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Paradigm shift in the negotiation chamber
2007-03-19 17:28:00
Multilateral disarmament and arms control negotiations have achieved scant success in recent years. Based on this observation, a few questions come to my mind: Can we get beyond blaming political will and find innovative ways to shift today?s approaches towards more productive strategies? How can multilateral negotiations be made more effective? In particular, how can new insights about the dynamics of cooperation help us tackle complex negotiation dilemmas?I recently read an interesting report published by the Institute for the Future, an independent, non-profit strategic research group based in California, whose aim is to identify emerging trends that will transform the global marketplace. This report, entitled ?Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business: Managing Dilemmas in the 21st Century?, is in my opinion highly relevant to the practice of disarmament and arms control multilateral negotiators. One point stressed in this paper is that it?s necessary to develop our under...
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The Best Club in Town?
2007-03-14 09:23:00
Multilateral diplomacy is a cautious business in its working methods. Governments and their diplomats are usually reluctant to break with established precedent. This conservatism is now deeply ingrained. The UN?s committee-style negotiating structures operate pretty much now as they did 60 years ago when it had one-quarter of its current membership and international diplomacy was largely a gentleman?s club.But the world has changed. These changes are more than rhetorical ? they present new risks and opportunities for states people and diplomats, and most of all to the security of people and communities they are often psychologically distant from. The issues stemming from intuitions like Tit for Tat are still poorly understood, especially in very large group dynamics like UN negotiations. The brute reality is that if diplomats don?t consider the pros and cons of these types of intuitive strategy, they?ll be handicapped in dealing with problems of cooperation central to multilat...
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The West Wing
2007-03-11 11:12:00
I argued in this blog's previous posting on 7 March that in multilateral negotiating situations, ?nice but retaliatory? strategies like Tit or Tat run into difficulty because it?s very difficult to discriminate against non-reciprocators (See "You scratch my back ...).One reason for this is that groups are much more prone to defectors and free riders the larger they become. It?s hard to identify those we should retaliate against. A recurrent theme in The West Wing , an American television series about the life of a fictional U.S. President, is the difficulty, not so much in retaliating militarily against terrorist attacks, but in identifying and locating the perpetrators without killing lots of blameless civilians. Israeli military forces encounter this problem each time they retaliate against attacks by the many Palestinian factions and splinter groups pitted against their occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. In real life it?s hard to come up with strategies that strike t...
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You Scratch My Back...
2007-03-07 15:17:00
All humans, regardless of culture or other differences, appear to have certain common perspectives (or ?constraints?) in dealing with the world. One relates to ?reciprocal altruism? or ?you scratch my back, I?ll scratch yours?. It?s an instinctive strategy that lies at the heart of human collective endeavour from the building of the Egyptian pyramids and the atomic bomb to the International Criminal Court. And, it?s the basis for our urge to detect and punish cheats or free riders in our everyday lives.Tit for Tat. Do unto others. Whatever we call it, mutual reciprocity is an urge with a deep basis in our nature in common with many other species, some as simple as bacteria and viruses. Primate behavioural expert Frans de Waal recently observed, ?Humans and other animals share a heritage of economic tendencies ? including cooperation, repayment of favours and resentment at being short-changed.?So what? The key is the ability to discriminate against non-reciprocators by withhol...
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Tit for Tat and the Diplomat
2007-03-05 16:03:00
It?s been a pretty dismal decade for international disarmament and arms control diplomacy. The review meeting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May 2005 failed to agree on any meaningful steps to curb and roll back the spread of nukes. India and Pakistan ? and now Iran and North Korea ? pose challenges to the existing nuclear order that may stretch it beyond breaking point. The nuclear test ban flounders in limbo although a fragile moratorium holds pending its entry into force. The treaty banning biological weapons still lacks a verification regime although it did manage to get through its review meeting in late 2006 without breaking up in disarray like in 2001. And, although talks there have gained a new lease of life there this year, efforts to commence negotiations on screening fissile material production, or prevent an arms race in outer space, remain stillborn after almost a decade of talks in the fading splendour of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.Explana...
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Welcome to Disarmament Insight
2007-03-05 08:39:00
This blog site is aimed at negotiators, policy wonks, activists, researchers and anyone curious about disarmament and human security.Every few days we'll be adding new thoughts about our research, including how it relates to current events, future trends and other things we feel excited about on disarmament-related issues.We'd be interested in your thoughts too about the stuff we post here. Agree? Disagree? Comment away when the mood to blog moves you (so to speak). In fact, that's the whole idea . Basic rules apply - don't be rude, try to be constructive and bear in mind that everything you read here is unofficial and not for further attribution. It's all about the dialogue, man ....!HAPPY BLOGGINGthe Dis Insight team
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