The Power to Blame as a Source of Leverage: International Mediation and ‘Dead Cat Diplomacy’

What is it about?

Why do some parties choose to blame disputants for the failure of negotiations, and with what degree of success? Termed here as 'dead cat diplomacy', this paper proposes that when faced with the prospect of failed negotiations, sometimes the only leverage left in the mediator's toolbox is the power to threaten to blame an intransigent disputant for failing the peace process in order to keep the talks on track. The term dead cat diplomacy was first coined by former US Secretary of State James Baker during his Middle East negotiations in 1991, where he often threatened Israelis, Syrians and Palestinians that he would lay a figurative dead cat at their doorstep to send a public signal that their intransigence had 'killed' the the cat, or the peace process. This paper examines Baker's successful application of dead cat diplomacy compared to the failed attempts by President Barack Obama and Donald Trump to leverage this threat in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It then presents three conditions necessary for the effective use of dead cat diplomacy: it must be used as a last resort, it must be perceived as credible by the targeted disputant, and the bargaining capacity of the targeted disputant must be limited due to domestic or external pressures.

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