Understanding Differences, Acting on Commonalities | Global Connections Call Notes 9.4.2024

Introduction

John Marks is an entrepreneur of peace. From his work in the CIA to the founding of premier peacebuilding organization, John has searched for ways to make the world a better place and bring others along to accompany his bold ambitions. He is the founder of the renowned peacebuilding organization Search for Common Ground, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. When he stepped down as its president after thirty-two years, the organization had a staff of six hundred full-time employees and offices in thirty-five countries. He is now the founder and managing director of Confluence International and a visiting scholar in peacebuilding and social entrepreneurship at Leiden University. He is also a Skoll Awardee and an Ashoka Senior Fellow. He was coauthor of the controversial New York Times best-seller The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence and sole author of the award-winning The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Marks also founded Common Ground Productions and has produced TV series promoting nonviolent coexistence in twenty-five countries.

In September of 2024, John launched his latest book. From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship offers a master class in effective negotiation and conflict resolution. It builds on a core strategy of understanding differences and acting on commonalities. We’re grateful John joined us this month to share his wisdom and experience in a heartfelt conversation with Euphrates Founder, Janessa Gans Wilder. To view the 60 minute call recording, please click here. The following includes excerpts from our conversation.

Our Conversation

Janessa: I think it's safe to say that we are all gathered here, in a certain sense, because of you, because of your trailblazing in the peacebuilding field and your pioneering. I want to start again with your remarkable journey - how you have come from provocateur to peacebuilder. Can you share some of the high points of that transformational journey that led to the founding of Search.

John: I started in the [American] State Department, in the Foreign Service. I was an FSO, Foreign Service officer, and I went to Vietnam for my first assignment during the war years, and wound up resigning in protest after four and a half years. I became very much against the war and very much behind the sense that America needed to change in a major kind of way, and there needed to be major reforms and shifts. I then went to work for antiwar Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey. I was his principal staff person on the Case Church Amendment, which actually cut off funding to the Vietnam War.

At that point, I got a call to co-author a book with a guy named Victor Marchetti, who had been the Executive Director to the CIA's Deputy Director. He had serious writer's block, and wanted me to help him write the book. The US government or the CIA had gone to court to get a preliminary injunction against him in writing the book. And there was a big flaw in his plans, in that he hadn't written a word, and he asked me to be his co-author. This was before Watergate had really blossomed, and it was a very risky move in terms of bridge burning and what I wanted to do with my life, but I was very much convinced that the abuses of the government needed to be stopped. So I co-authored that book, which became the first book in US history ever to be censored before publication. We published it with blank spaces wherever the CIA said it needed to be censored, and that made it into a bestseller. In other words, there were pages that looked like Swiss cheese and other pages that were just blank.

I then embarked on a bit of a crusade to limit the abuses of the American intelligence community. And I did that for the next five or six years. I just got to the point where I realized that the work I was doing was defined by what I was against, and I wanted to be for things. I wanted to build a new system, rather than tear down the old system. And that little epiphany probably took me three or four years to develop, though I'm talking to you rather glibly about what happened to me. I was in that spirit with a painful divorce in that period too, which kind of shook up my being. It was in that spirit that I founded Search for Common Ground. I felt that there just needed to be a better way for the world to deal with conflict, and the vision of Search for Common Ground was to transform the way the world dealt with conflict - away from adversarial, win-lose approaches towards non adversarial, win-win solutions.

Janessa: Can you share the story, which highlights the stance that you personally used to take, versus the one you took? I’m referring to the time where you shouted down the CIA director in front of 1000 people, and then later you were at the table with him and the KGB. Do you mind sharing that?

John: One of the most successful peer projects we had in the early years of search was to form a US-Soviet Task Force to prevent terrorism. Our operational motto was to understand the differences and act on the commonalities. So in the effort to safeguard the world against nuclear warfare and to bring the United States and the Soviet Union together, we were looking as an organization for areas on which they could agree. Not having terrorism seemed pretty high on the list, and it wasn't a front burner issue at that point. At that point, it was more of a kind of a side issue of the Cold War. And so in my chutzpah, or whatever you want to call it, I put together with the Soviet journalist a joint task force to prevent terrorism, and we brought together terrorism specialists from the two sides.

