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International Mediation in Syria’s Complex War: Strategic Implications

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Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2017

Part of the book series: NL ARMS ((NLARMS))

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Abstract

This chapter offers a critical inquiry of the current process of United Nations (UN)-Arab League mediation in the Syrian war, in order to explain the effectiveness and implications of international mediation as a non-kinetic (non-coercive) asset in strategies that address this war. The Syrian war is perceived as a civil war with features of an evolving proxy war, which has in many ways come to define twenty-first century wars. Whereas it is often argued that multilateral mediation in Syria has largely failed at the new fault lines of major-power rivalries, it will be demonstrated here that mediation’s effectiveness as a non-kinetic strategic means needs to be interpreted in a much broader perspective than the usual dichotomous notions of success or failure may account for. Moreover, the limitations will be shown of traditional concepts in mediation theory that have largely defined the conditions for mediation onset, such as a mutually hurting stalemate and the ripe moment for conflict resolution. The chapter outlines the implications in view of critical scholarship on war and non-linear strategic approaches, involving notions such as uncertainty and unpredictability. By addressing these topics, the study brings various bodies of literature together, problematizes some core concepts and assumptions, identifies consequences, and suggests ways forward in research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Balibar 2008, p. 366.

  2. 2.

    See also Sauer 2017.

  3. 3.

    Mumford 2013a, b.

  4. 4.

    Mediation is “a process of conflict management where disputants seek the assistance of, or accept an offer of help from, an individual, group, state, or organization to settle their conflict or resolve their differences without resorting to physical force or invoking the authority of the law [italics mine].” Bercovitch et al. 1991, p. 8. See also Hellman 2012, p. 591.

  5. 5.

    Barkawi and Brighton 2011.

  6. 6.

    A few exceptions should be noted, amongst them Jones 2000 and Hellman 2012, who in fact developed critical scholarship on mediation.

  7. 7.

    Beyerchen 1992-1993; also Osinga 2007.

  8. 8.

    See Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2011; Mearsheimer and Walt 2013; Zweibelson 2015, 2016.

  9. 9.

    Sauer 2017.

  10. 10.

    Proxy warfare, then, may have some overlaps with but is also different from hybrid warfare, conceived as a strategy that links conventional means with insurgency tactics. See Lanoszka 2016.

  11. 11.

    Roberts and Everton 2016, p. 30.

  12. 12.

    Ducheine 2016, p. 203.

  13. 13.

    Roberts and Everton 2016, p. 30.

  14. 14.

    Ducheine 2016, p. 203.

  15. 15.

    Ducheine 2016, pp. 201, 210.

  16. 16.

    Ducheine 2016, p. 206.

  17. 17.

    Hughes 2014, p. 523.

  18. 18.

    Galeotti 2016, p. 282.

  19. 19.

    Mumford 2013a, b.

  20. 20.

    Hughes 2014.

  21. 21.

    Mumford 2013a, p. 40.

  22. 22.

    Towle 1981, pp. 21, 23, 26.

  23. 23.

    The field of proxy wars is widely recognised to be underdeveloped in studies on war, security and the military. See Mumford 2013a, b.

  24. 24.

    Phillips 2015, p. 358; Hughes 2014, p. 523; Hill 2015; Lundgren 2016.

  25. 25.

    Hughes 2014.

  26. 26.

    Lucas et al. 2016, p. 26.

  27. 27.

    Brown 2016, p. 243.

  28. 28.

    Strachan 2007, p. 11.

  29. 29.

    Beyerchen 1992–1993, p. 67.

  30. 30.

    Von Clausewitz [1832] 1976, p. 75. For the German edition, see Von Clausewitz [1832] 1991.

  31. 31.

    Bercovitch and Gartner 2006, p. 329.

  32. 32.

    Gowan 2013, p. 1.

  33. 33.

    Gowan 2013, p. 1.

  34. 34.

    Gowan 2013, pp. 3–4.

  35. 35.

    Crocker et al. 2015; Hill 2015; Hinnebusch and Zartman 2016.

  36. 36.

    Lucas et al. 2016, p. 24.

  37. 37.

    Lundgren 2016; Hill 2015.

  38. 38.

    Gowan 2013, p. 1.

  39. 39.

    Crocker et al. 2015, p. 144.

  40. 40.

    Crocker et al. 2015, p. 144.

  41. 41.

    Crocker et al. 2015, p. 144.

  42. 42.

    Hinnebusch and Zartman 2016, p. 1.

  43. 43.

    Lucas 2016, p. 24.

  44. 44.

    Akpinar 2016.

  45. 45.

    Akpinar 2016; Hill 2015; Lundgren 2016. Also Bercovitch et al. 1991; Bercovitch and Gartner 2006.

  46. 46.

    Gowan 2013, p. 5.

  47. 47.

    Akpinar 2016, p. 2294.

  48. 48.

    Zartman 2001, 2015; Pruitt 2015.

  49. 49.

    Hinnebusch and Zartman 2016, p. 13.

  50. 50.

    Hinnebusch and Zartman 2016, p. 6.

  51. 51.

    Touval and Zartman 1985 have claimed that a stalemate is a sine qua non for mediation to occur. See also Hellman 2012.

  52. 52.

    Hellman 2012, p. 593.

  53. 53.

    Pruitt 2015, p. 134.

  54. 54.

    Hill 2015, p. 446.

  55. 55.

    The deal was that the Syrian government would accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. See Crocker et al. 2015, p. 150.

  56. 56.

    Simonen 2017; see also Orakhelashvili 2015.

  57. 57.

    Crocker et al. 2015, p. 144.

  58. 58.

    Webb 2014.

  59. 59.

    This point is also highlighted by Crocker et al. 2015, p. 151.

  60. 60.

    Among the few exceptions are Goodwin 2005 and Wheeler 2013.

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  1. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Berma Klein Goldewijk

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  1. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Paul A.L. Ducheine

  2. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Frans P.B. Osinga

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Klein Goldewijk, B. (2017). International Mediation in Syria’s Complex War: Strategic Implications. In: Ducheine, P., Osinga, F. (eds) Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2017. NL ARMS. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-189-0_7

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