Peacebuilding, Peacemaking and Multi-Track Diplomacy—John McDonald

The Government Mechanic

You may wonder how a podcast and YouTube channel called The Government Mechanic arrive at Episodes 11 and 12 to talk about the activities of peacebuilding, the psychology of peacemaking, and international diplomacy among countries and peoples in conflict. The answer is that fixing broken Departments and Agencies means leaders in these government departments and agencies get out of their offices and out of their comfort zones and go out into the communities and hold Listening tours and townhall meetings and work with community-based people to come up with shared solutions to any number of problems. Once those conversations start to happen, then the activities of fixing government morph into community peace building. The Episode starts with some definitions and Dr. Kahn introduces 3 video clips from an interview with Ambassador John McDonald from 2010!

Definitions: Peacebuilding is active - it’s a ceasefire, or a gang truce, or a summit on violence. Peacemaking is internal, it’s psychological, it’s a change of heart, seeing something from another’s view. Diplomacy is another level; diplomacy is international and between cultures and countries. The US Department of State now accepts as true that diplomacy occurs along many different tracks not just government to government. Diplomacy can happen sports team to sports team or business leaders to government leaders.

Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic.