DIPLOMACY AND WAR AS INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

An institutional perspective on diplomacy implies an understanding in terms of a relatively stable collection of social practices consisting of easily recognized roles coupled with underlying norms and a set of rules or conventions defining appropriate behavior for, and governing relations among, occupants of these roles (Young, 1989: 32; cf.

Understood as an ancient, perennial inter­national institution, diplomacy is comparable to, and contemporary with, war. In a sociolog­ical or institutional sense, war can be seen as a “social custom utilizing regulated violence in connection with intergroup conflicts.” War, like diplomacy, “appears to have originated with permanent societies” (Wright, 1942: 36). Diplomacy and war alike presume that individuals, through language and tradition, are able to identify themselves with the group. And the recorded history of both institutions dates back to the literate civi­lizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt (Wright, 1942: 38).

Diplomacy is often contrasted with war. Thus, diplomacy has been characterized as “the peaceful conduct of relations amongst political entities” (Hamilton and Langhorne, 1995: 1) or “the art of convincing without using force” (Aron, 1967: 24). Whereas diplomacy is commonly seen as the oppo­site of war or any use of force, several scholars are reluctant to draw such a clear­cut line. “Diplomacy is among the oldest forms of intervention to limit recourse to war but it has also been its handmaiden” (Fierke, 2005: 21). Students of contemporary international relations have coined the phrase “coercive diplomacy” to denote the use of threats or limited force to persuade opponents not to change the status quo in their favor or to call off or undo an encroachment (George, 1991; George and Simons, 1994).

It is the threat of damage, or of more damage to come, that can make someone yield or comply. It is latent violence that can influence someone's choice - violence that can still be withheld or inflicted, or that a victim believes can be withheld or inflicted. (Schelling, 1966: 3)

Coercive threats are made either to compel or to deter. Compellence refers to attempts to get the opponent to change behavior; deterrence to efforts at stopping actions before they take place. UN threats of military action to Saddam Hussein if he did not remove his troops from Kuwait in 1990, as well as NATO threats to start bombing Serbia if Milosevic did not sign the Rambouillet Accords in 1999, are examples of compellence. Deterrence was prominent during the Cold War, as the United States and NATO as well as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact communicated to each other that military intervention would inflict tremendous pain. The purpose of compelling as well as deterring threats is to convince the opponent that the cost of non-compliance is sufficiently high to elicit compliance (cf. Schelling, 1966: 69-72; Fierke, 2005: 81-82).

Diplomacy, in this view, can be an integral part of armed conflict, insofar as the critical targets are “in the minds of the enemy as much as on the battlefield; the state of the enemy’s expectations is as important as the state of his troops; the threat of violence in reserve is more important than the commitment of force in the field” (Schelling, 1966: 142-3). In other words, several types of interventions can be labeled “diplomatic,” insofar as they “involve some form of communication to avoid or limit recourse to force, as well as to realize it” (Fierke, 2005: viii).

In Aghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East, peace and war exist in parallel and contem­porary peace operations are simultaneously making war and building peace. Warfare and peacemaking are therefore intimately connected and should be regarded as a con­tinuous process. Various diplomatic practices, such as competitive negotiation and power mediation, illustrate the oscillation between threat and reward strategies, which are used to influence the pay-off structure and incentives toward conflict resolution. Still, the use of threats and escalation is a high-risk strategy. The parties may keep on escalating in the hope that the other side will give in. At the same time, they may find themselves unable to escape escalation.As a consequence, they are likely to end up in a “competitive irrationality” in terms of possible outcomes, such as war (Zartman and Faure, 2005: 10). For instance, the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East in recent decades has invariably been accompanied by feverish diplomatic activity. Since the breakdown of the Camp David summit in the summer of 2000 and subsequently the peace process, Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a dangerous violent escalation in which the parties are trying to get the other side to yield and back down.

Still, “every war must end” (Ikle, 1971), which again underscores the interface between diplomacy and war. Throughout history, some of the most prominent diplomatic gatherings have been in the wake of devastating wars. If the outbreak of hostilities implies the breakdown of diplomacy, the end of fighting and the final outcome of a war require diplomatic efforts.

The alternation between diplomacy and violence may also continue in the imple­mentation phase, after a peace agreement has been signed. Most contemporary peace processes suffer from a lack of adherence to signed peace agreements. Spoiler groups, that is, actors actively engaged in violent actions aimed at undermining a peace process, are frequent phenomena and troublesome to deal with since they tend to become veto holders of peace processes. As Kydd and Walter (2002: 264) underline, “extremists are surprisingly successful in bringing down peace processes if they so desire.” For instance, only 25 percent of signed peace agreements in civil wars between 1988 and 1998 were implemented due to violence taking place during negotiations. Without any violence, 60 percent of the peace accords were implemented (Kydd & Walter, 2002: 264). The power of spoiler groups tends to increase when political leaders publicly declare and make commitments not to negotiate and make concessions under fire. It is assumed that negotiating while violence continues signals weakness to the other side (Aggestam, 2006). Yet, in practice, diplomats become hostages to spoilers who determine the pace and direction of a peace process (Darby, 2001: 118). This is well illustrated in a comparison between the different negotiation styles of Yitshak Rabin and Ariel Sharon. The peace process in the 1990s was early on beleaguered by terrorist attacks, and yet Rabin declared after every attack in Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that to stop the peace process would be to give in to terror and extremism. Sharon on the contrary argued consistently that he refused to deal with the Palestinian leadership as long as the violence continued, which partly explains why every attempt to negotiate a de-escalation of the conflict failed. Hence, in recent years, a major challenge for diplomats is how to manage these spoiler groups. International custodians, overseeing implementation of negotiated agreements, have therefore become increasingly common.

In short, if war and diplomacy cannot be seen as mutually exclusive institutions influencing international conflict resolution, diplomatic practices are usually contrasted with the methods of warfare. Normatively, diplomacy is preferable to war; yet states frequently resort to war in resolving their conflicts. This gives rise to two broad ques­tions: How do the norms, rules and practices of diplomacy contribute to conflict resolution? Under what circumstances do states prefer diplomacy to war? In line with our institu­tional perspective, our primary focus will not be diplomatic practice - such as negotiation and mediation - but the normative foundation guiding diplomatic practice.