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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
International conflict has long plagued the world, and it continues to do so. With many interstate and civil disputes experiencing no third-party attempts at conflict management, how can the international community mitigate the effects of and ultimately end such violence? Why, in so many cases, are early, “golden opportunities” for conflict management missed?
In this book, J. Michael Greig, Andrew P. Owsiak, and Paul F. Diehl introduce the varied approaches and factors that promote the de-escalation and the peaceful management of conflict across the globe—from negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and adjudication to peace operations, sanctions, and military or humanitarian intervention. The history, characteristics and agents of each approach are examined in depth, using a wide range of case studies to illustrate successes and failures on the ground. Finally, the book investigates how the various tools interact—both logically and sequentially—to produce beneficial or deleterious effects.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Front Matter
About the Authors
1 Introducing International Conflict Management
Conflict Management vs Conflict Resolution
Overview of the Book
2 Key Ideas and Frameworks
Cross-Cutting Concepts
Conflict Patterns Since World War II
Why are Some Conflicts Never Managed or Resolved?
Identifying Conflict Management Success
3 Intervention
Traditional Military Intervention
Humanitarian Intervention
Legal Considerations for Intervention
Patterns of Intervention
Agents of Intervention: States and International Organizations
When Does Intervention Occur?
When Does Intervention Promote Conflict Management?
Conclusion
4 Sanctions
Logic and Motivations for Sanctions
Types of Sanctions—Traditional vs “Smart”
Patterns in the Use of Sanctions Over Time
Agents of Sanctions—States and International Organizations
When and How Often are Sanctions Effective?
Conclusion
5 Negotiations
Logic of Negotiation
Context for Negotiation
When and Why Do Parties Come to the Negotiating Table?
When Do Parties Reach a Settlement?
Pitfalls in the Implementation Stage
Conclusion
6 Mediation
Differences with Negotiation
The Logic of Mediation
Patterns of Mediation
Agents of Mediation
When Does Mediation Occur?
When and How Often is Mediation Effective?
Conclusion
7 Legal Approaches
Differences with Negotiation and Mediation
Arbitration versus Adjudication
Forms of International Courts
The Logic of Legal Approaches
When Do Parties Choose Legal Options?
Is Legal Dispute Resolution Effective?
Conclusion
8 Peace Operations: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding
Traditional Peacekeeping versus Peacebuilding
The Logic of Peace Operations
Patterns in Peace Operations
Agents of Peace Operations
Are Peace Operations Effective and Under What Conditions?
Conclusion
9 The Intersection of Conflict Management Approaches
Conflict Management Trajectories
Approach Compatibility: Complements and Contradictions
Guidelines: What to Choose and When
Conclusion
References and Suggested Readings
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1
Patterns of Conflict, 1946–2016
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1
Interventions, 1947–2005
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1
Sanction Activity Over Time, 1945–2004
Figure 4.2
Sanction Threat Outcomes, 1945–2004
Figure 4.3
Sanction Imposition Outcomes, 1945–2004
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
Proportion of Militarized Interstate Disputes Ending in Negotiated Settlement, 1…
Figure 5.2
Most Common Civil War Peace Agreement Provisions
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1
Frequency of Mediation by Conflict Type, 1946–2006
Figure 6.2
Initiators of Mediation by Conflict Type, 1946–2006
Figure 6.3
Mediation Providers by Conflict Type, 1946–2006
Figure 6.4
Frequency of Intrastate Mediation by Third Party, 1946–2006
Figure 6.5
Frequency of Interstate Mediation by Third Party, 1946–1999
Figure 6.6
Mediation Outcomes by Type of Conflict, 1946–2006
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1
International Legal Bodies, 1816–2011
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1
New Peacekeeping Missions, 1948–2016
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1
Conflict Management Trajectory in the Burkina Faso–Mali Dispute, 1985–1986
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1
Distinctive Indicators of Conflict Management Success by Approach
Table 2.2
Characteristics of International Conflict Management Strategies
Chapter 3
Table 3.1
Intervention by Region, 1947–2005
Table 3.2
Motivations for Third-Party Intervention
Chapter 4
Table 4.1
Frequency of Sanction Issues, 1945–2005
Table 4.2
Frequency of Types of Sanctions Threatened or Imposed, 1945–2005
Table 4.3
Top Sanction Senders—International Organizations, 1945–2005
Chapter 8
Table 8.1
Peace Operation Mission Types
Table 8.2
Distribution of Peace Operation Mission Types, 1948–2015
Table 8.3
Peace Operations by Sending Agencies, 1946–2016
List of Boxes
Chapter 3
Box 3.1
Intervention in the Libyan Civil War
Box 3.2
Intervention in Kosovo
Chapter 4
Box 4.1
Bosnian War
Box 4.2
Syrian Civil War
Chapter 5
Box 5.1
Negotiation Success and Failure in the Colombian Civil War
Box 5.2
US–North Korea Agreement and Implementation
Chapter 6
Box 6.1
Mediation Success in US–Cuban Relations
Box 6.2
Mediation Success and Failure in the Peru–Ecuador Dispute
Chapter 7
Box 7.1
Border Dispute Between Benin and Niger
Box 7.2
South China Sea Arbitration
Chapter 8
Box 8.1
Traditional Peacekeeping Success and Failure
Box 8.2
Peacebuilding Success and Failure
Chapter 9
Box 9.1
Example of a Conflict Management Trajectory
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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International Conflict Management
J. MICHAEL GREIG, ANDREW P. OWSIAK, AND PAUL F. DIEHL
polity
Copyright © J. Michael Greig, Andrew P. Owsiak, and Paul F. Diehl 2019
The right of J. Michael Greig, Andrew P. Owsiak, and Paul F. Diehl to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3055-7
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Greig, J. Michael, author. | Owsiak, Andrew P., author. | Diehl, Paul F. (Paul Francis), author.Title: International conflict management / J. Michael Greig, Andrew P. Owsiak, Paul F. Diehl.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2018054233 (print) | LCCN 2019016696 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509530557 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509530526 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509530533 (pbk.)Subjects: LCSH: Conflict management--International cooperation. | Peace-building--International cooperation. | Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes. | Pacific settlement of international disputes.Classification: LCC JZ6368 (ebook) | LCC JZ6368 .G74 2019 (print) | DDC 327.1/7--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054233
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
About the Authors
J. Michael Greig is Professor of Political Science and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas. He is the co-author of International Mediation (2012) and numerous articles in leading international relations journals. His recent research examines the onset and termination of civil conflict, peacekeeping, and diplomacy.
