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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Dayuhan who wrote (101218)6/12/2003 12:29:50 AM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
A more evenhanded policy - specifically one that acknowledges that responsibility for creating and for resolving the current problems must be equally shared by the two sides - might also make American mediation a bit more credible. It is difficult for a traditional partisan of one side in a two-sided debate to act effectively as a mediator.

Ah, your attitude sounds just like the State Department. Unfortunately, maintaining such an artificial standard of equality in sharing out the responsibility at every point of the process, effectively prevents the mediator from using judgement. As I've argued before.

Hypothetical case: US is the evenhanded mediator between A and B. US shares out equal responsibility to each side, and sets each tasks to do. A does the tasks. B fails to do the tasks, does just the opposite in fact, but lies and says he's done them. What does the US do now? If the US comes down hard in judgment against B and for A, can the US still be "evenhanded"? If B has a lot of friends (in fact acted as he did in expectation of his friends' support), don't you expect that B's friends will raise a hue and cry about how the US is "favoring" A and is a partial mediator, not to be trusted?

You get my drift. A lot of time the State Department response is to pretend that both sides have performed equally, no matter the actuality, and to judge equally between them, thus preserving "evenhandedness". I don't regard this approach as productive. It tends to reward behaviors that were better not rewarded.
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