Pierre Hazan: "Negotiating with the Devil: Inside the World of Armed Conflict Mediation"

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- Good afternoon, everybody.

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Thanks for joining us.

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I'm very happy that Pierre Hazan could make it from Geneva

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to join us for the presentation of his new book.

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My name is Gilad Binon.

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People know me here, I'm part of GEZE.

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Steffi Maron, director of GEZE.

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We've been cooperating for many years.

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Pierre was here, I think, 10 years ago.

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But I'll briefly introduce Pierre.

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- Journalist, doctorate from Geneva

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and Harvard Law School, senior fellow

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at the United States Institute for Peace.

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Then director of policy for the United Nations

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High Commission for Human Rights.

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And for many years now, a strategic advisor

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for the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue,

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which for people who know mediation

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is pretty much the most important

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private diplomacy organization in the world.

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Pierre was also a member

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of the Commission on Peace in the Basque,

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which resolved the Basque conflict in Spain,

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and has written many books on the topics

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of transitional justice, wars in Yugoslavia.

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And now more broadly about negotiation.

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In terms of what we're going to try and do today

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is we will begin with a presentation by Pierre.

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And I'd like to ask him to give us a few minutes

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of the book coming from his own experiences,

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both before he became part of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue

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and especially when he began to reflect on the book

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as presidential fellow at the Robert Bosch Stiftung

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here in Germany, in Berlin.

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Then we will go over to a comment by Dr. Steffi Marum.

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I have a few questions afterwards,

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and then we will open the floor for your questions.

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So thanks for coming.

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Pierre.

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- Okay, thank you, Gilad.

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Well, thank you for having me,

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and I'm very much looking forward

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to the conversation we are going to have.

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What Gilad has said is exactly that.

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I'm more a practitioner than an academic.

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And nevertheless, I try to reflect a bit

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about my experiences and to broaden it a bit.

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So I work in mediation.

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And I was struck by the fact

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that we don't reflect much about our own trades.

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And so it started by a very personal experience

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in which, as a result of a mediation,

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which was very confidential,

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I was part of a group of humanitarian actors who had,

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to select people who might be free

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from a terrible detention camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

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and some who will stay in the camp

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and might die as a result.

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And that was a very moral troubling experience.

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And that makes me think about choices,

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moral choices in extreme situations.

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And then I joined this organization of mediation

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in non-conflict.

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And sometimes also I've seen very, very difficult dilemmas.

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And I start to think about trade-offs.

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Basically, when you think about Gaza,

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when you think about Sudan,

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when you think about Ukraine, there are trade-offs.

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You are, people are looking for compromise.

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You heard about the grain deal.

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In between Ukraine and Gaza.

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- Russia.

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- In America and Russia, thank you.

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In Gaza, we have been very still a mediation process,

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not very successful, but there was not long ago,

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a limited agreement to free some hostages against a ceasefire.

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So there are still mediation happening.

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But what are the limits of these trade-offs?

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And when you said trade-offs,

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we mean that they will be winners,

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but they might be losers.

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And how is the peace economy working?

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What is the price for peace?

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Or what is the price for an agreement?

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And I tried to think about it, didn't find much.

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Because very often, most of the deals or most of the peace,

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agreements are pretty confidential.

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But as I was working in this organization,

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I asked a lot of people around me and my own experiences.

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And that's why I started this process about the price for peace.

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Who is paying it?

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And I discovered that sometimes it's the majority of the people.

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It's women who are paying the price for peace.

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Sometimes it's minorities.

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Sometimes it's third parties.

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But also, I realized that in order to approach this subject,

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I need to have some understanding of the mediation field,

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how since the end of the Cold War, it has evolved.

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Who has the right to sit at the table?

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Who is invited to sit at the table?

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And I realized that the answer has changed throughout time.

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In the last 30 years or so, the answer has changed dramatically.

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So there is for me a first period, which is the '90s.

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You know, the '90s is this unilateral movement,

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the American, the sole superpower.

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And it's, the UN is playing such an important role.

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There is the best seller of the time is

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the end of history, and it's not so far away from today.

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And there is the liberal peace paradigm,

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which is so important that through markets and elections,

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basically, and democracy, the world will be much better.

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And then in the same time, during these periods,

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new rules were elaborated regarding justice.

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And some of you may remember that after the war in former Yugoslavia,

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there was the establishment for the first time ever

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of an international criminal tribunal during wartime,

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which is something very unheard of in 1993.

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And the following year in 1994, it was Rwanda, 1998,

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is the Rome statue.

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And which basically say that you cannot discuss anymore

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with war criminals.

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Criminals needs to be behind doors.

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They cannot be invited for negotiation,

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for discussion, for mediation.

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And the UN, obviously, if it wants to achieve its goal,

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cannot discuss with these people.

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And that created immediately a huge gap.

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A huge tension.

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Because on the one hand, you want to discuss

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with the ones who are considered the very bad guys.

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And on the other hand, you are saying,

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well, we cannot discuss with them.

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So we had, in the middle of the '90s,

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this tension of peace versus justice.

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And we know what happened in the '90s.

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We had, well, a lot of...

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So the rules started to change.

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It was impossible to have so-called war criminals

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at the table, but also amnesty laws were being redefined

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much more than no more blanket amnesties.

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Immunity was also totally redefined.

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So justice was taking a huge place.

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And at the same time, mediators had the difficulty

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they want to discuss.

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So how do you do that?

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And obviously, there was Bastia Zagrebina,

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and at one point, it was decided...

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I mean, the prosecutors indicted Karadzic and Mladic,

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the leaders of Bastia Zagrebina, but not Milosevic,

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because they wanted Milosevic at the table of negotiations.

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So you see this tension.

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And this tension continued to build up,

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obviously, during that period.

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But then the second period started with 9/11.

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After the 9/11, there is the resolution 137,

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1373 of the Security Council,

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which basically stated it's forbidden to speak

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with so-called terrorist organizations.

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And the UN started to make lists of terrorist organizations.

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And the US had already a list.

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The EU started the list.

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Britain started the list.

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And not a lot of autocratic countries,

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but very, very happy, because they could enjoy and say,

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well, there are proscribed groups,

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there are terrorist organizations.

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We don't want to talk with them anymore.

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Sometimes it was legitimate organizations.

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But from that perspective, they could say, well,

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there are terrorist organizations.

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And that created a new problem, because suddenly--

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because in the heads, in the beginning, after 2001,

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there was the feeling of the ambition of the Americans,

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and possibly the Russians, to eliminate so-called terrorist

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organizations.

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But it didn't work.

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So what do you do?

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The system was blocked, was not working.

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And the solution of this contradiction, basically,

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came through private organizations of mediation,

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which started to fill a gap in international systems.

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And this-- and I'm working for one of these organizations,

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which were created at the time.

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The Center for Humanity and Dialogue

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was created in 2000, basically.

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The CMI, which is another organization, the same.

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So suddenly, there was a gap in international relations,

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needed to talk with the people it was forbidden to talk to.

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But in the same time, states could say, well, we are not

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going to do this, or we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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And so, in the end, we are not going to do this.

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We have the first layer, which is still operating, the whole, basically, the peace versus justice dilemma.

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Then you add the second layer, which is the war on terror and all the problems it has created in terms of effective mediation.

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And then we had possibly a third period, which started for me around Libya and Syria, around 2011 and 2012,

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when the world started to be less unipolar and more multipolar.

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And you have a lot of different players starting to play into the game, regional powers like Turkey, like Brazil, like South Africa, like China, obviously.

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And that changes radically the political landscape, and the game became much more sophisticated.

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We have different alliances, and sometimes very, how can I say, brief alliances, according to the needs of the moment, which could be shifting.