Andrew P. Owsiak is Associate Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. He is the author of numerous articles in leading international relations journals. His areas of expertise include interstate conflict and conflict management processes—including diplomacy, territorial disputes, rivalries, war, and non-violent conflict management strategies.
Paul F. Diehl is Associate Provost and Ashbel Smith Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas-Dallas. He is the co-author most recently of The Puzzle of Peace (2016) and Past President of the International Studies Association and the Peace Science Society (International) respectively. His areas of expertise include the causes of war, UN peacekeeping, and international law.
1Introducing International Conflict Management
The Korean War ended in 1953. Nevertheless, the threat of renewed war on the Korean peninsula has persisted constantly between then and now. More than forty militarized disputes (involving the threat, display, or use of military force) related to the conflict have occurred in this period. Although nuclear concerns date back to 1993 when North Korea first threatened the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the risk of nuclear war stemming from the peninsula’s conflict has accelerated since North Korea began nuclear tests in 2006.
It is fortunate that none of the post-1953 Korean confrontations has escalated to full-scale war. Some of this “success” results from the myriad conflict management efforts of the international community. Over the past seven decades, various actors have employed a wide range of approaches to manage the conflict. Military intervention under United Nations (UN) auspices first attempted to control and end the conflict in 1950, even as it later expanded, perhaps prolonged, the war, and contributed to the stalemate of 1953. Subsequent negotiations between the United States, South Korea, and North Korea dealt with a variety of issues, from lower-order concerns (e.g., reuniting families) to mid-level concerns (e.g., humanitarian aid) to issues central to the conflict (namely, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by North Korea). On occasion, these negotiations have even been facilitated by third-party mediators, as when ex-US President Jimmy Carter acted as a go-between in the 1994 nuclear negotiations.
Conflict management efforts have not, however, been confined to diplomacy alone. The UN and individual countries have imposed economic sanctions on North Korea and its leadership at various junctures and to various degrees. These coercive tactics are designed to discourage North Korea from further advancing its nuclear program and, ideally, to encourage it to abandon its desire to possess nuclear weapons at all. Importantly, they also follow failed attempts at consensual conflict management rooted in international law. One hundred and ninety-one countries have voluntarily accepted the NPT, with non-nuclear states promising to use nuclear power only for peaceful purposes and to foreswear any weapons development. International legal agreements have consequently received credit for limiting the number of new nuclear states (Fuhrmann and Lupu 2016), as well as proving effective in restraining North Korea.
The enduring conflict in Korea provides a window into the myriad approaches available for international conflict management, along with the conditions affecting their successes and failures. This book reviews the most prominent of these approaches, used widely to manage both interstate and civil conflicts. At one end of the spectrum sit the more coercive means of compelling protagonists to cease their violent or otherwise undesirable behavior; military intervention and sanctions fall into this category. The rest of the spectrum contains a variety of less hostile conflict management approaches, under which disputants cede various degrees of control over the conflict management process and outcome to third-party actors. Negotiation and mediation, for example, require the cooperation of disputants to begin the conflict management process, reach a settlement on the disputed issues, and enforce any settlement terms. Peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities, on the other hand, still rely on cooperation to a significant degree, but their outcomes rely extensively on the effectiveness of the third parties that conduct the peace operation. Somewhere between mediation and peacekeeping lie the legal approaches (adjudication and arbitration) in which the disputants permit a third party (court or arbiter) to settle their disputed issues, usually through formal, legal processes over which the disputants have little control.
This is a book about conflict management. As such, we begin with defining conflict management and distinguishing it from another process—conflict resolution—with which it is often confused.
Conflict Management vs Conflict Resolution
Conflict management and conflict resolution are often used interchangeably in the media and scholarly analyses (for an overview of the field’s development, see Kriesberg 1997). Both occur in contexts where a significant likelihood of armed conflict exists. Violence or even full-scale war might be manifest, but short of that extreme, conflicting positions on important issues or explicit threats of violence raise the specter of violence in the near future. Preventive measures appear in the early stages of conflict, prior to the onset or threat of violence; management and resolution needs then expand during active violence (e.g., an ongoing war); and disagreements might need to be managed or resolved in the aftermath of any militarized conflict. The management and resolution concepts therefore occur during multiple conflict stages and capture a broad range of pre-, intra-, and post-conflict activity.
The two processes also share the penultimate goals of stopping ongoing violence and preventing its onset or renewal. Yet they do this in slightly different ways. Both processes seek—at a minimum—to achieve what is often termed “negative peace,” usually defined as the absence of violence (or war specifically). Conflict resolution, however, goes slightly further, with a greater focus on “positive peace” as well. Positive peace requires not only the end of violence, but also the achievement of social justice and the removal of the root causes of violence (see Galtung 1969; on types of peace, see Kacowicz and Bar-Siman-Tov 2000, or the discussion in Goertz et al. 2016). Its achievement often requires negative peace as a foundation on which to build. As this distinction in peace types demonstrates, conflict management and conflict resolution are not the same processes, nor do they necessarily produce the same results. Fundamental differences distinguish them from one another.
Maoz (2004) identifies a series of goals for conflict management, three of which are fundamental. The first is to control or limit violence in the dispute. Note that this does not necessarily eliminate all violence or end the possibility of it. Rather, conflict management tries to lower the level of violence to some predefined limit or merely relative to the status quo. A second goal is to contain the geographic scope of any conflict. That is, conflict management works to prevent violent conflict or potential unrest from spreading to new areas, because this expansion would increase the conflict’s negative consequences and perhaps complicate resolution. Finally, a third, related goal is to restrict the number of participants involved in the conflict. Much as firefighters try to confine a blaze to its original structure, conflict managers seek to confine conflict to as narrow a set of locations and actors as possible, which then makes battling the original conflict easier. This also includes limiting the consequences so that civilians are not killed or otherwise adversely affected by the conflict.
