Strategic Decision Making Program

by Carole Fotino

Carole Fotino is director of the Institute for Decision Making & The Peace Institute of the Rockies. She met with the US State Department in Washington DC in April, and as a result they are planning to include the Secretary's Policy Planning in the organization's forward movement in a way that is yet to be determined. Secretary's Policy Planning is the group working with US Secretary of State The Honorable Condoleezza Rice to create the foreign policy decisions of her office.

The Strategic Decision Making Program - a.k.a. "Costing Latent Conflict" - is a simple idea really. Events that appear unrelated through time or space (partitioning and future genocides are an example) are actually organically connected, that connection we label as Latent Conflict and the costs of the second event need to be included in the decision making process (through the cost/benefit analysis) prior to the first event. It's not unlike the beginning of the environmental movement in which the costs of later environmental status need to be included in the processes that created it. Though it is a simple idea, two simple and connected ideas really, it is often not perceived as so by those with whom I speak! To me it seems almost commonsensical and like something that should have occurred to us many decades ago but, is really rather cutting edge in the world instead.

By the way, Organizationally, I represent the Inst. for Strategic Decision Making when I'm in DC and with corporations (the two target audiences for this program) because that's more akin to the lingo they understand. It is however a Doing-Business-As name for the Peace Institute and it and the program that goes with it are only one of 8 programs with innovative approaches to the establishment of peace. What we say is that the Peace Institute develops and strengthens the social institutions that will allow for the non-violent resolution of conflicts internal to and between nations. Terrorism, IIGPs (Institutionalized, Inclusive, Grievance Pathways at all levels,) and S.A.W. (Soldiers Against War) are three of the other programs we have as well. Descriptions of the other related programs will be described in separate postings to this blog; they may help to clarify the situation further.

The ideas (Costing Latent Conflict) have been nominated for a Breakthrough award and, I'm told, a possible fellowship.

(Anyone interested in assisting with this effort should contact the web administrator who will inform Carole so that she may contact them.)