Singapore Mediation Lecture 2021

professor kishore mabubani our distinguished speaker for today justice belinda ang chairperson of the singapore mediation center judges of the supreme court of singapore mr philip fong managing partner of harry elias partnership professor timothy clark provost of the singapore management university mr calvin poa deputy secretary the ministry of law distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen good afternoon i'm ban jun yan i'm the executive director of the singapore mediation center on behalf of the organizers harry elias partnership the singapore mediation center and the singapore management university's center for commercial law i would like to welcome all of you to the 10th anniversary singapore mediation lecture i would like to thank harry leia's partnership for their generous sponsorship of the singapore mediation lecture series which has become a key event in the mediation calendar this is the 10th year of the lecture and to celebrate the milestone there are two differences with this year's edition to start this is our first ever hybrid lecture where we have more than 300 people from all around the world joining us over zoom we are pleased to welcome our friends from thailand philippines hong kong fiji dubai and as far as field as europe we hope that this will be the first of many lectures that you will be able to join us for and secondly for this year we have moved a little from the lecture's usual commercial mediation focus and we'll be exploring an interesting topic dispute resolution between states we may be tempted to think that diplomacy and commercial dispute resolution have little in common but in reality the fundamentals and key principles are exactly the same in this vein we're extremely privileged to have with us today professor kishore mabubani to share with us his insights on this professor mahubani has dedicated five decades of his life to public service 33 years at the singapore administrative service 13 years as the founding dean of the lee kuan yew school of public policy and continuing now as a distinguished fellow at the asia research institute where he has launched the asia peace program and an mooc on u.s china relations in diplomacy professor marubani took on many challenging assignments he served in phnom penh kuala lumpur washington dc and two stints as singapore's ambassador to the u.n he held the apex position of permanent secretary of the ministry of foreign affairs from 1994 to 1998 and was also conferred the public administration meddled gold by the singapore government in 1998. professor mabu bani had an equally illustrious career in academia he was appointed the founding dean of the lee kuan yew school of public policy in august 2004 and despite his heavy administrative duties professor marbani proves to be a prolific author he has published eight books including can asians think and has china won professor marbani has received global recognition for his intellectual contributions having been listed several times in the list of top global thinkers by foreign policy and prospect magazines the citation for the u.s foreign policy association medal he received in june 2004 described him as a gifted diplomat a student of history and philosophy a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker professor madubani has helped positions in several globally significant committees he was the founding chairman of the nominating committee of the lee kuan yew world city prize in 2019 he was the second singaporean to be elected as an honorary international member of the american academy of arts and sciences which has honored distinguished thinkers including several of america's founding fathers since 1780 it is our great honor to be able to have him here with us today maya invited us to put our hands together to welcome professor mabu bani to address us [Applause] it's really a great honor and especially the to be the first non-commercial person to be invited to deliver this and so i hope you i can assure you you will not make any money from my remarks at all today but still i hope i don't let you down i know that the focus of this lecture series has been on commercial mediation but as you know is not my field of expertise so as someone who's been a diplomat for 33 years i'm going to speak about three key principles of interstate mediation or interstate conflict resolution but i believe that actually some of these principles can also be applied in other areas of mediation including hopefully commercial mediation and i also want to explain why interstate mediation is also a pressing issue in asia most asians actually surprisingly are not aware that the most dangerous interstate disputes are in asia what do i mean by most dangerous i mean that the largest potential wars that could be fought today are likely to be fought in asia now to explain this point let me make some comparisons there is no danger of a major interstate conflict in either north america or south america united states and canada are not going to war with each other brazil and argentina are not going to war with each other nor is there such a danger uh in africa and i say this with some conviction because just before coming here uh it's my first time in my life i had two back-to-back lectures i was speaking to one thousand africans from two o'clock to three o'clock today and about how africa can come together and one thing again i knew as i was speaking to one thousand africans that there's no danger of an interstate war there and of course the best place in the world is still the euro the europe because the european union members have reached a higher speed of human achievement in the area of war and peace and what do i mean by the higher speak because in europe you don't just have zero wars among the european states you have zero prospect of war uh between united states like uk and france or germany and france even though as you know they have fought countless wars among themselves going back for centuries so my dream for asia and which is why mr van mention i set up the asian peace program is to achieve zero prospect of war among major asian powers such as between say china and japan or between india and pakistan but because there's no zero prospect of all i said okay let's establish the asian peace program at the asia research institute and us and this is the uh this is my only connection with the commercial world if you would like to support the asian peace program uh please come and see me or you can get some information about it on our website uh one thing you've discovered when you launch launcher program your first responsibility is to raise funding so i hope you'll support it but at the same time [Music] my key goal is to try to persuade you that all of us in asia should make a peace and priority because as i said the most dangerous wars could be fought in asia and to to explain that let me give you three concrete examples of dangerous wars firstly the most dangerous war could be fought and we did come close by the way could be fought within the united states and china over taiwan now some americans who mean well believe that the people of taiwan should be free to have their own independent country what these americans don't know is that if they push for taiwanese independence they will definitely trigger a war between us and china and let me add just a very important point to emphasize why the stakes are so high here if an all-out war breaks up between united states and china china could lose 10 u.s could lose 10 to 15 cities china could lose 30 to 40 cities you're talking in in terms deaths of hundreds of millions in nuclear war so the stakes in a nuclear war are very high and yet even though hundreds of millions of people could die in a nuclear war arising out of taiwan you will see we are taking risks on taiwan that could trigger such a war so when i speak of danger it is not a hypothetical or a distant danger that danger is lurking around the corner and if you want a second example the second dangerous war could be fought within china and japan over the disputed islands with china called jayutai and japan called senkaku the danger was lower 20 years ago now it has become much higher with daily close encounters within chinese and japanese naval vessels and in 2017 ryan house of the brookings institution warned quote there's a greater risk of an unintended incident between chinese and japanese forces operating in the east china sea due to the frequency of closing operations involving chinese and japanese assets the absence of mature risk reduction mechanisms and the lack of consensus between beijing and tokyo on acceptable behavior so if a conflict breaks up within china and japan i wouldn't be surprised if you get your ships passing through within 100 yards of each other or every day you can you of course you'll get conditions and of course that point is brought home by my third example the third dangerous war could be fought within china and india at the himalayan border indeed only 14 months ago or 15 months ago chinese and indian soldiers died fighting each other not and killing each other not with rifles but with their fists and wooden clubs and dozens of soldiers died and there too a small accident could spark a major war there and in addition to these three examples i'm sure you're all aware that wars or skirmishes could also break up within north and south korea [Music] japan and south korea china and vietnam thailand and cambodia malaysia and philippines india and pakistan and i could go on in every example i cite there are live border disputes between all the countries that i mentioned so given all these big dangers in asia what should we in asia do should we do nothing put our heads in the sand like ostriches and hope for the best or should we promote some key principles that will help to make conflicts less likely and indeed improve understanding between the conflicting parties so what i'm going to argue in this lecture is that we in asia all of us should promote three key principles that will help in conflict resolution and i describe these three key principles in three simple words which i hope you will try to remember the three simple words are freeze talk and trade and i'll explain each one as best as i can first freezing now the idea of freezing interstate dispute sounds counterintuitive surely we should work hard to improve the situation and not freeze the disputes actually freezing is very critical and one reason why the three most dangerous disputes i mentioned at the very beginning taiwan china japan china india the reason why they have become more dangerous in the last 20 years is because they haven't been frozen and all they had to do was freeze them but instead the opposite has happened and they have become more dangerous so let me explain first on taiwan after the united states established diplomatic relations in 1979 with beijing and switched from official ties with taiwan to unofficial ties with taiwan the taiwan issue was not a major problem in u.s china relations because the u.s maintained what the u.s called a one china policy which acknowledged that china and taiwan had declared that they were one country no problem for years and years decades and then suddenly some people in the trump administration like the vice president mike pence and the secretary of mike secretary of state mike pompeo tried to change it and suggest that maybe taiwan could become an independent country let me give you a concrete example on november 13 2020 pompeo reportedly said taiwan has not been a part of china now this statement clearly contradicts the one china policy that the u.s had agreed to and equally dangerously in violation of an explicit understanding that only retired u.s government officials will be sent to taiwan the trump administration tried to send serving u.s government officials to taiwan this also violated long-standing agreements now let me emphasize one very key point here when the trump administration officials were trying to move make these drastic and dramatic changes in taiwan policy and this is shocking they did this with total ignorance i'm not exaggerating they did this with total ignorance of the significance of the taiwan issue for the people of china the trump administration officials were not even aware of the century of humiliation that china has suffered and that taiwan is today the last living symbol [Music] of this century of humiliation if i had to use a human analogy if someone's got a saw on his foot and he walks past you you deliberately step on that soul that's what the us was doing with his taiwan policy under the trump administration and that's also why as mr barn mentioned i produced this mooc course on u.s china relations just to explain this history of taiwan and and because of this ignorance of history the trump administration officials were not even aware that they could have triggered a war over taiwan when they unilaterally tried to change the broad parameters of a taiwan policy that had essentially kept peace for over taiwan for over 50 years and let me add something and there's i'm going to tell you a story which i have not been able to confirm but i'm going to repeat it just to explain the danger when the trump administration was thinking of sending a serving u.s official in a plane to taiwan i understand there were discussions on whether or not to shoot down that plane can you imagine what would happen right that's how dangerous it was and we just we're not even aware this is going on so this is why i suggest this idea of freezing a dispute because if you can prevent a nuclear war over taiwan by freezing the dispute let's freeze the dispute keep the parameters don't change them then you avoid a war similarly the china-japan dispute over disputed islands became more dangerous when japan unilaterally change the status of the islands now you may know the story in 2012 a japanese politician an extremist right-wing politician shintaro ishihara who's very anti-china threatened to purchase the disputed islands the then japanese government led by prime minister yoshiko noda claimed that he was trying to avoid the problem from ishihara by nationalizing the disputed islands and making them the property of the japanese govern now the chinese government warned the japanese government and said excuse me if you nationalize the islands you are changing the the the parameters of our understanding right you're saying that now they're part of the property of the japanese government and the chinese warn them don't do it the warnings were ignored and so what you see today are the increasing daily encounters between chinese and japanese naval vessels every day because it wasn't frozen that's why freezing is so important so if you look at it there's so many disputes in asia that could become more dangerous if they are not frozen they include the disputes between china and india which are referred to at the border where by the way both sides have increased their military capabilities the dispute even outside asia between russia and nato over ukraine where some americans are trying to bring ukraine to nato even against the advice of a cautious person like henry kissinger the dispute between north and south korea stepped up new missile tests you have the setting up of the terminal high altitude area defense thought strong reactions from china i'm just giving you examples of how when you don't when you don't freeze the dispute you change the parameters they get worse and they're countless examples in asia and the rest of the world so therefore i hope you will agree with me that if you can just promote the simple principle of freezing disputes that in itself can help to prevent war now all this may sound simple and commonsensical but one big lesson i've learned after 33 years in diplomacy is that common sense is not very common that's the tragedy so all this brings me to my second principle talking of course the second principle is that all disputing parties must talk to each other now again this should be plain common sense and this is exactly why diplomacy was invented almost two or three thousand years ago and what's interesting and i i found this uh actually my ras found this wonderful quote uh from ancient chinese history on the advice of a man called chong i probably mispronounced his name to diplomats at the beginning of the third century bce this is what i'm going to quote to you was said 2 300 years ago okay this is why he says if relations between states are close they may establish mutual trust through daily interaction but if relations are distant mutual confidence can only be established by exchanges of messages messages must be conveyed by messengers or diplomats their contents may be either pleasing to both sides or likely to engender anger between them faithfully conveying such messages is the most difficult task under the heavens for if the words are such as to evoke a positive response on both sides there will