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And then, now, there is a new phenomenon in this multipolar world,

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which is the return to interstate conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

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Between Russia and Ukraine, I mean, the full-fledged, not like 2014, or Iran and Israel.

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So, there is a new landscape.

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So, that's created, that's basically, for me, the landscape where I started to think about difficult issues,

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how mediators are working in these difficult issues.

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And what I saw in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also from a very different perspective, happened in Syria.

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And we can also make the case for Gaza, is, at what time do we decide that it's best to help the process of ethnic cleansing?

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In Bosnia and Herzegovina, what I've seen is UN, UNHCR, ICRC,

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in particular, had a real dilemma.

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What do you do?

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I mean, basically, a lot of people were threatened to be killed,

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if they don't accept to be ethnically cleansed.

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And in order to soften this process, the UN, at one point, and the ICRC, decided to help.

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But by helping that, you become almost accomplice of a process of cleansing.

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And in order to soften this process, the UN, at one point, and the ICRC, decided to help.

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But by helping that, you become almost accomplice of a process of cleansing.

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And in order to soften this process, the UN, at one point, and the ICRC, decided to help.

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But by helping that, you become almost accomplice of a process of cleansing.

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But by helping that, you become almost accomplice of a process of cleansing.

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But by helping that, you become almost accomplice of a process of cleansing.

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forced deportation of people, which is a war crime. So are you becoming an accomplice of a war crime

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in order to save the life of people? Maybe you are doing so for very good reasons, but you see

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that type of tension. In Syria, the context was different. Cities were besieged and bombed,

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and starved. And what do you do when there are some kind of agreements and you help the population

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to move from one city which has been besieged to another city, which at one point will be also

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besieged? Are you still moving the people to a third city and so on and on? And sometimes it's

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what happens. So mediation organisations had to deal with this issue and to decide to which extent

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they wanted to end the war. And that is what happened. So mediation organisations had to deal

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with this issue and to decide to which extent they wanted to end the war. And that is what happened.

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So mediation organisations had to deal with this issue and to decide to which extent they wanted

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to end the war. And that is what happened. So mediation organisations had to deal with this issue

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and to decide to which extent they wanted to end the war. And that is what happened. So mediation organisations

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alleviate the suffering of the population, but in doing so it has consequences. And you can also

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ask, even if it's not very popular and even provocative, to ask this question about Gaza.

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You can ask the people, you can ask why the Egyptians are not opening the border in order

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to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians. Of course it will facilitate the work of Netanyahu,

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I agree, but what is best from a humanitarian perspective? So you see how difficult it is.

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I'm not saying, I'm not coming with a Mathematica formula, I just want to put on the table the

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difficulties. And then, and I mentioned it earlier, the peace versus justice. There is, you know,

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Bosnia-Herzegovina, 120 000 people who were killed during these terrible years, and then we have a

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peace deal. Great!

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But let's look more for a second to this peace deal.

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Basically the peace deal is based on dividing the power between the three nationalist political

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parties. So basically you are giving the power to these nationalists. And in the same time,

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the most, the more

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democratic elements are being marginalized. And contrary to the European Court of Human Rights,

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Rome, people, and Jews couldn't become president, obviously, because it has to be a nationalist

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party belonging to one of the three main groups. So you see the limitations, again,

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maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:24

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

17:25

So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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So you see the limitations, again, maybe for very good reasons, but it has consequences. And maybe it's not a real peace, it has been a frozen peace.

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a frozen war, and it still is a frozen war. But maybe it's better to have a frozen war than a

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real peace. Again, we can discuss that, but for the time being, I just want to open the discussion.

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Third situation, peace versus human rights, peace versus women's rights, Afghanistan.