Although conflict obviously involves disagreement, conflict management assumes that disputants share some common interest(s) in limiting the conflict and its effects. This does not suggest that all disputant preferences are compatible, but only that some or all of the disputants would like to limit the conflict. These limitations might be temporary (e.g., a ceasefire during a war) or (quasi-) permanent (e.g., a desire to prevent conflict escalation, which produced support for a peacekeeping force in Cyprus [1964–present], even as the underlying issues at the root of the conflict remain unresolved). It is possible, and indeed at times common, for this assumption to be incorrect. There are instances in which some disputants do not want to stop fighting or to place limits on the conflict. If a side is winning battles, for example, then limiting conflict stalls its momentum and potential for victory. For example, in 1997, once the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) took the city of Kisangani, they refused to negotiate with the government in Zaire until President Mobutu resigned, despite previously pressing for negotiations with the government. Similarly, conflict management that freezes the status quo can disadvantage the disputant seeking to revise it (e.g., a government seeking to oust insurgent groups from any territory it holds or a rebel group desiring to overthrow a government). In these circumstances, conflict management efforts are prone to failure, largely because of the revisionist side’s lack of cooperation.
Conflict resolution, in contrast, goes beyond conflict management. In its ideal form, conflict resolution works to remove the issues under contention or the underlying bases of dispute from the relationship (Burton 1987). In other words, it renders the risk of conflict escalation moot because there is no longer a reason to fight. Consistent with this logic, some (e.g., Luttwak 1999) take an expansive view of conflict resolution that includes military victory for one of the warring sides, a situation in which resolution is achieved through brute military force. More commonly, though, conflict resolution resolves the underlying, disputed issues through non-violent mechanisms. For example, if an interstate territorial dispute ends with a mutual agreement to draw a border, then the prospects for war may fall and the groundwork for cooperative activities in other areas may strengthen. This occurred after the Vatican mediated a resolution of the Beagle Channel dispute in 1985; since that agreement, Argentina and Chile have greatly expanded trade with each other and are now considered friendly with one another.
Conflict resolution efforts begin with a more optimistic assessment of the prospects for dealing with the conflict. Except for wholly naive or misguided attempts, third parties must believe that there exist outcomes that will satisfy all disputants. This often means finding non-zero-sum settlements, although settlements heavily weighted toward the interests of one side may still be acceptable to the loser. The International Court of Justice, for example, ruled in 2015 that Costa Rica had full sovereignty over a disputed island, and Nicaragua has indicated that it will abide by that ruling. Conflict resolution therefore requires, beyond limiting the violence, that disputants have “overlapping bargaining spaces” (one or more settlement options acceptable to all disputants), as well as some willingness to end the conflict and accept a settlement. Importantly, conflict resolution also need not be all or nothing. Disputants can agree to settle some disputed issues while leaving others to future resolution efforts, or merely agree to disagree.
Conflict management and conflict resolution are not fully separate but are interrelated in numerous ways. First, many of the conflict management approaches discussed throughout this book can be used for either process. Bringing disputants to the table for direct negotiations or mediation, for example, may produce outcomes that either manage or resolve a conflict—or both (e.g., an agreement to manage the conflict in the short term, while implementing provisions of a comprehensive agreement in the long run). Some agreements even include provisions for conflict management following resolution. After disputed issues are resolved, for example, the possibility arises that disagreements will reoccur over those issues or that new sources of dispute will emerge; conflict management mechanisms cannot ensure that disagreements will not arise, but they can provide peaceful mechanisms to address those disagreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, has a Dispute Settlement Body that provides for resolving (future) trade disputes, ideally through consultations with the parties and, if necessary, via quasi-judicial panel hearings and awards.
Second, conflict management approaches can be precursors to conflict resolution. Stopping a war or limiting the scope of violence often constitutes the first step in a broader peace process. Traditional peacekeeping forces operate on this principle; they usually deploy following a ceasefire to ensure compliance with it, thereby creating a more suitable environment for negotiations between the combatants. In other instances, actors hope that progress on conflict management will produce a cascade of cooperation that makes conflict resolution more likely; according to this logic, a step-by-step cooperative process, starting with the concerns easiest to address, lays the groundwork for more expansive settlements, including those that resolve the most contentious issues. The Oslo Accords (1993 and 1995) between Israel and the Palestinians relied on this idea. Interim arrangements secured the withdrawal of Israeli forces and Palestinian governance in occupied territory; the final resolution of issues such as borders and the status of Jerusalem, however, was deferred for future negotiations. In other circumstances, conflict management from one approach tries to achieve conflict resolution through another, subsequent approach. For example, negotiations may produce an agreement to halt provocative actions toward claims (e.g., territorial ones) and to submit the dispute to an international arbiter or court (see, e.g., the Colombia–Venezuela or Ethiopia–Eritrea border disputes).
Third, some approaches facilitate conflict management and conflict resolution efforts, although they may themselves produce neither. Economic sanctions offer an illustration. They often attempt to bring a recalcitrant disputant to the negotiating table, where management and resolution could occur. The sanctions against South Africa eventually convinced it to end apartheid and permit majority rule. Similarly, global sanctions on Iran encouraged the multiparty negotiations that produced a deal in which Iran suspended nuclear weapons development in return for the lifting of those sanctions.
Finally, the original pursuit of either management or resolution might produce the other. A process designed for conflict management, for example, could yield resolution. The opposite, however, is more likely, as outcomes fall short of aspirations. Parties in an international or civil war might sign a ceasefire but fail to find the common basis needed for a comprehensive peace agreement; the end of fighting in the Korean War illustrates this idea.
The chapters that follow focus on conflict management and the various approaches used to achieve it. Conflict management is a necessary (but insufficient) condition for resolution. Starting from the premise that a violent conflict exists or there is a significant risk of it, management will take precedence over resolution because resolution is unlikely to proceed in the face of violence or its threat. Nonetheless, as noted above, one cannot always distinguish between conflict management and conflict resolution. The descriptions and, to some extent, the processes and outcomes, of these two approaches may therefore be the same or similar for both.
Overview of the Book
In the following chapter (Chapter 2), we set the stage for our analysis of individual conflict management approaches in several ways. First, we identify a series of key ideas about conflict management and its success found in numerous works; these reappear frequently as threads that connect the logics of conflict management across different approaches. This is followed by a specification of some patterns in conflict over time, as the conflict context is an important variable in determining which conflict management approach is selected as well as when success is achieved. Nevertheless, some conflicts are never managed, even when their importance and negative consequences suggest that they should have been; we will cover some of the occasions when conflict management has been absent and examine the reasons why. The chapter concludes with an overview of how conflict management success might be judged as well as some indicators that might be used to measure that success.
We devote a separate chapter to each distinct conflict management approach: intervention, sanctions, negotiation, mediation, legal approaches, and peacekeeping (see Table 2.2 below). These chapters follow a similar format. We first establish a foundation by defining the approach, discussing its key concepts and characteristics (often in relation to other approaches), describing how the conflict management process unfolds, and providing information on the logic or strategic considerations underlying how the approach facilitates conflict management. We next identify the actors that most commonly employ the approach, along with some historical patterns (when appropriate). Finally, we devote the main parts of each chapter to specifying the conditions under which actors select the given approach and the approach succeeds, based on the extensive scholarly research available. The book then concludes with a chapter that explores how approaches interact with one another. This is an important consideration not only because approaches can occur simultaneously or sequentially, but also because they are often theoretically and practically interdependent. One approach may have downstream consequences for another.
Within each substantive chapter (Chapters 3–9), we also include extended discussions of conflict cases that illustrate the chapter’s major concepts and conclusions. Chapters 3–8 contain two cases each: one a relative success (e.g., negotiation that leads to a lasting peace agreement) and the other a relative failure (e.g., unsuccessful negotiations in which disputes continue). Chapter 9 includes one illustration of the conflict management trajectory concept, which contains a series of successes and failures. These cases collectively represent different types of disputes (e.g., civil and interstate), disputants (e.g., major and minor powers), and geographic regions.
We begin with conflict management approaches on the more coercive end of the scale, starting with military intervention—the sending of troops into a dispute’s theater to engage a disputant militarily, protect civilians, or deliver humanitarian aid (Chapter 3). This might, at first glance, appear to be contradictory to conflict management—using military force to limit military force. Indeed, external actors occasionally become a direct party to the conflict, which runs counter to common conceptions of conflict management. Nonetheless, intervention aims to mitigate armed conflict or its effects. Third parties may still be serving their own self-interest in the process. Our focus, however, is not on military interventions designed exclusively to further the interests of the intervening party (e.g., the US invasion of Iraq in 2003), but rather on those attempting to promote the cessation of hostilities or end human rights abuses, even as the intervention might favor one protagonist over others. The amount of coercion desired and needed to achieve these goals will vary; the advent of the United Nations and the proliferation of numerous regional organizations, for example, means (multilateral) intervention trends toward less coercion and less frequent use of traditional military force over time. Nonetheless, the goal remains to change the disputants’ calculus about whether violence will help them achieve their goals, and to assist civilians experiencing unacceptable costs from violence.
Outside parties can also exert leverage over disputants through economic sanctions (Chapter 4). Sanctions impose economic costs and limit policy options as a way to compel disputants to comply with third-party demands. They can, for example, inflict sufficient economic pain on belligerents to end a conflict (that is, incentivize a shift from violent to non-violent conflict management) or change a conflict-prone policy (e.g., the abandonment of a nuclear weapons program). They also may limit the resources, such as weapons, that disputants need to continue fighting. More recently, “smart” sanctions target specific sectors of an economy or decision-makers’ assets; the goal is to impose high costs on specific actors (e.g., political leaders or military forces) that have the greatest influence over policy, while minimizing any effect on the broader population.
Whatever their exact form, actors frequently employ sanctions because they are viewed as a less risky, lower-cost, and more humane conflict management approach than outright military intervention. Important questions, however, persist about both the application and effectiveness of sanctions as a conflict management tool. The conflicts in which actors use sanctions tend to be those with highly salient issues at stake for the disputants and, therefore, those most likely to produce intense fighting. Under such circumstances, only extremely high costs will change disputant behavior, and sanctions rarely inflict them. Moreover, third parties often apply sanctions not because they expect them to succeed at managing a conflict, but rather because sanctions provide a low-cost appearance of doing something. In light of these considerations, understanding the conditions under which sanctions will most likely be effective gains in importance.
Of the more cooperative forms of conflict management, negotiation is perhaps the most familiar (Chapter 5). In the negotiation process, disputants’ representatives meet directly with one another—without the assistance of a third party—and pursue agreements designed to halt existing violence, lessen the likelihood of future violence, and decrease hostility between them. This behavior theoretically carries similarities across diverse contexts (e.g., arms control, labor disputes, etc.), and research focuses on determining the conditions under which negotiations occur and produce agreements. One set of concerns, which we might label micro-level influences, concentrates on the attributes, behavior, and interactions of those conducting the negotiations. Some disputants, for example, do not agree to negotiate for “sincere” reasons, choosing to use negotiations as an opportunity to regroup for later violence instead; understanding why and how actors come to the negotiating table therefore has downstream consequences for their ability to reach agreements during talks and implement agreements after negotiations occur. In contrast, macro-level factors, such as the relative power of the involved actors and international norms, reflect the contextual influences under which the negotiations take place. These, too, alter the prospects for reaching and implementing agreements, since even when negotiations produce agreements, many fall apart when the parties renege on promises or fail to implement key provisions in the agreement.
