Preface: Extensive research with individuals in the foreign and public policy fields have yielded seven potential objections to Public Talks. Among analysts who see public opinion as a powerful and growing force in international affairs, none of these objections outweigh the argument in favor of establishing a negotiating option when other talks have failed. Each reply to an objection stands on its own, but revisiting some themes is inevitable. Thus, the first-time reader can obtain a full understanding of Public Talks by reviewing those objections that appear most relevant.
All of the following objections are addressed immediately below:
1. Any US administration will strongly oppose a process that encourages an equal exposition of both sides of a conflict.
2. Since the stronger of two sides can easily reject a Public Talks challenge, the value of this new platform is dubious.
3. Since public talks might be used against the US, it should be rejected.
4. Advocates of realpolitik, arguing for secrecy, will be adamantly opposed to a public airing of these crucial issues.
5. This proposal is divorced from reality because governments don't care about advertisements or messages, but rather interests and power.
6. Since the UN, think tanks, academia, journalists and NGOs already create enormous quantities of documents related to international conflicts, nothing different could be expected of a strategy that simply creates more of the same.
7. The public will never be interested in reading about the details of these conflicts when they have access to summaries of this information from television, newspapers, magazines and all the other standard media.
1. Any US administration will oppose a process that encourages an equal exposition of both sides of a conflict.
Consider the following: Directly after 9/11, a Pew Research Center poll indicated that 73 percent of the American public favored hearing from both sides of political issues – even if it meant hearing directly from our enemies. Americans want access to information, and they are not inclined to take the declarations of foreign governments at face value. As such, the US government would have nothing to fear from exposition of different views of an international conflict. If the US government favored one side or the other, it would let that be known through its considerable public information operations as well as its actual policies and practices.
Public Talks can only be brought to the world stage by a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats – a core group of serious thinkers who are convinced that this new negotiating mechanism serves the interests of the US.
Both Democrats and Republicans will fully anticipate where initial resistance for Public Talks will come from and why. They will understand objections to this strategy and will remember instances when past administrations have opposed public airing of issues key to our national security. Nevertheless:
1. Public Talks will not be viewed by the American public as an ideologically divisive issue; it simply codifies a formal, structured process that encourages the exposition of both sides of a conflict.
2. Leaders, journalists and the public will understand that establishing a new negotiating option – after all other negotiations have proved unworkable – advances US interests.
As statesmen in and out of Congress strategize on introducing Public Talks to the American people, they will see that news coverage of it has no precedent.
Commentators, columnists and bloggers will speculate as to how and where it could be applied, provoking international debate that will engage policy experts, journalists, activists, and politicians everywhere.
2. Since the stronger of two sides can easily reject a Public Talks challenge, the value of this new platform is dubious.
Today, the powerful often reject with impunity calls for talks from the other side. Yet consider the larger events that will introduce Public Talks. Citizens, journalists and leaders will see a new communication structure independent of ideology. Public opinion polls will likely indicate strong support.
In this new political environment, the less powerful will value this new communication process. They will be able, in many cases, to project their issues, causes and grievances onto the world stage. Through press conferences, TV appearances and other media initiatives, they will take steps to create public expectations for their upcoming Dialogue Document that will ultimately be delivered into the hands of people worldwide. Citizens and leaders everywhere will then see a historical narrative that may contrast with the view held by the more powerful group.
Rejecting Public Talks risks ceding the moral high ground to an adversary, which could precipitate a shift of both US and international support. Journalists and the public will ask,
What do they have to hide? Why not engage in this process?
The US public may be especially receptive to Public Talks. Americans are increasingly aware that governments and other groups, sometimes hostile ones, are seeking to influence them. As the sole superpower, many forces both domestically and abroad seek to influence the US government by appealing directly to its public.
For the first time, they will have not only access to the central details of societies but they will also know that polls can be a mechanism linking public opinion to international events. The American public, less ideological and more practical than their political leaders, will perceive Public Talks as a potentially effective international conflict resolution strategy – and they will want to see it applied where traditional talks have failed.
3. Since Public Talks might be used against the US, it should be rejected.
As a permanent member of the Security Council, the US can veto any UN initiative. For the US, the most common application of Public Talks would be to encourage two adversaries to engage in this dialogue.
Consider a hypothetical challenge to negotiate in public that the US chooses to accept. Public talks will allow the American and world public to understand the competing views and historical narratives of the two sides in a far more complete manner than do private talks.
Public Talks would actually increase government accountability for both the US and foreign governments because the parties will have publicly laid out their positions on an issue and will therefore be less likely to withdraw under public scrutiny.
One telling analogy could be the very extensive and unfruitful negotiations that took place for years during the Vietnam War. Indeed, if Public Talks had taken place in, say, 1965, perhaps a fuller recognition of that conflict could have emerged, causing a shift in US opinion and politics, thereby forestalling the tragedy that unfolded over the next several years.
While political leaders often pursue an ideological course of action with myopic determination, the American public is generally much more practical and less committed to a rigid ideology. For the public to make the best possible judgment they must have access to the unvarnished truth, without obfuscation or deception.
This will tend to come from the equal clash of opinions, which is the natural outgrowth of Public Talks.
4. Advocates of realpolitik, arguing for secrecy, will adamantly oppose a public airing of crucial issues.
Public Talks only comes into play after formal diplomatic talks have failed. Secret talks will always have a role, but the world needs a viable alternative when meetings between diplomats and leaders have broken down.
Ultimately, history will be an untenable burden for those that believe that who hold to the exclusivity of secret talks. There is a common thread that runs through many of the best-known negotiated agreements of the 20th century I– Versailles, Potsdam, Yalta and the SALT Treaties. In each case a signed agreement was reached that participants later reinterpreted in vastly different ways, causing the agreement to be ultimately disavowed. Leaders have often, perhaps even typically, misinterpreted an agreement shortly after signing it in order to sell it to their constituencies. Later, reality catches up, and the deal is repudiated.
Public Talks will engage both constituencies in the tradeoffs broached as the process unfolds, creating fewer surprises and thus a potentially more durable agreement. As each side studies both their own demands and those of their adversary, the steps towards a compromise will become increasingly clear.
Public Talks allows for the inclusion of secondary parties, that is various parties and groups not in power, therefore ensuring that the leaders themselves are considering all of the elements of their position and reconciling internal conflicts before the final deal is made.
Examples of failed secret talks are numerous and varied. Yet since no alternative to this distinctly personal process exists, secret talks are never compared or contrasted with any other process. However, once Public Talks is comprehensively compared and contrasted with secret talks, the arguments in favor of the former will only grow stronger.
5. This proposal is divorced from reality because governments don't care about advertisements or messages, but rather only interests and power.
These critics ignore a growing trend of our day – public opinion has become a force in national and international affairs. Many manifestations of this phenomenon are part of our political process, from the White House's quick response statements that seek to get out front on political issues to the way that virtually every government in the world carefully stage-manages media events for its national leader.
Governments are intensely concerned about public opinion and devote considerable resources to media relations and public affairs.
In democracies, leaders who fail to recognize public opinion are quickly voted out. Beyond this obvious issue is that, for the US, public opinion in other countries has never been more important. As public support for the war in Iraq waned around the world, US policies were directly affected. Turkey initially supported US war plans but as public opposition against the war grew to almost 90%, it reversed course – despite billions of dollars of promised aid. As support for the war within many countries has waned, the coalition in Iraq has shrunk steadily. Regardless of the metrics used to measure the significance of public opinion today, only the most unobservant would not recognize this central issue.
Nevertheless, one can expect dismissals of Public Talks from "realists" who believe that foreign policy should only by the realm of "experts," and remain above public opinion. No one will say so clearly, of course, because by doing so they would suffer from the accurate accusation that they are anti-democratic and opposed to government transparency.
6. Since the UN, think tanks, academia, journalists and NGOs already create enormous quantities of information on conflicts, nothing different will come from a process that simply creates more of the same.
Dialogue Documents would not be produced by UN staff, professors or journalists. Instead, these documents would contain direct, unfiltered views that come directly from the representatives of the countries and groups in conflict.
While UN staff, academia, and members of the media have their place and certainly can contribute to the debate through established means, the benefit of Public Talks is that the views come directly through those involved in the conflict. The representatives speak from their involvement in the conflict, not from outside of it.
Dialogue Documents are the centerpieces of a much larger worldwide communication process that people everywhere will recognize as a large-scale conflict resolution process.
In contrast to position papers, press releases, traditional reports etc., the Dialogue Document will constitute a new medium that will integrate a mix of information entirely unlike anything the public has seen. Marshall McLuhan made the point that with information, perception is everything. Hence his "the medium is the message."
7. The public will never be interested in the details of conflicts when they have access to summaries of this information from television, newspapers, magazines and all the other standard media.
Predictions by experts of what interests the public, as the many publishers who rejected Harry Potter will attest, are not simple matters. Conflicts between nations and societies have been a major source of news since the word has existed – and Dialogue Documents would allow readers to understand these conflicts as never before. Not only would many citizens see a historical narrative from different sides of a conflict, they would know that the entire world would be focusing on that same process. People will recognize the life and death nature of the communiqués and may find this multifaceted process of enormous interest. Simply put, it is a new form of news that comes directly from leaders, yet answers directly to world opinion.
Amid worldwide coverage, one or two print media would have the rights to distribute the Dialogue Documents on each continent. While the Internet would provide the opportunity to freely access this information, the 8-12 page Dialogue Documents will constitute a direct historical record that will be valued by many peoples. Indeed, many will want the entire original group of documents associated with a given public negotiating process. Thus, considering the larger context in which Public Talks will take place, there exists the possibility that the central communication instrument of this process will be among the most widely distributed documents in world history.
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