Peacemakers come in all different types from the very granular and practical to the esoteric. Most of us who do peace work professionally are grounded in a deeper spiritual practice, and most peacemakers and mediators don’t talk much about their personal spiritual journeys. On this edition of The Doug Noll Show, we will walk with a shaman, a visionary, and a peacemaker. This hour will enrich us all with the higher calling of peace as we have a conversation with James O’Dea.

James is Co- Director of The Social Healing Project and has conducted healing and reconciliation dialogues for the past twelve years. He is a member of the faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and its past President. He was Executive Director of The Seva Foundation and the Washington Office Director of Amnesty International. He lectures widely and offers ongoing intensive trainings and sacred activist retreats. He is a member of the Advisory Board of The Peace Alliance. His book Creative Stress: A Path For Evolving Souls Living Through Personal and Planetary Upheaval has been called “the medicine for our times.”

James tells us that the root causes of conflict seem to be based on the entanglement of the victim and the perpetrator. Perpetrators are usually deeply wounded and their only escape from the pains of their psychological injuries is violence and inflicting pain on others. The cycle of wounding is therefore sustained through generations.

To break the cycle, we must separate the actor from the act. I talk about the redemptive nature of peace as I have witnessed in my Prison of Peace project.

James and I talk about deep listening as the first step in breaking the cycle of violence. James describes the limbic field of resonance that arises when one person deeply listens to another.

I ask James to talk about the book he is currently writing: Cultivating Peace: The Art, Science, and Practice of Peacebuilding. James says that this book describes the reframing of the peace movement on the planet. Instead of protesting war, the new peace movement is about developing a culture of peace. One of the greatest barriers to this culture of peace is the deep cynicism of so-called realists. James says that the cynics are hiding their own wounds when they scoff at the notion of a culture of peace.

I mention that another service of the peacemaker is to bring hope to conflict. Cynics live in despair and have given up hope for peace. Their cynicism protects them from the hurt of disappointment and disillusionment.

I ask James about his work with rehabilitation in prisons. James tells us he is developing an assessment tool to measure the progress of transformation within prisons. He measures attitudinal shifts of inmates to create an empirical record of change.

We shift to the discussion of lawyers as change agents. James tells us that he is working with very small groups of lawyers in group intensives. These lawyers have confronted the cynicism of the legal system and seeking ways to make it more holistic. We both observe how many lawyers seem to be exhibiting symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder caused by the chronic stress of working in a structure that is not aimed towards building healthy, humane relationships between humans.

We conclude our conversation as James observes that the level of consciousness on the planet appears to be rising. Although much work remains, James is optimistic that enough people are working for change towards peace that we will see significant shifts in our lifetime. James’s website is www.jamesodea.com.

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What is it like living as a member of a peacekeeping force? How do you survive international war zones as a member of the UN security force?

My guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show has spent many years as a security and police officer on duty with the United Nations. Bob Rail is a former Chicago police officer who became involved in international security operations back in the 1990s in Sarajevo and the breakup of Yugoslavia. He has served as a peacekeeper for the UN around the world, including tours of duty in Iraq, Indonesia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and just about every other war zone you can imagine. His latest book, Surviving the International War Zone, tells the stories of what it’s like living in a foreign land where most everyone is armed and no one much likes anyone else.

Bob tells us that he was part of the team that travelled to countries recruiting international peacekeepers from national police forces. The UN sets age requirements, physical fitness requirements, and basic policing skills. Bob observed a wide variation in policing skills, largely dependent on the ability of a country to invest in proper police training. In some countries, the failure rate was high; in others, it was modest.

When officers arrive in country on assignment, there is always mass confusion in training and standards. What amazed Bob was how quickly teams formed and overcame the confusion with tolerance and solidarity.

We talk about the nature of hatred. Bob tells some stories that illustrate how deep the hatred is in some countries. From birth, children are indoctrinated in hate and vengeance, which perpetuates the cycle for generations on end.

I ask Bob how he and his colleagues maintained their humanity and balance in the face of the atrocity of war zones. Bob says it was very difficult. The “new Normal” was pretty weird. The one thing Bob could not handle was the abuse of children. He tells us a shocking story of how parents must guard a child’s grave until they are certain the body is decomposing to prevent it from being dug up and paraded by enemies.