be the temptation to exaggerate them with flattery [Music] and if they are unpleasant there will be a tendency to make them even more biting in either case the truth will be lost if truth is lost mutual trust will also be lost if mutual trust is lost the messenger himself may be in peril unquote the last few words are very telling the messenger himself may be in peril why is that important but i know many of you associate diplomacy with a good life fine dining lavish cocktail parties and after being a diplomat for 33 years i can confess that i've had many much lots of fine wining and dining and i often used to say that i had to sacrifice my poor body for my country as my body was forced to imbibe good food and good wine champagne discovers a lot of calories now but although all this may seem like a joke to you actually creating the right environment for talking and communicating is critical to good diplomacy so when people pay attention to all these fine aspects of diplomatic life they fail to realize that the most essential dimension of diplomacy is the concept of diplomatic immunity why immunity in the old days when ambassadors went to enemy courts as indicated by trunks and dealt with kings and queens of enemy countries this is true they face the real danger of having their heads chopped off if the king or queen got angry with them this by the way used to happen regularly so obviously few people wanted to go as ambassadors to enemy courts for fear of having their heads chopped off so to solve this problem the concept of diplomatic immunity was invented and it was a great invention because after that ambassador's hits couldn't be chopped off you're probably wondering why is he keep talking of heads chopped off hedge chopped off his chopped up let me tell you why because it highlights the most important dimension of diplomacy diplomacy was invented two or three thousand years ago to enable you to talk to your enemies and not your friends common sense right i'm sure you all agree right why you don't need you don't need to promise you talk to your friends they'll chop your heads off but amazingly enough even though this is common sense there's one country that violates this commonsensical rule amazingly it's also one of the most intelligent and sophisticated countries in the world the united states most countries in the world by the way this is a fact establish diplomatic relations with each other without asking whether a country is a friend or enemy united states is the only country that has completely misunderstood the concept of diplomacy because it will not establish diplomatic relations with some enemy states even though diplomacy was invented to enable countries to talk to enemy states and this is why the united states didn't have diplomatic relations with countries like cuba and north vietnam for decades and still doesn't have diplomatic relations with enemy countries like iran and north korea and this goes against common sense countries need diplomatic immunity when they speak to enemies not friends so all this leads to a huge question that i actually cannot answer if diplomacy was invented a few thousand years ago to enable states to talk to enemy states why does the world's most sophisticated country the u.s not established diplomatic relations with some enemy states frankly today the most sensible thing the united states could do is to establish an embassy in kabul to talk to the taliban what do you do they pulled up the embassy but that's what diplomacy is for right and what is shocking and this is the thing that's really puzzling me and i've done some research on this and i've lived in the u.s for 13 to 14 years i haven't found a single major voice in the u.s that says and the us says you know the best universities the best think tanks in the world no major voice in the u.s stands up to say that the u.s should obey common sense and establish diplomatic relations with iran north korea taliban that's what you should do that's what diplomacy is about so the silence of american intellectuals in this area is both surprising and puzzling and unfortunately the united states also missed some golden opportunities in i'll give you let me give you a quick concrete example in 1992 china did something very shocking you know that china had fought the korean war right china and north korea had fought again u.s and south korea in the the korean war 1950-53 north korea was an ally without informing north korea china suddenly established diplomatic relations with south korea amazing that created an opportunity for the u.s to do the reverse and say okay if the u.s establishes relations with south korea i will establish relations with north korea but that didn't happen so the opportunity was missed even though the president then was bill clinton was relatively open-minded so as a result of the failure to establish diplomatic relations between us and north korea the opportunity that was wasted in 1992 30 years ago relations between us and north korea have steadily been going down decade by decade because they don't talk to each other and there's no understanding but there's one brave man in this area he should get the nobel peace prize his name is donald trump seriously he is the only american president who's brave enough to have met president kim jong-un not once but rice in singapore in june 2018 in hanoi in february 2019 and then at the demilitarized zone in june 2019. unfortunately donald trump failed to achieve peace in the korean peninsula because he was let down by senior officials mike pompeo and john bolton instead of negotiating a careful step-by-step diffusion of tensions between us and north korea where you give something you give something i give something you give something and then you arrive at a consensus pompeo and bolton demanded total capitulation by north korea in the negotiations and this is confirmed in the memoirs of john bolton and he explains why the u.s expected north korea to give up everything before the united states would start talking and obviously it didn't make sense things got obviously came to a crunching came to a halt in the korean peninsula and things got worse and but of course this is a result of the fact that the u.s is so powerful things get worse in the korean peninsula the us is not threatened but i believe that the day is coming when the u.s may have to change course and perhaps follow the rest of the world in establishing diplomatic relations also with enemy states and when will this happen well this when this will happen was explained in a speech given by the former president bill clinton in a speech he gave in yearly in 2003 and this is what he said you have to listen carefully because he's being very oblique in his message i quote if you believe that maintaining power and control and absolute freedom of movement and sovereignty is important to your country's future there's nothing inconsistent in that in the us continuing to behave unilaterally the us is the biggest most powerful country in the world now we've got the juice and we're going to use it then he has a butt but if you believe that we should be trying to create a world with rules and partnerships and habits of behavior that we would like to live in when you are no longer the military political economics of power in the world then you wouldn't do that it just depends on what you believe unquote this is very oblique but the message is clear if the u.s is going to be number one forever he can keep on doing whatever he's doing he's number one nobody can shake it but then he adds a butt but if you can conceive of a world where the u.s is no longer number one and we know it may happen within 10 to 15 years then surely it's in the united states interest to strengthen multilateral rules and norms and institutions and processes that's what bill clinton was trying to say and part of the multilateral rules and norms is also multilateral diplomacy and i can tell you and i say this as a friend of the us and i wrote an entire book about this one of the most unwise things that the u.s has done has been to weaken multilateral institutions so this is why my second point about talking is so critical now come to my third point trade and why why do i argue that all disputing countries must trade with each other you may be puzzled by this suggestion since trade is mainly done among businessmen they carry out trade to make money not make peace yet even though most businessmen are not aware of this their trading activities have