Step 2
Develop a Strategic Plan
Once the need for track II activities is determined, the next step is to develop a strategy for engaging in track II activities that maximizes their benefits and actual y brings about the desired change.
The first question to consider is thus, what is the desired change? The easy answer is, usual y, “we want to bring about peace.” But intervenors— either track I or track II—must be much more specific than that. They must look at the needs identified in the needs assessment and determine which, if any, of those needs they might be able to help fill—and how. At this stage, several strategic decisions need to be made.
Decide on a Level of Work and a Strategy for Change
One decision involves the level at which the track II intervenor is going to focus his/her work. Many track II peacemakers work at the interpersonal level on psychological and relationship aspects of the conflict and blithely assume that their efforts, at least when combined with similar track II initiatives, will have a larger, sociopolitical impact on the conflict and the society as a whole. But this larger impact is unlikely to happen unless the would-be peacemakers not only consider, at the outset, how it might be achieved but also build into their plans concrete steps for “scaling up” the impact to the larger society by broadening the geographic scope of an intervention, the audience, or both.9
For example, interethnic dialogues and problem-solving workshops typical y seek to break down negative stereotypes of “the other” and build trust between the participants. But the number of direct participants may be limited to just ten or twenty people. How are any attitudinal changes effected in a workshop going to be spread? Unless influential and well- connected people are involved in these small group processes, then shifts in attitude will be disseminated more widely only if follow-up activities have been designed in advance. (For example, participants can take ideas developed in these workshops back to their constituents, discuss them, develop them further, and then form their own follow-up workshops with other people to further pursue some of these ideas.)
This problem of scaling up the impact il ustrates the importance of track II actors’ being explicit about their “strategies for change,” their underlying assumptions about how positive change happens, and what can be done to start or accelerate that process. For example, a track II intervenor that sees a need to diminish prejudice and discrimination might believe that such changes can be effected by bringing the two groups together for conflict resolution training, an intergroup dialogue, or a problem-solving workshop. Indeed, al three of these approaches have been shown to have positive impacts on the relationships between the immediate participants, increasing intergroup understanding and diminishing negative stereotyping. However, if the intervenor’s goal is to bring about change at the community, national, or international levels, these approaches (alone, at least) are unlikely to be very effective. Public information campaigns; childhood and adult educational programs; innovative media programming; and social, economic, and political policy changes may al be more effective strategies for achieving such deep structural changes.
Different types of processes are needed to bring about different types of change, and a change in one domain (personal, relational, structural, or cultural) does not necessarily bring about a change in any of the other domains. To transfer from one level (or type of change) to another, Lederach, Neufeldt, and Culbertson talk about “scale-up,” which they define as “efforts to enhance the impact of a project by enlarging it or linking it with broader initiatives.”10 Scale-up happens by either broadening the geographic scope of an intervention, or broadening the audience, or both.
Similarly, the Reflecting on Peace Practice Project frequently made the distinction between projects that focus on “many people” and those that focus on “key people.”11 Lederach, Neufelt, and Culbertson observe that if sociopolitical or cultural change is desired, programs that combine both of these dimensions—thus working with individuals, institutions, and the public—are necessary to effectively scale up impact. 
Other track II processes deal with the change problem more directly— they work to produce draft plans, proposals, or principles of agreement. If this is done with the blessing of track I and the understanding that the results will eventual y be fed into the track I process, this direct approach can be very effective. If it is done independently of track I, it might still be productive—especial y if the track I process bogs down or dies. Then the track II process can provide an alternative approach. However, as noted below, multiple simultaneous efforts to produce agreements can also lead to confusion, forum shopping, or dead ends for one or both processes.
Broad choices about process need to be made before a particular intervention is designed or implemented. These include choices about what type of activities one should undertake, who should be involved and over what time frame, and how one should coordinate or link into other related track I and track II activities. While more specific than strategies for change, 25 these decisions are informed by one’s notions about how change comes about and what aspects of practices make the desired change most likely to occur.
Plan for Coordination
Track II actors should consider how they and their strategy fit into the larger picture of peacemaking activities. Most of the conflicts that are the targets of track II interventions are complex and protracted, and many other track I and track II players are likely to be involved or to have been involved. The conflict analysis performed in step 1 should give a track II actor the knowledge with which to prepare a map of past and present activities that wil indicate gaps—areas of need that are not being addressed—and possible avenues for coordination.
Opportunities for coordination with other peacemakers should be built into the strategic plan. This means, at the least, making plans to contact, informal y, other actors in the same region—to keep track of what they are doing, what their needs might be, and how their efforts might affect, interfere with, or benefit from one’s own. Sometimes such coordination is made routine by convening a meeting of track II (or even track I and track II) actors once a month or once every few months. While valuable, such meetings take time and require personnel, a quantity almost always in short supply, so they tend to occur less often than they should. Coordination can also go beyond the simple sharing of information to include sharing conflict analyses and evaluations of past intervention activities, joint planning of upcoming interventions (to enable actors to build on each other’s activities), sharing resources, or even working on intervention activity jointly. (This happens less between tracks, but it does happen within track II.) The further ahead of time that such coordination
is planned, the more likely it is to actual y happen and the greater the
benefits are likely to be.
Avoid Stepping on Toes
Coordination can also prevent conflicting or counterproductive peacemaking activities.
Track II players can make life more difficult for other peacemakers— both track I and track II—if they overstep their bounds, make promises they cannot keep, work outside their skill areas, or launch underfunded projects. Projects left unfinished because a track II actor’s funding ran out can sometimes worsen the climate for peacemaking for everyone else by raising and then dashing participants’ hopes. If participants conclude from such failed processes that “mediation does not work” or that the other side cannot be trusted—because that particular process did not succeed— future peacemaking attempts, including track I efforts, may inspire only skepticism or indifference. This presents a challenge because most projects start with less funding than they would prefer and press ahead in the hope that if the process proves successful, more funds will become available. Such optimism is often rewarded, but when additional funding cannot be found and the track II actor has to suspend or terminate the process, the participants are left frustrated or disil usioned. One solution to this problem is to design a process that will be helpful—at least in some limited way—even if it ends sooner than is hoped. Clarity about short- term, mid-term, and long-term goals and objectives can go a long way for avoiding disappointment over time.
Similarly, when track II processes are not coordinated with party-to- party talks, the result can be fragmentation of the international response to the conflict. Competing definitions of the problem and competing solutions can produce a confused marketplace of peacemaking. In such an environment, parties are tempted to go forum shopping for the intervention process that seems to serve their own best interests, while shunning others, including, perhaps, the track I process. Track I mediators find such actions highly problematic, for obvious reasons.
Track I players can also make life more difficult for track II actors, either intentional y or unintentional y. Intentional acts include denying visas for track II intervenors or disputing parties, thereby making it impossible to hold meetings. Track I actors also can refuse (or simply forget) to share information about the track I process. If the two tracks are following divergent courses, problems are likely to arise for both of them sooner or later. If there is some degree of coordination between the processes, however, both will likely benefit.
Effective coordination of governmental, civilian, military, and NGO activities has been particularly important—yet problematic—in both Iraq and Afghanistan, though it has been slow to develop in both places. When the threat of violence is real, NGOs often rely on the military to provide security (since NGOs seldom provide it themselves), but they often shun 27 open communication, cooperation, or collaboration with the military (or any track I actor) for fear of being seen as part of, or working for “the enemy,” and thus as legitimate targets. As security has become less of a problem in Iraq, coordination has improved. This has been especial y true since the State Department and the Department of Defense have begun to implement NSPD 44 (a National Security Presidential Directive on the coordination, planning, and direction of stability and reconstruction operations [SROs]) and the parallel DOD Instruction 3000.05, both of which call for greatly increased collaboration between agencies in an effort to deliver effective SROs.