USING ONLINE/SIMULATED INTERVENTIONS TO TRANSFORM THE 1982 FALKLAND ISLANDS WAR LESSONS INTO STUDENT’S EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

International Studies Association 1999 CONVENTION, Washington DC

Nora Femenia, Ph. D.

This paper purports to describe an experience about integrating students’ classroom theoretical learning with hands-on experiences dealing with the parties to an international dispute. In this way, the theoretical concepts discussed in class were made relevant by the connection with actual participants’ perceptions of the same dispute in real time. At the end of the Course, students’ were able to design possible future scenarios including a draft peace plan to solve the dispute using field information gathered in their interactions with the actors.

Course design:

NSU’s ARD 6601, the International Conflict Resolution course designed for the Department of Dispute Resolution Masters’ Program has a hands-on approach. Its purpose is always to link theoretical levels of analysis with the concrete, day-to-day application of principles to the confusing reality of human conflict.

Here are two examples of this approach:

·        Group exercise in the design of a peace program. Identification of the conflict, sharing the necessary information; identification of main actors, issues and positions, design of a possible intervention (who, when, what kind of intervention? with what allies? political costs? probabilities of success? of failure? what if?).

·        Inclusion of an annex to final paper (no longer than one page) describing policy recommendations that would improve the chances for a successful third party intervention in your case study. To satisfy this requirement needs some thinking about the difficulties (political, bureaucratic, and technical) that presenting, negotiating and implementing the peace/conflict resolution proposal would entail.

Nova Southeastern University’s policies

  NSU is, in general, strongly interested in promoting student’s use of technology and electronic means. It has highly promoted the use of net searches for paper research. All students are encouraged to communicate with the instructor electronically for information and feedback on class and research paper ideas. Research for papers should be attempted through electronic means such as the internet, campus library resources, including interlibrary loan, and the electronic library.

In designing this International Conflict Resolution Course, the combined purpose of teaching the theoretical basics of the field, plus giving students simultaneous exposure to electronic peacemaking were paramount. For this purpose, the practical side of learning from a simulated conflict intervention by means of class role-playing was substituted by a real intervention in a real conflict by means of internet communications.

Student’s intervention and the internet experience

To give students a deep understanding on the applied aspects of international conflict resolution, either from the formal or informal intervenor’s point of view, with special emphasis on developing applicable intervention strategies, a direct intervention was included in the syllabus. This direct intervention was proposed thus:

Individual work instructions: After selecting your final research paper theme, write a one-page memo on:

·        What are the variable(s) of the post armed Falklands conflict you are focusing on

·        Design of a very simple survey or questionnaire with your three basic research question(s)

·        Identification of the necessary points of entry in the selected country(s) so you would be able to apply your questionnaire to the appropriate candidates.

  After reviewing the research paper proposals, the group intervention was planned along the following steps: 

a) Familiarization with the internet milieu, and especially with the mechanics and rules of interaction of discussion boards.

b) Defining a strategy for posting the questions, so respondents would feel safe to answer,

c) Collection of responses,

d) Analysis of responses and drafting of a short policy paper on the conclusions to be included in the peace plan draft (final classroom meeting) and posted on the Falklands-Malvinas Discussion Forum.

  The case study: the players

  The Falklands-Malvinas 1982 war has been adopted for this Course as the principal case study for several reasons.

It is a manageable conflict with very well known variables; there is plenty of information available; and electronic access to the main three national actors (the UK, Argentina and the Falkland Islands) is now technically possible.

After the bloody confrontation and Argentine defeat on June 14, 1982, both Argentina and the UK have sustained the stalemate about the conflict. One national group with its long-term sovereignty claim (Argentina) and the other (UK) with its refusal to alter the status quo by entering into any kind of negotiation about the future of sovereignty.

The pivotal piece for any future solution is the Falkland Islanders’ situation, progressively made more prominent along time from the war to the present interactions.

Even when Argentine foreign policy does not recognize officially the Islanders as a party in the dispute, it is more and more inclined to evaluate developing public attitudes in the Falklands as part of the necessary scenario for a future viable solution.

Islanders’ wishes or needs are now included as part of the negotiation process, if not officially, as a necessary background for any agreement. The UK is including not only a symbolic representation of their wishes as a British colony, but also more and more representatives to participate in decision-making as people with their own voice. The writing of the Falklands 1985 constitution has declared the will of this small population (approx. 2, 300) to become self-determined in the long run.

  The Falklands conflict situation now: present negotiations

  After the Argentine defeat on June 14, 1982, successful rapprochement between the two countries (Argentina and UK) has resulted in multiple business agreements that have reinforced a very positive relationship. The only big leftover problem is the Falklands-Malvinas sovereignty dispute, which remains “frozen” under the umbrella agreement by which both parties agreed in leaving outside this issue, isolated from any other issue under present negotiation. Domestic pressure from the two publics, in England and Argentina keep the issue very much in contention, with the growing political participation of the Falklanders’ lobby, reinforcing respective positions and making increasingly difficult to find a new and creative solution.

Growing political activism by the Falklanders, who manage consistently to have their wishes supported by the UK Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, tends to construct a future in which more and more the self-determination for the Islands is becoming an option. Time is on their side. Meanwhile, time is short for Argentina, who is pushing for some serious negotiation to take place in the little time left for the present government, and ignored by UK timeless strategy.

  What non-governmental interventions are possible now?

  After a life of geographical and political isolation, the Falklanders are experiencing an accelerated development process. From their previous isolation and single dedication to wool production and sheep raising, the Islanders have become accustomed in few years to diversify their productivity through international commerce, due to the establishment of fishing areas that are revenue-producing, oil exploration and tourism. This goes hand on hand with internal political sophistication that allows the scarce population an intense training in participatory democracy. Eight Councillors are elected each four years and they convey public opinion to the Crown elected governor through a couple of institutions: the Legislative and Executive Council.

In a parallel development, Islanders have broken their traditional isolation and became experts in presenting their case in the most important international fora. Many of them hold offices in London, at the Falklands Islands Government Office and represent the Islands in the UN. Among their new connections, they are linked to several NGOs representing globally the problems of small communities, islands, colonies and the like.

This networking activity has taken several of them to Argentina, where they made known their opinions to important organizations in Buenos Aires, prompting thus some local experts to offer ready-made solutions for the conflict, easily rejected. Their sense is that any solution found has to include their own participation as actors in the consensual process avoiding the perception of being mere recipients of solutions devised for them by others.

Meanwhile, the prohibition for Argentine nationals to visit the Islands is maintained, on the basis that there is not enough confidence to warrant unrestricted access of visitors, which could evolve into political maneuvering. The main condition to allow visitors is for Argentina to drop  the sovereignty claim.

The Course interventions were designed to respect those feelings by consultation of Islanders themselves, within the assumption that only by asking their true opinion would meaningful information emerge.

Students’ designs for interventions were thought of “from the bottom up,” avoiding consulting external experts’ advice on the Falklands issue, but listening to the same participants whose lives will be affected by whatever decision is taken in the future.

What is possible now, if really a consensual solution for the sovereignty problem is to be found, are community-based solutions that represent Islanders’ wishes. In Argentina, a growing acceptance of the Islanders’ existence, wishes and needs has also to develop by changing public attitudes in order to foster any real future agreement. Public education in Argentina about the Islanders’ situation is a real need for any sustainable solution to develop.

The Falklands-Malvinas.com website (: www.falklands-malvinas.com)

            The Discussion Forum

This site was designed in October 1996, as a place of public discussion about the conflict and with the explicit purpose to promote the inclusion of all three sides, breaking the de facto exclusion of the Falklanders. The official parties’ definition of who is a party at the dispute lists Argentina and the United Kingdom only, because the Falklands is up until now a British colony.

The Forum embodies an experimental approach to inter-personal, inter-active and open conflict resolution, in the two parties’ languages.

The Forum does not have any official representation or linkage with the governments of the two (three) sides of the conflict, being only a personal initiative. This gives the Discussion board much of the characteristics of a free side where people can say what they think without being limited by the necessary restrictions shaping official positions. With its dual web boards, where participants can post their ideas in Spanish and English, it shares several of the characteristics of open space technology, where the people present are the right people at the table. It has its share of persons in official positions, either posting or reading, but in an individual capacity only.

 Framing of the forum as a conflict resolution place

  At the beginning, the discussion forum was open to everyone, with very loose instructions about appropriate behavior.

“Welcome! This is your own space to ask and answer questions about every aspect of the Falklands, offer information and express your opinions. Please, see if you can follow an already existing thread, and if there is no one, propose your own.

Remember that we are here to understand each other, so you are invited here to read carefully in order to appreciate truly different positions, and maintain a positive attitude that will foster cooperation.

Thanks for your respectful and insightful participation in this dialogue!

The purpose of the Forum is to exchange information and comments in a friendly and orderly atmosphere.” 

  This resulted almost immediately in a style of mutual aggression between participants from Argentina and the rest of the world that made thoughtful interactions impossible.

  It was necessary to design another approach. Taking from mediation practices the opening statement model, the discussion board has lately been framed under an opening disclaimer, which narrates to the would-be participants what the nature of the process is, what the rules of the interaction are, how the other has to be listened to and dealt with, and what conflict resolution processes are.

  This disclaimer also has the purpose to prevent what has happened in other similar boards about ongoing conflicts, where participants have converted the site in the electronic equivalent of war. Aggression, national denigration, and insulting words are proffered in such a way as to destroy dialogue. The constant work of the moderator, weeding the destructive postings, personally educating some participants in netiquette and blocking others, has allowed this board to offer a space where different tentative solutions for the conflict can be expressed/tested without immediate consequences. This is the second piece of the interactional framing, added to the first:

“The hosts of this Forum reserve the right to refuse access to anyone, to remove topics and messages at any time, and to close the discussion Forum for any reason.

Please, keep the topic of your messages relevant to the subjects in discussion. If you participate, it's because you agree with the posted rules; therefore no public comments on Forum management are appropriate. Use private emails for suggestions.

Please, keep your comments and language within educated language norms. Personal verbal attacks, or the use of derogatory slurs or profanity in your messages will be deleted and the user denied password.

If posted without your email address, your posting will be deleted.

Avoid using ALL CAPITALS in your message or subject - it makes people think that you are yelling!”

  When the Forum begun, in 1996 only participants from Argentina and the UK had access to internet. At the beginning of 1998, the Falkland Islands got connected to internet. After several months of moderated interaction, the active participation of Falkland Islanders has produced a real dialogue between participants from the three sides of the dispute.

Matching teaching objectives with the Falklands-Malvinas For um’s objectives

  Student’s intervention design:

They were several stages of this student involvement in the Falklands conflict.

·        First, the knowledge base. How much has a student to know about the past history of the conflict and about the present situation, post-armed conflict times, to be able to converse meaningfully with conflict participants?    

The internet gives now direct access to the field in such a way that only diplomats or natives would have had in the past. The possibility of reaching out and talking with the participants of the conflict by a non-official intervenor in a direct way was unforeseeable some time ago.

Moreover, “cyberspace constitutes a wonderful example of how people can build personal relationships and social norms that are absolutely real and meaningful even in the absence of physical, touchable matter.” (Pacagnela, 1997)

Direct feedback from people involved in the conflict gave students the necessary information to address their draft proposals more accurately, while at the same time the developing connection allowed conflict participants an opportunity to voice their concerns and aspirations in a safe way.

·        Second, how to select the appropriate intervention. Once defined what they had to know, and the best style to interact with the selected national participants, what kind of intervention was possible in the electronic milieu?

  Given that “computer networks have a status equalization effect; a few field studies confirmed that organizational electronic mail reduces social differences and increases communication across social boundaries.” (Sproull & Kielser, 1986) a structured dialogue between the three parties based on three questions and a summary was the format. Students decided, irrelevant of what the official positions of the respondents were, what questions to ask, about which issue and who would be respondents, in what national party (Argentina, UK and/or Falkland Islands). This created a new opportunity that has not happened in the real world of policy yet, where three-party negotiations are still in the probable future.

·        After posting the questions in the Falklands-Malvinas Discussion Forum, receiving the answers in public (by postings) and privately (by private email), and summarizing the answers into a position paper, a draft containing the positions described by the participants was posted for feedback comments. This allowed students to test their ability to do reflective listening, carefully summarizing the main points of the argument and reflecting back this summary on the same Discussion Forum board.

  What did students learn with this approach?

  Having looked at all possible aspects of the respective national groups’ positions which would present either opportunities for success or failure, (given that the field of conflict resolution is fraught with unsuccessful attempts to manage conflict,) students were more able to evaluate why a particular proposal would fail or succeed, after checking it out with some members of each party.

In this way, students were able to ponder the limitations of what is politically possible, in the real world, against theoretically sound solutions without reality check.

  What is the impact of this intervention, if any, on the different parties?

  Could results, beyond the learning experience itself, such as the establishment of some point of consensus, be transposed to the real international conflict interaction? It depends on what we already know, or not know, about the points of contact between the mediated world of cyberspace and the outer world. But this electronic peace-making work is done under the premise that there is a strong connection between the community of ideas shared on internet and the real world of policy decision-making.

“Social worlds, even in cyberspace, are exceedingly complex and their basic characteristics cannot be determined by any intrinsic feature of the communication medium: relationships on the net can be altogether more or less democratic, inhibited or egalitarian than in real life, depending on an intricate pattern of elements. In fact, in particular conditions on-line behavior can be more social and normative than face-to-face interaction.” Pacagnella, L. (1997) If we can show a more normative interaction that leads to serious three-party communication; this could be a model of the possible parties’ behavior in other face-to-face interactions.

Along the International Conflict Resolution Course, we expect to establish that a highly prescribed, carefully scripted social interaction would give the participants the opportunity to articulate better what they see as their needs, without the argumentative contentiousness of the real negotiation process. By offering a careful summary of each group’ s needs and wants, and sharing these with the other side in a neutral space like the Discussion Forum, a new form of dialogue ensues.

Being posted in the website, summaries offered avoided such immediate public impact produced by other media, and so opinions posted there are more shielded from political pressure.

As it appears in a public forum, this discussion with the three sides’ positions has an educational impact on the general public. A search in the right search engines reveals that the Forum is linked to more than 80 different sites. Personal communication informs us that in Argentina there is constant observation of the Discussion Forum by government officials. When President Menem of Argentina went to London in the first official visit after the 1982 war, his public apology for the war was echoing a peace initiative only present in the Discussion Forum since December 1997. This initiative invited participants to express their sorrow for the 1982 Argentine invasion and subsequent armed conflict.

From the Falkland Islands, even elected Councilors read it and post their answers.

  Conclusion

  If politics is the art of the possible, students taking the IRC Course have learned valuable lessons in the art of consulting constituents about their own views on the conflict. Also about obtaining consensual definitions of needs and positions, and establishing a dialogue among adversaries in the open view of an unknown number of readers.

If conflict resolution is the art of the impossible, then students will be able to design interventions in such a way that they respect parties’ values and interests while at the same time offering a way out of the dispute. If none of the final papers was able to offer the “magical solution,” they described in deep detail the necessary steps to build a consensual process that the parties own. Which is, in itself, no small learning, because if there is to be a permanent solution for the Falklands conflict, to be accepted and sustained it will have to be constructed from the bottom up by the parties themselves.

References:

Pacagnella, Luciano, (1997) “Getting the Seats of Your Pants Dirty: Strategies for Ethnographic Research on virtual communities,”  in JCMC, at:

http://www.ascuc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue1/pacagnella.html