Conclusion
Keep Your Eye on the Big Picture
To achieve peace in today’s complex conflicts, a wide variety of interventions need to be undertaken by a diverse cast of would-be peacemakers working with an equal y diverse cast of local actors at different phases of the conflict. Track II interventions typical y are the first to be undertaken, plowing the ground to make it more fertile for track I efforts at a later time.
Track II actors can start to work around the purveyors of hatred and fear—those who nurture violence—through various activities with small groups of independent thinkers who believe that there must be alternative, nonviolent ways to deal with their conflicts. By providing informal, low-profile, and low-key opportunities to explore alternative approaches with “the other”—through interactive problem-solving workshops and cross-conflict group dialogues—a few brave individuals can begin to forge a new way forward, long before the parties would be willing to sit down at the negotiating table.
These quiet efforts can slowly be magnified by more open and larger- scale efforts such as peace and tolerance education in schools and/or on the airwaves. As the peace constituency expands, the ground for track I negotiations becomes much more fertile. This is not meant to imply that a peace constituency alone will make peace possible—it will not. Leaders must still be willing to enter into—and conclude—peace negotiations. This often involves admitting they were wrong to get into the conflict in the first place or that they did not fight well enough to win. This is a very hard step for leaders to take—and they often do not until there is enough outside pressure on them to change their cost-benefit calculations to the point where peace seems potential y more advantageous than continued war. However, once leaders are ready to negotiate, the potential for the successful culmination and implementation of an agreement increases considerably if the peace constituency behind them is large.
Track II does not stop, however, when track I starts. It proceeds simultaneously as wel , sometimes feeding ideas into the track I process, and sometimes supporting the track I process by helping out with research, training, and other assigned or requested tasks. And track II also can continue the work with mid-level leaders and the public to further enlarge the size of the grassroots peace constituency. This is critical y important because this constituency must be large and committed by the time any peace agreement is signed, as it is the mid- level leaders, along with the grassroots, who are going to determine the success or failure of implementation of any agreement. If an agreement is signed by elite negotiators but not supported by the people on the ground, it will never hold. A single spoiler may be able to reignite the flames of conflict, and the peace agreement wil be quickly forgotten. A large grassroots and mid-level peace constituency, however, can act like firefighters, who will be able to quickly pour water on the fire built by a few would-be spoilers.
An example of unsuccessful spoilers is the shooting of two British troops—and shortly thereafter a police officer—in Northern Ireland in March 2009. Presumably the intent of the perpetrators was to reignite “The Troubles” between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. But by 2009, the peace constituency in Northern Ireland was so strong that few people wanted a renewal of conflict. Rather, leaders on all sides immediately denounced the killings and insisted that all sides work together to bring the killers to justice and maintain the peace.
In his book The Moral Imagination, 45 John Paul Lederach observes that the worst conflicts are transformed by a few people who possess a profound imagination. The moral imagination that he describes has four components. The first is the ability to imagine oneself in a positive relationship with the other. Most people in intractable conflicts assume that the other is evil—that no positive relationship with them will ever be possible. Lederach asserts that people who are going to be able to lift societies out of deadly conflict must be able to see beyond the stereotypes, hatred, and fear to imagine a profoundly changed relationship with the other—one of mutual understanding and support.
The second component is a deep curiosity about what is and what could be. Peacemakers must be able to understand the complexity of the situation they are operating in, but also be curious about other possibilities, new ways of seeing the world and acting within it.
Third, peacemakers must be profoundly creative. “Creativity,” says Lederach, “moves beyond what exists toward something new and unexpected while rising from and speaking to the everyday.”46 Lederach focuses on people who have lived their entire lives surrounded by deadly conflict, conditions that have left most people miserable and hopeless. Yet a few, he notices, manage to rise above the fear and the hopelessness to create a vision for a better future. These are the peacemakers who will likely succeed.
While Lederach largely focused on parties internal to the conflict, the same can be said of external intervenors. An anonymous reviewer of a draft of this handbook wisely suggested that some people tend to be able to “think outside the box” better than others, saying “a good rule of thumb for selecting intervenors or facilitators is to avoid the specialists or the experts who know; the more one knows about the conflict or about what ought to work, the less one is able to listen and to imagine.”
Final y, peacemakers, says Lederach, must be willing to take risks. Risk taking requires stepping out of the world of the known, into the world of the unknown. There are no roadmaps, no landmarks, and no guarantees of success. Yet there is the knowledge that there is a possibility of a better place down the road, and a willingness to follow that unknown road to see what is there.
Track II peacemakers would do well to develop Lederach’s moral imagination. By being curious and creative, willing to imagine new relationships and take risks, track II peacemakers can work to create a new landscape of peace.