THE USE OF SETTLEMENT INSTITUTIONS AND PROCEDURES, 1919-1980

We can now examine the ninety-four conflicts to see which procedures—bilateral negotiations, multilateral conferences, mediation, and adjudication—were used most often to achieve compromise or award outcomes and which were relatively more successful. In most of the conflicts, diplomats and government officials made more than one attempt to resolve the major issues and employed more than one procedure in seeking an outcome. Thus, each attempt was followed through to its conclusion to see whether or not it culminated in some partial or complete agreement. The figures in the second column of Table 15^4 include only formal attempts to use one or more procedures for arranging compromise or award outcomes. They exclude informal attempts at settlement, such as offers of mediation that were immediately rejected, casual communication and bargain­ing in the form of press conference statements and speeches, or the unpublicized

³² One major difference between adjudication and arbitration is that in the latter, the parties, by previous agreement, may have the issue settled according to other than legal criteria.

424 The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

discussions that may have occurred in the corridors and salons of international organizations or foreign offices. Informal bilateral discussions that may have led opponents to submit a problem to international organizations or courts, although necessary antecedents to formal settlement, have also been excluded.

Several conclusions can be made from the figures. A large majority (73 percent) of all attempts at resolving conflicts and crises were taken through bilateral negotiations and international organizations. Mediation outside interna­tional organizations is relatively rare, as is the submission of conflicts to interna­tional tribunals. Multilateral conferences, reflecting the direct involvement of more than two parties in many conflicts, still occur, although not frequently. Perhaps more interesting are the figures on the successes, wherein bargaining within one or more of the settings led to a commonly recognized and legitimate outcome, in the form of a treaty, agreement, or legal decision. In some cases, the "success" was a formal decision to accept some alternative procedure for settlement. For instance, bilateral negotiations were considered successful if they led to an agreement to resolve the conflict formally through a plebiscite (for instance, the negotiations between France and Germany during 1934, when they agreed to use a plebiscite to determine sovereignty over the Saarland).

Based on a percentage of successes to attempts, bilateral and multilateral negotiations appear to provide the best possibility for success if we assume that the trends since 1919 will continue. Cases before international tribunals also had a high ratio of successes to attempts. The number of mediations outside the context of international organization is low (only thirteen attempts), so it is difficult to form conclusions about this procedure. The ratio of successes to attempts is, however, considerably lower than in the other procedures: Only four of thirteen attempts led to compromise. This is not to suggest that third-party intervention into international conflict is as a rule unsuccessful. On the contrary, a large portion of the successes in the "International organizations" row are directly attributable to various conciliating and mediating committees established by interational organizations or the actions, often taken on their own initiative, of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations and its predeces­sor. It is the context rather than the procedure or technique that is at question: Mediation outside international organizations is seldom attempted, and when it is, it rarely succeeds.

The figures in Table 15-4 also show that international organizations have been used extensively as forums in which conflicts between states have been handled. Of the 156 attempts to resolve the conflicts identified in this study, 58 (37 percent) were undertaken by the League of Nations, the United Nations, or regional organizations. Considering that seventy years ago, interna­tionally organized efforts at conflict resolution or crisis management were rare, it is clear that these bodies have made a significant impact on this endemic problem of international relations. A closer look at the operation of the United Nations in handling conflicts and crises will illustrate the variety of third-party intervention techniques that have been developed and will enable us to make

Table 15-4Settlement Procedures for 94 Conflicts, 1919-1980

• Does not include mediations involving international organizations

some general assessments about the effectiveness of this organization in meeting its primary task of maintaining international peace and resolving conflicts.

RESOLVING CONFLICTS

AND DISPUTES

IN THE UNITED NATIONS

To examine pacific settlement procedures and the degrees of success and failure in handling conflicts, this portion of the study will use a sample of thirty-two conflicts and disputes that resulted in some United Nations action aimed at bringing about a compromise. These thirty-two cases, occurring between 1946 and 1965, include bilateral and multilateral conflicts and crises, colonial conflicts, and disputes, as defined at the beginning of the chapter.³³ In all thirty-two situations, at least one of the major consultative organs of the United Nations— the General Assembly, Security Council, and Trusteeship Council—or the Secre­tary-General took formal action aimed at resolving the conflicts and disputes. By action is meant some form of diplomatic initiative, whether fact-finding, re­porting, mediation, interposition, or supervision. Any conflict, crisis, or dispute

³³ The cases are: Greece, Indonesia, Indian minorities in South Africa, Southwest Africa, Palestine, Korea, Togoland, India-Pakistan, Libya, Eritrea, Somaliland, Bulgaria-Hungary-Romania, German reunification, Tunisia (Bizerte), apartheid in South Africa, West Irian, UN airmen in China, Suez, Hungary, Oman and Muscat, interventions in Lebanon and Jordan, western Samoa, Cameroons, Cambodia-Thailand, Laos, Ruanda, the Congo crisis, Portugese territories in Africa, Souther Rhode­sia, Yemen, incorporation of Sabah and Sarawak into the proposed Federation of Malaysia, and Cyprus. The figures in the tables and most of the following discussion, are based on information found in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Synopses of United Nations Cases in the Field of Peace and Security (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1966).

426The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

in which one of the consultative organs merely discussed a situation or passed a resolution but took no other action was excluded.

