Violent conflicts have been erupting at a brisk frequency, getting bloodier, and more protracted. In the past year alone, we witnessed pitiless fighting in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti, the Sahel, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. India and Pakistan came to the brink of a war. Border clashes erupted between Thailand and Cambodia and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Fears of violent conflicts—continuing and erupting—across the globe haven’t ebbed as the year begins. And on Saturday, President Donald Trump resorted to military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power.

Consistent and energetic efforts at peacemaking and mediation are urgently required but the primary peacemakers and mediators of the post-World War II order—the United States, the United Nations, and various European states and bodies—have either lost the political will, the normative drive, or the capacity to lead and support the necessary work of ending or reducing global conflicts.

In the past two decades, the United States and Europe have stepped back from peacemaking and mediation, and the United Nations, while still irreplaceable, isn’t as effective as it used to be. The logic of power politics or great power rivalry is further diminishing the appetite of major powers for peacemaking. Geopolitics abhors vacuum and the old addresses of peacemaking and mediation are being replaced by new ones in the Global South: Doha, Ankara, Riyadh, and Muscat, to name a few.

The new mediators

Qatar, which won its independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, wove in mediation and peaceful resolution of international disputes into its 2004 constitution and emphasized it as a pillar of its foreign policy. Since then, Qatar has come to play the most prominent role in mediating between warring countries and factions within countries, willing itself into a mediation powerhouse spanning the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  

Doha has mediated in the peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban to help end the war in Afghanistan; between the Colombian government and the Gaitanista Self-Defence Force, the powerful organized crime group; between Israel and Hamas; and between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Qatar has also helped broker a deal to resume diplomatic ties between Kenya and Somalia, helped the U.S. and Venezuela in a prisoner swap, and mediated between Ukraine and Russia to reunite children separated from their families during the war.

In the past some years, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Oman have also been bolstering their mediation efforts and seeking more prominent roles in helping reduce conflicts. Turkey hosted several rounds of peace talks between Russians and Ukrainians, and achieved significant diplomatic success by brokering, along with the United Nations, the Black Sea grain deal in August 2022. Ankara also coordinated the Aug. 2024 prisoner swap between Russia, the United States, and several European countries, which involved the exchange of 26 prisoners, including Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal correspondent held in Russia.

TOPSHOT - Qatar's chief negotiator Mohammed al-Khulaifi (C) stands between peace mediator Sumbu Sita Mambu, a representative of the Democratic Republic of Congo (seated-L) and Rwanda-backed armed group M23 executive secretary Benjamin Mbonimp (R) as they sign a ceasefire deal in Doha on July 19, 2025 to end fighting that has devastated the country's mineral-rich east. (Photo by Karim JAAFAR / AFP) (Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images—AFP or licensors

Saudi Arabia has sought to help end Sudan’s brutal civil war, mediating through several rounds of peace talks it hosted in Jeddah between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Riyadh also hosted high-level U.S.–Russia talks to end the Ukraine War, and actively mediated to prevent the conflict between India and Pakistan from escalating in May 2025. Oman played an instrumental role in the back-channel negotiations between Iran, the United States, and Europe that led to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015.

The fall of multilateralism

With the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the dawn of a unipolar era, peacemaking and mediation had regained prominence and support, which led to the Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia, the Good Friday Agreement bringing peace to Northern Ireland, Timor-Leste transitioning to independence from Indonesia, the conclusion of war in Sierra Leone, South Sudan’s attainment of independence, and the end of Nepal’s long insurgency.

The U.S. and Europe significantly retreated from mediation and peacemaking because of a combination of factors: a decline of confidence in liberal interventionism such as in Libya; return of great power competition with the rise of China; the rise of nativist populism in Europe and the U.S.; the normative revisionism and growing indifference to international law in the West; European focus on rearmament; and increased disagreements between the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The United Nations still plays an important role as a neutral third party or referee in resolving thorny international disputes but its role in peace-making and mediation has diminished significantly. The decline of multilateralism and the reduced importance of multilateral institutions is starkly evident compared to their historic interventions.

For instance, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the world’s largest security body with 57 member states, has played a highly modest role in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and ease tensions between Russia and Europe. This is striking given the organisation's origins: it emerged from the Helsinki diplomacy of the 1970s, which produced the Final Act of 1975—a landmark Cold War agreement that sought to reduce East-West friction and promote cooperation between rival blocs.

A new atlas of war and peace

Contemporary wars and conflicts are too complex to be mediated by a single actor. Mediation in recent conflicts, even by a group of actors, has offered mixed results. In the Ukraine war, Turkey, the United Nations, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all played diplomatic roles of varying significance.

Qatar led efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, with crucial support from Turkey and Egypt. Yet it was President Donald Trump who ultimately compelled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire deal—a reminder that American power can still serve as a decisive force multiplier in pushing negotiations over the line. Similarly, it was Turkey and Qatar's joint effort that prevented the recent border tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan from spiraling out of control. 

But mediators often can pay a steep price for their efforts. Qatar, for instance, has ensured sustained criticism from certain media organizations for its mediating role and for hosting the political offices of Hamas and the Taliban in Doha—despite having done so at America’s request. The Sept. 9 Israeli strike on Doha demonstrated that the cost can exceed reputational damage and escalate into a direct violation of a mediator’s security and sovereignty.

Such risks demand international discussion about protecting mediators and peacemakers and preventing similar assaults in the future. The increasing perils faced by mediators, coupled with the complexity of contemporary conflicts, demand that states and multilateral institutions must pool their experience, capacity and resources more effectively.

Multi-party mediation is the future. Making it work demands greater cooperation between the countries of the Global South, Europe and North America, as illustrated by the joint effort of Qatar, Norway, Spain and Switzerland to facilitate talks between Colombia and the Gaitanistas. Today’s mediators draw on diverse experiences, employ varied methods and tools, master local contexts and tap in different networks. No single model can be replicated in different conflicts.

Similarly, greater cooperation between multilateral institutions and individual countries is sorely needed. With the global order in flux and the great powers pursuing geopolitical and normative revisionism, there has been much discussion about the role small and middle powers can play in upholding international law and multilateralism. What can such countries contribute by way of global public goods?

Peace and stability are among the ultimate global public goods. And mediation offers more. Consider the Black Sea Grain deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations between Russia and Ukraine. Roughly 30% of the world’s grain exports pass through the Black Sea. By ensuring the undisrupted passage of that grain, the agreement had profound ramifications for global food security.

The world needs more referees and geopolitical firefighters to put out the fires of wars and conflicts. Small and middle powers, particularly those from the Global South, are stepping into this breach and providing an essential public good that great powers, bound by their own rivalries, increasingly cannot.