CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
International Conflict Resolution
From Practice to Knowledge and Back Again
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Anthony Wanis-St. John
Suzanne Ghais
F
ew other domains of conflict resolution offer as much opportunity
and risk as the field of international conflict resolution.1 Ending wars
while helping to rebuild societies in which ideas contend peacefully
with other ideas are tasks that appeal to humanity’s highest ideals. Yet such
tasks pose daunting challenges. The pathways of contemporary international
conflict resolution practice are strewn with failures whose cost in human life
is high. We define international conflict resolution in this chapter broadly,
seeking to be epistemologically inclusive: international conflict resolution is
that body of knowledge, practices, norms, and institutions that seeks the prevention, reduction, and transformation of potential or actual violent conflict
within and between states.
In this chapter we examine some of the origins of the broad international conflict resolution field; consider some of the perennial debates
about the causes of international conflict and peace; provide an overview
of a selection of the tools, norms, and practices of international conflict resolution; and, finally, cast a glance at the contemporary and emerging challenges that foment conflict locally while calling forth global responses.
ORIGINS
Concern with the prevention and resolution of war probably dates to the
emergence of war itself. Ancient narratives such as the Mahabharata and
the Iliad offer brief glimpses of divine and human mediation (Wanis-St.
John, 2012). Contemporary approaches trace their origins to the two
European state-centric attempts to create regional orders that would not
decay into a war among major powers: the fragmented Westphalian peace
that followed the Thirty Years War and the balance of power inaugurated
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2 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
LIMITS OF UN CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Our contemporary UN system was designed to promote international peace
while preserving existing states, balancing the major powers and containing
nascent nationalisms within postcolonial borders. It by no means eliminated
war entirely, although it may indeed have helped mitigate the onset of interstate wars. The UN’s collective security mechanisms were idled at the time
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
by the Concert of Europe system that followed the Napoleonic Wars
(Kissinger, 1994). Two more modern attempts to prevent armed conflict globally also emerged from wars that began in Europe: the League
of Nations following World War I and the innovative United Nations system following World War II. Despite humanity’s attempts to create stable,
peaceful international orders among states, old challenges remain—albeit
at reduced levels—as new ones emerge.
The invention of strategic nuclear weapons shaped the evolution of the
Cold War and inspired policymakers and theorists, as well as many laypersons, to think about how superpower wars involving nuclear weapons
might be avoided and how local conflicts could be at least contained or
managed without risking potentially world-ending total war between the
superpowers (Wright, 1957). But the ferocity of local wars even during the
Cold War, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the broad dispersal
of small arms all raised new questions (and rekindled old debates) about
the desirability of arms races and the effectiveness of international systems of collective security. These challenges led to path-breaking investigations into how to avoid wars, or keep wars limited (and thus nonnuclear)
using deterrence, tacit bargaining, and signaling (Schelling, 1957). But the
rationality premise of deterrence troubled analysts who borrowed insights
from psychology and deployed them in political science: misperceptions
and other cognitive distortions plague the decision-making and political
analyses of leaders (Jervis, 1976), leading to conflict. Many grew concerned
that failures of deterrence could lead to total nuclear war and that other
means had to be found for organizing our world than a mutual balance of
terror among superpowers. Arms control and disarmament through negotiation raised new possibilities of international cooperation, even among
rivals, through reciprocal vulnerabilities and coordinated management of
international crises. Intensive nuclear diplomacy from the 1970s onward
helped make Europe less of a potential nuclear battleground for NATO and
the Warsaw Pact in case of a superpower war, while also paving the way to
the end of the Cold War (Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, 1996) and a new era of
cooperation between the United States and the Russian Federation.
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INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
of the body’s creation through the mutual vetoes of the United States and
the Soviet Union on the Security Council, which was empowered by the UN
Charter to “determine the existence of any threat to peace . . . and to maintain
or restore international peace and security” through the use of force (chap.
VII, arts. 39 and 44). Once freed from this deadlock, the Security Council
could deploy bold new multilateral missions of peacemaking (mediation) and
peacekeeping (interposition of neutral UN-commanded armed forces between
belligerents) as well as peace enforcement (combat) in order to resolve
international conflicts. Over time, the Security Council has determined with
increasing frequency that sovereignty cannot excuse governments that either
gravely violate the human rights of their own citizens or wage unjustified war
on other countries (Pearson, 1957; Durch, 1993, 1996; Goulding, 1993; AbiSaab, 1978; Higgins, 1980; Boutros-Ghali, 1992; Ratner, 1995).
When governments willfully violate the security of their own civilians,
the international community reserves some right of multilateral intervention. While new norms such as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) are
still in formation and lack coherent prescriptive implications, sovereignty
can no longer be considered a shield behind which rights can be abused
systematically. The line between domestic jurisdiction and international
intervention has blurred over time. Secession, regime change, and peace
enforcement are no longer taboo topics (although these are by no means
panaceas for weak states or violent conflicts). For better or worse, the UN
Security Council’s five permanent members are largely immune from the
controls of the UN system, and as the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
show, they can and do make war unilaterally on other states. As the two
wars in Chechnya demonstrated, they can wage war internally without fear
of concerted multilateral intervention.
The causes of war and of peace, which we discuss next, are many and
widely debated. Warmaking is no longer the unique provenance of states. It
was once safe to assume that armed movements’ goals were almost entirely
nationalistic (even when their rhetoric was global). Nonstate armed movements now have various degrees of independence from sponsoring states
and presence in multiple geopolitical regions. By the same token, however,
peacemaking is also no longer a task left entirely to sovereign states and
multilateral organizations. Civil society groups within countries and transnational movements can and do play roles in the resolution of international
conflicts. While many of the tools of international conflict resolution are
still among the tools of statecraft, some that we discuss here, such as mediation, problem solving, and negotiation, are practiced by experts without
diplomatic credentials. States are no longer the only cause of conflict, and
the systems we have created to preserve stable global order can no longer
be the sole means of creating peace.
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4 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
CAUSES OF WAR AND PEACE
Table 56.1 Causes of Civil Wars
Underlying Cause or Condition
Causal Pathway
Cognitive processes
Symbols, exclusive identities taken to extremes
Ethnic mobilization
Interactions between ethnic groups and the state
(e.g., differential political treatment or rights,
different rates of development)
Poverty
Ambiguous: Ease of rebel recruitment? State
Disintegration of empires or
Contestation of new boundaries, fear of domination
weakness? Becomes grievances?
large, multiethnic states
by one ethno-national group over another,
conflicting promises, unrealistic expectations of
nationalism
Grievances
Disparate or unfair political or economic treatment
Economic opportunities of
Corruption, organized crime, or sale of valuable
by the state relative to expectations
warfare
resources by warring parties; financing
of warring groups by outsiders; weapons
trade; pools of young unemployed, failed
demobilization and reintegration of combatants
Weak states
Lack of legitimacy, lack governing capacity, lack of
effective mechanisms for peaceful resolution of
differences, inability to manage or defeat rebellion
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Waltz (1954) contrasted three images of international relations that together
help explain international conflict and war: human nature (also called the
individual level), the composition and structure of states (also called
the state level), and the anarchic state system (also called the system level)
within which states exist and compete for survival. Although Waltz’s neorealism favored the third image to explain war, the combined effect of his
three images is also compelling: leaders and citizens with inherited and
learned patterns of human aggression who live in oppressive, weak, or
overly aggressive states, interacting with each other in the absence of an
overarching restraining global authority, should inevitably be drawn into
violent international conflict. Neoliberal political theorists take a more
prescriptive view that cooperation and peace can and should emerge even
under anarchy and rivalry. Ethologists (de Waal, 1989) and anthropologists
(Fry, 2007; Ury, 1995) offer evidence against overly deterministic views of
human proclivities to war and argue that humanity has both biological and
cultural legacies of peacemaking behaviors. (See table 56.1.)
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Underlying Cause or Condition
Causal Pathway
Ideologies and belief systems
Absolute, uncompromising goals; heightened
Wars themselves
Increased polarization, economic deterioration,
motivation; support from strong outside actors
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
militarization
Those who examine conflict as the product of individual cognitive processes, as well as intergroup dysfunction, also have contributed greatly to
our understanding of international conflict, and thus to its resolution. From
psychology and sociology, we have come to understand how symbols are
used to mobilize followers, how easy it is to create out-groups by fomenting exclusive identities (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), and how social exclusion
social exclusion and moral exclusivity (Opotow, 1990) ultimately pave the
way for violence against out-groups and, thus, war.
Real wars persist and contemporary explanations have delved into the
structures of states, as well as the dynamics of intergroup processes and the
persistence of grievances real or constructed. Since the middle of the twentieth century, according to data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program,
the number of active civil wars has increased, and the number of interstate
wars has decreased. Civil wars spiked in the early 1990s, then declined precipitously over the following ten years, but they remain at about double
the number now as in 1950. Meanwhile, purely interstate war seems to be
almost—but not quite—extinct (Themnér and Wallensteen, 2012). What
explains these trends? To answer this, we need to explore some of the causes
of contemporary civil wars and some of the causes of interstate peace.
Ancient Hatreds?
Two of the popularly held causes of civil wars do not hold up to scrutiny. In considering ethnic and intercommunal conflicts such as those
in Bosnia, Israel-Palestine, and Rwanda, it is common to point to ancient
hatreds (Barber, 1992; Cusack, 1994), yet none of these conflicts dates
back to ancient times. While the existence of the relevant identity groups
and differences may be centuries old, the actual conflicts are products of
modernity (Crawford, 1998; Shamdasani, 2009). The existence of multiple
ethnic groups within a state does not necessarily lead to violent conflict
(Boix, 2008; Fearon and Laitin, 2003), though there is some evidence that a
medium level of ethnic diversity is conducive to conflict—that is, both very
homogeneous and very heterogeneous countries are at lower risk of civil
war than are countries with two or three large ethnic groups. This is perhaps because this social composition facilitates organizing and cohesion
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6 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Poverty and Conflict
Like “ancient hatreds,” poverty is sometimes assumed to be a cause of civil
war (as well as of terrorism). It is true that poorer countries are more likely
to experience civil war than wealthier ones (Henderson and Singer, 2000;
Hegre and Sambanis, 2006; Collier and Hoeffler, 1998), and both low gross
domestic product (GDP) and high income inequality are associated with
longer civil war duration (Collier et al., 2004). However, the causal connection between low GDP and war is still contested. One explanation is that
recruitment of rebels is easier among the poor, who lack better economic
alternatives (Collier et al., 2004). However, there is some evidence that
lack of state reach or infrastructure is a stronger cause of civil war than
poverty itself or ease of rebel recruitment. In one study, the association
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
around ethnic identity issues (Collier and Hoeffler, 1998; Collier, Hoeffler,
and Söderbom, 2004).
There is no single, universally accepted explanation for ethnic conflict, although most scholarly explanations revolve around the interactions among ethnicity, economics, and politics. “Ethnicity becomes a call
to action”—and thus a source of possible conflict—“when such a group
organizes for political and economic ends” such as an independent state,
equal economic opportunity, or rights to religious expression (Nash, 1989,
p. 127). Causes of ethnic conflict may include differential rates of modernization, economic competition, the psychological tendency to elevate one’s
own group and downgrade others, disparate treatment by colonizers, and
other factors (Horowitz, 1985). The emergence of secessionist movements
“is determined mainly by domestic politics, by the relations of groups
and regions within the state,” though the success of such a movement “is
determined largely by international politics, by the balance of interests
and forces that extend beyond the state” (Horowitz, 1985, p. 230). Ethnicity
is “the way power is exercised, especially in the process of allocating the
resources of the state. The so-called ethnic conflicts and wars are merely a
reaction to bad governance” (Bakwesegha, 2004, p. 55). It is “a loss of trust
in the ability of the state to accommodate their interests which often drives
minorities into the path of violence” (de Varennes, 2003, p. 153). Political
and economic transitions are part of the cause of violence, as ethnic and
sectarian wars may erupt when “secular economic decline, neoliberal economic reforms, and institutional transformation have broken old ‘social
contracts’” that used to regulate access to economic and political resources
(Crawford, 1998, pp. 4–5); indeed, change in political institutions is linked to
a higher risk of civil war (Collier et al., 2003, p. 64). These explanations differ in emphasis and detail, but all point to the state and its policies far more
than to supposed ancient antipathies or, for that matter, the nature of the
international system, as causes of ethnic conflict.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
between low GDP and civil war disappears when controlling for state reach
(Holtermann, 2012). Jakobsen, De Soysa, and Jakobsen (2013) find that it is
poverty itself, and the resulting low opportunity costs for rebels, that drives
civil war more than state strength. It is difficult to tease apart economic and
political factors. Lower GDP also correlates with many other factors, such
as lower education levels, higher birth rates, and lower levels of democracy, which may have some role in causing civil wars. These uncertainties
make it hard to isolate the role of poverty in causing armed conflict.
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Empires, Colonies, and Cold War Dynamics
Many civil wars can be traced to the end of empires such as the European
colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (Bakwesegha, 2004) and, more
recently, the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This in part accounts for the
spike in civil wars that followed the end of the Cold War and the breakup
of the Soviet Union, including conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Georgia,
Armenia-Azerbaijan, and Chechnya. It is not so much that the Soviet Union
kept a lid on existing conflicts, but instead, when a new state is born of a disintegrated empire, boundaries are contested and ethnic and religious groups
fear control of the state by another group (Posen, 1993).2 While the end of the
Cold War created, for a time, an increase in conventionally fought internal
wars in the former Eastern bloc, over time the end of the Cold War helped end
more civil wars than it started as the two superpowers disengaged from proxy
wars in Latin America, Africa, and Asia (Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010; Kreutz,
2010). Sub-Saharan Africa saw an increase in civil wars as the superpowers removed their support from weak states (Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010), but
energetic peacemaking from the mid-1990s on has helped end many of them.
In the regions formerly ruled by European empires, many contemporary conflicts can be traced back to the colonists’ favoring of one group
over another (e.g., Rwanda and Burundi), to actual settlement by colonizers
(e.g., Northern Ireland, South Africa), or to conflicting promises made or
expectations formed as declining empires confronted nascent nationalisms
(Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan-Kashmir). The modern concept of nationalism, in which ethnicity is expected (unrealistically) to match state borders,
has played a catalytic role in spurring violent conflict, especially when a
group defines its national identity to the exclusion of other identity groups
within the same state.
Grievance
Political grievances undoubtedly account for many civil wars (Kriesberg
and Dayton, 2012) and help opportunistic leaders to mobilize followers.