At our second meeting, we had William Colby, who had been the head of the CIA, and Ray Klein, who had been the Deputy Director, and two very high level retired generals from the KGB. It was the first time the KGB had ever sent such high level people to the US for friendly conversation. We were able to get Colby and the KGB people to agree on a liaison channel between the two agencies to help prevent terrorism. And that was very successful. And I think what you were referring to is after that agreement was signed,( it was an official agreement, so it had no legal standing) I invited everybody to come to dinner. I was always a bit of a provocateur. I started the conversation by saying, well, let's say a little bit about ourselves, knowing full well that this is not what intelligence people want to do. They don't want to tell you anything about who they are. But I went first, and I said that I had resigned in protest from the State Department, and that I'd written a book about the CIA and the like. One of the KGB generals, with a kind of an impish smile, said, so you were a troublemaker. Colby said, I will agree that he was a troublemaker, but now we're working together, and that's what the important part is. For me, that was kind of a completion, because it completed my old life, being a muckraking journalist who was opposing everything to bringing together people who were very strange bedfellows and having them work together for the common good.

Janessa: And such a transition for you, from shouting down this gentleman and almost embarrassing him in front of a huge crowd of people to then, you know, working side by side with him in a non adversarial stance.

John: Well, it was, it was not easy for me, but I think it was much more difficult for him.

Janessa: That leads me to another question that I know folks in this community and elsewhere are grappling with as we confront the challenges of our time. We're sort of wondering where to stand on the spectrum. There are people that say that protest and taking that adversarial stance is the only way to move the needle forward. There are others that are talking about forging common ground, and using your voice in another way. I sometimes wonder if there is a hierarchy to that. What is most effective? Where are we needed, as social entrepreneurs, as social activists, as peace activists? Even right now in Israel and Palestine you're seeing the different approaches and methods. And where have you found that it's most effective for us to place ourselves? Is it personality driven, or is it being different, morphing in different ways according to the challenges or conflicts that we're facing? How can we be most effective?

John: I think there are people who need to be adversarial, and that is not a bad thing. In other words, by two sides or multiple sides being adversarial, conflict is created that people who are common grounders or problem solvers can deal with. I just don't think you can do both at the same time. I think, as an individual, you have to make the choice. And I chose, after, at least 10 years of operating in an adversarial way, to become a common grounder and to try to reconcile differences. Now the former Premier of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin said, you don't make peace with your friends. If you're going to be a peacemaker or peacebuilder, you're going to have to work with people you don't like. In every conflict, any rational person can see one side is usually more right than another. I know that, I don't ignore that, but as a peacemaker or a peacebuilder, I don't say that, and I don't come from there when I work. I'll start off metaphorically. You shouldn't try to make peace in your own divorce. In other words, when you're engaged in the conflict, when it's your conflict, you're probably not going to be a good peacemaker. There can be exceptions to that, but I think that probably adversarial behavior and non adversarial behavior don't mix too well, at least in the same people.

Janessa: I've always felt like, for example, the Israeli Palestinian conflict…I am an American. Who am I to tell them how they should make peace or forge ahead? They are the ones living this conflict, living this situation. They are the only ones who can make peace amongst themselves. But are you suggesting that sometimes it's helpful to have that third party?

John: I think, particularly in that conflict, which I've worked personally in more than any other conflict in the world, it's absolutely called for and needed. They are not able, or have not been able since 1948 to make peace themselves. So one needs to make yesable propositions to both sides to get them into processes that might make a difference. And those propositions need to be okay with both sides. They can't favor one or the other. But mediation, facilitation, I think, is called for. Obviously it's better if you speak Hebrew and Arabic, and you really can be immersed in it. But I have no problem at all engaging. In fact, I was out there six weeks ago trying to engage. And you know, I don't think that you can do it in every instance, but you can find areas where people can agree. And right now it's almost impossible.

Janessa: Except they can agree on their basic humanity?

John: They don't agree on their basic humanity, neither side lets the other one be human. And so if you could do projects which have them recognize the humanity of the other side. We worked with some filmmakers a few years ago about firefighting in Israel. There was a huge fire in the Carmel region, and Palestinian firefighters came across the green line with permission and helped put out the fire. We sponsored with another group a documentary showing what the firefighters were doing, and got it shown on Israeli television. We wanted to say, look Palestinians are human beings who can be very helpful in your lives and positive in a country where there are very, very negative stereotypes about Palestinians. And so that's the kind of thing which is a mediating action that you can do. It seems to me that foreigners are, let's say, more able to do it. It would be better if every Israeli would trying to do that, or every Palestinian, but they're not.

Janessa: I want to get into the power of media. First, I think what will be really helpful for this group of peacebuilders, is to understand, in broad categories, the work that Search does, what you founded it to do, and then what it evolved into. Are you doing mediation, media - sort of the broad brush categories, and then I'd love to also dive more into the power of media and storytelling.

John: Search had an operating mantra, which was, understand the differences and act on the commonalities. That's what we were trying to do and we had about 35 different delivery systems on how to do that. You could use media. You could use training. We did comic books. We had a drumming contest in Burundi. There are all sorts of ways you could do that, if you accept the basic idea [of] looking for areas of commonality and bringing them together across religious lines or ethnic lines or gender lines. I stepped down in 2014 and I really can't speak to what the organization's doing [now], because I'm not in the loop at this point. I know the basic vision is intact and I think the ways they operate are a bit different than in my day. I'm sorry about that, because I think we developed some effective ways of resolving conflict which may not have been followed up on.

Janessa: We will. We will follow up on them. Share your wisdom with us. We're ready.

John: I think if I were going to put something in your operational bonnet, I would recommend getting into TV production and video production.

Janessa: It's even in your bio, the founding of Common Ground productions. As we all were inundated with media now, not to mention AI, it's evolved so out of hand. The power of media and story can be used in both negative and positive ways. Decades ago, somehow you saw this coming and you became an early adopter. Tell us how that light bulb went off in you, and then how Search has been able to use it for such good purposes.

John: The last book I wrote before I made the transition into Search, was called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. It won a major award, and ABC, the TV network, decided they wanted to make a documentary out of the material in the book. I became a consultant. If I had been the producer, it would have been a bit different, but it was okay. About 8 million people saw it, and I noticed that was about 7,970,000 more than read it. I was very impressed with those numbers, and that stayed with me when I founded Search. In the early days of Search, we were doing trainings and workshops and when we were really on top of our game, we might have 40 people in a room. And I noticed there were about 8 billion people in the world that we weren't really making a difference on a global level. I wanted to get into media production.

So the first thing I did when Search had four employees was [make] business cards, which said I was the president of Common Ground Productions. Now, Common Ground Productions had absolutely no reality at that point, but printers who make cards don't ask for credentials or diplomas, all they want is $50 for the printing. Within about three years, we had a series on American Public Television called Search for Common Ground. And that was the start of what we were doing. After a while, I didn't want to just do talk shows, I wanted to do much more popular entertainment. We got into what I called soap opera for social change. We made reality series, and we found all sorts of ways to use popular culture. Now with social media, I probably would adopt a somewhat different strategy, but in much of the less developed world, people watch television. In Kenya, we had a website with a full time moderator. He had about 20,000 people involved in that. Everybody said, that's wonderful, 20,000 people, except we were doing a TV series that was reaching about 5 million people a week. I don't want to exaggerate the unimportance of social media, but I think you still can reach people through television and radio.

Janessa: What would you say was the most successful or the show with the most impact?John: We had a series called The Team [in 18 countries], which was about soccer/football as it’s the most popular sport in the world, by far. It was always about a fictional soccer team whose players reflected the diversity of the country. The core metaphor was, if they don't play together and cooperate, they'll lose. That's the metaphor of sports. Teams have to have teamwork. We did over 350 episodes of this series, and it was successful because we were hitting culture as it is, not the one we want. You know, I've written books. People don't read books. I mean, I hope you all read my book, but a lot of people, most people in the world, don't read them. They're from very small audiences, but you could reach with popular culture. Look at our own society, All in the Family, Archie Bunker, had a fundamental impact on changing attitudes towards bigotry in the United States. I've never seen any statistics on this, but I understand that attitudes towards gay marriage really changed substantially because of dramatic television episodes.

Janessa: What about the one on women's empowerment in peacebuilding. [You had] a couple shows about, Madam President, or about women leaders?

