Hurting Stalemate Stage

By
Eric Brahm

September 2003

Once conflicts escalate for awhile, they often reach a stalemate: a situation in which neither side can win, but neither side wants to back down or accept loss either. Stalemates emerge for a number of reasons: failed tactics, depletion of available resources to fuel the conflict, a reduction in support of the conflict by group members or allies, or costs becoming too high to continue.[1]

Additional insights into Hurting Stalemate Stage are offered by Beyond Intractability project participants.

Despite realizing that the conflict is going nowhere, it is often difficult for parties to transform the nature of the conflict and consider a settlement. For long-term conflicts, individuals have been socialized to the polarized view of self and other. They are afraid of the other side and do not want to reconcile with them or meet their demands.

What is more, many individuals on both sides build up a vested interest (see also conflict profiteers) in the perpetuation of the conflict. If the conflict is bringing them political power or economic opportunities, they may want to keep it going, rather than working towards de-escalation or settlement. Leaders also fear the loss of face that would ensue if they had to admit that pursuing the conflict was a mistake. (That is why face-saving measures are especially important for settlement.)

Eventually, conflicts reach a point at which a sort of equilibrium sets in, in which neither side is getting any closer to achieving its goals and which no one is happy with the situation. They come to realize that the costs of continuing the struggle exceed (oftentimes greatly exceed) the benefits to be gained. This is the situation known as the "mutually hurting stalemate" which is often ripe for the introduction of proposals for settlement.[2]

[1] Jeffrey Rubin, Dean Pruitt, and Sung Hee Kim, Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement, 2^nd edition. (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994), 152-5.

[2] I. William Zartman and Maureen Berman, The Practical Negotiator (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 66-78; I William Zartman, "The Strategy of Preventive Diplomacy in Third World Conflicts," in Managing US-Soviet Rivalry, ed. Alexander George (Westview, 1983); Saadia Touval and I. William Zartman, eds., International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Westview, 1985), ll, 258-60; I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Use the following to cite this article:
Brahm, Eric. "Hurting Stalemate Stage." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: September 2003 <http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/stalemate/>.

Sources of Additional, In-depth Information on this Topic

Additional Explanations of the Underlying Concepts:

Online (Web) Sources

Conflict Research Consortium Staff. "Breaking the Impasse: Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes--Book Summary." University of Colorado: Conflict Research Consortium.
Available at: http://www.beyondintractability.org/booksummary/10564/.

This is a summary of Breaking the Impasse, by Susskind and Cruikshank. The book offers a guide to consensual strategies for resolving public disputes.

Schrodt, Philip A., Deborah Gerner and Omur Yilmaz. "Evaluating 'Ripeness' and 'Hurting Stalemate' in Mediated International Conflicts: An Event Data Study of the Middle East, Balkans, and West Africa." , 1900
Available at: http://web.ku.edu/keds/papers.dir/Schrodt.etal.ISA03.pdf.

"The contemporary literature on international mediation places a great deal of emphasis on the concept of a conflict being 'ripe' for mediation. This in turn is determined in part by the parties being in a 'hurting stalemate.' While these concepts are attractive as metaphors, it is less than obvious whether they can be operationalized in a manner that enables either to be clearly determined ex ante (that is, prior to the success of a mediation). After reviewing existing literature on ripeness and hurting stalemates, we examine the Israel-Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, former Yugoslavia, and the civil wars in Liberia, and Sierra Leone for empirical regularities prior to negotiation that differentiates whether parties will undertake negotiation, and whether the negotiations succeeds."

Glaser, Tanya. "Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement - Book Summary." University of Colorado: Conflict Research Consortium, 1900.
Available at: http://www.beyondintractability.org/booksummary/10477/.

This is a summary of the book Social Conflict, by Dean G. Pruitt and Sung Hee Kim. In the work, the authors describe how people engage in social conflicts. The authors describe the sources of conflict, identify five basic conflict strategies, and explore processes of conflict escalation and resolution. (This summary refers to the first edition of the book.)

Offline (Print) Sources

Susskind, Lawrence and Jeffrey Cruikshank. Breaking the Impasse: Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes. New York: Basic Books, January 1, 1987.
Breaking the Impasse offers a guide to consensus building strategies for resolving public disputes. The authors frame their discussion of public disputes in terms of distributional versus constitutional disputes. The authors describe possible obstacles to agreement and techniques for getting past those obstacles. Click here for more info.

Zartman, I. William. "Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond." In International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War. Edited by Stern, Paul C. and Daniel Druckman, eds. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, September 2000.
Zartman lays out his basic concept of ripeness and the hurting stalemate in this book chapter.

Pruitt, Dean G., Jeffrey Z. Rubin and Sung Hee Kim. "Stalemate and De-escalation." In Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement, 2nd Edition. New York: McGraw Hill College Division, January 1, 1994. Pages: 150-167.
This chapter explains why stalemates occur and describes how parties move from stalemate to de-escalation. Stalemates emerge for a variety of reasons, including exhaustion of resources unwillingness to incur continued costs. One way for parties to move out of stalemate and into de-escalation is through problem-solving. In this chapter, the authors stress the role that increased communication and the development of superordinate goals can play in moving adversaries toward problem-solving and de-escalation. Click here for more info.

