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.
In a Cold War context, “theologians” were those who counseled achieving overwhelming military and economic superiority before even turning to negotiation, which would then, more or less automatically, by some mystical process, ratify this asymmetrical power relationship. Kissinger observed, “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 a diplomatic blueprint for them, were pointless (if not immoral) until ‘positions of strength’ had brought about a change in Soviet purposes.”1
At the time that Kissinger and Nixon were pursuing negotiations toward an opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union, many Americans were aligned with the “theologians.” They rejected the idea of negotiating with “godless Soviet Communists” and the “fanatic Chinese ideologues.” How could one deal with parties who spouted fearsome anti-American rhetoric, who espoused ideologies antithetical to core Western values, and whose policies badly damaged or destroyed even their own traditional societies (e.g., Mao’s Cultural Revolution or Stalin’s actions to cause dreadful famine in Ukraine)? Beyond ideological or rhetorical considerations, both China and the Soviets were major allies and weapons suppliers to North Vietnam. By 1969, more than thirty-six thousand Americans had died in that still-raging Southeast Asian war. Despite these obstacles, Kissinger saw realistic possibilities for each side’s interests to be met more fully, on balance, by carefully designed agreements than continued hot or cold conflict.
Each era has its version of the Cold War “theologians,” who see little use for negotiation except to deliver ultimatums accompanied by credible, overwhelming consequences should the target say no. In Vice President Dick Cheney’s famous phrase (variously applied to North Korea, Iran, terrorists, and elsewhere), “We don’t negotiate with evil. We defeat it.” In bitter business or legal disputes, a too-quick refusal to consider negotiation may have analogous “theological” roots—for example, if one side insists from the start that “the only language they understand is power,” or if the issue is reflexively defined as “on principle,” or if a willingness to negotiate “signals weakness.” This viewpoint animated many of the opponents of President Obama’s 2015 negotiations with Iran over that country’s nuclear program.
At the other end of the spectrum, Kissinger’s realistic approach to negotiation contrasts with the views of those he termed the “psychiatrists.” Also present in some form in every era, these often naïve idealists regularly urge negotiation largely for its own sake, see disagreements mainly as unfortunate misunderstandings or purely failures of process, and relegate tangible and strategic factors to the background.
Kissinger observed that “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 United States 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.”2
Eschewing both “theology” and “psychiatry,” Kissinger and Nixon articulated a realistic approach to negotiation with the Soviets that would “weave together all the many elements of the superpower relationship into an overall approach that was neither totally confrontational (like that of the ‘theologians’) nor totally conciliatory (like that of the ‘psychiatrists’). The idea was to emphasize those areas in which cooperation was possible, and to use that cooperation as leverage to modify Soviet behavior in areas in which the two countries were at loggerheads.”3
In this vein, one of us (Mnookin) wrote a book, entitled Bargaining with the Devil, that analyzed analogous approaches to negotiating with a counterpart that one regards as evil.4 While some would never bargain with the devil (theologians), others would always do so (psychiatrists). À la Kissinger, much better advice is to make a realistic assessment of the context to decide whether it does or does not make sense to bargain with the devil—and if it does, how.
When we use the term realistic to describe Kissinger’s approach to negotiation, we thus refer to a context-driven approach that is deeply informed by the interests of the parties, as they see them, rather than by ideologies about the role of the negotiation process. At bottom, “realistic” negotiation is pragmatic in the sense that Kissinger describes: “[Y]ou are trying to affect the conclusions of the other side, and you are trying to find something that both sides find sufficiently in their interest to adopt. That’s the essence of negotiation.”5 (In characterizing Kissinger’s approach to negotiation as “realistic,” we thus have a much narrower meaning than that in the full-blown school of “realism,” or realpolitik, in international relations, which posits rational state actors jockeying for and/or applying power in a perpetual state of conflict with one another.)6
While Kissinger never argued for negotiation as a universal conflict solvent, he had a very clear “criterion for progress” in negotiation, which would be substantive, “expressed in precise agreements reflecting mutual interests and not atmospherics. Above all, relaxation of tensions had to proceed on a broad front: We will regard our Communist adversaries first and foremost as nations pursuing their own interests as they perceive these interests, just as we follow our own interests as we see them. We will judge them by their actions as we expect to be judged by our own. Specific agreements, and the structure of peace they help build, will come from a realistic accommodation of conflicting interests.”7
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 views 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.”8
Interests 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 an interest.9 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 best to negotiate to advance idealistic objectives.10
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 to 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.”11
Ingredients for the Realistic Negotiator: Parties, Interests, Possible Deals, and Alternatives to Negotiated Agreements
As in the Rhodesian case, to prepare for negotiations with Ian Smith, Kissinger characteristically assessed the full set of parties, actual and potential, along with the full set of their interests and the implications of impasse, which he frequently manipulated. For a deal to be realistically possible, its signatories must judge it to be preferable, in terms of their interests, to the consequences of failure to agree. This is a minimum necessary condition for any deal to be struck, and it accounts for the focus of modern negotiation analysts on the vital importance of each side’s “best alternative to negotiated agreement” (or, in the jargon, its BATNA).12
Kissinger continually sought to evaluate and influence both sides of the “deal-versus-no deal” equation, emphasizing (a) the value of his target deal to his counterparts relative to (b) the cost of no deal.13 He often argued that for a deal to be attractive and sustainable, each party had to have a stake, or to see real value, in it relative to no-deal. And value, for Kissinger, is measured in terms of the parties’ interests as they judge them.
In tandem with stressing how a proposed deal could serve the parties’ interests, Kissinger frequently emphasized the high costs to his counterpart of a failure to agree. To Rhodesia’s Ian Smith, saying no to majority rule came to mean a Kissinger-engineered cutoff of rail lines and an end to vital military support by South Africa plus escalating guerrilla action. To the Chinese, no-deal with the United States meant facing an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union alone. And Kissinger could be quite forceful in describing the consequences of no-deal. In pressing the Israelis to be more forthcoming with respect to the Syrians, Walter Isaacson somewhat dramatically recounts Kissinger’s “doomsday” argument: “Conceding territory in the Golan was bad [for Israel], Kissinger admitted, but letting the negotiations fail would be worse. ‘I think it is essential that the gravity of a failure be understood,’ he said. . . . If that happened, the U.S. (and Kissinger) would no longer be willing to act as a mediator, he warned. The pro-Israel coalition in Washington, which was based on ‘an odd combination,’ would quickly fall apart. Israel would find itself alone, helpless.”14
When Success Is Unrealistic: Fruitless Negotiations When “No” Dominates “Yes”
To a realistic negotiator, in the sense we use the term, one fundamental reason for a negotiation to stall or fail is simple: in terms of the interests at stake, refusing to agree looks more attractive to one or more sides than saying yes. For example, when the British prime minister arranged to negotiate with Rhodesia’s Ian Smith on the warships HMS Fearless and HMS Tiger, the talks did not fundamentally fail as a result of a faulty process, an inauspicious venue, poor communication, cross-cultural miscues, personality clashes, or lack of preparation. Instead, they went nowhere because, for Smith, acceding to a deal meant a crushing loss of white power and position, while a “no” meant a chance for their continuation. (Kissinger’s approach to the negotiations, by contrast, ultimately confronted Smith with a situation in which the dire consequences of a “no” to majority rule were worse than the merely bad ones for a “yes.”) When one or both sides prefer “no” (or no-deal) to “yes” (or a deal), for any plausible deals, we describe the situation as having an adverse deal/no-deal balance; simply put, there is no zone of possible agreement.
While we have thus far cited a number of examples of Kissinger’s successful negotiations, we now examine two episodes in which he was unsuccessful at reaching the deal he sought. These cases (first, a failed effort to gain Pakistani agreement to halt its nuclear weapons program; second, a failed effort at Jordanian-Israeli disengagement) offer useful insights into the minimum conditions for deal prospects to be realistic. (Of course, Kissinger had a number of other negotiation “failures”: some, because no zone of possible agreement existed; others, due to a faulty approach or other factors. When it is instructive for our purposes, we later delve into some of these cases.)15 Such insights can help one assess the likelihood that a potential negotiation will succeed and determine when one should abandon the effort to reach agreement. In both the Pakistani and Jordanian cases, as we will soon show, it became increasingly evident that Kissinger’s counterparts saw no deal as superior to any agreement that the American could plausibly offer. At such a point in the process, a realistic negotiator will abandon the effort unless other factors, such as domestic politics, compel a continuation of the talks.
Failed Effort: To Persuade Pakistan to Halt Its Nuclear Weapons Program
In 1976, as President Ford’s term neared its end, Kissinger attempted to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Pakistan. Five years earlier, as national security advisor to President Richard Nixon, Kissinger had developed close ties with Pakistan, which played a crucial role in facilitating the negotiated opening to China. Now he hoped to prevent Pakistan from pursuing an already dangerous arms race with neighboring India and undermining the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. Despite Kissinger’s arduous efforts, his negotiations with Pakistan failed. Probing the reasons for this failure helps clarify the importance of the deal/no-deal balance as a diagnostic tool.
Following humiliating defeat in its 1971 war with India, Pakistan accelerated its covert nuclear weapons program.16 These efforts were ramped up in 1974, after India successfully tested a nuclear bomb in May of that year.17 From Pakistan’s perspective, only its own nuclear weapons could counter India’s massive conventional military edge and developing nuclear capability.18 By 1976, however, the Ford administration and the U.S. Congress were determined to stop the potential global spread of nuclear weapons, including to Pakistan.19 Yet Pakistan was resolutely intent on obtaining such weapons, with its prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, having famously and publicly promised, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”20
Some members of the Ford administration, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, proposed the idea of supporting nuclear energy programs in Iran, and offering Pakistan access to the energy, but Kissinger attempted a more direct approach.21 In order to obtain nuclear components, the Pakistani government had turned to France in 1974 to purchase a nuclear reprocessing facility.22 In June 1976, U.S. pressure, via the Nuclear Suppliers Group, failed to persuade the French to cancel the agreement.23 (It is intriguing to speculate whether commencing an earlier, more intensive negotiation campaign à la Kissinger’s Rhodesian effort might have built sufficient leverage to dissuade France from the sale. For example, might Kissinger have earlier and more forcefully enlisted Britain or West Germany’s help with the French?)
In any case, Kissinger flew to Pakistan in August 1976 to negotiate directly with Prime Minister Bhutto, strongly encouraging him to halt the nuclear program. At stake was over $100 million in annual aid from the United States. If Bhutto agreed to halt the program, Kissinger offered, aid would continue and the United States would provide Pakistan with 110 A-7 military aircraft and additional military aid.24 This was a potent incentive; the Pakistani air force supported the deal, but Bhutto refused.25
Though not independently verified, a colorful account of the discussion has widely circulated, with a smiling Bhutto asking Kissinger what would happen if he [Bhutto] refused the deal. Temper rising, Kissinger is alleged to have replied, “Then we will make a horrible example of you!” Bhutto responded that Pakistan could survive without support from the United States, but that the United States would then have to find some other ally in the region. He then promptly walked out of the room, leaving Kissinger without an agreement.26 Regardless of the details of the account, Bhutto was in a difficult position. Having taken a strong public stance in favor of a nuclear weapons program for Pakistan, for both strategic parity with India and national prestige, and with an election upcoming, he was unable to retreat without facing a catastrophic loss of public support.27 Kissinger, too, was in a tough spot; India seemed to be moving closer to the Soviet Union, and Pakistan was a valuable regional ally.