John: We did a series. It was Pan-Arab. It was filmed in Jordan, and it went out over the whole Arab world. It was called Madam President, and it was about the first woman president of an Arab country. We decided we better make it a fictional Arab country, because no Arab country was really up to it. We're a little bit ahead of the curve on that one. Madam President was not into revenge. She was not into saving face. She was not corrupt, and she probably did what, if you, Janessa, were president of a country, would try to do, as opposed to what the current leaders in the Middle East tend to do. I don't know how successful it was, but millions of people saw it, and I think that kind of television can have a profound impact and attitudes and behaviors.

Janessa: When we think of peacebuilding, we think of men around the table negotiating a treaty. Is that still the reality? Do there need to be more women at the table? How do we include more of the grassroots role?

John: Let's just be honest about it, which I try to be all the time anyway. Women are better peacemakers than men. They're much less likely to want revenge, to need to save face. Empowering women as peacemakers was always an important part of what we as an organization were trying to do. The example which was most effective that I can think of was in Burundi, where we literally worked with 1000s of women's groups in order to get the women to cross ethnic lines of Hutus and Tutsis, and that seemed to have a real impact on preventing genocide. You never know how many people didn't die because of your action, because it's like trying to prove a negative. But the fact is, we felt, and the many people who observed it, felt it was very effective. And I think that all these efforts which go on to try to get women into negotiating teams all are important because they're much better at making peace. It's men are not culturally nearly as attuned as women.

Janessa: I want to ask you an honest question. Did you sort of have to humble yourself when you met Susan and really partnered with this woman to lead this organization. And I know you've said how you compliment each other? I mean, not many men would sort of take the stance and be in this kind of public partnership with a woman. So I'm just wondering what that even looked like, personally for you.

John: I met Susan when I was in South Africa making a television show, a series which was called South Africa Searches for Common Ground. My co-producer introduced me to Susan. It was love at first sight. We were in love with each other within a day. And on day three of our new relationship, Susan informed me that we were going to work together, and that freaked me out, at least for 24 hours, but I assimilated. I'm a fast learner. She had been working as a peacemaker in South Africa. After the elections (she wouldn't leave beforehand) she came to Washington, and we got married. I wanted to make her co-president, but my board wouldn't go for that, so she became Executive Vice President of Search, reporting to me, which, of course, she didn't do. We complimented each other beautifully, and that was really important. I'm more into my head. She's more into her heart, and that was a very good mixture. We both had most of the same qualities somewhere, but she had some of them much stronger than I did, and I had some that were stronger than she did. And together, I think we were a very effective pair. Search had been going along before I met Susan, pretty much at a level. We had about 10-12 people, and we were doing okay, but after we started working together, the organization started to grow at 20% a year, which continued for the next 20 or so years. That wasn't a coincidence. Her involvement plus my involvement was a very effective combination we felt.

Janessa: We only have basically time for one more question before we open it up. I want to bring up, in 1994 this Iranian gentleman, Mahalodi, who you had brought into the fold as a regular participant in some of these meetings on the Middle East. He was so struck by the process which was so new for him. He said, for the first time, I experienced a kind of atmosphere, a kind of spirit in this gathering, which permits people to open themselves up without reservation and speak out of their hearts. And I can only just imagine how shocking this was and or what a gift for him and all the other participants to be in that kind of space, which was unheard of. And so I wanted to ask how you created that kind of spirit in a gathering, and also how you overcame language barriers, for example, in meetings with the Soviets or the Iranians. That can be such an immediate barrier to opening up, but somehow you were able to do that.

John: It's complicated, but there were some basic rules. First, you had to listen very carefully to what all the sides wanted, and you had to pay attention to who they were. And then, particularly in the early days, we always had good facilitation. I was not the facilitator. I'm not a very good facilitator. Susan's a brilliant facilitator, and she facilitated the meetings between the Iranians and the Americans. We claimed she was a third party South African, which she was, but they didn't really accept that. But they trusted her and us, and we would adapt to the situation. We would not try to do anything out of a playbook or advanced planning. We would think about things in advance, but where you went with it would be determined like in the afternoon, in any session would be thought through at lunch. And you needed to be very adaptive in doing this work well. And then you needed to find the places that people could agree. Where do you think you agree is not going to get you anywhere. You needed to come in with some ideas and say, what about this? What about that? And you would get an answer, and they'd say, it'd be okay, but maybe not for that, for something else, and you would incorporate that into the project. I had been an investigative reporter before I founded Search, and that training I had, which was mostly self taught, of researching what I was doing, is very important. We were looking and thinking about areas where they could go in a positive direction.

