A genealogy of mediation in international relations: From ‘analogue’ to ‘digital’ forms of global justice or managed war?
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836717750198 |
| Author | Oliver P Richmond |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
750198CAC0010.1177/0010836717750198Cooperation and ConflictRichmond
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Cooperation and Conflict
2018, Vol. 53(3) 301 –319
A genealogy of mediation in
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‘analogue’ to ‘digital’ forms of
global justice or managed war?
Oliver P Richmond
Abstract
What does it mean to mediate in the contemporary world? During the Cold War, and since,
various forms of international intervention have maintained a fragile strategic and territorially
sovereign balance between states and their elite leaders, as in Cyprus or the Middle East, or built
new states and inculcated new norms. In the post-Cold War era intervention and mediation
shifted beyond the balance of power and towards the liberal peace, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Kosovo, and Timor Leste. In the case of Northern Ireland, identity, territorial sovereignty, and
the nature of governance also began to be mediated, leading to hints of complex, post-liberal
formulations. This article offers and evaluates a genealogy of the evolution of international
mediation.
Keywords
Bosnia, Cyprus, international mediation, Middle East, Northern Ireland, post-liberalism
Introduction
During the Cold War, and since, international mediation has become a well-recognised
tool of conflict management and diplomacy, used by the US (before 2017 at least), the
UN, a range of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and private actors
(Bercovitch, 1992). It has shifted from Realpolitik to the norms of the UN Charter, in line
with the evolving foreign policies of the US and EU: concerted attempts have been made
to support and improve its application (Touval, 2003; UN, 2009).
Mediation has regularly been used at ‘great power’ conferences (e.g. for nuclear
disarmament) or by major powers between smaller ones (such as in the Middle East
leading to the Camp David Agreement in 1978, or in Bosnia leading to the Dayton
Corresponding author:
Oliver P Richmond, Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester,
M13 9PL, UK.
Email: Oliver.richmond@manchester.ac.uk
302
Cooperation and Conflict 53(3)
Agreement in 1995). It has been used to create ceasefires and adjust borders (as with the
Naivasha Agreement signed in 2005 between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement
and the Government of Sudan), and to arrange reparations (as during recent Colombian
peace talks).1 It has often aimed at constitutional settlements, as in the Cyprus conflict
from 1964 onwards, at the Paris Talks over Cambodia in 1989–91, Dayton for Bosnia-
Herzegovina in 1995, and Rambouillet over Kosovo in 1999. It has been a tool of last
resort during on-going violence, as with UN mediation over the Syrian conflict in 2014.
It has been used for issues of weapons of mass destruction disarmament (as with various
attempts with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and 2000s), and/or to bring about compli-
ance with international law or legal procedures (as with the pursuit of suspected Serbian
war criminals in the late 1990s). It has been recently used in Yemen, Syria, and Libya,
and the EU has established a Mediation Support Team to strengthen its External Action
Service.2 However, its use has also shifted to small-scale conflicts in the Global South
(needless to say, mediated by representatives of the Global North), rather than dealing
with the deep structural conflicts in the international system. Broad teams of mediators
have been deployed in such conflicts since the 1990s, however, often connecting media-
tion to civil society actors. In 2014, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution aimed
at strengthening mediation (UN General Assembly Resolution, 2014), in parallel with
the EU (EU, 2009), but this coordinated attempt has had limited impact (Bhattarai,
2016: 43).