Some quantitative studies claim to have refuted the importance of grievances (Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Collier and Hoeffler, 2000; Jakobsen and
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8 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Weak States as Conflict Opportunities
Another dimension of opportunity concerns weak states, where institutions
are incapable of resolving social conflict, mitigating grievances, or suppressing violent opposition (Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Paris, 2004; Call and Wyeth,
2008). When a rebellion starts in a strong state, it is more quickly crushed
by the government (Cunningham, 2006). More important, perhaps, a rebel
group will not find as much support if the state has broad legitimacy. A
strong state has effective, legitimate mechanisms for maintaining security
and resolving conflicts that are viewed by citizens as legitimate. The absence
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
De Soysa, 2009), but political grievances are difficult to operationalize for
statistical research. Measures of the level of democracy, political freedoms,
economic inequality, or ethnic fractionalization do not necessarily capture the concept of grievance. When a group feels it is being discriminated
against in the distribution of economic or political goods, this constitutes
the kind of grievance that can lead to war (de Varennes, 2003; Sisk, 2009;
Gurr, 1993; Wallensteen, 2012). This proposition is compatible with earlier
theories about relative deprivation (Gurr, 1970; Davies, 1962) in focusing
not on absolute economic or political well-being but well-being relative to
expectations. The civil wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, as
well as the unsteady political transitions in the Philippines and Haiti, provide evidence that grievances are a powerful factor in explaining the mobilization of resistance and state repression in response.
Still, civil wars or rebellions are not as widespread as the existence of
grievances, and so other factors are needed to explain civil wars (Collier
et al., 2004). Thus, increasing attention has been devoted to the political economy of war—the ability to finance and support a rebellion (or, for
that matter, a government’s counterinsurgency), and even the possibility of profiting from violent conflict (Collier et al., 2003). New work on the
licit and illicit economies that support conflict actors, local corruption, and
the effect of foreign investment in a postconflict region, the need to revitalize local economies and small businesses, and the corrosive impact of
organized crime controlled by conflict actors call attention to the fact that
both power and resources underlie conflicts and interact with each other
(Berdal and Wennemann, 2010). One facet of this is the tangible goods
needed for a rebellion, so factors such as valuable natural resources (e.g.,
oil, diamonds, drug trafficking, human trafficking; Ross, 2003), support from
outside states or diaspora communities, abundant weapons from neighboring wars, and large pools of unemployed young men are increasingly seen
as causes of civil wars or at least factors that perpetuate them; the Taliban
in Afghanistan and Pakistan certainly have all of these sources of support.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
of these mechanisms and this legitimacy leaves a vacuum in which groups
may pursue their grievances through violence (Call and Wyeth, 2008).
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Ideologies and Beliefs
Ideologies and belief systems continue to fuel violence. Marxist ideology
helped persuade leftist rebels to take extreme risks and sustain their sacrifices (Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010), and recently, irregular warfare in the
Middle East and the larger Islamic world can be traced to militant Islamism
(Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010). It has been claimed that ideological struggles
are less amenable to negotiated settlement than other kinds of conflict
(Pruitt, 2006). Somewhat to the contrary, it has also been argued that ideological conflicts are more amenable than ethnic conflicts to settlement
through reforms or power sharing, because unlike in ethnic conflicts, the
loyalties of the population in ideological wars may be won through such
political changes (Kaufmann, 1996). Political Islamism bears some similarity to communism in that it has absolutist ideals (worldwide Sharia law in
one case, global communism in the other) and is often advanced through
irregular, insurgent warfare. The role of states such as Saudi Arabia in propagating radical versions of Islam (Abou El Fadl, 2009) needs to be examined
further and compared to the earlier role of the Soviet Union in promoting
communist ideology. However, the role of transnational, nonstate actors,
particularly Al Qaeda and its offshoots, in promoting Islamist ideology, has
no parallel in the Cold War communist movement. It remains to be seen
how long militant, extremist Islam will remain a source of violent conflict.
Of course, ideologies drive states as well as nonstate actors to war. The
United States’ invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was driven at least partly by
the ideological preferences of a relatively small group of policymakers (the
so-called neoconservatives) who had espoused doctrines of preemptive,
unilateral military intervention against unfriendly, nondemocratic regimes
(Project for the New American Century, 1997 and 2005). Iraq earned its
bad reputation through its weapons of mass destruction programs, its defiance of United Nations weapons inspectors, atrocities committed against
Iraqi Kurds and Shiites, not to mention Iraq’s wars with Iran and Kuwait.
However, the neoconservative belief in forceful regime change signified a
doctrinal departure from the Clinton administration’s efforts to deal with
Iraq through multilateral efforts of deterrence and containment.3
War Breeds War
Civil wars themselves tend to create the opportunity for more civil wars
(Call, 2012; Collier et al., 2003): war increases polarization and hatred,
causes massive civilian casualties and displacement, reverses economic
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10 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
development, floods regions with weapons, and increases the political
power of the military. Civil wars also tend to last on average far longer than
interstate wars (Collier et al., 2004; Kreutz, 2010), and for unknown reasons, civil wars that started in the 1980s or 1990s have lasted roughly twice
as long on average as those that began in the 1960s or 1970s (Collier et al.,
2003). Therefore, while the rate of civil war onset has been fairly stable
since the 1950s, the rate of termination was generally slower until after the
Cold War (Fearon and Laitin, 2003), when peacemaking and civil war termination accelerated (Kreutz, 2010). The tenacity and recurrence of civil wars
help explain their increase through the early 1990s.
We must explain not only why civil wars have increased overall but why
interstate wars have decreased. To a considerable extent, the post–World
War II UN system of international peace preservation has been successful
in reducing the incidence of interstate war, and the use of armed UN peacekeeping missions has been successful in reducing war recurrence (Fortna
2008; Goldstein, 2012). Part of this success is the spread of the norm of territorial integrity—the idea that state borders are inviolable (Zacher, 2001).
Indeed, the last successful conquests of territory occurred in 1975, with
Morocco’s assumption of control of the Spanish Sahara (which remains
disputed) and the victory of North Vietnam and the Vietcong over South
Vietnam (Zacher, 2001). Also in that year, Indonesia invaded East Timor
and controlled it until it gained independence (after a three-year process) in 2002 (Zacher, 2001).4 More recent territorial aggressions such as
Iraq’s attempt to annex Kuwait in 1990 called forth a unified international
response, and many earlier territorial conquests, such as Turkey’s takeover of part of Cyprus, remain disputed. When border and other disputes
have arisen (e.g., chemical contamination, navigation, fisheries, maritime
delimitation), states have frequently resorted to the International Court of
Justice and abided by its determinations instead of attacking each other
militarily. Interstate wars are costly and ineffective ways to resolve political differences, as conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq war and the Ecuador-Peru
war have shown. Increasingly, regional intergovernmental organizations
such as the Organization of American States, the African Union, and the
European Union mediate interstate conflicts and deploy cease-fire monitoring, peacekeeping, and peace enforcement missions.
Beyond the UN and regional intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),
interstate peace can be attributed to the increasingly dense network of
institutions for a wide range of economic, environmental, political, and
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Explaining the Decrease in Interstate War:
Norms, Institutions, and Regimes
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
economic cooperation into which states are drawn. Regime theory holds
that cooperation is possible even in the anarchic international system
through institutions or regimes (Keohane, 1984; Krasner, 1982; Axelrod
and Keohane, 1985; Oye, 1985). These are not necessarily actual organizations, though they can be; they are characterized by norms, decision rules,
and procedures that help overcome the barriers to cooperation (e.g., inadequate information, uncertainty about intentions, inability to sanction violators). There is now a complex web of institutions to which states belong:
IGOs (such as the UN, the African Union, or ASEAN), trade regimes (such
as the North American Free Trade Agreement), military alliances (such as
NATO), and treaties (such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Bearing
out the concept of complex interdependence (Keohane and Nye, 1977), the
global system is increasingly like a small town in which actors restrain
themselves from hostility in one arena because they are in cooperative
arrangements with the same players in other arenas.
It is also widely argued that interstate peace is maintained more easily when states are governed democratically, and enjoy free markets and
trade with each other. Liberal peace theory generally contends that interstate commerce promotes peaceful relations between trading states. Some
theorists assert that this is caused by the promotion of good relations and
a sense of community or, more prominently, the fear of losing gains from
trade (Barbieri and Schneider, 1999). Others argue that domestic constituencies and robust democratic institutions constrain liberal states, while norms
of dispute resolution and bargaining according to equity and rule of law also
strengthen peace (Dixon, 1994; Morgan and Campbell, 1991). Gartze, Li, and
Boehmer (2001) explore the enhanced communication and costly signaling
that arise between interdependent states, reducing their recourse to militarized conflict. Liberal international trade, in combination with democratic
governance and respect for human rights, is assumed to transfer rivalry to
the marketplace to be worked out by supply and demand dynamics.
Ongoing Vulnerabilities to Interstate War
We should not romanticize or exaggerate the world’s success in reducing
interstate wars. Wars still occur and are likely to continue, especially wars
involving oil-producing states led by revolutionary regimes (Colgan, 2013).
Some countries are far weaker than others, leaving them vulnerable to the
interests and designs of greater powers. Weapons of mass destruction are still
in circulation; as we write, North Korea is threatening to use nuclear weapons,
and the proliferation of nuclear weapons remains worrisome. There is also
the widespread phenomenon of intervention in other countries’ civil wars
(Regan, 2002). One author goes so far as to call this the “delegation” of war to
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12 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
rebel groups (Salehyan, 2010). While perhaps overstated, this suggests that
interstate conflict has perhaps only changed venue from international war
to civil war as states pursue their interests by supporting one side in another
country’s internal conflict, thus turning them into proxy wars (and likely prolonging them). Nevertheless, due in part to the decline in international war,
the overall number of battle deaths per year in all wars combined is less than
half what it was during the Cold War (Goldstein, 2012). (See table 56.2.)
The decline of interstate war and the growth of civil war have posed challenges to the practice and theory of conflict resolution. State-centric solutions to violent, militarized conflict are of limited use in civil wars, as we
discuss later in this chapter. In addition, regional conflict complexes that
involve both interstate wars and internal wars pose yet further challenges.
Sanctions and Negotiation Prevention
UN and Regional Peace
Processes
Inducements
Organization
(Negotiated
Conflict
or Mediated
Resolution
Early warning
Conflict-sensitive Economic
aid delivery
development
State capacity
building
as prevention
Precursors,
Ripeness
Pre-Negotiation,
Problem-
Negotiation
per se
Solving, Back
Implementation
and
renegotiation
Channels
Arms embargoes Trade sanctions
Positive
strengthen
aid,
local conflict
membership
resolution
in IGOs, etc.
Ceasefires
Declarations of
principles
Peacemaking
Aid to
inducements—
Interim
agreements
Military observer Peace
(mediation
missions and
enforcement
to prevent or
peacekeeping
(combat)
resolve)
forces
capacity
Comprehensive
agreements
Preventive
deployment
(interposition of
neutral forces)
PEACEBUILDING: Liberal, External versus Indigenous, Local versus Hybrid
(may cut across all approaches, norms, and tools of international conflict
resolution, especially prevention and post conflict reconstruction)
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Table 56.2 Tools and Practices for International Conflict Resolution
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
The violence in the African Great Lakes region epitomizes this. The genocidal
violence in Rwanda in 1994 was certainly exacerbated by prior Ugandan
support for Tutsis, and Zairean and French support for Hutus. The postgenocide intervention of Rwanda in the affairs of Democratic Republic of
Congo, (Zaire), ostensibly in pursuit of fleeing Hutu genocidaires, helped spur
two decades of a regional war that continues to engulf Africa. The difficulties
of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the US invasion of
Afghanistan show that fragile states may continue to be bases for nonstate
actors and insurgents that invite neighbors and great powers to intervene.
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
TOOLS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
There are numerous tools used by conflict parties and the outsiders seeking to help them to achieve resolution that can be independent of or interact
with the actions of UN and regional organizations. We present them here in
the roughly sequential order of prevention, track 2 negotiation and problemsolving workshops, negotiation, mediation, and postaccord peacebuilding.
In reality, however, the sequencing is nonlinear. Civil wars in particular are
prone to recurrence: an increasing number of civil war onsets are recurrences of recently ended conflicts. By one calculation, this accounts for 90
percent of civil war onsets in the 2000s (Call, 2012). Since civil wars are prone
to recur, the line between prevention and postconflict peacebuilding blurs.
We also briefly consider the role of development assistance and sanctions.
Assessment, Prevention, and Early Warning
Increasing attention has been devoted to the early warning and prevention
of violent conflict, an aspiration embedded in the UN Charter but practiced
infrequently (Zartman, 2005). In this arena, there is research to support the
adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In a set of six
case studies, Chalmers (2007) estimated the costs of plausible conflict prevention packages including combinations of military force, economic aid,
and diplomacy. He concluded that the savings to the international community from avoiding the conflict outweighed the cost of the prevention package, with results even more pronounced if the costs to the conflict countries
themselves (not just to the international community) are taken into account.
Similarly, an earlier study compared the $200 billion cost of international
responses in seven conflicts to the $70 billion cost of prevention action
(Report of the United Nations Secretary-General, 2001). Political leaders, however, undervalue conflict prevention because it is hard to deploy resources
(and to take credit) for preventing something that has not occurred.
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14 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
In our view that prevention is actually resolution at earlier stages of conflict escalation. The goal in conflict prevention is not to prevent conflict per
se but to prevent its violent manifestations. We agree with a broad definition of conflict as a perceived or real incompatibility of goals, with positive
change possibly resulting if the conflict is managed effectively (Kriesberg
and Dayton, 2012). Viewed in this way, prevention is the application of conflict resolution, settlement, and management tools at early stages of conflict, before escalation to violence, as well as in postconflict situations in
anticipation of possible recurrence of armed conflict.
The first challenge of prevention is to identify conflicts in which violence
is likely to occur. The mass media usually take interest in dramatic events,
so conflicts draw more attention only once violence has erupted. Broadly,
there are two approaches to early warning: the first is identifying countries
or groups that exhibit the structural conditions that are statistically associated with conflict, and the second involves tracking the more proximate
causes of violent conflict or signs of incipient violence. The first approach
statistically assesses countries or minority groups that are more prone to
conflict risk, such as has been done by Ted Robert Gurr using assessments
on the incentives and capacity for rebellion, and by Paul Collier and his
associates who use econometrics to predict conflict proneness. For more
immediate warning of conflicts, qualitative methods are more valuable and
may involve reporting by humanitarian agencies, media, academic area specialists, diplomatic corps, IGOs, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
such as the International Crisis Group (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall,
2005). Despite the inherent value of early warning, policymakers and analysts are at risk when “detecting” emerging violent conflict. Unwelcome
news might result in a shoot-the-messenger response (or denial by decision
makers), while fear of getting the analysis wrong may cause the analyst to
adopt undue optimism or trepidation about reporting (Jentleson, 2000).
Because of contemporary research on the causes and contexts of violence, formal conflict assessment frameworks are being adopted by governments, IGOs, and NGOs to inform their planning and determine if a
particular intervention will ameliorate or exacerbate conflict dynamics.