Mediation (Chapter 6) shares many similarities with negotiations, but refers broadly to a wide range of distinct, third-party behaviors designed to mitigate or resolve conflict, including the facilitation of negotiations (i.e., good offices) and the proposal of potential settlement terms (i.e., conciliation). The third parties involved may be private individuals (e.g., Jimmy Carter) or representatives of states (e.g., Norway or the Pope), international organizations (e.g., the United Nations), or non-governmental organizations (e.g., the Quakers). They engage in mediation when disputants prove incapable of managing their conflict alone and, therefore, require help. Disputants permit this third-party involvement because it offers them both assistance with and significant control over the conflict management process and its outcome. Mediation is an entirely voluntary process, meaning the disputants must accept the mediator, the process, and the outcome; disputants can walk away at any time and are not bound to accept any agreement the process produces, even one proposed by the mediator. This distinguishes it markedly from legal approaches (which are binding) and coercion.
Many of the theoretical and empirical interests in mediation mirror those found in negotiation studies (e.g., conditions for effectiveness), and sometimes these sets of studies are indistinct from one another. Nevertheless, mediation studies frequently focus on the attributes (e.g., impartiality) and strategies of the mediator as important factors in mediation’s occurrence and success (that is, the “supply side” of conflict management), in addition to disputant characteristics and contextual factors (that is, the “demand side”). This occurs because the involvement of a third party necessarily changes the bargaining dynamic and, therefore, the theoretical expectations for when mediation will occur and succeed, thereby differentiating it further from negotiations.
Under legal approaches, disputants cede greater control over their conflict’s management (Chapter 7). In particular, disputants place their conflict in the hands of a third party—a standing, formal judicial institution (e.g., the International Court of Justice) or an ad hoc quasi-judicial body that follows pre-established procedures, applies international legal principles (or other pre-approved considerations), and issues a binding award that resolves the disputed issues with legal finality. The exact legal process in operation adheres to the policies, rules, and procedures of the body hearing the case, with significant differences between various international courts. Nonetheless, these processes often progress through a phase in which the third party decides whether it has jurisdiction (or accepts the case), reviews evidence and arguments submitted by the disputants (e.g., written and oral proceedings), deliberates, and issues a ruling. Arbiters and international courts typically do not themselves implement their rulings, although they occasionally hear appeals that a disputant is in non-compliance (see International Court of Justice).
Because disputants agree to adhere to a ruling before the legal process begins and because the third party’s policies, rules, and procedures guide the process, disputants lose significant control under legal approaches. The use of legal approaches therefore usually indicates that disputants recognize direct negotiation or mediation has been or will be unsuccessful. In some cases, it may also suggest disputants’ preference for avoiding negotiation or mediation to resolve their dispute, a preference that arises frequently when leaders want to settle a disputed issue, but do not want to be responsible to their constituents for the concessions that might be required to do so. As a final topic, we then explore the key debates surrounding the use of legal approaches, including whether they effectively resolve disputes and, relatedly, whether disputants actually comply with legal rulings.
Between legal approaches and coercion lie peace operations, which are cooperative but require significant third-party commitments (Chapter 8). Peace operations have changed significantly over the past fifty years. Traditional peacekeeping missions (stationing a small contingent of lightly armed forces or observers to separate and monitor combatants) proved helpful during many conflicts but seemed inadequate to address the many civil conflicts proliferating after the Cold War ended. Third parties therefore expanded mission mandates, ultimately producing peacebuilding missions. Such missions aim to prevent conflict recurrence, introduce and strengthen government institutions (e.g., election monitoring or a revised judicial system), and return displaced persons to their homes. This profusion of tasks suggests that a variety of logics underlie peace operations. The complexity of the logics builds further when we consider that a variety of actors authorize and participate in peace operations, each of which has distinct motivations for doing so (e.g., United Nations vs African Union vs Australia). Such considerations, along with the conflict context and disputant characteristics, affect how, why, where, and when peace operations occur. Moreover, given the variety of mandated tasks, determining the effectiveness of peace operations can be challenging. Traditional measures of success (e.g., no recurrence of fighting), for example, may be inappropriate or incomplete indicators of some missions’ success (e.g., a peacebuilding mission), while other mandated tasks (e.g., support for confidence-building measures) may be difficult to assess at all.
Finally, after considering each approach in isolation (Chapters 3–8), we next entertain their interactions (Chapter 9). This represents a key advancement in recent research. Attempts to manage a dispute rarely occur in isolation. Rather, most disputes see a constellation of conflict management attempts, often involving different approaches (e.g., mediation and peacekeeping) and third parties. For a variety of reasons, conflict managers are aware of one another’s efforts and incorporate information about these previous efforts into their decisions about what to do next. The same third party, for example, often tries to manage a dispute via multiple efforts; it will know what it previously did. Similarly, because international disputes (and their management) are high-profile events, potential third parties (e.g., the United Nations) monitor conflict management efforts. This means that we should expect conflict management efforts within the same dispute to be interrelated. Recent research has begun to theorize about this interdependence more explicitly, even advancing the concept of a conflict management trajectory: a “path” of conflict management within a given dispute that can be theorized, tracked, and studied empirically. After introducing this concept in greater detail, the chapter explores the potential theoretical connections between various conflict management approaches and explains what we know about how actors select among and sequence the approaches presented in earlier chapters.
2Key Ideas and Frameworks
It is evident that conflict management approaches differ in many important ways (e.g., some are more coercive, whereas others are consensual). Nevertheless, our understanding of these different approaches can often derive from common elements. In this chapter, we examine some of those commonalities with respect to important concepts, the conflict context for management, and the standards used to judge success or failure.
Cross-Cutting Concepts
Although there are a variety of conflict management approaches, some concepts cut across them and form the basis for whether and when approaches succeed. Many of these concepts developed originally within negotiation studies, the research milieu with the longest pedigree, but they extend well beyond that subfield. They therefore feature prominently in the chapters that follow.
Timing and Related Ideas
One of the most prominent ideas in conflict management holds that the “timing” must be right in order for conflict management to succeed. One might interpret the term “timing” literally, and indeed, early research focused on whether conflict management occurred during the early, middle, or later stages of a conflict. “Timing,” however, indicates something broader than this. Good timing means that the conditions required for a given conflict management attempt to succeed are manifest. It is therefore a mistake to consider the attempt in isolation; desirable outcomes result from a concatenation of different factors, of which the conflict management approach is only one.
