Diplomatic Process Research Articles

Policy Options in a Time of Transition: The US and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

After decades of unprecedented national concern and diplomatic mobilization, popular and policy interest in Israel's continuing settlement in the territories occupied in June 1967 has all but disappeared. This inattention is not a consequence of an American policy triumph, but rather the opposite. Observers of all persuasions agree that during its first term, the administration of President Barack Obama was singularly unsuccessful in leading a diplomatic process between the antagonists. It stood by as Israel continued to marginalize the PLO and expand settlements in occupied territories, even as the PLO focused on building a new, and at times troubled, relationship with Islamist forces ruling the Gaza Strip. On Obama's watch, policymakers and the public alike have surrendered to the passions that drive the conflict. Seemingly unable to affect the course of the conflict, and drawn to the more hopeful and dramatic narratives of the Arab Spring, the American public and policymakers alike have become bored with the problem between Israelis and Palestinians.But while the public may be forgiven for its lack of attention to, and interest in, the finer points of the conflict, policymakers are responsible for adhering to a more exacting standard. When the vital national interests of the United States are at stake, as they are in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, there is no credible excuse for inattention, much less for failure.President Obama has noted that the United States is in an of transition2 as it seeks to define and preserve its interests in a rapidly changing and sometimes revolutionary international environment. This article is both a response to these uncertain times and a guide for navigating them. It outlines a results-oriented paradigm for resolving the bitter antagonisms between Israelis and Palestinians that have eluded solution for decades. The article rests upon a new, if unremarkable assumption - that the United States, in order to advance its own interests, is obliged to draw a picture of the future of relations between Israel and a new state of Palestine and to lead the parties, as well as the international community, in realizing this vision.Notwithstanding the current policy malaise, nothing that has transpired in recent years is cause to alter the considered judgment that the resolution of the festering conflict between Israel and Palestine remains a critical and vital national security interest of the United States and a necessary prerequisite for fully realizing the uncertain promise of the Arab Spring. In order to act, and to convince others to act in concert, leaders need to be credibly committed to this unambiguous objective. As a new but uncertain era dawns in the Middle East and North Africa, the creation of a firm foundation for peace and security that includes the state of Israel living in peace and within recognized boundaries alongside the state of Palestine remains a core US interest.America's vital security interest in a solution was most cogently advanced by General James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, in March 2011:I believe the only reliable path to lasting peace in this region is a viable two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. This issue is one of many that is exploited by our adversaries in the region, and it is used as a recruiting tool for extremist groups ... The lack of progress also creates friction with regional partners and creates political challenges for advancing our interests by marginalizing moderate voices in the region. By contrast, substantive progress on the peace process would improve CENTCOM's opportunity to work with our regional partners and to support multilateral security efforts.3President Obama himself made the same point when he declared:It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. …

Referendum to Determine Nagorno Karabakh's Final Status: A Critical Appraisal

With the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh having reached a stalemate some time ago, the Co-Chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group have been forced to introduce new proposals to the sides involved in an attempt to move the diplomatic process forward. The Madrid Principles, as they have since become known, require mutual compromises between Azerbaijan and Armenia, including a return of territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control and an interim status for Karabakh, until the eventual determination of its legal status, probably via a referendum can be reached. This paper considers the practical difficulties of organizing a referendum: such as, who would be entitled to vote? What would be the question asked? And how the result would be determined? The author is of the opinion that if a referendum is to be held to determine the (final) status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it should be conducted immediately, without further delay, otherwise, the Minsk Group's proposals are likely to fail.

The Palestinian Situation in Light of the International Diplomatic Law

This research seeks to investigate the legal status of the State of occupied Palestine in light of the international diplomatic law represented by PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in international forums. It also seeks to determine the legal status of the State of occupied Palestine in light of the provisions of international diplomatic law and its implications. The research tries to answer a major question which is: what is the legal status of the Palestinian situation in light of the provisions of international diplomatic law and its implications and did the birth of the Palestinian authority influence the run of the Palestinian diplomatic process, and which is the competent authority in running the Palestinian diplomatic process under the provisions of international law?

Introduction

Within a short period the International Criminal Court (ICC) has become central to world politics. The dramatic diplomatic process that produced the Rome Statute in 1998 was followed by an unexpectedly rapid succession of state ratifications and the establishment of the court in 2002. As of late 2011 the ICC has indicted twenty-six individuals related to seven official investigations, all in Africa. Proceedings against one of these individuals were dismissed. Two other indictments, including one for Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, became moot because the individuals were killed before arrest or trial. The remaining list includes a sitting head of state, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, as well as Kenya's sitting deputy prime minister, Uhuru Kenyatta. The United Nations Security Council referred both the Sudan and Libya situations to the court; three African states requested investigations of their own situations. The ICC prosecutor independently started an investigation in Kenya. Despite efforts by Kenyan state officials to halt ICC proceedings related to the widespread violence and killings following the 2007 national elections, opinion polls suggest that 73 percent of Kenyans want the ICC to remain involved.

Contemporary diplomacy: representation and communication in a globalized world

1. Introduction: Understanding Global Interactions Through Diplomacy Section One: Actors and Venues 2. The Changing Landscape of Diplomatic Actors and Venues 3. Nation-state Governments, Sub-national and Local Governments 4. Multilateral Institutions, Supranational Polities and Regional Bodies 5. Global and Transnational Firms 6. Civil Society Organizations and Eminent Person Diplomats Section Two: Processes and Functions 7. Technological Change and Diplomatic Process 8. Public Diplomacy 9. Managing Economic Diplomacy 10. Managing Military and Security Diplomacy 11. Managing Cultural Diplomacy 12. Conclusions: Contemporary Diplomatic Practice and Theory Looking Ahead

Two States or Not Two States? Leadership and Peace Making in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

The debate around the viability of the so-called ‘Two-State Solution’ and the perspective of an alternative ‘One-State Solution’ began to attract renewed the attention after the collapse of the Oslo process. We suggest that instead of debating the viability of rival constitutional schemes, a more fruitful approach to the issue of peace making in Israel/Palestine should focus on the structural elements of the picture more than on future possible outcomes of the diplomatic process. This article focuses on the role of the two leaderships by analysing their historical background, discourses and policies in order to understand to what extent the debate on the TSS/OSS dichotomy reveals the hidden logic of the alternatives. Our aim is to describe the ‘primordial soup’ that enables discussion and decisions with respect to the different scenarios addressed by the debate. We conclude that the TSS/OSS alternative hardly identifies meaningful coalitions for peace making and the attainment of either of the two solutions seems to be unlikely without a dramatic change the very identity of Palestinian and Israeli leadership; the rhetoric about the ‘missed opportunities’ of negotiation contributes instead to obscure the resilience of the status quo.

Flawed Mediation and a Compelling Mission: Chinese Diplomacy in the Six-Party Talks to Denuclearise North Korea

This paper examines China’s role in the Six-Party Talks, a multilateral initiative with the aim of denuclearising North Korea. As North Korea’s behaviour has become increasingly provocative, evidenced by the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Incidents and the newly unveiled uranium enrichment plant at Yeonbyon, China’s indecision in dealing with the deteriorating situation has dramatically undermined Beijing’s ability to continue successfully to play the leading mediator role. Yet if China fails to take decisive action now, the consequences could be dire. Further deterioration in North Korea’s behaviour could trigger a nuclear arms race, severely hamper regional economic development and even create a geopolitical split in East Asia, leading to a confrontation between the US, South Korea and Japan acting together on one side, and China, Russia and North Korea aligned on the other. The factors that have prevented China from making further progress in the diplomatic process are many and various and this paper will reveal the complexity of the North Korean issue for China. Foreign academics and policy makers have tended to attribute China’s indecision over North Korea to China putting its own security interests first. But this is far too simplistic a picture of the complex relationship that China has with North Korea. There are a host of factors at work that need to be taken into account to understand the present impasse in the diplomatic process. These factors include China’s emotional ties to North Korea and empathy with its position as the weakest party in the Talks, the conflicting attitudes within the Chinese government itself towards the North, and the competing interests and lack of trust between the different stakeholders. It seems that for the foreseeable future, the North Korean issue will continue to plague Chinese foreign policy until all the parties involved act as a collaborative body to reach a consensus on how to resolve the situation.