Janessa: I know active listening was a big part. And we talk a lot about that at Euphrates, the levels of listening, and really the deep listening, and that must have been new to people.

John: My job at these sessions with the Iranians, with the Middle Easterners, was to sit in the corner and listen for good ideas. And every once in a while, I'd hear something where it would trigger something in me, and I try it out in the corridor, and I'd say, What would you think of this? And somebody would say, it is a bad idea or a good idea. And depending on what I was hearing, we might bring it into the meeting. In a three day meeting, I might have talked once or twice at the very end or suggested something, but I tended to work the corridors much more than I would work the meetings. I wouldn't want to get in the way of the facilitation.

Janessa: That's one of the chapters in your book. I can't remember what you titled it. It's basically in using your intuition.

John: Fingerspitzengefühl! It’s a German word for having an intuitive touch at the end of your fingers. It's important, and it's not something you can really teach to people. They just need to have it. Do I go this way? Do I go that way? Do I do this project or that project which is going to be successful, which isn't? And I think your instincts are important. However, I don't recommend to anyone that they go solely on instinct. I think there needs to be a mix of intellectual cognitive process with good instincts, and mixing the two together, and having individuals who can do both is very important.

Community Discovery Time

Community member: I was actually wondering, for someone looking to take peacebuilding work to a higher level, do you have words of wisdom for how to get started?

John: I am a great believer in apprenticeship. It's fine to do a Peace Studies program or get a master's in conflict resolution. And that stuff is useful, but it's not as useful, in my mind, as essentially becoming an apprentice to some or an intern or working with someone who's doing the job or an organization that's doing it's an organization you respect. I think that's the best way to learn. It's not something you're going to get the first 10 minutes. I want to tell you. And I don't think these courses prepare people for really being in the field as well. They could do better, but the fact is, the way you learn what's going on in the field is to be in the field.

There are master's programs. You can now get a PhD in conflict resolution, in peace studies. But I think that those are more, particularly the PhD, for credentials or for teaching than it is for actually being able to do it. In fact, it may not even help. But look, I'm a practitioner. I'm not a theoretician, and I have a certain prejudice against people who think they've learned in school the work that I did for 35 years.

Community member: Thank you everybody, for bringing all of us together once again. And John, I just can't agree with you more the fact that you were referring to the facilitation, which is more important, and also the listening skills, because by doing that, I feel with facilitation, we make use of an experiential process. The theory is one thing, but to take the material that comes from the group itself, that is a better way for me also, and for others that I've worked with before, how we find common solutions much easier. And I just want to thank you for that.

John: I agree with you 100%. We stressed in our first Middle East meetings, active listening, and we had a great facilitator in those meetings. And one of the Egyptian participants, who was a very well known human rights activist, went home to Cairo, and he was explaining to his wife and two sons about what had happened. He told them about the concept of active listening and how much he liked it. And one of his sons turned to him and said, Dad, does that mean you have to listen to us? I'm not sure what the answer his answer was.

Community member: Thank you very much, John. I'm interested to know your assessment of and advice for organizations like Rotary International that have invested enormous amounts of money in global peace building and their peace centers and so forth. Any thoughts that you have about you know how they could significantly move the needle in their work.

John: I would run into your people around the world. A lot of your graduates came to work for us at Search. I would say raise more money and expand and keep doing it. I think the kind of work of having your fellows go around the world is great. The world needs more of it. And, you know, you can always find different ways of bringing people together or empowering them, but you've got a pretty good successful organization. Keep it up. Thank you.

Community member: Thank you so much for this opportunity. Very, very glad to meet you. I have heard so much about Search for Common Ground. When I was working as a young person adopting the United Nations Security Council resolution 2250, I worked with the SFG officers in DC. So I'm very pleased to be here. One question I'm so much interested to ask is how much influence do you still have at Search at this moment? And within your peacebuilding, practice and methodologies, has there been a moment where you apply the principles of decolonization? The success and development of Search for Common Ground is global. So I just want to hear your views on decolonization.

