Yet underlying our exploration of these many facets of negotiation will be a sobering truth: the techniques of reaching agreement, however creative, depend for the ultimate success on the accuracy of underlying assumptions about the world, judgments about the parties’ real interests, and in-depth knowledge of history, politics, economics, and culture. Process insights in the service of flawed objectives or divorced from an understanding of the true situation are unlikely to yield much of value.
Decide when an under what circumstances you should meet with your counterpart. Assess key barriers to agreement and consider direct versus indirect approaches to overcoming those obstacles. Equating negotiation with merely “talking at the table” often risks failure, depending on the barriers to agreement. These can take many forms: economic (e.g., your counterpart has a better offer), psychological (e.g., there exists distrust, dislike, poor communication, or egotism), tactical (e.g., one party makes hardball moves, tells lies), setup related (e.g., key allies are not involved, self-interested agents selectively filter information) and so on.
To craft a strategy, employ a “wide-angle lens” to assess the full set of potentially relevant parties. Many negotiators think to narrowly about the parties to a negotiation, limiting their focus to those people necessary to sign an agreement or their direct agents. By contrast, before Kissinger settled on a negotiating strategy, he thoroughly assessed the situation, especially the full set of potentially involved and influential parties from key nations. Even if his target deal was with the Rhodesians, his party assessment was much broader. Not only did it include “external” parties, but also “internal” US parties. In particular, Kissinger made sure that his boss, the president, was part of the assessment and was fully behind his efforts.
All previous efforts had failed because they had started with negotiations with this representative of a white minority that had no conceivable incentive to abandon its dominance. We therefore proposed to deal with Smith only after the other parties’ commitments had been agreed. We could do nothing about the reality that Smith and his European minority had little to gain from our diplomacy. But we proposed to ease the transition by treating him with respect. I had no record with him either for good or ill and considered him a problem to be dealt with rather than an enemy to be overcome.
“Map backward” from your target deal to design a sequential “negotiation campaign.” With a target agreement in mind between you and a key party, decide whether a direct or indirect approach would be more promising. If you opt for an indirect approach, consider orchestrating a sequence of negotiations that puts in place the most promising possible setup for your ultimate negotiation with the key party.
Finally, on June 23, face-to-face with Vorster “in a smallish sitting room, I began — as was my habit in almost all negotiations – with a philosophical discussion of what we were trying to achieve.” For both geopolitical and moral reasons, the US was seeking peaceful transitions to majority rule in the region. But, Kissinger argued, “If Vorster identified the future of his country with the fate of Rhodesia and Namibia, the outcome would be complicated and surely considerably delayed. But in the end, majority rule was unavoidable in Rhodesia… Violence would increase; radicals would gain control of the armed struggle, aided probably by foreign forces, at which point South Africa would face the dilemma of holding still while the European populations or Rhodesia and Namibia were expelled, or joining the conflict.”
Kissinger neither threatened the South Africans nor lectured them. The Ford administration was not “waging a crusade against them as individuals; indeed, … we had compassion for the agonizing dilemmas bequeathed them by preceding generations… We were not out to punish them for their father’s sins or even their own — as were so many of their critics in the West. Rather, our goal was to bring them face-to-face with the realities and lead them as gently as possible to the acceptance of the fact that these realities dictated change both on moral and on political grounds.” As such, Kissinger “presented these views more in sorrow than in anger, not as a debate over South Africa’s past so much as an option for its future.”
“I think history is against you, but we want to buy time at least… If we can separate the South African issue from Rhodesia, it will give more time to deal with South Africa — unless Rhodesia is settled in a way that accelerates the problem.”
Empathy and assertiveness can be a potent combination. An empathetic style in negotiation is not the same as one expressing agreement or sympathy, but instead involves showing the other party your understanding of its perspective. This approach may have softened reflexive South African defensiveness. At the same time, Kissinger’s actions and requests (US denunciation of South African policies, US backing of harsh UN resolutions condemning South Africa, and US demands for Vorster to put serious pressure on Rhodesia) were highly assertive in substance — even though, during face-to-face negotiations, delivered “softly.”
The message may be harsh, but the delivery may be soft. While the content of Kissinger’s message to Vorster and, especially, Smith was quite tough, his style was low key and empathetic, not accusatory or demanding. This approach was more likely to elicit the agreement Kissinger sought than a more confrontational manner, which often evokes defensiveness and rejection. Kissinger later told us that, in his judgment, a blunt approach to Vorster or Smith “would have blown up the process.” As we note in an earlier “negotiation insight,” less effective negotiators often see a tradeoff between empathy and assertiveness when, in fact, one can be both empathetic in style and assertive in substance. Yet there is a risk to an empathetic approach: when an external audience (in this case, the more ardent opponents of apartheid) observes what appears to be conciliatory negotiating behavior, that audience may infer approval and vociferously object.
Effective negotiation often requires more than persuasive verbal exchange; actions away from the table to orchestrate incentives and penalties can be crucial to include the desired “yes.”
The Nixon Administration pursued two courses to achieve this goal. During the Middle East War, it kept open an almost daily channel of communication with the Kremlin to avoid permitting decisions to be taken in the heat of the moment on the basis of inadequate information.
Simultaneously we conducted negotiations on a range of issues in order to give the Soviet leaders a stake they would be reluctant to jeopardize. The Berlin negotiations contributed to Soviet restraint in the Middle East until well into 1973. Afterward, the European Security Conference helped to moderate the Soviet reaction during the various diplomatic shuttles that moved the Soviet Union to the fringes of Mideast diplomacy… Detente not only calmed the international situation, it created inhibitions which caused Soviet leaders to accept what amounted to a major geopolitical retreat.
