Talk:Confidence-building measures

Merge
Confidence-building measures and Confidence and security-building measures are the same concept. -- Whpq (talk) 10:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I am undertaking the merge.  Nolelover  It's almost football season!  14:44, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have finished the merge.  Nolelover  It's almost football season!  14:57, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Feedback requested from expert Jim Macintosh
I would like to get some feedback on adding a section to the "confidence and security-building measures" discussion. The new section would focus specifically on the "confidence building process" which is a conceptually more encompassing way of dealing with confidence building. As someone new to active participation here, I am uncertain whether I should do this. The reason for my uncertainty is this: I am the main analyst who has worked on this subject for several decades. I have published a good deal on it, including several monographs that have seen relatively wide circulation. I have the sense from reading various help topics here that it is not normally accepted form to simply source yourself, but I am the principal source for this material. Is it OK to go ahead and write a short description of this approach?

In addition, if using myself as a main source is OK, would it make more sense to create an entirely new category called "confidence building process"? I am fine with leaving it here until others decide a separate category is appropriate. Any help would be appreciated. My name is Jim Macintosh and the most comprehensive example of my work is "Confidence Building in the Arms Control Process: A Transformation View," (prepared for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, 1996 (ISBN 0-662-25029-X; JX1974.M32 1996)).

Jimmacintosh100 (talk) 20:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I have added a discrete section discussing confidence building viewed as a process. I have not altered any other sections. The text (as noted in the entry) is drawn from the Executive Summary of Confidence Building in the Arms Control Process: A Transformation View. I cleared its use with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. To the best of my knowledge, this monograph is the most comprehensive articulation of this analytic perspective. Jimmacintosh100 (talk) 20:50, 18 July 2011 (UTC)


 * You can see a brief response . I propose that (see below) you first clarify the licensing of your material. After that, I or other editors can tidy up your contribution (if you don't). Boud (talk) 22:03, 6 February 2020 (UTC) Boud (talk) 22:04, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 7 August 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved to Confidence-building measures per nom. No such user (talk) 14:25, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Confidence and security-building measures → Confidence-building measures – Per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CONCISE, and basic English grammar. If the longer version were to be used, it would be Confidence- and security-building measures (hyphenate split compound modifiers per MOS:HYPHEN; this article is about confidence-building and security-building measures, not about security-building measures and confidence). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:57, 7 August 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. Andrewa (talk) 10:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose but relisting. According to wp:concise, it should just be confidence-building (which currently redirects there), should it not? What am I missing? Andrewa (talk) 10:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Support the abbreviation CBMs, or "Confidence-building measures", is used throughout the article. (I don't think it should be "confidence-building") — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 19:51, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. The literature that I am have read predominantly uses "Confidence-building measures", abbreviated to CBMs. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:25, 22 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Possible copyvio problem - Contadora and the diplomacy of peace in Central America
The huge section on Examples in the seems to have come from the  the 'confidence and security-building measures' article.

Those 13 "examples" look like a cut and paste from Contadora and the diplomacy of peace in Central America, which can be viewed via (sorry!) GAFAM: google books. (No point me giving a specific link, since each user has his/her personalised google link, to make sure that Lord Google knows exactly what we're doing, where, and when.)

Copy/pasted material:
 * Everything from 1. CBMs dealing with troop movements and exercises: down to 10. ... d. Examine primary and secondary school curricula and texts for aggressive, hostile or false information on potential adversaries. seems to be almost identical, except for generalising from "Inter-American" to "regional", or similar minor changes;
 * 11. in Contadora is excluded, and 12. from Contadora becomes 11. in 97219110.
 * Correspondingly, 13. and 14. in Contadora become 12. and 13. in 97219110.

The copyright states standard copyright 1987 Taylor & Francis. Since 1987 is pre-2006 (the date of 97219110) there's no risk that Contadora copied from Wikipedia.

On the other hand, this could be US army material - thus under public domain - which was reused by Contadora under the conditions of PD - but then we would have to have access to the original "copy" which is under PD, in order for the chain of copying to avoid the non-free Taylor&Francis step in the chain. Maybe one of the two English-language refs such as ''Peacekeeper's Handbook. NY: IPA, 1978''? I couldn't get this through Google because it gave me books with this book in the reference list.