Transnational intellectual cooperation, the League of Nations, and the problem of order

AbstractThis article examines the political and cultural contexts of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation and the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. These two League of Nations bodies were charged with fostering international understanding through the promotion of educational, scientific, and cultural exchange. Whereas previous studies have revealed the institutional and diplomatic processes that shaped these bodies, the present article considers their intellectual genealogies and trajectories. Adopting a transnational perspective, it argues that the multi-layered quest for order is central to understanding intellectual cooperation in the interwar years. This concern was reflected in the role of cultural relations within the post-war order, and in the aim of strengthening intellectuals’ position in the social order (both through legal instruments and through new tools for ‘intellectual labour’).

Bombing to Bargain? The Air War for Kosovo

Given the prominence of air power as a foreign policy tool, we attempt to clearly link the military process of dropping munitions on the target state to the accompanying diplomatic process between the attacker and the adversary. To explore the connection between the two processes, we look at the 1999 NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo, which allows us to isolate the influence of air power. Why were 78 days of NATO bombing needed to convince Milosevic to make concessions? Comparing expectations from both bargaining models and traditional coercive models, we find that the intensity of bombing, the duration of bombing, and mediation were important predictors of the Serbian government's behavior during the Kosovo crisis.

Storming to partition: Croatia, the United States, and Krajina in the Yugoslav War

To many scholars and policymakers, ‘partition’ offers the most efficacious means of resolving ethnic-civil wars. Others reject partition as a solution, citing flaws (both logical and empirical) and harmful international implications should such an approach become commonplace. What has been missing from this debate is an understanding of how the process of partition unfolds. In this article we examine such a process, the case of the Krajina in the war in Yugoslavia, 1994–1995. The US aligned itself with Croatia against Serbs rebelling in the Krajina region of Croatia. The culmination of this alignment occurred in August 1995 when Croatian forces initiated ‘Operation Storm’ (Oluja) against Croatian Serb insurgents. Croatian forces effectively cleansed the Krajina of its Serbian population. Eager to initiate a diplomatic peace process, Washington welcomed the Croatian operation, and largely because of Operation Storm, negotiations at Dayton became possible.

The European Discourse in Germany, 1939-1950: Three Case Studies

This article seeks to contextualize support after the Second World War for European integration in Germany, analysing continuities between interwar, wartime and postwar debates about unifying Europe both within and beyond Germany. Using such a temporal framing serves to highlight that many groups advocating European integration in the post-1945 period emerged out of more long-standing internationalist communities, not all of whom had supported international political frameworks and cooperation from a pro-democratic standpoint. Rather, a significant number of groups on the Left and Right sought to construct international bodies as a means of restraining what they saw as the harmful potential of majoritarian democratic nation-states. The article is therefore a contribution to recent research initiatives that have more critically assessed the growth in support for a united Europe after the Second World War and which have enriched the study of European integration from an earlier focus on primarily diplomatic processes and institutional histories. A case is made for an intellectual history of European integration, and the article highlights the importance of intellectual and political communities that argued for a Third Way Europe. The groups featured are not simply German organizations, but are communities whose membership, connections and impact were transnational. The article therefore seeks to challenge the approach typified by Alan Milward's important text, The European Rescue of the Nation State, which saw nation states as the major players in the history of integration, and their leaders as largely uninfluenced by the activities of civil society organisations.

Germany 1989: in the aftermath of the Cold War

Introduction. I. Division through Zoning. II. Cold War Confrontation. III. Ostpolitik: Putting the East at Ease. IV. A Precarious Relationship. V. The People's Revolution. VI. The Diplomatic Process. VII. An Expensive Take-Over Business. VIII. The Long Hangover. IX. A Crisis of Identity. X. Attempts at Explanation. APPENDIX. 1. Select Bibliography. 2. Chronology. 3. (Charts). 4. (Cartoons).

CANNIBALS AND PEDLARS

The Alor islands in Nusa Tenggara Timur, comprising mainly Alor and Pantar, have been studied more extensively by anthropologists than historians. Conventional historical sources are comparatively rare and difficult to interpret. This article contextualises the neglected group of islands by establishing its place in the political and economic networks of early modern insular Southeast Asia in the period c.1600–1850. By comparing Dutch and Portuguese original sources, and taking into account oral tradition and extant anthropological research, the article argues that Alor society, while it may have appeared unchanging and undeveloped to the external observer, was affected by processes in the larger region, partly but not solely connected to early colonial European activity. These processes included migration, politics, trade, and religion. Foreign pedlars had a degree of intercourse with the islanders. A reputation for savagery and cannibalism followed the Alor, particularly those living in the mountains. A loose connection between the VOC and the five Muslim coastal domains of the group, Galiyao, emerged from the 17th century, primarily via Dutch allies on nearby Solor. Portuguese attempts at political influence in the 19th century underpinned a diplomatic process which eventually led to a division of colonial spheres of interest in the 1850s.

Politics of culture in liberal Italy: from unification to fascism

Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy discusses the controversial process of modernization and nation-building between Unification and Fascism. Analysing cultural policy on the level, the book includes chapters on theatre and opera, the medieval revival, the rediscovery of the Etruscan past and on the Italians’ changing relationship to the nation state and the monarchy. Challenging the stereotypical idea of a nation obsessed with its home-grown culture, Italy’s political, social and cultural transformation during the nineteenth century was closely linked to the European experience of modernity, reflected in philosophical and political debates and in Italy’s cosmopolitan approach to music and the arts. The book takes the former Papal Legations and their capital Bologna as a case study - a large region in the north of the peninsula, which played a crucial role during the political and diplomatic process of Unification. Conflicts between ancient elites and the rising middle class, between the Moderate and the Democratic traditions of the Risorgimento, and between Catholicism and anti-clericalism demonstrate how throughout the second half of the nineteenth century Italians negotiated national, regional and identities. After a short experience of municipal socialism during World War One, Bologna was the first city in which the Fascist squads replaced a democratic administration. Comparing Bologna to examples of other Italian cities and the nation as a whole, the book offers a new explanation of Italy’s road to Fascism and a fresh approach to studying the relationship between culture, politics and societal change during the European Fin-de-siecle.

