Positive Reinforcement in Diplomacy: How?

Murray Sidman

Positive reinforcement, although it does not generate the enmity and counter-aggression that comes in the wake of coercion, is nevertheless a contingency: it does not mean giving everything away for nothing. To be effective, positive reinforcers must be contingent on conduct and on the circumstances in which the conduct takes place. Although not coercive unless misuse transforms it into negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement is still behavioral control.

Because the stakes are so high, preliminary experimentation is desirable, although diplomacy that is based on empirical data has hardly been a tradition anywhere. Might it make sense for the state department to establish a research arm that included behavior analysts and experts in scientific methodology? These “foreign-service scientists” could initiate experimental studies, some perhaps asking whether our accumulating knowledge about behavior might be applied in the service of international peace.

Instead of attempting to destroy an unfriendly government by supporting internal violence and terrorism – and in the process, turning old friends into enemies – might we shape cooperation and friendship? Shaping is a tried and true behavioral procedure. It involves finding some conduct that we consider desirable and making that conduct more likely by providing positive reinforcers. The first reinforceable conduct may be relatively unimportant but it will produce new forms of conduct, closer to what we eventually want. By providing reinforcers – sometimes, changes in our own behavior – that satisfy the needs of the other nation, the process becomes reciprocal; both nations gradually change the nature of their interactions with each other.

In international relationships, that means getting together to find areas of agreement. Disagreements are easy to identify but we often overlook an unfriendly nation's needs that we could satisfy without endangering ourselves, and we fail to consider the likelihood that the other nation would be willing to go along with at least some small requirements of our own. A certain amount of mutual back scratching is always possible.

For example, providing medical supplies in return for minimal commercial airport privileges would bring citizens and government officials of each country into constructive contact, would endow former enemies with the characteristics of positive reinforcers, and would establish bases of trust. Having made small progress, we might then see what other areas of cooperation could be found. Perhaps we could ask for the release of some political prisoners and on our part, provide educational opportunities for civilian and military personnel.

In return for friendship and cooperation, we could do more than just remove coercive pressures. We could send farm machinery, help to erect factories and train people to own and operate them, provide medical supplies and physicians to initiate public health programs, and establish schools that would help guarantee the country's self-reliance.

Positive reinforcement for cooperation might prove just as effective internationally as in the individual family, bringing with it a lessening of the tensions that coercive control only worsens. Existing data suggest that the attempt would be worthwhile. The disastrous effects of the current control techniques in international diplomacy make the attempt necessary.

International terrorist activities are just one side effect of coercive pressures that have been in place for a long time. And, of course, terrorism itself is a coercive technique, so it, too, generates countermeasures. Once set into motion, repeating cycles of coercion and counter-coercion are hard to interrupt. Each side fears that any relaxation of its coercive practices will leave it at the mercy of a merciless enemy.

Positive reinforcement, used ineptly, has helped foster terrorism. The payment of ransom, whether money, prisoner exchanges, transportation, armaments, or any other positive return, has ensured that the taking and killing of hostages will continue. Responding to anguished pleas from the families of hostages by paying ransom for the release of one group has guaranteed that others will later be taken. This is not a matter of personal opinion; it is the way positive reinforcement works. As long as we pay terrorists for what they do, they will be happy to keep on obliging us with more of the same.

Another source of strong positive reinforcement that helps perpetuate terrorism is the intense television, radio, newspaper, and magazine coverage of every terrorist act. Terrorists have discovered that throwing a small stone can make a worldwide splash, with ripples extending not only into every council of state but into every household. The relatively small effort involved in taking a few hostages can bring an insignificant group up from obscurity. Representatives of the most powerful governments and the most influential churches allow themselves to be led blindfolded to rude negotiating tables where they discuss payment with hostile and contemptuous captors. The news media place the negotiators in the world's center stage.

Imagine the feeling of power and grandeur in the breasts of terrorists as they see themselves and hear their achievements discussed on channel after channel and page after page of the news media. What must it mean to people whom the world has treated with contemptuous disregard to discover that they have been able virtually to wipe out the international tourist industry just by detonating a couple of bombs in airports? Are there simpler ways to make your existence felt than by kidnaping and killing a few defenseless individuals, or planting a time bomb, or machine-gunning a prominent politician or industrialist? Have the deeds of any hero ever gained more recognition?

It has never been possible for the news media to report everything; editors have always had to choose what to publish. But the media have never developed criteria for deciding what to report and what to leave unsaid. Taking account of the behavioral consequences of their practices would help provide rational and objective bases for such decisions.

As far as government policy on terrorism is concerned, the first thing to be done there, too, is to stop the reinforcement. End all negotiations, even “quiet diplomacy.” Stop enhancing the prestige and power of governments that make the support of international terrorism a matter of national policy. To use a technical term that is nevertheless apt, terroristic activity and its support must be extinguished, not reinforced.

Terrorism has yielded huge returns – many large reinforcers – and so we can expect it to continue for a long time even if it were never to succeed again. Also, the beginning of extinction will bring a temporary escalation of terroristic activity. We may be left with no alternative but to reply to the escalation with violence of our own.

No one should suffer the illusion, however, that anything permanently constructive can be accomplished that way. Coercion has brought a large segment of the world to a state of economic deprivation, social humiliation, and political repression. The rest of the world will have to reverse its reliance on coercive diplomacy if it is ever to eliminate the threat of desperate counter-coercion.

Adapted from: Sidman, M. (1989). Coercion and Its Fallout. Boston: Authors Cooperative

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