Prof. Bruce R. Hitchner

HIGHLIGHTS:

Any time a war is ended, it must be considered a successful outcome

"[Success or failure] no one of them arguably dominates over the other. There's no question that peace it brought. The war ended as a result of the Dayton Agreement. It stopped. Any time a war is ended, it must be considered a successful outcome, at least in terms of conflict and violence."

Annexes which remain to be implemented

"It's also the case that nobody at Dayton thought that the agreement was finished in terms of its implementation. Much of the Dayton agreement had annexes, which remain to be implemented. And everybody assumed that it would take some years to fully implement because, in a way, the peace agreement was a ceasefire agreement as much as it was a formal end to a conflict."

The implementation process remains fraught

"Many of the things that were put into place, in terms of annexes, were more attempts to find technical, diplomatic, or political solutions to problems that were deeply ideological and deeply emotional. Once that could not necessarily be solved by implementing laws, passing regulations, or carrying out certain activities that the international community had established by Dayton. As a consequence, the implementation process remained fraught - and it remains fraught to this day."

Open question…

"Does Dayton serve as a model, or should we see it as something that can be used elsewhere? That's an open question because every conflict and every issue in the world has a particular set of circumstances for which no one past solution works."

How do you work in that kind of environment?

"The argument that one could say is that, depending upon the circumstances where you do have a nation-state or a region where groups of people are in conflict based on issues of ethnicity and identity are involved, then, in fact, there are aspects of Dayton that make good sense to think about. How do you work in that kind of environment?"

There are aspects of Dayton that are still valuable

"So, one could argue that under a specific set of circumstances involving an internal conflict or conflict within the state, there are aspects of Dayton that I think are still valuable. The project of negotiating Dayton and the implementation process could still be valuable."

A nation-building process following a peace agreement

"What I do think is interesting about Dayton is that it tried to build a state on top of the peace agreement. It tried to build a functioning state, and I think that's the issue that remains."

Stop the war. But what comes next?

"It's one thing to stop the war, but you have to decide what comes afterwards. In that sense, the effort to build it – if you will, we'll call it nation-building for what it is - is still a sine qua non. And Dayton provides a very interesting template for how that was done… In all the negotiations that are going on… Everyone agrees that you need to stop the violence. But they have to know what the future looks like or some idea of it, and Dayton is a very good template for how people start to think about this."

Sometimes, conflicts end because both sides can't keep fighting

"You could argue that, to some degree, part of the reason Dayton occurred wasn't because of these larger events but also because both sides were becoming exhausted. Sometimes conflicts ended because both sides couldn't keep fighting, and that could happen vis-à-vis Ukraine-Russia. So that's another factor that could make another Dayton possible - that, at some point, key conflicts are no longer frozen. There's too much loss of life and too much cost in terms of the economy and the social fabric of a society that it would be possible to conduct a Dayton-style process. Again, it is a nation-building process following a peace agreement."

Ongoing lessons-learned process

"And it's part of the reason, I think, people at the 30th anniversary want to look back - they do believe that there are a host of lessons embedded here that are still to be learned because the process is ongoing."

We are not at the end of history

"Dayton resolved many smaller conflicts, many of that could be resolved on the basis of some larger consensus framework. Maybe it could be over energy issues, maybe the environment, climate change, etc. I don't see that happening right now. I don't see that global framework coming about. So the answer is no. Probably today, Dayton will be caught up in a conflict that is going on between the US/EU and, on the other hand, Russia, China, and Korea, and the other bloc resisting this. I can imagine the conflict in Bosnia being strung out, and the only thing I will say is that we're not at the end of history."

Solutions locked up in tight negotiating boxes

"[today] Almost all the solutions were locked up in what I would call tight negotiating boxes, in which key individuals on one side are talking to certain individuals on the other side within a very tight framework. The objective is to come to a very small set of linked agreements to resolve a problem. My concern with this process is Zeno's paradox, where diplomats tend to put more hope in these very small-scale, intensive, localised negotiation processes. But at the end of the day, depending upon the circumstances, their strength or failure depends on the power that surrounds them - not on the negotiations per se. "

TRANSCRIPT:

• Please explain your connection and expertise with the Dayton Peace Accords.

