Civil War is Solvable (Again)

on November twentieth, twenty one. The US is not in a state of civil war, but certainly with the insurrection at the US capital, uncivil actions by US citizens as well as our deep divisions were on full display. What is it that they want? What are their concerns, What are their ideals their objectives. If you don't have an idea of what they want, it's very difficult to negotiate. Negotiation is a way to mitigate tension. Another is to

elevate truth and distinguish it from fiction. But just how best to pursue any of these tactics can be harder to discern. Here it's solvable. We're going to explore these questions and others as part of a series examining the strength of democracy and how to solve polarization in the US. President Biden has inherited a nation that is not just politically polarized, but it's also reeling from a long history of racial trauma. We know that anger and pain don't

disappear with the installation of a new president. Every peace process boils down to where you draw the line between peace and justice. No matter where you draw the line, there will always be some people from one side seeking more justice or from the other side seeking more peace. Je Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Prize in twenty sixteen. He is the former president of Columbia. He is credited with reuniting his country by ending its deeply divisive civil war,

a conflict that lasted more than fifty years. Columbia makes an interesting example for Americans, not because we are involved in a civil war, but because the habits of mind and the tactics that the Colombians have used to reintegrate their insurgency might help us think about how we can bring Americans back together into a single political system too. My soluble is to find the ways to end civil armed conflicts and to find reconciliation. I first spoke with

one Manuel Santos in twenty nineteen. Here's our conversation Juan Manuel Santos. When you became president of Columbia, you were faced with one of the longest running, most insoluble civil wars in the world. When you begin thinking about how to solve a problem like that, it seems intractable, it can't end. How do you break the problem down? What do you think of first? What was your first instinct?

My first instinct was to try to get a complete picture of the problem and try to generate the necessary conditions to solve it. Many times this is not done, and when you don't have the necessary conditions at your disposal, it is impossible to solve a conflict of the nature. What do you mean by conditions? What exactly what you're talking about. I studied why my predecessors failed, because all of them tried to negotiate peace. And I studied more

than seventeen conflicts around the world. Some of them were successful in being ended, some of them not. But I studied each and every one of these conflicts and extracted what was applicable to our conflict and what to do and what not to do. And when I had those conditions ready, I then started negotiations. Conditions like you have to have the military balance of power in the favor of the state. As long as the insurgency the grillers think they can win by using violence, it's very difficult

to negotiate peace. You need the commanders of the insurgency to personally consider that for them on a personal level, it's better to negotiate a peace agreement than to continue the war. And something that is very very necessary in today's world. Any asymmetric war in any part of the world needs the support of the region and if necessary, of the international community to reach an agreement. So these conditions were identified and then created. Because conditions don't appear

just out of the blue. You have to create those conditions, and we created those conditions in the case of Colombia. And what did you do first? Well, my first effort was to strengthen our military and I had the opportunity of doing that because I was Minister of Defense before being president. And also to use the carrot and the stick with the military commanders, telling them that they personally

would be better off if they negotiate peace. And something that I did which was quite controversial at the moment, was making peace with our neighbors in order to seek their support. Charis in Venezuela, who's not popular in Colombia, was very unpopular, and we didn't have diplomatics or even trade relations with aswell at that time, and I made peace with him. Also with President Correa and Ecuador, the

south of Colombia. We did not have diplomatic or even trade relations with either, and we needed them to support the peace process, otherwise the peace process would not be successful. So I made peace with both of them, and with other neighbors which we did not have it at that time, in good relationships Brazil and Peru and the rest of

that America. I know that one of the other things you did is that you sought to give the rebel leaders some incentive to join the political process in Colombia, in other words, to bring somehow bring them in, allow them to have a political party, allow them to be elected. And this, of course was also controversial because many people feel that these are criminals and they should be in jail. Can you explain why you thought that was necessary and

whether you think it worked well. Every peace process boils down to where you draw the line between peace and justice. No matter where you draw the line, there will always be some people from one side seeking more justice or from the other side seeking more peace. So to make peace is not very popular, and this is an experience that all peacemakers have had during the recent history. Also, in a process of this sort, what are the guerrillas

fighting for. They want to change the country, they want political power, and you have to give them a way out, a dignified way out, if you want them to lay down their arms, and the way to do that is to offer them space in our democracy. And almost every peace process around the world has to give the counterpart some guarantees that they can continue their struggle without violence through democratic means. And this is an essential part of any agreement. Yes, this is what was done in Northern

Ireland as well. Absolutely, and every other conflict in the world has been solved by giving the counterparts some kind of guarantees in their democratic life. Otherwise they will never give up their arms unless you defeat them militarily and exterminate them, which is something impossible. In the case of Columbia, it was impossible. Then you have to negotiate, and negotiations

mean making transactions. In the case of Colombia, for example, I gave them ten places in our Congress, five in the Senate, five in the House of Representatives, to guarantee them for three periods representation in Congress. And they were satisfied with that, and I think that was an essential part of the agreement. When you do that, though, don't you really and I know this was you know this did happen in Colombia, don't you risk losing public support?