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You know, the Americans say they have to protect women, but at one point they wanted to make a deal

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and to withdraw. In order to withdraw, they have to weaken the Afghan government, and they have to

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weaken the women's associations in order to re-legitimize the Talibans, in order to make a deal

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with them. So that was the price for peace. And again,

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let's look at

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what we can do. I have been working in the Sahel region, there have been a number of peace agreements,

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local peace agreements, not big agreements. But here again, women's rights became, as a result,

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very, very limited. What were the other choices? We can discuss, but again,

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so sometimes you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you

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have a peace agreement, you can find yourself in a very difficult situation also. When you are not sure that one party is seriously engaged in a peace process, it could be a trick. It could be a PR exercise. And possibly sometimes, like it happened in Sri Lanka, one of the army was pretending to negotiate. In fact, it was preparing a massive military attack, which destroyed the tigers and killed 30,000 people.

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So again, at one point the mediators should say enough is enough.

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I shouldn't continue to give legitimacy to a process which is not a real process.

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And then there is what we can call the devil's dividend.

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When one party can ask the mediator to put someone else on the discussions,

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we can think about Navalny, who suddenly became part of an exchange process between different people.

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And Putin didn't like the idea, and Navalny was taken basically out of the equation.

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And...

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so that makes you think a lot, and sometimes peace could be also hurting a third party.

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We can think about the Abraham Accords from the Israeli perspective, it was

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obviously trying to hurt the Palestinian side and also weaken Iran in an alliance with Saudi Arabia

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against Iran. You see that all of these questions are... well, draw my attention

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and I think that it was, for me, necessary to try to reflect.

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So I don't know if I need to continue, I could, or... I don't want to depress you also,

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I mean, let's be very clear about that. I have some very good news also,

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but I keep them for the end in order for you to be happy when you leave.

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Thank you for that, Pierre. Dr. Steffi Mauro.

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That's a very good transition to what I was about to say.

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So it was... I had the pleasure to read the book, and what I will try to do is to, on the one hand,

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reflect a little bit on how I read it and what I took out from it. Maybe that corresponds to

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what you wanted to say, maybe not, we can discuss this. And then I have three directions that we

21:33

could go in for the discussion, maybe. But indeed, the book starts very gloomy. So if you are not in

21:39

a good mood, you should read it. If you are not in a good mood, you should read it. If you are not

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in a good mood, you shouldn't start reading, although it's a very pleasant read because you

21:44

quickly then develop a complexity that is also inspiring. But the gloomy situation you just

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described, and I will put this maybe a little more in a sharper way, maybe a little bit

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polemicizing, describing a multipolar world that is a world after the Pax Americana, so the

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American hegemony has collapsed. There are more and more state and non-state actors who do not

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obey any longer the laws of war. We have an impotent UN, and the relative stability of the

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Cold War is gone. What has been replaced, or it has been replaced by a new pragmatism

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that replaces a system of norms that we thought is a stable one. We have a new arms race,

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and we have a new geopolitical competition. All this in the context of new global challenges such

22:46

as the climate crisis that also redefines the rules of conflict and the rules of mediation. So

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it's a multi-crisis. It's a complete mess. And the book sets out to, in the first part, then to indeed

23:00

draft a larger historical narrative about the last three decades exactly around the caesuras that Pierre already sketched, and to

23:09

see how we ended up at this very moment. And these three major periods or three major caesuras,

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and maybe kind of sharpen this a little bit more. You put it in very polite ways,

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but let me put this a little bit more, you know, it's late in the evening way. So the 1990s,

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the end of the Cold War has ended. The Soviet Union has collapsed. The end of history is there. This

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gives rise to a new morality in international politics and an enthusiasm about the peace

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dividend. So a world that is now stable again, guaranteed by the hegemon of the USA. And these

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decades already in the 1980s saw humanitarian intervention as a new tool in international

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relations. Some of you might remember Mary Calder's book on that as well. So this seems to be now a new way of how to deal with

24:08

international conflicts. And this rise of humanitarian intervention is complemented also by a golden age of mediation. And Pierre

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writes that mediation became the major ideological marker of the values vaunted by the new international order. Liberalism was the

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ultimate goal for societies. So it is in the context of a liberal world order after the end of the Cold War that gives rise to this peculiar way of mediation. And this period