This article outlines a genealogical approach to mediation in theory. First it examines
stage 1 forms of mediation, denoting traditional, realist conceptions. Then the article
discusses the contours of liberal mediation representing stage 2 in its evolution, with its
cosmopolitan and normative goals. It then turns to stage 3, which is divided between two
possible post-liberal forms: essentially a hybrid of strategic, liberal, and local forms of
mediation (broadly defined) and technological/neoliberal alternatives. The article also
refers to several cases by way of illustration, including Cyprus, the Middle East, Bosnia,
and Northern Ireland, which have received considerable attention. In the Middle East
(principally Egypt–Israel in the 1970s during the Cold War) mediation supported a tradi-
tional system of territorial sovereignty. In Cyprus, UN and later EU mediation has tried
to transcend territorialism and nationalism. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, mediation aimed at
a liberal peace-type settlement, supported by a classic post-Cold War peace-building
operation. In Northern Ireland, mediation occurred in the new normative and more inte-
grated order of the post-Cold War, and managed to develop a new and less territorial
system of sovereignty and governance. Using these cases, through a critical mode of
analysis connected to both to genealogy (Foucault, 1972: 83) to underline how mediation
has historically resulted in compromises in both interests and rights rather than support-
ing the struggle for the latter, and ‘eirenism’ which illustrates the subaltern (that is the
most powerless subjects in international relations (IR) or society) critique of politics,
power, and peace (Richmond, 2011: introduction), this article shows how mediation
praxis is evolving (Assefa, 1987; Bercovitch et al., 1992; Kleibor, 1996; Mandell et al.,
1991; Princen, 1991; Richmond, 1998b; Ryan, 1990). The three stages I outline overlap,
carry continuities, and indicate specific differences across eras and cases, but they also
connect the changing structure of international order to the development of methods to
maintain it – from analogue to digital form (to deploy a contemporary analogy). The
Richmond
303
article concludes with some comments about what a genealogically informed version of
mediation might now entail.
Genealogy and mediation
Standard analyses of mediation generally attempt to place it within a problem-solving
framework of reconstruction or bargaining (Bercovitch, 1996), with the goal being a
stabilisation of the existing state and regional order and its associated territorial and nor-
mative rationalities. A genealogical approach would underline the limits of such a con-
servative, hierarchical, and static form of an analysis, particularly in terms of power,
justice, and rights claims. It would attempt to uncover hidden, historical power relations
and resistances through the process of mediation, setting the scene for a just settlement.
This raises an important contemporary question: what does it mean to ‘mediate’ in a
world in transition and in broader, less literal terms, as IR passes into a new, probably
post-liberal era where expanded emancipatory discourses (aimed at liberating subjects
from forms of violence) are entwined with structural forms of power related to geopoli-
tics and geo-economics? System maintenance may well contradict the critical goals of
reform-oriented disputants, particularly if civil society actors are involved in negotia-
tions. A critical, or indeed post-structuralist, view of mediation highlights the relations
between violently different historical positions, identities, and interests. It speaks to
larger, post-colonial and genealogical questions about the unjust nature of the order that
is being reproduced, resisted, or reformed (Foucault, 1972: 83).
Any form of mediation inhabits a space between claims made about politics backed
by violence in the state-centric dimension, in the diplomatic and material frame, in his-
torical and normative dimensions, and according to social and subaltern perspectives. A
genealogical approach places mediation within an interpersonal diplomatic framework
within the states-system and also in the broader, multidimensional terms of historical and
distributive justice across the global commons (Connolly, 2017). It highlights the subal-
tern struggle for rights and sustainability just as much as the elite struggle for order and
control (Connolly, 2017; Escobar, 1995; Spivak, 1988; Scott, 1985).
The recent evolution of international mediation can be broken down into three main
stages, as follows.
Stage 1. Mediation in modernity: maintaining state-centric
order
International mediation was theorised during the Cold War as a high-level, short-term
process that aimed at a fragile strategic balance of power between states and their elite
leaders, using a mixture of diplomacy, status, and overt power (Bercovitch, 1996;
Zartman et al., 1997). Mediation was an official process of conflict management
where disputants were assisted by an outside individual, organisation, group, or a
state, to settle a conflict without further use of violence according to the law, applying
techniques, resources, legitimacy, or knowledge brought in by the third party.
Disputants retained control over the process; it was ad hoc, and impermanent
(Bercovitch, 2004).
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Cooperation and Conflict 53(3)
The cases of the UN Secretary-General’s mediation in Cyprus since 1964 and US
Presidential mediation in the...
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