Dr. Jean Meyer Global Citizenship Award: The Leadership Challenges of Public and Private Diplomacy in Resoving Conflicts

Boston, 22 September 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The international community is starting to realize that conflict resolution requires a multidimensional approach. In a world where protracted conflicts are numerous, the traditional means of diplomacy are not always enough. How, when and with whom do we engage in conflict resolution processes is something that needs to be thought through when developing mediation from an art to a practice and a profession. Mediation as a tool is greatly needed in our world as we again see how dangerous it is to embark on the path of conflict.

As we all know, a huge majority of conflicts in the current world are internal conflicts with ethnic, religious, economic and many other dimensions. We have seen this perhaps most clearly in the case of Sri Lanka and recently in Georgia. In Sri Lanka the violence continues on a daily basis as the rest of the world quietly looks the other way. On the other hand, the conflict in Georgia is in the spotlights and set to be long-lasting as so many foreign countries have interests set on it.

When talking about peace mediation of internal conflicts, it is evident that the very principle of sovereignty is at stake. Governments of war-torn societies are often reluctant to “internationalize” their internal disputes and conflicts. This means, for example, that involvement of the United Nations in conflict resolution or crisis management in the case of these internal conflicts is being considered cautiously and critically by the governments.

When resolving and preventing conflicts, a conventional, purely state-centric approach might not be an option in many cases. Sometimes we have to be ready to challenge our conventional way of doing business. Non-governmental actors can play a pivotal role as facilitators or mediators of a peace process. I’ve been asked many times how should mediation be pursued; what are the methodologies and techniques that are needed. I believe there is no precise answer; however I see mediation more of an ‘art’ rather than an established practice. The reason for this might lie partly in the immense complexity in brokering international conflicts. Indeed, the diversity of mediation has become so expanded that it is often difficult to create the boundaries between leadership, diplomacy or foreign policy.

Increasingly, actors in multidimensional peace-building efforts have come to recognize that the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs. Indeed, tackling the challenges of cooperation is now widely viewed as an operational imperative. The lessons learned for mission success over the 15 years of intrusive stabilization and post-conflict capacity-building operations, whether they were conducted by the United Nations, OSCE or coalitions of the willing, all point to the centrality of effective coordination between international actors and the local society. Moreover, while security/state-building tasks are often initiated in the context of international peace operations, they require long-term commitment. Development actors, including a subset of specialist security/peace-building NGOs, have demonstrated experience in post-conflict state-building and have, in practice, been at the forefront of doctrinal developments in areas such as community policing, rule of law, Security Sector Reform and dimensions of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration.

The main source of frustration for the international community is its inability to credibly and accurately predict and rapidly respond to conflicts that threaten to turn violent. This is due both to the complex dynamics of internal, ethnic and communal conflicts and to the reluctance of many States to take steps that involve risks and costs. I am equally concerned about the large number conflicts that the international community has not been able to solve. The international community should never accept the fact that some conflicts remain unresolved. Each conflict is to be seen as a vital challenge requiring an immediate attention from the international community.

Conflict in the Middle East, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Burma / Myanmar, Darfur and Somalia are affecting the credibility of the international community. These conflicts have led to widespread devastation and regional instabilities, as well as large numbers of refugees. The international community remains unable to prevent the outbreak of war and the scope of action of many organizations is confined to limiting the negative effects of violence. We all know that solving these conflicts is central. Ultimately the inability of the international community to solve these conflicts can be explained by the lack of political will and sustained leadership.



The essence of peacemaking is to create an environment in which negotiations to resolve a conflict can begin. It is important to recognise that peacemaking can only take place when there is a genuine desire to avoid further violence among all parties of a dispute. Political negotiations alone will not resolve conflicts. Effective peacemaking often requires co-ordination with peacekeeping forces and international organisations involved in peace building programmes. The pursuit of a peaceful settlement should be a long-term strategic commitment.

My experience is that a combined effort of different actors in different tracks often yields the best results. A good conflict resolution strategy has to be multileveled and needs to include the official process of mediation; the possible quasi official processes promoted by unofficial groups; public peace processes aiming at sustained dialogue; and the various activities of civil society. At its best, a multi-track conflict resolution strategy gains entry at different stages, opens new avenues for dialogue, creates leverage and shares costs and risks.