inadvertently produced a valuable byproduct called peace and amazingly enough this this was discovered and explained by a philosopher one of the most famous philosophers in the world emmanuel kant who wrote in his famous essay and perpetual peace in 1795 quote the spirit of commerce which is incompatible with war sooner or later takes hold of every nation as the power of money is perhaps the most dependable of of all the powers included under the state power states see themselves false without any moral urge to promote honorable peace and by mediation to prevent war wherever it threatens to break out unquote the power of money produces peace that's why trade is so important but the best way to explain this is with concrete examples example is thinking for concrete and live cases of disputing parties and i'll choose two from asia two of the most difficult political relationships in asia today are between india and pakistan on the one hand and between china and vietnam on the other hand in both cases they have fought wars with each other india and pakistan fought major war with each other in 1965 and 1971 and as you know also experienced a painful and bitter partition in 1947 which explains why i was born in singapore in 1948 my parents left after the partition and china and vietnam have also actually suffered more casualties and fought a war more recently in 1979. now in theory the dispute between china and vietnam should be more difficult to manage because it goes back 2000 years indeed vietnam was occupied by china for almost a thousand years under various chinese dynasties by contrast the dispute within india and pakistan is only 74 years old in terms of culture and cuisine india and pakistan are much closer than china and vietnam and here's a concrete example i actually wrote this speech while listening to a singer called mohammad rafi he was born in lahore which is part of pakistan in 1924 he's a muslim but his voice is cherished and loved by hundreds and millions of hundreds of millions of hindus who consider his voice to be one of their own indeed muhammad rafi a muslim's voice continues to be among the most beloved singers in a sub-continent full of hindus so clearly in theory the china-vietnam dispute should be more difficult to handle but in practice the india-pakistan dispute is more difficult to handle so why is that this division divergent within theory and practice the answer is simple china and vietnam carry out normal trade with each other india and pakistan don't have normal trade one big difference and here's the data that backs up this point india and pakistan fought their last war as i said in 1971. china and vietnam fought the last war in 1979. in 1991 trade within india and pakistan was 97 million dollars as you know 30 years have passed the trade between india and pakistan has grown to 285 million dollars in short it has grown three times in 1991 trade within china and vietnam was a mere 32 million dollars today after 30 years trade between china and vietnam has grown to 133 billion dollars trade within india and pakistan went up three times trade within china and vietnam went up four thousand times just note the huge difference if you can increase trade you create better prospects for peace so why why what has been the impact of trade on peace the clearly trade is not the only factor that explains the difference there are also other differences as you know china and vietnam made peace with each other after the cold war ended and after vietnam withdrew from cambodia in 1989 but differences remain within china and vietnam over competing claims in the south china sea and there have been no military clashes or skirmishes between china and vietnam since 1988 when six chinese and 64 vietnamese died in the naval skirmish by contrast by the way if the chinese and vietnamese have another clash in over 30 years india and pakistan have several clashes and skirmishes as you know over the past year so clearly trade is one of the key i think i've confused you a bit because i skipped one of the points here trying to shorten it my big point here is that trade is the key factor that explains why china and vietnam are relatively speaking at peace and india and pakistan relatively speaking are not at peace and by the way i want to add that academic literature supports this point a paper from 1981 by solomon william policek of stanford university found that countries with the greatest levels of trade engage in the least amounts of hostility with a doubling of trade leading to 20 diminution of belgium on average a more recent paper and by stanford university professors matthew jackson and stephen nay argues that one of the major causes of declining interstate conflict worldwide includes greater trade increased trade decreases in countries incentives to attack each other now of course you can speculate on why that is the case number one because trade interdependence mean that you lose money if you start a war that's one reason secondly and equally importantly trade leads to greater face-to-face interactions and face-to-face interactions even with your mask on makes a difference and you can improve your understanding and i want to emphasize that i say this with great personal conviction because of one of my biggest life experiences one of my biggest life experiences has been to attend asean meetings i attended my first asean meeting in 1971 exactly 50 years ago until today i have a vivid visual memory of what the atmosphere in the room was like when i walked into the asean meeting in 1971 this was among the five founding members indonesia malaysia singapore philippines thailand and i could smell the hostility in the room among the five because all five had disputes with jesus each other very recently indonesia malaysia confronted singapore malaysia separation thailand malaysia muslim separatists philippines claims sabah every all the states had disputes right it's law of suspicion i went back to asean meetings 20 years later when i was the permanent secretary of the ministry of foreign affairs and when i attended as a somme leader from singapore i was amazed when i started attending asean meetings again i couldn't smell any hostility in the room at all 20 years of face-to-face meetings had eroded that hostility among asean and that's why by the way asean today is one of the most peaceful regions of planet earth and why because trade has also exploded in the asean region from roughly 13 billion in 1980 among the founding members to 630 billion in 2019 an increase of 50 times trade equals peace proof asean now let me conclude my remarks by addressing an obvious question that may have surface in your minds the question is this isn't kishore being simple-minded in his presentation how can simple things like freeze talk and trade make a big difference in interstate disputes now let me explain that such capitalism is perfectly natural so let me apply the principles of freeze talk and trade to the biggest and most dangerous interstate dispute in the world today the dispute within the two largest powers in the world united states and china now i believe that most of you are aware that relations between us and china are getting more dangerous that's why you know i wrote the book as china one so is there a simple way to make the u.s china dispute the biggest dispute in the world less dangerous the answer is freeze talk and trade firstly the most dangerous issue between us and china the one that could cause the war within the u.s and china is taiwan right how to avoid a war on taiwan freeze don't change anything just freeze all these agreements and then you prevent a war in taiwan second talk the best thing that you could do is to have the leaders of china and the us joe biden and xi jinping meet face to face and talk to each other and you know what this is what john taunton the co-chairman of asia society has observed that joe biden is the first american president ever [Music] to be elected with a pre-existing relationship personal relationship with xi jinping which he fought when xi jinping visited united states as a vice president and which he fought when biden returned the visit to beijing these two people know each other very well they should talk but they cannot they cannot talk because if biden tries to talk to xi jinping he'll be accused of being a weak leader one who's not standing up to china so even talking is not possible within two of the most important leaders in the world that's why talking is important and