Covering the World

USIP Press Publishes Volume on Negotiating with Iran

On September 23, 2009, USIP launched the latest volume in its Cross-Cultural Negotiation series, Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History, at a special event on U.S.-Iranian relations. Featuring author and former ambassador John Limbert, panelists Farideh Farhi (University of Hawaii) and Kenneth Pollack (Brookings Institution), moderator Marvin Kalb asked the speakers to comment on how, if and when the United States should engage in discussions with Iran.

Limbert, who was taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, noted that dialogue is the only possibility for ending the 30-year estrangement. “Talking to Iran, hard and disagreeable as it might be, is likely to be more productive than continuing almost three decades of noisy and sometimes violent confrontation,” he writes. He emphasized that “negotiation or dialogue is not surrender or appeasement.” Instead, it is a process by which two sides discover where common interests lie.

Limbert cautioned against asymmetric negotiations in which Iran’s nuclear capabilities are the sole focus of the dialogue and in which neither side can address the concerns of the other. Whereas for the United States and other nations, a nuclear Iran represents a serious security threat, for Iran, having a nuclear program is an issue of national interest, pride, identity and respect. For this reason, a dialogue on nuclear capability should be part of a discussion of a broader range of issues.

Negotiating with Iran offers case studies of past U.S.-Iranian encounters as well as fourteen recommendations for those preparing to negotiate with Iran today. Limbert advised the U.S. and the international community to take Iran’s ghosts of history into consideration.  “When one is in the room with an Iranian counterpart, there are ghosts in the room: ghosts of 1953 and the American-British coup that overthrew Mossadegh, ghosts of the Shah, ghosts of people like Morgan Shuster and Howard Baskerville, ghosts of the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1827, which imposed humiliating conditions on Iran. One should be aware that those ghosts are present and going to affect the way the Iranian side or your Iranian counterpart will approach the negotiation.”

For more information about the event and the book, please click here.  

To watch an interview with John Limbert, please click here.

USIP Press Publishes Collection of Essays on the Muslim World

The Institute presented to the public a valuable new resource titled Conflict, Identity, and Reform in the Muslim World: Challenges for U.S. Engagement at an event on October 15, 2009, featuring Daniel Brumberg, USIP’s vice president, Centers for Innovation and coeditor Dina Shehata and special guest speakers Keith Ellison (D-MN), U.S. House of Representatives; Ömer Taçpınar, Saban Center, Brookings Institution; and Palwasha Hassan, Jennings Randolph Afghanistan Fellow, USIP. The panelists tackled questions explored in this volume, which focuses on how the United States and its Western allies are looking beyond a decade of estrangement with a Muslim world increasingly fragmented by its own domestic and regional conflicts. It highlights the challenges that these conflicts within Muslim-majority states and regions pose for the West as well as the Muslim world. A product of USIP’s Muslim World Initiative, Conflict, Identity, and Reform in the Muslim World brings together the diverse views of a talented group of contributors. “Our goal was not to arrive at a consensus on the issues confronting U.S.-Muslim relations but rather to reflect many diverse perspectives on ways to improve those relations and to promote Muslim-world peacebuilding,” Brumberg said.

For more information about this book, please click here.

USIP Launches Doctrine for Civilian Peace Operations 

On October 7, 2009, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute unveiled the first strategic “doctrine” ever produced for civilian actors involved in peace operations. The Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction is a practical roadmap for helping countries transition from violent conflict to peace.

“The question du jour is what the strategy in Afghanistan should be,” said Beth Cole, lead writer for the manual. “This manual provides a strategic framework that can help guide that strategy.”

Strategic guidance for civilian planners and practitioners engaged in these missions is long overdue. While the military for decades has been equipped with doctrine to guide its decisions and actions, civilian actors still operate without any unifying framework or principles of action. Guiding Principles seeks to fill this gap by introducing a comprehensive set of shared principles and a strategic framework derived from the enormous wealth of knowledge and experience that the global peacebuilding community has accrued over the last two decades.

Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction is a companion publication to the U.S. Army’s Field Manual 3-07: Stability Operations and is designed to support the civilian side of U.S. interagency operations—those entrusted to lead these challenging missions. “This book will have an incredible impact on the future of civil-military integration. Together with the Army’s revolutionary Stability Operations doctrine, these complementary manuals will influence our national security for generations,” said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, commanding general of the U.S. Army’s Combined Arms Center. “No civilian should deploy without them.”

For more information about this book, please click here.