By Patricia H. Kushlis
A must-read article on international negotiations has just appeared in the September/October 2009 Foreign Affairs magazine.
Unfortunately, the article entitled “Without Conditions,” plays sixth fiddle to those that precede it. Moreover, it is squeezed in just before a special - heavily featured - section devoted to climate change. Besides that you have to be a subscriber, buy the article, or visit a library with a subscription to read it.
There’s reams of just plain good common sense crammed into “Without Conditions.” My suggestion for those short on time is to forget the hype and the special and concentrate on six pages of jargon-free English aimed at US and Israeli policy makers in particular - especially those looking to employ quiet diplomacy in dealing with relations with adversaries - as well as for the rest of us who just want to understand better how a country can succeed at the bargaining table in resolving seemingly irresolvable differences without resorting to a call to arms.
Yet, if you don’t look carefully, “Without Conditions” (pp. 84-90) will most likely pass you by. That’s a mistake because author and Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra raises some of the most important dilemmas facing this country today: when to negotiate with an enemy, and what, if any, preconditions to insist upon before doing so.
The preconditions dilemma
Negotiations with other countries were – for the most part – anathema to the George W. Bush administration. From that administration’s perspective, to negotiate at all was a sign of weakness. Heaven forbid: that administration didn’t want to appear weak when it commanded the largest military in the world many times over and saw the use of force as the primary way to keep America safe and at the pinnacle of world power. Besides, the US military and its industrial complex have built a huge constituency in the country while the State Department has not.
Between 2001 and January 20, 2009, setting impossible preconditions, therefore, became a favorite American delaying tactic. This way the US could appear on the side of the angels, so to speak, when the other country – be it North Korean, Iran, Iraq or Russia – failed to respond to the administration’s demands that the country in question meet whatever preconditions the US had decided to impose that day.
“The cessation of violence,” Malhotra points out “is perhaps the most common precondition that governments evaluate when considering diplomatic engagement” with an adversary “but it is far from the only one.” The question, however, remains: “the ability of extremists to derail negotiations through violence and belligerence presents policymakers with a high stakes dilemma: Should the muzzling of extremism be set as a precondition to negotiations, or should negotiations be initiated in order to reduce support for extremism?”
It all depends: but it is also not a chicken and egg question
Although Malhotra suggests that “failing to set preconditions when they are useful can undermine the effectiveness of a negotiating strategy . . . preconditions that are ill conceived may eliminate the prospect of diplomatic engagement.”
“To determine whether and when to impose preconditions, governments should make two assessments: First whether the other side is able to meet them and second whether “agreeing to the preconditions significantly reduces the other side’s bargaining power.”
Preconditions, according to Malhotra, are “appropriate only when they satisfy both criteria: the opponent is capable of meeting them and doing so will not weaken future leverage.”
Policy-makers also have to consider timing – namely whether it is better to begin negotiations in the short term or hold out until some time in the future when conditions might be better. Malhotra argues that in the case of North Korea “Delays will only increase its relative bargaining strength as Pyongyang continues to expand its nuclear capability.”
It seems to me that the timing question may also help clarify why the Obama administration is looking to impose a short deadline on Iran. What may have thrown US calculations off in the Iranian case is the unknown effect on Iran’s national security apparatus of the ongoing Iranian internal power struggle that erupted in June. What the administration has seemed to recognize is that action on the part of the US would be seen as meddling in Iranian affairs and that a putative military attack on the country’s nuclear infrastructure would be counterproductive.
The virtue of ideological purity = the vice of impracticality
When a government sets preconditions – as the US did – of refusing to talk to groups with ties to terrorists – “the position has the virtue of ideological purity but the vice of impracticality.” Nevertheless, in one way or another, those perpetrating violence need representation at the bargaining table. This was demonstrated in Northern Ireland when Sinn Fein with its ties to the IRA was allowed by Ulster “to negotiate the issue of violence.” As Malhotra suggests: “not all extremists are willing to negotiate, but efforts to exclude those groups that are willing to come to the bargaining table or send their proxies are ultimately self-defeating.”
And finally, he points out that setting preconditions may have domestic political roots: that even governments predisposed to negotiate may be wary of public opposition to them. Too often, he argues, a public tends to support such demands as “just claims against an enemy that has behaved immorally or illegally.” That is certainly true and, in my view, overcoming simplistic black and white foreign policy jingoism that is stoked by the right-wing media in this democracy too, needs to happen. Fast. But it won't be easy.