By Oliver P. Richmond
Based on his new article that focuses on the emergence of the concept of “stalemated peace”.
The dominant research methodologies, conceptual, and practical doctrines of the post- Cold War order related to peacemaking, such as ‘hurting stalemates’, ‘ripe moments’ and ‘backsliding’ operate within a conflict management framework associated with negative forms of peace. This framework was updated after the end of the Cold War with a broader, more positive ‘liberal peacebuilding’ paradigm. Both frameworks, to varying degrees, indicated a Northern/ Western convergence around limited goals for peacemaking, peacekeeping, international mediation, and conflict resolution, but it is only recently that the implications have become clearer at a system level as well as for institutions and civil society.
There is a more convincing interpretation now available, however: this Eurocentric approach has ultimately led to a ‘stalemated peace’ (SP) model of peacemaking, which has affected UN peace missions more generally, undermining the UN’s normative purpose as well as its practical tools. Unexpectedly, the stalemate model may also contribute to systemic, geopolitical tensions and conflicts in world politics, making it much more unstable than previously thought.
This epistemological weakness has allowed scholars and analysts to describe the “grand stalemate’ of the Minsk agreements after 2015 as one which might have achieved ‘stabilisation’. The stalemated peace model may in addition provide camouflage for strategies of forced displacement and partition, with long-standing consequences in Cyprus, Kosovo, Syria, Israel/ Palestine and Gaza, Amenia/ Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, and in many other recent wars. This association with a ‘negative peace’, limited ‘conflict management’ and power-driven pragmatic policy compromises ultimately contributes to the re-ignition of war, such as with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A stalemated peace process may hold out the potential for a sudden or eventual agreement, but in an unstable international environment driven by geopolitical, material and ideational concerns it often leads to war in the longer term, rather than providing a basis for progress.
In the literature on peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, significant problems were obscured by the development of apparently pragmatic concepts such as those of ‘hurting stalemates’ and ‘spoilers’, which actually disguised ‘backsliding’ where UN peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and political missions could not bring about a sustainable peace. This weakness cannot be addressed without a conceptual shift from problem-solving (or ‘stabilisation’) to new, more emancipatory frameworks for peacemaking where political claims are addressed across the wide scope of peacemaking, including issues of local and global justice and sustainability. These possibilities transcend the liberal peace model significantly, they mainly exist in the scholarship or amongst social movements, have been translated into doctrine only in extremis and are long overdue. Hints can be seen in UN documentation on ‘sustaining peace’ or in long running debates within the Non-Aligned movement dating back to the 1960s. Their insights remain unimplemented, underpinning stalemates rather than the redressal of unmet political claims, meaning that peacemaking and UN peace missions have become depoliticised from the perspective of civil society, while preserving political power-structures with only minor checks. Global order and security have thus become increasingly detached from the structural implications of critical, and peace research insights into local political claims in conflict-affected societies.
Related to only minor theoretical innovations (even if embedded in international doctrine and the increasingly dysfunctionality of the state and international system, this has meant the stalemated peace model has often been regarded as acceptable to international actors and disputants. Indeed, the fear of a related loss of power because of any concessions made under any agreement has encouraged key actors in peace processes to consider escalating violence as an alternative to compromise (as with Charles Taylor in Liberia). This dilemma has also been touched upon by some civil society actors which have envisioned further escalation in Ukraine in order to produce a victory before a liberal peace settlement can be attained.
Consequently, long-standing stalemates may not be a platform for a future breakthrough as previously thought, but instead may inculcate revisionist and revanchist sentiments, which also involve the revival of violence- both direct and structural- as a legitimate political tool.