Peace Agreements and Civil Wars in Africa: Insurgent Motivations, ...

Moreover, because total spoilers seek total goals, any cease-fire agreement they sign is a tactical move—a time to gain advantage in a struggle to gain victory. As Stedman further points out, total spoilers are led by individuals who see the world in all-or-nothing terms and often suffer from pathological tendencies that prevent the flexibility necessary for a compromise settlement of the war.⁷¹

1.7. Ripeness, Ripe Moments, And Peace Agreements

It is widely believed that the key to successful agreements in a civil war lies in the timing of negotiations. George Modelski, for example, notes that a stalemate is the most propitious condition for a settlement. He defines a stalemate as “the state of affairs in which neither side, given its aims, has the resources to overwhelm the other (absolutely, or without incurring unacceptable losses).”⁷² The importance of a stalemate is due to the fact that without it, one or both of the parties in the conflict may hold unjustified hopes of an outright win, and therefore have the incentive to go on fighting. Moreover, a stalemate creates that situation of “balance” between the parties without which negotiations cannot properly begin.⁷³

Concept of Ripeness

Zartman introduced and popularized the notion of “ripeness” to indicate when conflicts are most likely to be negotiated by third-party intervention, noting that parties in a civil war begin negotiations to resolve their conflicts when alternative solutions have been tried but failed, and when the parties find themselves in an uncomfortable and costly predicament.⁷⁴ Others have also applied this notion to analyze the timing of third-party initiatives in both internal and international conflicts.⁷⁵

The concept of a “ripe moment” has been further developed and applied by both scholars and diplomats. Marrack Goulding, a former undersecretary-general of the United Nations, writes, “Not all conflicts are ‘ripe’ for action by the United Nation (or any other third party).”⁷⁶ Noting the successful mediation of Trieste in 1954, Campbell argued that the mantra of the conflict resolver should be timing, timing, and timing (italics added). Besides, the propitious moment to this negotiated settlement between Italy and Yugoslavia “did not exist earlier, and…might not have recurred later.”⁷⁷