The Dilemma of Mediation - Essay Example

Running Header: THE DILEMMA OF MEDIATION The Dilemma of Mediation: An Analysis of Two Internal Conflicts And the Effects of External Brokering Your Name Your College Date of Submission Up until the last three centuries, wars between and within nations and among groups within a particular region raged on, for the most part, until they burned themselves out. For one thing, communication and transportation were much slower affairs then than they are now in our own time. It could take months for news to travel across an ocean or a continent - one of the most obvious examples of this, in relation to third-party efforts to end wars, occurred at the end of the War of 1812, between the young United States and the United Kingdom. The most successful battle for the Americans during this war happened in New Orleans - months after the Treaty of Ghent, signed in Belgium, had brought the war to a close. There was no satellite phone, no telegram that could travel from Belgium to New Orleans in time to head off the bloody battle. Another factor that kept diplomatic efforts to broker peace agreements at a minimum was the fact that technological constraints kept wars from spreading to engulf entire halves of the globe - or the whole word itself. Cannons, muskets and swords could not cause noxious clouds of gas to pass over entire civilian populations, and neighboring countries or cultures would only sparingly jump in to assist their neighbors. The Industrial Age, starting in Europe in the 1800's, and the development of significantly entangling networks of treaties of protection, wherein major powers promised to support one another in the event of attack, made the prospect of continent-wide, or even worldwide conflict, more of a possibility after the middle of the nineteenth century. When American President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace agreement that settled the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, he was honored the next year with the Nobel Peace Prize (Bailey and Kennedy, p. 628). The very fact that such a prize existed showed the changing sensibilities of the world, namely that war anywhere in the world was a danger to the rest of the world. In the years since Theodore Roosevelt, the world has undergone two wars that basically dragged in every major world power. The first of these conflicts introduced the world to biological warfare, in the form of the deadly mustard gas that would later be outlawed. The second of these finally ended with another military innovation: the nuclear bomb. It has been argued that a bomb of this nature is the only weapon that would have kept the Japanese population from fighting, civilian by civilian, exacting huge casualties from the Allied troops before surrendering. Even so, the arrival of the nuclear bomb signaled the end of the widespread war, because the final weapon was so awful in its power that it served as a deterrent. And so organizations like the United Nations sprang up in the second half of the twentieth century, with the goal of keeping regional conflicts from becoming continental, or even global ones. There have been situations where international, third-party attempts at solving conflicts were successful, but there have been many more that only bogged the problem down and made it last longer. One of the most problematic regional conflicts of the twentieth century was the struggle over apartheid in South Africa. While the British had created the colonial Union of South Africa in 1910, the policy known as apartheid was not implemented until 1948. In the intervening years, the African natives had faced restrictions that were common to all indigenous peoples under colonial rule. When the Afrikaner leader D.F. Malan took power in 1948, his government passed some laws that mandated that blacks live in certain areas, have identification on them at all times, and denied several basic civil rights to blacks (Sanctions against South Africa). This change in law escaped international attention, in part because of the vast distance between South Africa and the West, and in part because 1948 was still a highly turbulent time on the world stage. While the Second World War had ended three years previously, other events had kept the tensions of war alive. The Soviet Union had developed its own atomic weapon, and the alliance that had joined them to the United States against Hitler and Tojo quickly dissolved into a Cold War that would last another five decades. Another factor that kept other countries from intervening against the policies of apartheid was the simple fact that many of the world's powers had racist attitudes toward citizens of African descent. While South Africa was passing the laws of apartheid, blacks in the American South had to use separate restrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants, and even schools. As the West went through the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, though, the plight of the black citizens of South Africa received an increasing amount of international attention. Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, began raising opposition within South Africa to the racist policies of apartheid. Mandela and many of the other leaders of this group were arrested and held in prison for years. Still, some of the protests were heard: in the 1970's, the government began easing the racial restrictions. Because the ANC found the pace too slow, though, it instigated violent protests. The reaction by the government and by white extremists led to violence throughout the country. Even after P.W. Botha's government took over, with the ostensible goal of ending apartheid, the ANC insisted that the pace was still too slow (Sanctions against South Africa). Desmond Tutu, an Anglican bishop, emerged as an influential figure in bringing international pressure to bear on the South African government. He asked Western countries to boycott South Africa economically, and while American President Ronald Reagan opposed formal sanctions and wanted to try informal channels instead, he was overridden by the American Congress, which decided in 1986 to stop importing South African goods and ban American businesses from investing in South Africa. The specific economic sanctions included a ban on importing South African currency, including gold krugerrands; importing weapons or military items; exporting computer technology of any kind to South Africa; lending money to the South African government; conducting flights between the United States and South Africa; trading nuclear technology; importing uranium and coal; investing in South Africa at all (Sanctions against South Africa). The sanctions went further than a simple boycott, however - part of the legislation was designed to assist black South Africans in coming to the United States, receiving leadership training, and returning to their native country to take part in the post-apartheid government. Within four years of the sanctions, Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison after twenty-seven years, and the South African government got rid of most of the laws of apartheid, which was finally abolished for good in 1992. When this finally happened, President Bush lifted the American sanctions against South Africa. There is a variety of opinion as to the particular effect that these sanctions had on the pace of reform in South Africa. Some would argue that the sanctions were the turning point, and that the force of world opinion and economic sanctions forced the South Africans' hand (Sanctions against South Africa). Others view the American sanctions as an important step but not really influential in forcing the government to change (South Africa). Another regional conflict that has raged over the past few decades has been the question of how Ireland should be governed. The dispute over Ireland goes back much further in time, back to 1609, when the United Kingdom established a colony of Scottish and English Protestants in Ulster, in northern Ireland. Ireland had remained staunchly Catholic after England's King Henry VIII had split from Rome, establishing the Church of England to facilitate the speed of his divorces. It did not take long for conflict to break out between the Irish Catholics and the colonists - there were two bloody wars between the two groups in the first century of this arrangement, one from 1641-1653, and one from 1689-1691 ("The Troubles"). In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, the struggles between the Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Catholics in the Republic of Ireland erupted into bloody warfare that took years and rounds of settlement talks to defuse. In 1969, the Provisional Irish Republican Army began a campaign that was designed to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and create one Republic of Ireland that covered the whole island. Northern Ireland was governed by the British, while the rest of Ireland was not. Northern Ireland was not only populated by Protestants, however; there were Catholics living inside Northern Ireland, called nationalists, who wanted the place where they lived united with the rest of Catholic Ireland. And so part of the struggle had to do with the way that the unionists (those in Northern Ireland who wanted to remain united with Great Britain) treated the nationalist minority. When the Provisional IRA rose up, the unionists in Ulster felt that the British government did not provide sufficient protection, and so some of the more extreme unionists formed their own paramilitary organizations to ward off the nationalist threat. While the official British position was that their security forces, which did later become involved in the conflicts, were neutral in the situation, the nationalists saw them as helping the Ulster Unionists, while the unionists saw them as selling them out. Between 1968 and 2001, 3,523 people died as a result of these conflicts. The majority of these deaths (1,855) were civilians caught in bombing attacks or crossfire between the paramilitary groups ("The Troubles"). As one might expect, the process of negotiating peace in this conflict was protracted and complex. In 1993, after twenty-five years of virtually uninterrupted conflict, a series of negotiations that had been going on since the late 1980's between John Hume of the SDLP in Northern Ireland and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein. The resulting Downing Street Declaration was issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds. The key points of this declaration reiterated British neutrality in the question of Northern Ireland, as to whether it should remain British or join the Republic of Ireland; expressed the British desire that the citizens of Northern Ireland should freely decide whether or not to remain in Great Britain; expressed the Irish recognition that a majority of those in Northern Ireland would have to vote to join the Republic of Ireland ("Northern Ireland peace process"). The Downing Street Declaration did not successfully quell the violence, however. Because the majority of the people in Northern Ireland wanted to remain part of Great Britain, the nationalists did not get what they wanted: a united Republic of Ireland. Because of this, the IRA and other nationalist groups continued their violence, and the struggles continued. The American government offered to mediate negotiations that ended in 1998, with Senator George Mitchell as the Chairman of the negotiating sessions. Behind the scenes, American President Bill Clinton was also making calls to the various party leaders, moving all of them towards a peaceful solution. And so on April 10, 1998, what became known as the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Among other provisions, this agreement provided for the release of all related prisoners, the withdrawal of paramilitary and British troops, setting up a referendum for Irish reunification, and establishing programs for helping the two cultures in Northern Ireland coexist ("Belfast Agreement"). While this agreement still did not result in a final peace for the two parties, the IRA would eventually give up its armed campaign for good on July 28, 2005, when it promised a final decommissioning of all of its weaponry. Even in their final statement, they expressed a desire for a unified Ireland - showing that their initial aim had not died. One could definitely question the effectiveness of the American intervention in the negotiation process. The actions of Senator Mitchell and President Clinton may well have brought about a swifter ending to one phase of the conflict, resulting in the Good Friday Agreement. However, the conflict merely erupted again, not to end for seven more years. Human nature being what it is, the combatants did not want to put down their arms until it was patently proven that they could not win. So it was when the ancient cavemen fought, so it was in the epic wars of the Greeks, and so it will be, as long as there are people on the earth, interacting with one another. Works Cited Bailey, Thomas A. and Kennedy, David M. (1987). The American Pageant. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company. "Belfast Agreement." Wikipedia. Accessed 28 November 2006 online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_Agreement. "Northern Ireland Peace Process." Wikipedia. Accessed 28 November 2006 online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_peace_process. Sanctions against South Africa (1986). (1994). Accessed 28 November 2006 online at http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/56.htm "South Africa." Encarta. Accessed 28 November 2006 online at http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761557321_12/South_Africa.html "The Troubles." Wikipedia. Accessed 28 November 2006 online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles Read More