Arriving at Yes
The Rt. Hon. George Reid was President of the Scottish Parliament until May
2007. Previously, he worked as a Director of the International Red Cross. The following are extracts from his speech in Chisinau on 2 October at the opening of the School of Conflict Resolution of the Foreign Policy Association of Moldova.
I have spent half my last 30 years in countries whose citizens have been denied a decent life because of conflict. Between my time in the British and Scottish Parliaments, I worked for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Africa. Since my retirement from politics in May this year, I have been back in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and have also been busy helping to build consensus in Northern Ireland.
Peace is much more than the absence of war. If underlying tensions are not addressed, they are apt to fester and flare up once more. Over the last three decades, I have come to learn that peace-building is as important as peace-making. That adversarial approaches to conflict resolution — where one side sees the other as an opponent who must give in — resolve nothing. That if Positions are the basis of negotiation, someone is likely to lose. But if talks centre on Issues, on underlying Needs, we may just get to a magic moment where the parties recognise that they have a common problem which requires to be jointly resolved.
This is a situation where I want to win, but where I want you to win too. It’s all about Arriving at Yes — about moving from Win/Lose to Win/Win.
Two Sides of the Dniester
What I want to explore in this lecture is how, based on my experience in other conflicts, both sides of the Dniester might edge towards saying Yes. In this respect, I applaud the “Two Banks, One Future” programme run by the Foreign Policy Association of Moldova.
On the plane to Chisinau I read an article by a western journalist who lumped Transdniestra together with Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia. This is unhelpful nonsense. I am just back from the Caucasus, where I saw minefields strewn along artificial frontiers, gun fights and vast numbers of refugees and displaced persons. That is clearly not the situation here. On both sides of the Dniester, families are in close contact and relations between different nationalities remain reasonably warm. Western journalists who write about “a deep ethnic divide” in this country should remember that there are more Russians and Ukrainians on this bank of the river than on the other, and that all lived together for half a century in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic — a shared history longer than that of many of the states today in the United Nations.
Nonethless, efforts to end the conflict since 1992 remain unfulfilled. Chisinau and Tiraspol still state Positions, rather than examine Issues and Needs. The disputes over competing powers, customs fees, public utilities, privatisation and the use of Latin or Cyrillic script still lumber on.
In consequence, Moldova remains the poorest country in Europe. The state budget is 30 times smaller than Scotland’s, a devolved nation within the United Kingdom. According to the International Organisation for Migration, at least 600,000 Moldovans work abroad, their remittances helping to plug an alarming balance of payments gap. In such circumstances, crime flourishes and good governance flounders.
With the admission of Romania, the European Union may have come to the frontiers of Moldova. But it is easier for someone from Tiraspol, on a Russian passport, to get a visa for the EU than for someone from Chisinau.
Yes, Moldovans are Europeans. But, no, Moldovans are not members of the EU Club. That means, of course, accepting the club’s rules. It also means resolving the dispute across the Dniester. As Lord Dubs makes clear in his address to your Parliament, it is highly unlikely that Brussels will admit a country which has an unresolved conflict within its frontiers.
How, then, to Arrive at Yes? To move from Win/Lose to Win/Win?
Blessed be the Peacebuilders
Over the past 30 years I have worked, not to make peace, but to build peace in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Six quick examples of how that process was managed.
o South Africa: At the height of the violence, civil society stretched out to churches, trades unions and NGOs around the world, building an alliance against apartheid, and a boycott of South African goods to the extent that the business community there took fright. There was the visionary leadership of Nelson Mandela, and the sharing of power across the old divides. And the recognition that truth and reconciliation need to be planned and to endure for a long time.
o Nagorno-Karabakh: a frozen conflict which flares up from time to time, with little prospect of resolution in the short term. But the peace-building process continuing regardless — Azeri and Armenian MPs meeting in the Highlands of Scotland and elsewhere, young people from both countries producing joint media, and proposals now being advanced by politicians for joint projects in banking, environment and transport.
o Ex-Yugoslavia: for me, at the height of the conflict, the return of the worst of World War II. The more people look and sound alike, the more they need to emphasise every little difference. But the seductive embrace of the EU — peace and prosperity in return for good governance - has led in most of the successor countries to the building of civil society, the dampening down of the diaspora, the identification of common needs in water and electricity and shared purpose across the nationalities to make it happen. There remain, though, real dangers for Serbia/Kosovo [and, by implication, for Abkhazia and Transdniestra] on 10 December.
o Northern Ireland: Those in this hall who say the United Kingdom can manage conflict because of its centuries of democratic life forget the shootings and bombings, the criminality and the 38 years of British Army patrols on the streets. But peace-building never stopped, particularly among the women of the province, and through the NGOs. Again, economics played a major part — the Republic, thanks in large part to the EU, had become more prosperous than the North. There was the key role of external facilitators, particularly Senator George Mitchell. And absolutely central — the readiness of London to give Dublin a voice in Ulster, and of both governments that further constitutional change would come only by democratic vote of the people.
o Scotland: When I was first elected to the Commons in 1974, the Nationalists demanded Independence and the Unionists feared that any concessions would be a step to separation. Enter civil society — the churches, trades unions, NGOs — who worked ceaselessly across party lines in our Constitutional Convention to hammer out a middle way, giving Scotland one of the most powerful sub-state parliaments in Europe. Again, if there is further constitutional change, that will only be through the democratic will of the people expressed in a referendum.
This School of Conflict Studies should note that Devolution in the UK is not decentralisation. This is very important in terms of Transdneistra. With decentralisation, the state makes policy which can be varied at local level. With devolution, there is the option of making policy in Edinburgh which is different from that of the state in London — in energy, education, enterprise, health, justice and the police. And also of having its own representative offices, mini-embassies, able to handle devolved competencies in foreign countries — which may be of some interest to Tiraspol.
Issues not Positions
There are a number of well defined processes for arriving at Yes. They are all based on the proven success of moving from Positions (“my rights”) to Issues (“our needs”):
o The Win/Win Attitude: The Labour leader John Smith, for example, making clear that Scotland was “unfinished business” (so pleasing Edinburgh) while stressing a devolutionary settlement (so reassuring London). To date, it has proved a win-win outcome, with Scotland adding value to the British state while having virtually 100% control of its own daily life.
o Confidential Listening: Empathy achieved by staying silent and listening to an opponent’s concerns as a way of unlocking opportunities and solutions.
o Avoiding Assertiveness: Attacking the Issue and not the person (particularly important in countries where parties and political structures are built round a single individual).
o Cooperating Power: Setting the objective of power “with” and not “over” opponents.
o Unilateral Concession: Offering your opponent something without seeking anything in return. The outcome, in the longer term, is nearly always a reciprocal response. In the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Republicans unilaterally agreed to a Unionist President. The Unionists immediately announced that the job would go to a Republican next time.
o Mapping the Conflict: an overview of the issues which charts common needs.
o Neutral Evaluation: the engagement of a third party, without any side in the conflict, to identify strengths and weaknesses, risks and likely outcomes, so that opponents re-evaluate where they stand. Sometimes expanded to Med-Arb, where the neutral mediates and arbitrates. Or to Arb-Med, where the neutral seals a decision in an envelope and gives the parties a set period to negotiate through a mediator.
o Broadened Perspectives: the evaluation of potential outcomes within a wider horizon — in the case of Moldova, for example, within the European Union.
All this, of course, is very different from classic negotiation on Positions — sometimes referred to, in the jargon of the trade, as “Baseball Arbitration”.
Yes on the Dniester
It would be absurd for me to come to Chisinau with ready-made solutions to the Transdniestran issue. All I can do, from my past experience, is to share some ideas of what has worked elsehere.How can Moldova win? How can Transdniestra win? The European Union win? Russia (and, remember, this is Russia’s “near abroad”) win too?
o Moldova: I understand why Positions have been taken on democratisation and demilitarisation on the left bank of the Dniester. But positions produce No’s and usually freeze conflicts. Might there be merit in concentrating more on the Issues of trade and customs? On trying to convince the Tiraspol business community that the big prize is access to European markets through Moldova?
o Transdniestra: Does an Independence referendum achieve anything apart from freezing the conflict? Does Scottish devolution, with control over all Home Affairs - the police, enterprise, external relations — offer a winning way forward?
o The European Union: Is it really sustainable for people from Tiraspol, on Russian passports, to have east EU access while people from Chisinau have to queue for visas? If good governance is helped by economic growth, what can be done to ease Moldovan wine and farm products (and Transdniestran steel and textiles) into western European markets?
o Russia and the Ukraine: We should remember that Moldova is their near neighbour too. Surely they have a legitimate interest in the success of their nationals who operate businesses in Transdniestra? In the medium-term, is Scottish-type devolution not a win for them too?
Envoi
All I have tried to do in this lecture is stimulate discussion, not lay down solutions. There are many ways of arriving at Yes. The golden rule is to concentrate on Issues, not Positions. To look for Outcomes, not Outputs. To recognise that politics these days is too important to be left just to the politicians, but should include civil society and the business community as well.
In the difficult days when Senator George Mitchell was trying to find a light in the darkness of Northern Ireland, he was fond of quoting another great American.
It was President Abraham Lincoln, faced with secession by the Southern Confederacy, who posed the question:
“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”
Published with kind permisson of the Rt. Hon. George Reid