This view suggests that conflict management attempts will succeed at some points in time but not others, and the approach itself is not necessarily at fault. Much depends on whether the other requisite conditions are present. Thus, conflicts are often labelled as “ripe” or “ready” for management or resolution if these other conditions are present. Theoretically, mediation, negotiation, and other approaches should be tried at such moments. For example, peacekeeping forces are better able to limit violence after a ceasefire, or even better after a peace agreement, than they are during ongoing wars; a conflict is “ripe” for peacekeeping after these agreements.
Mitchell (1995) identifies four different models of “ripeness.” All or parts of these appear in various forms throughout discussions of conflict management approaches, and most were developed within the context of mediation and negotiation specifically. Perhaps the most well-known is the “mutually hurting stalemate.”
Mutually Hurting Stalemate
The term “mutually hurting stalemate” (MHS) entered the lexicon of international studies through the work of I. William Zartman. First introduced over three decades ago (Zartman and Berman 1982; Touval and Zartman 1985), MHS is a perceptual condition “in which neither side can win, yet continuing conflict will be very harmful to each” (Zartman 2003). The existence of this condition supposedly encourages disputants to go to the negotiating table and possibly to reach a settlement.
MHS has three essential components. The “stalemate” component signifies an impasse in the conflict such that no disputant can envision achieving its goals through continued fighting. The “hurting” element denotes that the parties are paying costs by fighting, costs that can eventually become significant enough for disputants to consider changing their behavior or relationship. Finally, the “mutually” component indicates that each party experiences the first two components. A one-sided hurting stalemate creates a situation in which the non-hurting side may continue fighting and reject any settlement attempt. A sufficient level of pain must therefore be experienced by each disputant, although this need not mean that the pain has to be equal across disputants, or from the same source (Zartman 2001, 2007).
When disputants experience a MHS, they look for an opportunity to switch from violent to non-violent pursuit of their goals. This is based on a cost–benefit calculation, consistent with a rational choice model of decision-making. In particular, the switch makes sense if disputants see a potential catastrophe down the road (e.g., paying unacceptably high costs without achieving their goals) and therefore work through non-violent means to avoid that catastrophe. Otherwise, rational actors should not reach a MHS absent incomplete information, uncertainty, or failed institutions precipitating the MHS; a fully rational actor would negotiate and settle its dispute before the MHS could occur.
According to Zartman (2001), a MHS is merely a necessary condition for de-escalation and negotiation. Other elements must therefore be present for an improvement in the belligerents’ relationship to occur, including “a way out” (that is, a viable alternative to the status quo) or a “mutually enticing opportunity” (see the discussion of these elements below; Zartman 2000, 2007). If these are also present, then the conflict is “ripe” for settlement.
Imminent Mutual Catastrophe
The model based on imminent mutual catastrophe (IMC) builds on the idea of a MHS. IMC goes beyond the costly stalemate concept to argue that the prospect of even greater, disastrous costs lying on the horizon if conflict continues will push disputants into conflict management. Inertia and internal politics (within a country or group) may lead a disputant to resist conflict management, even when a MHS exists. A major shift in the cost–benefit calculations is therefore required before disputants will be open to management and resolution (i.e., for the conflict to be “ripe” for settlement). The looming, disastrous costs create that shift.
Mitchell characterizes the IMC as an extreme version of the MHS. The costs of conflict remain critical to the IMC, but these costs must be significant and occur in the near future rather than in the present. The argument therefore relies on the perception of costs, as opposed to actual ones—and both sides must face such a catastrophe.
What kinds of catastrophic costs might alter disputants’ willingness to pursue and accept a settlement? This is more difficult to determine empirically than in the abstract. The prospect of nuclear war offers a likely situation, encouraging disputants to step back from the brink (e.g., India and Pakistan); yet this occurs rarely. Mitchell (1995) mentions the end of World War II as an example: the Japanese surrendered after having two atomic bombs dropped on them, while the Allies were willing to settle rather than pay the costs associated with invading the Japanese homeland. But even this does not quite fit. Japan had already experienced catastrophe, though it could have experienced more. Moreover, Japan’s calculations resulted in an unconditional surrender; albeit negotiated, this is not the symmetrical outcome that most conflict management approaches envision. Perhaps a better example might be the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the United States and the Soviet Union backed away from possible annihilation. These (limited) cases demonstrate that the IMC model remains more hypothetical than empirically based.
The Entrapment Model
A third variation on the idea of timing and ripeness is the “entrapment” model (ENT). The MHS and IMC rely on rational cost–benefit calculations: when the costs of conflict become much greater than its prospective benefits, (non-violent) conflict management has a greater likelihood of producing its desired outcome. The entrapment model employs a different logic.
The ENT model essentially rests on the notion of “sunk costs” (i.e., the accumulated costs—financial and otherwise—of conflict), which then influence decision-making. Rational disputants should consider future costs in determining whether to continue violence; the sunk costs paradox, however, posits that, as a disputant pays higher (accumulated, past) costs, it is more likely to continue fighting and will resist conflict management efforts. In this sense, it might be considered the inverse of the two previous models of ripeness. Disputants believe that they must defeat their opponent to justify past expenses and suffering. This logic parallels human behavior in many other contexts, such as gambling or a greater willingness to continue standing in line at a restaurant because of the time already spent waiting rather than how long the remaining wait might be. This logic seemingly implies that conflict management might be best early in the conflict before costs accumulate, although that turns out not to be the case.
Can disputants ever escape this trap? Mitchell (1995) suggests so. Initially, disputants focus on their goals and justify any costs paid in terms of achieving those goals. As the conflict drags on, they will next focus on maximizing relative gains (that is, punishing the opponent in addition to obtaining goals) and minimizing losses. Once they exhaust resources, disputants then search for a way out. This process implies the need for conflict management much later in a conflict’s lifespan, after a key transition point where decision-makers experience a psychological shift from a sunk-costs orientation to one based on loss minimization. It is unfortunately not clear what precipitating events or conditions bring this shift about. Furthermore, there are no known cases in which an actor has completely exhausted its resources prior to accepting conflict management.