In war zones, everything is compressed. There is no ambiguity; everything is black and white. Emotions are intense, primal, and compressed.

I ask Bob about torture. Bob says that torture will always be with us. When people are under sufficient provocation, they will do anything to protect themselves and their families. He tells us that all Special Forces troops are subjected to waterboarding as part of their training so that they can understand what it is. He says that may be torture, but real torture is when one partisan captures an enemy, ties him to a tree with barbed wire, and pulls out teeth with pliers one at time. Bob briefly describes some of the effects of torture he saw in Iraq.

Finally, we turn to Bob’s book, Surviving the International War Zone. He tells us how the book came about. The contributors were all colleagues with him in various countries. Each was asked to provide stories of his emotional experiences, good and bad.

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Iraq has been squeezed from the headlines by the on-going problems in the economy and the fascination with the Republicans vying to challenge President Obama. The fact that the media has lost interest in Iraq does not mean that the country is peaceful and unnewsworthy. Iraq continues to struggle with ethnic, tribal, and religious divisions. Reconciling these groups continues to be a daunting task.

My guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show has just returned from a journey of reconciliation in Iraq. Luke Wilcox is the Development and Communications Director of the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP). He spent 5 weeks in Iraq in June – July of 2011 working as an unarmed American with his host, Sami Rasouli, and the Muslim Peacemaker Teams. Luke was a Katherine Davis Fellow for Peace in 2010 and graduated from Boston University with an M.A. in International Relations. His colleague, Kathy McKay, is Executive Director and a co-founder of the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project.

Luke says that he went to Iraq as a different kind of American. He was an unarmed guest seeking to build respectful relationships between people. He was not interested in contracts or military efforts to suppress violence; he was interested in learning about the people of Iraq.

During June and July 2011, Luke lived in Najaf, with his host Sami Rasouli. Luke was introduced to many Iraqis who don’t fit the category, “Iraqi” (as it has been defined in America). They were invariably generous, welcoming, and kind—perhaps better descriptors for the category of “Iraqi”–but they were also diverse. Luke learned that Iraqis like Americans, but don’t care for American politics or the American occupation of Iraq. They are waiting for the occupation to end in December 2011.

Among the most frustrating effects of the war and U.S. occupation are the lack of electricity, which comes and goes every couple of hours, and the lack of clean water. The American contractors and military, and the Iraqi government have not yet been able to restore basic services. The problem is partly due to insurgent efforts to blow infrastructure like power plants and power lines up and partly due to the incredibly deep and broad corruption that prevents projects from being completed. Vast amounts of the $81 billion US reconstruction dollars have been siphoned off to American and Iraqi individuals. Luke tells us that the graft in the Iraqi government is beyond comprehension.

While Luke did not encounter any violence or danger, he learned that the Iraqi security forces, while getting stronger, still suffer from corruption and graft. The sectarian violence is not natural to Iraq, however. The people in southern Iraq believe and hope that after the American military leaves Iraq, Iraqis will be able to rebuild their country their way.

In southern Iraq, which is mostly populated by the more conservative Shia people, women veil themselves in the traditional abayah. Luke initially thought that modern women might find this oppressive. To his surprise, wearing the abayah was not experienced as oppressive, and Iraqi women bristled at the idea that they did not have rights or a voice in the affairs of the country. Luke tells us that he was surprised that feminists existed under the veil.

Generally, Luke found that women were respected, well-educated, and participating members of civil society. While southern Iraq had grown more conservative, the widespread oppression of women, as experienced in Afghanistan, was simply nonexistent.

To learn more about Luke Wilcox and the Iraqi American Reconciliation Project, visit the website at reconciliatonproject.org.

The Peacemaker’s Bookshelf

For this edition of The Peacemaker’s Bookshelf  I have selected a new book written by Bob Rail entitled Surviving the International War Zone. Bob was a police officer for many years before he became involved in international peacekeeping. As an international police officer assigned to some of the most violent conflict zones in the 20^th and 21^st century, Bob has seen every kind of violence one human can do to another. And, he has developed a deep appreciation of the power of peace, rather than war, to help people move through violence to a better life for themselves and their families.

Surviving the International War Zone is a series of stories, essays, and observations from Bob, his wife Janet, and many of his colleagues. The stories are sometimes humorous, seen from the perspective of the now rather than the then. Mostly, they show how men and women assigned to keep people who really, really hate each from killing everything in sight, managed to keep peace and their personal sanity.

The book is designed to impart wisdom to those who will be working in a war zone and those who must plan for those who go. There are pearls of wisdom on every page as Bob and his colleagues share the learning curve they went through to survive desert heat that was measured with a meat thermometer, snipers, street gangs, and terrorists. What is so interesting is that the contributors Bob selected come from all over the world. Germany, Zimbabwe, Norway, Russia, Spain and other countries are all represented in the book. Each of these men and women share their personal perspective on living and working in a war zone from their cultural as well as professional backgrounds.

What is truly amazing is how, through the violence, brutality, and atrocity of war, these story tellers, police officers, trainers, and advisers all, kept their humor, perspective, and humanity.

This book is an eye-opener that brings the reality of what peacekeepers do front and center. It is a fascinating read and another essential book for any serious peacemaker. The book is Surviving the International War Zone, by Robert Rail. It is published by CRC Press, a division of Taylor and Francis.

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This week’s news has been dominated by the wild gyrations of the sock market and to a lesser extent the crash of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan that killed over 30 Seal Team members, including some involved in the Osama bin Laden raid. The media is not paying attention to the more pressing issues of war and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan is suffering from a low grade civil war, has nuclear weapons, and is implacably opposed to India. South Asia is a dangerous place and is therefore of great interest to me as a mediator and peacemaker.

My guest is Daniel Wagner, Managing Director of Country Risk Solutions, a political risk consulting firm based in Connecticut. Daniel is an authority on political risk insurance and analysis. He has written hundreds of articles on risk management and current affairs, His forthcoming book, Managing County Risk, will be published in early 2012.
Daniel explains that the business of political risk insurance is about assessing the risks of making investments and doing business in foreign countries. Essentially, he analyzes the political, economic, physical, and cultural environment in a country to determine what risks an investment might face.

Daniel tells us that India and Pakistan are like two patients that are allergic to each other. The animosity not held just by extremists, but by a broad spectrum of the populations of both countries. Ironically, they all want the same thing for their children-peace and prosperity. They just don’t know how to get there.

The US has supported Pakistan because of Pakistan’s geo-political importance. However, the corruption is hugely problematic. Very little of the billions of dollars given to Pakistan are used for intended purposes. The Pakistani military is adept at negotiating with the US and playing both sides against the middle. For all intents, however, Pakistan is a failed state. It is unable to provide basic services to its population, instead choosing to spend the bulk of its budget and aid on military spending.

Pakistan could be labeled the most dangerous nation in the world. The average Pakistani spends 50% of its disposable income on food, which in other countries, would lead to protests and civil resistance. In Pakistan, the people have been conditioned to accept their economic situation as normal. However, there are deep ethnic divides within the country, no rule of law, a limited civil society, and an economy dominated by the military. The Pakistani military sees itself in a world of existential threat and therefore is willing to use any means necessary to preserve and protect its power and privilege. The US is therefore in the unenviable position of working with an untrustworthy country that does not share aligned interests.

While past relations between the US and India has in the past been cool, relations are warming as US-Pakistani relations deteriorate. The upshot in these relations is that the likelihood of a stable Afghanistan is very low.

The US must apply more common sense and humility in its foreign relations. Instead of protecting the power, position, and privilege of various heads of state, US foreign relations should be focusing on how to help the average person live a better life.

We turn to China. China has become adept at meeting its own political and economic interests through direct foreign investment. The Chinese are actively pursuing stable energy resources and are developing a navy to protect its own petroleum shipping interests.

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As most people know the so-called Arab Spring has led to some interesting and very different results across the Middle East. Tunisia and Egypt successfully engaged in nonviolent action to overthrow their regimes. Libya is now in a stalemated civil war between rebels and Moammar Kaddafi. Syria is violently responding to nonviolent protests and over 2000 have been claimed to be killed in the city of Hama. Bahrain enlisted the aid of Saudi Arabia to put down protests. So why the difference? Why is it that nonviolent action worked in some countries, but not in others? And why is violence not working in places like Syria and Bahrain to either change the regime or stabilize and strengthen the regimes?

