United States mediation in the post Cold-War era: three case studies

This study aims to compare and contrast the United States’ mediation attempts in the Bosnian conflict, in Palestinian-Israeli and Haitian conflicts. For this purpose, the following components of the literature on mediation are utilised as the analytical tools of this thesis: The power of the mediator, stakes of the mediator, roles played by the mediator, entry and timing of the mediator. In addition, certain indicators are chosen; namely, the relative power of the parties, redistribution of resources, policy or position changes, duration of the conflict, establishment of ongoing mechanisms, the use of media in order to observe the changes realised during or as an outcome of the mediation attempts. According to the analyses of these three mediation attempts, this thesis reveals that “mediation” stands as an important foreign policy making tool of the United States in the Post Cold-War era. In addition, this study underscores the importance of mediator’s power in international mediation attempts. Ill Lastly, the study intends to make a contribution to the literature on mediation through defining a new concept called indirect mediation.