The Enticing Opportunity Model
The final variant of “ripeness” is the “enticing opportunity” model, which stresses the available alternatives to conflict instead of the costs associated with continued conflict. This model also relies on a cost–benefit analysis, but emphasizes the benefit component; it therefore focuses attention on what conflict management can offer the disputing parties. Ripeness occurs when an attractive alternative appears that disputants find clearly superior to continued violence.
It is unlikely that a brand-new conflict management opportunity will suddenly arise, but more likely that existing alternatives appear in a new light (Crocker 1992). Throughout a conflict, all disputants usually know both a variety of prospective settlement outcomes, as well as the conflict management approaches available to achieve them. Clever, new proposals can arise, but this would be rare. The key, then, is not to expand or enhance the menu of settlement options, but to make the existing alternatives to violence more attractive to disputants.
What will accomplish this goal? First, leadership changes among one or more disputants often produce different policy priorities and preferences. A disputant might therefore become more willing to accept conflict management and to settle a conflict under terms it previously regarded as unacceptable (of course, the reverse can be true as well). Second, conflict management efforts can manipulate the relative costs and benefits of violence and non-violence. If they raise the costs of continued violence, then they theoretically encourage the use of non-violent alternatives; economic sanctions attempt this. Alternatively, if they raise the benefits of non-violent alternatives, then they increase the likelihood that disputants will abandon violence. Peacekeepers that guarantee a negotiated settlement’s terms, for example, ensure that the benefits promised in the agreement accrue to the disputants; this is the essence of the credible-commitment concept discussed below.
Enticing opportunities can occur during the early, middle, or later stages of a conflict. Indeed, they might be considered as a “way out,” one of the elements that moves a MHS to a desirable settlement outcome (Zartman 2000). Sudan experienced this logic. After decades of civil war, a plebiscite on independence was not only attractive to South Sudanese forces, but also became so to the central Sudanese government.
Credible Commitment
A second general idea that explains why conflict management succeeds or fails concerns credible-commitment issues. Credible commitments refer broadly to the durability of potential settlement outcomes, in particular disputants’ perceptions about how likely their opponents are to cooperate honestly in conflict management efforts and to implement any agreement reached. A specific application of this broad concept produces the “commitment problem,” which arises when a settlement will fundamentally change disputants’ relative power (Powell 2006). This possibility opens opportunities for the strengthening state to renege on the agreement after it is signed and to exploit the weakening one to obtain better terms for itself. As a result, the actors that will be weakened refuse to reach a settlement, and conflict management stalls. Rebel disarmament after civil war offers the quintessential illustration, although the problem appears in interstate disputes as well. Rebel groups must disarm after civil war—to restore the government’s monopoly on the organized use of force within the state—and disarmament terms therefore appear in many agreements that end civil wars. If disarmament occurs, however, the now unarmed rebels face an armed government, which can then renege on the agreement previously reached and compel the rebels through force (the threat of death or imprisonment) to further make concessions on disputed issues. This creates a familiar impasse: the government refuses to negotiate without disarmament, while the rebels refuse to disarm because they will lose substantial bargaining leverage.
The credible-commitment logic rests on three assumptions. First, successful conflict management requires the cooperation of two or more disputants. This is uncontroversial for most of the conflict management approaches examined throughout this book. Negotiation and mediation, for example, are voluntary processes that cannot operate without disputant consent. Similarly, traditional peacekeeping operations involve the consent of one or more disputants, largely because their mandated tasks demand disputant assistance (e.g., maintaining a ceasefire or holding free and fair elections).
Second, disputants lack trust in their opponents. Intense hostility and a history of violence erode trust, leaving disputants with little reason to believe that their opponents sincerely want peace. Moreover, an enemy that cheats on an agreement can threaten a disputant’s security or existence. A rebel group can promise to disarm and disband after a peace agreement, but most governments would find this promise alone unacceptable. Failure to disarm and disband places the state at risk, and government supporters would therefore find this approach untenable. The South African government, for example, only accepted a peace deal for the independence of Namibia after securing a peacekeeping force to monitor the disarmament process in the country. In a similar vein, rebel disarmament in the face of government promises not to kill or imprison (former) rebels often proves insufficient; the possibility of government cheating places rebels’ individual security at risk.
Credible-commitment concerns can sabotage conflict management in numerous ways. Negotiations and by extension other conflict management approaches proceed through three broad stages (Walter 2002). Disputants first entertain conflict management and decide whether to “come to the (bargaining) table.” They then bargain in pursuit of an agreement to change their behavior or resolve disputed issues. The form of this agreement varies by approach; negotiation and mediation produce a ceasefire or substantive agreement, while peacekeeping typically secures an agreement to deploy a peace operation. Finally, if an agreement emerges, disputants enter an implementation phase, in which they execute the provisions of the agreement (e.g., to enact the terms of a negotiated or mediated agreement, to uphold an international court ruling, or to conduct elections as promised in a peace agreement).
Credible commitments appear most acutely in the final stage of negotiations, but ripple backwards to affect the others (Fearon 1998). If, for example, a disputant strongly believes that its enemy will not implement any agreement reached, why would it participate in conflict management? The process would offer it little foreseeable benefit. In this way, implementation concerns undermine the possibility of even getting to the table. With little promise of implementation (stage three), disputants do not expect to reach an agreement, regardless of what they do (stage two); they therefore never attempt to bargain in the first place (stage one). Note that this is not identical to saying that disputants must believe an agreement is imminent if they participate in conflict management; disputants know that managing conflict over highly salient issues will be challenging. Nevertheless, they must believe that their enemies are participating in good faith, that is, pursuing conflict management with sincere intentions to resolve the dispute and implement agreements (on the question of insincere motives, see Chapter 5). Otherwise, why bother?
Third parties can short-circuit this logic. If the third party ensures that enemies keep their promises, then commitments become more credible. A third party does this in several ways. The first involves monitoring and verifying the conflict management process and outcome. Returning to the example of rebel group disarmament and demobilization, a third party (e.g., peacekeepers) can certify this occurs and is complete; because the government trusts the third party more than rebel leaders, such a certification increases credibility and allays government fears. A second way uses third-party reward (or “carrots”). For example, a third party might provide financial or other aid in exchange for a disputant successfully implementing a peace agreement; if the added incentive for compliance outweighs any benefits from cheating, then the third party instills confidence that disputants will honor their commitments. Finally, and relatedly, third parties can punish non-compliance (i.e., use “sticks”). For example, threats of military force and sanctions (two forms of conflict management discussed in later chapters) reinforce other conflict management approaches (e.g., mediation or peacekeeping) by encouraging compliance.
