To settle on the right tactics, Kissinger stresses the importance of understanding the dynamics of the process. Almost poetically, he describes the uncertainties and intangibles that initially confront a negotiator and how the underlying situation will slowly be revealed: “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; when 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.”1
Kissinger urges learning as much as possible about the situation before advocating one’s own views, interests, or positions. In part, as 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.”2
Making Proposals and Concessions: How and When?
Many people think of negotiation as nothing more than haggling, not unlike at 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 experience, Kissinger both characterized and critiqued the standard bargaining approach: “If agreement is usually found between two starting points, there is no point in 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 what one ‘really’ wants will be considered a compromise.”3
He elaborated, cautioning about the risk of extreme demands: “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.”4
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 prime minister John Vorster: “I began—as was my habit in almost all negotiations—with a philosophical discussion of what we were trying to achieve.”5
Kissinger broadened this point to negotiations in general: “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 or of penalties if an impasse continues.”6 He continued: “[T]he 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.”7
Given a choice between the traditional bargaining approach and something very different, Kissinger expressed his clear bent: “[T]he 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.”8
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.”9 (Of course, by no means are all American diplomats susceptible to this risk.)
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 Communiqué 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.’”10
Of course, the extent to which this kind of joint problem-solving approach will be reciprocated depends on the other side. When one of us queried whether this method would have worked with his Soviet counterparts, Kissinger averred that, often, it would not have. More than he might have wished—for example, mediating between the Israelis and Syrians on a street-by-street basis in the Golan town of Quneitra after the 1973 war—he found himself in the role of the haggling rug merchant.
Kissinger generalized his advice on when to negotiate, how to formulate opening positions, and when to make concessions: “[T]he 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 it 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 consciences for it impresses novices as a demonstration of toughness.11
“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 the 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.”12
Wordsmithing and “Constructive Ambiguity”
Evidently, the realist in Henry 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.”13 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.”14
Creative wordsmithing, however, can facilitate mutually beneficial results where clumsier formulations would result in impasse. Perhaps the most famous example of this comes from a U.S.-Chinese declaration that permitted more important joint interests to be pursued. During the negotiations over the opening to China, the thorniest issue involved the status of Taiwan, which claimed to be the legitimate government of the whole of China. At the same time, the People’s Republic of China [the mainland] claimed that Taiwan was merely a rebellious province of the larger entity. Kissinger sharpened the negotiating challenge: “We needed a formula acknowledging the unity of China, which was the one point on which Taipei [the capital of Taiwan] and Peking agreed, without supporting the claim of either.”15
To get past this issue, which had been a major contributor to total impasse in more than 130 prior U.S.-Chinese meetings in Warsaw, Kissinger modified an elegantly ambiguous formula with which both sides could live. This wordsmithing enabled U.S.-Chinese cooperation on a wide range of issues. The crucial sentences: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Straits maintain there is but one China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.”16
Kissinger described the negotiation that followed his proposal on wording: “The Chinese asked for a recess at 11:35 p.m. At 4:45 a.m. we were given a new Chinese draft and by 5:30 a.m. Zhou returned. He and I refined the text for several more hours until at 8:10 a.m., concluding a nearly nonstop session of twenty-four hours, we had agreed on the main outline of what came to be known as the Shanghai Communiqué. It was an unusual document. Its explicit, sometimes brutal disagreements gave emphasis to the common positions—the concern with hegemony (a euphemism for Soviet expansionism), the commitment to normalize relations.”17 Kissinger later remarked, “I do not think anything I did or said impressed Zhou as much as this ambiguous formula with which both sides were able to live for nearly a decade.”18
Consider a second example, involving the immediate aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Potential progress was stymied by contention over the wording of the letter of invitation to the formal negotiations; each party was trying to use the wording of the invitation to favorably influence the outcome of the planned negotiations. The process was stuck, in part over Palestinian participation in the talks on which the Arabs and Israelis had completely incompatible positions. If the parties did not come, there could be no headway on the issues.
Frustrated, Kissinger observed that “The debate over the letter of invitation could produce only deadlock, not progress. However the letter was phrased, it could not substitute for the actual negotiations. . . . As for the letter of invitation, I argued, it was essential to break out of the irrelevancies by which each party was trying to use the drafting exercise to foreordain the outcome before the conference was even assembled. If we were serious about disengagement first on the Egyptian and then on the Syrian front, the prime task was to . . . get on with the serious negotiation.”19
Getting past the deadlocked and time-consuming debates on the wording of the invitation letter was clearly a worthy goal. But how, as a practical matter, to negotiate this desirable move forward? Kissinger explained: “I told Sadat, it might be best if we agreed on a . . . neutral formulation about other participants that made no explicit reference to the Palestinians at all—such as that [sic] ‘the question of additional participants’ would be discussed during the first stage of the conference. The Arabs could say that they would urge Palestinian participation at that point; Israel could say it would refuse—but all this would happen after the conference had opened.”20 (It worked, at least in the sense that the Geneva conference took place without Palestinian participation.)
A third example: during the Israeli-Egyptian disengagement talks, a particularly challenging question concerned control of the Cairo–Suez Road. This road led to Egypt’s Third Army, which was at that point completely surrounded by Israeli forces. The Israeli cabinet had forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to refuse UN control of this road, which Sadat needed to send nonmilitary supplies to his encircled soldiers. However, Kissinger judged that “to ask Sadat to send nonmilitary supplies through Israeli checkpoints was a humiliation.”21
In the face of Israeli refusal to turn over control of the road to the United Nations and of Egyptian refusal to submit to Israeli checkpoints on the road, how might creative wordsmithing lead to the desired substantive outcome? Kissinger explained: “The solution was to avoid the issue altogether by making the sort of compromise the acceptance of which marks a triumph of faith over substance. The checkpoints were placed under the United Nations; at the same time Israeli officers were permitted to participate ‘to supervise the non-military nature of the cargo.’ The Israelis could claim that the UN posts were there on sufferance on ‘their’ road; Egypt could insist that the UN presence effectively removed the road from Israeli control. The Israelis could point to the fact that their officers participated in the inspection; the Egyptians could argue that this was as part [sic] of a UN procedure. The fundamental fact was that there would now exist a mechanism for uninterrupted nonmilitary supply to the Third Army.”22
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. Progress may result from direct engagement on previously blocked issues. Elliot Abrams, a veteran American negotiator, highlighted one of several uses of this concept: “‘[C]onstructive ambiguity’ is logically ugly but has been strategically effective. If all parties avoid talking about the one big conceptual issue on which they disagree, they can engage in countless practical ways.”23 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 Israelis 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?”24 However, some constructively ambiguous “solutions” may blow up if they merely paper over fundamental disagreements that will soon surface.
Some observers view the tactic of constructive ambiguity with deep suspicion. For example, as Brookings Institution fellow Khaled Elgindy argued, “Whatever its virtues in other settings, in the context of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, ‘constructive ambiguity’ has succeeded only in producing confusion and eroding trust between the parties. Throughout the Oslo process of [the] 1990s, disagreements over how to interpret various provisions led to endless delays as well as the renegotiation and outright lack of implementation of signed agreements.”25 While this indictment of constructive ambiguity is far too broad, it contains a core caution about fudging clashes that will not become amenable to resolution with the passage of time or the growth of relationships.
To those less familiar with the ways of effective negotiators and diplomats, it may seem absurd that “mere words” might block progress between parties with potentially shared interests in reaching a deal, sometimes one of a life-and-death character. Yet, as the examples just given illustrate, hallmarks of Kissinger’s tactics at the table have been faith that apparently incompatible positions can be often bridged and the skill to do so with the use of creative wordsmithing and, potentially, constructively ambiguous solutions. So long as these formulations do not merely obscure, or worsen, an inevitable explosion, but instead create conditions that reduce the odds of a blowup and permit talks to proceed, constructive ambiguity can be a useful tactic.
Tacit Bargaining: Agreement Without “Agreement”
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.”26 Kissinger, too, understood the value of so-called tacit bargaining in obtaining de facto agreement on desirable results.27
By informally dealing with Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union via quiet, nonpublic back channels with Moscow, the Nixon administration was able to help increase the number of Jewish emigrants. In 1968, the Soviet Union permitted only four hundred Jews to leave the country to settle elsewhere, primarily in Israel and the United States. With détente and the slow improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations, Kissinger noted that the Nixon administration began raising the issue “in the presidential back-channel with the argument that Soviet actions would not pass unnoticed at the highest levels of the American government. The Kremlin began to respond to American ‘suggestions,’ especially after Soviet-American relations started improving. Each year, the number of Jewish emigrants rose, and by 1973 the annual figure reached 35,000. In addition, the White House regularly submitted to Soviet leaders a list of hardship cases—individuals who had been denied exit visas or whose families were separated, and some of whom were in prison. Most of these Soviet citizens were also permitted to emigrate. . . . No formal requests were made and no formal responses were given [emphasis added].”28
A similar tacit bargaining dynamic occurred in 1973 with respect to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat around the issue of reopening and clearing the Suez Canal. Kissinger judged that Sadat “could not accept a formal obligation to clear and reopen the Suez Canal. But he could tell me that if he could do so as his own decision—if Israel would only stop demanding it—he would begin clearance operations as soon as both armies had reached the lines foreseen in the disengagement agreement.”29 Thus, while Sadat bargained explicitly with Kissinger, he was induced to bargain tacitly with Israel.
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. Both constructive ambiguity and tacit agreements, when appropriate, enjoyed pride of place in Kissinger’s tactical tool kit.