Stability and change in strategic beliefs of Tony Blair about the Middle East peace process : institutional transition from Premiership to the Middle East Quartet

Le monde académique a récemment démontré un vif intérêt envers les théories de la socialisation. Pourtant, de nombreux penseurs argumentent que le terme de « socialisation », surtout la socialisation des acteurs internationaux au sein des institutions internationales, demeure peu développé.Différentes approches des relations internationales traitent ce concept de façon divergente. Si le néoréalisme utilise la « socialisation » pour décrire l’homogénéisation de la conduite des acteurs internationaux sous les conditions de l’anarchie1, l’institutionnalisme contractuel aborde l’interaction sociale au sein des institutions comme un phénomène n’ayant pas d’impact sur les «identités» et les « intérêts » des acteurs. Par ailleurs, pour les constructivistes, la socialisation constitue un concept pivot. Dans leurs analyses sur la création et la diffusion des normes internationales, les constructivistes portent leur attention sur les «logics of appropriateness”. Ils expliquent que le comportement des acteurs pertinents subit des mutations dues aux changements endogènes dans leurscaractéristiques normatives et leurs identités. Une autre tendance peu développée dans le monde académique est l’application du concept de la socialisation dans le domaine d’étude de la paix, tout particulièrement, la médiation internationale. Il n’y a pas davantage de consensus parmi les spécialistes de la question même si la nature, l’identité et les caractéristiques cognitives sont indispensables pour effectuer une médiation efficace.Alors qu’un groupe d’experts (Oran Young, Jacob Bercovitch) a présenté l’identité des médiateurs en faveur de la paix comme une raison du succès de la médiation, un autre groupe (auquel appartient Marvin Ott) a réduit ce sujet à une position secondaire. La littérature sur la médiation a étudié plusieurs exemples significatifs, tant à propos du contexte que des conditions de l’intervention diplomatique au plus haut niveau. Parmi ces contributions académiques on peut remarquer une étude de cas sur le rôle du Président américain Carter au cours des négociations de Camp-David2. Dans le même esprit, Brian S. Mandell and Brian W. Tomlin ont étudié les activités de médiation d’Henry Kissinger pendant la période 1973-1976, et ont observé comment sa stratégie a modifié les paramètres qui régissaient la dispute entre les Israéliens et les Arabes, et a contribué à l’introduction de nouvelles conditions3de discussion. Pourtant cet exemple et d’autres études analytiques de la participation de hautes personnalités dans la médiation, n’ont pas suffisamment traité de l’impact des institutionsinternationales sur les processus cognitifs des acteurs. Nous croyons que l’exploration des approches stratégiques des médiateurs avant leur intégration au sein des institutions et l’impact de cette intégration sur leur compréhensionantérieure de la question pourrait constituer un profond intérêt académique. C’est pour cette raison que notre analyse doctorale vise à contribuer à remplir le vide mentionné ci-dessus en combinant ces deux perspectives : l’approche sociologique et la résolution des conflits. L’axe de notre étude doctorale est Tony Blair, ancien Premier ministre britannique et actuellement Représentant du Quartet international pour le Moyen Orient. Nous visons à investiguer sur l’attitude cognitive de Tony Blair à l’égard de la paix entre les Palestiniens et Israël dans les deux contextes institutionnels : d’abord, en tant que Premier ministre (de 1997 à 2007), ensuite en tant qu’Envoyé du Quartet (depuis 2007 jusqu’à maintenant).En termes généraux, nous tenterons de présenter un aperçu de la compréhension conceptuelle de Tony Blair sur des causes du conflit, sa perception des intentions et des capacités des partis concernés, ainsi que sa vision des stratégies les plus efficaces pour résoudre ce conflit. Nous suggerons que le choix de cette personnalité comme unité de notre analyse, parce qu’il a été Premier ministre britannique et qu’il est actuellement Représentant du Quartet est un choix assez pertinent par rapport aux argumentations des constructivistes. Premièrement, selon Cederman, les structures sociales et les caractéristiques des agents sont mutuellement constitutives4. De cela vient la proposition que la stabilité et leschangements dans le système cognitif et la position politique d’un Premier ministre de la Grande-Bretagne (Tony Blair ou d’autres) va produire certains effets sur le comportement gouvernemental. Deuxièmement, ce serait une tâche analytiquement intéressante de montrer comment des interactions internationales peuvent influencer les perceptions du conflit et les prescriptions politiques d’un ancien leader d’une puissance, actuellement envoyé pour la paix. En faisant appel à la rationalité pour notre étude mentionnée ci-dessus, nous pouvons formuler la question de cette recherche de la façon suivante : Comment la conception stratégique de Tony Blair évolue-t-elle avec le changement du contexte institutionnel? Comme il a été explicitement noté, nous observons dans notre étude les processus cognitifs de Tony Blair dans deux contextes institutionnels différents. Pour cela, nous allons diviser le travail en deux parties constitutives, ou deux études de cas. Dans la première étude de cas, nous allons traiter de l’approche stratégie de Tony Blair envers le processus de paix en qualité de Premier ministre. Dans la seconde étude, nous explorerons la stabilité ou le changement de ses conceptions stratégiques en tant que Représentant international. La première étude est divisée en deux chapitres inégaux. Le chapitre I est consacré aux processus cognitifs du Premier ministre du 11 septembre 2001 à janvier 2006. Le chapitre II est concerné par sa dynamique cognitive de janvier 2006 jusqu’à son départ du pouvoir en juin 2007. Cette division inégale est justifiée par notre choix