International Negotiation: The Peru-Ecuador Case
By Luigi R. Einaudi - April 4th, 2025
The Washington Psychiatric Society 2025 Spring Symposium.
Thank you. I am delighted to be here with you.
Back
when I was in a position to advise young Americans considering a
diplomatic career, I would tell them that they would have to be very
tough psychologically, because if they became diplomats they would be
ground to dust between the nationalism of the United States and the
nationalisms of the foreigners with whom they would be dealing. The
foreigners would see them as agents of U.S. power, and Americans would
see them as defenders of foreigners.
Giandomenico Picco felt
pressures like these to an extreme as he ventured far beyond the normal
confines of diplomacy to understand the personal narratives of those
involved in conflicts. Gabrielle Rifkind has stressed the importance of
empathy for all sides and of the contributions of third parties.
My
experience is that their insights are essential. Conflicts among
nations are hard to understand, let alone resolve. A would-be peacemaker
has to have the patience to listen a lot. Patience to take part in
interminable negotiating sessions and to hear stubborn, unyielding
wrangling by the parties. Patience to deal with his or her own
government. Patience to learn the history of the conflict. Patience to
listen to the complaints and fears of all sides. Patience to identify
all the many interests involved. Patience to assess them. And perhaps
above all, patience and imagination to help redefine them if necessary.
And all the while, patience to mobilize the necessary domestic and
international support.
My remarks today draw on a consequence of
the nineteenth-century breakup of the Spanish empire in the New World.
The ownership of enormous tracts of the Amazon was left ambiguous. Most
disputes were settled, but one, between Peru and Ecuador, was not. More
than a century later, it led to a 1941 war that proved disastrous for
Ecuador. A treaty known as the Rio Protocol ended that war. Brazil,
Argentina, Chile and the United States signed on as guarantors. Within a
few years, Ecuador challenged the Protocol, claiming its boundary
provisions mistakenly deprived Ecuador of access to the Amazon. In 1995,
Ecuador moved troops into an area it contested and fighting broke out
again. Each guarantor named a special envoy to try to end the conflict. I
was named the envoy of the United States.
From the start, our
efforts took place in an aura of impossibility. A ceasefire might be
possible, but the dispute itself could not be resolved. The two
republics were born in its shadow, and so it would always be there. Our
first challenge was to separate the special forces soldiers of the two
sides who had become inextricably entwined in dense mountain jungles. We
were told we would never be able to separate them without fresh
casualties, but thanks to the skill of our military observers and the
discipline of the combatants themselves, over three months five thousand
fighters were separated without a single new death.
Next it was
said that we would never reach agreement on procedures because the
debate over procedures was an excuse to avoid negotiating the real
issues. When we reached agreement on procedures and began substantive
negotiations, it was said we would never be able to decide anything
because it would be impossible to reconcile the demands of international
law—by which we were bound—with political viability in the two
countries, without which no solution could work.
Then it was said
that, in any case, these countries were too violent and unstable:
nothing would ever work. And, in fact, we ran into serious delays when
the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru was taken hostage by terrorists
and when the President of Ecuador was removed by his Congress.
Finally,
it was said that we could play all the diplomatic games we wanted, but
that the two militaries needed hostilities to justify buying arms and
that they would never accept a settlement. The conflict might be
managed, skeptics said, but it would never be resolved.
In this atmosphere several “rules of the road” emerged almost as a matter of survival as we went along.
First
of all, Maintain Unity, among ourselves, within our own governments and
as far as possible with others affected by the conflict. Whatever
course of action was decided had to be the product of the four special
envoys deciding together, on the basis of everybody’s inputs. Hammering
out decisions collegially was hard. No one came out of a meeting with
the same position with which they had begun, but it also meant that each
of us was committed to the outcome. And unity did not just mean we four
diplomats stuck together. It meant making sure that we only made
commitments our governments could support.
Second, ensure
military support for diplomacy and diplomatic support for the military.
Six militaries were involved, the two who were fighting each other, and
the four guarantors whose observers separated the fighters and then
enforced a demilitarized zone. Military opposition might prevent a
solution, but their own limitations and sense of duty might lead them to
accept a negotiated peace, even to claim it as a victory for their side
– if their views were taken into account..
Third, always
remember that it is the parties in conflict that will have to live with
the result. If they do not, whatever is negotiated will not last. That
meant Peru and Ecuador had to lead or be put in the lead. Even when
there was a total impasse, we never let a negotiating session end
without the parties publicly agreeing to a date for a new session. No
matter how much we had to do ourselves, we never forgot that it was the
parties themselves who would in the end determine whether a settlement
would last.
A critical fourth rule was Use the law. We lived by
the Rio Protocol, the ensuing declarations, and the Terms of Reference
we negotiated for the military observers. These were the foundations for
common action, predictability, and legitimacy. The military have a
practical operational term: interoperability – ensuring that cooperating
forces have the rules and equipment to work together. Diplomatic
interoperability is shaped by the law, treaties and multilateral bodies.
We sought support from the UN, the OAS and subregional organizations.
