The Program on Negotiation

After a few weeks on vacation, I’m back at PON for about another month. For this entry, I thought I’d depart a little from the usual format and do some thinking about (gulp) politics. But I’ll refrain from taking partisan positions (that’s the plan, anyway).

At the beginning of the month, Barack Obama said something in a press conference relating to negotiation, creating a fairamount of uproar in the process. In response to a question about whether he would meet separately with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea during his first year in office as President, Obama replied, “I would. And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this Administration, is ridiculous.”

Sounds familiar. It seems like one of the fundamental tenets behind the Program on Negotiation is that talking – to government leaders, business leaders, your friends, whomever – is in fact a viable solution, or at least a logical step, in resolving seemingly intractable conflicts. The vast majority of research that I’ve done here has supported this principle, and it’s something that I personally believe as well.

However…

If Obama is to be taken at face value, and refusing to be in diplomatic contact with adversaries has in fact been a guiding principle of foreign policy for the past eight years, why?

There can’t possibly be no logical reasoning at all behind the “no talking” rule. And whether or not I agree or disagree with current foreign policy, I find it impossible to believe that no one in President Bush’s team of policymakers is an intelligent person. There’s got to be some logic there. So how is it that these two groups of smart people – the shapers of foreign policy and the theorists behind interest-based negotiation – have come to such different conclusions?

It seems like the easy answer is that there are times when you should not talk, times when you should not negotiate with your adversary, and when silence (or other action) is the best option. How to recognize these times is a different story and a much harder question to answer. In fact, disagreement over the threshold between negotiation and a refusal to talk seems to be the major point of variation for the many different viewpoints on this issue.

It might be that the conclusions of this school of foreign policy and interest-based negotiators aren’t that different after all. I’m not sure that any negotiator would say that one should always negotiate in any situation, no matter regardless of circumstances. But I doubt – would hope, at least – that foreign policymakers would also say that there do exist instances when it is “okay” to negotiate with adversaries.

One of the experiences I have with this general issue is in the field of mediation, when a key determination happens early on in the intake process, as the case coordinator decides whether a case is appropriate for mediation. It’s definitely a distinction that I didn’t understand at first, having a lot of faith in mediation as a conflict management strategy – even if there is no agreement, wouldn’t the talking process be of some use to the parties, in some small way? But it soon became clear that there are many instances when mediation is not a good option – many of which center on concerns about rationality (if a party is mentally ill, if for whatever reason they are likely to go back on the agreement, etc.).

Do fears about rationality underlie the positions held by those in the supposed “no talking” school of foreign policy? Do we not negotiate with North Korea because we believe ourselves to be rational and they to be irrational and unpredictable?

I know I said I wouldn’t take political positions, but to be honest, this thought makes me pretty pessimistic about our ability to resolve conflicts with adversaries. A level of mistrust that runs so deep as to question an opponent’s logical stability sounds very hard to displace. It holds up “talking” as a sort of privilege that friendly countries can take advantage of, and that adversaries have to earn, and I’d question whether talking should hold that kind of a role. Even with fear of an adversary’s irrationality in place, the choice of an approach involving a flat-out refusal to talk seems like it is in effect, for lack of a better phrase, letting the fear win.

But like I said, there’s probably not a single negotiator who would always choose dialogue in every instance. So the question remains: when should you not negotiate?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 @ 1:50 pm on the category PON Intern - Sara. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 Both comments and pings are currently closed.