This example highlights the characteristics of Kissinger the strategic negotiator: clear long-term objectives (ensure regional stability, enhance detente, reduce Soviet influence in the Middle East), a focus on the broader context and possible connections among parties and issues rather than treating them as independent (forge linkages among negotiations over disengagement with those over detente involving Berlin and European security), as well as a clear plan with direct and indirect elements, enhanced American credibility, and a flexibility of means while firmly maintaining ends.
Rogers had a shrewd analytical mind and outstanding common sense. Yet Rogers’s perspective was tactical; as a lawyer he was trained to deal with issues as the arose ‘on their merits.’
By comparison, Kissinger saw himself as a strategic negotiator. When he envisioned a desirable agreement that would advance broader interests but that was currently out of reach, he would conceive of moves he might make ahead of time and across different issues or regions. Such moves would often generate a more promising setup for achieving his target deal. In his words, “I attempted to relate events to each other, to create incentives or pressures in one part of the world to influence events in another. Rogers was keenly attuned to the requirements of particular negotiations. I wanted to accumulate nuances for a long-range strategy. Rogers was concerned with immediate reaction in the Congress and media, which was to some extent his responsibility as principal spokesman in foreign affairs. I was more worried about results some years down the road.
The challenge, then, is to devise a system in which change can be accommodated without producing chaos.
Scrowcroft judged that Kissinger had “the finest strategic mind I have ever come across. He could balance a whole lot of disparate issues and interrelate them all a year or two on. That was very rare. Several years later, all the strands would come together.”
During his years as a Harvard academic, prior to serving in government, Kissinger harshly criticized negotiations that were not pursuant to a clear set of larger interests and thus, in his view, that were consumed with largely meaningless tactical choices. For example, with respect to arms control, he argued that “because we lack a strategic doctrine… it is inevitable that our proposals… are fitful… developed as a compromise between competing groups and without an overall sense of purpose… typically we have been forced to assemble a set of hasty proposals because we have agreed to go to a conference under the pressure of world opinion… Attention has been focused on a fruitless controversy over whether we should be ‘conciliatory’ or ‘tough,’ ‘flexible’ or ‘rigid.’” In later faulting President Obama’s foreign policy for its lack of long-term strategic initiative, especially with respect to China and Iran, Kissinger echoed his earlier critique: “We must take care lest the Obama Doctrine become an essentially reactive and passive foreign policy.” More broadly, he argued that “Too much of our public debate deals with tactical expedients. What we need is a strategic concept and to establish priorities.”
More operationally and with respect to his team, he emphasized the importance of a continual and explicit focus on larger strategic objectives: “I have always put great stress on getting my associates to analyze where they are, where they want to go, where our country should go, and then work back from that to practical solutions… When I came to Washington, I assembled a group of really young, able, dedicated people. I would meet with them several times a week, preferably daily, asking the question, what are we trying to do? What is our strategy in the world?”
Kissinger’s focus on the potential interdependencies among parties and issues over time also helps explain the central role he gave to a reputation for “credibility” in his negotiations. Simply put, one’s credibility is the belief by others that one’s threats and promises will be carried out. To many people, fostering credibility seems a matter of common sense, though the concept has long been a controversial preoccupation both for those involved in foreign policy and for those who analyze it. Derided as the “credibility addiction” by some who believe that the US has made costly mistakes by overemphasizing this aspect of its policies, Kissinger sharply disagreed: “no serious policymaker” could debunk or ignore US credibility, as “scores of countries and millions of people relied for the security on our willingness to stand by allies.” Seemingly separate negotiations were, in Kissinger’s view, tightly connected by the beliefs of counterparts that the US would (or would not) act in accord with its words. Such beliefs in one negotiation heavily depended on US actions elsewhere. For example, Kissinger was concerned that too rapid a withdrawal from Vietnam would damage China’s respect for American power. After all, such power was a major factor that impelled China, facing Soviet threats, to seek rapprochement with the US. Kissinger reflected, “Peking had no interest in a demonstration that the US was prepared to dump its friend; in its long-range perspective of seeking a counterweight to the Soviet Union, Peking in fact had a stake in our reputation for reliability.” Yet, after years of fighting in Southeast Asia, it was unclear to many observers how heavily US credibility should have been weighed relative to the costs and prospects of military success, domestic cohesion, and other elements of America’s international reputation, prestige, and judgment.
Although hardly an absolute, maintaining the credibility of one’s words, promises, and threats is clearly an important factor in negotiation. As Kissinger stressed, “The one general rule I would apply for consideration is I tried never to leave Washington for a negotiation unless I had an 80 percent assurance it would succeed… One shouldn’t risk it as Secretary of State, because you use up your prestige too easily.”
In 2016, Kissinger compared credibility on the part of nation-states to a key quality for individuals: “Credibility for state plays the role of character for a human being. It provides a guarantee that its assurance can be relied upon by friends and its threats taken seriously by adversaries.”
What we call Kissinger’s “realistic” approach to negotiation becomes clearest in contrast to what he, somewhat tongue in cheek, caricatured as “theological” and “psychiatric” views of the process. Absolutist “theologians” see negotiation mainly as a useful tool for virtually imposing “terms” when one side has completely dominated the other. “Psychiatrists” are true believers in negotiation for its own sake in nearly all circumstances.
