Pathways to Resolve the Pendleton International Airport Controversy

15. Pendleton International Airport

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Based on the principles of inventive negotiation outlined in these articles, here are concrete pathways to resolve the Camp Pendleton airport dispute:

1. Reframe from Positions to Opportunities

Current Impasse: Both sides are locked in positions—civilians want an airport; Marines need coastal training facilities.

Inventive Approach: Shift the conversation from "Who gets the land?" to "What extraordinary opportunities exist here for both military readiness and regional prosperity?"

2. Build a Pie Factory, Not Just Split the Pie

Rather than viewing this as zero-sum (airport vs. training facility), create a joint-use facility that serves multiple purposes:

Integrated Operations Model:

• Design the airport as a dual-use facility where military and civilian aviation infrastructure overlap
• Schedule civilian flights during weekdays; reserve weekends and specific periods for military training exercises
• Create shared maintenance facilities, reducing costs for both parties
• Develop advanced air traffic control systems that can seamlessly switch between civilian and military operations

3. Leverage Third-Party Facilitators

Professional facilitators should be brought in at the beginning of negotiations to manage consensus building processes, oversee substance, relationships, and process, and create freedom and safety to explore ideas.

Recommended Actions:

• Hire neutral facilitators experienced in complex multi-party negotiations
• Include representatives from all stakeholder groups: Department of Navy, Marines, San Diego County, Orange County, Riverside County, environmental groups, and local communities
• Use structured processes like those successful in energy/environmental negotiations: work groups, plenary sessions, caucuses, and brainstorming without criticism

4. Address the Real Military Concern Creatively

Defense Secretary Gates pointed out that amphibious beach landing tactics haven't been used since the Korean War, while America's military power now rests heavily on control of the skies.

Creative Solutions:

• Enhanced Air Training Facilities: Build additional air facilities at Camp Pendleton that provide both civilian airport infrastructure and advanced military aviation training capabilities
• Virtual Training Systems: Invest in cutting-edge simulation technology for amphibious landing training, reducing the need for physical coastal access
• Rotational Access: Maintain full Marine access to coastline during designated training periods when airport closes to civilian traffic
• Expanded Airspace: The airport infrastructure could actually enhance military training opportunities for tactical aircraft operations

5. Create Economic Incentives for Military Personnel

High-paying service jobs could be made available at the new airport for both military spouses and reservists, and jobs created by the international airport could help the substantial population of veterans in Southern California find employment.

Implementation:

• Priority hiring programs for military families
• Training partnerships between airlines and military (building on existing pilot pipelines)
• Veterans' employment center at the airport
• Apprenticeship programs in aviation maintenance and air traffic control

6. Design Collaborative Decision-Making Structures

Following the successful MyHeart consortium model:

Governance Structure:

• Create a multi-stakeholder oversight board with rotating leadership
• Establish work packages: infrastructure design, environmental impact, military operations coordination, community engagement, business development
• Use consensus-building processes where all parties have equal voice
• Implement "sleeping on it" protocols—no major decisions without overnight reflection periods

7. Address Information Sharing and Trust Building

The MyHeart Project included small groups, two-day events allowing for 'sleeping on it,' and activities that built both inventive ideas and trust among participants, with an emphasis on dual purposes.

Trust-Building Activities:

• Organize site visits where civilian leaders experience military training operations firsthand
• Host military personnel at existing international airports to understand civilian aviation needs
• Create joint study groups examining successful dual-use facilities worldwide
• Develop shared language and understanding through cross-training sessions

8. Think Long-Term Relationship, Not One-Time Deal

Partnership Framework:

• Establish a 50-year collaborative agreement, not just a land-use deal
• Build in regular review and improvement cycles
• Create profit-sharing mechanisms where airport revenues fund military facility improvements
• Develop joint research initiatives on aviation technology benefiting both civilian and military applications

9. Use Diversity as Strength

Diverse work groups put more ideas on the table than homogeneous ones, once the diverse groups have developed relationships and learned to understand one another.

