The unfortunate thing is that those involved in a conflict dare not admit their true conflict attitudes even to themselves. They would lose confidence and resolve and the ability to sustain their supporters if they had to admit that victory was unlikely. It has always astonished me that Frederick the Great used to lose ground and men to his enemies and still came out as the victor of the battle. It was all a matter of morale. Frederick the Great used to be convinced that he had won. His troops and soon his enemies believed that as well – even though the score card went the other way. So it is quite reasonable for both sides in a conflict to maintain attitudes of completely unrealistic confidence. At a roulette table anything can happen at the next spin of the wheel. The fact that anything can happen does not mean it is likely to happen. But when the only alternative to hope is defeat then you stay with hope. All the more reason for being able to design outcomes which would not be regarded as ‘defeats’.
It has to be supposed that in most cases conflicts arise because both sides want a conflict to arise. For the moment we can exclude bullying aggression. As with the First World War, there is a feeling that there should be a conflict. The excuse for it or the immediate reasons for it are less important.
As in the animal kingdom, the purpose of this sort of conflict is to establish a ‘general dominance’ over the other party. The young lion must challenge the old lion. The sea lion must show who is master to the other sea lion that threatens the beach harem. In a pack of wolves or monkeys the leader must constantly show that he is still the leader. So we tend to regard conflict as a way of establishing supremacy. This blanket supremacy will then enable our will to be done or will at any rate cow the opponent and make him more pliable. Instead of having to argue each case on its merits you establish that you are ‘top dog’ and thereafter your case is permanently endowed with rightness and good reason. There is a lot to be said for the practicality of this approach and there was a time (in the imperial days of Rome or Britain) when it worked marvellously well. Let us not knock it as an idiom but merely point out that it is no longer appropriate with today’s weapons.
A union picks a fight with the management to show whose will is going to prevail. A government arranges a showdown with the miners’ union in order to keep all other unions in order.
This is, of course, the macho view of a conflict. The substance does not matter, the dominance of winner over loser does.
I have mentioned elsewhere in this book that the prolongation of a conflict may be in the interests of one (or even both) parties. It may be a matter of distracting attention from other matters. It may be a matter of creating an external enemy in order to create internal unity. It may be a matter of enjoying the importance a conflict confers. It may be that the reactive thinking of a conflict is more attractive to politicians because it is less risky than the initiative thinking required in peace. It may be that the press has so fired everyone up for the conflict that it has become a sort of sports fixture with a running score. We need to look closely at the perceived values of continuing the conflict.
There is an effort on both sides to crystallize disagreement on some basic point. Just as a successful advertising campaign must have a slogan, so a successful conflict must have a simple central theme. If the actual issue is complex then a simpler theme will be derived from it. Such slogans as the ‘freedom of the individual’ can usually be attached to any conflict. The other side, by virtue of what it is proposing, is threatening the freedom of the individual. This follows logically because if your side wants something and the other side has contrary wishes then they are seeking to inhibit your wants: your freedom of choice.
The important point is that in trying to solve conflicts we often go directly to the heart of the conflict which we assume to be this central point. This is a mistake. The central point is usually not the real reason at all but a communicable slogan.
If matters were not brought to this central conflict point then the conflict would probably not have arisen in the first place, since each separate point of disagreement would probably have been settled by discussion.
There is the notion – derived from the pre-antibiotic days of treating a boil – of bringing matters to a head. Once matters had been brought to a head then they could be dealt with. A conflict clears the air and sorts things out.
As mentioned earlier, the design approach to conflict resolution avoids this conflict point at first and only comes to it at the end.
These are the initial days and the days of confidence. It seems likely that the outcome is going to go your way. Everyone in a race who has a chance naturally feels at the start of the race that the potential of victory is there. If we had a better way of assessing likely outcomes than the current one of the blank cheque of hope and wishful thinking, then fewer conflicts would be started. Perhaps there should be a skilled group of people whose job it is to assess likely outcomes (and costs, as I mentioned earlier).
False confidence and the euphoria of righteousness are always difficult to cope with. Timidity and caution are but weak words. We need a much stronger image to bring to mind the comparison between sensible behaviour and the childishness of most conflicts. Perhaps we should practise going to the brink of conflicts we know we will never have in order to establish the value of conflict avoidance.
There comes a point, perhaps because of cost, when a party knows that victory in the original sense is no longer possible. At this point the party would like to back out with honour and with something to show for the cost and effort. It is at this point that the design effort is crucial. We just have to design both cosmetic and real benefits. Moving out of the conflict must now be a real opportunity, not a mere escape from disaster.
We can be forced to go on: because our usual concept idiom is of victory and defeat; because we feel that the other party is in the wrong and must be punished; because the dialectic mode means that you can only be right if the other side is wrong. So we are reluctant to let the other party off the hook. He is on his knees: let us finish him off. The colossal reparations demanded of Germany after the First World War were unpayable, created horrendous inflation in Germany and were directly responsible for Hitler and the Second World War. The much more enlightened approach to Germany and Japan after the Second World War converted these two enemies into staunch allies.
The religious concepts of guilt and sin and punishment are out of place in conflict resolution. We need to show that a conflict is simply not a practical or effective way of getting something done. Unfortunately in many cases it is the only way because we have not designed better ways. So we need to do some design thinking about this.
Complete victory only makes logical sense because victory is assumed to be the end state of ‘conflict’. There is no other reason why complete victory is important. Humiliation does nothing to improve the relations between the two sides and adds little of practical value.
It is perfectly possible for a party to go into a conflict with no intention of forcing a victory. There may be a range of other objectives. What may be desired is a compromise or even a permanent stand-off. It may be that the matter needs sorting out with some design.
The conflict may be the only practical means of energizing the system and getting something done. What is required is action, not victory. It is a pity the Argentinians did not signal this as their intention when they invaded the Falkland Islands.
There can also be a deliberate creep strategy. Here the purpose of the conflict is not to achieve final victory but to inch things forward. Campaigns for civil rights and women’s rights are of this type.
The key question is whether a party is in control of the situation or just hanging on from moment to moment. The momentum of events may carry things along to such a stage where one party (and even both) are so locked into the situation that they can do no more than survive. They take whatever actions are necessary for the moment and hope that eventually things will sort themselves out.
This is a totally absurd situation where the conflict has become a sort of Frankenstein monster with all parties just serving its appetite.
It is very easy for an interactive situation to acquire its own life. This is because an interactive situation is not under the control of one party. The reactions of the other party are outside the control of the first party.
All the more reason for the parties to get together through an organization such as SITO to take joint control of the situation again. No matter how valid the ‘antagonistic’ idiom might have been at the start of the conflict, once it has gotten out of control then a cooperative design mode is essential. If the boxing ring catches fire then both boxers cooperate to extinguish the flames.