John: I'm not in the loop at Search at this point. They treat me very nicely. They're going to have a book party for me in Washington. But I'm just not part of the decision making or operational part of Search at this point. Founders, when they leave organizations, tend to be yesterday's people, and that's just what happens. It won't happen to Janessa, of course, but it happens to most of us, and it's just a truism. And in the decolonization area, I prefer to deal with specific conflicts. If there were a conflict between a particular government in Africa and the British government, that would be more something than the more abstract idea of decolonization. I'm for decolonization as an individual, and I think it has to happen. And I think the West has really gone too far in the way it's dealt with the less developed world. But I prefer to deal with conflicts within the context of the conflict, the specific conflict.

Community member: I'm trying to know whether John may have any experience to share with us with regards how someone can make peacebuilding more sustainable at grassroots level.

John: I can't really generalize. They need to be sustained. They need to move forward. In the Israeli, Palestinian context, there's almost no grassroots peacebuilding going on. It's been most of the people who were doing that kind of work gave up in despair as things got worse and not better, and that's a huge problem. I think in the Israeli Palestinian context, the main problem is the almost complete dehumanization of Israelis towards Palestinians and Palestinians towards Israelis. These are not false perceptions, because the other side often has done things. Now I have my own views on what a solution should look like, but it's the same. Everybody knows what the only solution is possible, but it's not going to happen in the near run, or the middle run, or probably the long run, because of that dehumanization. So I think working on dehumanization is probably the best thing that peace activists can do.

Janessa: John, as we are past our time, but I do want to give you a chance for the final word. I'm going to ask a few questions in that final word. What's big for us at Euphrates is the idea of personal peace practices, and we really stress that in our peace building programs. Peace starts with us, and then we bring that into our interpersonal relationships, then we bring that into our communities, and then the global and so we see that throughline between personal peace and global peace. This is a very hard road to be on - the road of peacebuilding. I know so many times I've wanted to give up and surrender. Our friends in Israel, Palestine right now, how do they keep going, even as things don't seem to get better, but worse and worse? So I would love to ask you as sort of a final question, how did you persevere through all of the challenges, not just in running an organization, but in the myriad conflicts that you witnessed and that you were a part of? What personal peace practice did you have or cultivate that got you through? And then also, if there is a final word of encouragement or something that you wanted to share with this community that is so specifically peacebuilders.

John: There's a lot to answer with this. That's not a simple question. I think that for about almost the first 10 years of Search, we didn't get very much done. We did enough to stay alive, and that was probably our largest accomplishment. And I don't know how long you've been in operation, but you're a young organization, and it always gets better. It should get better. Janessa, usually you're the only person who will work for nothing or work without getting paid when there isn't enough money in the bank account to pay you. And let me say, I went through that stage and then the last 20 or so years, I got my full salary, which I I was very grateful for.

I'm at, at heart, an optimist. You don't found an organization called Search for Common Ground, if you're not an optimist. And I believe that the trajectory of human behavior is going up. It's positive, but it doesn't go up on a straight line bias. It goes up as a roller coaster, ups and downs. I don't like the downs particularly, and I like to be successful, but I found that there was enough success that I didn't get keeled over by our failures. You know, in baseball, if you hit 333, you're a superstar. In NGO world, if you're successful a third of the time, you're probably doing pretty well too, but you've got to be able to deal with the two thirds of the time when you're not successful, or the two thirds of your projects that don't work that well. Probably another quality that people in our field need to have is being able to deal with failure, because you're going to find it. Things are not going to work. I mean, I've been working in the Middle East for 25 years, and it's getting worse. I wish that weren't so, and I'm not trying to be smart about it, but I just wish it weren't so. I used to meditate. When I first went to the Soviet Union in Moscow, I meditated every day, and that was helpful to me, but I didn't really develop much of a practice. Susan says, I’m a spiritual being. I'm not sure what that spirit is. I don't have a religious faith or whatever, but I seem to be able to do the work in a way that reflects my inner spirit, and that, I think is my key.

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