Examples include the US government’s Interagency Conflict Assessment
Framework, typically used to guide a large workshop to brainstorm conflict dynamics and then to guide a field mission in a country or region.5 The
resulting report informs policy decisions and helps assistance programs
mitigate those dynamics and strengthen existing resilience and conflict resolution capacity. Assessments can be used in all phases of conflict but are
of particular value in prevention.
An important innovation in prevention is the practice of deploying UN or
other peacekeeping forces in anticipation of future hostilities: a preventive
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INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
deployment. Such missions, used notably in the Central African Republic and
Macedonia, provide critical security and reassurances so that parties can
proceed with negotiations rather than militarization (Grizold et al., 2012).
Beyond preventive deployment, conflict prevention practices have
advanced considerably. The Internet and cell phone networks are increasingly used for early warning of violence. Examples include the USHAHIDI
project (www.ushahidi.com), the PAX initiative (www.paxreports.org),
Frontline SMS, Voix des Kivus, and PeaceNet (Search for Common Ground,
circa 2011). These initiatives involve various combinations of collecting text
messages and other cell phone data about outbreaks of violence (particularly in connection with postconflict elections), crowd-mapping the data,
centralizing or disseminating the data through the Internet, and coordinating with local mediators or peace committees. They have promise for
conflict prevention to the extent that small-scale violence might presage
larger-scale political violence.
Humanitarian aid and development organizations are increasingly
aware of the possibility that the delivery of aid can unintentionally create
or exacerbate conflict. For example, aid can be stolen by warring parties
to support soldiers or buy weapons, or more broadly, aid can substitute
for the provision of civilian needs, freeing public resources to be spent on
combat (Anderson, 1999). Some humanitarian NGOs now build conflict
sensitivity into their programming (Mashatt, Long, and Crum, 2008; World
Bank, 2011). There is a difference, though, between “working in conflict”
and “working on conflict”; in other words, conflict-sensitive practices in
humanitarian development (working in conflict) are not necessarily peacebuilding activities (working on conflict) (Atmar and Goodhand, 2002; DAC
Network, 2008). Still, conflict-sensitive practices can be viewed as a tool for
preventing the emergence or exacerbation of violent conflict.
Economic Development as Conflict Prevention? Returning to structural
prevention, or identifying which societies are conflict prone based on underlying conditions (Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Violence,
1997), economic development can arguably be seen as a measure of conflict prevention.6 The link between poverty and civil war needs to be better
understood before we can specify whether and how economic development
prevents conflict. To the extent that development both alleviates poverty and
helps states deliver services, it seems suited to the task of reducing the likelihood of civil war, which leads us to discuss state building as prevention.
State Building as Conflict Prevention. Good governance helps manage latent and actual conflict, channeling it into a political process, and
thus helps prevent violence (Holsti, 1996). As awareness grows of the link
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16 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Negotiation to Resolve Violent Conflicts
Getting to the Table. Once an interstate or civil war is underway, it
may end through decisive military victory, or, increasingly in the post–
Cold War period, negotiation. The first issue is how the parties reach the
point of deciding to negotiate with one another—the issue of getting to the
table. The most influential theory about timing negotiation initiatives is
Zartman’s ripeness concept, which posits that a mutually hurting stalemate, together with a mutually enticing opportunity to escape the stalemate
and reciprocal acceptance of each party’s legitimacy, are the preconditions
to successful initiation (Zartman, 1989). In short, the parties are likely to
be most ready to negotiate if they have reached a painful stalemate on the
battlefield; that is, all sides conclude that they cannot win. Some have argued
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
between weak states and the onset of civil war, state building is now seen
as an important component of conflict prevention and peacebuilding:
“where governance is legitimate and accountable to citizens, and when the
rule of law prevails, armed conflict is less likely” (Ramsbotham et al., 2005).
State building provides legitimate means of security and conflict resolution
and a foundation for economic development. Without strong states, groups
seek security, development, or the redress or grievances through alternative channels, including violence (Call and Wyeth, 2008).
However, state building and peacebuilding are not the same thing, and
there are inherent tensions and dilemmas between the two. For example,
state building is a process that may create political winners and losers (thus
potentially stoking conflict), and strengthening a state’s security apparatus
could exacerbate repression (Call and Wyeth, 2008). Also, the process of
externally aided state building involves dilemmas—for instance, external
control undergirded by supposedly universal values are used to build local
ownership and legitimacy (Paris and Sisk, 2009). Moreover, while international state-building interventions have typically emphasized the creation of
free markets and the holding of elections, these competition-based processes
can lead to renewal of conflict unless they are preceded by the buildup of
functioning state institutions that provide security and justice (Paris, 2004).
Jonas Savimbi’s renewal of the civil war in Angola after he lost an internationally supported election illustrates these dilemmas and tensions. In
addition, there is evidence that semidemocratic states are more prone to
civil war than either full democracies or dictatorships (Henderson and
Singer, 2000), implying that democratization attempts can lead to greater
instability at least in the short term. Efforts to strengthen the state, like economic development, have to be done thoughtfully, with awareness of dilemmas and in close coordination with broader peace-building priorities.
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
that this is an overly passive perspective and that the international community must begin the process of peacemaking and urging the parties to the
table regardless of “ripeness” (Lederach, 2008; Hampson, 1996). Zartman
(2008) recognizes that ripeness is at least partly perceptual and can be cultivated by outside actors. Others argue that different parties to the same conflict may have different outlooks, and either the pain of a stalemate or the
prospect of a fruitful negotiation is sufficient to prompt a party to seek negotiation (Pruitt, 2013). Ripeness is especially elusive in civil wars because the
asymmetric nature of the conflict causes insurgents to compensate for their
lack of resources with commitment to their cause, while the government
enjoys a preponderance of power despite less zeal (Zartman, 2005). Mutual
delegitimization further imperils perceptions of ripeness, so a further challenge is for conflict parties to recognize each other as having legitimate roles
in the resolution of conflict or at least the ability to, in effect, veto a negotiated agreement—thus ameliorating some of the inherent asymmetries
(Zartman, 2007). A prescriptive implication of ripeness and readiness is that
outside parties can help the conflict parties change their minds about the status quo and get them to accept negotiation (or mediation) in place of violence
as the means to their political ends.
Movements and governments that make war on each other face numerous difficulties in perceiving each other as negotiation partners and frequently reject negotiated outcomes publicly—even when they face military
stalemate or defeat. Often the first step in negotiations is the establishment of secret contacts—backchannel prenegotiations between the parties
or through third-party conduits (Wanis-St. John, 2006; Pruitt, 2008). This
method has been used to positive effect to help parties explore the feasibility of substantive negotiations, or to help achieve a broad formula for resolution, which may be crucial for achieving a durable cease-fire (Mahieu,
2007; Sisk, 2009). However, in its secrecy and exclusiveness, there is a danger that it can fail to build a broad enough constituency for peace—a factor
in the failure of the 1993 Oslo accords to result in a comprehensive peace in
Israel-Palestine (Wanis-St. John, 2011; Pruitt, 2008).
Another route from particularly intractable conflict to the negotiating
table is track 2 diplomacy and problem-solving workshops. Deeply rooted
conflicts resist attempts to negotiate because they involve the deprivation
of nonnegotiable basic human needs like identity and recognition rather
than simply interests (Burton, 1990; Azar, 1986). Academics and former
diplomats have thus promoted a workshop format that is typically held
in secret (or under the guise of an academic conference) and involves
either official representatives of the warring parties or people who report
to or have influence on them (Fisher, 1997; Burton, 1987; Saunders, 1995;
Rouhana and Kelman, 1994; McDonald, 1991; Kelman, 1992; Montville,
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18 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
1987). Problem-solving workshops have often helped the parties shift from
zero-sum to more positive-sum views of the conflict, thus paving the way
for negotiation, and have had some success in improving relationships
and understanding between conflict parties, as well as in exploring causes
and solutions (Fisher, 2005). Two challenges are the transfer of such outcomes to official decision makers and dispersing the outcomes more widely
among other officials and civil society generally.