Leveraging Differences:

• Include military strategists, commercial aviation experts, environmental scientists, urban planners, economists, and community representatives
• Embrace the creative tension between military precision and commercial efficiency
• Use different perspectives to identify solutions neither side would discover alone

10. Apply the "Trade Causes Peace" Principle

The fundamental factor in causing bilateral cooperation is trade, as countries seek to protect wealth gained through international trade.

Economic Interdependence:

• Calculate the economic value to both parties: $X billion in regional economic development vs. $Y value of enhanced training capabilities
• Demonstrate how airport revenues could fund military infrastructure improvements worth more than current arrangements
• Show military personnel how regional prosperity enhances base community quality of life
• Create shared financial stakes where both parties benefit from the airport's success

11. Manage Emotions Constructively

Recognize that both sides have strong emotional connections:

• Military: pride, tradition, national security concerns
• Civilians: regional identity, economic anxiety, mobility needs

Emotional Intelligence Strategies:

• Schedule "complaint time" sessions to air frustrations constructively
• Use emotions as information about what matters most to each side
• Take breaks when anger threatens to derail inventive thinking
• Focus on future opportunities rather than past conflicts

Concrete Implementation Roadmap

Phase 1 (Months 1-6):

• Select and engage professional facilitators
• Conduct initial stakeholder mapping and relationship building
• Organize site visits and cross-training sessions

Phase 2 (Months 7-12):

• Hold initial consensus-building workshops using brainstorming and small group processes
• Develop 3-5 conceptual models for dual-use facility
• Commission feasibility studies

Phase 3 (Year 2):

• Refine preferred alternative through iterative feedback
• Develop detailed operational protocols
• Negotiate governance structure and profit-sharing arrangements

Phase 4 (Years 3-5):

• Complete environmental reviews and permitting
• Begin phased construction
• Establish ongoing partnership management structure

Conclusion

The key insight from inventive negotiation is that the best solution isn't compromise—it's combination. By building a genuinely integrated facility that serves both military training needs and civilian aviation requirements, all parties can achieve more than they would through traditional bargaining. The focus must shift from dividing limited coastline to creating expanded opportunities for both regional prosperity and military readiness.

Success requires moving beyond "us versus them" to "we're building something unprecedented together." As the articles demonstrate, this approach has worked in contexts from Edison and Swan's partnership to Disney and Pixar's collaboration to complex international energy projects. The Pendleton International Airport controversy represents exactly the kind of opportunity where inventive negotiation can create extraordinary outcomes.

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Finally, it is a bit surprising that the AI report above did not consider the implicit relationship/tradeoff currently being made between international commerce infrastructure and national defense. That is, the government providing a new international airport hub will stimulate trade between the United States and the rest of the world. And we know that trade causes peace and reduces the need for military expenditures.

For more information on the prospect of a new airport go to www.PendletonX.org.  Also, see the article on the topic from the Harvard Business Review just below:

Negotiating Over a Limited Resource: What Would You Do?

by Lynda Lawrence, William Hernández Requejo, and John L. Graham

Harvard Business Review, June 28, 2011

When different groups disagree over a limited resource, negotiation becomes necessary. Unfortunately, most negotiations still default to zero-sum bargaining (one side takes more, while the other side settles for less) or interests-based bargaining (an approach that lets each side win in the short-term, but doesn’t deal with the long term). We’ve been focusing on an approach we call “inventive negotiation” which goes a step further. The focus becomes a long-term relationship that benefits both parties — not just a one-time deal.

In our last post, we described a tricky situation where nutritionists and fast food companies successfully built such a relationship. Now, we’d like to explore how inventive negotiations could help resolve a still-ongoing dispute over a very limited resource: real estate in Southern California.

For more than two decades, leaders of San Diego and Orange counties in Southern California have struggled to manage the burgeoning needs of air travelers in the area. One potential solution is prominent — a new international airport at the south end of Camp Pendleton.

