Confidence-building measures (CBMs) or confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) are actions taken to reduce fear of attack by both (or more) parties in a situation of conflict. The term is most often used in the context of armed conflict, but is similar in logic to that of

trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another * Trust (bus ...

and

interpersonal communication Interpersonal communication is an exchange of information between two or more people. It is also an area of research that seeks to understand how humans use verbal and nonverbal cues to accomplish a number of personal and relational goals. Inter ...

used to reduce conflictual situations among human individuals.

History

Embassies and people to people contacts

Confidence-building measures between

sovereign states A sovereign state or sovereign country, is a political entity represented by one central government that has supreme legitimate authority over territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined terri ...

for many centuries included the existence of and increased activities by

embassies A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...

, which are state institutions geographically located inside the territory of other states, staffed by people expected to have extremely good

interpersonal skills A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called social ...

who can explain and resolve misunderstandings due to differences in language and culture which are incorrectly perceived as threatening, or encourage local knowledge of a foreign culture by funding artistic and cultural activities. A much more

grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...

form of confidence building occurs directly between ordinary people of different states. Short visits by individual children or groups of children to another state, and longer visits (6–12 months) by secondary and tertiary students to another state, have widely been used in the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

as one of the methods of decreasing the tensions which had earlier led to many centuries of inter-European wars, culminating in the first and second

world wars A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World WarI (1914 ...

Cold War

Confidence-building measures (CBMs) emerged from attempts by the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

superpowers and their military alliances (the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

and the

Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...

) to avoid conventional or nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. The term appears to have been first used in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 914 (x) in 1955, prompted by the U.S. "Open Skies" proposal. However, CBMs also exist at other levels of conflict situations, and in different regions of the world although they might not have been called CBMs. Open Skies reference pp.19-20. This monograph contains a detailed list of pre-Cold War confidence building examples and a detailed discussion of the CBM literature up to 1984.

Information exchange and verification

In international relations, the way that confidence-building measures are intended to reduce fear and suspicion (the positive feedbacks) is to make the different states' (or opposition groups') behaviour more predictable. This typically involves exchanging information and making it possible to verify this information, especially information regarding armed forces and military equipment.

Mathematical model

Mathematically, confidence-building measures are assumed to be useful as a peace mechanism based on the

positive feedback Positive feedback (exacerbating feedback, self-reinforcing feedback) is a process that occurs in a feedback loop which exacerbates the effects of a small disturbance. That is, the effects of a perturbation on a system include an increase in the ...

model of conflict, where fear (and/or suspicion) of military attack or

human right Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

s violations is the positive feedback factor, is a valid model of the conflict. The actions which constitute confidence-building measures provide a

negative feedback Negative feedback (or balancing feedback) occurs when some function (Mathematics), function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is feedback, fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by ...

to the conflict, which weakens, or possibly cancels or reverses the tension which would otherwise grow

exponentially Exponential may refer to any of several mathematical topics related to exponentiation, including: *Exponential function, also: **Matrix exponential, the matrix analogue to the above * Exponential decay, decrease at a rate proportional to value *Exp ...

and eventually continue or turn into a

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

. Here, "positive" and "negative" refer to the mathematical nature of the feedback; positive feedback leads to worsening intensity in a conflict, while negative feedback leads to de-escalation of the conflict, a "peace spiral" or Gradual Reduction in Tension (GRIT).

Validity of the model in the Internet era

If the

feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...

model assumed by the confidence-building measure mechanism is correct, then the rapidly developing improvement in communication between ordinary people by the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

should provide extremely robust, fast methods of information exchange and verification, as well as improved people-to-people contacts and general building of

networks, reducing the intensity and frequency of

s. Evidence, however, suggests that the Internet is as likely to inflame opinion and increase conflict (or at least tensions) as individuals are exposed to significantly different points of view.

Typology of confidence-building measures

Existing and proposed confidence-building measures in the context of

arms control Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Arms control is typically exercised through the u ...

, also called ''confidence and security-building measures'' (CSBMs), can be categorized by three main types. Confidence building can also be viewed as an overall process, rather than a collection of individual measures. In a monograph distributed to the

Conference on Disarmament The Conference on Disarmament (CD) is a multilateral disarmament forum established by the international community to negotiate arms control and disarmament agreements based at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The Conference meets annually i ...

in 1997, Macintosh divides CSBMs into informational type (A), verification type (B) and constraint (C) measures.

Type A: Information, interaction, and communication measures

Informational and similar type measures include: # ''Information'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the provision (exchange) of information about military forces, facilities, structures, and activities. Examples include: publication of defence information; weapon system and force structure information exchange; consultative commissions; publication of defence budget figures; and publication of weapon system development information. # ''Experience'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the opportunity to interact with officials or experts from other countries. Examples include: military personnel exchanges; security expert exchanges; transnational secondments; joint military training and joint military exercises; and seminars discussing doctrine, strategy, and technology issues. # ''Communication'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the creation and/or use of shared means of communication. Examples include: " hot lines" for the exchange of crisis-related information; joint crisis control centres; and "cool lines" for the regularized distribution of required and/or requested information. # ''Notification'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the advance, accurate notification of specified military activities. Examples include: advance notification of exercises, force movements, and mobilizations - including associated information about forces involved.

Type B: Verification and observation facilitation measures

Verification and similar measures, such as those of the

Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe The original Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) was negotiated and concluded during the last years of the Cold War and established comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment in Europe (from the Atlan ...

