Diplomacy and the Future of World Order

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

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781647120955
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An international group of experts confront challenges to peace and conflict diplomacy by considering three potential scenarios for world order–evaluated through regional perspectives from around the world–where key states decide to go it alone, return to a liberal order, or collaborate on a case-by-case basis.

PART I

Peace and Conflict Diplomacy in the Current International Environment

CHAPTER 1

A Challenging Time for Peace and Conflict Diplomacy

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

We believe in disarmament but must arm to the teeth in order to discourage others from taking advantage of us. We wish to see disputes settled in a legal and orderly way, but we confront forces that want not to change the existing law but to substitute an entirely different legal and political order. We want to use our national and economic resources constructively, but must expend them prodigally on a technical race of essentially military hardware. . . . In the main, it is no wonder that people both at home and abroad are confused about American motives and American actions. (Bloomfield 1959, 3–4)

As Lincoln Bloomfield observed sixty years ago, the practice of peace and conflict diplomacy has long been a complex activity. Although diplomacy is often seen as fluid and adaptable, changing to address evolving circumstances, there have been rules and expectations that governed diplomacy in the past. Diplomacy took place between countries or other official bodies and engaged the elite. With few exceptions, envoys in a conflict situation were granted immunity and offered protection by the belligerents, valued by all sides for their ability to gather intelligence and pass messages. Much diplomacy was bilateral and involved the envoy of one ruler visiting the ruler(s) of the opposing side (Meerts 2015). At other times, however, a number of rulers joined together in larger diplomatic undertakings to form alliances, end wars, or agree on new rules that led to systemic change, as the European states did in 1648 with the treaties enshrined in the Peace of Westphalia. Implementation in this case was guaranteed by implied threat—a country that did not honor the agreement was liable to retaliation by an alliance of countries on the other side. The Peace of Westphalia, of course, was an elite agreement. The obligation to consult stakeholders in these reorganizations was not considered a priority—or, perhaps more accurately, was not considered at all.

Peace and conflict diplomacy retains some of the features of traditional diplomacy. It is, for instance, often conducted by elites in closed settings. However, it has also expanded to meet changing needs, particularly in the area of mediation, a type of third-party-assisted negotiations to resolve conflicts. Today, peace and conflict diplomacy takes many forms—bilateral diplomacy, multilateral negotiations, public diplomacy, facilitation, mediation, and other activities. It has expanded beyond the realm of governments and official bodies to include people-to-people programs and cultural exchange. Nongovernmental and civil society organizations are also late-twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century elements of the current diplomatic sphere, both as participants in peace processes and as advocates for change.

WHAT IS PEACE AND CONFLICT DIPLOMACY?

We use the term peace and conflict diplomacy as an overarching phrase, shorthand for a number of activities that states, international organizations, and civil society groups employ to make peace and manage conflict. These activities range from negotiation, mediation, and facilitation to peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention and, though related, are different from each other in their objectives and in their implementation. The term highlights the fact that diplomacy in the twenty-first century is not simply what one observer has referred to as “the art of high-level engagement across national bodies, i.e., government to government,” but also a process characterized by the involvement of intergovernmental, nonstate, civil society actors who are key players in the management and resolution of conflict (Schomerus 2017). There are three dimensions of peace and conflict diplomacy:

•Diplomatic strategies to cope with / manage other people’s conflicts—for example, in Cyprus, South Sudan, Colombia, and Kashmir.

•Strategies for dealing with and regulating the actual or potential conflicts of interests among major powers themselves in third areas, such as North Korea, Ukraine, Syria, and the South China Sea.

•Strategies for coping with challenges to the governance of existing states and societies of the international system and from transnational threats such as piracy and terrorism.

Peace and conflict diplomacy is about the capacity of states and institutions to maintain stability in turbulent zones and order among themselves while working together to stem challenges to the wider global community. The practice of peace and conflict diplomacy includes negotiation, mediation, coercive diplomacy (i.e., sanctions and deterrence), intervention, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and building capacity for resolving differences through discussion and political action rather than violence. Too often, these individual approaches are framed as being mutually exclusive, especially in debates between realist and liberal scholars about the relationship between force and diplomacy. As experience shows, however, both kinds of statecraft or diplomacy are required and the real challenge is to develop and employ them in a structure of pragmatic principles tailored to the situation at hand.

Diplomacy vis-à-vis peace and conflict management has changed in response to its environment. Toward the end of the Cold War and for some months thereafter, lessened contention between the United States and the USSR led to cooperative engagement in winding down regional conflicts—Afghanistan, Angola / South Africa / Namibia, El Salvador, and Cambodia. In the early 1990s, the outbreak or expansion of civil wars in Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, and other places led to a dramatic increase in the number of UN-led efforts to end violence and mediate a negotiated settlement to civil wars. But UN reverses in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia led to a phase of sober reflection about military intervention. Then the cycle turned again, as seen in the uptick in robust action in East Timor, Kosovo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Negotiation and mediation produced impressive results due to increased cooperation and engagement in ending conflicts in Peru/Ecuador, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Burundi, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

During this period, peace and conflict diplomacy was often used in conjunction with military intervention. Diplomatic engagement to end conflict—efforts to tamp down the violence, get to the table, find negotiable issues, define an area for mutual agreement—rarely worked without the threat or use of force. However, peace and conflict diplomacy has also advanced its knowledge about sources of soft power leverage to aid in peaceful settlements of conflict, as the global community refined its sanctions policies and learned to work together to put pressure on conflict parties.

A CHANGING PRACTICE

A snapshot of the current environment presents a different picture, and a challenging one for peace and conflict diplomacy. International polarization on critical issues regarding human rights, state sovereignty, and the appropriate role of the international community presents serious obstacles to peace and conflict diplomacy. Tensions between Russia, China, and the West are high, and the consequences of this polarization have played out both on the ground in Syria and at the United Nations.

Competing national priorities also affect the types of diplomacy in which states are willing to engage. For example, military campaigns to counter violent extremism and radicalization in conflicts such as those in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan have overshadowed diplomatic efforts to help warring parties reach negotiated settlements over their differences.

The transnational threat posed by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) network, and the ability of these groups to launch terrorist attacks far from their bases of power, introduced a model of conflict different from the one we have dealt with over the past forty years. Another challenge is the proliferation of NSAs as negotiating parties. The NSAs may share a common goal but have very different negotiating positions and experience a good deal of hostility toward each other. The opposition parties in Syria shared the goal of overthrowing Syrian president Bashir Assad but could not agree on much else. The challenges of developing a negotiable agenda have always been difficult, with much time spent on deciding what is on and off the agenda. In these new circumstances, setting a negotiating agenda has been beyond the reach of all involved in the process. How does diplomacy have to change in order to engage effectively with these nonstate actors, including those cases where the NSAs are identified as terrorists by the United Nations, the United States, or other powerful entities?

Another challenge for current diplomacy is to make room for diverse voices while promoting a sense of unity and common purpose for the effort. International donors and peacemakers increasingly recognize that inclusion is critical to enduring settlements and have made efforts to bring in previously under-represented groups, including women and young people, into peace negotiations. In addition, civil society has become a more active participant in peace and conflict work over the past thirty years. International nongovernmental organizations and local civil society organizations participate both as independent entities promoting political, social, and economic development and as implementing partners for outside donor programs. Another change in the conflict environment has been the development of new media. Social media and the twenty-four-hour news cycle allow people who are directly affected by the negotiations to voice their support or opposition; they also allow pressure groups and interested parties from outside the affected sphere to try to shape the negotiations (Fletcher 2016).

Dealmaking in private between world leaders may still be an option in closed systems; but in open or partially open societies, peace and conflict diplomacy is subject to domestic and international scrutiny. Although the representation of diverse points of view is very important to the outcome of any agreement, the proliferation of voices makes developing a unified negotiating position difficult for the dealmakers—that is, for the governments and institutions that purport to represent those diverse points of view. In addition, the inconsistency of domestic support for global engagement and the rise in populism make long-term commitments to mediation much more difficult in democratic states, as other national priorities take precedence over third-party work in faraway lands.

Diplomacy vis-à-vis conflict has usually been associated with peace talks and negotiation for conflict prevention or resolution, but diplomacy is also part of the conflict itself. As is often the case, antagonists fight and talk at the same time. For instance, in the civil war in Sudan, negotiations between the north and the south continued throughout many decades of violent conflict, as each party tried to gain the upper hand both through fighting and through talking.

The habitual targeting of civilians in current conflicts and the resulting floods of refugees have also led to the development of humanitarian diplomacy, because organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross are required to negotiate for humanitarian access with governments as well as to negotiate the rules of the road and bargain over resources with other humanitarians and with official donors. Humanitarian diplomacy contains elements of traditional diplomacy and advocacy but differs from both in its desire to balance “impartial and neutral humanitarian operations on the ground with equally neutral, impartial, and effective humanitarian advocacy in the corridors of power and on the global street” (Slim 2019, 67).

FRAMING THE QUESTIONS

Is the space for peace and conflict diplomacy shrinking in this environment? There is some evidence that it is not, particularly in the increasing activity of regional organizations in this space; cooperation to combat global pandemics such as SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19; and also increased attention to mediation at the United Nations. However, the evidence that the space is shrinking is compelling, as seen by the retreat or retrenchment of great powers from peacemaking, attacks on elements of the liberal rules-based order, the increased reliance on military solutions, and the challenges facing UN peacekeeping and growing polarization of the UN Security Council. A “sovereign backlash” in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Italy, and Austria, and the rise of nationalist parties in Brazil, the Philippines, India, and other parts of the world, have also placed limits on third-party initiatives.