24:38

sees the introduction of a new figure of the devil. So the devil changes the face in this narrative here. But it steps up here first as the war criminal,

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a criminal as the enemy. This is a legal and discursive framing of certain actors in those conflicts that is introduced. And that is an instrument

24:59

of moving certain actors out of the equation, away from the negotiation table. But it's not only the introduction

25:08

of this war criminal figure in these negotiations, but it's also what Pierre describes, an increasing politicization of international criminal justice and also

25:18

the reference to human rights that then poses a new challenge to mediation. Because it's not only that humanitarian intervention or the

25:27

criminalization of certain war practices is introduced, but it's also tied to certain political projects. And this gives rise to what Pierre describes

25:38

as a judicial diplomacy. And in another part of the section of the book, you refer to it as judicial neo-imperialism. So it is becoming also politically contested.

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That period of the 1990s, this golden age of mediation then becomes or turns into cold turkey for mediators, one could say, after 9/11 and after the onset of the war on terror.

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So these events from New York to Madrid, London, Paris, Berlin, Nice, you name it, has dramatically reframed the way how state actors and major important international actors

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look at mediation and at the laws of war. And they were reframing actors in conflicts as terrorists, again, as an instrument of moving some actors away from the

26:37

negotiation table, but in more radical terms, actually, then simply as criminalizing them, but really muting their voices.

26:47

This also has introduced new warms in warfare and procedures to end wars. I would add, it also has added the extraterritorialization of the enemy's persecution with Guantanamo, for example, so it is complemented by the establishment of extra-normative

27:07

spaces in which, for example, torture would be tolerated, while it would not be tolerated within democracies.

27:15

And in this context, the room for mediation almost collapsed. You refer to those shifting and variable lists of whom you are allowed to talk to and who not, but it's not only that these lists of terrorist organization is volatile, but connected to it is also the role of mediators who then become, so to say, second

27:37

ranked terrorist organizations, so to say, if they are talking to terrorists. And it would be interesting to look into who is defining these lists and who is able to implement them.

27:50

But this has dramatically complicated the work of mediators in this multipolar world. At the end of the 2000s, this then gives room to an increasingly multipolar world in which new actors, also state actors, emerge as players,

28:07

in the geopolitical game, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. But they do not only emerge as regional or global powers, but they also emerge as potential mediators.

28:22

So they complicate much more the landscape of what are the norms actually to which we need to adhere. So it is, in this regard, a multipolar world, not only in the sense that there are new state actors emerging,

28:37

but it's also multipolar in the sense that there are new types of actors beyond the territorialized nation-states governments emerge.

28:46

One could say this is an effect of the re-spatialization of the world. It's also re-spatializing war and peace in that regard, in the sense of what kind of actors are allowed to sit at the negotiation table.

29:01

And this complication, Pierre has described, gives room to new kinds of actors.

29:06

And this complication, Pierre has described, gives room to new kinds of entrepreneurs, of a new kind of business, I would say polemically, namely a private mediation agency.

29:14

And so it gives rise to a private diplomacy, as Pierre frames it, which is very interesting, I think, to look at, as Pierre explained.

29:23

It seems to close a gap or a fracture, jumps into a fracture in the international system.

29:29

The 2000s then lead into the 2010s.

29:36

This is a period that radicalizes this multipolarity and radicalizes the demise of Western hegemony that again redefines the space for mediation

29:46

and also redefines the types of mediators and their resources and competences.

29:52

It is characterized by also deregulation of warfare, increasingly complemented as an effect of the crisis of the UN.

30:00

And Pierre leads us through the 2000s into the present moment from Iraq to Kosovo,

30:06

Syria, Syria, you name it, where we then also end in Russia, Ukraine and Gaza.

30:16

The NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 also appears a very crucial moment as a caesura in the transition from this 2000s war on terror order

30:25

into this multipolar deregulated order, as it has delegitimized certain normative claims on the R2P principle,

30:36

so some participants of these negotiations, Russia in particular, has collapsed the Western liberal normative order in many respects.

30:46

So this gloomy narrative in the first part is then complemented in the second part by this zooming into specific grey zones,

30:55

grey areas as Pierre calls them, to more closely look into exactly the complexities and ambiguities of what mediators find themselves in.

31:06

The first part is about the international committee of the Red Cross at the end of the Second World War

31:11

and how it dealt with the persecution and the annihilation of Jews,

31:17

struggling to define or redefine neutrality in the face of genocide.

31:22

The second case or a bunch of cases he looks at is Kosovo and Srebrenica

31:29

and how the UN redefined neutrality in the face of genocide.

31:33

And then finally with Syria and the Sahel.

31:35

So this is the Sahel region looking into the moral dilemmas that result from this tension between the goal to protect civilians

31:45

and the restrictions to negotiate with actors that are excluded from the equation because they are labelled as terrorists.

31:53

So this part is extremely inspiring as it, on the one hand, discusses the complexity of neutrality and impartiality, which Pierre differentiates,

32:05

but on the other hand, situates these concepts in their historical context.

32:08

So what the book really is very strong in is that it goes beyond a neutralizing language of the lawyer,

32:17

but rather situates these terms very carefully in the historical concepts.

32:22

It also looks into the ambiguities of the mediator's role,

32:29

not having this mathematical formula at hand, but having to carefully revisit

32:35

their positions to observe when and how they are instrumentalized by conflicting parties

32:42

and to make a decision when it's okay to be instrumentalized and when not.

32:47

So very carefully drawing attention to timing and context in that regard,

32:52

but also drawing attention to the limitations of mediators.

32:57

So it also invites here a lot for humility, I would say, being cautious about generalizations

33:05

and accepting the fragmentation of the present.

33:10

So in that regard, I think that the book provides, I would say, four main arguments to discuss.

33:19

Firstly, that is that these transitions from the end of the Cold War into today are crucial,

33:26

and both the very much celebrated introduction of international criminal justice in the 1990s

33:35

and the war on terror have been counterproductive and have in many ways contributed to the present problem.

33:44

Secondly, the exclusion of certain actors from the negotiation table,

33:52

either by framing them as war criminals or as terrorists,

33:57

has radicalized and escalated many conflicts and reduced the scope for negotiation.

34:04

Thirdly, in this multipolar world with new global challenges that Pierre characterizes,

34:10

it is ever more important to pay attention, and everybody who does global and European studies will rejoice on that,

34:17

it is important to pay attention to the interaction intermingling between local and regional contexts and global contexts.

34:25

So you cannot be an expert only on one place or country and that's it,

34:30

but rather you have to be very much open and ready

34:34

to consider other connections.

34:38

And finally, we need in this novel world the search for a new moral compass

34:44

that is not easily replaced by another set of norms,

34:47

but rather by a new way of deliberating with each other.

34:53

Maybe questions or comments or points for discussion I would throw on the table here is,

35:00

while you might have noticed that I was very much inspired

35:04

by the nature of reading the book and I learned a lot,

35:07

the first comment comes as an historian of the Cold War

35:12

to think about how the transition that you describe of the last three decades

35:18

has a prehistory in the Cold War decades

35:22

and in which way maybe these one or two decades of the 80s and 90s

35:27

maybe are very, very specific and rather the exception from the rule than a new normality.

35:34

So when I look into the 60s and 70s and the wars around decolonization

35:42

and how liberation movements tried to find their place at the negotiation table,

35:47

we also saw a multiplication of the types of actors that were involved in these negotiations.

35:53

International organizations were quite crucial to give them the room

35:56

to become these kind of actors such as UNESCO,

35:59

but also the ICRC was very important, so I was wondering in how far

36:04

this multiplicity of the types of actors is actually something

36:08

which is quite normal in broader global history processes

36:12

and while the 1990s are rather than here an exception to the rule.