The public is angry at these people. They're terrorists. They've caused all this damage, They've killed people, they forced people to leave the country. They've been very destructive. So how do you bring the public along and convince them that this is trade off between peace and justice is worth it. When I became president, I was the most popular politician in Colombia. I had more than eighty five percent favorability. As soon as I talked about negotiating peace, I was warned,

this will cost you your political capital. People will not understand that you are very effective. Hawk was elected because you were successful making war. You now sit down with the terrorists to make peace. But it's the only way to finish the war through a negotiation, And so you have to be able to do what is correct, even though it's I'm popular. You have to be able to sacrifice your political capital if you want to achieve your objectives. And I was warned that was going to happen, and

it happened. My favoriteity went down dramatically. But I have the great satisfaction of ending the war with the FARC after fifty years, and that, of course, is made it worthwhile in every respect. I was in Columbia last year and was traveling with a friend who was doing a project. We met lots of young people who were entrepreneurs and who were building new things in Columbia, and I did have a feeling that this is a country where there

was a lot of optimism. People kept beginning sentences by saying, now that we have peace, now that the war is over, now we can do things that we couldn't do before. But at the same time, they weren't at all enthusiastic about the deal, about the rebels entering the political process. It was a very strange contrast, you know, You is if they were half convinced that this was a good thing, and they saw why it was beneficial, but they didn't

feel optimistic about the process itself. This happens in every peace process. The people like peace, but they don't like to pay the price for peace. The price in this case was to see the guerrillas terrorists who had committed tremendous atrocities war crimes in congress. A lot of people, of course, don't like it. I don't like it, but it's the necessary price you have to pay in order to have peace. I prefer to have them in congress shouting and making speeches, then to have them in the

jungles can napping and putting bonds. How do you bring society around? What is the Do you have advice for your successors? How do you How do you convince people that this is a good way to end the conflict, because I know some people are not convinced. One of the most difficult problems that you run in a process of this sort is to tell the people that they have to learn how to forgive, how to reconciliate. And

this is very hard. To tell a mother whose daughter or son had been killed raped to forgive the perpetrators. This is very, very difficult. But I learned from the victims that the victims, and this is a very strange paradox, were the ones who at the end were more enthusiastic about ending the war because they did not want other people to suffer what they suffered. For me, that was

a lesson in life. I never expected that. On the contrary, people who had never experienced war or was not affected by war were the ones who were more critical of the peace process. But this is something which is normally

in many other processes. I studied them. For example, in the case of Israel and Palestine, Prime Minister Rabine, who paid with his life the piece processes he did with the Palestinians, experienced that from the Israeli people who did not want the Palestinians to have a say in Israeli politics. And this is a common denominator of almost every piece process. Mandela who was very much criticized by his own people for being too lenient, but as he said, if you

want peace, you need to make transactions. Did you meet with victims? Yes, I had a marvelous experience. A professor from Harvard went and visited me at the beginning of my government and said, you are embarking in a very very difficult trip. I advise you when you're sad, when you're about to throw in the towel to talk to the victims, tell you their dramas, what they have gone through. That will re energize you. And that's what I did.

I had as a discipline to talk to victims every week or every two weeks, to different victims, and that served through the process with six years as a tremendous re energizer. Every time I talked to a victim, I came out saying I have to continue, I have to persevere. And they, the victims, were the first ones to tell me, President, don't throw into town, continue persevere. What was your experience like of speaking to the rebels whom you'd fought against

for many years? You need to put yourself in their shoes. Empathy is very important in any negotiation. What is it that they want, What are their concerns, what are their ideals their objectives. If you don't have an idea of what they want, it's very difficult to negotiate. So I came into the negotiation with tremendous ap hancian. I was their worst enemy, but I made it as one of my objectives to build trust that they started trusting me

and I started trusting them. Of course, I put many sort of measures throughout the process to confirm that they were negotiating good faith, and I think they did the same with me, and at the end the trust was there that I was negotiating good faith and that they were negotiating good faith, and that was essential. From your experience, do you think you can generalize you learned from other

conflicts which you studied. Are there lessons that you would like to pass on to others when you look around the world, when you look at you at Israel, Palestine, or at some of the other other civil wars that continue, Yes, there are many lessons. First, that every conflict can have a solution. Five years ago, six years ago, nobody in colum We thought that a peace agreement with the fart was possible, and people say that we made possible the impossible.