Since the theologians such as John Foster Dulles deemed the Soviet proclivity for world domination to be congenital, they did not consider Soviet leaders as suitable negotiating partners until the Kremlin had abandoned its ideology. And since the principal task of American foreign policy was seen as achieving the overthrow of the Soviets, comprehensive negotiations, or even diplomatic blueprint for them, were pointless (if not immoral) until ‘positions of strength’ had brought about a change in Soviet purposes.
According to the ‘psychiatric school,’ the Soviet leaders were not so different from the American in their desire for peace. They acted intransigently partly because the US had made them feel insecure. The ‘psychiatric school’ urged patience in order to strengthen the peace-loving segment of the Soviet leadership, which was said to be divided between hawks and doves in much the same way that the American government was.
The concept of interests is core to a realistic approach to negotiation. For Kissinger, a sophisticated interest assessment calls for carefully probing not only the view of one’s counterpart, but also the historical context shaping those views. This “requires a sense of history, an understanding of manifold forces not within our control, and a broad view of the fabric of events.”
Interest can certainly consist of territorial, military, economic, or other tangible assets, but the concept is broader. In fact, whatever the parties genuinely care about that is at stake in a negotiation, tangible or intangible, can be understood as n interest. Considerations as varied as mutual recognition, a cease-fire, one’s reputation, or your future credibility can all qualify as interests in a negotiation. As such, acting as a “realistic” negotiator need not imply indifference toward moral or ethical concerns. Indeed, Kissinger believes that a negotiator can, and should, be highly realistic about how to best negotiate to advance idealistic objectives.
Writing in 2014, Kissinger emphasized this point, but sharply critiqued a focus on advancing principles or ideals by rhetorical means without a realistic strategy: “If the old diplomacy sometimes failed to extend support for morally deserving political forces, the new diplomacy risks indiscriminate intervention disconnected from strategy. It declares moral absolutes to a global audience before it has become possible to assess the long-term intentions of the central actors, their prospects for success, or the ability to carry out a long-term policy… Order should not have priority over freedom. But the affirmation of freedom should be elevated from a mood to a strategy.”
Kissinger stresses the narrowness and practical limitations of this view. “Historically, negotiators have rarely relied exclusively on the persuasiveness of the argument,” he averred. “A country’s bargaining position has traditionally depended not only on the logic of its proposals but also on the penalties it could exact for the other side’s failure to agree.” For Kissinger, artificially separating actions at and away from the table is almost analytically, and practically, incoherent: “One fundamental principle that I have learned in diplomacy is that you cannot separate diplomacy from the consequences of action. The idea that you can have a diplomacy that is conducted like a graduate seminar without the rewards and penalties that attach to actions, it’s a fantasy.”
Even at the Congress of Vienna, long considered the model diplomatic conference, the settlement which maintained the peace of Europe for a century, was not achieved without the threat of war.
Kissinger warns bargainers not to crudely deploy sticks and carrots to influence behavior: “you have to be careful not to marshal them in such a way that looks like a demand for surrender, because then you are creating an additional incentive for resistance. Diplomacy and power are not discrete activities. They are linked, though not in the sense that each time negotiations stall, you resort to force. It simply means that the opposite number in a negotiation needs to know that there is a breaking point at which you will attempt to impose your will. Otherwise, there will be a deadlock or a diplomatic defeat.”
As we launch into an analysis of the Vietnam talks, we step back briefly to emphasize a point that is basic to any effective negotiation: an accurate assessment of your interests. It drives the target agreement you seek to reach and often influences your strategy and tactics. If the assumptions underlying your interest assessment are deeply flawed, even a superb negotiation strategy and tactical brilliance cannot be truly successful.
To them [the North Vietnamese] the Paris talks were not a device for settlement but an instrument of political warfare. They were a weapon to exhaust us psychologically, to split us from our South Vietnamese ally, and to divide our public opinion through vague hints of solutions just out of reach because of the foolishness or obduracy of our government. No negotiator, least of all the hard-boiled revolutionaries from Hanoi, will settle so long as he knows that his opposite number will be prevented from sticking to a position by constantly escalating domestic pressures.
My aim was to weave a complex web that would give us the greatest number of options. Though favoring a strong military reaction, I never wanted to rely on power alone or, for that matter, on negotiation by itself. In my view diplomacy and strategy should support each other. I always favored preceding or at least accompanying a military move with a diplomatic one, even when I rated the chances of success as low. If it were accepted, we would achieve the goal of our diplomacy. If rejected, a conciliatory offer would help sustain our military effort with our public.
Still, we need to distinguish between decision making at the outset of a challenge and later. For example, knowing after the fact that you lost a lawsuit need not imply that you should have preemptively settled at the outset if your initial decision was driven by an informed and favorable assessment of the odds, costs, and benefits of going to court. It might have been a good decision to fight, but a bad outcome when you lost. Similarly, betting your life savings on the lottery, and winning, would represent a terrible decision but a terrific outcome.
Yet, for its ultimate success, any negotiation depends on the quality of the assumptions that led to undertaking it in the first place. Brilliant tactics used to acquire a company whose value you have grossly overestimated will not go down as a triumph. Sophisticated legislative coalition building on behalf of a badly designed policy initiative will still be regarded as a failure. Even though, for analytic purposes, one might learn a great deal from studying the negotiating strategy and tactics in such cases, the outcome will inevitably reflect badly on the process.
The effectiveness of a threat to use force or the actual use of force as part of a negotiation depends on many factors, especially the credibility of the threatening party along with his or her capability to carry out the threat. Whether such a threat produces a “yes” also depends on whether the threat can be clearly communicated, the expected cost of the threat to the target relative to the cost of giving in to the demands of the threatening party, the target’s confidence that agreeing to the threatening party’s demand will really avoid the use of force, and the target’s capacity and will to resist. Even with all these conditions satisfied, violence can produce seemingly irrational responses. It can backfire, leading to mutually destructive escalation. These factors have been extensively studied, generally under the heading of “coercive diplomacy.”
At a minimum, this work on coercive diplomacy makes abundantly clear that no simple equation connects amount of force with results. Blunting the massive North Vietnamese offensive in April 1972 almost surely turned the tide at the bargaining table in Paris. Yet the sheer extent of American military force focused on a small, poor region in Southeast Asia is remarkable. For example, almost 2.6 million US troops served in South Vietnam; the tonnage of bombs dropped on North Vietnam exceeded that dropped on Germany, Japan, and Italy in WW2. That this amount of force did not lead to outright victory should confound any naive predictions about the effectiveness of raw power in producing desired outcomes.
Treating force and diplomacy as discrete phenomena caused our power to lack purpose and our negotiations to lack force.
As with this and earlier examples, Kissinger frequently looks to history for insight into coalitional dynamics that could lead to decisive opposing coalitions. He warned against the dominant power throwing its weight around in a manner that would stimulate smaller states to coalesce in opposition. He observed that “Bordering more neighbors than any other European state, Germany was stronger than any single neighbor but weaker than a coalition of all of them. Ironically, Germany’s attempt to break up these incipient coalitions by threats or blackmail before WW1 became a self-fulfilling prophecy that rendered the emergence of hostile coalitions almost inevitable.”
Kissinger drew a similar lessons from the Soviet’s military buildup. “The generation governing the Soviet Union in the 1970s accumulated military and geopolitical power less as an expression of long-range geopolitical aims than as a substitute for them. Inevitably the pursuit of strength for its own sake frightened most of the non-communist world and brought about a tacit coalition of all industrial nations plus China against the Soviet Union, which made its ultimate collapse inevitable.” More recently, China’s aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas have worried neighboring countries, tending to drive them closer together. Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014 produced a similar effect on European countries, who began to increase their defense spending in response.
With respect to the most promising approach after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, he reflected that “we had to make a basic strategic decision: Shall we go now for an overall settlement or continue the step-by-step? An overall effort has its advantages. Most importantly one can put everything on the table; one can argue the framework of final settlement with full knowledge of the objectives of all sides involved. But the disadvantages are that it would bring all the Arabs together, and when this happens the radical Arabs would have the upper hand. Then the Soviets would always be able to outbid whatever else was on the table and the radical Arabs would, of course, have to opt for what the Soviets had to offer.
From Vietnam to Syria to Rhodesia, Henry Kissinger has stressed that “the secret of negotiations is meticulous preparation.” Time and again, Kissinger’s staff and counterparts attested to his fine-grained grasp of the issues. Former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir remarked on Kissinger’s “fantastic capacity for dealing with the minutest of details of whatever problems he undertakes to solve.”
Beyond mastery of the issues, “meticulous preparation” to Kissinger meant developing clarity on his own interests and on the psychology, purposes, concerns, perceptions, relationships, political context, and culture of his opposite number(s). To prepare, he zooms out: envisioning a target agreement and provisional strategy, developing a realistic grasp of the deal/no-deal balance, often making game-changing moves to tilt that balance favorably.
And he zooms in: he cultivates an understanding of his individual counterparts and then customizes his interpersonal approach and tactics.
By contrast, a sophisticated negotiator dealing with a “revolutionary” power may find standard negotiation approaches misplaced. Kissinger observed that in these situations, “diplomats can still meet but they cannot persuade each other. Instead, diplomatic conferences become elaborate stage plays which seek to influence and win over public opinion in other nations. They are less a forum for negotiation than a platform for propaganda.”
Choosing the most appropriate moves at the table, therefore, depends on analyzing the real nature of the negotiation at hand and whether it is in a preliminary or later stage.
Dobrynin was a classic product of the Communist society. Born into a family of 12 children, and the first member of his family to go to a university, he had benefited from the system that he represented so ably. He was trained as an electrical engineer and seconded to the Foreign Ministry during the war. Whether he owed his flexibility to his training in a subject relatively free of deadening ideology, or to a natural disposition, he was one of the few Soviet diplomats of my acquaintance who could understand the psychology of others. He knew how to talk to Americans in a way brilliantly attuned to their preconceptions. He too was especially skilled at evoking the inexhaustible American sense of guilt, by persistently but pleasantly hammering home the impression that every deadlock was our fault. He understood that a reputation for reliability is an important asset in foreign policy. Subtle and disciplined, warm in his demeanor while wary in his conduct, Dobrynin moved through the upper echelons of Washington with consummate skill.
Kissinger reminded Ford of the importance to Brezhnev of the upcoming meeting: “to be seen in the company of the US President, or closeted with you in secret sessions fills a deep seated Russian need to be accepted as an equal.”