36:17

Also with a historical perspective, I was wondering if, again,

36:26

this Western hegemony that you described for the 1990s also is very exceptional,

36:30

particularly when you look at the 20th century, because for the 20th century

36:33

after, you know, the Russian revolution, there was this big competitor in town,

36:38

which indeed also resulted in the contestation of liberal norms of the international game,

36:46

and I'm just wondering how you would reflect on this mode of competition

36:51

and which way you would see this different to today's mode of competition.

36:55

A second, you know, thought I had leads me into the direction of

37:03

thinking about the role of the mediator.

37:06

I was really fascinated in how you reflect on your own experiences,

37:09

how you became a mediator from being a journalist

37:12

and how you reflected on the different roles people have at the negotiation table

37:17

from observer to mediator to humanitarian worker to combatant, etc.,

37:25

and how important that is that we understand those different roles.

37:30

But I also was wondering how...

37:33

what it takes to become a good mediator,

37:36

what kind of professionalization you see as crucial.

37:42

You hint at these moments in your book at certain times

37:47

and also on the institutional context it takes,

37:50

and I was just wondering, also with an eye on the global and European studies crowd here,

37:55

what does it take to become a good mediator?

37:59

And finally, and that gives you the moment to...

38:03

give us a bit hope,

38:06

what are the perspectives for the future?

38:08

So you start with this gloomy picture,

38:10

but I would argue you actually end on a quite positive note,

38:14

because in the last chapter you very nicely describe

38:17

how important the negotiation of local agreements is,

38:22

going beyond universalizing big normative schemes,

38:28

and how much potential there is,

38:31

particularly when you look at the Sahel,

38:33

but also you look into a number of challenges medias are now faced with

38:39

beyond the multipolar world,

38:41

but also the question of alternative facts,

38:45

questioning truths that indeed is a bigger problem,

38:49

also for mediators.

38:51

But there is this hint towards this private diplomacy,

38:57

which seems to be a way,

38:59

or could be maybe also understood as a way to re-stabilize

39:02

the situation.

39:04

So asking for this hope,

39:06

I would close my comments.

39:08

Thank you so much, Steffi.

39:10

Pierre.

39:11

Well really, thank you so much for your very attentive reading.

39:17

And very often,

39:21

I mean a few times I've been offered to explain myself

39:24

about my attitude towards international justice.

39:28

And because you say the word and I would like to come back

39:32

to it.

39:34

Well, I think the concept of international criminal justice

39:39

is beautiful.

39:41

I'm very skeptical to have international criminal justice

39:45

in a time of war.

39:49

Okay, here I will,

39:53

I mean what is really interesting,

39:55

if you go back to history,

39:56

and I think it's interesting to go back to history.

39:58

In, okay, the resolution of the Constitution,

40:02

the resolution 808 and 807,

40:04

which established the ICTY,

40:07

International Tribunal for Yugoslavia,

40:10

was the product of the French,

40:14

and in particular by Roland Dumas.

40:17

And I met this Minister of Foreign Affairs,

40:21

and I say, well,

40:23

you are the man who started a revolution

40:28

of international relations.

40:31

It's not only a legal revolution that you created,

40:34

but really a revolution in international relations.

40:38

You go with the resolution 808,

40:40

it's adopted,

40:42

first ever tribunal to indict war criminals in wartime,

40:47

then Rwanda, then ICC,

40:50

becoming really global justice and all of that.

40:53

And he looked at me and I say,

40:56

well, it's not exactly that.

40:58

I had a problem.

41:00

And my problem is Mitterrand,

41:03

who was the president, and myself,

41:05

were perceived as being pro-Serbian.

41:10

And I was afraid one day to be accused,

41:14

like in a future Nuremberg trial,

41:17

to be on the dock.

41:19

And I say, no, I needed a shield.

41:22

And when the Justice Minister, Robert Badinter,

41:26

came to see me with his candid ID,

41:29

he said, no, I don't believe you.

41:31

And I said, no, I don't believe you.

41:33