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Negotiation. Negotiation is “the first line of conflict resolution” (Zartman,
2007, p. 465). International negotiations involve some of the dynamics of
the interpersonal and interorganizational levels of negotiation but also
involve vast diplomatic bureaucracies, the possibility of military coercion,
the influence of transnational and nonstate actors, the absence of an overarching legal framework, and the influence of other international events
on any particular negotiation (Hopmann, 1996). In the post–Cold War
period, a far higher proportion of civil wars has been settled through negotiation than before (Call, 2012). This could be because of a normative shift
by which the international community calls for fighting to halt and negotiation to begin (Crocker, Hampson, and Aall, 1999). There are those who
argue, however, that total victory of one side leads to a more durable peace
(Licklider, 1995), especially if the rebels win (Toft, 2010); others question
the methodology behind such arguments (Sisk, 2009). In any case, there is
less willingness today to see parties “fight it out” at the expense of civilian
populations, so the focus is on making negotiated outcomes more durable
(Hartzell and Hoddie, 2007; Walter, 2002).
Civil wars raise questions about who the legitimate parties to negotiation are. This stands in contrast to interstate wars, in which the parties are
recognized states. It is generally argued that all major armed groups need
to be represented (Darby and Mac Ginty, 2008; Hampson, 1996; Licklider,
2001, p. 701; Blaydes and De Maio, 2010; Sisk, 2009), yet there may also
be small fringe groups that are excluded (Newman and Richmond, 2006;
Darby and Mac Ginty, 2008). The excluded groups may be more likely to
become spoilers—that is, to sabotage the peace through postagreement
violence (Nilsson, 2008). However, parties at the table may also become
spoilers (Stedman, 1997). Increasingly, peace negotiations involve not only
armed groups but unarmed ones—civil society organizations and political
parties—though they often serve in a consultative or observer role rather
than as full negotiating parties. Some argue that this trend toward inclusiveness makes agreement less likely to be reached (Cunningham, 2011),
but the involvement of such groups seems to add to the durability of resulting agreements (Wanis-St. John and Kew, 2008; Nilsson, 2012; Blaydes and
De Maio, 2010).
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INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Mediation. International mediation—understood here as negotiations conducted with a third party’s help when the parties have difficulty negotiating directly—is widely used in the settlement of civil wars (Rubin, 1981).
Mediators may be states, the UN, other IGOs, local or international NGOs, religious organizations (Huda, 2010; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty, 2007), eminent individuals acting on their own, or a combination of such actors. Eminent
individuals often are former high-level officials, such as Jimmy Carter, Martti
Ahtisaari, or Nelson Mandela. While the “mediator” is more often a large
entity than an individual, there is still usually one key person—such as a
head of state or a special representative to the secretary general—who chairs
the plenary sessions and heads the mediation team. More recent examples
include former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan attempting to mediate the
Syrian civil war and former Senator George Mitchell serving as mediator in
Northern Ireland. While we have not seen the establishment of a corps of
professional international mediators to help resolve violent conflicts as
has happened in the domestic dispute resolution field, that may be emerging. The UN created the Mediation Support Unit in 2006, followed by the
Standby Team of Mediation Experts in 2008 in an effort to move away from
reliance on sporadic, ad hoc mediation efforts (UN Department of Political
Affairs, 2013; Wils and Herrberg, 2011). We have seen the development of
NGOs such as the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and
the London-based Conciliation Resources, which conduct and disseminate research on peacemaking and peacebuilding and occasionally serve
as mediators. One possible model could entail a prominent individual or
appointed representative serving as lead mediator—bringing with him
or her the name recognition and credibility based on individual clout or
that of his or her organization—but with conflict resolution experts as consultants or staff.
Increasingly there are multiple entities vying to mediate in violent
conflicts or different mediators over time in a single conflict (Lindgren,
Wallensteen, and Grusell, 2010). This can be problematic, leading to competition, rivalry, and muddled chains of command among mediators and possible forum shopping among parties (Crocker et al., 1999; Lanz and Gasser,
2013). Indeed, mediators can actually become spoilers as they vie for the
status or funding that comes with a lead mediation role (Lindgren et al.,
2010). But if the mediators or would-be mediators can coordinate according
to their comparative advantages and capabilities, the multiplicity of mediators can be a “compelling force for peace” (Crocker et al., 1999, p. 698). For
example, the Catholic lay organization Community of Sant’Egidio served
initially as a track 2 mediator between the parties to the Mozambique
civil war, a process that morphed into the track 1 talks. “Along the way the
Vatican, the Italian government, the United States, the United Nations, and
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20 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
several other interested governments provided support, resources, and, at
times, additional diplomatic mediation” (Jackson, 2005, pp. 161–162).
Another conflict resolution method involves multiple states or IGOs
helping to mediate: a contact group or a “friends of . . .” group, which are
“informal mini-coalitions . . . that provide support for resolving conflicts
and implementing peace agreements” (Whitfield, 2010, p. 5). This helps
achieve a unified international voice on the need for peaceful resolution.
For example, in the 1990–1996 peace process to end the Guatemala civil
war, a group of “friends” formed, including Colombia, Mexico, Norway,
Spain, the United States, and Venezuela, to support the peace process. They
collectively persuaded the conflict parties to negotiate toward an eventual agreement (Rosenthal, 2001). With the collapse of the Soviet Union
and end of the Cold War, Guatemala was no longer the site of proxy war
between the superpowers. Not all “friends of” groups are necessarily interested in peaceful resolution. The Friends of Syria group, comprising the
United States, European Union, and Arab League, is a partisan, pro-rebel
group, while Iran and Russia continue to support the Syrian government.
This lack of unity among the international community is one reason that
the Syrian civil war rages on as of this writing. Others, such as the Middle
East Quartet in operation since 2002 and consisting of the United States, the
Russian Federation, the European Union, and the UN, appear to have done
little to optimize their joint diplomatic capabilities in support of renewed
Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.7
It is generally agreed that mediators of international conflicts are not
expected to be neutral, in contrast with some domestic mediation contexts
(Smith, 1985; Greig and Diehl, 2012); indeed, some argue that biased mediators are actually more effective because their close relationship to one side
may make them more credible transmitters of information (Lindgren et
al., 2010). A mediator’s close relationship with one party may be helpful for
leverage—in particular, government-biased mediators seem more likely to
convince governments to make substantial concessions (Rubin, 1981; Touval,
1982; Svensson, 2007). There is evidence that biased mediators may produce
higher-quality outcomes because they are less interested in agreement for its
own sake and more interested in substantive political changes tied to more
durable peace and democracy (Svensson, 2009). The question of bias aside,
mediators in international conflicts still need to be trusted to some degree by
all parties—a point more difficult to test empirically. For example, both sides
in the Philippines-Mindanao conflict trust Malaysia as the mediator, although
Malaysia is seen as favoring the Muslim minority in Mindanao. While officially a representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Malaysia
is trusted by the Philippine government in part because of its membership in
ASEAN, which upholds the sovereignty of member states (Hopmann, 2013).