Is peace and conflict diplomacy effective? Here, the picture is more balanced. There have been a number of successes: for instance, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran, the Paris climate accord, the Colombia peace process, and the European Union’s management of the Kosovo/Serbia split. Resurgent sovereignty, however, has swept away commitments to joint international action, big states increasingly assert their right to do as they like, and successful peacekeeping or military victories often lack a political context and do not often lead to durable political outcomes. In the Middle East, problem-solving diplomacy is easily eclipsed by the instinct to polarize relationships along national or confessional lines. More generally, relations between states and their societies are under stress in both the Global South and Global North.

Major states and institutions involved in peace and conflict diplomacy have grown wary of military intervention using force—particularly boots on the ground—in support of the effort. Can international actors develop means to persuade or pressure parties to sign a peace settlement without resorting to force, and if so, what are those means? Perhaps more important, can international and regional actors improve their competence in making connections between the application of military power and the quest for legitimate political solutions? The case of Libya bears eloquent testimony to this issue.

A consensus on the aims of peace and conflict diplomacy has broken down. If in the current climate, nation building is off the menu, there is little accord on what should replace it. Consequently, conflict zones are hosts to many different kinds of programs—for instance, countering violent extremism, ensuring stability, building local capacity and resilience—without an overarching framework to give these activities definition and direction. Although there is considerable lip service paid to the issue of governance, the ways that local conflict management and resolution mechanisms can be nurtured to promote pluralism, inclusivity, and tolerance in nondemocratic societies are less well understood. What options are available to diplomats and conflict management practitioners to build collaboration among third-party actors in order to bring coherence to peace and conflict negotiations? How can collective conflict management emerge out of the discordant international environment?

Finally, there is little agreement on who should be the main agents of peace and conflict diplomacy. Diplomacy, once the purview of major states and the United Nations, has been delegated to others and distributed around the international system. Regional organizations, civil society organizations, and private peacemaking efforts have taken up the challenge and become much more active in the peace and diplomacy arena. At times, local or regional organizations are the first responders in a crisis situation, with outside actors engaging only when invited by the local or regional body. How does the presence of multiple actors affect peace and conflict diplomacy? What are the consequences of gatekeepers guarding access to the conflict, especially if they have their own agendas or if their lack of capacity to be coherent and competent may in fact exacerbate the problem?

FOCUS OF THE BOOK

The aim of this book is to develop thinking about these questions; as a consequence, its potential scope is very wide. Chapters 1 through 3, which constitute part I of the book, give an overview of the current international environment for peace and conflict diplomacy and define the scope. However, in an effort to narrow the book’s focus and to encourage a comparative aspect among the chapters, we asked the authors to give us their thoughts on three possible scenarios for the future. Scenario 1 captures a return to a world of geopolitical contestation at the global and regional levels, in which each sovereign state would look only to protecting its own interests. Scenario 2 envisions a return to a liberal international order, in which the welfare of individual states and organizations would be defined in terms of larger common interests and goals. And scenario 3 describes a world of ad hoc, outcome-oriented temporary arrangements between states and organizations, concentrating on solving problems but not on changing the international order.

Chapter 2 recognizes that all three scenarios may operate with differing degrees of salience at the same time globally and/or regionally. It also recognizes that though many believe that the period of liberal international order was open, democratic, and characterized by a general respect for a rules-based approach, major powers continued to dominate and to act in their own interests when it suited them rather than subordinating themselves to the interests of the global community. Even in this period, peace and conflict diplomacy furthered the agenda of the most powerful players because the world did not operate entirely on the basis of either realist or liberal principles.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno reflects on this idea in chapter 3 on international organization perspectives on the instruments of diplomacy and conflict management. The chapter examines the effect of the decline of international cooperation and the rise of nationalism on international organizations’ capacity to play a productive role in peace and conflict diplomacy. Many observers believe these factors have marginalized international organizations, especially the United Nations, as the world returns to a Cold War–like order. Guéhenno points out, however, that the current environment differs significantly from the bipolar Cold War, particularly in the growth of multipolarity, as Russia, China, the United States, and Europe follow different and often opposing paths, and regional powers strengthen their own positions through alliances or through regional institutions. This multipolarity makes the world more complex, but it also opens up space for other players, including international and regional organizations, to continue to have significant roles in regional or global security.

Regional Perspectives

In designing this book, we thought it essential to review the major questions and potential answers from the perspective of various regions. Part II of the book, which comprises chapters 4 through 12, captures views from the United States, South and Central America, Russia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Africa, and the Middle East.

Chapter 4, by Hans Binnendijk, on US peace and conflict diplomacy in a state-centric world, examines the abiding role of states in shaping peace and conflict activity. He reviews ten cases of international peacebuilding from 1993 to 2018, and finds that in most examples, the United States and other states retained their central role and were critical to the successful termination of conflict or settlement of differences. Interestingly, international organizations, though not central players in conflict termination, played significant roles in facilitating the negotiation and implementation of agreements that followed the cease-fires. Binnendijk also looks ahead to the types of issues that will challenge global peace and security, and he concludes that US leadership is essential to their resolution. Without renewed American commitment to resolving international security problems, he fears that the “concert of nation-states” that might arise in its s...