Words of Wisdom

The United States took over as President of the Conference on Disarmament today. There was a lively debate with many statements lamenting the Conference's inability to break its more than decade-long deadlock and finally begin new negotiations on a treaty dealing with fissile material for nuclear weapons. One statement stood out from the others in terms of its clarity, insight and the fact that it addressed some of the themes that, on this blog, we think are important. Ambassador Glaudine J. Mtshali of South Africa delivered the statement and we reproduce it here, in its entirety, for your reading pleasure:

CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT
STATEMENT BY SOUTH AFRICA
24 JUNE 2008

Thank you, Madam President,

At the outset, please allow me to add my delegation 's congratulations on your assumption of the Presidency of the Conference on Disarmament and to express our appreciation for the efforts undertaken by the 2008 CD Presidents thus far to steer our discussions in this forum with a view to moving forward on a Programme of Work.

Since the tabling of document CD/1840 during March of this year, my delegation has closely followed the interventions of numerous delegations that have spoken about the CD's continued inability to agree on a Programme of Work. Many delegations have also lamented the stalemate or impasse that has existed in the Conference over the past number of years.

However, Madam President, if one looks at the Conference on Disarmament, one cannot claim that the structure of the Conference does not allow negotiations to take place. Indeed, if this were the case, then it would not have been possible for the CD to have negotiated any treaty to date. One cannot argue that if the CD's Secretariat had more staff, then negotiations will commence. One cannot say that a lack of funding prevents the CD from negotiating. Neither can one make the case that the Conference's agenda does not allow negotiations to take place.

Similarly, the Rules of Procedure are often said to be in need of a revision. But the Rules of Procedure do not prohibit negotiations. On the contrary, the Rules merely seek to structure, guide and expedite the work of the Conference on Disarmament. Nevertheless, there seems to be an abundance of experts on Rules of Procedure, just as there appears to be an abundance of interpretations of various Rules. An Ad Hoc Committee would sometimes appear to mean two different things to different delegations, whilst a Programme of Work can apparently even mean three different things to only two different delegations.

Madam President,

The consensus rule in the CD has often also been mentioned as the main reason why the Conference has not been able to negotiate anything in the last couple of years. But is it not perhaps the misuse of the consensus rule, rather than the rule itself, that has created the problem? The consensus rule does not apply itself; it is the Members of the CD that choose when and how to apply it. When it is used to block the commencement - not the finalization - of negotiations, one can perhaps understand why some refer to the "tyranny of consensus". We should therefore not forget that it is the Member States who decide whether or not to negotiate: not the "machinery", or the institution.

The lack of negotiations in the CD has been ascribed to a number of things, but many delegations and commentators often refer to the lack of political will as a cause - or perhaps the main cause - of the absence of progress in the Conference over the years. In this regard, we should not overlook the fact that we as representatives of our countries have an important role to play in recommending courses of action to our principals that may influence or shape the exercise of political will.

Madam President,

In his closing remarks as CD President last week, the Ambassador of the United Kingdom reminded delegations that the perfect should not become the enemy of the good. In fact, my delegation would go even further by saying that if we wait for the perfect Programme of Work to be adopted by the CD, we will probably wait for a very long time. None of the 2008 CD Presidents has claimed that CD/1840 is perfect: a fact that has been recognised by a number of delegations since the formal tabling of the document. My delegation certainly also does not believe that CD/1840 is perfect, much as document L.l also was not perfect in 2007. However, whilst not perfect, my delegation believes that CD/1840 represents that which is possible and practical under the present circumstances.

Madam President,

All Member States obviously have priorities, but different priorities need not necessarily be mutually exclusive. With a little ingenuity and a lot of flexibility and compromise it should be possible for us to work with - and not against - each other. My delegation therefore stands ready to join a consensus on document CD/1840.

I thank you, Madam President.

Photo Credit: Pearldirect retrieved from Flickr

Dealing with Deadlock in Multilateral Disarmament Negotiations

We've had a very interesting start to the week on the disarmament front here in Geneva.

On Monday, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy organised a Negotiation Day to analyse the state of the art of multilateral negotiation with the help of the PIN Group (PIN stands for 'Processes of International Negotiation').

Today, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, made a statement formally presenting the Conference on Disarmament with a draft treaty on the 'Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects' (PPWT).

The same question ran through my mind at both events: How can multilateral negotiation processes best deal with deadlock when it occurs? In other words, when parties to a multilateral negotiation find themselves in a mutually hurting stalemate but cannot find an obvious way out, what options are open to them?

Moday's negotiation day offered a number of mostly theoretical answers that focused mainly on diluting or re-interpreting the consensus rule in order to allow for more fluid decision-making. This may seem like a good idea but, unfortunately, is not always practicable.

In the case of the Conference on Disarmament, for example, this strategy simply won't work since the consensus rule is formally enshrined in the Conference's rules of procedure. Changing these rules to allow for majority decision-making would itself require consensus; an impossible prospect given that the States likely to be marginalised by such a development would never support it.

In any case, the consensus rule in the Conference on Disarmament did not come about by accident. It is similar in some respects to the veto power of permanent members of the UN Security Council insofar as it reassures the larger powers that the Conference cannot agree disarmament or arms control measures against their respective wills. Whereas only 5 States wield vetoes in the Security Council, however, in the Conference on Disarmament all 65 member States do so.

The presence of Mr. Lavrov in the Conference on Disarmament today provided a more practical illustration of another strategy that may be used to overcome deadlock in multilateral negotiations - bringing in the big guns to apply a high-voltage defibrillator to what some describe as a moribund body (clear!).

Mr. Lavrov is just the latest in a stream of top-level officials to have passed through Geneva in recent weeks in an attempt to revive the Conference. Last week it was the UK Defence Minister, Des Browne, and the Administrator of the US National Nuclear Security Administration, Thomas D'Agostino. The week before that it was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who delivered a particularly frank call for the Conference finally to begin negotiating. Nor is Mr. Lavrov likely to be the last high-level official to stop by Geneva in an attempt to get things moving again.

But there is also a third strategy for dealing with deadlock in multilateral disarmament negotiations and that is changing the forum in which the negotiations take place. This strategy may not always work, but there is evidence for its effectiveness in some cases.

The most obvious example is the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. When the best that States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) could do in 1996 was to agree to regulate, not ban, the use of anti-personnel mines, this led a small group of States and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to take the negotiations out of the United Nations. By the following year, this stand-alone process produced a treaty banning anti-personnel mines that today has 156 States Parties.

A similar thing has recently happened with cluster munitions. Again, it was the inability of States Parties to the CCW to agree a negotiating mandate that would address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions that led Norway at the end of 2006 to invite interested States to Oslo to begin a stand-alone process to negotiate a treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. Over 80 States now subscribe to the Oslo Process, over 110 are registered to participate in its next meeting in Wellington, New Zealand (next week) and a diplomatic conference in Dublin at the end of May will negotiate a new Cluster Munitions Convention. In the meantime, the CCW has also been spurred into action and has agreed a negotiating mandate, albeit a vague one, on cluster munitions with the result that, from nothing, we now have two parallel negotiating processes on this issue.

Interestingly, a similar strategy of changing the venue of negotiations has also been tried out on the Conference on Disarmament. In 2005 at the UN General Assembly's First Committee on disarmament and international security, a group of States proposed to create ad-hoc committees in the General Assembly that would essentially do the Conference on Disarmament's work until such time that the Conference was in a position to do so itself. Unsurprisingly, the idea did not go down well with the Permanent Members of the Security Council and the proposal was withdrawn, albeit with the proviso that it might be re-introduced at a later date if there was still no progress in the Conference on Disarmament.

That was over two years ago and the Conference on Disarmament is still deadlocked. Time to try another strategy perhaps? Any bright ideas out there?

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: 'Locked' by Pedro Da Silva on Flickr

Getting the ball rolling in the Conference on Disarmament

I first attended a CD meeting in 2003. I was fresh out of university at the time and assumed, rather naively, that I would require a large sheaf of papers to fulfil my note taking duties. I needn’t have bothered, however, as the meeting began 20 minutes after the stated time closed less than 5 minutes later. What a contrast to the first session of the 2007 year, which ended last week. I’ll forgive the delegates (and interns) for looking a little tired. I’d be too if I had to follow such an unforgiving meeting schedule for 10 weeks.

It’s encouraging to see the CD finally shaking off its apathy. Prior to 2006, delegations would usually meet on a Thursday morning in a formal plenary meeting with private group consultations held at various times through the week while the CD was in session. Often, delegates’ speeches to the Conference lacked focus and direction. Not surprisingly a few capitals began to question the financial and political value of maintaining a full time delegation in Geneva. In many ways these were wasted opportunities for a Conference that allowed delegations to hold up to 10 meetings a week with full translation services and still paid to retain them, despite CD deadlock.

Some analysts have argued that the CD is simply a ‘talk shop’ and that increasing the frequency with which delegates interact with each other on substantive issues is not a wholly valuable way to build trust and enhance cooperation. I believe, however, that increasing the meeting frequency of diplomats over the past 18 months has been a strong factor in the current level of movement in the CD. Why? Because it has given diplomats an opportunity to study their negotiating partners and allowed them to better assess the others’ intentions.

Economist Catherine Eckel and political scientist Rick K. Wilson believe that the ability to read the intentions of others is an important method used by humans in the process of cooperation. One way that humans assess intention, for example, is through facial expressions. Eckel and Wilson argued recently that “Although social cues are culturally derived, the capacity to pick up and process those cues is part of an evolved cognitive structure. The fact that we pay attention to others, that we try to infer intention behind another’s action, and that we conditionally respond, provides new insight into strategic behaviour”. They’ve further argued that “repeated play is crucial, even when identities are anonymous” in order to better assess the intentions of your opponent.

This has important implications for the arms control and disarmament community in Geneva. On average a diplomatic representative there represents his or her country in the CD for a period of 4 years. The question is: how do diplomats know to trust one another? Although altruism comes into play in human behaviour, it’s clear that we don’t act altruistically toward everyone. As we’ve noted in the DHA project, cooperation will fail to thrive if one can’t differentiate between those who are likely and unlikely to reciprocate cooperation over the longer term. Increasing the meeting frequency in the CD may have actually aided the process through which negotiators learn to trust (or not) their negotiating counterparts. Intensified social interaction in the CD has supplemented other contacts between multilateral practitioners in the disarmament community in Geneva, or enabled it between some delegations (say, the U.S. and North Korea) when very little would otherwise occur.

Eckel and Wilson’s paper entitled “Why fairness? Facial expressions, evolutionary psychology, and the emergence of fairness in simple bargaining games” provides some interesting insights into the way we interact with each other and what this mean for international cooperation. They concluded that such perspectives help to conceptualize ‘human decision processes differently from what is usually done in political science’. Seems like another way of “thinking outside the box” in multilateral disarmament to me.


Vanessa Martin Randin


Reference

C. Eckel and R. Wilson (1999) "Why Fairness? Facial Expressions, Evolutionary Psychology and the Emergence of Fairness in Simple Bargaining Games." (paper presented at the 1999 Workshop on the Workshop II conference, Bloomington, IN)