And that is a lesson for any conflict if you find the correct conditions and you find the correct moment, because there are moments in a process which are essential to have a successful negotiations. I think every conflict in the world can be solved. Any other specific lessons I mean, is it just is it just being optimistic or the specific of any conflict, you need to know what the

counterpart really wants. You need to be able to convince the international in today's world, the international community, of a solution to this conflict. You need to know where you draw your red lines, but where you can give to

the counterpart what is necessary to obtain peace. For example, in the case of Colombia, and in the case of today's conflicts, there's no way you can have a solution with total impunity because all countries are are subject to the Rome Treaty, which is a treaty that was negotiated by the international community precisely to allow peaceful solutions of

armed conflicts. In that Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court was born, was created, and the transitional justice was in a way invented, and the negotiation in the case of Colombia and in any case, was go and negotiate as much justice as you can without sacrificing peace. And this

is the nutshell of any today. You cannot have total amnesty for war criminals or people who have committed terrorist acts that are considered crimes against humanity, But how to punish them, how to judge them, is an essential part of any conflict today. In the case of Colombia, it's the first time that the two parts sat down and negotiated a special tribunal to apply transitional justice, and this is being showed as an example for other conflicts from

No One. Lots of people say, whenever you approach a country in the throes of a civil war or a difficult conflict, I'm thinking of Libya, I'm thinking of several other particularly difficult places. People from those places will say, Oh, our country is so specific. Our conflict is to do with our history. You know, there aren't any lessons we can learn from the outside. Sounds like you don't agree

with that. No, because we're all human beings, we all have concerns, we all want to live in peace, and you get any conflict via a religious conflict, ethnic conflict. These conflicts can be solved when there's goodwill from both parts and a conviction that peace is better than the war. There are a lot of countries that have now have very deep divisions and deep polarization, which doesn't necessarily lead to civil war violence. The United States right now is

very bitterly divided and polarized. Do you have advice for Americans about how they can think about overcoming these deep civic divides? Well, this is a problem that there is president Almost everywhere in the world, there's deep polarization. That's when emotions take over and arguments are left to one side. We must try to recuperate the importance of the arguments

of dialogue and not simply react with your emotions. This is much easily said than done, but it is again a necessary condition to try to diminish the polarization that we're seeing in the US, in Colombia, in Europe, for example, what is happening in Europe due to the problem with migration.

When you analyze the problem migration in Europe, this is a very very small problem to create such political reaction, and you have to be able to explain to the public opinion that the problem is not as big as many people are trying to present it. The problem is minimal. I will give you a statistic. In Colombia, we have today many more Venezuelan refugees than the whole amount of refugees that have gone into Europe. We had been able to cope with that. How is it possible that in

Europe governments are falling because of that? It's simply an example to show you that many of the problems that have caused this polarization are not that big, and the big challenges to try to explain why this is so and try to reduce the polarization. Are there examples of ordinary Colombians or groups of Colombians who contributed to the peace process by their actions? Are there examples? You can give, oh many many examples. I will tell you one specific example.

Her name is Pastora Mida. Her son was tortured and then killed. Two weeks later, somebody went into her house. He was wounded, and she took care of him. And when he recovered, he saw a photograph of her with her son, and he said, I am sorry to tell you I was the one who killed him, and I was the one who tortured him. And she reacted in a most spectacular way, positive way, saying, thank you for telling me, because I will forgive you and this will liberate me from my hate. That story for me was

so powerful, liberate me from my hate. This is what the world needs to be liberated from hate. And this specific example I can mention a hundred in the war in Colombia, people who really are the heroes of this peace process. That's why when I received the Peace Prize and Nobel Laureate. I said this is not for me, It's for the victims. That was the former President of Columbia,

Juan Manuel Santos. To learn more about the Colombian peace process and truth and reconciliation, please check out our show notes. Solvable is produced by Joscelyn Frank, Research and booking by Lisa Dunn. Our managing producer is Katherine Gerardo and our executive producer is mil LaBelle. Solvable is a production of Pushkin Industries. You can find additional Pushkin podcasts on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Ann Applebaum.