Running head: META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES Contemporary Approaches to Addressing Protracted, Intractable Conflict: Towards the Development of a Meta-framework

Protracted, intractable conflicts are a form of human interaction that may very well determine our capacity to survive as a species. Their paradoxical structure, depth of meaning, intense emotional core, complexity, and malignancy are self-sustaining and are often experienced as overwhelming to the parties and third parties alike. The literature in this area presents a variety of singular and often contradictory strategies for intervention. This article is the second in a three-part series that presents a meta-framework for protracted, intractable conflict: a broad conceptual framework that views these disparate approaches as complementary for theory building and intervention. This paper presents an overview of the main types of approaches for working with intractable conflicts, examining the underlying assumptions and objectives of each approach. META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 3 Contemporary Approaches to Addressing Protracted, Intractable Conflict: Towards the Development of a Meta-framework Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April of 1998, Ireland, Britain, and the international community have been cautiously optimistic about the chances for peace in Northern Ireland. That agreement continued a cease-fire by the mainstream Irish Republican Army, and opened the way for its political ally, Sinn Fein, to join the power-sharing assembly in Belfast to which Britain had transferred day-to-day government. However, the I.R.A. still holds large stockpiles of arms, and in October 2002, a senior Sinn Fein official was accused of espionage. Britain responded by suspending the Northern Ireland assembly to avoid a walk-out by hard-line Protestants, and reimposed direct rule from London. Analysts in the region are concerned that the 35 years of guerrilla war and counterinsurgency will resume, returning the conflict to the high levels of pre-1998 violence. Protracted, seemingly intractable conflicts such as the situation in Northern Ireland are daunting. They tend to be intense, complex, exhausting, and extremely difficult to resolve. Their persistence and pervasiveness can bring terrible consequences; including inexplicable human suffering, high economic costs, destruction of vital infrastructure, division of families and communities, extreme violence, dislocation, and trauma (Lederach, 1997; Cairns & Darby, 1998; Kreisberg, 1999, Coleman, 2000). While every conflict is unique in its history, presenting issues, parties, and so on, protracted, intractable conflicts tend to share some characteristics which distinguish them from more negotiable problems (Coleman, in press). They tend to emerge from a context with a history of domination and perceived injustice, and are most likely to surface (or META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 4 resurface) under conditions of significant change, instability or anarchy. They involve basic human and social polarities that are paradoxical in nature, deeply symbolic, and are reinforced by broader ideologies and processes of meaning-construction. They are embedded in inescapable, destructive relationships with a complex constellation of issues and an exclusive social structure, are maintained by the development of polarized collective identities amongst members of the ingroups, and are perpetuated by the internal dynamics and investments of the individuals and groups involved. They are also fueled by intense emotionality, exacerbated by malignant social processes, and operate with a high degree of pervasiveness and complexity. Finally, they often result in a protracted state of destructiveness and trauma for individuals and communities alike. Each of the characteristics outlined above sheds some light on the many causes, processes and states of intractability. But ultimately, it is the complex interactions of these various characteristics across different levels of the conflict (personal, group, national and international) and over long periods of time that brings them to such a state of hopelessness and intransigence. Given the seemingly impossible nature of such conflicts, how are we to proceed to work constructively when faced with them? Addressing Protracted, Intractable Conflicts Over the past several decades, the literature on social conflict has put forth a large array of approaches for prevention, intervention and reconstruction work with protracted social conflicts (see Table 1). These perspectives have emerged from a variety of disciplines such as political science, social psychology, developmental psychology, law, education, communications, anthropology, linguistics, public health, and economics. Some of these approaches are complementary, while others conflict in there underlying META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 5 values, assumptions, and preferred methods of intervention (Fisher, 1997). At times, separate groups of scholar/practitioners champion different strategies, often accompanied by intense opposition and resistance to contradictory approaches (Pruitt & Olczak, 1995). In addition, the overwhelming complexity of protracted conflicts tends to attract us to theories and solutions that simplify the problems. Thus, the “peace debate” has become characterized by inflexible, polar positions and rivalries that are resistant to adaptation and change (Pickus, 1992). For instance, some political scientists trained in international relations view the field of conflict resolution as “...at best well-intentioned, at worst soft and driven by sentimentalism, and for the most part irrelevant” (Lederach, 1997, p. 24), while others trained in the social psychology of conflict resolution see the international relations field as “locked into power paradigms and unable to reach the root of the problems in creative ways” (Lederach, 1997, p. 25). In this manner, our field at times falls prey to the same polarizing dynamics that afflict the disputants we attempt to serve. This paper presents an analytic overview of a variety of contemporary approaches to addressing protracted, intractable conflict. It begins by presenting a case study of the seemingly intractable conflict in Cyprus. In the next section, I use this case as a means of illustrating the different orientations of each of the approaches outlined in the paper. In the third and final paper of this series, I will discuss how these many distinct or contradictory approaches can be seen as complementary when intractable conflicts are viewed as complex, multi-level systems sustained in a state of destructiveness by their underlying structures, malignant social processes, and by the unintended consequences of many social interventions. META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 6 The Case of Cyprus The Republic of Cyprus is an island situated in the northeast Mediterranean, forty miles south of Turkey and six hundred miles southeast of Greece. The current population is approximately 754,800 people, with 85% Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians and 12% Turkish-speaking Muslims (Cypriot Government Website, 2002). Strategically located between Europe, Asia, and Africa, it has been occupied and ruled by the Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Franks, Venetians, Ottoman Turks (from 1571-1878) and the British (from 1878-1960). In 1925 it became a British colony, during which time British leadership began to politicize Greek and Turkish communal differences, leading to a rise in antagonistic nationalism (Azar, 1986). From 1955-1959 a Greek-Cypriot anti-colonial struggle ensued and demands for a Cypriot union with Greece (enosis) led to an onset of Guerrilla warfare and a four-year state of emergency. During this period, Turkish-Cypriots sided with the British government who favored taksim (partition of the island) and formed a paramilitary organization to defend its interests. In 1960, under the London-Zurich Agreements, Cyprus became independent from Britain, with Britain retaining sovereignty over its military bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia. A complex and rigid constitution was presented (fashioned by Greece, Turkey and Britain), which intended to balance the interests of both the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot communities, including a constitutional provision for separate communal chambers on education and culture. Competition, mistrust, and adversarial relations between the communities followed. The separate cultural and educational systems contributed to the communities becoming more isolated and feeling more META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 7 threatened by the presence of the other. Civil war broke out in 1963 which brought on much suffering and insecurity, especially for the Turkish-Cypriot community. In 1964, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 186, by which it recommended the establishment of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). Both communities accepted the presence of UNFICYP, however in 1971 terrorism resumed on the island. In 1974, a military coup in Cyprus by Greek-Cypriots and Greek elements favoring union with Greece was followed by military intervention by Turkey, whose troops established Turkish-Cypriot control over the northern part of the island. Approximately 160,000 Greek-Cypriots and 40,000 Turkish-Cypriots were displaced. A de facto ceasefire came into effect in August of 1974, which established ceasefire lines and a buffer zone between the areas controlled by the two communities. This effectively partitioned the island, with Turkish-Cypriots controlling 35.4% of the north and the Greek-Cypriot community controlling 62.8% of the island in the south. The buffer zone constitutes 1.8 %, including some of the most valuable agricultural land. Cyprus is currently governed by a president, elected by the Greek-Cypriot community, and a 50 member House of Representatives. In 1983, Turkish members ceased to participate in the government and the Turkish-Cypriot community declared independence (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus). To date there is no free movement or daily contact between the two communities. For almost 40 years, from 1963 until the present, the United States, The United Kingdom, Canada, Greece, Turkey, Russia, NATO, The United Nations, and other powerful third parties have made numerous attempts at peacekeeping and peacemaking in Cyprus. This has included interventions such as: direct appeals to the leaders or heads of META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 8 state, military intervention by the UNFICYP, mediation, direct negotiations, summit talks, shuttle diplomacy, funding for peace and reconstruction ($250 million earmarked by the U.S. Congress in 1984), and a host of UN resolutions. In addition to formal diplomatic efforts, there have also been a variety of “track-two” initiatives on the island including problem-solving workshops and inter-communal dialogues. To date, these first and second-track initiatives have been successful at containing or managing the violence, but as of yet have not made significant progress at peacemaking or in achieving a sustained resolution of the conflict. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan has repeatedly stated, the continuing quiet on the island should not obscure the fact that there is only a cease-fire in Cyprus, not peace (UN Website, 2002). Contemporary Approaches to Addressing Protracted, Intractable Conflict Protracted conflicts such as the Cypriot case often draw the attention of a variety of local, national, regional and international actors (diplomats, analysts, policy makers, NGOs, mediators, scholars, clergy, and so on) who may attempt to intervene. Each actor or agency approaches conflict based on their own particular understanding of the problems-on-the-ground and on a resulting set of implicit or explicit action-objectives. These approaches can vary greatly from actor to actor and from conflict to conflict. Below I outline some of the more common approaches used to address protracted social conflicts today. Each of the following approaches offers a different orientation to conceptualizing and addressing protracted social conflict; each with its own understanding of the causes of intractability, and each with its own set of values, assumptions, objectives, and procedures for working in settings of intractable conflict (see Table 1). Each approach is META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 9 based on theory, focusing on certain aspects of the phenomenon of intractable conflict other than others. The following “fuzzy” (somewhat overlapping) categories are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, but are illustrative of the diversity of approaches currently utilized for this work. Although I identify some of the approaches with particular scholar-practitioners, it should be recognized that these as well as other scholar-practitioners often employ various approaches, using the ones that are most suitable to the conflict with which they are concerned. (INSERT TABLE 1) Using deterrence, force and power in a world of rational realism. Historically, this perspective has been the dominant paradigm for the study of war and peace in history, politics and international affairs. It views intractable conflicts as resulting from rational choices made under the conditions of the “real politics” of hatred, manipulation, dominance and violence in the real world. It is grounded in the realist paradigm which assumes that resources and power are always scarce, that human beings are basically flawed (always capable of producing evil) and have a will to dominate, and that one’s opponents in conflict at any point may become aggressive (Thompson and Jensen, 1992; Jervis, 2000). It further assumes an inherently conflictual world with uncertainties regarding the present and future intentions of one’s adversary leading to a focus on short-term security needs, worse-case scenarios, and the use of threat and coercion (Levy, 1996). From this perspective, the protracted conflict in Cyprus is seen as due to the island’s coveted strategic importance in an ongoing struggle for dominance and influence in an uncertain and ever-changing world. It has been 1 I use the labels “intractable conflict”, “protracted social conflict”, and “deeply-rooted conflict” interchangeably, although I understand them to have important differences. META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 10 perpetuated by a variety of unilateral attempts by each of the parties to prevail that were met with resistance and escalation. Given the high level of threat and instability often associated with intractable conflicts, this approach has tremendous intuitive and practical appeal. Proponents argue that conflicting interests, rivalries, and expansionism are facts of life, and are only exacerbated by such psychological phenomenon as fear, mistrust, and misperceptions. They argue that terrorism, factionalism, guerrilla war, insurgency, and crime are common, and that conflict under these conditions is essentially zero-sum. Thus, strength and deterrence (such as maintaining a strong military or police force) is seen as essential for preventing aggression and maintaining peace (Luttwak, 1992). Intractable conflicts are therefore seen as natural and inevitable, but containable. Power (money, status, force, intelligence) is believed to be the primary commodity through which conflict can be controlled, and so people and groups defend what power they have and always seek to attain more (Michels, 1911). Thus, the main objectives that emerge from this orientation to intractable conflicts are to increase and use one’s power effectively to contain the violence and aggression of the other, to protect one’s basic security and rights, and to achieve unilaterally one’s goals in the conflict. Many of the national and international parties involved in the Cypriot conflict have viewed the conflict in these terms and applied this basic strategy. The realist approach to addressing protracted conflict is primarily associated with rational choice theories of conflict such as game theory and two-level game theory. Game theory (Rapoport, 1974; Schelling, 1960) looks at conflict arising from rational decisionmaking in competitive and mixed-motive situations, and focuses on the logic of the META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 11 disputant’s choices in conflict and on the outcomes of those choices. Game theory posits that in conflict (as in games of skill) there is always a rational choice which is the best, safest counter-choice to your opponent’s most preferred course of action. The study of protracted conflict from this perspective is an attempt to discover the correct rules for discerning these choices. Game theory uses the “mini-max” strategy as its basis for making choices. “Mini-max” equals choosing the alternative which minimizes the maximum loss that your adversary can inflict upon you. The realist theorist will want to limit the alternatives available to the adversary so that when the adversary chooses to minimize his or her maximum loss, he or she will inevitably choose an alternative that is good for his/her side. Two-level game theory (Putnam, 1988; Starr, 1999) extends game theory into situations with games in multiple arenas, such as the situation faced by many leaders who must simultaneously manage conflicts across groups and within their own groups. Such interdependent multi-party conflicts often present decision-makers with conflicting preferences and can confound or redefine rational decision-making. These rational choice theories are based principally on an “economic” model of rationality and decision-making. This model states that purposive choice is determined by the calculation of expected utility (the value of an alternative times the subjective probability that the choice will lead to the alternative) from an existing set of alternatives for a given decision. Although valid under certain conditions, economic models fail to account for other types of rationality (such as social, legal, moral and political reasoning) which function quite differently and have a large impact on decisions and outcomes in intractable as well as other settings (see Diesing, 1960 for an extensive discussion). Furthermore, the core competitive assumptions of the realist orientation (regarding the META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 12 nature of power and security, the availability of resources, and the inevitability of the other’s aggression) limits a party’s response options and typically results in competitive and escalatory dynamics and self-fulfilling prophesies which foster further entrenchment in the conflict (see Deutsch; 1973; 2000). Practical examples of this approach include the Machiavellian approach to statesmanship (Machiavelli 1513/1976); many traditional approaches to statist diplomacy and negotiation (Newsom, 1992); game theoretical strategies of collective security and deterrence (Schelling, 1960; Treverton, 1992); coercive and “jujitsu” tactics of community organizing (Alinsky, 1971); various competitive tactics of distributive bargaining (see Lewicki, Minton & Literer, 1998); as well as “zero-tolerance” antiviolence policies in schools and “tough-love” parenting strategies in families. Establishing normative, legal and institutional stability. This category of approach for addressing protracted, intractable conflicts is closely affiliated with traditional realism, but is distinct enough in its emphasis and important enough to warrant its own discussion. Its primary orientation is on the critical role of anarchy and social and political instability in fostering violent protracted conflict, and on the importance of strong norms, laws and institutions to counteract these forces. As such, its focus on Cyprus would be on how phases of local, regional, and even global change and instability have prompted aggressive moves by various parties (such as Turkey’s military response to the Greek-Cypriot military coup in Cyprus in 1974), thereby escalating and sustaining the conflict. Every family, community, and society has social norms, rules and institutions that regulate behavior. These regulations provide the structure and sense of clarity necessary META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 13 for a predictable and stable social life. The fundamental test of such norms, laws and institutions is the extent to which they are able to control the use of unauthorized force by one member of a community against another (Thompson and Jensen, 1992) and the extent to which they provide for the freedom of access to the fundamental values of human dignity (McDougal, 1992). Protracted conflicts often emerge from and contribute to extreme ruptures in such states of stability and order (Crocker, Hampson & Aall, 1996; Deutsch, in press; Coleman, 2002). The resulting chaos can undermine any attempts to work constructively in such settings. For example, in a recent editorial on the peace process in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, High Representative of the International Community for Bosnia-Herzegovina, wrote: “In hindsight, we should have put the establishment of the rule of law first, for everything else depends on it: a functioning economy, a free and fair political system, the development of civil society, public confidence in police and the courts” (Ashdown, 2002, p. A25). The importance of order and stability is usually evident in well-functioning social systems, but becomes essential as situations deteriorate and conflicts intensify. This orientation to addressing protracted, intractable conflict is associated with a set of realist theories related to power and stability, particularly in the international domain. These include balance of power theory (Morganthau, 1967), power transition theory (Oganski & Kugler, 1980), and hierarchical equilibrium theory (Midlarsky, 1988). These theories share the assumptions that parties in conflict tend to act rationally to advance their security, power and wealth in a threatening and anarchical system, and that outcomes are essentially determined by the relative distribution of power between parties (Levy, 1996). These theories are essentially concerned with the problem of stability META-FRAMEWORK: APPROACHES 14 (defined as the absence of a major war) in the international domain, but differ in their depiction of the conditions, laws, and power configurations which will constitute stability. When rules, norms and laws are broken, and the decisions of legitimate authorities are disobeyed, it tends to weaken the credibility and stability of such structures. When this occurs, people seek retribution. This is particularly true when such rule-breaking is seen as intentional and inflicts “symbolic harm” (displaying disrespect for social rules and the other’s dignity), thus demonstrating contempt for group rules and threatening the social order. Retribution against rule breakers can serve to reassert the continuing strength of the laws, norms and rules, be cathartic, deter future violations, help reform transgressors, and help victims recover from any losses incurred (see Tyler and Smith, 1998, for a summary of the research on restorative justice). Thus, the primary objective of re-establishing constructive norms, laws and institutions in settings of protracted, intractable conflict is to provide or restore the base-line conditions for freedom from arbitrary violence and for a secure sense of stability, trust, as well as fair legal processes for all parties. The introduction of a constitution into the newly independent Cyprus by Greece, Turkey and Britain is an example of this type of