Dick Murphy, a former mayor of San Diego, laid out a still-viable plan some ten years ago: “The Camp Pendleton idea is to operate what I would call Southern California International Airport on a piece of Camp Pendleton. Now, we’re not talking about shutting down Camp Pendleton… But the new airport could be a joint venture with Orange County. … I would envision that airport being primarily an international-transcontinental airport like Dulles. So, basically, anybody out of San Diego County or Orange County or Riverside County who wanted to fly overseas or to Washington DC could fly out of that airport.” The project would help create jobs in the region and further open the nation’s most populous state to international trade. Plus, there’s already a rail line to the area that would help flyers get to and from “Pendleton International.”

Now for the other side. The Marines and the Department of the Navy want to retain all of the 15 miles of California coastline they now control for training purposes. As the Assistant Secretary of the Navy told us in a letter, “Amphibious landings continue to be an integral part of Marine Corps operations and MCB is the premier amphibious landing training installation on the west coast of the United States…The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force… conduct daily training activities aboard MCB Camp Pendleton, including live-fire operations involving amphibious landings, ground movement, artillery, mortars, tanks, tactical aircraft, and laser systems. The presences of a commercial airport on the base would divide training areas, restrict access to airspace, and adversely reduce opportunities for Marine units to conduct realistic training…”

Can civilian leaders in San Diego and Orange counties and their military counterparts reach an agreement that satisfies both sides?

Perhaps the most famous negotiation parable involves an argument over an orange. The simplest approach was to simply cut it in half, each person getting a fair share. But, when the negotiators began talking to each other, exchanging information about their interests, a better solution to the problem became obvious. The person wanting the orange for juice for breakfast took that part and the person wanting the rind for making marmalade took that part. Both sides ended up with more. And yet neither agreement is particularly inventive. The parable of the orange becomes a story about invention when both parties decide to invest in an orange tree.

The historical reality is that the branches of the military and the federal government have almost always taken a “dividing the orange” sort of competitive approach to the distribution of funding. But in the current federal budget-cutting environment, inventive negotiations are crucial to make the most of every dollar spent.

In this case, the best argument against a joint-use airport on Camp Pendleton is that the Marines need the coastline to practice beach landings. But that tactic hasn’t been used since the Korean War, as Defense Secretary Gates himself pointed out last summer. However, America’s military power does now rest heavily on control of the skies. It could be that building additional air facilities on Camp Pendleton — some of which would be a commercial airport for civilians — could provide additional training opportunities for the military. Perhaps Pendleton International might be closed to civilian use on certain days and made available exclusively for military training exercises.

Negotiation could reveal other ways that a new airport could benefit the military as well as civilians. Perhaps high-paying service jobs could be made available at the new airport for both military spouses and reservists. Moreover, as America’s wars wind down, and as efforts to rein in spending ramp up, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines will all be entering the civilian workforce in great numbers. The jobs created by this new international airport could help the substantial population of veterans already living in the Southern California region find employment. There’s already some basis for collaboration between airlines and the military, as a large proportion of civilian airline pilots started as military pilots.

The decision about dedicating part of Camp Pendleton as an international commercial airport need not be just a zero-sum choice between defense infrastructure and trade infrastructure. An inventive negotiation approach that considers the interests of the surrounding communities and the future needs of the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the marines themselves can result in a unique joint-use facility that accommodates the air travel needs of the seven million residents of the local communities and the ever-changing training requirements of a vital military.

How would you resolve this dispute in a way that leaves both sides better off than they are now? We’d love to hear your ideas.

Read more on Negotiation strategies or related topic Negotiating skills

LG

Lynda Lawrence, William Hernández Requejo, and John L. Graham Lynda Lawrence is the Chief Idea Officer at Ideaworks Consulting, William Hernández Requejo is President of Requejo Consulting, and John L. Graham is Professor Emeritus at The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. They are the authors of AND? How to Build Relationships through Inventive Negotiation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7524j2vk