Jonas Gahr Støre: In defense of dialogue

Amongst all the troubling deficits we struggle with today --

we think of financial and economic primarily --

the ones that concern me most

is the deficit of political dialogue --

our ability to address modern conflicts

as they are,

to go to the source of what they're all about

and to understand the key players

and to deal with them.

We who are diplomats,

we are trained to deal with conflicts between states and issues between states.

And I can tell you, our agenda is full.

There is trade, there is disarmament,

there is cross-border relations.

But the picture is changing,

and we are seeing that there are new key players

coming onto the scene.

We loosely call them "groups."

They may represent social, religious,

political, economic, military realities.

And we struggle with how to deal with them.

The rules of engagement:

how to talk, when to talk,

and how to deal with them.

Let me show you a slide here

which illustrates the character of conflicts

since 1946 until today.

You see the green

is a traditional interstate conflict,

the ones we used to read about.

The red is modern conflict,

conflicts within states.

These are quite different,

and they are outside the grasp

of modern diplomacy.

And the core of these key actors

are groups

who represent different interests

inside countries.

And the way they deal with their conflicts rapidly spreads to other countries.

So in a way, it is everybody's business.

Another acknowledgment we've seen during these years,

recent years,

is that very few

of these domestic interstate, intrastate conflicts

can be solved militarily.

They may have to be dealt with with military means,

but they cannot be solved by military means.

They need political solutions.

And we, therefore, have a problem,

because they escape traditional diplomacy.

And we have among states

a reluctance in dealing with them.

Plus, during the last decade,

we've been in the mode

where dealing with groups

was conceptually and politically dangerous.

After 9/11,

either you were with us or against us.

It was black or white.

And groups are very often

immediately label terrorists.

And who would talk to terrorists?

The West, as I would see it,

comes out of that decade weakened,

because we didn't understand the group.

So we've spent more time

on focusing on why we should not talk to others

than finding out how we talk to others.

Now I'm not naive.

You cannot talk to everybody all the time.

And there are times you should walk.

And sometimes military intervention is necessary.

I happen to believe that Libya was necessary

and that military intervention in Afghanistan was also necessary.

And my country relies on its security

through military alliance, that's clear.

But still we have a large deficit

in dealing with and understanding modern conflict.

Let us turn to Afghanistan.

10 years after that military intervention,

that country is far from secure.

The situation, to be honest, is very serious.

Now again, the military is necessary,

but the military is no problem-solver.

When I first came to Afghanistan in 2005 as a foreign minister,

I met the commander of ISAF,

the international troops.

And he told me that, "This can be won militarily, minister.

We just have to persevere."

Now four COM ISAF's later,

we hear a different message:

"This cannot be won militarily.

We need military presence,

but we need to move to politics.

We can only solve this through a political solution.

And it is not us who will solve it;

Afghans have to solve it."

But then they need a different political process

than the one they were given in 2001, 2002.

They need an inclusive process

where the real fabric of this very complicated society

can deal with their issues.

Everybody seems to agree with that.

It was very controversial to say three, four, five years ago.

Now everybody agrees.

But now, as we prepare to talk,

we understand how little we know.

Because we didn't talk.

We didn't grasp what was going on.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC,

is talking to everyone,

and it is doing so because it is neutral.

And that's one reason why

that organization probably

is the best informed key player

to understand modern conflict --

because they talk.

My point is that you don't have to be neutral to talk.

And you don't have to agree

when you sit down with the other side.

And you can always walk.

But if you don't talk,

you can't engage the other side.

And the other side which you're going to engage

is the one with whom you profoundly disagree.

Prime Minister Rabin said when he engaged the Oslo process,

"You don't make peace with your friends,

you make peace with your enemies."

It's hard, but it is necessary.

Let me go one step further.

This is Tahrir Square.

There's a revolution going on.

The Arab Spring is heading into fall

and is moving into winter.

It will last for a long, long time.

And who knows what it will be called in the end.

That's not the point.

The point is that we are probably seeing,

for the first time in the history of the Arab world,

a revolution bottom-up --

people's revolution.

Social groups are taking to the streets.

And we find out in the West

that we know very little about what's happening.

Because we never talk to the people in these countries.

Most governments followed

the dictate of the authoritarian leaders

to stay away from these different groups,

because they were terrorists.

So now that they are emerging in the street

and we salute the democratic revolution,

we find out how little we know.

Right now, the discussion goes,

"Should we talk to the Muslim Brotherhood?

Should we talk to Hamas?

If we talk to them, we may legitimize them."

I think that is wrong.

If you talk in the right way, you make it very clear

that talking is not agreeing.

And how can we tell the Muslim Brotherhood,

as we should,

that they must respect minority rights,

if we don't accept majority rights?

Because they may turn out to be a majority.

How can we escape [having] a double-standard,

if we at the same time preach democracy

and at the same time

don't want to deal with the groups that are representative?

How will we ever be interlocutors?

Now my diplomats are instructed

to talk to all these groups.

But talking can be done in different ways.

We make a distinction between talking from a diplomatic level

and talking at the political level.