Canada and the Kosovo Crisis

Assessments of Canada's involvement in the Kosovo War of 1998-99 have generally depicted Canada's role in the crisis within the period's broader discourse of diplomatic and military decline. Much of the Canadian academic and media opinion at the time depicted the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade under Lloyd Axworthy as overmatched players in the major leagues of crisis diplomacy, as historian Michael Bliss epitomizes: Instead, as junior partners, we simply went along. Our politicians were, publicly, ventriloquists' dummies, and from the public record, it's not at all clear that Canada exercised anything like real independence.1 However, this article will demonstrate that Canada did not simply offer troops in a fainthearted or half-hearted gesture to NATO, but effectively employed its resources to play an important part in the diplomacy that led to United Nations security council resolution 1244, in the maintenance of allied unity, and in operation Allied Force. Using public source documents and extensive interviews, it will concentrate on the intensification of diplomatic attention to the Kosovo issue, Ottawa's decision to intervene, the conduct of the campaign, consideration of the ground option, and the diplomatic process that brought the crisis to a resolution.THE CRISIS UNFOLDSNo one should dare to beat you, exclaimed Slobodan Milosevic, chairman of the central committee of the Serbian League of Communists, to a crowd of Kosovar Serbs in April 1987. His rhetoric, inspired by perceived injustices inflicted by the Albanian majority, injected a potent drug into the veins of the Serbian public, contributing to a decade of ethnic violence in Yugoslavia. In March 1989, Milosevic coerced the Kosovo assembly into amending its constitution, repealing the political, educational, and linguistic autonomy of the Kosovar Albanians, who represented about 90 percent of the province's population. Although Kosovo was not a republic within the Yugoslav Federation, the south Serbian province had been granted considerable autonomy under Marshall Tito's regime. After years of passive resistance and opposition to violence, many Albanians began to favour violent responses, such as those employed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Through 1997 and 1998 the KLA conducted periodic campaigns against Yugoslav targets in Kosovo. The Yugoslav forces, ill -trained for counterinsurgency operations and shocked by the audacity of the KLA, often retaliated disproportionately, targeting Albanian civilians. In February 1998, Serbian police and the Yugoslavian army commenced a high-level campaign to eliminate elements of the KLA. Despite occasional international attention, Milosevic was able to sideline any sustained interest in Kosovo by insisting that its fate was an internal matter.Canada had a strong historic commitment to European security and was extremely active through the 19905 in the former Yugoslavia. Canadians were lead participants in the United Nations protection force, committing 1300 troops to the dangerous and frustrating mission to freeze Balkan violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. Despite this contribution, Canada was excluded from the contact group, composed of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, which coordinated the approach to Bosnian conflict management.2 After the conflict was resolved, Canada committed I200 troops in 1996 as part ofthe NATO-led stabilization force in BosniaHerzegovina. The mission's emphasis on peacebuilding fit within Axworthy's human security agenda, which sought to develop a less statecentric and more person-centred approach to the conduct of foreign relations. To this end, Axworthy also negotiated the Ottawa treaty to ban antipersonnel landmines in 1997 and took a lead role in advancing the Rome statute of 1998, which formed the International Criminal Court.3Canada was among the first countries to engage Milosevic on the issue of human rights in Kosovo. …

China and the North Korean nuclear issue: competing interests and persistent policy dilemmas

Abstract China's role in the North Korean nuclear issue has undergone major change in recent years. In the initial years of the Six-Party Talks, China's role was central as facilitator, arbiter, and host of the diplomatic process. However, since 2007 the U.S.–North Korea bilateral relationship has been the dominant factor in Korean nuclear diplomacy, largely marginalizing China and the other three powers involved in these efforts. As a result, China has been confined principally to hosting the talks and to rubber-stamping agreements already achieved between Washington and Pyongyang. China continues to seek an uneasy balance among three vital interests: (1) ensuring peace on the peninsula; (2) fostering North Korea's denuclearization; and (3) seeking to preserve a continued relationship with North Korea. But it has yet to develop a full strategy for reconciling these interests and managing its policy priorities. However, China has accelerated its economic and political ties with both the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Beijing therefore seems well-positioned for the peninsula's longer-term evolution, including its hopes that North Korea will ultimately move toward a more “reformist” orientation and a much-diminished emphasis on military power in its national strategy. But the dilemmas in Chinese policymaking persist, with Beijing able to influence but not control the major uncertainties, especially those related to North Korea's future.

Russian policy in Korea in a time of change

Abstract The Korean peninsula's importance for Russia has grown in recent years, while its Asian policy also became more active in line with the resurgence of Russia's international profile. As its relations with both North and South Korea improved, Russia's participation in the Six-Party Talks became the most significant development. Russia wants the nuclear problem of the Korean peninsula to be solved diplomatically, on a multilateral basis, taking into consideration the interests of all the parties. The future of the diplomatic process depends largely on overcoming mistrust and normalizing the relations of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) with the West. Pressure and power politics will not work, let alone implementing a military solution or attempts at a “soft landing.” The five parties and international bodies (including the UN) must guarantee North Korean security and help with development. For that, a “strategic decision” on coexistence with the DPRK should be taken in Washington, to...

