1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910826651703321

Autore

Beardsley Kyle <1979->

Titolo

The mediation dilemma / / Kyle Beardsley

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2011

ISBN

0-8014-6262-2

0-8014-6261-4

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (252 p.)

Collana

Cornell studies in security affairs

Disciplina

327.1/7

Soggetti

Mediation, International

Conflict management

Peace-building

Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes

Pacific settlement of international disputes

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The dilemma -- Negotiating mediation -- Why accept mediation? -- Raison d'être : short-term benefits of mediation -- The struggle for self-enforcing peace -- Mediation in intrastate conflicts -- Implications, applications, and conclusions.

Sommario/riassunto

Mediation has become a common technique for terminating violent conflicts both within and between states; while mediation has a strong record in reducing hostilities, it is not without its own problems. In The Mediation Dilemma, Kyle Beardsley highlights its long-term limitations. The result of this oft-superficial approach to peacemaking, immediate and reassuring as it may be, is often a fragile peace. With the intervention of a third-party mediator, warring parties may formally agree to concessions that are insupportable in the long term and soon enough find themselves at odds again.Beardsley examines his argument empirically using two data sets and traces it through several historical cases: Henry Kissinger's and Jimmy Carter's initiatives in the Middle East, 1973-1979; Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 mediation in the Russo-Japanese War; and Carter's attempt to mediate in the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis. He also draws upon the lessons of the 1993 Arusha Accords, the 1993 Oslo Accords, Haiti in 1994, the 2002



Ceasefire Agreement in Sri Lanka, and the 2005 Memorandum of Understanding in Aceh. Beardsley concludes that a reliance on mediation risks a greater chance of conflict relapse in the future, whereas the rejection of mediation risks ongoing bloodshed as war continues.The trade-off between mediation's short-term and long-term effects is stark when the third-party mediator adopts heavy-handed forms of leverage, and, Beardsley finds, multiple mediators and intergovernmental organizations also do relatively poorly in securing long-term peace. He finds that mediation has the greatest opportunity to foster both short-term and long-term peace when a single third party mediates among belligerents that can afford to wait for a self-enforcing arrangement to be reached.