Remembering the Edinburgh Conversations – an appeal to conversation and reciprocity

Over 40 years ago, the Edinburgh Conversations brought US and Soviet military officials together in dialogue during the Cold War. Today, Laura Wise explores how the principles of open conversation, trust, and reciprocity remain vital in resolving contemporary conflicts.

More than 40 years ago, a small group of military officials from the United States and the Soviet Union were brought together by a team of trusted academics at the University of Edinburgh. Meeting in secret at the height of the Cold War, these dialogues later became known as the Edinburgh Conversations.

Aimed at thawing relations between the world’s leading nuclear powers, core elements of the Edinburgh Conversations were “open dialogue, continuity of contact, reciprocity of visits, social events and free and frank exchange of ideas”.

Fast forward to present day, the need for open dialogue across deep divisions is stark. We live in an age of escalating armed conflict: “Since 2010, the number of conflicts involving states has almost doubled”. Beyond this statistic are experiences of unimaginable horror: reproductive genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, aerial bombardment of schools in Ukraine, massacres of ethnic minorities in Sudan, and conflict-related sexual violence against civilians in Myanmar.

In the face of this horror, it is easy to assume that initiatives like the Edinburgh Conversations are a relic of the past. However, research from the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), led by Edinburgh Law School, shows that mediation and peacemaking efforts continue to bring opposing sides together in even the most violent and supposedly intractable contemporary conflicts.

These peacemaking efforts face enormous challenges to even get parties to talk, requiring that armed groups trust in the seriousness of a process, and its ability to deliver dividends. Confidence-building measures are one way that mediators try to develop trust in early stages of peace talks, through mechanisms such as prisoner exchanges and security guarantees. Symbolic, inter-personal actions can also build trust between enemies, such as handshakes or shared meals.

Careful consideration of how opposing parties talk to each other also matters. Timing, inclusion criteria, secrecy, and objective-setting have been a key part of designing peace processes since the 1990s. Such technocratic choices now intersect with new challenges, such as the ability of digital technologies to support – or undermine – a dialogue, and the difficulties of working in a congested and diverse peacemaking space, where multiple interested states jostle for influence.

As mediation orthodoxies struggle to adapt to fragmented and messy conflict realities, there are still some back-to-basics approaches that can open space for conversation. For example, referring to a humanitarian ‘pause’ instead of a ceasefire, even if parties have essentially agreed to stop using force, was a creative naming technique used in early peace talks between the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement.

Bringing diverse groups of people together in neutral spaces to talk can also maintain energy behind the idea of dialogue at times when formal processes have stalled or failed. Through PeaceRep, researchers from the Universities of Stirling and Edinburgh convened a series of ‘Study Group’ meetings between civil society, ethnic resistance movements, People’s Defence Forces, scholars and practitioners from Myanmar. These conversations have created a space for groups and individuals to “discuss emerging themes in the political space in Myanmar”, and have helped to build relationships between actors with diverse perspectives on the conflicts, in a moment when there is little prospect of a formal peace process between the military junta and opposition groups.

The peacemakers of today are facing difficult choices within an unenviable funding environment. But the Edinburgh Conversations of the Cold War show us the enduring value of the “free and frank exchange of ideas”. As Western governments invest in military solutions to what are political problems, we urgently need to make the case for supporting sustainable peacemaking efforts, and persevere in pursuing dialogue across divides.

Laura Wise, Senior Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh and PeaceRep programme coordinator

This article originally appeared in ReSourcE ReSourcE Autumn/Winter 2025.

The RSE’s blog series offers personal views on a variety of issues. These views are not those of the RSE and are intended to offer different perspectives on a range of current issues.