ABSTRACT
This chapter examines sources of and threats to leverage necessary for mediation and negotiation efforts to resolve violent conflict and deals with intractable global security issues. It discusses ways to strengthen leverage in negotiations in the current international environment via a combination of hard power, soft power and multiparty coherence. The chapter examines the role of leverage in the four cases. They include mediation and negotiation around the Cyprus conflict, the violence surrounding the 2007 Kenyan elections, the 2012 Geneva talks on the Syrian conflict, and the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Comparing conflict cases is always dangerous, because every conflict carries its unique set of characteristics and unique trajectory. The chapter concludes by arguing that in order to develop and sustain the necessary momentum, participants need to build a coalition of supporting actors that can come together to exert joint pressure on the process.