de présenter les événements de début 2006 qui auraient pu potentiellement changer la conception de Tony Blair. En effet, en 2006, le groupe palestinien Hamas a remporté la victoire dans les élections nationales. Un responsable du gouvernement de Blair l’a rappelé: « Personne n’attendait ce résultat.L’élection avait été planifiée comme moyen de neutraliser le Hamas, mais tout d’un coup cela est survenu […] de manière surprenante ». Dans ce contexte, et du point de vue analytique la question principale est de voir comment le Premier ministre Tony Blair a fait face à la situation évoquée. Celle-ci pouvait, soit engendrer des changements dans le contenu de ses convictions sur les approches stratégiques les plus optimales envers le conflit, soit il pouvait interpréter la nouvelle situation de telle façon que sa connaissance et ses idées soient conservées intactes. Comme la victoire du Hamas aux élections de 2006 était passible de produire des changements relatifs à la stabilité du processus de paix, nous avons décidé de traiter cette question dans un chapitre séparé, bien que cette période (2006-2007) soit plus courte que lapériode précedente.Recently there has been increasing interest in the socialization theory in the academic world. Yet, many scholars claim that the socialization within international institutions remains underdeveloped. Different international relations approaches treat this concept in a different way. Neorealism uses socialization to describe the homogenization of self-help balancing behavior among security-seeking states interacting under conditions of anarchy. Contractual institutionalism generally does not focus on socialization pro- cesses in international relations per se. The notion that social interaction can change preferences and interests or fundamental security philosophies and ideologies is not a central concern. For thisperspective social interaction inside institutions is assumed to have little or no effect on the "identities" or "interests" of actors, or at least institutionalists are divided as to whether there are any effects. The quality or quantity of prior social interaction among players should be irrelevant to the calculus of whether or not to defect. For social constructivists, socialization is a central concept. According to Onuf, “social relations make or construct people-ourselves-into the kinds of beings we are”. In their accounts of the creation and diffusion of international norms constructivists mostly focus onthe "logics of appropriateness" – pro-norm behavior that is so deeply internalized as to be unquestioned, taken for granted. This naturally raises questions about which norms are internalized by agents, how and to what degree. Kratochwil and Ruggie imply that by treating institutions as social institutions "around which actor expectations converge" the interestingquestion becomes the processes by which this intersubjective convergence takes place. On the one hand, most mainstream international relations theorists contend that there are two main ways in which involvement in international institutions changes state behavior in more cooperative directions. The first is through material rewards and punishments: in pursuit of a (mostly) constant set of interests or preferences a state responds to positive and negative sanctions providedexogenously by the institution (rules, membership requirements, etc.) or by certain actors within the institution. The second is through changes in the domestic distributions of power among social groups pursuing (mostly) a constant set of interests or preferences such that different distributions lead to different aggregated state preferences6.On the other hand, constructivists hold that the behavior of relevant actors changes due to endogenous change in their normative characteristics and identities. In other words, change in the behavior of the participants in a social interaction may have little to do with exogenous constraints on the individual and the group and a lot to do with socialization7.The constructivist approach to international institutions proposes the following definition of the concept of socialization: “It is defined as a process of inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community. Its outcome is sustained compliance based on the internalization of these new norms. In adopting community rules, socialization implies that anagent switches from following a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness; this adoption is sustained over time and is quite independent from a particular structure of material incentives or sanctions”. Unlike mainstream neorealist perspectives, sociological approaches would treat institutions as ‘environments’ of social interaction, rather than as ‘boxes’ of material constraints. This means the research focus shifts to the non-material (e.g. psychological, affective, ideological) effects on pro-group behavior that interaction with other human agents can generate9.Thus one of the most frequent research questions posed by them are “When do international institutions create senses of community and belonging? If and when this happens, what does it mean for individual and state allegiances, interests, and identities? What processes underlie such transformative dynamics? For many scholars applying sociological approaches to the exploration of institutions the unit of analysis is the individual who interacts with the social environments inside international institutions. This differs from many of the sociologically oriented studies to date. For the most part, when IR specialists or sociological institutionalists have look for the effects of social interaction at the international level the unit of analysis has tended to be the state (or state elites in a fairly aggregated way). Johnston believes that this focus on the international level where the unit of analysis is the state presents obvious problems when examining particular institutions as social environments since states as unitary