Senate Committee to Hear Public Talks Proposal

A new political idea, “Public Talks,” was introduced to Capitol Hill in a September 25 opinion editorial in Roll Call. http://www.ifpdialogue.com/RollCall.pdf This new form of international dialogue – “a diplomatic option of last resort” - is the focus of a formal proposal: http://www.ifpdialogue.com/Senate.pdf to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October the 9th.

An early step in the establishment of Public Talks calls for a set of rules and terms that will create a level playing field between two adversaries. Thus, this idea of process offers no advantage to the fundamental views and positions of either Democrats or Republicans.

This structure will set the stage for a dialogue where both sides of a given unresolved conflict will be motivated by the growing important of both American and world opinion.

One perspective is provided in this Sept 26 Huffington Post writeup, headlined:
A Truly Original Foreign Policy Idea: Public Talks
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/a-truly-original-foreign-_b_65889.html , posted by blogger Chris Weigant, who says, “The author of this extraordinary proposal is John Connolly, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Dialogue. The idea (in a nutshell) is: when all other diplomatic methods of resolving a disagreement have already failed, why not try something different? Have both sides publish their views of the history of the conflict to the world's audience, in publicly available media — and let the chips fall where they may. Each side would make its case to the world, for all to see. As charges and counter-charges are published in a continuing process (over a period of months), each side could rebut legitimate points made by the other in subsequent releases — in an attempt to sway world opinion to their relative perspectives.”

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