Now talking can be accompanied with aid or not with aid.

Talking can be accompanied with inclusion or not inclusion.

There's a big array

of the ways of dealing with this.

So if we refuse

to talk to these new groups

that are going to be dominating the news in years to come,

we will further radicalization,

I believe.

We will make the road from violent activities into politics

harder to travel.

And if we cannot demonstrate to these groups

that if you move towards democracy,

if you move towards taking part

in civilized and normal standards among states,

there are some rewards on the other side.

The paradox here

is that the last decade probably was a lost decade

for making progress on this.

And the paradox is that the decade before the last decade was so promising --

and for one reason primarily.

And the reason is what happened in South Africa:

Nelson Mandela.

When Mandela came out of prison

after 27 years of captivity,

if he had told his people,

"It's time to take up the arms,

it's time to fight,"

he would have been followed.

And I think the international community

would have said, "Fair enough.

It's their right to fight."

Now as you know, Mandela didn't do that.

In his memoirs, "Long Road to Freedom,"

he wrote that he survived

during those years of captivity

because he always decided to look upon his oppressor

as also being a human being,

also being a human being.

So he engaged a political process of dialogue,

not as a strategy of the weak,

but as a strategy of the strong.

And he engaged talking profoundly

by settling some of the most tricky issues

through a truth and reconciliation process

where people came and talked.

Now South African friends will know

that was very painful.

So what can we learn from all of this?

Dialogue is not easy --

not between individuals, not between groups, not between governments --

but it is very necessary.

If we're going to deal with political conflict-solving of conflicts,

if we're going to understand these new groups

which are coming from bottom-up,

supported by technology, which is available to all,

we diplomats cannot be sitting back in the banquets

believing that we are doing interstate relations.

We have to connect

with these profound changes.

And what is dialogue really about?

When I enter into dialogue,

I really hope that the other side

would pick up my points of view,

that I would impress upon them

my opinions and my values.

I cannot do that

unless I send the signals that I will be open

to listen to the other side's signals.

We need a lot more training on how to do that

and a lot more practice

on how that can take problem-solving forward.

We know from our personal experiences

that it's easy sometimes

just to walk,

and sometimes you may need to fight.

And I wouldn't say that is the wrong thing in all circumstances.

Sometimes you have to.

But that strategy seldom takes you very far.

The alternative is a strategy

of engagement and principled dialogue.

And I believe we need to strengthen this approach

in modern diplomacy,

not only between states,

but also within states.

We are seeing some new signs.

We could never have done

the convention against anti-personnel landmines

and the convention that is banning cluster munitions

unless we had done diplomacy differently,

by engaging with civil society.

All of a sudden,

NGOs were not only standing in the streets, crying their slogans,

but they were taking [them] into the negotiations,

partly because they represented the victims of these weapons.

And they brought their knowledge.

And there was an interaction

between diplomacy and the power coming bottom-up.

This is perhaps a first element

of a change.

In the future, I believe,

we should draw examples from these different illustrations,

not to have diplomacy

which is disconnected from people and civil society.

And we have to go also

beyond traditional diplomacy

to the survival issue of our times,

climate change.

How are we going to solve climate change through negotiations,

unless we are able to make civil society and people,

not part of the problem, but part of the solution?

It is going to demand an inclusive process of diplomacy

very different from the one we are practicing today

as we are heading to new rounds of difficult climate negotiations,

but when we move toward something

which has to be much more

along a broad mobilization.

It's crucial to understand, I believe,

because of technology and because of globalization,

societies from bottom-up.

We as diplomats

need to know the social capital

of communities.

What is it that makes people trust each other,

not only between states,

but also within states?

What is the legitimacy of diplomacy,

of the the solution we devise as diplomats

if they cannot be reflected and understood

by also these broader forces of societies

that we now very loosely call groups?

The good thing is that we are not powerless.

We have never had

as many means of communication,

means of being connected, means of reaching out,

means of including.

The diplomatic toolbox

is actually full of different tools we can use

to strengthen our communication.

But the problem is that we are coming out of a decade

where we had a fear of touching it.

Now, I hope, in the coming years,

that we are able to demonstrate through some concrete examples

that fear is receding

and that we can take courage

from that alliance

with civil society

in different countries

to support their problem-solving,

among the Afghans,

inside the Palestinian population,

between the peoples of Palestine and Israel.

And as we try to understand this broad movement

across the Arab world,

we are not powerless.

We need to improve the necessary skills,

and we need the courage to use them.

In my country,

I have seen how the council of Islamist groups

and Christian groups

came together, not as a government initiative,

but they came together on their own initiative

to establish contact and dialogue

in times where things were pretty low-key tension.

And when tension increased,

they already had that dialogue,

and that was a strength to deal with different issues.

Our modern Western societies

are more complex than before,

in this time of migration.

How are we going to settle and build a bigger "We"

to deal with our issues

if we don't improve our skills of communication?

So there are many reasons,

and for all of these reasons,

this is time and this is why we must talk.

Thank you for your attention.

(Applause)