, include: # ''Observation-of-movement conduct'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the opportunity to observe specified military activities. Examples include: mandatory and optional invitations to observe specified activities (with information about the activity) and rules of conduct for observers and hosts. # ''General observation'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the opportunity to engage in non-focused "looks" at relatively small and generally-specified sections of territory within which activities of interest and/or concern may be occurring or may have recently occurred. Examples include: Open Skies agreements. # ''Inspection'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the opportunity to inspect constrained or limited military forces, facilities, structures, and activities. Examples include: special observers for sensitive movements and activities; on-site inspections of various forms; and the use of special tagging and tracking devices. # ''Monitoring'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging the opportunity to monitor constrained or limited military forces, facilities, structures, and activities, principally through the use of monitoring devices. Examples include: perimeter monitors; motion sensors for no-go areas; sensors for use in restricted access areas; and activity sensors. # ''Facilitation of verification'' measures: measures requiring or encouraging participants to facilitate and/or not interfere with agreed verification efforts. Examples include: agreement to not interfere with inspection and/or monitoring efforts and agreements specifying how verification efforts are to be assisted or facilitated.

Type C: Constraint measures

Constraint type measures include: # ''Activity'' constraint measures: measures requiring or encouraging participants to avoid or limit specified types of provocative military activity. Examples include: no harassing activities such as "playing chicken" on the high seas; no harassing or provocative close encounters between military aircraft and/or military aircraft and naval or ground forces; and no harassing activities in airspace near territorial boundaries. # ''Deployment'' constraint measures: measures requiring or encouraging participants to avoid or limit the provocative stationing or positioning of military forces. Examples include: no threatening manoeuvres or equipment tests; no threatening deployments near sensitive areas (such as tanks near borders); equipment constraints such as no attack aircraft within range of a neighbour's rear area territory; manpower limits; and nuclear free zones. # ''Technology'' constraint measures: measures requiring or encouraging participants to avoid or limit the development and/or deployment of specified military technologies, including systems and subsystems, believed by participating states to have a destabilizing character or impact. Examples include: no replacement of deployed military equipment of certain types (typically tanks, heavily armoured combat vehicles, self-propelled artillery, combat aircraft, and combat helicopters) with new, more advanced and capable types; no modernization of deployed military equipment of certain specified types in certain key, well-defined respects; no training with new systems; no field testing of new designs; and no production of specified new systems and/or subsystems.

Confidence building viewed as a process

An alternative analytic approach to understanding confidence building looks at broader process concepts rather than concentrating on specific measures. Confidence building, according to the transformation view, is a distinct activity undertaken by policy makers with the minimum intention of improving some aspects of a traditionally antagonistic security relationship through security policy coordination and cooperation. It entails the comprehensive process of exploring, negotiating, and then implementing tailored measures, including those that promote interaction, information exchange, and constraint. It also entails the development and use of both formal and informal practices and principles associated with the cooperative development of CBMs. When conditions are supportive, the confidence building process can facilitate, focus, synchronize, amplify, and generally structure the potential for a significant positive transformation in the security relations of participating states. Confidence building in this view is a process that constitutes more than the sum of its parts. When confidence building leads to the institutionalization of a collection of new rules and practices stipulating how participating states and non-state actors should cooperate and compete with each other in their security relationship, the restructured relationship can reduce the likelihood of armed conflict by redefining expectations of normal behaviour among participating states in a way that is more likely to handle conflict by non-military means.

References

Inline

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , last1 =Maiese , first1 =Michelle , author-link =Michelle Maiese , title= Confidence-Building Measures , trans-title = , website= Moving Beyond Intractability , year =2003 , url = https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/confidence-building-measures , access-date = 2005-12-09 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130908031946/https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/confidence-building-measures , archive-date= 2013-09-08 , url-status=live , url-access = {{cite book , last=Macintosh , first=James , date=1996 , title=Confidence building in the arms control process : a transformation view , location=

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

, publisher= Department of Foreign Affairs (Canada) , page= , isbn=9780662250296 , oclc=433939801 {{cite web , title= Letter dated 97/08/04 from the Permanent Representative of Canada addressed to the Deputy Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament transmitting a publication entitled "Confidence building in the arms control process : a transformation view" / by James MacIntosh. , website=

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

, date =1997-08-05 , url = https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/243689?ln=en , access-date = 2020-02-08 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200208214207/https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/243689?ln=en , archive-date= 2020-02-08 , url-status=live , url-access =

Other

*Beltrán, Virgilio. "Buscando Nuevos Roles para los Ejércitos de América Latina", ''International Congress of Military Sociology'', Valparaiso, Chile, 29–31 August 1992, pp. 37–38. *International Peace Academy. ''Peacekeeper's Handbook''. NY: IPA, 1978. *International Peace Academy. ''Conflict in Central America: Approaches to Peace and Security'', NY: St Martin's, 1986. *OAS, Permanent Council, Grupo de Trabajo sobre Cooperación para la Seguridad Hemisférica. ''Nuevo Concepto de Seguridad'', OAS Document CP/GT/CSH-13/92, 12 February 1992.
Bazin, A. (2014). Trust: A Decisive Point in COIN Operations. Infantry Magazine. Bazin, A. (2013). Winning trust and confidence: A grounded theory model for the use of confidence-building measures in the joint operational environment. Bazin, A. (2015). Winning trust under fire. Military Review.

External links

*http://www.beyondintractability.org/m/confidence_building_measures.jsp
PeaceForge
- online forum and database (

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

) on peace and conflict resolution
Read the 'Agreement between Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China on Confidence Building in the Military Field in the Border Area', UN PeacemakerStuck in the "Frenemy Zone"
Peacekeeping Diplomacy Peace mechanisms Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe