Governing Frozen Negotiations and Conflict Escalations: Political Violence and the Destabilization of Unresolved Secessionist Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Space

In secessionist conflicts, tools of governance such as international negotiations, engagement without recognition of the separatist entities, and confidence-building aim at the de-escalation of violent conflicts and stabilising security. These measures of conflict transformation are related to the hope of reaching a final conflict settlement and thus, a lasting peace. Yet, in the post-Soviet space, these tools have led to mixed results in the settlement of protracted secessionist conflicts, and only Moldova and Transnistria have witnessed no escalation into violent conflict since the 1990s. Why did some of post-Soviet ‘frozen conflicts’ escalated into violent conflicts again, while others did not? Through comparing protracted and new secessionist conflicts in Eastern Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, the paper investigates potential causes of conflict destabilization and escalation. Departing from the theoretical framework developed by Rumelili (2015), the paper couples the notions of ontological security and securitization with the identity politics of international law. We assume that international legal discourses are tools of political violence and for political mobilization. Whenever references to territorial integrity, self-determination of people, occupation, genocide, and terrorism, among the others, are received and supported by the target audience of the local populations, the risks of political violence and conflict destabilization increase. We will analyse how international discourses disaffect the relations between the local populations and elites, and in the way how they see and perceive each other. We will also show that strong engagement between people and negotiators favours a climate of stability despite all odds, whereas the lack of interaction in the other cases analysed enforces a relationship of suspect and insecurity between conflict parties. These investigation will lead us to discussing potential breaking points and moments of change as well as measure of governing them that keep fragile peace or lead to the outbreak of violence.