Zartman, I. William and Maureen Berman. The Practical Negotiator . New Haven: Yale University Press, August 1983.
The Practical Negotiator draws upon both theory and practice to present a model of the negotiation process. This text focuses primarily upon international negotiations. Click here for more info.

Zartman, I. William. "The Strategy of Preventive Diplomacy in Third World Conflicts." In Managing US-Soviet Rivalry. Edited by George, Alexander L., ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1983.

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Examples Illustrating this Topic:

Online (Web) Sources

Lieten, Kristoffel. "India: Jammu and Kashmir: Half a Century of Conflict." , 2002
Available at: Click here for more info.

This article outlines the key events in the history of India and Pakistan's conflict over Kashmir and Jammu, focusing heavily on developments in the region since 2002. The paper details the many attempts at resolving the conflict over several decades, all of which have failed in one way or another.

Indurthy, Rathnam. "Kashmir Between India and Pakistan: An Intractable Conflict, 1947 to Present." , 2003
Available at: Click here for more info.

This case study describes the different stages of the Kashmir conflict from emergence, to stalemate, to failed peace, to escalation.

"Moldova Narrative: Origins and Background Conditions of the Moldova / Niester Conflict." Conflict Early Warning Systems (CEWS), 1900.
Available at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/ir/cews/database/Moldova/moldova.pdf.

This essays offers insights into the Moldova Niester conflict by: providing historical facts about the area; explaining the multi-dimensional cultural and social aspects of the conflict; and detailing the emergence of the conflict following independence from Soviet Russia.

Mateeva, Anna. "Nagorno Karabach: A Straightforward Territorial Conflict." , 2002
Available at: Click here for more info.

This article details the dynamics of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabach in which ethnic Armenians have been struggling for control since the late 1980s. There have been a variety of attempts to mediate this conflict, particularly in the form of multi-track diplomacy, but as of 2002 it remained at a stalemate.

Conflict Research Consortium Staff. "Resolving Environmental Regulatory Disputes--abstract." University of Colorado: Conflict Research Consortium, 1900.
Available at: http://www.beyondintractability.org/booksummary/10565/.

Resolving Environmental Regulatory Disputes by Lawrence Susskind, analyses the use of voluntary, informal negotiations to resolve environmental disputes. The author proceeds by examining case studies.

Offline (Print) Sources

"Conflict 'Ripeness' Revisited: The South Africa and Israel/Palestine Cases." Negotiation Journal 15:1, January 1, 1999.
"This article seeks to develop such generalizations and to refine the ripeness concept by analyzing the factors that led to negotiated agreements between the National Party (NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa in 1990 and between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993. Highlighted in each case will be the influence of internal politics, which, I conclude, is overlooked by ripeness propositions, along with the role of perceptual shifts regarding the possibility and the necessity of negotiation."

Mooradian, Moorad and Daniel Druckman. "Hurting Stalemate or Mediation?: The Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, 1990-95." Journal of Peace Research 36:6, November 1, 1999.
This article presents a comparison of the impacts of six attempts at mediating the conflict over the political status of Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union. Each mediation attempted to bring the key parties (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh) to the negotiating table. The data analysis produced from this research shows that a mutually hurting stalemate is indeed a condition for negotiating a ceasefire and reduced violence between warring parties.

Susskind, Lawrence, Lawrence Bacow and Michael Wheeler. Resolving Environmental Regulatory Disputes. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Books, June 1, 1983.
Resolving Environmental Regulatory Disputes analyses the use of voluntary, informal negotiations to resolve environmental disputes. The author proceeds by examining case studies. Click here for more info.

Zartman, I. William. Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Updated Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 1, 1989.
This study examines the causes and nature of African conflict and addresses the issue of how foreign powers can contribute productively to the management and resolution of such conflicts without resorting to the use of military force. The book focuses on four case studies of local conflict and external response (Western Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Shaba province in Zaire, and Namibia) to assess various approaches to conflict management, and offers guidelines for identifying the ripe moment for effective external response.

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Audiovisual Materials on this Topic:

Online (Web) Sources

The Mideast: A Century of ConflictPart 6: From the First Intifada to the Oslo Peace Agreement. NPR. October 7, 2002.
Available at: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/history6.html.

This audio clip discusses the beginning of the first Intifada and Israel's government being divided between the right-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party (who eventually favored negotiations with the Palestinians). As the Intifada continued Israelis decided that it was time to settle with the Palestinians. In 1992, Prime Minister Rabin authorized secret negotiations with the PLO in Oslo. The Israelis and the Palestinians signed the Oslo peace agreement in 1993.

Offline (Print) Sources

Euskadi: A Stateless Nation. Directed and/or Produced by: MacCaig, Arthur. First Run Icarus Films. 1984.
This film highlights events in the Basque-Spanish conflict that have led to its long stalemate. Click here for more info.

Irish Ways. Directed and/or Produced by: MacCaig, Arthur. First Run Icarus Films. 1989.
This film investigates the pervasive atmosphere of fear and mistrust in Northern Ireland. Click here for more info.

Time of the Locust . Directed and/or Produced by: Gessner, Peter. First Run Icarus Films. 1966.
This film documents how U.S. troops got mired down in Vietnam, where they sustained heavy casualties without making progress towards winning the war. Click here for more info.

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