It is absolutely vital that the linkages between peacemaking and peace building be tightened and the gaps, which hamper so many recovery processes, be narrowed. Every society recovering from conflict needs a long-term development plan which is closely interlinked to the peace process itself. Even a successful peacemaking phase can fail if it is followed by peace building and state building efforts which have been un-attached from the society and the peace process. A successful state building process aims towards developing a national system that protects, sustains and improves the quality of life within national borders as judged by that country’s citizens. However, there remains a need for greater dialogue and creative thinking on how external partners can support this process.

The United Nations is s till the globally most present ‘peace-making’ body – there is no real alternative. It can gather the combined ‘influence’ and ‘persuasion and pressure’ of a large number of member states. It has also an ability to support and further legitimize engagement of regional actors and organizations.

However, I believe we are all aware of the constraints of the United Nations and of the tendency of the international community to give it demanding assignments without providing adequate resources and political support. For this and other reasons, regional security organisations are vital. Regional arrangements, such as the EU, OSCE and NATO complement and support the UN’s capacity. Furthermore, I think it is extremely important that not only the European or transatlantic regional organisations are active in peace and security co-operation, but also organisations such as the African Union are looking for a more active role in peacekeeping and peace support operations and increasing their capacity to act.



I have always firmly believed in the potential of the European Union in conflict resolution. The EU has played an important, if often unnoticed role in stabilizing regions threatened with insecurity by using the economic, technical and political means available to the European Community. The EU has the biggest single market in the world, the largest aid budgets, tens of thousands of peace-keepers that are active all over the world, and a corps of 50,000 diplomats. It has seen through the process of enlargement that it can make a real difference by showing leadership and abandon its introspection, for a serious engagement with the rest of the world. But this takes unity, courage, vision and greater coherence. I think that there is a real opportunity for Europe to begin shaping global events.

The European Union has the potential to support the conflict resolution activities of the United Nations. The UN is a key actor in conflict resolution and the EU should focus on making it stronger and more effective. Therefore I have followed with great concern how the EU has lost its possibilities to work through and with the UN. The values represented by the EU are continuously being questioned at the UN and it is increasingly difficult for the EU to act in the UN context.

The European Council on Foreign Relations has recently made a study on the voting pattern of the human rights issues within the UN. The starting point of the study is the slow-motion decline Europe is suffering in the United Nations. The problem is not a lack of internal cohesion within the EU. As we all know, Europe has become increasingly coherent in human rights issues since the nadir of the Iraq War. The problem of the EU is that it is losing power to shape the rules of the game in the UN and the rest of the world is increasingly preventing it from realizing its vision of international order.

According to this particular study, the EU needs to become aware of following things shaping the current international scene: Firstly, the EU must adapt to an increasingly hostile environment at the UN and acknowledge the aggressive diplomacy used by some emerging powers and blocks of states. Secondly the EU needs to recognize a number of its former allies in the UN system, including many African and Islamic countries, drifting away from it during the last decade. Thirdly the EU needs to realize that simply keeping the Europeans together is not enough. The EU needs to find new ways of advancing its agenda outside the European countries. Fourthly, the EU should understand the costs of its own double standards and to avoid the image of being ready to preach but unready to address its own weaknesses.

The ECFR study shows the support declining for EU positions in the General Assembly, Human Rights Council and the Security Council. While the EU has lost political credibility alternative poles like Russia and China are emerging to be more attractive. As the EU is now united in over 80 per cent of votes at the General Assembly, the frequency with which other states have voted with us has dropped from 75 per cent ten years ago to just over 50 per cent today. And according to the study, the US is doing even worse. At the same time, China and Russia are supported by other states in 80 per cent of the voting.

The diminishing influence of the EU is all the more surprising taking the fact that the EU states finance a lion’s share of the UN budget and have strong representation in the UN. The EU holds four or five seats on the Security Council at any given time. Despite of this fact, the EU has been forced to water down resolution of peacekeeping in Darfur, sanctions against Iran and to my great regret, a resolution on the status of Kosovo could not be settled in the UN.

I believe that the EU can get support globally only by successful conflict resolution. The same could be said about the US. In order for the EU and US to gain support within the UN we need to do everything possible to solve ongoing conflicts. The international community needs to start learning from the past conflict resolution experiences and the learning curve of the international community needs to include tools to create and to use best practices of successful conflict resolution and peacebuilding. This means for instance including the civil society sector, both international and local, into the learning process.

This is vital also for the UN. We all know that the UN needs to reform in order to really become more efficient. The UN needs to go beyond discussing about the reforms as a value and on a theoretical level and start acting so that it is respected and supporter by its member states. The UN needs to again become the key actor in conflict resolution in the world and the fact that the member states are unable to agree on the reform of the organisation’s structures is seriously hampering its ability to act in conflict resolution.



Let me say a few words about Kosovo. I was appointed as the Special Envoy for the Kosovo status process by the Secretary-General on 14 November 2005. I sent my Settlement proposal, which is the best compromise as I see it to the UN Secretary-General at the end of March 2007. I envisaged that the supervisory role of the international community will come to an end only once Kosovo has implemented the measures set forth in the proposal. The UN Secretary–General endorsed my Settlement proposal and forwarded it to the UN Security Council. Despite intense efforts, the Security Council remained divided and Russia blocked the passing of a new resolution that would de-facto give Kosovo independence. I do find it regrettable that the Security Council could not reach agreement on this issue. In my view, if this body of the UN can not make decisions on important issues, then it is likely that these issues will be resolved somewhere else. If such tendency were to become dominant, the relevance of the Security Council would be diminished which in turn would change the system of international relations as we know it.

What happened with Kosovo proves this point. Almost a year after I initially submitted my proposal, it became clear that the Security Council would not pass a new resolution. Therefore, since everybody, even the Russian Federation, agreed that the status quo in Kosovo was not sustainable, a solution outside of the Security Council needed to be found. The result we all know – many important countries, including the US and the majority of the EU have recognized or committed themselves to recognize Kosovo’s independence. Do I think it is an ideal solution? No, but in the given circumstances, that was the only one that could lead to stability in the Balkans and signal the end of the era that witness one of the worst atrocities committed on European soil in recent times.

Recently we have heard statements that based on the example of Kosovo, Abkhazia and South-Ossetia should also be recognized as independent states, as Russia has done. However, the situation neither in Abkhazia nor in South-Ossetia is similar to Kosovo. For anyone who finds it relevant to make comparisons between Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Kosovo, I strongly recommend to restudy the history. In the current circumstances, the independence of Abkhazia or South-Ossetia would not be a result of a supervised and a legitimate negotiation process like was the case in Kosovo. The independence of Kosovo is vital for the regional security in the Balkans and widely in Europe, which again is not the case for Abkhazia or South-Ossetia. Kosovo is an excellent example how transatlantic cooperation between the United States and the European Union can work at its best.

A study into the legal perspective of the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts done by the Crisis Management Initiative concludes that neither Abkhazia nor South-Ossetia has a valid claim to statehood under international law on the basis of unilateral action. Solution of the conflicts is legally possible only by a negotiated solution. Nevertheless, to the extent that the Abkhaz and South-Ossetians may be held as distinct “peoples”, they enjoy the right of self-determination. An examination of international legal practice in analogous cases shows that self-determination may either be realized through appropriate federative or autonomous arrangements for self-government within Georgia or by other arrangements for minority protection.

It is interesting that also within Russia, there have been powerful voices cautioning the leadership in its actions. A number of prominent Russian foreign policy analysts saw the recognition of the disputed territories coming and warned against it. For example Sergei Karaganov, of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, Russia's equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations, urged the Kremlin to think carefully before recognizing the two secessionist states. The cautious voices also included a highly experienced diplomat and former government minister, Alexei Adamishin. "Russia has every moral right to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia," he wrote in an opinion piece beforehand. But the consequences will be "catastrophic."

These voices reflect the view that while Russia may have won the military confrontation; it might be losing in the diplomatic front. Russia has been able to use the threat of recognition of the break-away republics to its advantage but now it has used that option without gaining much from it.




The European-American-Russian relations have been and remain one of the main factors determining the state of world politics, especially on security issues. And the greatest single common interest and challenge for the EU and the US is the integration of Russia into a cooperative framework. The success or failure in this will have a long lasting impact on transatlantic relations as well. We all want to see a stable, democratic and prosperous Russia that is integrated in global and European cooperative structures. Unfortunately at the moment it seems that we are further from this goal than we have been, maybe since the end of the Cold War.

Some argue that Russia was somehow humiliated in its relations with the West in the 1990’s and now when soaring oil and gas prices have made Russia more powerful, the methods with which Russia is trying to regain its power in the world would somehow be justified by this perceived humiliation. I strongly disagree. Russia has decided to be less cooperative with the West and attack a neighbouring independent country. Unfortunately this is not the way that Russia or any country can became a respected international player. Instead, Russia would need to gain the respect of the world community by focusing to improve Rule of Law, to diversify its economy to create the basis for sustainable growth, and to work with the international community in crisis management and development cooperation.

The EU is Russia's main trading partner and as such of paramount political importance. The European Union has a vital interest for a stable and prosperous Russia close to its borders. Furthermore, Russia is important for EU because of its substantial oil, and especially natural gas reserves. The degradation of EU-Russia relations has made it more difficult to secure political commitment and investment to build additional pipelines from the Caspian Sea to Western Europe in addition to the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The EU leaders have already declared that alternatives for diversification of energy sources will be sought.


I firmly believe that it is the duty of Europe to help in bringing the US back to its core values and both need to work to make the transatlantic relationship a relationship between equal partners. The EU and US need to become the engines in tackling the challenge of resolving conflicts in the world. The transatlantic relationship has taken a downfall during this decade but it can be mended.

Many in Europe are watching the US presidential race with a lot of enthusiasm and believe that a change in the US foreign policy is imminent as both the candidates have distanced themselves from the policies of the current administration. We often fail to see that there has already been a change in the current administration’s approach towards multilaterism, in fact the second term of President Bush has been different in its foreign policy approach than the first.

Especially during the last two years a new culture of transatlantic strategic partnership has emerged. The US has started to recognize the European Union as an actor in security policy, which is a break with the past when the US only discussed security policy within NATO or with individual European states. As this has been one of the US policy “red lines”, the change in attitude is significant.

The US has also acknowledged that the EU has capabilities in civilian crisis management that the US has not yet developed and that are important in for example Afghanistan. Senior members of the administration are calling for those capabilities to be developed. For example Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated in July that “when it comes to America's engagement with the rest of the world, it is important that the military is - and is clearly seen to be - in a supporting role to civilian agencies. He also stated that “the non-military instruments of America's national power need to be rebuilt, modernized and committed to the fight”. Lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan have already prompted the US to start building the civilian capacities through the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.

Interagency co-operation is not only pivotal for relieving the suffering of people affected by a crisis, but also for achieving long lasting results. The European Union and the United States are both key contributors of development assistance and actors in peace operations. Despite the varying strategies and approaches, they have a shared interest to working towards coherence between development assistance, humanitarian aid, conflict prevention and crisis management in order to create conditions for sustainable peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, having lived many years in United States and having cooperated with many administrations, I am very impressed by the vigour of the tough intellectual debate and soul searching that takes place in the United States. That’s one of the things I would like take place in Europe as well. I am also confident that the US is capable of changing its policies whenever it decides to do so, even if it sometimes takes time. I try to follow your internal discussions.

I recently received a study done by James F. Dobbins titled “Nation-Building and Counterinsurgency after Iraq”. He ends his report by saying that “America’s military, national police and intelligence services are already largely fenced off from politicization on the grounds that national security is too important to entrust to amateurs. The nation should seek the same standard of professionalism for the senior civilians who staff the Department of Defense and other national security agencies, including the National Security Council staff. It may have been neoconservative excess that contributed to the current quagmire in Iraq, but well-meaning liberals are capable of the same sort of folly, as David Halberstram documented in “The Best and the Brightest”, his classic study of Vietnam War-era policymaking. Presidents should be surrounded by advisers of their own choice, but they should also be exposed to and able to lean upon professional staff, not insulated from them by layer upon layer of individuals appointed principally for their loyalty and service to a political party.” These should be instructions to all of us on both sides of the Atlantic. In my different missions, I have always tried to get the best possible people to work with me. That is the main reason if I have been successful.

I thank you.