Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 3 | Track II Diplomacy, page 2

As an example of Track II diplomacy taken in its broadest terms, Montville cited President Richard Nixon's "ping-pong gambit,"* as a way to warm the atmosphere for the formal "Track I diplomacy to pursue the dramatic opening to China." However, more formally, he refined his definition of Track II as "An unofficial, informal interaction between members of adversary groups or nations that aims to develop strategies, influence public opinion, and organize human and material resources in ways that might help resolve their conflict. It must be understood that Track II diplomacy is in no way a substitute for official, formal Track I, government-to-government or leader-to-leader relationships. Rather, Track II activity is designed to assist official leaders by compensating for the constraints imposed in official Track I negotiations. Track II diplomacy is a process that aims to help resolve or manage conflicts by exploring possible solutions out of the public view and without the requirements of formal negotiation or bargaining for advantage."

Simply, Montville says: "The goal is to take the edge off resentments," creating opportunities for Track I.

Typically, Track II diplomacy involves "workshops" sponsored by non-governmental organizations, attended by invited, interested individuals with influence in the adversarial governments. Attendees may include former top officials acting in an unofficial capacity, such as former President Jimmy Carter or former Secretary of Defense William Perry (currently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution), who have participated in talks with counterparts from North Korea. They may also include current officials acting in "an unofficial" capacity. Perry offers a simple, broad definition: "The dialogue between non-officials of nations designed to make up the perceived shortcomings in the official dialogue."

"It's not about negotiations," says Ronald Fisher, author of several books on Track II and Professor of International Peace and Conflict Resolution in the School of International Service at American University. "It's about analysis, it's about creating some options for the official folks going into Track I negotiations to work with."

Fisher, like Montville, views Track II as a function of social psychology--that is, in peacemaking, recognizing the need to heal wounds as well as negotiate a formal treaty--while many of today's leading Track II practitioners eschew the "touchy-feely" in favor of a "nuts-and-bolts" oriented goal.

In Fisher's view, "We have to look at the human relationships of the parties in the conflict. We must open up communications, look at issues like mistrust, hostility and the effects of trauma if you want to actually resolve the conflict as opposed to just getting a peace agreement. Not that they're not important: things like territory, control, these are central issues. But often, it's the subjective factors that render the conflict more difficult to resolve."

"I would call it social process sensitivity," says Fisher. "It's the principle of standing back and looking at your social interactions to try and figure out what the hell is going on." But increasingly, the more dominant forms of Track II are those that deal more in policy issues and matters of political confrontation.

"The touchy-feely aspect doesn't get me very far," says Michael Krepon, Founding President of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a leading Track II practitioner in South Asia, working at tamping down nuclear-threat issues between Pakistan and India. "I want concrete ideas discussed. I want seeds planted," he explains, referring to his efforts to have South Asia's nuclear powers work together to establish security, including securing their nuclear arsenals, a subject neither side willingly concedes is an issue. For example, he says, at Track II sessions in 2003-2004 with Pakistani and Indian representatives, "We entered into this discussion in a respectful way, through the use of a common enemy."

Krepon's imagined "common enemy" was "a nuclear terrorist that nobody could control. It could have been a Hindu rogue, or a Muslim rogue...so it's a common threat, to all. Now what are the best practices, best ideas and best mechanisms that are out there to deal with this problem?"

Several authorities hasten to point out that Track II is a Western cultural phenomenon, "an egalitarian, democratic, process-oriented way of dealing with problems," says Fisher, and may not function as well dealing with an authoritarian dictatorship, such as North Korea, where the slightest drift from the party line may be regarded as treason.

Indeed, while Chinese and North Korean representatives at Track II sessions are members of what are euphemistically called GO NGOs (government-operated non-governmental organizations), their American counterparts report a growing willingness by those Asian delegations to adapt to the candid nature of Track II workshops.

Track II talks frequently include current government officials from either or both sides to a conflict, who represent that they are acting in their capacity as private citizens, not as officials, permitting unusual freedom to float trial balloons or hear informal proposals. In these instances, the exercise is characterized as "Track 1" although it is still understood to come under an expanded notion of Track II.

In many Track II or Track 1 exercises there is the essential understanding that the attendees will return home to brief authorities, providing an informal, back-channel method for communications, while providing everyone involved with an elegant protective layer of "plausible deniability."

Hoping to jumpstart stalled nuclear non-proliferation talks with North Korea, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), operating with a Carnegie Corporation of New York grant, convened two days of Track II talks in New York City in the summer of 2005, which included officials of the United States and North Korean representatives, all serving in "non-official roles." (See sidebar.) These discussions mirrored the stalled multilateral talks with the six nations involved in the negotiations--the United States, China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea and Russia--each sending top officials.

Instrumental to this Track II effort were several important former officials, among them Henry Kissinger; former Under Secretary of State Arnold Kanter; former U.S. Ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy; and Robert Scalapino, widely regarded as a premier Korea scholar. "These people all have gravitas and since they are not working for the government, they can stand back and give more candid assessments of what was going on," says Stephen Del Rosso, Chair of the Corporation's International Peace and Security Program, who attended the sessions. "Several of the policymakers, including those from Asian countries, noted how useful it was to have these experts there to set the framework for discussions and allow issues to be probed and questions to be raised that policymakers could run with or respond to."

Next page: An important measure for evaluating Track II, then, is the level of achievement any session has in developing new ideas that are successfully transferred or transmitted back to policymakers for consideration at future Track I sessions.

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