequently used to deal with interstate disputes (Bilder 1997), as well as disputes between private actors that cross international borders, the continued importance that states attach to their sovereignty in international affairs has meant that the opportunities for judicial recourse generally tend to be limited. Bargaining and negotiation are thus the default option when disputes arise. This is because states are often reluctant to let themselves be governed by extra-national legal institutions even if they have formally agreed to submit themselves to the legal rules and norms of those institutions. For instance, shunning Law of the Sea provisions, East Timor and Australia have negotiated a temporary arrangement dividing the income from off-shore petroleum resources, but have put off the settlement of the borders in question for 50 years as part of the deal. This reluctance to be governed by international law is especially true for those great powers that see themselves as completely independent actors in the international system, as the US’s refusal to ratify the International Criminal Court illustrates (Hampson and Reid 2003: 22–33).

When it comes to the great issues of war and peace, international negotiation and diplomacy have generally been the preferred means for dispute settlement at the global level since the Second World War. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is the advent of nuclear weapons technology. As many scholars and commentators have pointed out, the advent of nuclear weapons had a progressively sobering effect on the way the two superpowers managed their strategic and ideological rivalries during the Cold War (George et al. 1988). Nuclear brinksmanship, which reached its highest and most dangerous point during the Cuban missile crisis, eventually yielded to a more business-like relationship characterized by regular summits between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union and negotiations on arms control, troop deployments and other kinds of confidence-measures directed at reducing tensions and the risks of escalation in crisis situations. The leaders of the West, but especially the United States, also invested their diplomatic political capital and energy in negotiating a relatively smooth and trouble-free transition when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

But it is not just technology and the costs of war that have influenced strategic calculations and the pursuit of the negotiation option, realist theories of international relations also stress that the prospects for diplomacy and negotiation in international relations have historically been influenced by the balance of power, the presence or absence of military stalemate and domestic political pressures (Organski 1968; Stein 1990). All of these variables have salience in recent international relations, including the management of superpower relations during the Cold War.

Liberal theories of international relations point to another set of factors that help to explain why negotiation is the preferred option for resolving international disputes, especially in recent years. An important body of scholarship argues that there is a strong relationship between democracy and peace, which, following the writings of Immanuel Kant, suggests that democratic states have an overwhelming tendency to resolve their differences via peaceful, i.e. diplomatic, as opposed to violent means (Russett 1993). However, there are some important exceptions to this rule. Weak democracies have a tendency to exhibit both illiberal and belligerent tendencies, which suggests that the ‘democratic peace’ thesis should not be interpreted and applied simplistically (Mansfield and Snyder 1995). Even so, the spread of pluralist values throughout the world with the rise in the number of democratic states – what Samuel Huntington (1993) refers to as the ‘third wave of democracy’ – has buttressed a preference for diplomacy and negotiation in international relations, a trend that is likely to continue if democracy is consolidated in those states where liberal norms are shaky or weak. This is because political solutions and the peaceful settlement of disputes are highly valued in democratic polities and because there are a variety of constitutional checks on executive power in democratic states, which further encourage negotiation processes between the different branches of government.

Finally, the continued importance that states attach to sovereignty (Chayes and Handler Chayes 1995; Krasner 1999) itself has generally tended to act as a brake on temptations to challenge the status quo or to try to redraw state boundaries through the use of force, especially in former colonial territories like the African subcontinent. The normative appeal of Westphalian principles remains strong in international affairs, although, in some respects, the ‘pillars’ of this system are crumbling with the emergence of new normative principles that are centred on the concept of human security. Sovereignty has come under challenge when there are violations of human rights and governments fail to protect or respect the basic rights and freedoms of their citizens. International interventions in the Balkans, Kosovo, East Timor and elsewhere were carried out in the name of higher humanitarian principles (Blechman 1996). But even the strongest champions of humanitarian intervention when there are gross violations of human rights believe that the international community should only use force as a last resort, and only after all other peaceful means, including the negotiation option, have been exhausted (ICISS 2001).

The puzzle of civil war termination

In the case of intrastate conflicts, the embrace of the negotiation option by the parties to these conflicts nonetheless remains something of a puzzle. As Mack (2005) and others have documented, there was a steady rise in the frequency and magnitude of civil wars during the Cold War up until the late 1980s–early 1990s, when the trend reversed itself and intrastate conflicts experienced a steady decline. However, unlike civil wars in the past the majority over this decade ended in a negotiated settlement, usually with the assistance of a third party – and typically more than one – in helping secure a negotiated outcome.

One possible explanation why many of these conflicts ended in a negotiated settlement is because many of them fall into the category of what Roy Licklider refers to as ‘long civil wars’. As Licklider observes, ‘We have some evidence that long civil wars are disproportionately likely to be ended with negotiated settlements rather than military victory. This is plausible since a long civil war means that neither side has been able to achieve a military victory’ (Licklider 2005: 39). The logic of this process is spelled out by Robert Harrison Wagner. He notes, ‘that a military stalemate merely transforms a counterforce duel into a contest in punishment, in which war becomes indistinguishable from bargaining. Thus in deciding whether to accept some proposed settlement, there are two ways in which a party to a stalemate might expect to do better if it continued fighting instead: it might be able to overcome the stalemate and achieve a military advantage, or its opponents might, after further suffering, decide to settle for less. A negotiated settlement therefore requires that all parties to the conflict prefer the terms of the settlement to the expected outcome both of further fighting and of further bargaining’ (Wagner 1993: 260).

The parallel ending of many of these civil conflicts with the end of Cold War also suggests that broader, systemic forces may have been at play. Many conflicts in the Third World during the Cold War were aided and propelled by the two superpowers who were busy arming insurgents (or governments) in order to strengthen and expand their respective spheres of influence. The desire to end these so-called ‘proxy wars’ as the Cold War wound down encouraged the two superpowers to pursue negotiated solutions so that they could gracefully exit from their regional commitments, which had also become very costly (Weiss 1995). Nowhere was this desire for a negotiated ‘exit’ to their difficulties more evident than in the case of Cambodia (Solomon 2000). Negotiation efforts there, which were led by the five Permanent Members of the Security Council, were tied to a wider exit strategy so that China, Russia, Vietnam and the United States could disengage from their military commitments in the region and move towards the normalization of relations. Similarly, in Southern Africa, US efforts to negotiate a peaceful termination to the conflict in Namibia were tied more broadly to a negotiated withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, which became the cornerstone of the US policy of ‘constructive engagement’ in the region (Crocker 1992).

Although the end of the Cold War had its positive effects in some regions, it is important not to stack the historical deck. It is also the case that the bipolar system checked and prevented many conflicts from breaking out, and the Soviet collapse followed by US disengagement coincided with a number of 1990s conflicts that might never have occurred in Cold War times, including wars in Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia (and its neighbours), Afghanistan (between the Mujahadeen and Taliban), Aceh/Moluccas/Timor, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Moldova, and the Balkans.

The transformation of the international system from the Cold War period to the post-Cold War period also had other important consequences. At least initially, the United Nations suddenly assumed greater relevance as the great powers looked to international institutions to play a greater role in conflict management processes, including the mediation and negotiation of international disputes (Skjelsbaek 1991; Skjelsbaek and Fermann 1996; Vayrynen 1985). The same was true of regional and sub-regional organizations, which also began to expand their roles in conflict management in their own neighbourhoods, sometimes with the support and backing of the international community (Smock and Crocker 1995; Thornton 1991; Wedgwood 1996).

The changing US global position has also expanded the range of potential US responses to individual conflict scenarios. On the one hand, the unipolar environment enables Washington to enjoy a freer hand as a potential intervener in both the political and military sense. On the other hand, the absence of an adversary pole may reduce the perceived necessity for action or leadership in the broad global service of order and stability. At the end of the day, it has depended and may continue to depend on the circumstances of individual cases. The US capacity to conduct an essentially discretionary foreign policy looks likely to continue.

What is also quite striking is that a wide variety of small-state and non-state actors also began to offer their services in conflict management and resolution processes. For example, small and medium-sized powers, like Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland, who had long been active in international peacekeeping operations, began to actively market their negotiation and intermediary services to warring parties (see Princen 1991, 1992a, 1992b). From the Middle East to Central America to Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, these countries have played key roles in instigating negotiations between warring sides, backstopping negotiations once they got underway, and ensuring that the parties remained committed to the peace process once a negotiated settlement was concluded. Prominent international nongovernmental organizations, like the Community of Sant’Egidio – a Catholic lay organization that has been active as a mediator in Mozambique, Algeria and Kosovo (Bartoli 1999) – have also played key roles in bringing parties to the negotiating table and creating much-needed forums for dialogue, discussion and negotiation, especially at the intercommunal and societal levels – although such roles are by no means new (Yarrow 1978).

From the point of view of the conflicting parties, negotiation becomes a more desirable option when hope of winning the war on the battlefield fades. The condition of ripeness – the point at which a conflict is ripe for resolution – has been associated with mutually hurting stalemates, or situations in which the parties to the conflict are unable to muster or deploy their armies or militias in order to change the facts on the ground. The parties cannot win militarily by themselves, they cannot persuade outsiders to provide extra firepower, and they cannot lessen the capacity of their enemies to continue the fight. This was the situation in Mozambique when the Community of Sant’Egidio became involved in the mediation there. In addition to depleting the fighting capacities of the combatants, a long civil war leads to exhaustion in the wider community by destroying economies and taking a psychological toll on civilians affected by the conflict. Popular backing for the fight diminishes, and the drop in popular support makes it difficult for the parties to recruit and r...