in terms of trade as you know trump launched a trade war against uh china in the election campaign joe biden said it's on record he said and i quote president trump may think he's being tough on china all that he's delivered as a consequence of that is that american farmers manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more biden himself said these tariffs and sanctions make no have no positive impact but biden cannot reverse them even though he says that they don't make any sense so you see if you apply freeze talk and trade to the most important job political relationship in the world it makes a massive difference that's why these three principles are important and i believe that if you apply freeze talk and trade to all the other disputes in asia they will all get better so i hope you'll agree with me and join me in supporting the asian peace program thank you very much [Applause] joining us today will be miss darkest craig anderson assistant professor of law associate dean student staff and alumni affairs at the singapore management university ms sharon ong director general international and advisory the ministry of law and mr francis gold partner of harry liar's partnership francis is the head of international arbitration and mediation and private client advisory at harry elias partnership and he was instrumental in working with smc to launch this lecture series 10 years ago francis will be moderating this panel session for us over to you francis thank you jin yen professor kishore it was such an uh you know refreshing time listening to you share your insights uh who would have thought that these commonsensical principles of freeze talk and trade would have such far-reaching consequences interesting also that since 1795 emmanuel kant used these words by mediation to prevent war so freeze talk and trade these principles affect not only our domestic and commercial disputes but also the existential question of how can countries better manage and resolve their disputes so that we can all live in peace but now let's unpack these concepts in our panel discussion today perhaps dockers kick it off with how can we what's the thinking behind freeze talk and trade how do these concepts dovetail into mediation you francis um just want to thank you uh thank you professor babani about for your remarks and they have resonated a lot with me and i recall that you when you started the speech you said that we wondering how it links to mediation so i i think what resonates with me is that a lot of these fundamental principles underlying dispute resolution they are they are universal across different contexts and since it's a mediation lecture i think most of us here some of the mediators we associate mediation with peacemaking and my sense is that nowhere is peacemaking really so pertinent relevant as international stage especially when we when war is something that can easily occur so so i i just taught what to share of just a couple of principles that resonated with me coming from my background of dispute resolution even though sometimes this may be applied in commercial disputes and not nearly internationally one is the idea of trade which is uh the last point the idea of trade greater trade interdependence creates the economic incentive to talk to avoid wars so this this reminds me of um i think those those uh who are training in singapore mediation center like francis most of the time or junior most of the time you do start a conflict resolution course or negotiation course with an exercise that is premised on the prisoner's dilemma right which is a concept used in game theory but i think it really is also used in many many uh forums because it illustrates this paradox that we have this tension between actors knowing that long-term cooperation is actually good for them but at the same time there's a tension with wanting to a short-term gain at the other's expense yeah so so that that that kind of paradox arises because you feel that you want to gain short term and then and then you want to defect so so i think this idea of trade really highlights underscores that the tension between the between your individual gain and the joint long-term gains that we can reap if we truly see the rationale in cooperation and that is something that is always covered in negotiation so so i think if uh in fact i think international relations some people see it as an infinite prisoner's dilemma so so in that sense if you really see very uh distinctly that your future gains your own gains are connected to the future joint gains you have inducement to cooperate right so i think this is where where trade if you see that we all have a mistake in the future that interdependence will create some incentive to talk incentive to negotiate which negotiate is really something synonymous with diplomacy and and um so so that really resonated with me because we we find this difficulty encouraging people to recognize the interdependence and the focus on that rather than the short-term gain and uh the the second point which i thought was already relevant to all of us is the idea of peacemaking being central to willing to cooperate with each other right and um and this kind of principles like prof you mentioned about principles can make conflict less lightly rules or partnership uh it's interesting that this was introduced as early as 1980s when i did most of us familiar with getting to yes a book uh written by rother fischer and julia murie but i think it stands for this idea that we are talking about today that we don't see our relationships as a zero-sum game right but we see it as not just winners and words but a way in which we can have dialogue a way we can actually reach joint gains so and the fundamental principle is really to try to understand each other i think we're familiar with that digging deep into the interest that would underline positions so so i really hope and that is something that will continue to be done not just in our daily lives but also internationally so that is my take on how it relates to us francis okay thank you dockers uh prof kishore a question has come in from the audience it says in your speech the top three conflicts you listed all involved china so isn't that a clear signal that china needs to change its stuns and be less of a war monger becoming more conciliatory so how do you apply freeze talk and trade to such a person or a country yeah thank you is this working yeah yes you can we can hear well um i must say that's a very good question and and that's absolutely right they involved china and the us china and japan and china and india and clearly china has caused the major disruption uh in the world order no question whatsoever and china's the big disruption that china has caused is that in 1980 china's gnp was 10 of the united states in ppp terms by 2014 china's gnp had become bigger than the united states so we have seen the basically the re-emergence of china as the great power which which it has been for only a couple of thousand years so when a new great power emerges obviously things have to change so i always i use a very simple analogy right the when we began this conversation there was a cat sitting next to me and then after talking about 30 40 minutes the cat has become a tiger so when a cat becomes a tiger tigers don't meow tigers raw and we have to adjust to the re-emergence of uh china but what one thing that china has done which is very unusual uh and this is a harvard professor who's documented this most great powers where they emerge uh especially as they've developed muscles they start wars and uh and graham allison says that the china is the only great power that has emerged without actually fighting a war he said that china today is where the united states was in the 1890s when germany's became number number one as you know united states conquered neighboring territories declared war on spain and that's how philippines became an american colony because america emerges a great power so china has emerged as a great power so far china has emerged peacefully we have to adjust to the rival of china but at the same time you've also got to understand that there are some issues for which the chinese have red lines and they cannot compromise and issue number one is is taiwan and so on the taiwan issue uh it's clear that the chinese have not moved any boundaries at all they're prepared to live with the current policies it's the united states under trump especially that tried to change this i think