India's Diaspora Diplomacy

AbstractCountries are increasingly conscious that their diaspora is a powerful asset in their pursuit of external objectives. Several factors have contributed. Everywhere the diplomatic process is more open than before; foreign ministries routinely network with a wide array of official and non-state partners. Thanks to rising migration, and growth in foreign employment opportunities, many countries have expanding overseas communities. A number of small and medium-sized countries find that such communities are even larger than the home population. We also observe that in many states, these groups, whether they have taken up the citizenship of the country of residence or whether they remain citizens of their home countries, find it easier than in the past to participate actively in social, economic and political activities in their adopted homes. Finally, the example of Israel — that is, the support that it mobilizes from the global Jewish community — resonates with many countries that would like to develop their own links with their overseas communities, as feasible.

Will Russia Ever Join the WTO?

AbstractWhy would Russia, a major power, be thwarted for fourteen years in its attempt to join the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Through a detailed examination of Russia's WTO accession negotiations, the diplomatic processes of the WTO's accession procedures are uncovered, showing that this diplomacy is best understood as a complex process where state-level factors and international regime-level factors, such as the rules and conditions of accession, interact. In the Russian case, the dialogue's length partly reflects technical difficulties in specific elements of the negotiations and partly a degree of ambivalence in the Russian government's attitudes towards accession. The Russian economy's high degree of dependence on oil and gas exports has taken the short-run urgency out of the negotiations from the Russian point of view, while reinforcing the medium-term case for accession within the context of a diversification policy. Russia's new President Dmitry Medvedev and new Minister for the Economy Elvira Nabiullina are strongly committed to WTO accession as a basis for developing the Russian economy as an innovation-based economy. Meanwhile, Russia's former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is sympathetic to that idea, but is inconsistent in his pronouncements. At the regime level, the key obstacles to accession in the past have been Russia's insistence on the freedom to maintain government agricultural subsidies and the reluctance of other WTO members to compromise on this issue. Since the Georgian crisis of August 2008, the United States has tended increasingly to use WTO accession as an instrument of political leverage vis-à-vis Russia. It must be assumed that Georgia will veto any Russian application for membership unless a satisfactory solution to the Abkhazia/South Ossetia issue can be found.

Enhancing Diplomatic Effectiveness: A Common-Sense Risk Management Approach to Counter-terrorism

Effective counter-terrorism efforts require practical and realistic risk management decisions. Since our resources are limited, clearly we should allocate them in sensible proportions and on parallel tracks in order to achieve optimal results over the long term. Unfortunately, while we are good at mobilizing resources to defend against perceived imminent threats, we often neglect or underfund other important activities, such as enhanced diplomacy, which could reduce those threats in the future. With respect to counter-terrorism, it is difficult to make up for lost time in areas involving diplomacy. Building mutual trust and respect is an ongoing activity that cannot be rushed. Adding more people or more money later on does not shorten the time required to achieve mutual trust in the diplomatic arena. It may even delay the creation of such trust, as it indicates an inconsistency in commitment to the diplomatic process. Therefore, it is important to provide more resources for diplomacy as soon as possible, so that when cooperative counter-terrorism efforts are needed, the groundwork is already in place to maximize effectiveness. In particular, if we are to better coordinate our intelligence efforts, it is imperative to establish lasting relationships, both bilaterally and multilaterally, to reinforce mutual trust and commitment, and to overcome any political or cultural differences that might negatively affect cooperation. I acknowledge the dilemmas and trade-offs we face when having to choose between short-term and long-term actions. If we fail to put forth the maximum effort to stop immediate threats, there can be serious economic, political, and human consequences should a terrorist attack take place. On the other hand, if we fail to devote sufficient resources to long-term efforts directed at the mitigation of future terrorism, the threats may eventually multiply beyond our capability to defend against them. In my view, this is the greater danger.