What interests me most is the use of this instrument in and by our own government, usually under the more stately title of “conference,” and almost always for feinting, fogging things over and lending the appearance of frantic, pressured busyness to a state of utter paralysis. We have now, of course, come to Bosnia. As I write, it is still possible that some of the actions threatened after the last conference .on the subject may actually be taken. Who knows? There’s a first time for everything. But even if we do now begin to make good on our word-the unacted-upon American words that have come out of an endless series of these conferences over the past several years-the Bosnia-conference phenomenon will rate two paragraphs in history of its own.
The first will be for its skillful use by our government as a tactic. This has been a dazzling success, albeit the only success so far of our Bosnia policy. Every time something truly monstrous happens in that tragic, blood-soaked, brutalized place, our leaders immediately announce that this time they have gone too far, that the United States will not sit still for such an act of international defiance and outrage, that we are going to . . . call a conference. That’ll show ’era. A related tactical benefit generally has followed from the fact that the allied conferees have a terrible time agreeing and occasionally even in being civil with each other at these conferences, so that the action concerning their fights becomes a nice action substitute for the fighting in Bosnia as a matter of press coverage and public interest. By the time it ends in the usual diplomatic standoff, the other (real) combat will have been forgotten.
History’s second paragraph should be awarded on linguistic grounds. Did anyone ever suspect there were that many different locutions for holding a conference, locutions intended to create an aura of menace, urgency and resolve? My favorite among them is “huddle.” Your basic all-purpose huddle headline has gone something like this: BOSNIAN SERBS STRAFE CHURCH PICNIC; SCENE OF TERROR; 75 DEAD; ALLIES TO HUDDLE. Unlike in football, however, there is no suspense or tension in watching these guys in their closed little strategizing circle and wondering what the play will be. For when the huddle breaks only a couple of them even stay on the field; the others wander off to have a beer somewhere.
When conferences are used tactically as a reward, as they sometimes are, they are just as unavailing of anything we would call action. That is because the purpose is not to get any major business done, but to be seen acknowledging the existence and, by implication, the minimal decency of the other party. We are not going to isolate some head of state, our government recurrently decides, or cut ourselves off from all communication with the people of his country, just because he gassed to death all of the inhabitants of some province who were rumored to be supporters of his brother in a rather difficult family quarrel. National interest and clever geopolitics, it is explained, come down on the other side.
Most of the time the complaints about this sort of tactic are that we didn’t get enough in return, if we got anything at all. Throughout the cold war the question arose repeatedly in terms of when it was or wasn’t right to have a summit conference with the Soviets. The harping on how we insisted on “deeds not talk” as the down payment on such a conference was part of it. I will admit that sometimes these encounters in which ice is broken between adversaries or an international exile is allowed at the table have value- Khrushchev in America, Nixon in China, Sadat in Israel and most recently Rabin and Arafat at the White House. And the actual meeting and taking of one another’s measure can be helpful too (although as with John E Kennedy’s first Soviet summit, they can also make things worse). But these so-called conferences don’t usually qualify as conferences in terms of actually transacting business in the sessions themselves. Most of the agreement has already been reached in advance of the conference. The prospect of announcing it under the television light s is what the conference is really for.
This is where the conference as reward may slide over into the final tactical aim: the conference as public-relations blowout. But some conferences stand on their own simply as PR festivals, without any big agreement announcements. They are held only to trumpet the importance of a particular issue and all the participants’ heartfelt commitment to Doing Something About It. This is especially true of U.N, international conferences. Often their most important deliberations occur before the event, when it is decided, in a series of preconference skirmishes, how hideously flagrant a violator of the principles the conference is convening to celebrate can be allowed to sit at the table with a straight face.
Conferences are good for the international and national travel industries, for the lucky members of the inflated delegations that get to go if the thing is being held in a nice place and also, sometimes, because of the work accomplished. But guess which of these usually comes in last? I don’t suggest that they are all no good and should be abolished, only that you get a little more beady-eyed in your reactions the next time some international disaster occurs or some subject cries out for action and your government announces, as flit were actually saying something, “We are going to have a conference.”
