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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
On Tuesday June 20, in conjunction with Harvard''s Conflict Management Group (CMG), the Caspian Studies Program hosted a delegation from the Republic of Georgia and the neighboring republic in Russia, North Ossetia, for a training session. The delegation included senior civil servants from the Republic of Georgia, among them the Special Advisor to the President of Georgia for Conflict Resolution and Chief Negotiator for the South Ossetia conflict, as well as members of the foreign ministries of the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. North Ossetia-Alania (RF) was represented by the First Deputy Minister for Nationalities Affairs. The session occurred in the context of a week long Negotiation Workshop at CMG, where the delegation worked through exercises on positional bargaining, interest-based negotiation, consensus, communication, and measuring success.
The arrival of this group was unique since this was the first time that officials from Georgia and these three secessionist republics had all agreed to participate in a joint delegation. The Tuesday session, conducted by the Caspian Studies Program, concentrated on scenario planning training. Scenarios are alternative stories of how the future may unfold, constructed by trying to separate the predictable from the unpredictable with the goal of better understanding what is happening, and recognizing warning signs and opportunities in the future. Scenario planning involves assessing which of the scenarios is closest to the current reality and designing a path or alternative paths to move from the current scenario to the most desirable future scenario. Melissa Carr, Program Coordinator at the Caspian Studies Program, introduced the delegates to scenario planning theory and to the background of this tool which was born in the oil industry and developed in business circles. Arthur Martirosyan, Program Director of the Conflict Management Group, then led the delegation in an exercise applying scenario planning to the Chechnya conflict. The Chechnya example focussed on the interface between Russian politics and the war, and the correlation between two desirable conditions: peace and democracy. Through this example, participants were able to envision ways that could contribute to solving their own challenges in Georgia and the breakaway regions.
This was followed by a presentation by General (Ret.) John Reppert, Executive Director for Research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, on the use of this technique in the U.S. military. The guests participated in the session with great enthusiasm. Brian Mandell, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, coached the delivery team, and Brenda Shaffer (Fellow, Caspian Studies Program) contributed her insights on the democratic peace theory and the need to consider unexpected future realities in conflict situations.