My guest is Dr. Erica Chenoweth, assistant professor of Government at Wesleyan University and director of Wesleyan’s Program on Terrorism and Insurgency Research, which she established in 2008. Erica’s latest book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, has just been published by Columbia University Press. Erica has studied and compared the nature of nonviolent action to violence and war and has developed some surprising and powerful conclusions. We will talk about her work and those conclusions on this edition of The Doug Noll Show.
Erica gives us three take-aways from her research on the effectiveness of nonviolent civil resistance. First, nonviolent civil resistance works twice as well as violent resistance. Second nonviolent civil resistance works where you think it wouldn’t, especially against brutal and repressive regimes. Finally, when nonviolent civil resistance has existed, countries are more likely to be performed towards democracy. This research shows that power based on guns is quite vulnerable. Surprisingly, conflict security studies scholars have been completely blind to the power of nonviolent civil resistance is a strategic force in regime change.

Erica distinguishes between nonviolence and nonviolent civil resistance. Nonviolent civil resistance is the process of prosecuting a conflict through nonviolent means. Nonviolence refers to moral position that violence in any form is wrong. Nonviolent civil resistance is not a moral position and many civil resisters are not pacifists. In fact, most nonviolent campaigns are highly coercive. Doug points out that Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign in India was anything but peaceful. Erica agrees and points out that when cooperation of a population is withdrawn from the regime, the sources of that regime’s power are eroded.
Autocrats find nonviolent civil resistance to be very scary because they do not know how to respond to it. Since violence is the specialty of an oppressive regime, responding to violence is easy to understand and deal with. Nonviolent campaigns are based on a broad spectrum of tactics, including tactics of concentration and dispersion. Tactics of concentration include protests, marches, and sit-ins. Tactics of dispersion include strikes, boycotts, and stay-at-homes. The secret to nonviolent civil resistance is to mix up the tactics so that the regime cannot formulate an effective counter strategy.

Erica tells us that there are several conditions that appear to be present in successful nonviolent civil resistance campaigns. First, there must be a high number of participants. That number must be in the thousands. Her research search shows that nonviolent civil resistance attracts more participants than violent resistance. Second, over time, there must be defections by the security force such that the police and military refused orders to repress the population. Finally, the organization of the nonviolent campaign must include tactical diversity, switching from concentration to dispersion and back to concentration.
Interestingly, the research shows that outside financial support or foreign aid does not affect the success or failure of nonviolent civil resistance campaigns. Moral support, however, does help.
Doug asks Erica about leadership and organization of nonviolent civil resistance campaigns. Erica talks about Peter Ackerman’s work in which he argues for a three pronged approach: unity, nonviolent discipline, and planning. There must be a unified vision crosscutting the population, there must be a commitment to nonviolent resistance that is disciplined, and there must be extensive planning in the same style as a military campaign.
Nonviolent civil resistance campaigns to not succeed because they are nonviolent, they succeed because they coerce erosion of support.

Doug and Erica reviewed the Arab spring of 2011 in the context of her research findings. Erica tells us that Tunisia is a classic example of a successful nonviolent campaign. It was mobilized in a few weeks, the security forces refused to repress the population, and eventually Ben Azi’s power was so eroded that he was forced to step down. Prospects seem good for secular Islamic democracy in Tunisia, however economic development will be critical. Erica points out that whenever a country reaches a gross to mastic product of $11,500 US per person, democracy has never failed. Thus, raising Tunisia standard of living will be essential to promoting a pro-Democratic regime.
Egypt was similar to Tunisia. In Egypt’s case, the organizers had learned from protests occurring in 2008. There were many resources available to the Egyptians about the prosecution of nonviolent civil resistance campaigns, and they used them. Leaflets were handed out at protest showing escape routes, giving instructions on how to respond to police brutality, and providing information about the movement. The prospects for democracy in Egypt are not so clear, although Erica is hopeful. Part of the problem is that the military wants to control and rule the country, but not government. The military controls much of the economic activity in the country and does not want to give up that wealth. In addition, the military fears the Islamic movements and is leery of a pro-democracy movement that it cannot control.
To learn more about Erica’s work, go to rationalinsurgent.wordpress.com.

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On this edition of the Doug Noll Show, we go back to Afghanistan. As the Republican House of Representatives continues to deadlock America on the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, the war continues on. And, it continues to devastate civilians as it costs us billions of dollars per month. The humanitarian side of the equation rarely makes the mainstream press, so Doug brings on a voice with expertise and experience in Afghanistan.

Shannon Scribner has been with Oxfam America since 2003 and is currently leading the humanitarian policy team in Washington, DC. She has worked on Oxfam’s humanitarian responses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries.
Oxfam started as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in Oxford, England during World War II. Today, there are 15 affiliates working in 98 countries. OxfamUS is dedicated to advocacy as well as humanitarian work. Shannon and Doug talk about the poor priorities of the US Congress as they debate a debt ceiling limit when drought and famine in the Horn of Africa is creating a humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people.
Oxfam has been working in Afghanistan through partners since 1961 and began direct operations in 1991. It was one of the few NGOs allowed into the country by the Taliban. Since the 1990s, Oxfam has had direct operations in the north and central regions of Afghanistan and works through partners in the Pasthun dominated south. It focuses on local capacity management capacity building so that villages and communities can utilize the aid that comes their way. Oxfam works in all sectors of Afghanistan providing services as needed and requested by local communities.
The poverty in Afghanistan is staggering. The life expectancy is 45 years, 1 out of 5 children do not live to the age of five, almost 40% of the people earn less than $1 per day, and maternal mortality is extremely high. Only 48% of the people have safe drinking water.
The poverty is compounded by the continuing violence. There are many groups with many motives which the media calls the Taliban. In fact, there is no over-arching Taliban, but the word is used to describe drug dealers, warlords, Pashtun nationalists, Islamic extremists, and criminal gangs. These groups are embedded in their communities and use violence to resolve disputes, threaten and intimidate the people, and generally make life miserable. The likelihood of continued military action stopping this security problem is very low.
The US military emphasis has been on creating an Afghan security force composed of police and a national militia. The goal is to have 350,000 people in service by 2013. The problem is how to pay for this force as the cost will exceed the government’s budget. Up until recently, the US military has focused on quantity rather than quality. As a result of inadequate or nonexistent training, the Afghan security forces have caused as much humanitarian and human rights abuses as they have prevented. Finally, personnel are being trained in community-based policing, human rights laws, and due process.
While Afghanistan’s prospects for peace, security, and economic development are bleak, there are some bright spots. Huge strides have been made in education as over 6.7 million children are enrolled in school. Girls are being educated at historically high rates and want more. Afghanistan needs secondary schools, more primary school classrooms, more teachers, more materials and supplies to keep this momentum.
Women have been trained as midwives, which is having an effect on infant and maternal mortality. Women are participating in civil society at the local, regional, and national level. They are sitting on jirgas and participating in shuras. The challenge will be to maintain the growth of the status of women in Afghanistan society as the US withdraws and other forces attempt to whip Afghanistan back to a medieval existence.

The Peacemaker’s Bookshelf

It’s been months since I’ve had a book that I’ve wanted to add my The Peacemakers Bookshelf, and I finally came across one that is a must-read. The book is Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict and is written by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan. Erica is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University and previously was a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy school of Government. Maria is a strategic planner with US Department of State and served as director of policy and research at the international Center on nonviolent conflict.

Their book is a rigorous examination of the success and failure of nonviolent campaigns designed to instigate a regime change, liberation from foreign occupation, and self-determination. What they find is startling: between 1900 and 2006 nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve for partial success as their violent current counterparts. It doesn’t matter what type of regime, what type of repression, or what the capabilities of the regime are, nonviolent campaigns tend to work better than violent ones. 323 campaigns were studied over 106 years. In the case of antiregime resistance campaigns, the use of nonviolent strategies has greatly enhanced the likelihood of success. When territorial objectives like any occupation or self-determination is at stake, nonviolent campaigns still showing advantage. The only category of conflict were nonviolent strategies were not successful were in the cases of secession movements. However, violent campaigns were no more successful themselves. It appears that efforts to secede nation generally fail regardless of the strategy.

The authors argue that the reason nonviolent campaigns are so successful is because they have a participation advantage over violent insurgencies. The barriers to participating in a nonviolent action are much lower than in a violent action. Higher levels of participation also translate into tactical innovation, expanded civic disruption, and loyalty shifts away from the ruling regime.

More importantly, nonviolent campaigns create much more durable and internally peaceful democracies than transitions that follow violence and war. There is a much lower probability of a relapse to civil war when regime change has been nonviolent.

The policy implications of this book are profound. It would seem that supporting violent insurgents is likely placing a losing bet on a conflict. Military support for insurgents has no guarantee of success, and, in fact pretty much guarantees failure. Although this book went to press before the Libya civil war began, everything that these authors talk about has come about in Libya. Violence has led to a stalemate and there is no guarantee that a stable, democratic regime will emerge from war. How much better would a nonviolent approach have been?

The book is called Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict and is written by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan. It is published by Columbia University Press and should be read by every peacemaker.

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One of the most perplexing problems in conflict is dealing with evil. And, of course, that raises an even more perplexing problem—how do we define evil. After all one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. Some would say do not negotiate with evil. Others would say negotiate if you must. Like many problems in life, deciding when to bargain with the devil is a complex question with no pat moral, ethical, or practical answer.

My guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show has studied this question and his latest book gives us guidance. Robert Mnookin is a leading expert in the field of conflict resolution, and has applied his interdisciplinary approach to negotiation and conflict resolution to a remarkable range of problems; both public and private. Bob is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project.
He tells us he became interested in negotiation as an undergraduate studying economics under Thomas Schelling. After law school and stint in private practice, he entered academia and became interested in how the legal system provides a backdrop for negotiation. One of his early articles, “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law,” started to explore how negotiation as a strategic interaction was influenced by the possibility of trial.
We turn to the subject of evil. Bob says that evil, for his purposes, is the intention imposition of grievous harm on another human being without justification.
I ask Bob when one should consider negotiating with evil. He tells us that he rejects the idea that we should either never or always negotiate with evil. It is always a contextual decision. That is not to say that negotiating with evil requires moral relativism. The theme of Bargaining with the Devil is how to deal with the challenge of thinking straight about the costs and benefits of negotiating with evil. I go through Bob’s decision making framework: Identify your interests and the interests of evil, consider what alternatives to negotiation exist, determine the range of potential negotiated outcomes, calculate the hidden costs in choosing to negotiate, and if the alternative is force, determine whether force is legitimately and morally justified.
We end the segment by considering a negotiation with Moammar Gaddafi. Bob posed the question to a foreign minister of a European ally: “Assume Gaddafi, his family, and his cohorts could be induced to leave Libya with a billion dollars. Would you agree?”
Bob tells us that deciding whether to negotiate with Gaddafi is a complex problem. We talk about the policy of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court that expressly rejects immunity or amnesty from prosecution for peace as “being in the interests of justice.” The proponents of the ICC have concluded that a categorical denial of immunity to evil humans is better than ending a prolonged war. We walk through the calculus of Libya, looking at the war as a tribal civil war, and wonder if Gaddafi’s exit would change anything. The worst outcome would be for Gaddafi to receive immunity, a large amount of retained wealth, and have Libya disintegrate into a failed state because tribal factions could not form a civil society.
We talk a little about justice. One of the tensions in negotiating with evil is the idea that justice may be sacrificed. Humans have a need to feel justice, which leads them to vengeance instead of negotiation. Bargaining with the Devil provides a framework for looking at that question. However, there are no easy answers.
Fundamentally, people demonize each other when they are adverse to each other. The current debt ceiling negotiations illustrate how the negotiators are being demonized by each other. In addition, the debt ceiling negotiations demonstrate the cost of negotiation with “evil” as constituencies abandon their negotiators. The feeling of being sold out permeates the problem of bargaining with the devil.
I ask Bob how one can induce an evil person to negotiate in the first place. The trick, he says, is to find out what the underlying interests of the evil person might be and appeal to them. He gives the example of Rudolph Kasztner, a Jew who negotiated with Eichmann for the ultimate release of 1,700 Jews in Nazi Hungary. Kasztner led Eichmann to believe that world Jewry would provide 10,000 trucks to Germany to be used on the eastern front if Eichmann would release hundreds of thousands of Jews out of Germany and central Europe. Kasznter had no way of delivering on this promise, but induced Eichmann to release 1,700 Jews as a sign of good faith. Kasztner paid deeply for his negotiation. In the 1950s he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator. He sued for defamation in Israel. The trial court, completely misunderstanding what Kasztner had accomplished, issued a devastating opinion against him. The decision was eventually overturned, but Kasztner’s reputation was ruined.
Part of the problem is that human mythology sees the Hero as Warrior. The peacemaker is not always a hero and therefore does not claim the mantle of the Warrior. People sometimes have difficulty with this and therefore blame the negotiator.
We talk about deceit and treachery in negotiation. Certainly, Bob tells us, we should expect deceit and treachery from evil people during negotiations. Whether we are deceitful is a more difficult question.

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In 1989, New Zealand embarked on a grand experiment in dealing with crime and juvenile offenders. Instead of putting young offenders in prison, New Zealand passed a law that required them to meet with their family and extended family to make things right with the victim and the community. The victims were always invited and were given the opportunity to tell their story and participate in the decision making. An amazing thing happened. Juvenile incarceration rates dropped by 80 percent in two years, and the New Zealand model of restorative justice proved itself to the world. Twenty years later, restorative justice in New Zealand thrives. And here to tell us about it is a New Zealand judge who is an active international advocate for restorative justice.

The Honorable Fred McElrea has been a District Court judge in New Zealand since 1988, serving 20 years until his retirement in 2008. Since 1993, with the support of successive Chief District Court Judges, he has been closely involved in the development of restorative justice procedures for adults, which led to the inclusion of such procedures in New Zealand’s Sentencing Act 2002.
The power of the conference lies in storytelling. As the offender listens, the victims explain how the crime affected them. The offender sees the human side of the consequences of the offense. This invariably leads to remorse and an apology to the victims. When this occurs, the victims experience a change of heart. They move from vengeance to constructive problem-solving and willingly participate in a plan on how to make things right for everyone.
Half of the cases are diverted to conferences before they even make it to court. The balance of the cases go to conferences after there has been a plea or adjudication of guilt. In the vast number of cases, the victim, the offender, and the offender’s family come to agreement on what should be done. When the plan is presented to the court, the judge must give the plan due consideration in developing a final order.
New Zealand prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers are thoroughly committed to the conferencing process. The challenge they face is that restorative justice requires a completely different ethos than the retributive system. Because lawyers are trained in adversarial ideology-the idea that the courtroom is a battleground-learning to participate in a collaborative process is a new and challenging concept.
The New Zealand process has demonstrated significant benefits over the trial system. Re-offending has dropped by 20 percent for those young offenders participating in a conference. Restitution and reparation payments have skyrocketed. The communities feel and are measurably safer.
Because of the success with juvenile offenders, New Zealand has started allowing adult offenders to participate in a conferencing process. The New Zealand parliament required judges to give heavy deference to plans coming out of the victim-offender conferences. Not surprisingly, the same positive results in reduced re-offending, dramatically higher restitution and reparation payments, and much improved community safety occurred. As a result, in a period of significant government cutbacks, the New Zealand Minister of Finance has decreed that restorative justice processes will receive budgetary increases in recognition of their cost-effectiveness.

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Some of the most intractable problems domestically and internationally escalate because people simply do not talk to each other. In deeper conflicts, getting the parties to the table is 90 percent of the work. But how do you go about designing and implementing a process that leads from dialogue and understanding to actionable results? One answer is found in a two year old non-profit organization called Convergence.

Rob Fersh is the president and founder of Convergence, a non-profit organization founded in 2009 to promote consensus solutions to policy issues of domestic and international importance. Rob has served as the United States country director for Search for Common Ground, an international conflict resolution organization.  While at SFCG, he directed national policy consensus projects on health care coverage for the uninsured and U.S.-Muslim relations. Rob has held a variety of positions in government and in the private sector and his passion is in establishing dialogues and conversations between unlikely parties, who together can change the world.
Convergence is the result of the work of many people, including former members of Congress, philanthropists, and faith communities, all of whom have an interest in developing civil dialogue to solve challenging policy issues.
Convergence is working in three areas of interest: US-Pakistan Leaders Forum, Nutrition, Food Production, Processing, and Distribution, and Health, and Education. The Pakistan Leaders Forum is conducting 6 meetings over 3 years in Pakistan and the US. It is linking members of civil society of each country to discuss and develop action plans on issues involving agriculture, energy, health, and education.
The Nutrition and Health project is looking at the rising levels of obesity and associated health costs. The project is in the assessment phase as interviews and research is conducted to outline issues. The common wisdom is that people in the food sector are talking past each other. There seems no coordinated thinking linking food production, regulation, agricultural subsidies,  processing and distribution chains, and consumers. As a result, the public is receiving mixed messages about health and food. In essence, the problem seems to be one of developing food literacy to change behaviors.
Doug talks about the complexity of the problem, using nutrient density as an example. Rob talks about the general process, which includes conflict mapping, identifying interests, problem-solving, and generating accountability.
Convergence works through a small staff that reflects the diversity of its work. Outside facilitators with deep process expertise are brought in to run the dialogues. Doug asks how Convergence is funded. Dave says that funding is challenging. Generally, projects attract funding and some participants are able to fund projects. Convergence has encountered some skepticism, especially from people committed to strong ideologies. It is overcoming these barriers through process success, creating hope for a better future, and carefully selecting issues for dialogue.
People can learn more about Convergence by visiting its website at www.cnvg.org.

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The war in Libya is costing the US over $100 million per month. As the cruise missles and bombs rain down on Khaddafi’s regime, they are destroying schools, roads, electrical grids, water distribution, and cultural centers. The entire landscape of Libya is being changed forever in the name of regime change. Yet no one is talking about the social and economic cost of reconstruction.

My guest is Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg is president of Peace & Conflict Planners Canada and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. She is Canada’s leading post-conflict reconstruction expert and specializes in the research and implementation of advanced technologies for reconstruction initiatives. Dr. Meharg focuses on economic acceleration in regions experiencing economic transitions, including post-conflict and post-disaster environments such as Afghanistan, Haiti and the Balkans.
Sarah tells us that the lessons learned in the reconstruction of Europe and Japan after World War Two have largely been forgotten. Most importantly, we have forgotten that war destroys places having great cultural, symbolic, and spiritual meaning. Thus, the process of post-conflict reconstruction is in large part a reconstruction of social identities.
Sarah has coined the word “identicide” to describe the intentional destruction of places that have deep symbolic meaning to the people. In most of the 21st century wars, opponents have systematically and intentionally targeted cultural, political, and spiritual architecture that gives places within a country special meaning. Identicide is a way of destroying the morale of people by destroying the familiar landmarks that give places meaning.
The problem is compounded during reconstruction because NGOs and government benefactors feel constrained by political correctness to not get into the middle of cultural conflicts around what and how these deeply symbolic places should be rebuilt. Imagine the British and the Europeans becoming involved in the design controversies around the reconstruction of Ground Zero? As a result, a power vacuum occurs and political extremists rush in to advance their causes. The ensuing conflicts are often more deeply caustic and enduring than the wars that brought them on.
Sarah advocates the use of Effects-Based Approaches to Outcomes as a planning philosophy in post-conflict reconstruction planning. She believes that reconstruction planning is a complex, difficult job that requires broad collaboration and coordination. EBAO processes help stakeholders look at all of the interconnected processes that must occur for effective reconstruction. Sarah points out that under current practices, dozens of NGOs may descend upon a war-torn country. Since they do not even use the same common software platforms, there is often utter confusion and wasteful duplication of efforts. At a minimum, NGOs should be using a common software platform to share data and allow for better coordination of efforts.
Sarah’s organization, PCPCanada, is social entrepreneurialism designed to bridge the gap between the military and the NGOs by bringing order to chaos. An essential part of any reconstruction effort is to create jobs on the ground for the people living in country so that they may rise out of the poverty created by the destruction of war.

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