Brezhnev is a mixture of crudeness and warmth. He has … love of physical contact — back slapping, bear hugs, and kisses … prides himself on being a sportsman … He vows he will never give up hunting, and he remains an avid soccer fan … He is given to incessant complaining to his colleagues about minor ailments, the workload … Brezhnev is a nervous man, partly because of his personal insecurity, partly for physiological reasons traced to his consumption of alcohol and tobacco, his history of heart disease and the pressures of his job. You will find his hands perpetually in motion, twirling his gold watch chain, flicking ashes from his ever-present cigarette. WW2 remains an earth shaking experience for him. He knows something of the human disaster of war — one should credit him with genuine abhorrence of it, though, of course, he uses fear of war in others to obtain political ends. Brezhnev probably will remind you of a tough and shrewd union boss, conscious of his position and his interests, alert to slights. He will try to flatter you. When he wants something, Brezhnev will be voluble in explaining how much in your interest a certain position is; he may intimate that it took a great deal of effort to get his colleagues to agree to a concession… He may stall interminably, but once he moves he will want things settled at once.
A convenient distinction between Mao and Zhou is to cite the Chairman as the philosopher and Zhou as the practitioner. Thus we can think of Mao as the philosopher, the poet, the grand strategist, the inspirer, the romantic. He sets the direction and the framework and leaves the implementation to his trusted lieutenant. He can be counted on to speak in broad, philosophic, historic terms and leave the negotiations to Zhou. He will want to talk about the long view, the basic tides running in the world, where China and the US are heading, with each other and with others.
Zhou is the tactician, the administrator, the negotiator, the master of details and thrust and parry. His emphasis will be on the concrete substantive issues and he will invoke the Chairman’s authority and prescience with what seems total sincerity. However, this distinction between the two men can be misleading. Zhou is perfectly at home on the philosophic plane, and he couches his tactical arguments in historical and conceptual terms. Zhou is clearly running China. He is the dominant figure in both the party and the government, and he steers both foreign and domestic policy.
Mao can be as ruthlessly pragmatic as he is ideologically fanatic … after all, in the past half-dozen years, a whole string of his closest associates have been declared guilty of the most serious crimes and whisked out of sight — including two hand-picked heirs and his personal secretary… Again and again, Mao has faced one towering crisis after another — the annihilation campaigns of Chiang, Long March, Japanese invasion, civil war with the Nationalists, Korean War, Great Leap Forward, split with Moscow, Cultural Revolution, progressive Soviet encirclement. Surmounting such challenges requires vision as well as tactics… Mao’s peasant background is evident in his direct and earthly humor, which he often used to ridicule or disarm opponents.
Zhou is charming, articulate and tough… You can be sure that he has done his homework, not only on the issues, but also on America and you personally… His negotiating style is extremely effective and requires finesses to counter. If he states a position in absolute terms, he will stick by it at least for a while,. He is not to be pressed if he is not ready to be pressed.
If, however, he is at all evasive or ambiguous — which is the usual case — this suggests room for exploration. In this case it is better to go at the issue circuitously rather than frontally. Either later in a meeting, or on an informal occasion, you could pick up the subject again and suggest another approach. He might then absorb this and come back subsequently with a new statement incorporating elements of what you said but presenting it as the Chinese view.
The indirect approach, the use of analogy, is typical of the Chinese in general and Zhou in particular. Almost everything he says, no matter how far it seems to stray from the subject at hand, is making a relevant point. This oblique style is not at all inconsistent with candor. Indeed, frankness was one of the dominant elements in our talks with Zhou and frankness would serve you well in your conversations.
Zhou can be extremely — and suddenly — tough. Both General Haig and I have been treated to withering blasts… You should not let such statements stand but rather respond very firmly, though non-abusively. If you start pulling back he will stay on the offensive.
In sum, these people are both fanatic and pragmatic. They are tough ideologues who totally disagree with us on where the world is going, or should be going. At the same time, they are hard realists who calculate they need us because of a threatening Soviet Union, a resurgent Japan, and a potentially independent Taiwan…
Yet… these leaders are in their seventies, and they surely want to reach certain goals before they depart the scene… [the internal opposition to both men] underlines the great gamble that Mao and Zhou have taken in dealing with us and inviting you. Thus they will need to show some immediate results for their domestic audience.
The Soviet insist on their prerogatives as a great power. The Chinese establish a claim on the basis of universal principles and a demonstration of self-confidence that attempts to make the issue of power irrelevant. The China of Mao and Zhou had absorbed conquerors and had proved its inward strength by imposing its social and intellectual style on them. Its leaders were aloof, self-assured, composed. Brezhnev represented a nation that had survived not by civilizing its conquerors but by outlasting them… he sought to obscure his lack of assurance by boisterousness.
Golda Meir was a founder of her country. Every inch of land for which Israel had fought was to her a token of her people’s survival; it would be stubbornly defended against enemies; it would be given up only for a tangible guarantee of security. She had a penetrating mind, leavened by earthiness and a mischievous sense of humor. She was not taken in by elevated rhetoric, or particularly interested in the finer points of negotiating tactics. She cut to the heart of the matter. She answered pomposity with irony and dominated conversations by her personality and shrewd psychology. To me she acted as a benevolent aunt toward an especially favored nephew, so that even to admit the possibility of disagreement was a challenge to family hierarchy producing emotional outrage. It was usually calculated.
And since many negotiations have an extensive internal and domestic component, it is hardly surprising that Kissinger assessed his US government colleagues, such as Secretary of State William Rogers, as carefully as his foreign counterparts.
Provided he was allowed some reasonable range for saving face by maneuvering to a new position without embarrassment, Laird accepted bureaucratic setbacks without rancor… In working with him, intellectual arguments were only marginally useful and direct orders were suicidal. I eventually learned that it was safest to begin a battle with Laird by closing off insofar as possible all his bureaucratic or Congressional escape routes, provided I could figure them out, which was not always easy. Only then would I broach substance. But even with such tactics I lost as often as I won.
