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Seeking Happiness, Finding Depression By John F. Schumaker

Dispensing Disability Awareness By Jeremy Opperman

A Strong Spirit An Interview with Mariane Pearl

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Can Nations Be Friends?

It is taken as fact in traditional thinking about international relations that countries do not have permanent friends. They only have permanent interests. This is essentially a realpolitik perspective that looks at power politics as the rule in the relationships among states. The countries that are strong militarily and economically dominate those that are weaker, or they compete for advantage with others that are similar in power. This was the norm before World War II, and that war, in which 25 million died, was believed by most people, at least in the northern hemisphere, to mark the end of raw power politics for all time.

Leaders in Western Europe and North America built structures of regional and international governance--the European Coal and Steel Community that evolved into the European Community, now the burgeoning European Union, and the United Nations. Postwar visionary architects designed each organization to contain the destructive competitive energies of states and to provide for the security of all member states by means of rules and procedures in the United Nations Charter that worked to assure nonviolent resolution of political conflicts at least among the major--and most potentially destructive--powers.

Partners

It probably is not accurate to say that the countries involved were friends in the traditional sense. They were more like profoundly sobered, practical partners. Their steadfastness in mutual relationships was in good part the result of shock and shame at what allegedly civilized nations could do to each other when their normal relationships collapsed. These leaders vowed that it would never happen again in Europe at least. And they succeeded up to our time through containing the dramatic deconstruction of the Soviet Union in an essentially non-violent process. Only the bloody dismemberment of Yugoslavia was an exception to the rule, and a process that once again brought shame to Western Europe and its North American allies.

There is arguably a consistent friendship quality to the relationships among the English-speaking countries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More often, one finds claims of friendship between political leaders as opposed to states. Most notable is the link between President George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair--at considerable domestic political cost to the latter. President Bush has suggested a deep bonding with President Putin of Russia, and President Reagan and Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev developed what appeared to be a friendship, as did President Clinton and Chairman Yeltsin. Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan appears to have a good relationship with George W. Bush, if not a deep friendship. Yet all of these ties are basically grounded in the estimates of the leaders involved that the national interests of their nations are best served by these apparently cordial interpersonal relationships.

We will have to look elsewhere for examples of genuine friendships among nations that reflect the kind of caring and mature focus on problem-solving that is expected in such a relationship. A promising area is the phenomenon of "track two diplomacy"--unofficial, informal, usually confidential interaction between representatives of peoples or countries in conflict that seeks to establish working trust and reliable ties among the participants. With a serious and sustained effort such ties result in agreements on the intellectual and moral bases of a political compromise.

The goal of the track two process is to communicate to official, track one, leadership the ideas and plans evolved in the unofficial consultative work. Track two diplomacy also includes efforts to influence public opinion in a constructive way in the populations of the groups or countries in conflict so that political leaders can more easily make compromises--perhaps suggested in the track two dialogues--to facilitate the making of political agreements.

The Psychology of International Friendship

One of the most important concepts in the discussion of intergroup or interstate mature relationships bordering on friendship is that of dialogue, the most common component of track two work among nonofficial leaders and intellectuals who represent groups in conflict. The late David Bohm, a British theoretical physicist, was as fascinated with the variegated relationships among human beings as he was with the particles he studied in his discipline. In his major study On Dialogue (1966) Bohm saw dialogue as much more than the commonly assumed exchange of conversation and perhaps ideas. It was in fact a deep exploration of multiple aspects of human personality and behavior and ultimately humanity. Dialogue, he wrote, reveals deeply felt values; the variety and intensity of emotions; and the power of cultural beliefs.

Thus, well beyond exchanges of views among parties, dialogue that is serious and sustained over a long period of time causes the participants to examine their own culturally rooted assumptions and beliefs, reveals their worst fears and invites the possibility of critical self-analysis and cross-table empathy. This in turn can be the precursor to new ways of looking at conflicted relationships--and of conceiving creative ways of transforming relationships from conflict to eventually a sense of community between former adversaries. It is worth noting that Bohm's work is studied by graduate students in the United States' biggest peace and conflict resolution program, at American University in Washington, D.C.

Inter-Tajik Dialogue

It is useful to examine a case of sustained dialogue that possibly holds the record for the most effective track two process that transferred its insights into track one peacemaking. In 1993, former American assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Harold H. Saunders, his partner Randa Slim and his co-convener, the Russian Gennady Chufrin, launched the Inter-Tajik Dialogue that continues to this day. As this is written, the group of pro-government and opposition representatives who have literally talked their way out of civil war and into a peace agreement in Tajikistan are in their 34th meeting.

The Inter-Tajik Dialogue is considered the child of the venerable Dartmouth Conference dialogues between the former Soviet Union and the United States that was begun (at Dartmouth College) by the late American journalist Norman Cousins, at the request of President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower believed strongly that genuine dialogue between conflicted parties in the formal track one, state-to-state, traditional diplomatic routine was almost always intellectually sterile and rarely produced creative solutions to political conflicts. It is fair to say that Eisenhower, the American military hero of World War II, was the father of track two diplomacy, although the concept would not appear under that name in the literature until 1981.

The Dartmouth Conference that started in 1960 was the longest sustained dialogue in the U.S.-Soviet relationship. In 1981, the conference established a regional conflicts task force that was cochaired by Harold Saunders, newly retired from government, and until 1988 by Yevgeny Primakov, who later became Russian prime minister after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1992, the regional conflicts task force decided to focus on the newly independent Soviet successor state of Tajikistan because of its potential to threaten the stability of Central Asia, bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and China. It was also suffering a civil war, and, finally, no one else was paying any attention to it.

The Inter-Tajik Dialogue is now 10 years old, and Saunders and Slim have ventured to analyze their process. Perhaps the authors' insights most relevant to the question of whether nations can be friends are that dialogue draws into focus relationships that have become dysfunctional or destroyed because of war, revolution or political breakdown. The participants, after establishing a measure of working trust, want to get on with the resolution of practical problems, but as they do, so they are gradually building an experiential base of interaction that lays the foundation for trust and even mutual caring. The Tajik dialogue was so effective over time that members of the unofficial track two process actually also played critical roles in the official track one peace negotiations. Ideas that were explored and tested in the track two, unofficial, dialogue were seamlessly transferred to the official negotiations precisely because they were produced in a good-faith effort.

After 10 years of dialogue, Tajikistani participants have established their own nongovernmental organization to institutionalize the process of problem-solving and relationship-building through dialogue, and they have established regional branches throughout the country. It is reasonable to suppose that the previously antagonistic political actors have transformed their relationship through a sustained dialogue process into something very much like friendship. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that the veterans of the dialogue process are ready to apply its insights into previously conflicted relationships to the management of relationships with Tajikistan's neighbors.

Friendship Through Healing History

One of the earliest recorded attempts to heal history between nations occurred in 1948 when French and German politicians, academics, intellectuals, industrialists, trade union leaders and journalists launched efforts to reconnect the two peoples at multiple levels of professional, functional and personal interaction. French and German cities were twinned to strengthen special relationships of friendship. Student exchange visits were arranged between the countries. And in a very psychologically significant initiative, a Franco-German council of historians began an intensive review of history textbooks in both countries to identify and purge the most tendentious, nationalistic and aggressive descriptions of each other as well as the kind of corrosive myths and fabrications that politicians had used to mobilize hatred against other groups and nations.

In another bilateral relationship, concerned citizens took the initiative to communicate a sense of friendship and caring to another nation in a way that could be said to have had a profound impact on peaceful transformation in the international community. Although the United States and the Soviet Union had not waged traditional war like France and Germany, they had engaged in a nerve-rattling Cold War that nourished fear in both peoples and around the world that nuclear war and indescribable destruction of the planet were real possibilities.

In the late 1970s, after the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, a group of Americans recruited by Michael Murphy, the cofounder of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, decided to reach out to the Soviet people, not out of existential altruism but out of a genuine fear of nuclear war. The Carter administration, in reaction to the Afghan invasion, had cut off educational and cultural communication with the U.S.S.R. and even set up a committee to kill the Olympics scheduled for Moscow. Murphy, his wife Dulce and their friends concluded that it was insane to cut off communication with a country that had so many nuclear missiles aimed at the U.S.A. Since the Esalen group was interested in higher levels of human consciousness and psychological health in general, the American adventurers sought out counterparts among the Soviet citizenry. But it did not take long for the circle to expand to scholars, intellectuals and journalists, and certainly some undercover KGB agents.

Track Two Diplomacy

In 1983, the Murphys invited me to establish an annual seminar at Esalen on the psychology of the U.S.-Soviet relationship. (I had coined the term "track two diplomacy" at an Esalen meeting in 1979 to describe their efforts in contrast to my own profession of official, "track one" diplomacy.) Eminent psychoanalysts, Sovietologists, specialists in American history, journalists and entrepreneurs discussed the complexity of the superpower relationship to get a grip on its psychodynamics and thereby develop ideas on how to transform it into something healthy and safe.

One of the concepts we debated was the psychology of enmity, with the hope that both peoples could free themselves from its sinister embrace. It was not long after the seminars that Soviet participants in meetings of the International Society of Political Psychology and other U.S.-Soviet conferences began speaking of the dangerous psychology of enmity and the need to abolish it. I mentioned this at a meeting at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow in 1992, in the former Chairman's presence. I said we used to think that our discussions at Esalen on the psychology of the U.S.-Soviet relationship were being transmitted directly to the Kremlin because our ideas popped up in Soviet speeches and writings so soon. Gorbachev merely smiled and silently pointed to the ceiling in the traditional Cold War warning that the KGB had put microphones there. Everyone laughed.

It is hard to scientifically verify how Esalen's track two friendship initiative with the Soviets influenced the peaceful transformation of the U.S.S.R. from a Communist regime to a fledgling democracy, a market economy and to the relatively bloodless collapse of the Soviet empire. But it seems significant that in 1989, Boris Yeltsin asked the Esalen project to arrange his first visit to the United States after he was expelled from office by Gorbachev.

Direct Encounters

In a track two process, Esalen got Yeltsin to meet President George H. W. Bush, former president Reagan and many other government and business leaders around the country. Perhaps more important, Yeltsin visited American supermarkets piled high with meats, produce and other products of what he had been taught by his political culture was a decrepit, failing capitalist system. Yeltsin suffered a major attack of cognitive dissonance. More simply, he saw that his country and its government was built on a foundation of lies, and when he returned to power--and in turn dismissed Gorbachev--he set out to deconstruct the foundation and the empire.

The Murphys and I visited some of our Russian friends in Moscow last September. Some of them were hurt by what they believed was American disinterest in them since they "lost" the Cold War. Others are angry about the "shock therapy" U.S. economists encouraged for the Russian economy that they believe caused the impoverishment of many Russians in today's free market. And Russians are very angry over the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo war. One of our best and most disillusioned friends suggested that America might atone for its negative impact on Russia by helping restore some Orthodox churches. We responded by saying that U.S. governments rarely acknowledge the need for atonement. Then he described a project that he had started to heal the wounds between the descendants of Red and White factions in the Russian civil war after the Bolshevik revolution. The Esalen people are considering ways to recognize and help this act of intra-Russian mourning.

After all, they are our friends.

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