George Mitchell on the human element of conflict

Last night, I went to see U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell deliver the Dean Acheson Lecture at the United States Institute of Peace here in Washington. Remembered bringing a peace deal in North Ireland to fruition 15 years ago , Mitchell has an even more difficult job these days: negotiating the labyrinth of Middle East peace as Barack Obama’s envoy to peace talks there. 

Mitchell’s speech was instructive — drawing lessons from Northern Ireland and applying them to his Middle East experience. And it revealed much about this foreign policy guru’s ideology toward the world of conflict. Wars, disputes, and internal strife are all man made, his speech emphasized — a depressing truth save for its one redeeming element: that what man has made, man can fix. "Human history is in large part a history of conflict," as he put it. The conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East were "both created by human beings — and human beings can solve them." 

But what I found more fascinating was his clear belief that economic strife and resource scarcity is vital to understanding conflict. Mitchell began his discussion with a foray into the challenges of population growth — as more people are demanding resources,  land, water, and political attention, conflict grows ever more inevitable. He also noted that some of the greatest technological advances that have coincided with human growth have been in the dark field of destruction — killing large numbers of people in a systematic fashion. 

This exploration of the Malthusian implications for conflict says much about how Mitchell envisions the conflict in Israel today: After all, the demographic transition of Israel, from a  majority Jewish state to an increasingly Arab one, has certainly exacerbated both the need for peace and the resistance toward compromise. 

More, Mitchell emphasized his belief that "despair is fule for instability and for conflict everywhere." That is not to say that conflict are exclusively, or even primarily economic; the Middle East dispute is certainly not.  But as a veteran of the civil war in Sierra Leone once told me: a hungry man will do anything for his next meal. And the devastation of the Palestinian territories may be reaching that point. As someone who is near-obsessed with civil war and the poverty that comes from conflict, that understanding was refreshing to hear.

Indeed, I was heartened by Mitchell’s speech, which was broadly optimistic about the seemingly distant goal of Middle East peace. The gut feeling I got wasn’t based on his political rhetoric or even his statement that "we cannot succumb to that view [that peace will fail.]" What I found most heartening was his insistence in compromise from both sides. As he eloquently put it, leaders are always willing to take the most extreme risks for war, but they are rarely ready to take them for peace. Here’s hoping that Mitchell can persuade them to do just that — for peace.