On Accountability, Mediation, and the Limits of Institutional Cooperation
The contemporary international order contains both institutional cooperation and strategic rivalry. NATO members use a formal alliance to coordinate policy and collective defence, demonstrating how institutions can sustain cooperation among states. Yet that cooperation has boundaries. As relations with Russia deteriorated, NATO increasingly organized its security around deterrence. An institution that enables cooperation among its members can therefore also deepen a division with a state outside it. Liberal institutionalism helps explain cooperation within the alliance, while realism helps explain the threat perceptions and military calculations shaping its relationship with Russia.
The question is under what conditions can institutions preserve dialogue across a security divide, rather than merely coordinate the states on one side of it? One condition may be to recognize that a state can remain a potential participant in a shared political order even when its actions must be opposed. Equal standing cannot mean indifference to the use of force, nor can a settlement decide Ukraine’s future on its behalf. But accountability need not foreclose a route back to negotiation.
An international committee could provide a setting in which both states can make claims and commitments clear enough to be examined and challenged, without giving either control over the process. Its independence would be essential: it could examine disputed claims and proposed terms, but it would not simply translate one party’s intentions for the other or pronounce a settlement on their behalf. Its role would be to facilitate dialogue and renewed negotiations, allowing the parties to revisit unresolved issues under the guidance of a third party. Any resulting commitments would need clear terms and means of verification, so that disagreements could be addressed before they reopened the conflict. Such a body could preserve the possibility of negotiation while maintaining the distinction between hearing a state’s concerns and excusing its conduct.
The need for such a forum becomes more urgent when neither party can count on a decisive military conclusion. The capacity to recruit new forces and replenish weapons can prolong a war without bringing its political disputes closer to resolution. A negotiated ceasefire may therefore be necessary to interrupt the fighting, but it cannot be treated as a settlement in itself. It would need provisions for monitoring, responding to violations, and continuing negotiations over the issues left unresolved. Only then could a pause in hostilities become a means of testing whether a more durable agreement is possible.
An institution keeps faith with peace when it holds a state answerable for its actions without closing the forum in which it might change them.