The world’s geopolitics is changing once again, and every time it does, there is a temptation to believe that politics, war and peacemaking will be totally transformed.  The newly victorious liberal world order set about ‘inventing’ peacemaking, preventive diplomacy, private diplomacy and mediation, all of which had a long history already.
The world is changing dramatically again but the challenge for 2020s mediators is to grasp these changes with a sense of nuance. A new distribution of global power and new types of warfare will indeed require innovations in mediation and lead mediators into new fields of work. But, at the same time, there is valuable knowledge and expertise from the past that 2020s mediators can use to shape a relevant practice and an appropriate ambition for the world and wars of the 2020s. Not all conflicts are new.
There is indeed a major shift in global power and international relations in the 2020s: the end of liberal global hegemony and the return to a geopolitically contested world. China and India have re-emerged as major powers in the contemporary international system. Russia and NATO are in open conflict over Ukraine. Important progress by African states in shaping a greater continental order via the African Union (AU) is under intense pressure again from new coups and conflicts. The Pacific is once more a potential battleground, with flashpoints in the Koreas and Taiwan and geostrategic rivalry between new Western alliances and China.
The threat of the Third World War has become part of the existential threat to the survival of our world and our species, alongside climate change, pandemics, and the possibility of artificial intelligence (AI) going out of control. All this is an indication of a reversion to mediation between great powers on disarmament, the danger of big wars, and the factual proxy wars.
The situation in Ukraine in 2022 when Russia invaded and Azerbaijan held a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, leaving the Armenian population in a mass displacement demonstrates that inter-state wars will continue to be the core of the mediation.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative (2022) is one of the important deals that were negotiated by the United Nations and Turkey allowing the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea amid the ongoing conflict with Russia. This project is a significant case of restricted functional mediation in active conflict situations.
The Ethiopia-Tigray Peace Agreement (2022) is based on previous agreements, particularly the involvement of the United Arab Emirates in the broader Ethiopia-Eritrea peace process, which was initiated in 2018. In late 2023, the United States, the African Union, and South Africa's collaborative efforts further promoted de-escalation and peace efforts in the region, building on earlier mediation efforts to resolve the Tigray conflict.
We have observed several rounds of mediation and negotiation during the Gaza conflict, involving key stakeholders, specifically Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. These negotiations have included various phases of peace talks, characterised by the reciprocal release of hostages from both parties involved.
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland have been making huge contributions in humanitarian prisoner and detainee exchanges and have been involved in mediating a number of high profile exchanges successfully. These exchanges have been done between countries such as the United States and Iran, the United States and Venezuela and also Russia and Ukraine.
In early 2021, the intra-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) dispute (2021) between Qatar and some of the other GCC member states that had lasted since 2017 was resolved, with Kuwait playing a central mediator role in the preceding negotiations that led to this resolution.
Thailand and Cambodia experienced a new border tensions and entered a fourth day following the attack of Cambodian military equipment by the Thailand fighter jet planes. This intensification upset a ceasefire that Trump had negotiated meant that he was open to going on the diplomatic front after a brutal war that broke out in July.
This came into concern as India and Pakistan were at loggerheads when in May, India accused Pakistan of an attack that had been carried out by India. On May 10, a ceasefire was declared, but these attempts at U.S. mediation without solving the old divisions still helped. According to Trump, the agreement was affected by trade leverage, which was refuted by the Indian officials.
There exist unresolved conflicts between Egypt and Ethiopia on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is important to the supply of water in Egypt, through the Nile River. Trump stated that he was trying to mediate but there was no formal or continued mediation system. The Prime Minister of Ethiopia inaugurated the dam in September over the objections of Egyptians, and President al-Sisi vowed to protect the interests of Egypt.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have recently taken steps to de-escalate tensions and have proposed mediation by brotherhood countries, specifically Turkey and Qatar, to facilitate a resolution to the dispute. These nations are positioned to act as mediators in the ongoing discussions. Unfortunately, there is no such progress but a ceasefire is there through negotiation and mediation.
Regional mediation and negotiation emerged as the predominant instruments employed in addressing each conflict. In terms of ADR, this development is consistent with established norms about the importance of having a dispute resolution system that should respond to the characteristics of the dispute, the power disparity between the involved parties, and the institutional context in general. The analyzed cases demonstrate that mediation during wartime can be affected by the imperfect consent, limited trust, and asymmetry of leverage conditions which are quite familiar with ADR theory but are not sufficiently considered in the context of the mainstream international relations discourse. The increased involvement of middle powers, regional organisations and non-Western mediators also questions the belief that mediation is the sole preserve of liberal international institutions.
Mediators and Negotiators must brace themselves for a complex international chessboard around every conflict.