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INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
More controversial than the issue of mediator neutrality is that of the style
of mediation. Research on the forms of mediation in violent conflicts has
generally used a typology of three styles: communicative (or facilitative), formulative, and manipulative (Touval and Zartman, 1985; Zartman, 1997). The
communicative approach emphasizes improving communication between
the parties—clarifying and transmitting messages and developing rapport
with both sides. The formulative approach is more assertive both procedurally and substantively: establishing protocols, structuring the agenda, helping parties save face, and making substantive proposals.8 The manipulative
approach is the most directive of all and may involve making threats or offering rewards to the parties and thus altering the payoffs of different outcomes.
Research has generally shown formulative and manipulative mediation to be
more successful in reaching agreement but facilitative styles more successful in calming tensions and reducing the chances of a future conflict or crisis (Wilkenfeld et al., 2005; Beardsley et al., 2006; DeRouen et al., 2012; Quinn
et al., 2006). The exception is when the two parties are of roughly equal
power, in which case the more assertive styles appear more effective in tension reduction as each side is still vying for advantage (Quinn et al., 2006;
Wilkenfeld et al., 2005) or the parties are locked in stalemate.
The possibility of nonneutral mediators combined with the possibility
of manipulative mediation makes the distinction between mediation and
other third-party roles difficult. If a third party is supportive of one side
in a conflict and uses military or economic aid to try to bring about a particular outcome, is this mediation or partisanship? We need better ways to
“differentiate between managing a peace process versus joining a conflict”
(Lindgren et al., 2010, pp. 9–10). A more nuanced understanding of various
third-party roles may help (Mitchell, 2008), but the fundamental difference
between international mediation (including in civil wars) and domestic
mediation (absent civil war) is that in the domestic arena, an overarching
legal system offers guidelines and enforcement. A domestic mediator does
not use coercion to push the parties into a particular outcome; this is the
job of the state. In the international arena, although there is a large corpus of international law, there is no single law enforcement entity (except,
loosely, the UN, but only on a case-by-case basis as decided by member
states, particularly those on the Security Council).
Therefore, the role of mediator—in the pure sense of an actor who helps
the parties reach a voluntary agreement without employing force—easily gets blended with the role of enforcer of international laws or norms.
Arguments in favor of mediation “with muscle” (Sisk, 2009) or “coercive”
mediation (Touval, 1996) seem to make more sense in the international
arena than in the domestic one: measured outside force may be needed to
halt the greater violence occurring between the conflict parties. Moreover,
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in asymmetric conflicts, military force on the side of the weaker party may
arguably be needed to bring about the kind of stalemate that leads to willingness to negotiate (Zartman, 1997). It may be wise, however, to keep in
mind the distinctions among different third-party roles in their pure types:
one state or IGO may intervene militarily on the side of the weak or provide peacekeeping troops, and the same party perhaps may simultaneously
mediate, but these are distinct functions.
Sanctions, Inducements, and the Economics of Peace
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Negative inducements, such as economic sanctions, have also played a role
in international conflict resolution by denying target states or regimes
access to arms, capital, markets for their exports, or assistance (Hufbauer et
al., 2008). While arms embargoes can alter the arms import practices of belligerents, they are far less successful in altering the policies of target states
(Brzoska, 2008). There is some evidence that economic sanctions reduce the
escalatory dynamics of both interstate and intrastate wars, in some cases
encouraging the parties in conflict to view negotiation as a more attractive
option than violence (Cortwright, 2007). Of course, sanctions can have unintended consequences, such as causing harm to innocent civilian populations (Damrosch, 1993). Positive inducements, offers of assistance, or access
to alliances or membership in global or regional organizations can be combined with negotiation to encourage conciliatory behavior. The dynamics
of sanctions differ when used on adversaries who fear future conflict versus when used on allies who do not fear future conflict, so their application
must be intelligent and judicious lest sanctions have paradoxical effects
(Drezner, 1999).
Development aid can play a role in international conflict resolution. As
a deliberate strategy of peacebuilding, this typically involves political and
civil society development to support local peace initiatives: training in dialogue, negotiation, media relations, advocacy, and other skills can empower
communities to resolve their own conflicts and keep them localized and
nonviolent. Support for rule of law can help build trustworthy governing institutions while reducing injustice and grievance. The US Institute of
Peace (2012), for example, has been working with different ethnic groups
in South Sudan whose conflicts over land use for farming and grazing and
other issues frequently become violent and attract the interference of the
government in Khartoum. The institute has also conducted dialogue training in countries such as Haiti (to support electoral violence prevention) and
Nepal (to support security sector reform). Since local and international conflicts are linked, it seems wise to link local and international conflict resolution initiatives. Carefully designed development work can directly mitigate
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
the causes and manifestations of war. Taken together, positive inducements,
sanctions, and development assistance can be mutually reinforcing tools of
statecraft that permit interested outside parties to influence the dynamics of
conflict without themselves resorting to more coercive diplomatic and military interventions.
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Peace Processes
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter mediated the termination of the state of
war between Egypt and Israel through two accords: A Framework for the
Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel, which led to a full
bilateral peace treaty, and the Framework for Peace in the Middle East,
which was meant to lead to a more comprehensive regional peace by
resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (Quandt, 2005). Although the latter
agreement was quickly cast aside, Carter recognized that the long-standing
Middle East conflict needed to be resolved at several levels rather than
through a single bilateral document concluded at a single summit event. It
would need, in fact, a process of negotiation encompassing several stages,
agreements, and phases. The Camp David Accords were, after all, the culmination of months of energetic diplomacy by President Carter, as well as by
prior US, UN, and other mediation in the Middle East conflict.
Although this may not have been the first use of the term peace process,
the Camp David talks of 1978 have conferred that terminology on every subsequent attempt to negotiate or mediate peace after a war. Peace processes
are simply negotiations and mediations, as well as the subsequent implementation and peace-building tasks that take place over long periods of time.
The use of negotiation and mediation in civil wars is more challenging
than in interstate wars. International conflict resolution, once the parties
have moved beyond reciprocal denials of legitimacy, involves—in roughly
sequential fashion—the cessation of hostilities, agreement on formulas or
general principles, interim measures to build confidence, and, if all goes
well, a final, comprehensive settlement. When wars were mainly between
states seeking security or territory, the terms of peace were relatively
straightforward: separation and redeployment of forces, cease-fires, and
return of territory or guarantees of security, according to the specifics of
the case.
In civil wars, the parties will most likely continue to share the same state, so
the main dilemmas concern the modality for creating or returning to a civic,
nonviolent, political order. This is bound to be contingent on the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) of fighting forces. DDR, in turn, is
an issue that is often linked to the willingness of the parties to participate in
old political institutions together or create new institutions and rules. Will they
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Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
share power? Will they form political parties that contest power through elections? How will power be exercised by winners? No party wants to lay down
its arms without assurances of security and some political gain. This gain may
come in the form of demands for the safety of rival leaders and forces, amnesties for past violations of the laws of war, and release of prisoners.
A peace process therefore entails a series of stages and activities (Darby
and Mac Ginty, 2008) which may or may not be linear: the open or secret
prenegotiations in which the parties consider each other’s legitimacy;
efforts to consolidate a cease-fire; negotiations to address the root causes
of the war, as well as new grievances. Contemporary peace processes are
not events that take place at a single point in time because negotiations to
end wars can and do falter at any of these several stages of negotiation.
Fighting, as we have noted, reemerges easily, particularly in civil wars,
and even seemingly well-managed peace processes can have catastrophic
outcomes, as the Rwanda case shows, since the genocide took place just
after a final agreement had been reached between the government and the
Rwandese Patriotic Front (Jones, 2001). The Palestinian-Israeli peace process, so promising at its initiation, quickly fell prey to spoilers, antipeace
constituencies, and delays and disagreements in the implementation of its
various stages (Wanis-St. John, 2011). Many other peace processes, however, such as the one in Liberia (culminating in the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement in 2003), have finally resulted in durable peace, even after multiple failures and resumptions of war.