What structures and tasks did the United Nations create and undertake in attempting to cope with situations they regarded as serious enough to warrant third-party intervention? The first response to the development of a crisis has usually been for the Security Council or General Assembly to organize an investi­gatory body, followed by the appointment of some agent (the Secretary-General, one of his representatives, or a conciliating committee) to attempt diplomatic intervention. Table 15-5 shows that of all actions aimed at bringing about a compromise outcome, fact-finding and group or individual mediation have been used most often.

In crises where violence has broken out and where the parties have previously agreed to a cease-fire or truce (usually after extensive United Nations mediation efforts), the United Nations has also been active in separating com­batants through interpositionary forces or truce observation teams. Many of the actions of the United Nations in the field of military supervision and interposi­tion are reasonably dramatic, and thus well known. Other supervisory activities are generally less publicized, and yet have been important in helping to imple­ment and police agreements reached by bargaining between the opponents. A few of these are the Korean Repatriation Commission; the Plebiscite Commis­sioner for Togoland; the United Nations Commissioner for Libya, who drafted a constitution for the country and helped establish a national government; the Temporary Executive Authority for West Irian, which administered contested territory pending transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to the Indonesian government; and the Plebiscite Commissioner for Western Samoa. Under the "other" category in Table 15-5 are several agencies that have been used primarily to help civilian victims of violence. These include the Korean Reconstruction

Table 15-5Agents Used by the United Nations for Intervening in 32 Conflicts, Crises, and Disputes

NUMBER AGENTS EMPLOYED

Fact-finding or observation committees or commissions, reporting to

General Assembly or Security Council 30 Mediation or conciliation committees or commissions created by the

General Assembly, Security Council, or Trusteeship Council 28 Mediator appointed by Security Council or General Assembly, other

than Secretary-General 3

Secretary-General or his representative as mediator 22

Truce supervisory organizations 4

Other supervisory organizations or commissioners 17

Interpositionary forces 4

Other (mostly civilian relief) 4

• Where an agency or person had two or more specific functions listed in its terms of reference, it is counted in all the relevant categories

427The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

Agency and the civilian relief operations undertaken in the Congo and among Palestine refugees. An unusual task was also commissioned by the United Na­tions, the clearing of the Suez Canal of sunken ships following the 1956 Middle East war.

More important than identifying types of agencies or agents used in attempting to resolve crises, conflicts, and disputes is the task of assessing de­grees of success. Judgments here are difficult, because many of the histories of these thirty-two conflicts have not been fully reported. It is difficult, moreover, to speculate whether the cases would have had approximately the same outcomes if the United Nations had not intervened. Did all the fact-finding, mediating, and supervising tasks organized by the United Nations really make any difference? Since we cannot answer this question in many of the cases, we will have to rely instead on a narrow criterion of success: Was each agency or agent able to fulfill the instructions given to it by the consultative organs or the Secretary-General? For example, the major task of a truce supervisory organization is to police cease-fire lines, report violations, and urge the violators to honor the truce agreements. If the agency was able to work as originally planned, even though it could not bring about a formal settlement, we must call it a success. Similarly, if an agency charged with the responsibility of making a report success­fully completed that task, it must be deemed a success whether or not that report had any impact on subsequent events. Any effort to inject a third party into the conflict as an active participant was counted as an attempt at mediation.

The figures in Table 15-6 show that of all the activities and tasks that the United Nations undertakes to cope with crises, conflicts, and disputes, media­tion is the most difficult, in the sense that only about two out of five attempts succeed. In at least twenty-three of the fifty-three attempts, the parties either refused to enter into serious discussions with the mediator, or if the talks did get under way, neither party changed its actions or positions to accord with the objectives of the mediating agent or agency. This conclusion does not warrant undue pessimism about the effectiveness of the United Nations, however. Many of the failures came in cold-war conflicts, where the United Nations has generally been ineffective, and in a few cases, such as racial policies in South Africa,

Table 15-6Attempts and Successes in Resolving Conflicts by The United Nations in 32 Cases

428 The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

where no diplomatic pressures, from whatever source, have had effect. On the other hand, many difficult crises and conflicts were brought to a conclusion essentially in accordance with United Nations objectives because of the mediatory activities of various commissions or individuals. We would include in this cate­gory the efforts of mediators in the Indonesian-Dutch war, the Arab-Israeli war in 1948-1949, the violence between India and Pakistan, the release of imprisoned United Nations flyers by Communist China in 1954, and the long and embroiled crises in the Congo.

Information-gathering and service functions of the United Nations have been on the whole more successful than mediation. Fact-finding and reporting, which usually come at the early stages of a conflict, have been hampered only in cases where governments have refused to permit investigating groups to conduct their operations in the territories where the sources of conflict existed. The South African government, for example, has not allowed United Nations fact-finding bodies into its territories to investigate conditions of the black popu­lations.

Various service and supervisory functions normally come at the latter stages of a crisis or conflict, when the parties have already agreed to a cease­fire or to accept more substantive terms of settlement. These prior agreements no doubt account for the high percentage of successful supervisory operations. However, we should not downgrade the importance of these service and supervi­sory tasks, since the agreements that result from crises seldom by themselves lead to peace, if by that term we mean that neither side would contemplate a renewed use of force. In fact, the high number of cease-fire violations and armi­stice-line incidents shows that many agreements are built on flimsy foundations. Others are at best truces rather than real settlements. Without truce supervisory organizations, incidents reflecting continued tensions would often lead to re­sumption of full-scale hostilities.

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