Internationally Challenges Since the Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, new international challenges have arisen. States face threats to their security and well being, such as terrorism and intrastate conflict. While international conflict once consisted of major global wars that pitted the world’s most powerful nations against each other, now we see states attempting to resolve conflict before the situation escalates. War is costly in many ways and can leave a country in ruin and its people physically and psychologically wounded. States use different conflict management and resolution techniques to bring an end to deadly combat or prevent combat from occurring.

Bargaining is a tool that is widely used in international relations. It is used to hopefully prevent two actors from engaging in war. Bargaining is defined as the negotiation of the terms of an agreement. The two sides first make demands. If they do not like the details of the demands, either side can reject them and eventually both sides will come to an agreement. Bargaining always involves interdependent actions because the decisions that are made by one actor will almost always depend on the likely or actual decisions of the other actor (Van Der Windt, 2011). Since successful bargaining can prevent war, it can be said that war is the result of failed bargaining.

In Rationalist Explanations of War, James D. Fearon suggests that war is a “costly lottery” where both sides must decide if going to war is worth the losses they will incur (Fearon, Rationalist explanations for war , 1995). The bargaining theory states that there is always a range, called the bargaining range, in which it would benefit two actors to negotiate rather than going to war. The bargaining range is determined by “the relative power of bot...

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...ions and problems that emerge in the world. In 2012, the UN released a report on “strengthening the role of mediation in peaceful dispute settlement” (UN, 2013). Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon expressed that mediation had been very effective in solving disputes and conflict in all regions and that more resources would be needed to “sustain the Organization’s broadening range of initiatives” (UN, 2013).

Since the current system ad hoc system of mediation is unorganized, it would benefit the world as a whole to establish an institution that focuses solely on mediation. According to Gregg and Diehl, “peacekeeping missions also began as largely ad hoc operations” (Greig & Diehl, 2012). With that in mind, it is easy to see how mediation as a conflict management tool has the potential to work hand in hand with peacekeeping to maintain international peace and security.