I had a professor who argued that there's no such thing as win-win in conflict negotiations. In her opinion, if neither party is compromising even slightly, then there wasn't an actual conflict to begin with. As a political scientist by education, I tend to agree. It's the basic Prisoner's Dilemma: the only way to win 100% is if the other party loses 100%. The 'win-win' most folks refer to is, in reality, Nash equilibrium, which is a situation where you optimize both parties' outcomes by compromising slightly in order to avoid getting totally screwed over. Else they're referring to synergy, which is a misapplication of the term. (Synergy is creating something greater than the sum of its parts, whereas Nash equilibrium is effectively creating something less than the sum of its parts.)
With that said, though, I'm going to clunkily segue into this story about Don't Ask Don't Tell.
The amazing Ian sends this article, and adds:
Everybody wins!
* The military generals seem not to have a problem with it.
* Evidence of similar equality in other Western armies (like the UK) suggests that the ranks will be against it in general, but that tends to melt away when it actually happens.
* Lieberman gets to run with it, giving him a chance to reestablish his liberal credentials (he took a huge hit in Connecticut over the HCR mess), whilst also making it somewhat more palatable to pick off a Republican or two.
* The public is now in favour of repealing DADT. Even Dick Cheney thinks it's time!
* It's the White House's idea to give it to Lieberman, so if it gets through, they get a big slice of the credit.
* And homosexual soldiers get to serve openly. Obviously, the most important winners :)
Here's crossing our fingers it gets passed quickly and smoothly. If it does, I think it does basically end up being an excellent example of 'win-win' synergy, as the military gets back an incredible number of mission critical members, and gays get to serve openly without fear of retribution for their private lifestyles. I'd like to add that in this case a 14-year-old conflict actually does exist as well.
On the other hand, the opposition then send articles like this one, which is ominously titled "Troops oppose repeal of 'don't ask'." Meanwhile, if you actually read the article, nearly 80% are fine with repealing the policy. How should we expect this policy to change when those who oppose the repeal of DADT think that 19% opposition from a traditionally wildly conservative organization is considered broad enough to blanketly apply to the majority of service members?
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