I'll prepare a copyvio report in the next few minutes... Boud (talk) 22:51, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Text removed. See Copyright_problems/2020_January_13 for details. Ajpolino (talk) 09:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Bazin COIN section (now Iraq/Afghanisstan) seems OK under US PD
by Bazin1972 appear to be by the author of the text; the material is according to him from the Infantry (magazine) (given as a non-inline reference), and it's clearly a copy/paste from https://archive.ph/Nf6Dy = https://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/magazine/issues/2014/Jan-Mar/Bazin.html, which can be converted to an inline reference after the above copyvio problem is sorted out. As the publication is by a US Army institution, by an author who apparently posted the material himself to Wikipedia, knowing that the material had to be under a compatible free licence, it seems reasonable to me to assume that this is accepted as CC-BY-SA compatible. Boud (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Whether or not the material is relevant here, and how much it needs editing to be integrated into the article, can be sorted out later. Boud (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Typology of CSBMs
"permission of the author and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade" is too vague: do you and DFAIT agree to publish under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL?

Just to clarify for proper attribution: User:Jimmacintosh100 appears to have published under CC-BY-SA+GFDL. Boud (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

The content of also appears to be published here by the author under CC-BY-SA + GFDL. Boud (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Tidying up
These two sections need tidying up to follow Wikipedia style, but I suggest we first wait to see if there's a response confirming CC-BY-SA+GFDL copyright from User:Jimmacintosh100... Boud (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I compressed quite a bit of material in my tidying up to bring things into Wikipedia style. The aim is to concentrate on plain English key points, without making recommendations (Wikipedia does not recommend what medicines or medical treatment to take, although there are well-developed guidelines on the content of medical/disease related articles; we don't recommend how to do arms control either). We can/should document what mechanisms and processes for arms control are claimed to exist or that are proposed to exist or that have been implemented, per reliable sources. Boud (talk) 00:53, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

M\Jimmacintosh100 response
Sorry, but I don't know if this is where I should respond. I am Jim Macintosh and added the Typology. I previously added the section "Confidence Building Viewed as a Process." I contacted Foreign Affairs at that time and received permission to use the material as I wished, although I am not even sure I need their permission. This is my work. I have made it clear that the views are my own and not the Government of Canada's for both entries. At that time, there were no objections from Wikipedia nor questions about CC BY-SA 3 License. I have a request in for clarification with Foreign Affairs as a courtesy, but don't see any issue as they were fine with this use before and it only advertises their interest in research.

To be clear, I have no issue with this copyright protocol - CC BY-SA 3.0.

Was blissfully unaware - or did not remember - about style rules. I will change English/Canadian English to US standard. I will also review other issues to see what I have done wrong regarding headers and spacing. Jimmacintosh100 (talk) 22:36, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi Jim :). I think we're building confidence here. This is the natural place to respond, and one of the two places where anyone worried about the issue would come for more info. The other place is in the history of edits of the article.
 * Firstly on the issue of copyright: "having no issue" is a bit abstract (a pedantic lawyer could complain), but I think that anyone reasonable looking at your comments above, in addition to the original text you pasted into the article itself, will interpret that to mean that you have published the content under CC-BY-SA 3.0 with full rights to do so.
 * Regarding style, it's rather norms and guidelines than rules: confidence-building is done by radical transparency, structure, assuming good faith and the norms of civilised discourse, confidence that your work will not be casually destroyed, and modularising individual issues when possible. For US vs UK English vs other English, see MOS:ENGVAR: except when there are strong national ties to a particular brand of English (e.g. US State Dept, Queen Elizabeth, Trudeau dynasty), the aim is to stick with the main choice already used in an article and achieve consistency within the article. See MOS:ENGVAR for a more detailed description. In this case, there's no huge pressure from editors, so I'll reverse your UK/CA to US edit, and make a proposal to decide on a long-term choice. Boud (talk) 22:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello. SO we are fine with the copyright? I agree to the copyright protocol for both entries and understand that I have the authority to do so. There should be no problem at all. I have already changed the few UK spellings to US. I really don't care and they were only there because the text appeared initially in a Canadian publication. I have been quite schizo in their use over the years. I made some changes to the style of the typology list(removing caps). Not sure if anything else needs to be done. Italics instead of bold? I always find the latter preferable, but will defer if asked. I only want to be helpful here and would not even have put the typology in had the one already here not been removed.Jimmacintosh100 (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: use British English
Given that this article doesn't yet have a well-defined choice of US vs UK/CA/Aus vs South Asia English and has a bit of a messy history of editing, I propose we use UK English, for the following reasons:
 * In the late XXth and early XXIst centuries, the US has mainly played a role of using the mafia principle in international affairs - "might is right" - so there's no "natural tie" between the US and confidence-building, instead it's rather the smaller powers that are more involved in confidence building (Switzerland, Norway). South Asia English would be good in principle, especially with the Gandhian tradition of confidence-building, but South Asian English is less well-defined than UK or US English, and we probably don't have many editors of this article right now able to follow that. So my informal proposal is to use "British English" as the main version of English. The small number of editors active here means that we probably don't need explicit Support or Oppose statements, but see WP:NOTVOTE anyway. Please state any objections with reasons. (Comment: I'm not from the UK, though I did live there for some time.) Boud (talk) 22:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia integration
More significant in the long-term than the US-UK-CA-AU-IN-PK-BD English question is integrating the J Macintosh material with the rest of the Wikipedia. My impression is that a lot of the specific mechanisms are not (yet) properly documented in the Wikipedia. A lot of sources, especially documents like UN documents, are likely to be open access and online, and could be used. We do have quite a few articles on various peace processes and arms control treaties. But quite a few of the Macintosh points could be expanded to prose articles - e.g. military personnel exchanges between China and ASEAN (I don't know if there have been any, this is just a hypothetical example) or military personnel exchanges in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (has that happened)? Boud (talk) 00:42, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Jim Macintosh here: Things get a bit awkward with respect to some of the comments above. I realized from the beginning that the confidence building article here was not very good and that the various sections (even before my addition) did not integrate very well. I did not wish to be doctrinaire or abuse other peoples' work, so I simply added my "alternative analytic perspective" section to what was there and made no other contributions or edits. That may have made the problem worse. Why doctrinaire? To be clear, most people who write about confidence building in the security realm (then and now) use the "minimalist perspective" that essentially treats "confidence building" as synonymous with CBMs (CSBMs), with an implicit assumption that using them helps. So they would not see a problem with a typology-oriented approach. That is what the original entry looked like. Then I added my dissenting view.


 * I wrote about this subject matter and this basic problem with explaining causality in confidence building thinking for several decades. The 1996 A Transformation View was a large monograph exploring this problem and proposing a solution. What I added in the Wikipedia section is a brief (!) but adequate summary of that minority viewpoint. My previous monograph Confidence (and Security) Building Measures in the Arms Control Process (1985 and also published by Foreign Affairs) has an exhaustive history of origins, then-current negotiations, proposed and possible measures, and definitions in the literature. Lots of references in big footnotes. I wrote a lot about this general subject up to about 2000. Interest faded on both my part and the Canadian government's. There really hasn't been a whole lot of interest or analytic effort since then. I am hopeful there might be a reignited interest, but have not seen much evidence so far. It is worth putting effort into this article to perhaps help on that front.


 * The point to this rambling preamble is this: I could use some material and references from my own work to make this a more comprehensive and integrated article, but I don't want to step on any toes or seem despotic. Much of what I could add is neutral and not my special take on the subject (origins in post-war world, CSCE, MBFR as well as basics of early definitions). The simple fact is that a lot of the work on this subject since the mid 1980s was either done by me or reported on by me. This is why I was uncertain how to proceed back in 2011. Definitely not looking to dominate this material here, but it is obviously a bit tricky. Thoughts and questions welcome.Jimmacintosh100 (talk) 03:35, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Jim Macintosh here: Well, that didn't go well. I see that the "Process" section has been changed. The point of the contribution is now absent entirely. Just as bad, the remnant completely mis-states the point, as discussed above. The point is that almost everyone writing about confidence building does NOT think in process terms, they think in measure terms. This is not an academic's typical antipathy toward their work being edited. By removing major portions of what was there, the remaining content is rendered pointless and misleading. I went to considerable effort to reduce a complex argument to its bare minimum. Please undo this unecessary and misleading change. I assume my offer to make other adjustments is declined. But please, this change is completely unacceptable. I would rather the material be removed entirely if not left as it was. I will take the weekend to see what develops. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimmacintosh100 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Jimmacintosh100 (talk) 16:47, 8 February 2020 (UTC) Still not happy with changes. I corrected the one obvious error with a new introductory sentence. I have lost interest in doing more for this article. Not interested in a bun fight. It would have been better to ask me to reduce content so no harm was done to the original intent. Please note that this stuff is not "opinion." It is a summary of a complex argument and the result of years of excruciating analytic effort.


