The Conflict Resolution Community and Iraq
Paths to Constructive Engagement
Chip Hauss
Search for Common Ground
George Mason University
chauss@sfcg.org
I have
done whatever I could to avoid having to talk about the looming war with Iraq
over the last six months. I’ve turned down speaking engagements and let
my students talk the issue through with minimal (unusually so) input from me.
Now, I find myself going to a meeting of some of the leading lights in the conflict
resolution field who will be meeting in Boulder, Colorado to talk through how
our community can do anything constructive during the current crisis.
My
initial reaction to the crisis was that I wasn’t going to say anything
because I was so personally conflicted that I wasn’t sure I had anything
to say. But, I also was not hearing my voice or that of the conflict resolution
community in the national and international debate over what could and should
be done.
So,
since I think best by writing, I decided to sit down and write this memo to
myself (and anyone else who wants to read it) so I won’t sound like an
utter fool at that meeting.
Why Me?
Before
I get into what I think we can do, I should explain what I bring to the
intellectual table. Put simply, I have close to 40 years as an activist, 30
years in academe, 20 years as a conflict resolution practitioner, and more than
10 years of obsession with Iraq which began when I had George H. W.
Bush’s nephew in my course that dealt with Iraq during the first Gulf
War….
I also
find myself in political transition. I was a conscientious objector in the
early 1970s and never seriously considered endorsing the use of force until
Iraq invaded Kuwait. While I did not support the Gulf War, it was clear to me
that I could have done so under other circumstances. I had the same reaction
during the war in Bosnia, though David Rieff’s writings have gone a long
way toward convincing me I was wrong then.[1]
Kosovo, however, marked an important turning point. I did everything I could to
find a viable, nonviolent response to the horrors of ethnic cleaning. I could
not. With all the sorrow I’ve ever felt in my political life, I
reluctantly supported the bombing campaign. I had the same reaction after 9/11,
at least regarding the attacks on Afghanistan and al Qaeda.
Don’t
get me wrong. There is a lot the Clinton and Bush administration did which I
could not endorse (e.g., the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay). And, I’m
by no means a hawk. However, as I’ve tried to wrestle with the use of
force in some of my writing, I now think there is a role for the military in
certain kind of peace making operations.
Also,
I’m a bridge builder by nature. One of the joys of working at Search for
Common Ground is our constant effort to bring strange political bedfellows
together. My professional colleagues and personal friends run the gamut from
career military and intelligence officers to some of the last remaining
Marxists on the planet (there isn’t much overlap there, of course).
Most
importantly of all, I have the spent the last 20 years committed to being
unswervingly constructive in my political work. This decision came to me on one
day in the spring of 1983. I had
just become involved with the
Beyond War movement. Shortly thereafter, I had to develop a final exam
for a team taught course in comparative politics I was teaching at Colby
College. Since my colleagues and I were barely speaking, we decided to have the
students submit potential questions which we would pick from. As I was leaving
the lecture hall after the last class, a student tapped me on the shoulder and
said that the question is obvious, “the world is fucked up,
discuss.” I realized that he was right. It was what we were teaching. It
then led to a summer of soul searching during which I decided to spend a lot
more time on what we at Search call “success stories” in conflict
resolution and political life in general.
Since
then, I have tried to help people find ways forward together, to see their
conflicts as something they share and have to tackle cooperatively. I have
stopped saying “no” to things I disagree with in public (though not
in my classrooms) and have constantly tried to live up to the statement of the
ANC leader, Gen. Andrew Masongo, “understand the differences; act on the
commonalities.”
Two Voices—or Two Paths
In the
year and a half since September 11, I have had a newfound appreciation both for
the demands on national security policy makers and on the conflict resolution
community. I have been in countless meetings in which scholars, practitioners,
and government officials alike try to figure out the best way(s) forward in
these troubling and confusing times.
I find
myself returning frequently to John Paul Lederach’s remarkable talk, Quo
Vadis, first given at the University
of California Irvine in late
October 2001.[2] In it,
Lederach talks about the need to understand what he calls two
“voices” emerging from the attacks.
The
first—which we in the conflict resolution/peace community acknowledge
with difficulty—calls for justice in the traditional sense of term. While
our leads us toward forgiveness and reconciliation, I know of no one whose
response to 9/11 did not include anger towards those responsible for the
attacks or a desire to see them held accountable for their actions. Moreover, I
noticed in many of my friends and colleagues an understanding that our policy
makers had to respond to the anger and the desire for accountability (and
revenge) on the part of most Americans.
The
second voice is the one we in the conflict resolution community are more
comfortable with. It seeks lasting solutions through restorative justice and
addresses the root causes of the conflict which gave rise to al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups in the first place. While this voice has long been part and
parcel of our work in building reconciliation and stable peace, it is far newer
for our national political elite. In private conversations, public talks, and
even some of the more bellicose speeches, I have been struck by the
administration’s understanding that any “war on terrorism”
has to include laying the groundwork for lasting peace by rebuilding torn
societies. I’m by no means saying that the administration is prepared to
do what is needed here; only that a door toward the kind of work we do has been
opened.
In
other words, each time I return to Lederach’s piece, I add to—and
perhaps change—his depiction of the two voices, perhaps in ways he would
have trouble with. Indeed, I now find myself talking about two paths that the
conflict resolution can go down, which call on us to do rather different
things.
·
What we can say in the
short run during the course of an immediate crisis such as the one over what to
do with/about Iraq
·
What we can do in the
longer term, especially at an organization like Search for Common Ground which
has the capacity to take on projects that last for years not weeks
In the Short Run
One of
the weaknesses of the conflict resolution field is that we do not yet have
effective tools for dealing with short term crises like September 11 or the
looming war with Iraq on two levels. First, we have yet to develop (m)any
viable techniques that could credibly defuse an exceptionally tense situation
and thereby make possible the negotiations that could lead to a settlement
short of war. Second, we do not yet have the regular and routine access to
senior policy makers that would make our voices heard alongside those of the
mainstream authorities in the think tanks and the political science departments
of universities such as Harvard.
Time
and again, I have heard colleagues bemoan our lack of effectiveness and
“their” lack of openness since 9/11. Nonetheless, I think there are
three areas we could be doing more as conflict resolution professionals. I
start with the area where are currently doing best in.
Issuing Warnings
While
I think we need to be as constructive as possible, it is important for us to
point out the likely negative consequences of war in the medium to long term
and the naïve assumptions about an easy outcome that underlie at some of
the pronouncements of administration leaders and their supporters. These
include, but are not limited to:
·
A bloody war with Iraq
could sew the seeds for “creating” new terrorists and other threats
to our security in the future. In other words, forcing our will on Iraq now
might have costs that far outweigh any benefits we might gain from a regime
change and disarmement.
·
Victory in Iraq is
likely to lead to a lengthy occupation by the United States and its allies.
Given what we know of Iraqi history, there is little reason to believe that
democracy or any sort of stable, legitimate regime will be able to take root
there quickly and easily.
Alter the Tone of the Debate
As
with most controversial aspects of American politics, the debate over Iraq has
largely involved people in all sides talking—or screaming—past each
other. That, of course, is not the way we like to work. We can, however, use
our toolkit to help make the discussion on the war more civil and then use that
civility to help people see areas they could move forward together rather than
in confrontation.
Colleagues
at ICAR, Search, and three local congregations recently put together a forum on
“wrestling with war with Iraq.” We made certain that we had all
major points of view represented on the panel. We also made certain that we
chose individuals who respected other points of view, listened to others, and
did not go for the intellectual jugular. We also made certain that the
moderator and one of the participants were experienced conflict resolution
facilitators.
The
conflict resolution practitioners did what we normally do when we facilitate a
process. They sought and focused on areas of agreement. They set a tone of
dignity and respect (and humor). Mostly, they tried to take the discussion
beyond the narrow positions the other panelists held to the broader interests
in ways which reflect our stock in trade. In short, they tried to reframe the
debate so that all parties at least understood each other better and began to
look for areas where they actually did agree (e.g., the horrid historical track
record of the Baath regime since it took power in 1968, the desire to avoid war
if possible).[3]
The
300 people in the audience were treated to a remarkable evening. I’m not
sure we reached Daniel Yankelovich’s definition of a dialogue in which
there is a discussion which is so charged that no party remains unchanged. But
we came close.
From Process to Position Advocacy
What
follows is the most difficult of the three points in this section and one that
will take us a while to master—if I’m right about it in the first
place. In essence, it lays out the first basic steps toward making the conflict
resolution community more political while remaining true to its bridge-building
and cooperative problem-solving commitments.
For
the most part, the conflict resolution community has shied away from political
advocacy with one very important exception. We cherish our role as third party
neutrals who can help people settle disputes because we have little or not
vested interest in any particular outcome.
The
one exception of course is our advocacy for conflict resolution processes. For many of us, that has meant trying to expand the
use of mediation and alternative dispute resolution whenever and wherever possible.
At Search for Common Ground, we have taken that advocacy into the public arena
by seeking to gain congressional passage of a bill that would create a United
States Consensus Council.
Most
of us at Search for Common Ground have been satisfied with our role as third
party neutrals and process advocates until recently. Our work had primarily
been located outside the United States. As much as the violence in Burundi or
the tensions in Macedonia pain us, we rarely have a personal or political stake in what the parties to
the dispute agree to.
But
when we launched Search’s US domestic politics program in 2000, we
encountered a very different situation. To begin with, the bulk of our staff
comes from a policy advocacy background. What’s more, we discovered that
as we began developing consensus building projects on such issues as the Faith
Based Initiative or prisoner re-entry, we discovered that we all had strong
political views, that it was hard to leave them at the door, and that we did
not agree amongst ourselves.
Since
then, we have been spending a lot of time talking about how we could and should
take political stands either as an organization (we are actively promoting
nonviolence in the Middle East) or as individuals in our lives outside of
Search. Or, in this case, how can we take a stand one way or the other on Iraq
that is both true to the principles of helps promote support for the field(s)
of conflict resolution.
Those
discussions are still in process. However, I have spent the last generation
implicitly trying to be a common ground advocate (our buzz phrase) in my other
life as a college teacher. My students know I am political active, and even
though they know I’m active in conflict resolution, they are reluctant to
let me get away without letting them know my own views on the issues of the
day.
My
experience is that being a common ground advocate is not dramatically different
from the behavior we expect to use in facilitating a dialogue or
mediation—though some of my colleagues think it is a lot more complicated
than I do. What I have tried to do over the years is to create a
“safe” environment in my classroom in which I take into account
that I have the power of the grade over my students and normally know a lot
more about the topic at hand than they do. I state my views and solicit theirs,
never putting them down. I invite them (and myself) to find areas where we
agree and to seek the underlying principles of the positions we disagree on. I
make it clear that I respect their views and themselves as a human being and am
truly committed to finding areas of agreement with them.
I also
find it extremely useful to put myself in their “shoes” so I can
understand their positions as fully as possible. I realized this through a
pedagogical accident. I had the same Bill Bush in a course on race and politics
the following year. He and an afrocentric student were talking past each other
even though it was clear to me that they didn’t dramatically disagree
with each other. So, on the spur of the moment I had them engage in a role
playing dialogue in which Bill was Jesse Jackson and the woman was President
Bush 41. The two of them struggled but made some progress. They went off for
dinner together to talk over what they had done and came back to give me a dose
of my own medicine by making me role play a Klan member in the next class!
My
experience since 9/11 has been overwhelmingly positive. My students have mostly
urged caution on both Afghanistan and Iraq. But, most of the them grew up in
the DC suburbs and thus many of them come from military families or otherwise
know people who were caught up in the attacks and the wave of patriotism since
then. At times, I have disagreed with both groups; but despite not holding my
views back, I’m pretty sure the students in each of the seven courses I
have taught since 9/11 were closer to agreement at the end of the semester than
they were before it began.
In
short, I’m one of those conflict resolution practitioners who believes we
must mirror the processes we support in our professional work in every aspect
of our lives. That commitment to “walking the talk” should carry us
in good stead as advocates as we also work to develop ways of playing a more
creative and proactive part in policy making.
The Longer Path
I am
far more confident in my thinking about the options open to us for the medium
to long term. In part, this is something I’ve been working on since the
afternoon of 9/11.[4] It is also the stock in trade of
organizations like Search for Common Ground which make long-term commitments to
help resolve enduring, deeply entrenched conflicts.
The
first thing that is clear is that we have to get ourselves a place at the
policy making “table” so that our points of view are taken
seriously long before we get to the crisis stage we have found ourselves in
over the last few months regarding Iraq. We are already inching our way there.
My colleagues who work in Washington on our international projects have regular
contacts and good working relationships with, say, the State Department desk
officers on the Balkans, the Great Lakes region of Africa, and the Middle East.
AICR members now routinely brief senior State Department officials. And,
expanding those links will be an important part of the organization’s new
president once he or she is hired and on board.
But
I’m also convinced that we need to speed up that “inching”
process. One important way to do that is to make ourselves more credible by
doing at least two things.
·
We have to make it clear
that we take national security policy makers and Lederach’s first voice
seriously. I have been in entirely too many meetings since 9/11 in which
colleagues have demonized Bush administration members in exactly the same way
we admonish others for using the “image of the enemy” in our
teaching and writing.
·
More importantly, we
have to reach out beyond the left and the peace community from which so many of
us come. At Search, we have good working relationships with a large number of
Republicans, Evangelical Christians, business leaders, and the like. However,
our DC staff (about 50 people) lost its one open Republican when she returned
to graduate school in September.
Second,
we need to increase awareness among policy makers and in the American public in
general that there are alternatives to the use of force, especially in
developing long-term responses to intractable conflicts. In fact, our community
has developed dozens of useful models, such as the ARIA approach used by Jay
Rothman and his colleagues. Whatever model(s) one prefers, the fact is that
there have been a number of highly successful international conflict resolution
interventions in the last decade that have made profound shifts toward stable
peace in Central America, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Cambodia, and more.
Unfortunately, most people, including most policy makers, think of these
“success stories” as exceptions to the rule that war is an
extension of normal politics by other means. In short, we need to think more
creatively about how to make win/win conflict resolution the norm at home and
abroad by, for instance, gleaning lessons from Malcolm Gladwell’s The
Tipping Point, on how popular fads
take root.
Third
and most importantly, we need to articulate a political strategy that gets at
the root causes that give rise to the conflicts we face in the first place.
Exactly what that strategy would be will, of course, vary from conflict to
conflict. However, it is highly likely that any such strategy would include at
least the following:
·
A serious attempt to
meet the unmet human needs that give rise to the conflict. Saddam Hussein and
the Baath Party did not appear all of a sudden out of nowhere. They are the
result of a long history of exploitation and oppression that critics and
supporters of Bush Administration policy agree on but is rarely included in
public debate about what do about Iraq.[5]
·
Work to change coalition
dynamics. Whatever happens in the next weeks and months, there is almost
certainly going to be a regime change in Iraq. As is the case with the
“war on terrorism,” we will find ourselves in a situation in which
there are thousands of mostly young people who will be even angrier toward the
West than they are now. The challenge is to find techniques that help those
people toward channeling that anger in a nonviolent rather than a violent
direction, including toward supporting terrorism
·
Be inclusive of people
and beliefs. It is a truism in our work that an intractable conflict cannot be
settled until all the stakeholders to it agree on a strategy for ending it. One
of the lessons of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland is the
importance of the years that were spent in convincing the IRA and Sinn Fein
that they should come to the table. I don’t mean to make this seem
simple. It was more than a decade between the first trial balloons in the
mid-1980s before the IRA and the British found a way to get them to the table,
and it took the Community of Sant’Egidio almost that long to do the same
in Mozambique.
The Time Is Ripe
The
time is by no means ripe for us to have an impact in preventing war with Iraq.
I finished this draft the morning after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s
speech to the Security Council of the United Nations. It convinced me more than
I already was that we are heading for a war that nothing short of capitulation
by the Iraqi government could prevent. I suspect that it will happen in a
matter of weeks, not even months.
However,
the time is ripe for the conflict resolution and national security policy
making community to begin finding ways of working together. What I have seen in
Washington since 9/11 is a growing understanding in policy making circles that
while the politicians and the soldiers know how to win wars, they do not know
how to build peace afterward and they are therefore more interested than they
ever were in what we have to say.
But,
if we are to nurture that still fragile and limited relationship, we have to
change as well. Put simply, I think we have to grow up as a movement in at
least two ways. We have to think more ambitiously about our mission and
envision ourselves as part of the policy making elite in this country and
beyond, not as the political “outsiders” most of us have been.
Second, I think we have to change the way we present ourselves so that we
become taken ever more seriously by the national policy making elites who
barely even knew of our existence two years ago.
[1] David Rieff, A Bed
For the Night. (New York: Simon and Schuster 2 002) and Slaugtherhouse (New York: Vintage
1995).
[2]
http://www.nd.edu/~krocinst/sept11/ledquo.html
[3] Perhaps because of the
pressing nature of the crisis with Iraq, the publication of work about Public
Conversation’s dialogue on abortion has largely fallen below the radar
screen for most American. PC facilitators brought together three pro-choice and
pro-life leaders for six years of dialogue. The two sides made minimal progress
toward agreement on the issue of abortion, per se, but at least came to find
other areas of agreement and find new levels of concern and respect for each
other’s point of view.
[4] In fact, this section
is based heavily on an article I wrote with Matt Hersey, “Terrorism and
Conflict Resolution.” In Dennis Sandole and R. Chris Moore, Terroriosm:
Concepts, Causes, and Conflict Resolution. (Washington: Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
2002), pp. 130-143. A copy can be found at
http://classweb.gmu.edu/chauss/search/terrorism.htm
[5] On this, see in
particular, Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm. (New York: Random
House, 2002). I recommend this book, both because I think it is the best recent
publication and because I disagree with Pollack’s decision that we need
to go to war.