An experienced negotiator — which by this time, I was — develops a sixth sense for when the other side is ready to settle. The signals are usually matters of nuance: Some issues are not pressed to the absolute limit; some claims are marginally modified; the door to compromise is always kept tangentially ajar.
Calibrating for limited available information and inevitable personal bias, we note the exquisite care Kissinger took to understand with whom he or the president will be dealing. As he put it with respect to Nixon’s China visit, “I know no Presidential trip that was as carefully planned,” with voluminous briefing books on the issues, suggested talking points, and “lengthy analyses of the personalities.” These were not recitation of a few throwaway adjectives (e.g., “tough,” “smart,” “wily”) plus simple biographical details (e.g., education, career trajectory). Instead, they were nuanced assessments, Kissinger often spelled out recommendations for the most effective strategy and tactics. Even where information is scarce, this is an invaluable practice for effective negotiators.
It is not merely distinctive individual characteristics that matters. To avoid error, effective negotiators must understand the limits implied by their counterparts’ cultural, political, and institutional contexts. This requires both awareness of gaps in one’s knowledge and a determination to fill them. As Kissinger noted, “When I first came into office, there was no major country I understood less than Japan. Like most Americans, I admired its extraordinary recovery from the devastation of WW2. But I did not grasp Japan’s unique character.” Indeed, after the 1973 War, Kissinger failed to persuade Japan’s prime minister to follow American policy; in large part, the path Kissinger urged would have left Japan subject to a devastating oil embargo.
High office in Japan is not an entitlement to issue orders, much less to rule by decree; it basically confers the privilege of taking the lead in persuading one’s colleagues. A Japanese PM is the custodian of national consensus, not the creator of it. Faced with American negotiators seeking to sway him on a personal level through the insistent reiteration of arguments or personal charm — as if the failure to agree were the result of incomprehension — the Japanese leader takes refuge in obscure evasions or, if pressed to the wall, implies the promise of something he cannot implement.
Summits between American presidents and Japanese PMs therefore all to frequently end in frustration. The American president asks for a decision — that is, an act of will to be imposed on reluctant colleagues or on a resistant bureaucracy. Since no modern Japanese PM has — or has ever had — that much authority, any acquiescence expresses at best a commitment to make an effort to persuade, not to command. Until the group relevant to the consensus (usually those who have to implement the decision) agrees that there is no alternative, the promise cannot be fulfilled. The single-mindedness of the consensus process is purchased at the cost of a seeming imperviousness to the sensibilities and views of foreigners and a languid pace in reaching decisions.
Because Israeli cabinets represent a coalition of competing personalities as well as parties, the opening Israeli position generally represents the sum of every key minister’s preferences — especially when there is not a dominant PM, as was the case at the time of Rabin’s first cabinet. Israeli negotiators modify their positions only after they have demonstrated to themselves and, above all, to their colleagues that there is no blood left to be squeezed out of the stone or, when there is a mediator — as there was during the shuttles — by saddling him with the blame for not having achieved their maximum position.
Extracting a concession from an Israeli government is usually a hair-raising enterprise. But one has to understand the dilemma. When you have a country 50 miles wide at its widest point and with a very narrow margin of survival, you cannot run risks. And when you are of the generation who had with their own blood acquired every territory, you could understand the reluctance. They never authorized their negotiators with general instructions, so they had to have specific ones.
Given the dominant image of Kissinger as a geopolitical grandmaster moving pieces ong the global chessboard in pursuit of what he saw as American interests, some may be surprised at the stress he places on developing personal relationships and rapport in negotiation. Predictably, Kissinger maintains the primacy of national interest over personal or relational considerations. Yet national interest was not the whole story.
Kissinger observed that “Very often there arises a gray area where the national interest is not self-evident or is disputed…” In such situations, Kissinger places a premium on the distinctive value of direct personal interactions with counterparts. Often, direct contact is key because “they have to have explained to them what is really being thought, which you can’t put through cables.” In these interactions, building trust can pay off.
Kissinger emphasizes the importance of developing and nurturing relationships before the needs of specific negotiation arise. Indeed, while our immediate focus will be on relationships with specific people, Kissinger built such relationships into an astonishing large and varied network that extended far beyond official channels to include journalists, press and TV personalities, as well as cultural figures and academics. This carefully nurtured network proved to be a formidable asset.
Along with former secretary of state George Shultz, who underscored the importance of “tending the diplomatic garden” for relationships to flourish, Kissinger observed that “It’s very important to establish relationships before you need anything, so that there is a measure of respect in negotiations once they occur or when a crisis develops. When you travel as Secretary, sometimes the best result is that you don’t try to get a result but to try to get an understanding for the next time you go to them.” Repeated personal contacts among leaders can help align goals and “keep the machinery of cooperation in working order.”
What the negotiator has to have, there has to be a channel in which the two sides can tell each other, at a minimum, what their thinking is, because you spend a lot of time in high office on the intentions of other countries. These other countries tell you accurately what their intentions are, and if you develop enough confidence in that, it facilitates the process of decision making. Of course it’s possible that they fool you and it’s possible that they tell you something, but they can do it only once, and then they’ve destroyed the channel. So what we could do through the Dobrynin channel was to permit the exploration of ideas.