Spoilers
There is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the primary disputants and the third-party managers when trying to account for conflict management success and failure. This myopic approach, however, ignores the behaviors of other actors that can influence conflict management outcomes. The oversight grows when we assume that all involved actors—primary disputants, third parties, and omitted actors—want conflict management. In reality, many actors, including primary disputants and third parties, possess motives to slow, damage, or wreck the conflict management process. These actors, whether within or outside the conflict management process, are considered “spoilers” (Stedman 1997; Nilsson and Kovacs 2011).
Spoilers are “leaders and parties who believe that peace emerging from conflict management threatens their power, worldview, and interests, and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it” (Stedman 1997: 5). Hamas offers an example. After Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu proclaimed that he would not negotiate with the Palestinians until terrorist or other attacks stopped for an extended period, Hamas militants launched rockets and sponsored suicide bombers to ensure that such negotiations never occurred.
The definition above is relatively narrow, suggesting that spoilers come from one or more of the warring parties, that negotiations are underway or envisioned, and that violence is the means for spoiling. Relaxing each of these specifications, however, allows us to understand spoiling behavior better (for a review of these and related issues, see Nilsson and Kovacs 2011). We leave aside any normative judgments about whether the spoiling behavior is justified or morally desirable. Although usually framed in negative terms, instances exist in which spoiling might be morally defensible, for example, if an agreement might result in human rights abuses, authoritarian rule, or other undesirable characteristics that spoilers’ actions can stop.
First and foremost, spoilers can arise from within or outside of a peace process. Primary disputants do not always want peace, and their actions can directly undermine conflict management efforts. If, for example, a disputant is winning a war, then stopping the violence forestalls its victory and interferes with its ability to achieve its goals. Serbian forces experienced this early in the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Disputants might also object to prospective management or settlement terms, and use spoiling behavior to exercise leverage over or rearrange conflict management priorities. This seems most likely in a multiparty negotiation, where agreements disproportionately serve the interests of some disputants, but not others. In other circumstances, spoilers come from outside the conflict management process. Informal negotiations to secure a ceasefire in the Syrian civil war, for example, did not include the Islamic State (ISIS); they had no interest in halting hostilities or encouraging others to stop attacking one another, because this would allow these other actors to devote greater resources and attention to combating ISIS. These various considerations suggest that finding (potential) spoilers requires a careful analysis of who has an interest in continued violence and why.
Second, spoiling behavior does not only occur during negotiations or only at the negotiation table specifically. All conflict management approaches can be spoiled. Trading with a sanctioned state, for example, renders economic sanctions less effective. Similarly, reinforcing military positions or ignoring judicial awards (e.g., China’s actions in the South China Sea) undermines legal approaches, while not participating in elections or refusing to accept electoral outcomes damages a peacekeeping mission tasked with arranging and monitoring democratic elections. In addition, spoiling can occur in the pre-negotiation (e.g., refusing to come to the table), negotiation (e.g., issuing unrealistic and insincere demands), and implementation stages (e.g., ignoring agreement terms). If we focus only on the negotiating table, we therefore miss much potential spoiling behavior.
Third, violence is not the only spoiling mechanism. To be sure, violence derails a peace process. Armed attacks, by definition, undermine negative peace. They also precipitate violent responses, and the consequences of the resulting action-reaction cycles complicate efforts to restore a ceasefire or to achieve a more enduring, peaceful outcome. Nevertheless, violence is not the only way to ruin conflict management efforts. Nilsson and Kovacs (2011), for example, catalog a series of other actions that constitute spoiling, such as: refusing to negotiate, reneging on agreements, refusing to demobilize, or establishing roadblocks against peacekeepers seeking to monitor a given area. In short, spoilers need only interfere with conflict management efforts; how exactly they do so varies widely.
Many motives underlie spoiling behavior, and these can produce opposition to all forms of peace, to a particular conflict management effort, or to a single component of a conflict management outcome. Within a given conflict, every interested party likely holds a motivation to spoil at one time or another. Whether the spoiling behavior occurs and has its intended effects, however, varies; this substantially depends on the capability of the party and the opportunities available to it. A small, well-armed group can attack a peacekeeping force or renew fighting with a group engaged in a peace process. An isolated group without this capacity, in contrast, faces significant limitations when attempting the same. Similarly, a country that trades substantially with a sanctioned state in valuable goods holds greater potential for spoiling those sanctions than a country with limited trade ties involving non-strategic goods. One can look at a party’s resources, number of supporters, and the like for assessing its spoiling capability. Yet one must also consider the party’s opportunities for spoiling as well. Even with capability, a party may not be able to stop negotiations or a judicial process, especially if those conflict management attempts have already begun; a state that cannot bypass a sanctions regime to engage in trade with a sanctioned state likewise cannot undermine sanctions, even if the resulting potential trade might do so.
Stedman’s (1997) typology of spoilers provides a useful framework for understanding the origins and motivations of spoilers. Total spoilers reject the basic principle of any settlement or accommodation with the opposing side. Limited spoilers seek to derail the implementation of an agreement for narrower reasons, believing that some subset of issues of concern to them have been unsatisfactorily addressed by the terms of agreement. Greedy spoilers oppose a settlement and seek to continue conflict, not because they have opposing views on the settlement of the issues at stake in the conflict, but because they benefit materially from the chaos produced by the conflict itself.
Beyond providing a framework by which to categorize spoilers, Stedman’s typology also distinguishes the ways in which different types of spoilers are most effectively dealt. Because greedy spoilers are motivated by material concerns, they tend to be most susceptible to inducement, most often in the form of side payments to buy their support for the agreement. Limited spoilers, because they do not at root oppose a peace process, can sometimes be effectively managed by offering them revised terms of agreement that