actors don't participate in institutions; rather, state agents do, e.g. diplomats, decisionmakers, analysts, policy specialists, non-governmental agents of state principals. In reference specifically to constructivism, Cederman point out that its ontology can best be captured by the notion of complex adaptive systems whereby social structures and agent characteristics are mutually constitutive, or locked in tight feedback loops, where smallperturbations in the characteristics of agents interacting with each other can have large, nonlinear effects on social structures13. This perceptive posits that it is relevant to explore how individual agents or small groups are socialized, because their impact on larger properties of the social environment can be significant. Another underdeveloped trend in academic scholarship is application of socialization approaches to the domain of peace studies and, in particular, international mediation. Neither is there consensus about whether identity, nature and cognitive characteristics of a mediator are indispensable for effective mediation. If on the one hand, certain scholars have addressed the identity of a mediator as predictors of success (for example, Oran Young, Jacob Bercovitch). On the other hand, others would reduce it to a secondary position (for example, Marvin Ott) arguing that they are essentially irrelevant compared to other contextualvariables. Mediation scholarship has undertaken a number of essential case studies about the context and condition of high-level third party involvement. For example, among these contributions are case-studies on President Carter’s role in Camp David negotiations. Brian S. Mandell and Brian W. Tomlin have also carried on a case study of the mediation activities of Henry Kissinger in the Middle East during the period 1973-1976 to verify how his strategy altered the parameters of the dispute and brought about conditions necessary for the creation of new norms. Yet these and other analyses of high-level actors taking part in mediation activities have not sufficiently treated the impact of international institutions on cognitive processes of mediators. We suggest that exploration of belief systems of high-level mediators prior to the entry into international institutions and the impact of the latter on their understanding of the issue would be of essential academic interest. For this reason, our doctoral analysis seeks to contribute to filling the above-mentionedgaps by combining these two perspectives: sociological and conflict resolution. The focus of our work is Tony Blair in the context of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. We seek to investigate Tony Blair’s cognitive attitude towards the Middle East peace process within two institutional contexts: first, as British Prime Minister (1997-2007) and,subsequently, as the Middle East Quartet’s Envoy (2007 until nowadays). In general terms, we intend to undertake insight into Tony Blair’s conceptual understanding of the causes of the conflict, his perception about the intentions and capabilities of the parties, as well his strategic beliefs about the most optimal approaches to the peaceful settlement. We assume that the choice of Tony Blair as the unit of analysis both in the role of the British Prime Minister and now the Quartet Representative is quite relevant to the argumentative position of constructivists. First of all, based on Cederman’s above-mentioned point that social structures and agent characteristics are mutually constitutive, changes and stability of the belief system and policy position of the British Prime Minister will produce effects on the governmental behaviour. Second, it would be analytically interesting to trace whether and how international interactions affect the former leader and currently peace envoy’s perceptions of the issue and policy prescriptions. Drawing on the above-mentioned rationale for our analytic study we formulate our research question in the following way: How is Tony Blair’s strategic conception of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process evolving with the change of his institutional context? As was explicitly noted, in our research we observe Tony Blair’s cognitive processes in two institutional contexts. For this purpose, we divide our work into two constitutive parts, or two case studies. In the first case study we elaborate on Tony Blair’s strategic approach to thepeace process between Israel and the Palestinians as British Prime Minister. In the second, we will explore his strategic conceptions as Quartet Representative. The first case-study is in its turn divided into two chapters. Chapter I deals with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s thinking process from September 11, 2001 to January 2006. Chapter II is concerned with his cognitive dynamics from January 2006 until his departure from Downing Street in June 2007. This specific division of Case-study I into two chronologically unequal chapters is justified by our analytic interest to trace cognitive processes under those events that are much likely to cause changes. Precisely, in January 2006 a Palestinian group – Hamas – gainedvictory at national elections. An official in the Blair government recalled: “No one had expected the result. The election had been intended as a way of neutralising Hamas and for it to suddenly turn around and bite us in that way was stonishing”16.From the analytic point of view the basic question is how Prime Minister Tony Blair has coped with this situation. The new situation may either induce changes in the content of his beliefs about optimal strategic approaches to the conflict. Or it may be interpreted in such a manner that his basic assumptions and cognition will be conserved unchanged. Since thisevent is likely to induce either change or stability in his conceptual approaches to the peace process, we decided to treat it in a separate chapter, even though this period is chronologically shorter than the previous chapter