i should mention in fairness to joe biden one of the best things that president joe biden did was that within two months within one month of taking over he sent retired officials to taiwan so he reverted back to the old policy so he lowered the temperature and recently when i heard the u.s defense secretary speak in singapore at the fullerton hotel a few weeks ago he reiterated the one china policy so you can see that if you don't try to change the boundaries then then you can have peace but i agree with the question is uh basic point that china has now emerged as a great power and china will not go back to being the uh how do you call it the old philosophy of hide and bite the tiger the tiger will not behave like a cat anymore thank you professor kishore there's another question here does freezing mean we have to gloss over existing problems and leave them unresolved if so how do we really move on from this agreement if we just freeze implicit in this question is how do we apply freeze talk and trade junior maybe you want to weigh in on this thanks francis actually i'll just jump onto the tail end of that previous question i think you also need to be careful when you look at a great power and sort of attribute a disproportionate amount of blame to them but when when a great power is great it will rub against many countries at the same time if you look at the major invasions that have taken place in the last 50 years grenada panama iraq afghanistan there's one common factor and that's all done by the united states so i think this is a problem with great powers in general not necessarily china but to your question i don't think the idea of freezing means that you gloss over the issue i think i would paraphrase it as don't make things worse and i think that implicit in this term freeze is a sense of acting in good faith while you are attempting to resolve the problem i don't think any party to a conflict resolution process would be impressed if they found out that the other side was secretly maneuvering while the talks were ongoing trying to create facts on the ground that would favor them i think there must be a sense of okay if you want to try to resolve this if you want to have some kind of understanding you must be acting above board in good faith and i think that's that's the point of it but if you keep trying to to move it a little bit if every time we have a ceasefire you quickly try to you know shift the border a little bit that makes the other side wary and it damages the trust that's necessary for for this so i understand that it's not really about glossing over it's recognizing that we have gotten to where we are there's been disputes there's been bitterness there's been maybe some bad blood but let's draw a line here and not let it go any further let's not unilaterally try to to change things that could just stir up the problem again and in fact in the commercial mediation space i think these principles apply i started off by saying that the undergirding fundamentals and principles remain the same whether it's for interstate disputes or for commercial disputes and i just want to elaborate a little bit on it for the talk what i found really interesting that professor mahubani pointed out was diplomacy was invented to enable you to talk to your enemies not your friends because your friends aren't going to chop your ambassador's heads off and what this encapsulates is the idea that we must be prepared to do the difficult thing if we want to see a conflict resolved and that means sometimes in a setting meeting with people that we are not comfortable with meeting and we have seen in many cases disputing parties refuse to even enter the same room they feel that the other side has behaved irresponsibly unconscionably and they don't want to lose the moral high ground by saying that okay i don't want to validate your behavior by getting to a room with you so i'm just gonna just sue you and i'm just gonna let a judge smack you but that doesn't solve the problem because maybe your perception of right and wrong is actually skewed it's only your perception maybe the other side has a legitimate grouse against you as well and you can only find it out when you talk so i like the idea that you have to try to do the difficult thing which is to be able to face the other person and say okay i'm going to let you have your side of the story and i'm going to share my side of the story and maybe we will realize that both of us were wrong in some ways and correct and that is a direct application for us in a commercial mediation space and finally for the last point which is about trade what again that that encapsulates is the idea of mutual benefit that when parties enter a process of conflict resolution with the idea that i'm not just going to try to extract the maximum benefit for myself but i also need to recognize that the other side must live with something otherwise we will not have an opportunity to succeed that mindset is very critical it's it's the way that parties will say okay you're not just gonna try to step on me and and basically keep me down until everything that you can gain you get out of it because that that's the kind of trust that is necessary when you say okay what is your interest how can i give you something that you will leave satisfied and i get what i want and we both live happy so i think that that's what trade looks like for states but for individuals for companies it's about the idea of mutual benefit that you don't just go in there with only your interest at heart so i hope that's kind of something to to draw it over to the mediation side of things thank you jin yen uh prof kishore there's a question here how does freeze talk and trade apply to perhaps a conflict which has a religious element or difficult aspects of intractability of this kind i think the the the honest answer to that question is that you will depend on the nature of that religious dispute what is the history the background and and so on and so forth as you know some disputes go back thousands of years right so and the best way actually to manage those disputes is to try to freeze them and not aggravate them right so don't again don't try to change the the parameters as much as possible i mean you got you got to think in terms of specific uh each each of these disputes has got its own history its own chemistry and you got to try and see what you can do within those differences and so i mean like you take for example the um there was a very bitter war in sri lanka as you know within the sinhalese and the tamils right and it's a complicated story i'm not the best expert on it but people were happy when they were allowed to use their own languages but when you suddenly say oh you cannot use your own language your tamils you've got to have speak singalis you change and then you create a problem and that create generated a war that lasted uh 20 30 years you know almost right and and what is shocking is that in the 19 when singapore became independent in 1965 so ceylon yours called then as the model right and singapore thought oh we must learn from ceylon such a beautiful country everything so peaceful so lovely maybe someday singapore can become ceylon today i think many people in sri lanka wish that sri lanka could become singapore and there was a big difference between sri lanka and singapore very simple we allow each ethnic group to keep their own language their own identity their own culture and there's peace right then we have four official languages right so all these simple things can make a huge difference but you have to understand the context of each of these disputes understand the history and then see what you can do about it i mean and to give you another concrete example why did the united states spend one trillion dollars and fail in afghanistan united states never studied afghan history i mean i said it's shocking basic okay i mean why how does it you try and parachute in a democracy into a country where there's such different tribes and so on so forth over thousands of years these tribes have worked out ways and means of getting along with each other they had a process called lawyer to bring everyone together to achieve a consensus why not have a lawyer why bring in a western democracy okay so again that's another example where you if you have established traditions history culture respect them and try to not to to to change them but whenever you go in there and disrupt things like that there will be a a reaction