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→‎Some tentative observations concerning agonal autism and the Syrian conflict

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 :"Suppose a couple have a marital problem to which he contributes passive withdrawal, while her 50 per cent is nagging criticism. In explaining their frustrations, the husband will state that withdrawal is his only defense against' her nagging, while she will label this explanation a gross and willful distortion of what 'really' happens in their marriage: namely, that she is critical of him because of his passivity. Stripped of all ephemeral and fortuitous elements, their fights consist in a monotonous exchange of the messages 'I withdraw because you nag' and 'I nag because you withdraw.' (...) It can be seen that the husband only perceives triads 2-3-4, 4-5-6, 6-7-8, etc., where his behavior (solid arrows) is 'merely' a response to her behavior (the broken arrows). With her it is exactly the other way around; she punctuates the sequence of events into the triads 1-2-3, 3-4-5, 5-6-7, etc., and sees herself as only reacting to, but not determining, her husband's behavior. In conjoint psychotherapy with couples one is frequently struck by the intensity of what in traditional psychotherapy would be referred to as 'reality distortion' on the part of both parties. It is often hard to believe that two individuals could have such divergent views on many elements of joint experience. And yet the problem lies primarily in an area already frequently mentioned: their inability to metacommunicate about their respective patterning of their interaction. This interaction is of an oscillatory yes-no-yes-no-yes nature which theoretically can go on ad infinitum and almost invariably is accompanied, as we shall see later, by the typical charges of badness or madness."
-Es ist naheliegend, das streitende Ehepaar mit seinen symmetrischen und sich gegenseitig ausschließenden Schuldzuschreibungen und Ursachen-Narrativen ("Du hast angefangen, ich musste mich ja irgedwie wehren") zum Paradigma internationaler Konflikte zu machen und die Sache dabei evtl. nur spieltheoretisch zu verfeinern. Nichts anderes haben im Übrigen Watzlawick et al. (1967) auch schon selbst vorgeschlagen und kurz am Beispiel der Pschologie des Wettrüstens durchdekliniert. Wo die Kommunikations- und Interaktionsstrategie einer Konfliktpartei in einer militärischen Auseinandersetzung ähnliche Störungsmerkmale aufweist, könnte man (metaphorisch) von "autistischer Agonalität" sprechen. Um die Differenz (und damit den Bezug) zum Begriff der agonalen Partnerschaft zu verdeutlichen, spricht Scheerer (2011) von agonalem Autismus. Gemeint ist damit das Fehlen einer mit dem Gegner geteilten normativen Metaebene, bzw. eines Signal-, Kommunikations- und Interaktions-Repertoires, das auch noch während der Auseinandersetzung eine Verständigung und eine rudimentäre Solidarität (Ritterlichkeit, Höflichkeit, Verhandlungen) ermöglicht. Wo Unfähigkeit zu agonaler Partnerschaft herrscht, wo der agonale Autismus regiert, da rücken Verhandlungen, Kompromisse und friedliche Koexistenz in weite Ferne.
+Nothing is more tempting than to transfer the husband-wife-conflict with its mutually exclusive narratives about causes and responsibilities ("you started it all") onto the level of international conflicts and to refine it a little bit by adding game theoretical concepts. As a matter of fact, Watzlawick et al. (1967) themselves suggested the application of the concept of discrepant punctuation to the arms race. In a way, though, such a focus on faulty communication tends to belittle the relevance of socio-economic interests, power structures, and legitimizing discourses. To say that conflict parties just do not talk enough and that they do not talk enough because they have different perceptions of  who started it all and who is responsible for the conflict ("discrepant punctuation") simply does not grasp the fact that international politics are not governed by naively distorted perceptions, but that - as a rule - they at least contain a large portion of strategic modelling for purposes of generating sufficient support on the home front. In the end, the official political discourse and the mainstream media discourse might look very similar to the one-sidedness of a husband's narrative in a couple conflict, but while the husband may be given the benefit of naiveté, the White House Syria (or Iran) narrative should be given credit for having been more carefully constructed to serve the foreign policy interests as defined by those in that house.
+In other words: political actors in asymmetric conflicts are all too often not really unable to develop communicative strategies, but rather unwilling to do so for rational reasons.
+===The rationality of irrational action ===
+In a couple conflict, the inability of spouses to reach a meta-level of communication and to have a distant look at what is happening, can prevent mutual understanding, self-reflection, and a negotiated peace accord. In the Syrian conflict, it may seem that it is exactly the same thing that is lacking, but the difference is that in the latter, there are institutions and elaborate policy bodies that should be able to extensively check options and rationally chose the best one sine ira et studio. Therefore, an assumption of a higher rationality should be justified - even though such an assumption leads directly to a new riddle - the paradox of higher rationality and low-quality outcome.
+Barbara Tuchman (1984) spoke of the "March of Folly" and tried to explain "one of the most compelling paradoxes of history: the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests", by the somehow tautological idea that those in charge are sometimes too stupid to do the right thing, even though they know that there are alternative paths of action.
+This is not very satisfactory, and this is where a bit of game theory can do some good. What seems irrational to informed observers of the Syrian conflict - the West's refusal to talk with the Iranian leadership to solve the Syrian conflict, e.g.  - may not appear so irrational at all when the Syrian conflict is not regarded in isolation, but as just one "game" among others. The theory of nested games
 Elemente des agonalen Autismus: