Conclusion: Emerging Problems in Theory and Practice

Jacob Bercovitch, Victor Kremenyuk, and I. William Zartman

Perhaps more than most other handbook subjects, Conflict Resolution is an exciting field of intellectual attention, still in a state of development.

We have learned much about the sources and causes of conflict, how to respond to it, prevent it or resolve it, but there is much more we need to do, and many unanswered questions. One of the questions left unanswered in the theory and practice of Conflict Resolution so far, is: where to go from here? It is evident that Conflict Resolution is promising and deserves support. Also, it is clear that with time, the CR approach will enjoy even more support because violent coercive solutions of conflicts become more and more expensive and the only viable alter­native to it is a peaceful resolution. Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have outlawed themselves in practice, except possibly at the hands of outlaws, and yet both interstate and intrastate conflict, often by the most primitive methods, has directly taken massive toll and indirectly destroyed and dehabilited entire societies (IRC 2001).

Each of the four parts of this collection asks different questions and poses new directions for further research and for testing in practice. Part I, History and Methods of Study, shows Conflict Resolution to constitute a serious corrective to established patterns of studying international relations (IR) from a Realist or Institutional perspective only. The field began as “peace studies”, a deliberate ideological challenge to foreign policy practice and to IR teaching. It has come a long way since then, picking up controlled comparisons in case studies, quantitative analysis, modeling, experimentation, social analysis, and multi­method research to add to diplomatic studies. Indeed, the variety of methodologies is so great that the opportunity for multimethod studies becomes more and more expansive. Today, methodologies old and new often tend to honker down in their approaches, defending themselves even more vigorously than their results, when they should be inviting cross-methodological testing and verification of those results. The first part of the book tries to capture this complexity and account for it, suggest the various ways conflict resolution can be studied, and shows how its findings impact so directly on our lives.

Methodologically and conceptually, this diversity has opened doors to new rooms of study. The Correlates of War (COW) project at the University of Michigan has produced a data bank used for testing many new propositions, but its presence calls for a brother bank of data on the Correlates of Peace (COP) (Telhami 2002). Other data banks have also been created (e.g. ICB, MID, ICM), and these indeed permit the analysis of different aspects of conflict, but more needs to be done if we are to understand how conflicts are or can be resolved. So there is a need, which we must all see as a challenge to meet, to develop better questions and data sources, so that better and more relevant answers can be sought (Bercovitch and Fretter 2007).

Part II, Issues and Sources of Conflict, presents an exhaustive analysis of the issues, sources and causes that are associated with or produce conflict in the relations between indi­viduals and groups. Many causes and sources are identified, but, in fact, the comprehensive knowledge that we have here only poses new questions for analysis. Territorial issues in conflict have been plumbed deep, but they still leave many questions unanswered when they move from political geography to psycho­geography: if sacred places are non-tradable items (Atran, Axelrod, and Davis 2007), how can they be made components of a positive­sum solution? Indeed, as the game theoretic presentation has shown, Chicken Dilemmas and Battles of the Sexes have two Nash equilibria, so how can collaborative situations be brought to a single joint and stable outcome? The dilemma is a clear example of the need for multi-method analysis.

Similarly, much has been done on the eco­nomic sources of conflict, even to the extent of purporting to elbow out other sources. But when in fact does general deprivation become reframed into terms of discrimination? Where do political entrepreneurs come from? And how can a country get out of the Conflict Trap (Collier et al.

Identity conflicts arise when one party's identity requires actions that impinge on another. This requirement can be internally focused or aggressive, either when one party's identity is only realized at the expense of another's or when one party feels the need to proselytize another. Or it can be externally driven or defensive, when one party feels itself to be under an existential threat. In all these cases, the operative trigger is subjective. It might be hypothesized that the more intense the identity feelings, the greater the chance for conflict with another party, but that does not solve the subjective problem. Which, when, and why - the eternal questions for social science analysis - compel us to push our research further.

Similarly, it is striking that the beginning of the new millennium faces a challenge to international relations from a mystical religious surge closer to the beginning of the previous millennium than to either the state­based, world-shrinking globalization or the positivist quantitativizing ways of studying it in the current era.

Part III, Methods of Managing Conflict, deals with how parties in conflict or change agents from outside can do something to escape from an escalating and costly conflict. It begins with an account of the latest set of ideas on conflict resolution - con­flict prevention. Launched at the UN by Dag Hammarskjold and revived by Boutros Boutros Ghali, it almost immediately stum­bled over its implications and never became an effective mandate. Yet prevention remains an aspiration for policy and an approach for research, elusive in both cases. Since conflict cannot be eliminated, only its escalation man­aged, resolved and transformed, prevention depends on its existence, and faces the continual challenge of satisfying at the same time the needs and desires of the parties that gave rise to the conflict. Conflict management is the enemy of conflict resolution, as it removes the pressure to resolve, yet it is frequently the only means to reduce violence, a paradox that itself needs resolving.

For conflicts that cannot be prevented, the next tool of conflict resolution is negotiation, where some basic new oppor­tunities appear. The new conflicts of the era pose questions about the assumptions of the negotiation process as developed, studied and practiced to date. Instead of a binary exercise between established parties, negotiation became increasingly a process of selecting parties, shaping awareness of inter­ests, and arriving at an outcome that depends on the sides' faith in its implementation. Cur­rent theory and practice are not equipped to handle such a process.

Mediation is more necessary than it should be and less frequently practiced than it could be. Conflicting parties need help, and are so engaged for ostensibly good reason that they cannot extract themselves from the costly conflict. The mediator is usually faced with the assumption that it knows the parties' interest in conflict vs. nonconflict better than they, and that it can help craft an agreement between conflicting demands of peace vs. justice. In so doing, the mediator draws on a limited supply of leverage, still not fully analyzed, to accomplish major transformations. The parties face the reentry problem of making their mediated behavior palatable to their home populations. Both theory and data are needed to analyze these problems and develop new knowledge useful to mediators and parties themselves.

Judicial methods of resolving conflict take ownership out of the hands of the parties and delegate it to a higher authority, much in the way that formal models in negotiation propose optimal solutions. But in the process of deciding guilt, the expanded international role of the judiciary under special courts and universal jurisdiction constitutes imped­iments to negotiated or mediated conflict management and resolution. Practice and research alike stand at the door to a solution to the paradox. Another paradox posed by evolving international law is the right to protect or sovereignty as responsibility, the duty imposed on stronger states to intervene in the affairs of weaker states to protect their population, in a reversal of the basis of the Westphalian system. But when that right is to be exercised remains deep in academic and diplomatic debate.

Similarly, the tool of dialog and the role of NGOs' Track 2 effects another penetration into the state sanctuary, held in the hands of actors who can go where states cannot. But the limits of this new activity are not yet clear, and neither are the measures of their success. The methods and the results are generally looser than standard negotiation and mediation, their purposes neither fully managing nor resolving, and their analysis and practice softer in the skills and processes involved. Yet the increasing penetrability of the state calls for increasingly sophisticated study and use of their methods and authorization of their agents.

Finally, the increasing prominence of international organizations (IOs) and non­governmental organizations (NGOs) on the global and regional levels brings to the fore a subject, like others above, caught in the cloud between their powers and their aspirations: working to provide leadership to the anarchic state system, yet dependent for its resources and authority on the very states they seek to control. The UN is weak to a fault, yet its very weakness keeps its members from enacting the reforms necessary to its strengthening (UN 2004). In some regions, such as Africa (with the AU) or Asia (with ASEAN), member states have enacted significant reforms, but their implementation has lagged. Between the two levels, the debate over subsidiarity often adds to inactivity. Indeed, the biggest challenge to scholarship on the subject is not to fall off either side of the road into cynicism or idealism, while finding appropriate data and analysis of IO effects on conflict resolution.

The final part of the Handbook, Part IV, introduces Current Features and Dilemmas in the study of Conflict Resolution. Here the intellectual horizons of the field are stretched farther, and new issues and ideas that have a bearing on conflict and its reclusion are introduced. New forms of conflict, such as terrorism, and how best to respond to it, are discussed. Terrorism is a form of unregulated conflict where the parties' identities are not always certain, or are even obscured, and the means used to pursue objectives are at best indiscriminate. This form of conflict poses new challenges to all of us in the field and requires different approaches and methods, yet ultimately, we believe that even such conflicts can be negotiated and resolved.

Another element in the expanding Conflict Resolution context is the press and other media, which in the ostensible search for better information for a better informed public can come to play an important, but often disruptive, role in the search for solutions to violence and conflict. Both training and reconceptualization are called for. Interest­ingly, democracy plays a similar role. The line between informed public awareness and uninformed public participation in conflict and its resolution is often thin and porous. Democratization is often a context and source of conflict, even though democracy, once attained, is both a procedure for handling conflict and a condition for reducing it. New work is needed to smooth the passage from authoritarian to democratic stability.

Another issue that may have a major impact on conflict is culture. Indeed, some posit that any future conflict will be a conflict between cultures, not states or nations (Huntington, 1993). How does culture affect conflict resolution? How sensitive do we have to be to cultural differences? Does conflict resolution have the same resonance in different cultures? The Western tradition that is individually oriented is also one that encourages the belief that all conflicts and contradictions can be resolved. That is not necessarily the case with other traditions, and we must be aware of it as scholars - still primarily from the Western scientific communities - seek ways of understanding and producing resolution. We should also be aware of the increasing role of force and the control of force in the resolution of conflicts: when do backfires control and when do they become forest fires? We need to appreciate how and when force, arms control and measures short of war can be used, and to what extent they may help ameliorate a conflict situation or make it worse.

This part of the book also shows how in recent years the very concept of conflict resolution has been stretched. Traditionally, conflict resolution amounted to an attempt, successful or otherwise, between parties and/or outsiders to do something about their conflict, that is, to reach an agreement, reduce violence, and modify some aspects of their behavior. Yet, in fact, most of the conflicts that were apparently settled or resolved tended to reignite into violence within a few short years. As a result, the topic of durability arose as a subject of concern and of study, as research continues to identify the reasons why agreements last, or don't. We recognize the need for an extended approach to the issue of resolution. We now expect a genuine approach to conflict resolution to involve changing structural and attitudinal aspects of a relationship, not just its violent behavior. Thus, we talk about peace building, which is in effect a post­conflict resolution structural approach, and reconciliation, which is in effect a post­conflict resolution attitudinal approach, and posit these as the criteria for assessing whether a conflict is successfully resolved or not. Merely changing behavior is no longer sufficient. In the current complex and intermeshed environment, we need to tackle the sources as well as the manifestations of conflict. Peace and justice still elude a perfect reconciliation, human rights both impede and sustain resolution, and atonement and forgiveness vie for first place in a productive sequence. As in many components of this field, the elements have been identified but their relationships need to be examined and more firmly established.

And at the same time, there is an accom­panying need to teach the knowledge that is available and to train conflict managers in the field, no matter what their other professions are. Conflict Resolution is a universal calling, its technology still lags behind that of war, its heroes are still not as tall as generals in the public eyes, and any Nobel prizes won by its scholars have come from the discipline of economics. Yet, it does not have a Nobel Prize of its own, to whose laureates this book is dedicated. We need to strive for better knowledge about resolutions that achieve some degree of peace, but are also predicated on some notions of justice and equity. And that is a tall order indeed.

The other basic element is the power of morality. Realists who believed primarily in the power of the force for centuries ridiculed such religions as Christianity or Buddhism for their appeal to nonviolence, respect for human life, and belief in justice. The rules of conduct in conflict excluded any “weakness” and refer to human feeling as deviation from the normal, regular way of pursuing victory. Some compassion to the victims was allowed and tolerated only after the conflict was won. This was the ethics even of the crusade. The use of force was labeled Ultima ratio regis, the last resort of the kings. And in all these circumstances, the attempts to address the moral side of the violence in conflicts were bluntly ignored.

Something has changed with the advent of weapons of mass destruction. The innocent people, the population have become one of the targets of the strategy of coercion. Sovereignty, already porous, has become sovereignty as responsibility, subject to a Right to Protect. While in nondemocratic systems it has hardly changed the usual way of military planning and domestic repression, it has become a hard moral problem in democratic societies. It has become morally unacceptable for military and political leaders to acknowledge the fact of strategic planning in which innocent people were in advance identified as the “collateral damage”. The mere fact that the notion of the “collateral damage” has appeared meant that there were some serious problems associated with the use of force even when the national security was at stake.

From this point of view, Conflict Resolution which promised a dignified outcome of con­flict, which appealed also to human feelings, thus giving more support to those who abhorred the perspective of a conflict with millions dead, has appeared as an outcome. It has allowed all those who instinctively resisted the idea of a forced solution to enlist a weapon that could allow winning without defeating. It stands as a worthy lesson to analyze and pursue in the 21st century and beyond.

We began this volume with the question of what conflict resolution is, and whether all conflicts can be resolved. We have turned our attention to a myriad of issues, and offered the considered viewpoints of scholars, diplomats, and other practitioners. We have striven to provide an accurate and contemporaneous picture of where the field is at, and where it might be heading. We conclude this volume more than ever convinced that conflict resolution is not just possible or desirable in the current international environment. It is absolutely necessary. Resolving conflicts and making peace is no longer an option; it is an intellectual and practical skill that we must all possess.

REFERENCES

Bercovitch, Jacob and Judith Fretter. 2007. “Studying International Mediation: Developing Data Sets on Mediation, looking for Patterns and Searching for Answers”. International Negotiation 12 (2): 145-173.