It is almost always a mistake for heads of state to undertake the details of a negotiation. They are then obliged to master specifics normally handled by their foreign offices and are deflected onto subjects more appropriate to their subordinates, while being kept from issues only heads of state can resolve. Since no one without a well-developed ego reaches the highest office, compromise is difficult and deadlocks are dangerous. As a general negotiating rule, I think it is very dangerous for heads of state to meet unless they know the outcome pretty well, because they are people of strong egos and there’s nobody to appeal to if it fails.
When people talked to Kissinger, they had the feeling that he empathized with their point of view, even if they were ideologically at different poles. Whether they were conservatives or liberals, each one felt that Kissinger at least understood their point of view and may have been sympathetic with it.
The same negotiators meet over and over again; their ability to deal with one another is undermined if a diplomat acquires a reputation for evasion or duplicity.
The opening of a complicated negotiation is like the beginning of an arranged marriage. The partners know that the formalities will soon be stripped away as they discover each other’s real attributes. Neither party can yet foretell at what point necessity will transform itself into acceptance; where the abstract desire for progress will leave at least residues of understanding; which disagreement will, by the act of being overcome, illuminate the as-yet-undiscovered sense of community and which will lead to an impasse destined to rend the relationship forever. The future being mercifully veiled, the parties attempt what they might not dare did they know what was ahead.
Kissinger urges learning as much as possible about the situation before advocating one’s own views, interests, or positions. In part, was we have highlighted, one learns through meticulous preparation. Yet even the best preparation yields incomplete understanding. As Kissinger explained, “Almost invariably I spent the first session of a new negotiation in educating myself. I almost never put forward a proposal. Rather, I sought to understand the intangibles in the position of my interlocutor and to gauge the scope as well as the limits of probable concessions.”
Many people think of negotiation as nothing more than haggling, not unlike a bazaar: one side makes an initial extreme offer, and counteroffers follow. Concessions are slowly made in the hope that the parties may ultimately converge on a deal. Early in his career and later, reflecting on the experience, Kissinger both characterized and critiqued the standard bargaining approach: “If agreement is usually found between two starting points, there is no point making moderate offers. Good bargaining technique would suggest a point of departure far more extreme than what one is willing to accept. The more outrageous the initial proposition the better is the prospect that one ‘really’ wants will be considered a compromise.”
“One tactic — and indeed the traditional approach — is to outline one’s maximum position and gradually retreat to a more attainable stance. Such a tactic is much beloved by negotiators eager to protect their domestic standing. Yet while it appears ‘tough’ to start with an extreme set of demands, the process amounts to a progressive weakening ushered in by the abandonment of the opening move. The other party is tempted to dig in at each stage to see what the next modification will bring and to turn the negotiating process into a test of endurance.”
Instead of tactical exaggeration, Kissinger counsels clearly conveying to the other side one’s own objectives and underlying interests. He argues that failure to do so is an enemy of effective negotiation. Recall, for example, his early focus with South African PM: “I began — as was my habit in almost all negotiations — with a philosophical discussion of what we were trying to achieve.”
“I made a considerable effort to leave no doubt about our fundamental approach. Only romantics think they can prevail in negotiation by trickery; only pedants believe in the advantage of obfuscation. In a society of sovereign states, an agreement will be maintained only if all parties consider it in their interest. They must have a sense of participation in the result. The art of diplomacy is not to outsmart the other side but to convince it either of common interests of of penalties if an impasse continues. The wise diplomat understands that he cannot afford to trick his opponent; in the long run a reputation for reliability and fairness is an important asset. The same negotiators meet over and over again; their ability to deal with one another is undermined if a diplomat acquires a reputation for evasion or duplicity.”
The preferable course is to make opening proposals close to what one judges to be the most sustainable outcome, a definition of ‘sustainable’ in the abstract being one that both sides have an interest in maintaining.
Remaining close to what one judges to be the most sustainable outcome, rather than “starting high and conceding slowly,” carries another potential benefit. It avoids one of the risks of developing a reputation for tactical “flexibility.” Kissinger observed that “American diplomacy is urged to be ‘flexible’; it feels an obligation to break deadlocks with new proposals — unintentionally inviting new deadlocks to elicit new proposals. These tactics can be used by determined adversaries in the service of a strategy of procrastination.”
When Kissinger deviated from his own “anti-haggling” advice, however Zhou Enlai unexpectedly jolted him back to what turned out to be a far more productive approach. Zhou urged negotiating on the merits rather than engaging in simple horse trading. In Kissinger’s words, “While drafting the Shanghai Communique with Zhou Enlai, I at one point offered to trade an offensive phrase in the Chinese draft for something in the American version to which Zhou might object. ‘We will never get anywhere this way,’ he replied. ‘If you can convince me why our phrase is offensive, I will give it to you.’”
The optimum moment for negotiations is when things appear to be going well. To yield to pressures is to invite them; to acquire the reputation for short staying power is to give the other side a powerful incentive for protracting negotiations. When a concession is made voluntarily if provides the greatest incentive for reciprocity. It also provides the best guarantee for staying power. In the negotiations that I conducted I always tried to determine the most reasonable outcome and then get there rapidly in one or two moves. This was derided as a strategy of ‘preemptive concession’ by those who like to make their moves in driblets and at the last moment. But I consider that strategy useful primarily for placating bureaucracies and salving conscience for it impresses novices as a demonstration of toughness.
