In the absence of an international arbitrator with teeth,
the nations of the world must at times have recourse to others in service to
the resolution of disputes—even longstanding ones. This, I submit, is a major
drawback to a world of sovereign nation-states, for rare is one that can
genuinely serve as an honest broker, hence with credibility to the disputants
rather than just one side. Conflicts of
interest all thus allowed, and even ignored as if they had no bearing. In the
context of the longstanding Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the United States has
been plagued with having to surmount the conflict between the interest of being
an ally of Israel and a neutral peacemaking with credible standing as such to
both sides.
In recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by
announcing that the American embassy would be moved to that historic city, U.S.
President Trump explicitly took sides in the broader dispute, such that the
Palestinians in reaction were “no longer on speaking terms with the president.”[1]
Two years earlier, in the midst of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump
had said, “Let me be sort of a neutral guy [in that conflict].”[2]
Sitting with the Israeli prime minister in the Oval Office in early March,
2018, the American president insisted that he would still be an active
participant in proffering a peace proposal. Yet without credibility as a
neutral guy to the Palestinians, President Trump risked having his eventual
proposal being viewed as merely an extension of the Israeli interests.
President Trump found himself in a conflict of interest—that
of being Israel’s strongest ally and a neutral peacemaker with credibility on
both sides. Taking a stand firmly in favor of Israel could not simply be
dismissed as if taking such a decision could have no bearing on the assumption
of neutrality ignores the conflict of interest itself. Such conflicts are never
missed by the party on the losing end. An ally of one disputant simply cannot
also be a “neutral guy.” In such a case, another nation-state must be found to
inhabit the neutral role, yet such a nation-state may be difficult to find,
given the networks of alliances that proliferate in a nation-state system of
international relations. That a neutral party would have to be powerful enough
in the world for the neutrality to be effectively leveraged—i.e., garnering the
attention of both disputants rather than dismissed—decreases the likelihood
that such a neutral party could be found. The E.U., for instance, typically
sided with the Palestinians over Israel—perhaps with a motive to counterbalance
the influence of the U.S.
Perhaps absent a global neutral arbitrator powerful enough
to implement a peace settlement, an ally of one disputant could together with
an ally of the other disputant act as a neutral pivot around which negotiations
could proceed. The U.S. would not be able to make a proposal that is
objectionable to the E.U. on peace in Israel. Yet this presumes that the
Americans and Europeans could work together as a united mediator credible to
both the Palestinians and Israelis. The basic problem, I submit, is that the
world puts too much on nation-states as the sole or at least hegemonic actors
on the global stage.
For more on conflicts of interest, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest.
[1] Peter
Baker and David Halbfinger, “Trump’s Hopes ofBeing the ‘Neutral Guy’ in the
Mideast Seem Long Gone,” The New York
Times, March 5, 2018.
[2]
Ibid.