A peace process agreement, once reached, sets out a number of critical
tasks whose successful implementation is key to the success of the peace
process. In the settlement of civil wars, these tasks can be grouped broadly
into four categories—political, military, economic, and social—although
they are inextricably linked to each other.
Cutting across all of these tasks are the gendered dimensions of both
war and peace. Socially constructed roles for boys, girls, women, and men
contribute to and are affected by massive political violence. Women are
sometimes combatants in civil wars, heads of families affected by war, and
victims of deliberate wartime sexual violence. But women are also critical
voices that help shape the peace into something more than a victory for
warlords (Anderlini, 2007).
The political tasks typically involve new governance arrangements: Will
insurgents form political parties? Will power be shared or contested in
winner-take-all elections? When will elections take place? What new, fair,
and accessible governance institutions will be created that will empower the
marginalized and provide services equitably? The military tasks concern the
provision of security to civilians (Call and Stanley, 2002), who, after being victimized by war, face threats from violent crime that emerge in the aftermath
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
of war. It also entails DDR, which requires the collection and decommissioning of arms, verification that parties do not hide or hoard arms, and the creation of new military units that bring together (rather than separate, as is the
case in interstate wars) the government and irregular forces while demobilizing abusive or obsolete units. Economic tasks include rebuilding of infrastructure, creation of employment for former combatants, and, perhaps
more important, liberalizing access to capital, land, jobs, and other economic
goods. The social tasks include the extent and form of reconciliation (AbuNimer, 2001) that is to take place among belligerents: transitional justice,
new human rights protections for individuals and groups, return of displaced
people, psychosocial healing for traumatized survivors, and reconstruction of
communities, among others. These tasks are not implemented at the moment
of signature of a peace agreement, but take time and, frequently, renegotiation of terms. Each of these peace process tasks has begun generating significant theoretical and policy-oriented literature (Zartman, 2007; Darby and
Mac Ginty, 2008; Stedman, Rothchild, and Cousens, 2002; Arnson, 1999, 2012).
Peacebuilding: Liberal, Indigenous, and Hybridized
The term peacebuilding is increasingly being used in place of or alongside
international conflict resolution. Lederach (1997) has been influential in this
respect, although Johan Galtung (1976) is credited with coining the term. A
broadly accepted definition has not yet emerged, but the general sense is
that peacebuilding encompasses international conflict prevention coupled
with postconflict reconstruction and state building and/or democratization
(Ryan, 2013; Nan and Jeong, 2008) to prevent recurrence of violent conflict.
In addition, some who use the term add that peacebuilding connotes sustainability of the peace efforts, typically through local ownership rather than
outside imposition. A transformative dimension is sometimes promoted, so
that structural, relational, and underlying causes of conflict are addressed.
Peacebuilding, then, seems to describe most or all of the activities we have
presented in this chapter but it temporally locates most of them in the stages
that precede and follow violent conflict and spatially views them as processes aimed at not only political settlement and physical security but also
deeper social, psychological, and institutional changes that help ensure
peace. While international conflict resolution may be the more inclusive
term, the use of peacebuilding as a term of art is gaining in currency.
Peacebuilding, regardless of its broadly construed definition, has come to
be appropriated by states and civil societies of the developed world who are
accused of imposing their external vision of peace on those who suffered the
absence of it. This has led some to contrast the “liberal peacebuilding” paradigm, with “indigenous” or “local” peacebuilding paradigms (Mac Ginty, 2008;
Wanis-St. John, 2013). These offer resistance to externally imposed activities
25
26 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
such as war crimes tribunals, democratization, elections, and human rights
norms and counterpropose with indifference, forgiveness, ritualized peacemaking, or still other forms of making peace (some of which might be considered “illiberal”). Since both internationally assisted and local or indigenous
peacebuilding have virtues and defects, and since both modify each other
in practice, Mac Ginty (2011) speaks of hybridized peacebuilding in which
space for the locally preferred alternatives helps to modify the heavy foreign
imprint of liberal international peace interventions.
CONCLUSION
Notes
1. The chapter subtitle comes from this quotation: “So the cycle runs from practice
to knowledge and back again, and that is the only way humanity improves itself
in any field” (Zartman, 2007, p. 12).
2. It has also been argued that the spike in civil wars in the 1990s had little to
do with the end of the Cold War; rather, the rate of civil war onsets remained
constant from about 1945 on, but the rate of termination was slower until the
mid-1990s (Fearon and Laitin, 2003). This argument is refuted by data showing
a marked increase in civil war onsets around 1991–1992, returning to Cold War
“normal” by about the mid- to late 1990s (Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010). Kalyvas
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
The causes of war, and thus the solutions to it, seem more complex than
ever before. There are new causes and new dynamics, as well as the classic catalysts for war. Our approaches to resolving international conflict
continue to rely on tried-and-true methods of statecraft and collective security, along with diplomatic and economic interventions (negotiation and
sanctions, or carrots and sticks), but these are buttressed by new players
such as the UN’s new standby team of mediators, civil society organizations including religious groups that intervene in conflict, emerging norms
and practices of assessment, prevention and intervention, and the interaction between externally imposed liberal peacebuilding and localized preferences. Innovations are emerging in the uses of technology to prevent
and monitor conflict. We have a clearer understanding of the economic
dimensions of war and peacemaking, as well as on the reconciliation and
human security dimensions of international conflict resolution. Still, much
remains to be done in both practice and theory making to help foster more
legitimate, inclusive societies that neither prey on their own citizens nor
bring war to others. The resolution of violent international conflict will
continue to demand human innovation to both shape the terrain of conflict
and adapt to the emerging demands of conflict-affected communities.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
and Balcells also show that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia
led to an increase in conventional warfare in those regions but a decrease in
insurgencies of the kind that characterized Marxist rebellions.
3. National Security Strategy of the United States, September 17, 2002, ch. V.
“The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.” Archived at http://
georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/index.html
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
4. It can be argued that more recent cases, such as Armenia’s annexation of the
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and Russia’s role in the Georgian separatist conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, are also tantamount to violations
of the norm of territorial integrity rather than purely indigenous secessions.
5. Others include USAID/OMA Tactical Conflict Assessment and Planning
Framework and its successor, the District Stability Framework, the European
Commission Checklist for Root-Causes of Conflict (2002), World Vision
Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts (2003), Clingendael Institute Conflict and
Policy Assessment Framework (2000), Collaborative for Development Action
Framework for Analyzing the Impact of Assistance on Conflict (2004), and the
World Bank’s Conflict Analysis Framework (2005), to name a few.
6. The Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Violence (1997) decomposed structural prevention broadly into three categories: security, well-being
(which includes economic development), and justice.
7. The Office of the Quartet Representative has, however, been an effective channel for supporting economic development and institution building among the
Palestinians, initiatives that may help if the parties do get back to the table.
8. This framework, though logical and useful, is somewhat unfortunate in that it
conflicts with the typology of styles for domestic mediation. The international
mediation typology does not distinguish between substantive and procedural
aspects of “formulation.” What is called the “facilitative” style in domestic mediation can be quite directive on procedural issues but avoids promoting substantive solutions (Mayer, 2004); a “directive” or “evaluative” style is directive with
respect to substance. One therefore wonders, in regard to research that finds
the formulative style most successful in international contexts, whether it is the
substantive or the procedural direction that is more crucial.
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