metalwing posted >>>
You cannot negotiate with someone who cannot be trusted.
And yet for some obscure reason there is a 'warm fuzzy blanket' of feeling about how successful we've been in our 'COLD WAR' negotiations with Russia!
Why is that, I wonder; sheeple-people blindly thinking that all those previous POTUS were just so brilliant at they're plans and staff that Russia just fell in line and always followed through with their signed agreement?
Not hardly and yet I still hear how successful America was/is about all those years.
Here's the last pages of this document from 2006...interesting reading and very lengthy so I've just inserted the last summary >>>
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International Security Negotiations:
Lessons Learned from Negotiating with the Russians on Nuclear Arms by Michael Wheeler
edited down to the last pages - summation:
What did we learn from the negotiating experience with the Russians? A number of micro-lessons emerge from reviewing the memoirs of Presidents, National Security Advisers, Secretaries of State and Defense, chief negotiators, and the like.128 The following is a distillation of such lessons, ranging from the obvious to the counterintuitive and from the trivial to the serious. The list is divided into three categories: general observations on negotiations; observations on American negotiating behavior; and observations on Russian negotiating behavior.
General Observations
A key to success in arms control negotiations is preparation, hard work, and understanding the opponent'�s position (how they see the issues, what constraints they face, where they are going, how far they are ready to go, what they are after).
- Seek to persuasively make the case that your proposals are reasonable, not hostile to the opponent'�s purposes nor contrary to the opponent'�s interests.
- Never waste a meeting, even when without instructions.
- Human relations are an integral part of diplomacy. A great deal of successful negotiation depends on the comfort level people have with one another. A good negotiator must be prepared to decide at what point marginal gains are outweighed by the loss of confidence caused by trivial haggling.
- Pay attention to detail. This is especially important in highly technical negotiations.
- Keep a careful and complete record of what is said.
- Seek a common understanding of complicated technical concepts.
Wheeler International Security Negotiations
- It is difficult to anticipate the twists and turns that future technologies may take, that will impact on the specifics of the arms control agreement.
- Reach-back to Washington is an essential part of arms control negotiations.
- Don'�t be afraid of tabling maximalist objectives at the start of a negotiation, but be prepared to pursue them over what may be a long period of time to achieve results.
- Negotiation often involves attempts to bridge real differences. When difficult issues are involved, agreement may not be possible in the short run, although circumstances may change that can lead to agreement; it is important in such cases to clearly communicate existing concerns and firm goals.
- Agreement comes when both nation's� interests appear to be served and/or not harmed.
- Negotiations involve a learning process for both sides �and sometimes serve the purpose of bridging different degrees of understanding and knowledge on the opponent's delegation.
- Plenary sessions, although formal and repetitious, serve an important purpose in allowing complex positions to be delivered in formal statements.
- Informal sessions are important for finding new directions for the negotiation. The right to probe �to discuss and explore without binding the nation is an important element of arms control negotiations.
- Repetition is important. If an issue is vital, it should be raised over and over again �patiently, persistently, consistently, persuasively.
- Negotiations can be intense without being angry and confrontational.
- Negotiations in the interagency and with Congress are at least as demanding as arms control negotiations with the Russians.
- In dealing with the Russians bilaterally on the margins of multilateral negotiations, make sure to retain the confidence of your allies �keep them informed, solicit their ideas, understand their interests and concerns.
Wheeler �International Security Negotiations
- Different agencies in the NSC system represent different institutional points of view on the substance, strategy, and tactics of arms control negotiations.
- Ambiguity may allow closure on a treaty, but also tends to invite activities that raise compliance concerns.
- Multiple channels for negotiations are useful if used skillfully with good coordination and integration.
-Negotiations by delegations at the ambassadorial level can refine options and polish conclusions, to turn over to ministers for reconciliation of differences, with summits reserved primarily to finalize agreements and to build consensus for ratification.
- Back channel negotiations can be useful: fewer people are involved, sensitive information can be protected more easily, exchanges can be informal and candid, barriers can be overcome. But back channels also are a mixed blessing: they can lead to confusion in negotiations and can produce compromises that, when reviewed more fully with more people involved, are seen to be counterproductive.
- Negotiations at summits also are a mixed blessing: decisions may be reached more quickly but it is difficult to extract the country from a bad negotiating position taken at a summit.
- Negotiations can be for propaganda purposes over and above any hope of substantive agreement. Media attention can be intense. A good public diplomacy strategy must be a part of any successful arms control negotiation.
- Democratic debate can complicate negotiations by exaggerating and dramatizing issues, sometimes to the point of distortion.
- Beware of negotiations at the eleventh hour.
- Don'�t confuse form with substance.
American Negotiating Behavior
- Extensive use of back channels gives the Russians a tactical advantage, allowing them to manipulate negotiations with the delegations when they see that the delegation's proposals are not backed at the top.
- Lack of continuity in delegation and backstopping expertise can be exploited by the Russians to tactical advantage.
Wheeler - �International Security Negotiations
- Patience is a virtue in negotiations but also may be hard for the United States to attain, especially since negotiations frequently must match the cycles and rhythms of presidential politics. America'�s opponents understand this and will try to wait for the pressure of democratic processes to produce US concessions.
Russian Negotiating Behavior
- When the opponent stalls, take it in stride. Russian negotiators like Dobrynin, when instructed to stall, could do it masterfully.
- For negotiators like Gromyko, it often appeared that there were no trivial issues. Every point was argued with tenacity.
- Negotiators like Gromyko mastered their briefs, knew the issue histories, and were sensitive to nuances.
- Negotiators like Gromyko could link every detail of a negotiation to every other detail, offering concessions conditionally, depending on movement on other issues.
- The Russians often began negotiations by demanding concessions as a price for sitting down at the bargaining table.
- The Russians would seek to wear their opponents down by haggling over general principles. Once those were agreed, haggling over implementation could be used to erode the opponent's positions on an issue. Be wary of how Russians use agreement in principle.
BROADER LESSONS What can be said about the experience of negotiating arms control agreements with the Russians from 1945 through 2002 that is relevant to today'�s world? Obviously much has changed.
During the Cold War, the United States was dealing with a closed society where a small group of men controlled Soviet policy, and the Soviet policy and decision process was heavily veiled. There was considerable debate in the West about what Soviet objectives actually were for much of the Cold War. The United States also was involved in a military confrontation that threatened its most vital national interests, where nuclear weapons were at the center of the confrontation, where the opponent was Wheeler �International Security Negotiations perceived to have superior conventional military power in the most important theater (central Europe), and where the threat of civilization ending nuclear holocaust hung over the entire endeavor. The environment for American policymaking also was different in important respects, e.g., much of the Cold War was not conducted under the glare of today'�s 24/7 media extravaganzas, enabled by modern information technology.
Finally, the arms control priorities of the American government focused for good reasons more on its bilateral relationship with Russia and less on the more diffuse multilateral regimes involving a number of centers of power. Multilateral negotiations took place and were treated seriously, but they did not ascend to the importance then of the USSR bilateral talks. The list of differences could go on. Enough has been noted, however, to suggest that even with all the differences from the Cold War to today, some macroscopic lessons are in order for a world in which arm control continues to be important but has less emphasis in national strategy, in which the threats are significantly different, and in which multilateral regimes are more important than ever, especially for addressing terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Lesson 1: Keep priorities straight when engaging in arms control. Arms control is an element of national strategy, not an activity to be pursued for its own sake or valued more highly than other tools. The major question is whether national security is protected and the national interest served, not whether arms control - succeeds' at any particular point in time.
Wheeler - �International Security Negotiations
Lesson 2: Arms control can reduce uncertainty and enhance predictability. This arguably was the most important contribution of the USSR Cold War arms control experience for the United States. Today, the Russians appear to value bilateral nuclear arms control more than the United States for exactly this reason.
Lesson3: Expect surprises during arms control negotiations. Arms control negotiations cannot be insulated from external events in global politics. The gardening analogy that George Kennan and many others have used to describe foreign policy is also true for arms control. An unexpected hail storm can upset months of carefully laid plans. Be prepared to recover and persevere.
Lesson 4: After detection, what? From the Baruch Plan onward, the premier question about verification was not whether cheating had happened, but what should be done about it. The arms control experience suggests that diplomacy to build the international consensus needed to enforce compliance is likely to be harder than the arms control negotiation itself.
Lesson 5: Good people and good practices are more important than specific forms of government organization, for devising arms control policy and for conducting negotiations. The quality of negotiators and skill in conducting and supporting negotiation and the willingness to see arms control as a team effort are more important to success than how the United States organizes itself internally to address arms control policy.
'PRINCIPLES OF NEGOTIATIONS' - Closing Remarks
The US-Russian negotiating experience was a collaborative affair, often enhanced by the working relationships that the negotiators on both sides established with one another over time. That negotiations Wheeler �International Security Negotiations
could be conducted in a serious, professional way, but also could be extended to a lighter touch is exemplified in the remarks that Edward M. Ifft, a long-time American diplomatic participant in the process, made at the Soviet mission in Geneva on November 16, 1989, at a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the strategic arms negotiations.
The five
'�principles of negotiations' that Ifft proposed, reportedly well received by both the US and the Russian delegations present, are:
- The Perverse Principle. The two sides have the same positions, but never at the same time.
- The Principle of the Conservation of Issues. Whenever an issue is resolved, another issue will spontaneously appear to take its place.
- The Comfort Principle. Progress is inversely proportional to the comfort of the negotiators.
- The Timing Principle. The negotiations take far too long.
- The Painful Principle. Every four years, the Soviet Union promotes its negotiators, while the United States purges its negotiators.
www.usafa.edu/df/inss/OCP/ocp62.pdf
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We seem to either selectively chose to remember that our #1 nemeses has broken/ignored/and lied repetitively about their nuclear weapons and military prowess!
And yet, when our great nation {regardless of the 'I HATE OBAMA CROWD} makes any attempt to repeat this nuclear negotiation with other 'PROBLEM NATIONS'...the naysayers cry foul at our POTUS attempts and think that ignoring the threat will just magically disappear or better yet - we need to get aggressive with that terrorist threat and strong arm them!
The good ole' fashioned way of dealing with our 'PROBLEM NATIONS'...LMAO
Body count my fellow members; those numerous dead & walking wounded just can't be wasted anymore!
"Know Your Enemy and Keep Them Close"...is only obtained through continued discussions!
Edited by
2OLD2MESSAROUND
on Wed 06/24/15 05:39 PM