"I was in Dayton in 1995 when the agreement was signed. I was a professor at the University of Dayton and the director of international programs at the university. At the time, we all watched in our local news and nationally that Dayton had become, if you will, for a moment, the centre of the world where negotiations were occurring at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And I can say that one of the things that happened was that at that point, my wife said, you know, I think it's important, my wife, Becky, that we should do something about what's going on in Dayton. And you're in a position now as director of international programs to attempt to try out, to see if we could make something useful happen that would complement the negotiations and the recent signing of the agreement. And so one of the things that I did right away was contact my old professor at University of Michigan, John Fine, a Balkan specialist. And I asked him, was there things we could do? He gave me a wealth of suggestions and information. I then began to organize with people in the community at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Air Force Association, with the Dayton Council on World Affairs, both of whom were organizations were thinking about doing something, too. And we came together. We formed a partners group. And one of the things we decided to do was to organize a series of events on the first anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Agreement in November 1996. Our object was not simply to show the Dayton Agreement, but to look for ways to help its implementation, to advance its implementation. We also organized, began to organize various communities’ groups in Dayton, the City of Dayton, businesses and so forth, to ask if they wanted to be engaged in this process, human rights organizations, hospitals, schools. And over the course of that year, leading up to November, we began to put together a tremendous community effort that led to the first event at Dayton in November 1996. We brought back many of the signatories involved in the Dayton negotiations. Over the next five years, we did events annually. We also did workshops. We formed an NGO called the Dayton Peace Accords Project. In 2001, when I moved to the Tufts University, partly because Tufts was rather interested in seeing the work that we had done in Dayton continue at Tufts. I became involved in the constitutional reform process with a number of colleagues, Don Hayes at OHR and Paul Williams of the Public International Law Policy Group. All three of us had developed a strong and close relationship with various parts of the community in Bosnia, the political community, with the international community, with the US government and so forth. I became part of the team that over the course of 2005 and early 2006 negotiated the so-called April package of constitutional reforms. I have been involved over the years, right up to this day, in monitoring the situation in Bosnia and the Balkans, writing op-eds, papers, doing interviews, staying engaged, trying to remain one of the few specialists working in this region, which, as we all know, many of the concerns and policy issues that dominated the international community in the 1990s prior to 9.11. focused on the Balkans, are now no longer issues of primary concern. But as we all know, as we get closer to the 30th anniversary, it's clear that there is much to be done vis-a-vis Dayton. Because Dayton has not been fully implemented, the international community is still involved in Bosnia. The progress since the end of the war has been not what we had hoped for. But fortunately, we still have a peace in Bosnia. And I'll say that that's where I would like to stop with my introduction."

• How can we observe the Dayton Negotiations Model: as a legacy of skilful diplomacy that ended a war and kept peace for 29 years or as a blueprint for future conflict resolution?

"First of all, I would say that all three of these assessments of Dayton are accurate. None of them arguably dominates over the other. There's no question that the war ended as a result of the Dayton Agreement. It stopped. That in some ways, any time a war is ended must be considered a successful outcome, at least in terms of conflict and violence. It's absolutely also the case that nobody actually at Dayton thought that the agreement was finished in terms of its implementation. Much of the Dayton Agreement, as you well know, had annexes which remained to be implemented. And everybody assumed that it would take some years, months and years, to fully implement because in a way, the peace agreement was a ceasefire agreement as much as it was a formal end to a conflict. And so over the years, the international community working with the local Bosnian authorities with the very complex machinery that Dayton had set up, attempted to implement the agreement. And it met with enormous challenges because in a very real way, the agreement itself had not resolved the causes of the conflict. And many of the things that were put into place in terms of annexes were more attempts to find technical or diplomatic or political solutions to problems that were problems were deeply ideological, deeply emotional, ones that could not be necessarily solved by implementing laws or passing regulations or certain activities that the international community had established by Dayton. As a consequence, the implementation process remained fraught, and it remains fraught to this day. One could argue that the Bosnia that we have today is the Bosnia and Herzegovina... Many of the aspects, that existed before the war are simply still in place. And that rather than essentially change that dynamic, some aspects of the peace agreement have reinforced it, unfortunately. Does Dayton serve as a model or should we see it as something that can be used elsewhere? That's an open question because every conflict and every issue in the world has a particular set of circumstances for which no one solution, past solution, works. And the argument that one could say is that depending upon the circumstances where you do have a nation state or a region where groups of people are in conflict based on issues of ethnicity and identity, are involved, then in fact, there are aspects of Dayton that make good sense to think about. How do you work in that kind of environment? That wasn't necessarily the case in, say, Afghanistan. One of the reasons you could argue for failure in Afghanistan is it didn't involve any of the dynamics that we had in the Balkans. And so one could argue that under a specific set of circumstances involving an internal conflict or a conflict within the state, there are aspects of Dayton that I think are still valuable. The project of negotiating Dayton, the process of implementation could still be valuable. And it's part of the reason I think people at the 30th anniversary want to look back is they do believe that there are a host of lessons embedded here that are still to be learned because the process is ongoing."