In September, Kissinger began a revived effort to reach an agreement with an enhanced offer. Beyond the financial and military lure of his new proposal, he predicted that a Pakistani “no” would be damaging to that country’s interests, especially if Jimmy Carter won in the upcoming November elections. He stressed the likelihood that the more liberal Carter would sever all U.S. aid to Pakistan, including vital defensive military hardware.28 Hence, Kissinger urged Pakistan to make a deal now, with the Ford administration.
Kissinger’s effort had been given a boost in August 1976, with the resignation of French prime minister Jacques Chirac, who had been handling that country’s nuclear export policy. French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing now took over this file. In September, Kissinger met with Giscard, who was receptive to prioritizing nonproliferation over commercial concerns. The French president also suggested that Kissinger turn to the Shah of Iran to exert additional pressure on Bhutto. Once again, however, setbacks soon followed. The French quietly informed Kissinger that they could not halt their sale of nuclear equipment to the Pakistanis, despite their support for nonproliferation, as no one could prove that the supplies would be used for weapons. Similarly, efforts with Iran faltered.29
In November, Carter defeated Ford. Kissinger undertook one last effort at a negotiated resolution, putting together even greater incentives to propose to Pakistan. In January 1977, he offered Bhutto substantial military and economic aid and U.S. support to obtain the basic infrastructure for a nuclear energy program, all in return for an “indefinite postponement” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. He made the case that Bhutto should agree now or confront far harsher terms from the incoming Carter administration. Facing upcoming elections, however, Bhutto refused at least until after the vote.30 On January 20, Jimmy Carter took office. Kissinger was out of time, and no deal was reached.
This was a case of an adverse deal/no-deal balance from Pakistan’s perspective. Virtually no agreement that Kissinger could have plausibly offered would have exceeded the strategic and political value to Bhutto of no deal (which meant continuing Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons). In short, while making the attempt was clearly worthwhile, the odds were stacked against success.31
Subsequent events strengthen this conclusion. Later that year, the Carter administration failed to gain Bhutto’s agreement to a sweetened economic deal. In July 1977, Bhutto was deposed and ultimately executed. The United States severed all economic and military aid to Pakistan in September 1977. Aid was restored in subsequent years, but Pakistan’s overt and clandestine pursuit of a nuclear bomb was undeterred. The country carried out five successful nuclear tests in 1998 and now has many nuclear weapons in its arsenal.32
Failed Effort: To Close the “Jordanian Deal” After Egyptian and Syrian Disengagement Agreements with Israel
On October 6, 1973, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Egypt and Syria led Arab armies in a surprise attack on Israel, in part to avenge their humiliation in the 1967 war. Although the Arabs were strikingly successful in the early days of the war, Israel, heavily resupplied by the United States, eventually pushed each army well back into its home territory. Angry at U.S. and allied support for Israel during the war, Arab oil producers imposed an oil embargo on the United States and its allies (Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), causing a fourfold spike in world oil prices and economic distress.
As the 1973 war concluded, Kissinger envisioned three potential agreements among Israel and its neighboring states that could dramatically stabilize the region: an Egyptian-Israeli disengagement accord, a Syrian-Israeli disengagement deal, and a Jordanian-Israeli pact, though Jordan was not among the attacking armies. As an immediate benefit, such agreements should result in the lifting of the oil embargo against the United States and its allies.
Each of these diplomatic initiatives was audacious to contemplate, especially given that none of the Arab countries even recognized the State of Israel. By May, however, to an admiring world, disengagement accords had been struck on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts—after challenging mediations by Henry Kissinger (as we see in chapter 4). Yet a deal with Jordan, the smallest and weakest of the Arab parties, eluded American efforts. As such, this was a “failed” deal. What led to this outcome and what might we learn from it, especially about the deal/no-deal balance as a diagnostic tool?
In 1950, the Kingdom of Jordan annexed the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), but later lost the territory to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. In subsequent years, Jordan’s king Hussein privately took pains to ease relations with the Israelis. While the two countries remained publicly at odds, