The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work

Although 2008 was a busy year on other fronts, we also completed the final publication of the current 'Disarmament as Humanitarian Action' series, which is entitled The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work.

Although there have been recent stand-out achievements like the new 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), success has been hard to attain in recent years in other areas of multilateral disarmament and arms control work. Political problems exist, to be sure, but they're not the sole problem. Professional diplomatic or journalistic shorthand like "lack of political will" can take on the mantra of an explanation that obscures specific underlying problems - problems that also differ across processes. However, to quote Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Act 1, Scene 2) in this regard:

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves ...

In our third volume, Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations, we explored some of the potential obstacles that are worth considering with a view to improving negotiators' performance that aren't often noticed by many of those in the thick of disarmament work. For instance, obstacles to progress can be the unintended consequences of past practice, or they can stem from the complex challenges those involved must deal with.

It's also likely that aspects of multilateral disarmament practice compound cognitive challenges individuals face in managing their perceptions and interactions with others. This has been an abiding theme of some of the posts on the Disarmament Insight blog, as some readers know.

We were keen to examine some of these aspects in greater depth, and to try to give form to some of the disparate observations and insights we've gathered within the project over the last few years that weren't included in the first three DHA volumes or other published work we produced. And a key catalyst was a workshop we held as part of the Disarmament Insight symposium series in September 2007, when two of our speakers on the topic of complexity and arms control, Philip Ball and Paul Ormerod, discussed Scott Page's book, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies.

Page's book contains a lot of useful generic insights about group prediction and problem solving - often in conditions of conflict, as well as cooperation - that prompted Ashley Thornton and I to consider how this might link up to some of the DHA project's research and observations about disarmament negotiating environments.

Drawing on the work of Page and many others from a range of disciplines, our little book makes the argument that while there is no way to ensure success in multilateral disarmament endeavours, practitioners can improve their chances by recognizing and harnessing cognitive diversity (or 'perspective diversity', in Page's parlance). This is effectively what humanitarian perspectives in disarmament processes such as the Ottawa process leading to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention and the Oslo Process resulting in the CCM have shown.

And progress in multilateral disarmament needn't stop there. The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work discusses practical suggestions to help achieve this.

John Borrie

Let’s polish up the crystal ball

The World Future Society recently released the Outlook 2008 Report as part of the November-December 2007 issue of its magazine “The Futurist”.

This report includes some 70 forecasts covering developments and breakthroughs in technology, energy and the environment, international relations and society in general.

Among the thinkers who have contributed to “The Futurist” magazine in the past years are current climate change activist (and just-announced Nobel Peace prize co-winner) Al Gore, former United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

So, what should we expect in the coming years? Here are the top 10 forecasts of the Outlook 2008 Report, some of which are directly relevant to human security and multilateral disarmament diplomacy:

1. “The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025”, as a result of globalization and technology innovations.

2. “Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry.” Smart fabrics – such as colour-changing or perfume emitting textiles –, digital wallets and computer shoes are just a few examples of the new technologies that will radically transform the textile industry.

3. “The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both will replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States.” According to Luttwak, terrorist attacks are a relatively minor threat to the United States that Soviet missile capabilities.

4. “Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.”

5. “The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event. The twenty-first century could witness a biodiversity collapse 100 to 1,000 times greater than any previous extinction.”

6. “Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.”

7. “World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.”

8. “The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080”. The predictions indicate a 38cm increase of sea level by 2080. If this is the case, the number of Africans affected by floods is estimated to grow from 1 million to 70 millions.

9. “Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale assault on the Arctic”. According to Brigham, the control over arctic natural resources will be a major political challenge in the next decades.

10. “More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities”. Because of the ever-increasing complexity of the world, artificial intelligence will play an increasing role in decision-making processes.

Of course, “The Futurist’s” predictions could well be proved wrong. That’s the problem with prediction – hence we’re not getting around in jet cars or rocket-powered backpacks despite assertions that it would be the case by today a few decades ago. Conversely, few saw the Internet or the iPod coming.

Humans often make their predictions based on current evidence and past experiences. If there’s one thing we’re learning in an increasingly interdependent world it’s that plenty of social phenomena are non-linear and inherently unpredictable. In complex systems – and complex social systems in particular –, actions sometimes have unintended consequences.

So, while forecasts like those in “The Futurist” are stimulating, I’m sure we’re in for some even more way-out surprises it didn’t predict – both good and bad.


Aurélia Merçay


Reference

The top ten forecasts from the Outlook 2008 report by the World Future Society are available online.

New podcast - the physics of social behaviour

How groups of people make decisions, form opinions, and determine social norms has traditionally been the focus of sociology, anthropology and political science. But physics too has a long tradition of studying systems of many interacting components and has developed tools for understanding how such systems can generate collective social behaviours that can't be anticipated by studying their components or their interactions in isolation.

One recent book exploring this topic, and how physical understanding of the world is relevant to social problem-solving, is 'Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another'. Its author, Dr. Philip Ball, is a science writer and broadcaster, and consultant editor at the science journal Nature. Critical Mass has inspired our work on the Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project, especially two chapters of our third volume of research discussing a "physics of diplomacy" and examining the mechanisms involved in demand for small arms. Quite simply, the ideas Ball writes about are relevant to multilateral decision-makers and the ways they frame issues.

On 25 September, the Disarmament Insight initiative hosted a workshop near Geneva with multilateral practitioners from diplomatic Missions, international organizations and civil society representatives to engage them on the theme of 'complexity and diplomacy: Understanding the implications for arms control'. The aim is to encourage participants to think differently about human security, and prompt new, constructive responses.

Our speakers included Philip Ball and we recorded his 45-minute talk. We have the pleasure to announce a podcast of his presentation on the physics of social behaviour is available from today. We've also included Dr. Ball's slides in the podcast to aid the listener. These are viewable in iTunes or in Quicktime Player in sync with the audio.

Enjoy!


John Borrie

Complexity and Arms Control Diplomacy

As part of its work, the Disarmament Insight initiative has hosted a sequence of workshops this year with Geneva disarmament practitioners to encourage them to think out of the box in their work. For example, previous visitors to our site may recall that on 25 May we held a workshop on 'human security, human nature and trust-building in negotiation' with speakers including the primatologist Frans de Waal, economist Paul Seabright and Robin Coupland from the International Committee of the Red Cross. (Podcasts of some of these talks are available by clicking on the podcast panel in the left column.)

Yesterday, we hosted another workshop with multilateral practitioners, this time on the theme of 'complexity and diplomacy: Understanding the implications for multilateral arms control'.

Diplomats love to talk about the complexity involved in their endeavours. But they usually do it in a rhetorical sense, without realizing that complexity is actually a domain of scientific research and that complex phenomena have particular features. But what's complicated isnt' the same as what's complex. A better understanding among arms control practitioners about what complexity is - and recognising the hallmarks of complex social phenomena - could, we think, help make their work more effective and has implications for human security thinking.

Small arms proliferation and the diffusion of new technologies, like say those in the life sciences that could be turned to hostile use, have many characteristics that indicate they're complex social phenomena. Multilateral negotiations themselves might also even be considered as complex social phenomena. We explored some of these ideas in our third volume of research, Thinking Outside the Box in Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations.

Yesterday we were joined by two speakers who've been big influences on our thinking - Paul Ormerod and Philip Ball (pictured above). Philip, a consultant editor at the scientific journal Nature and science writer and broadcaster, is author of a remarkable book, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, which won the Aventis Prize in 2005 and explores the relevance of complexity and statistical physics to the social world. Paul Ormerod is an economist and author of Butterfly Economics and Why Most Things Fail, and is an innovative and creative modeller on a wide range of real-world issues ranging from violent crime in the United Kingdom to the political stability of China.

In addition to the DHA project's own resident physicist and researcher, Aurélia Merçay, Philip and Paul discussed their work, and the relevance of concepts and applications of complexity to arms control efforts. One such application is a conceptual multiple equilibrium model Aurélia developed to examine the mechanisms involved in demand for small arms, in part based on Paul Ormerod's work. And it's clear from discussion with the diplomats and others attending that there are many other potential useful applications.

In coming weeks, after the dust has settled, look out for free podcasts of presentations by Aurélia, Philip and Paul from this site, or for download from the iTunes Music Store by searching there for 'Disarmament Insight'.


John Borrie


References

Ball, Philip, “Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another.” London: Arrow

Merçay, Aurélia & Borrie, John, A physics of diplomacy? The dynamics of complex social phenomena and their implications for multilateral negotiations in Borrie, John & Martin Randin, Vanessa (eds.), “Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations.” Geneva: UNIDIR: 2006.

Merçay, Aurélia, Non-Linear modelling of small arms proliferation in Borrie, John & Martin Randin, Vanessa (eds.), “Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations.” Geneva: UNIDIR: 2006.

Ormerod, Paul, “Butterfly Economics.” London: Fontana: 1999.

Ormerod, Paul, “Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics.” London: Faber & Faber: 2005.

Fooled by randomness?

One interesting and useful aspect of working in a think-tank like UNIDIR is that I often get the opportunity to talk with diplomats about their work and can sometimes observe them doing it. In return, diplomats can - and do - give feedback on the sorts of ideas and suggestions we can offer as researchers on the Disarmament as Humanitarian Action (DHA) project.

In multilateral diplomacy, like many other walks of life, there seems to be a bit of a generation gap or, perhaps more accurately, a "rank" gap. Younger, less-senior diplomats are fascinating to listen to in this regard, as their collective sense of the weaknesses of their institutional structures and ways of working, and problems with collective approaches is sometimes much more acute than the ambassadors. I imagine it may be because ambassadors are more sheltered from some of the less sexy drudgery of multilateral meetings and perhaps even feel they have more a stake in the traditions that characterize their "community of practice".

Whatever the reason, I had a productive time today talking with young officials on the United Nations Disarmament Fellows programme. (Well, young is relative - many are older than me.) These junior to mid-level diplomats come from a wide variety of countries from Pakistan to Switzerland to Fiji and bring with them a diverse range of outlooks.

Conscious that they've been lectured to a lot in recent weeks about the nuts-and-bolts of "disarmament machinery", I thought I'd take a different tack. Recently I began reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's remarkable book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, which I think should be required reading for every policy maker. (Taleb is also author of an earlier book, Fooled by Randomness.)

There's an old saying that what you don't know can't hurt you. It's quite a stupid expression really, since the things we don't know really can hurt us (think about the 1929 and 1987 stock-market crashes, which hurt plenty of people. Or the 2004 Asian tsunami).

Taleb argued in his book that the things that can hurt us most are the things we think we do know, but actually don't. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, if there are "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", the problem is that some of the latter are unknown precisely because we think we know them but don't. Taleb noted that nobody, for instance, predicted the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union's empire in 1989. Soviet-watchers were convinced the communist regime would remain in power for years longer, if not decades. The fall of the Berlin Wall surprised everyone.

Taleb's book was a useful entry point for exploring with these 20 or so younger diplomats two broad themes, drawing from a wide range of literature, the DHA project's research and this blog (type 'Thornton' into the search-box for some entries):

- Cognitive features hardwired into all human beings constrain the way in which we can perceive the world, and thus affect our decision making.

- A second problem is that the world isn't a smooth, linear narrative. That is, the world doesn't conform with our expectations, although we may fool ourselves into thinking so. That's because, as human beings, we have brains that are very good at re-shaping our expectations in hindsight without even realizing it, of confirming our beliefs without evidence, and intuitively leading us to the wrong answers when careful thought would serve us much better. We're not well-adapted to cope with complexity, which can be counter-intuitive.

It resulted in an interesting discussion and a good level of engagement. Perhaps the diplomats were just being polite, but I got the impression they regard these issues as real, and worthy of more attention in multilateral diplomacy than they currently get. They seem concerned that "business as usual" isn't working, and we need better ways of cooperating in the face of international uncertainty. I suspect Nassim Nicholas Taleb would agree.


John Borrie


References

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's web page is here.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Nash.

Trying to account for mass participation in the Rwandan genocide

In a period of about 100 days, from 6 April to mid-July 1994, experts have estimated that civilian militias and members of the national army dominated by the Hutu ethnic group killed some 500’000 to 800’000 Tutsi (another group) and moderate Hutu in the African country of Rwanda. While these figures are striking indicators of the most rapidly occurring genocide of the 20th century, also deeply disturbing was the high level of participation in the killing, estimated at between 200’000 and 500’000 people.

While the Rwandan genocide will forever remain morally unfathomable, how can we begin to account for such a large-scale level of participation in the killing, in the hope that unambiguous danger signs might be identified to prevent it happening again?

In a book published in 2006 (see reference below), Ravi Bhavnani posed the question: did killing Tutsi become the norm in the Hutu ethnic group? Bhavnani argued that the level of participation in the Rwandan genocide can be explained by the “emergence of a violence-promoting norm among the Hutu community”.

In his chapter, Bhavnani noted that studies pointing to explanations such as structural factors or to Rwanda’s culture – described as one “of fear” or “of deep conformity” – fail to explain the emergence of such large-scale violent behaviour. Likewise, the significance of the death of Rwandan President Habyarimana in a plane crash near Kigali airport on 6 April as the major catalyst for the genocide is problematic.

Starting from the idea that norms are emergent properties of social systems, Bhavnani used complexity theory and simulation by agent-based modeling (ABM) to try to develop an explanation for the emergence of a violence-promoting norm among Hutu people.

The existence of a norm depends upon complex patterns of interactions between the individuals forming a society. At the time of the genocide, Rwanda, Bhavnani argued, was a “densely populated, heterogeneous society” with frequent connections and intermarriage between the two major ethnic groups – Hutu and Tutsi – leading to a complex pattern of interactions. Bhavnani added:

“When a population mixes randomly, extremists eventually have the opportunity to interact with moderates, and observe and punish their behaviour.”

In other words, in Rwanda it was about killing or being killed.

By focusing on microlevel dynamics, Bhavnani hoped this ABM could show how local interactions could bring about massive Hutu participation in the killing. Of course, however intriguing, Bhavani’s work on its own is unlikely to settle the debate over what really caused the genocide. But it serves to underline the worth of studying collective violence by using bottom-up approaches and of appreciating the complex nature of many human social interactions or, as Bhavnani put it, that:

“The causes of conflict constitute partial explanations at best, and are inextricably linked to the process by which conflict unfolds.”

Aurélia Merçay


Reference

See chapter 6: Agent-Based Models in the Study of Ethnic Norms and violence, by R. Bhavnani in Complexity in World Politics: Concepts and Methods of a New Paradigm, N.E. Harrison & J.N. Rosenau, 2006, SUNY series in Global Politic, State University of New York Press.

Paradigm shift in the negotiation chamber

Multilateral disarmament and arms control negotiations have achieved scant success in recent years. Based on this observation, a few questions come to my mind: Can we get beyond blaming political will and find innovative ways to shift today’s approaches towards more productive strategies? How can multilateral negotiations be made more effective? In particular, how can new insights about the dynamics of cooperation help us tackle complex negotiation dilemmas?

I recently read an interesting report published by the Institute for the Future, an independent, non-profit strategic research group based in California, whose aim is to identify emerging trends that will transform the global marketplace. This report, entitled “Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business: Managing Dilemmas in the 21st Century”, is in my opinion highly relevant to the practice of disarmament and arms control multilateral negotiators. One point stressed in this paper is that it’s necessary to develop our understanding of cooperation by looking at it through the lens of various disciplines:

“In the last decade, scientists and social thinkers in a range of fields have independently discovered cooperation at the heart of a number of important phenomena. Evolutionary biologists, for example, have revealed how symbiosis plays a key role in everything from cellular evolution to speciation and ecosystem complexity. Mathematicians are revealing basic patterns that underlie synchrony and swarming at all levels of nature, informing our understanding of how cooperative actions and institutions can emerge from distributed actors. Sociologists have revisited the “tragedy of the commons,” illustrating how various commons have been transformed into successful cooperative ventures in different industries and environments.” (see reference below)

An interdisciplinary approach, including insights from physics, psychology, evolutionary biology and behavioural economics shouldn’t aim at developing recipes to insure success of negotiating processes. In fact, when it comes to understand social groups’ dynamics, there are no recipes or magical algorithms. However, it seems to me that these studies have a lot to teach us about complex problem solving. And I like to think that in 20 years, I’ll be able to say that I was among the first to believe in this paradigm shift.


Aurélia Merçay


Reference

Saveri, A. et al., available at http://www.iftf.org/docs/SR-851A_New_Literacy_Cooperation.pdf