so that that's why it is very important to um if you understand the history and culture there are reasons why things are certain way leave them alone freeze them don't try and think you can change them overnight thank you professor kisha now freeze talk and trade how do we actually implement that in the world today perhaps a big step forward would be for countries and for the international commercial community to embrace and implement the singapore convention on mediation perhaps this convention would be the harebringer of greater trade and peace because it aspires to establish a framework of amicable settlement of international commercial disputes and the hope as professor kishore has pointed out trade brings peace trade brings better international relations sharon over to you for your perspective thank you very much thanks very much um francis and uh thank you very much for professor babubani i thought it was a fascinating speech i really enjoyed it i wanted to just um before i go into that if i may wanted to just uh say that actually um article 33 of the united nations charter also recognizes mediation as one of the tools for maintenance of international peace and security and and it is together with conciliation and good offices special envoys um those are all dispute resolution tools for interstate disputes and actually there have been many very interesting examples and professor mabuni has brought those up in such a vivid way and because of your experience even going further back there's an interesting one i thought when i was doing some reading up on this between chile and argentina this was the disputes with the beagle channels and it was a maritime dispute that they had and it was um they couldn't resolve it because they went for arbitration and there was root in favor of chile argentina didn't agree with the arbitral award and it was the pope in the vatican who offered one of his cardinals to go and mediate between chile and argentina and it took five years but they came up with a treaty of peace and friendship and i thought that was just a really nice story uh there are many other examples uh for example the the u.s iran hostage crisis uh where uh during the iranian revolution and some of the iranian students stoned the u.s embassy and took some of the u.s state department officials hostage and algeria came in as the mediator and that also successfully resulted in the lgs accord so many interesting examples um on the international stage and those are by and large on either maritime disputes or violent or even say russian troop withdrawals from the baltic states so i think professor tommy cole served as the u.n special envoy for that bring it back to singapore conventional mediation uh i just wanted to share a little story um and to tie it in with professor mubani's characterization of free stock and trade actually the the delegates at the united nations negotiated or tried to negotiate a similar convention in 2002. it didn't succeed and therefore if you look at the model rules and under enforcement it just ends up with three dots because they just couldn't agree with it uh they decided to freeze talks um to just go back and and kind of re-look the whole thing and in 2015 they decided that hey maybe let's talk about it again the process was mediated indeed it was a mediated settlement and a lot of compromise there were uh two different factions largely on the one hand the eu and and the us on the other side both actually have very strong mediation practices as we know the eu also has an eu directive on mediation but for some reason the the form of the instrument just could not be agreed on so there was a big sticking point but we talked and and in the room we spent three years talking um and and that was everybody came with a very open mind a deep understanding of each other's um intractable or otherwise positions and that that's the the beauty of talking being on the same table negotiating understanding and even feelings there were a lot of feelings involved some some people just felt very upset by certain things but i think at the end of the day talking is what brings people closer together and understanding what the underlying interests are and the underlying interest really is trade at the end of the day this convention is a trade convention and people know that with the convention and with the easy enforceability of mediated settlement agreements across borders that promotes trade businesses would be happy if their problems can be resolved easily painlessly in a confidential manner it saves time it saves costs and it's a real triumph and maybe at this stage i'll pull out a photo because i just think it's it's such a beautiful photo i mean it just makes me happy every time i see it over here we have heads of states represented from over 70 countries different jurisdictions different political stripes um and you could leave the photo on for a while so different political systems different uh legal traditions so many differences but everybody came together that day on the 7th of august in singapore it was the 46 countries signed the singapore conventional mediation it was the highest number of signatories for first day signing of a trade convention and you will see some countries here who normally wouldn't be standing so close to each other in alphabetical order but but there they are the the bottom line is is trade it's a affirmation of it actually there is a quote from prime minister lee sin long i would like to read it because i don't want to misquote him obviously and i thought this this was a a really good quote if i can find it so uh prime minister lee said that the deep i'm sorry i should have looked at this uh closer uh well okay i i can't find it but but he did say that this is a support this is a this is in great support and a real commitment to multilateralism that for all these countries to come together recognizing that the trade imperative is what underlies the common interests of states and and nations and um i think that's just a wonderful display of unity and freeze talk and trade really thank you i i just thought it's interesting that uh sharon pointed out that mediation has been enshrined in the u.n convention article 33. it's a pity that most countries instead use article 7 which is the use of force i guess they didn't bother to read to the end of the convention but hopefully you know we can collectively try to change that and people really understand that mediation is a powerful way to resolve disputes whether it's a state level dispute or individuals and companies a powerful image uh you know all the heads of state standing together uh prof kishore there's a question here how can freeze talk and trade help asean and member states address and resolve the conflicts and developing catastrophe in myanmar i i knew there would be a difficult question well i mean the the the thing about freeze is that you know if uh this entire tragedy in myanmar was completely avoidable if aung san tsuchi had decided to freeze the situation in myanmar i mean what i'm saying to you is politically controversial and i'm not saying that what the military did was the right thing what the military did was wrong there should not have been a coup d'etat they should not have seized power that's let's be very clear about that but at the same time the military were making requests which would have been wiser for aung san tsuchi to have accepted right basically the military in this is a specific thing after the elections military was asking for some recounts in the some districts and sochi had allowed that that would have preserved the relationship between the two but what happened was that hong san tsuchi won the election so handsomely and she thought that she had all the power now and therefore she could say no to the military and she was therefore changing the parameters of a political understanding of live and let live between her party and the military and i think the military then said okay we will now hit back you know and if they if by the situation had been frozen and the military had been allowed to give have their autonomous political space in myanmar and they believe that they need that autonomous political space because myanmar is a multi-ethnic country and it's very difficult to hold it together you need a strong military and and it's both sides could have lived should could happen should have lived with the status quo and not try to change it unfortunately once you try to change the status quo