• Which elements from the Dayton negotiations process can transcend time and context and apply to mediating future conflicts? What are the most important lessons for the negotiators?

"You know, that's a really interesting question because some people like to focus on the negotiation process of 21 days per se. And at 21 days, what happened in 21 days? That was just a particular way of dealing with the circumstances at hand. And would one want to isolate the parties? Would one want to put them away for three weeks in one place? All those kinds of things. Would you want to have someone who is a kind of a dominant, you know, alpha male or female leading the negotiations in that way? I don't know if that's the answer at all. But what I do think is interesting about Dayton is that it tried to build a state on top of a peace agreement. It tried to build a functioning state. And I think that's the issue that remains, you could argue, for example, with Israel-Gaza, Israel-Palestinians, right? In a number of the conflicts, the question becomes, it's one thing to stop a war, but you have to decide what's going to come afterwards. And in that sense, the effort to build, if you will, we'll call it nation building for what it is, is still a sine qua non. And Dayton provides a very interesting template for how that was done. And I do imagine that in all the negotiations that are going on, vis-a-vis even, for example, the conflict with Lebanon, you know what I mean? What's the Lebanese state going to look like down the road, for example. No conflict can possibly occur simply on the basis that we... everybody agrees they want to stop the violence. They have to know what the future looks like and Dayton is a very good template for how people start to think about this. And in ways you could say that, as you go back on it, you look on it and say, there are aspects of the Dayton agreement that were put together, that actually were a very good thing, to attempt to do that. And it's going to be, it will probably be of some sort, if there is ever a resolution of the conflict, you know, between Palestine and Israel. And that's even way more fraught than we're dealing with here in some ways. It's going to have some aspects of what we would call a Dayton process in terms of what does the future look like. What does a future peace look like?"

• If we look at current global affairs, do you think the international consensus to end a war is weaker today than in 1995? Would the Dayton Peace Accords be successfully negotiated and signed today?

"The circumstances are very different. You could argue that the end of the Cold War, which is actually a factor in the emergence of the conflict in the Balkans, also led to the opportunity to bring people together to resolve that regional conflict in a way that we have no super event that could allow us to focus on settling these kinds of local conflicts that have a potential to have, you know, severe knock-on effects, right? And so, yes, it's a very different set of circumstances today. On the other hand, there could be a set of events today, a certain general policy shift at a larger level in the international community, which might allow for the resolution of conflicts in the way Dayton was resolved. Many smaller conflicts, that could be resolved on the basis of some larger consensus framework. Maybe it can be over energy issues, maybe the environment, you know, the climate change, etc. I don't see that happening right now. I don't see that global framework coming about. And so the answer is no. Probably today, Dayton would be caught up in the conflict that's going on between the US, the EU, and on the other hand, Russia, China, and Korea, the other bloc resisting this. I can imagine the conflict in Bosnia being strung out. And the only thing I will say is that we're not at the end of history. You could argue that to some degree, part of the reason Dayton occurred wasn't because of these larger events, but also because both sides were becoming exhausted. And sometimes conflicts end because both sides can't keep fighting. And that could happen vis-a-vis Ukraine-Russia, for example. So that's another factor that could make another Dayton possible. That at some point, key conflicts are no longer frozen, there is too much loss of life, too much cost in terms of the economy, the social fabric of a society, that it would be possible to conduct a Dayton-style process again, a nation-building process following a peace agreement."

• Finally, what do you see as the key challenges for the future of conflict mediation?

"I think the problem often comes, in my view... I'll say one thing that last night I was listening to President Biden's National Security Advisor on an interview in public television. And he was asked a number of questions about US policies in Ukraine, China, and so forth. And the problem I found with a lot of his answers were that almost all the solutions were locked up in what I would call tight negotiating boxes in which certain individuals on one side are talking to certain individuals on the other side in a very tight framework. And the objective is to come to sort of some very small set of linked agreements to resolve a problem. My concern with this process is it's a Zeno's paradox that diplomats tend to put more hope in these kinds of very small-scale, intensive, localized negotiation processes, that at the end of the day, depending upon circumstances, their strength or failure depends upon the power that surrounds them, not upon negotiations per se. Everybody knows how to negotiate, but conflict resolution in and of itself doesn't solve the problem. The larger context or framework in which you set conflict resolution within has to be essentially the motivating force for real change. And I can tell you that if you just conduct negotiations or diplomacy on and get lost, bogged down in these things, my feeling is you really are in a situation where you're hoping for, let's say, change that is, at the end of the day, not anywhere near as hopeful as your expectations are going in. That's what I'll say."