And then we created a special commission of geographers and jurists
chaired by the Chief Justice of the Brazilian Supreme Court to examine
specific territorial claims.
Our fifth operating rule was Keep
sights high. Optimism -- even illusion – was essential to avoid being
bogged down by unyielding difficulties, delays, interruptions,
exhaustion or simple inertia. We worked to shift focus from points of
contention where one party would “lose” to areas that had a “win-win”
potential. We looked for ways to put the immediate dispute into a
broader context that provided benefits for both countries. Most of
Ecuador’s territorial claims proved invalid, but what began as a
straight-forward territorial dispute revealed several other previously
neglected aspects of relations between the two neighbors that were open
to improvement, and the negotiating process itself provided dignity.
These
five points: maintain unity, integrate military and diplomatic efforts,
remember the parties are key, use the law, and keep sights high, are of
course abstractions. The realities were often even more complicated.
Here is a key example. The commission chaired by Brazil’s Chief Justice
ruled that the major jungle outpost captured by Ecuador was inside
Peruvian territory. But the Ecuadorians at that outpost, known as
Tiwintza, had not “run like rabbits” as their predecessors had been
accused of doing in previous armed outbreaks. They had stood and fought
and died there. And there they had had buried some of their dead.
Tiwintza was a real deal killer. The dead were few, but the screams of
blood are even louder and thicker than the waters of the Amazon for
which those soldiers had fought and died.
After three years, the
negotiations had advanced so far that a win-win solution was in sight.
Yet the deal killer was still there. And the potential settlement, so
far advanced, now suddenly coexisted with moves to rearm and a threat of
renewed fighting. As the two parties and the guarantors prepared to
meet again in Buenos Aires, my Argentine counterpart said he feared the
week could lead as readily to war as to peace. He did not want war
happening on his turf.
It was in Buenos Aires that necessity
begat invention. The total historically disputed area had been enormous,
some 120,000 square miles, smaller than France but larger than Italy. I
was struck that Tiwintza, the epicenter of fighting, where Ecuador had
buried its dead, was tiny. I pulled a matchbox from my pocket and put it
on the table to symbolize how small the area was, and proposed that we
find a special status for one square km that would include Ecuador’s
graves.
The negotiations that week ended without agreement. The
elements of a potential settlement were there. But some still felt
permanent stalemate was preferable to settlement. The Chilean guarantor
captured the negative psychology of the moment, commenting privately:
“Ecuador does not have the strength (fuerza) to lose, and Peru does not
have the grandeur (grandeza) to win.”
This is the point at which
the six proved they were stronger together than any one of them alone.
First, the presidents of Peru and Ecuador formally wrote to the four
guarantor presidents that they had agreed on many things, trade,
navigation, and frontier integration, but that they had been “unable to
find a mutually acceptable formula to complete the common land
frontier.”
Then the guarantor presidents responded that they
would decide the formula for the land frontier if the congresses of Peru
and Ecuador would each agree to accept a guarantor verdict, in advance
and sight unseen. In October 1998, both congresses voted to do so. The
guarantor presidents then declared that, under the Rio Protocol, Peru
was sovereign over the Amazon watershed that Ecuador had claimed. At the
same time, Peru must “grant as private property to the government of
Ecuador an area of one square kilometer” at Tiwintza. “This transfer,”
they declared, “will not affect sovereignty.” As owner, Ecuador would
enjoy all rights conferred under the laws of Peru for private property,
except for the right to sell the property; Peru was sovereign but could
not expropriate it.
The Pope and the King of Spain, whom we had
kept informed throughout because they had in a sense been "present at
the creation," blessed the finding. The presidents of Peru and Ecuador
accepted formally, and simultaneously signed agreements covering
frontier integration, trade, navigation, security, respect for the
fallen, development, commercial access to the Amazon, the rights of
indigenous peoples and a binational ecological zone. That spring, the
six armed forces put in the markers closing the agreed frontier.
Peru
and Ecuador could not have made peace without outside support. The
parties and the guarantors had listened to each other and, in listening,
learned how to maximize interests they shared. Neither side gained all
it wanted, but the settlement respected the basic interests of both
countries and of the larger hemispheric community. As we meet today, the
peace has held for more than 26 years.
I close by noting that
this outcome successfully overcame what I like to call the “Riddle of
Sovereignty.” Sovereignty is the basis of the modern state system.
Sovereignty is psychologically powerful because it expresses a nation’s
ability to make its own decisions. But science and globalization make
absolute sovereignty impossible. Today’s world requires that we
cooperate with others if we want to protect ourselves and keep the
problems of others from spilling over onto us. The best defense of
sovereignty today is cooperation in accordance with national and
international law.
I am particularly glad to have been able to
make these points before this audience. As psychiatrists, you understand
the art and power of active listening to articulate interests, clarify
situations, and promote understanding. And the patria of Giandomenico
Picco was Italy, whose experience over a thousand years with its
extraordinary city states proved that peace and prosperity depend on the
ability to unite for the greater good.
Thank you very much.