you see what happens everything got unbundled and you ended up with this very sad situation so the question is where do we go from here and the answer is you've got to be very patient nothing in myanmar will be solved quickly and easily and you have to remember that we went through worse phases of myanmar there are far more killings you know in i think 1988 if i'm not mistaken uh so myanmar has gone through worse things so what you do is you keep your channels open keep talking to the military keep talking directly or indirectly with aung san tsuchi and her people and then that's what diplomacy is about and then you try to get a modis vivendi and of course it's important also when you're in diplomacy to find out who has got influence in myanmar and clearly countries like china has a lot of influence really so you deal with china and you talk to china and you try and work out some things and actually on many issues like this you the u.s and the china and others can actually set aside their differences and try and come together on that and that involves talking you know and i would say also continue uh trading with myanmar because if you stop trade you isolate them things don't change in fact myanmar was isolated from for for many years so the the even for problems that that have become that you can still try to improve things if you follow through these uh principles and and um you know for example in uh in in in north korea for example just give another example if they had been talking much earlier north korea's nuclear development program would have stopped 20 10 20 years ago but every time you tried to isolate north korea in north korea and said okay i want to get attention only way to get attention develop my nuclear program you know so the the uh i would say yes you can continue to apply the free stock and trade but got applied i must emphasize intelligently with a very deep and sophisticated understanding of the nuances of the situation you know and then you can arrive i think but if you try to impose black and white solutions it's very difficult so for example i mean in terms of talking let's say the europeans and americans will refuse to talk to the military you should talk to them because you have to you have to get an agreement with them and the only way you get an agreement is by talking to them and talking doesn't mean you you necessarily recognize them you recognize that they are part if they if they are part of the problem they have to be part of the solution yeah jin yen over to you yeah uh professor i have a question for you actually uh in a mediation setting um there are certain instances where the parties talk but not in close proximity because of the concern of say domestic violence safety of the individuals and so on so they are maybe in separate rooms and they talk over video conferencing or something this issue of safety could this be also an issue that will affect the ability of parties like even states to talk because i can understand one of the concerns of the united states when they pulled out from kabul and not left an embassy behind was because they weren't sure of the safety of the embassy staff against shades of what happened in iran when the embassy was stormed and and you know whoever couldn't get out was captured so is that going to be a problem that you can't really meaningfully talk if there isn't that sense of that safety and protection for the parties in fact violating the principles of diplomacy as you started off talking about yeah i mean you're absolutely right i mean there are legitimate concerns for safety in some situations uh certainly uh i mean i would not recommend that singapore establish an embassy in somalia right somalia is the government you see in the the most fundamental requirement of a state is that the government must have the monopoly of force that's the most important requirement that's what we have in singapore the government has the monopoly of force and where there's monopoly of force then you can actually get the safety in somalia there's no monopoly or force because they're bombs going all the time you can't have an embassy in somalia but the taliban today and i'm still trying to understand none of us can understand the new taliban the new taliban is not behaving like the old taliban i mean let's be very clear about that if you if you've heard the taliban spokesman they're incredibly articulate okay incredible quite astonishingly articulate and they made it very clear that they want to learn they want to live with uh in united states and and the united states people forget a very basic fact okay the taliban took over kabul i think august 15th united states left on august 31st for 16 days taliban controlled kabul and then they allowed the americans to leave so they were sending a signal i have i control the situation but i will let you leave they could have shut down the airport immediately you just need a few rockets the airport would have been shut down right but they allowed the uh flights to take off so it requires a very uh sophisticated careful judgment but i think in in most cases we live in a world today paradoxically which is a less dangerous world because most states are now accepting some universal norms and by the way many of these universal norms come from the u.n charter and in my view the un charter is one of the most beautiful documents on planet earth by the way i'm a passionate lover of the un and the u.n charter if every state believes and follows the principles of the un charter you would have a far less troubled world including by the way the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of other countries that in itself that's one of the key reasons why asean is at peace we don't pass judgments on what if malaysia is having problems having setting up a government singapore keeps absolutely quiet which is the right thing to do we should shut up we shouldn't say anything at all malaysia it's none of our business whatever government they choose we respect that's the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and and that's what works so there's some uh fundamental principles like this and i think if the taliban is sending signals that it is prepared to respect the norms and guarantee the safety of uh american diplomats i would say they should they should they should try it because in that process you're more likely to get an understanding and you're more likely to get an afghanistan where hopefully will be preserved some of the sort of fundamental norms of other uh other societies or so so i think it's it's it can be done and certainly in the case of iran by the way iran today will be a very safe place for an american diplomat there's absolutely zero danger of an abduction of an american diplomat in in in tehran and and and by the way senator john kerry the secretary of state actually almost became a good friend of uh the iranian foreign minister javed uh you know who i mean the very articulate iranian foreign minister they got to know each other very well so and and you know i sometimes wondered whether or not i spend was worth it for me to spend 33 years of my life in diplomacy looking back now i realize it's actually very meaningful because if you can establish relationships across national boundaries and then develop friendships and then understandings and trusts and so on so forth that's actually quite a significant contribution to the world and that's why i think frankly if the united states started establishing embassies wherever in pyongyang in tehran and kabul and in havana it will be actually a very positive development yeah thank you professor professor kishore for the engaging discussion we have run out of time thank you panelists so just to round up freeze talk and trade freezing is not about glossing over disputes but not making the issues worse talking is about bringing parties together in a safe zone so that they can work through the differences trade trade is what we look forward to which reminds us that in a mediation it's not about the past it's not about necessarily even rights but it is about the future and it's about how common interests can be forged as we work together so on that note thank you panelists thank you professor kishor and we've come to the end of the panel discussion

Channel: Singapore Mediation Centre

Views: 42,807

Keywords: singapore, mediation, lecture, singaporeconventionweek

Id: dquhSjx-_jQ

Length: 90min 0sec (5400 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021