Usually it proves to be self-defeating; shaving the salami encourages the other side to hold on to see what the next concession is likely to be, never sure that one has really reached the rock-bottom position. Thus, in many negotiations I undertook — with the Vietnamese and others — I favored big steps taken when they were least expected, when there was a minimum of pressure, and creating the presumption that we would stick to that position. I almost always opposed modifications of our negotiating position under duress.”
Evidently, the realist in Kissinger regards actions and results, not words, as of supreme importance: “Statesmen prize steadiness and reliability in a partner, not a restless quest for ever-new magic formulas.” With respect to heads of state negotiating during summits, he cautions about the risk of merely papering over differences: “Deadlocks become difficult to break. Agreement may be achievable only by formulas so vague as to invite later disavowal or disagreement.”
Creative wordsmithing, however, can facilitate mutually beneficial results where clumsier formulation would result in impasse.
Just words? Hardly. Innumerable examples of such creatively ambiguous diplomatic formulations dot Kissinger’s negotiations. The common denominator is often a face-saving formulation that enables both sides to declare victory and move past previous blockages.
‘Constructive ambiguity’ is logically ugly but has been strategically effective. If all parties avoid talking about one big conceptual issue on which they disagree, they can engage in countless practical ways. Or creative ambiguity may buy enough time to improve relationships sufficiently to address the substance of deferred issues that earlier had been too contentious to negotiate.
Challenged by journalists on the correct interpretation of an ambiguous description he had used, Kissinger became testy: “For Christ’s sake, leave everyone their face-saving formula! If it pleases the Israeli to consider it ‘direct’ if they are in the same room with Egyptians, and Sadat prefers to call this ‘indirect’ if somebody else is there, what the hell difference does it make?” However, some constructively ambiguous “solutions” may blow up if they merely paper over fundamental disagreement that will soon surface.
In some cases, however, any words of agreement may be too costly to utter or formalize in an accord. However constructively ambiguous the proposed deal, it may be unacceptable if formally demanded. Former secretary of state George Shultz wisely noted bargaining situations in which a counterpart’s view was “I can live with that as long as I don’t have to agree to it, but if you make me agree to it, I won’t be able to live with it.” Kissinger, too, understood the value of so-called tacit bargaining in obtaining de facto agreement on desirable results.
Normally such tacit agreements can be potentially useful when a powerful internal or external stakeholder group or audience would oppose a formal deal, and would impose costs on a negotiator who agreed to one. A tacit agreement may yield the desired substance, if not the form, without many of the potential costs.
Experienced negotiators know that few deals result simply from the brilliant insight or dramatic stroke. An intelligent strategy plus the willingness and ability on the part of the negotiators to grind away, pushing the process toward a conclusion, are often essential ingredients for a deal. Kissinger exemplified the kind of sustained negotiating drive needed to transform a strategic conception into a workable agreement. Along with many others, British PM Ted Heath noted Kissinger’s “limitless capacity for hard work and an imperviousness to the strains of travel and long hours of negotiation.”
The willingness and ability to grind away can be essential, but to what precise purposes and to power what tactics? Kissinger commented on the dynamics of the negotiation process that could influence tactical choice: “In the course of every negotiation, a point is reached when the parties either conclude that they will eventually come together or that they are hopelessly deadlocked. In the former case, the negotiation gathers steam; individual issues are reconsidered in the light of imminent consensus. In the latter instance, though the process may drag on for some time, the negotiation is doomed because, from then on, the parties concentrates on shifting the blame for failure to each other.”
These positive or negative dynamics do not operate autonomously; the concerted action of astute negotiators can drive the momentum forward. Kissinger argued that “Speed… is often of essence. Every negotiation reaches a critical point where it will move rapidly to a conclusion or lapse into stagnation. This is when the highest levels of government must engage themselves to overcome bureaucratic inertia.” When Kissinger used the term momentum, he meant a shard sense among the negotiators of accelerating movement toward, or away from, an agreement. And this perception can have the quality of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Shuttling, though, could be useful for other reasons. Foremost is building momentum and creating a sense of urgency. The whirlwind of publicity and the jet-powered pace of Kissinger’s missions swept up the negotiators on each side and created a momentum that made last-minute breakthroughs more likely. Kissinger elaborates that in a shuttle, the presence of a high-level American mediator supplies the deadline and hence a sense of urgency. The parties have an incentive to consider what cost a stalemate might exact in terms of their relationship with the US.
When one side dug its heels for a protracted time, however, Kissinger was clear that the shuttle would not be effective. Moreover, if either or both sides suspected bias or a private agenda on the part of the mediator, the process could break down.
All these concerns were treated as if they existed in a vacuum. No reference was made to the global implication of Sino-Soviet tensions and the opportunities for us in the triangular relationship. The paper placed excessive emphasis on China’s ideology and alleged militancy; I thought the issue should be posed differently. Which of our problem with China were caused by its size and situation and which by its leadership? What did we want from China and how could we reasonably influence its decisions? How did we view the evolution of Sino-Soviet relations; how much could we influence them and which side should we favor?
I attempted to relate events to each other, to create incentives or pressures in one part of the world to influence events in another. I wanted to accumulate nuances for a long-range strategy. I was more worried about results some years down the road.
A vital negotiation practice involves always asking whether a particular negotiation has longer-term significance. For example, in deciding the amount of financial and managerial resources that should be allocated to fighting or settling a lawsuit, a key judgment involves the legal and practical precedents that may be set. Settling the suit for less than it would cost to defend it might seem appealing if the focus is on this specific case. But such a settlement might act as a precedent that would invite many more similar suits in the future. Fighting it in court might cost more in the short run but lead to savings in the long run.