 * Hi Jim. You can see how I used colons to show the structure of our discussion here - normally we're not supposed to edit each others' comments, but when newer people are unfamiliar with the techniques, this can be tolerated.
 * Responding to your paragraphs above:
 * I would generally also assume that CBMs are likely to help in peacebuilding, without guaranteeing it.
 * So in 1996 you wrote about your minority viewpoint, which if I underdstand it correctly, is that CBMs should not be viewed as automatically leading to (causing) peace or armed conflict prevention; you propose a solution in your 1996 monograph.
 * If you're interested in this long-term, then the most useful thing would be to get most of your sources into open access online repositories, not necessarily free-licensed, but open access so that a billion or so readers can easily compare what claimed facts are used from the sources to the sources themselves. You could upload your own materials to Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/) if you can't find a repository that seems more subject specific, or if you (or the copyright holders) agree to free license the content, then Wikisource - e.g. s:Ohrid Framework Agreement/Implementation and Confidence-Building Measures (one of the WMF wikis) - would be good. Offline sources are not forbidden, but they effectively exclude the vast majority of Wikipedians who do not have access to them. For the point about you feeling that you dominate the field, you've been totally open about your identity and the risk of a conflict of interest, so what you've done so far seems reasonable. Unfortunately, this type of topic is not "sexy" in terms of mainstream media - it's the deaths that hit the headlines, not the CBMs or CB processes - and correspondingly in Wikipedians' editing interests; so you're unlikely to get much feedback (whether constructive or unconstructive) when editing. I can't spend too much time on this myself - Wikipedia editing is only an intellectual hobby of mine.


 * This article does not cover "people who write about confidence building", it's presently defined to cover confidence-building measures, independently of academics who study them (or diplomats/institutions who try to implement them).


 * I empathise with the many years that you've spent working on this. However, while the content of a Wikipedia article is not intended to be dumbed down to Trump level, it should be made understandable to a wide audience. On your user page, I posted some Wikipedia guidelines, which you should spend some time browsing through. WP:AGF is one of the key policies; it means that you assume that the other editors are well-intentioned and are not try to "bun fight".


 * I propose we try working on your specific recent edit:


 * of the process section. This introduction needs to make sense for a reader of this article. "... alternative ... approach to understanding confidence building" is a bit difficult to follow, because the earlier text is about confidence building measures, not about "understanding" confidence building in general (the hoped-for result of CBMs); "looks at" doesn't add much meaning; "broader process concepts" doesn't seem to say much beyond "process". The word "analytic" is a problem here, it seems to me, because if we present analysis, then it has to be attributed, and with you as author and no peer review, it's getting rather risky in terms of not becoming self-promotion. That's why my idea is to focus on things that are reasonably objective or uncontroversial, that don't need attribution. On other hand, there's reasonable evidence that at least this monograph by you was taken seriously (the equivalent of peer review for scientific publications). Anyway, my proposal, helped by your above comments while trying to see the point of view of a typical reader, is:
 * Confidence-building measures were frequently seen as an end in themselves in the 1980s and 1990s. In his 1996 monograph, James Macintosh argued that the effectiveness of confidence building in the armed security context would be better understood by being analysed as a process rather than as a set of individual measures. 
 * Any objections? Or can you make a better proposal? (The ref UNDigLib_Macintosh96_distrib is online evidence that someone to some degree independent of you judged your monograph to be worth distributing and apparently distributed it.) Boud (talk) 21:59, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: delete Iraq/Afghan occupation section
Proposal: delete the section Confidence-building_measures completely (which means remove the figure from this article). Reasons: The material could be restored in an article such as Confidence-building measures by military occupying forces that are not party to the Rome Statute, but I suspect that many Wikipedians would see that as an oxymoron.
 * This article is about confidence-building measures in the context of peace processes and arms control agreements. The United States invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq were military invasions that killed many Afghans and massacred about 150,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis, and the "confidence-building" referred to is about the occupying military force "building confidence" either with the armed opposition or the government installed by the invaders (the text seems to switch from one to the other);
 * Neither of the invasions were authorised by the United Nations Security Council, so they were illegal;
 * The US is not party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (neither signed nor ratified), so it de facto reserves the right to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and refuses the right of the ICC to carry out prosecutions of US individuals suspected of these crimes;
 * In this context, it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that US occupying military forces' "confidence-building" in post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan has anything at all to do with confidence-building within the general aims of XXth century and XXIst century peace-building initiatives and processes. How can any locals have confidence in occupying military forces that authorise themselves to carry out war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide? The way that occupying military forces can build confidence among the locals is to pack their bags and leave and provide full documentation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and authorise ICC prosecutions of the period that started with the invasion.

or anyone else: Any objections to the removal? Boud (talk) 18:30, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * No objections. ✅. Boud (talk) 00:12, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

In-depth 1985 review on CBMs
We now have an open access version of, which is an in-depth source. A huge amount of good review material is available there that can be used in this Wikipedia article, including The review is especially interesting since it was published just before the end of the Cold War. Boud (talk) 01:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * pre-CSCE precedents of CBMs,
 * the evolution of terminology between CBMs and CSBMs,
 * the whole pattern of different agreements, negotiations and institution building,
 * flaws with CBMs (see the conclusion, p122)
 * fuzziness about the definition of CBMs;
 * lack of realism in threat assessment;
 * lack of plausible psychological or political explanation of how the CBM process works.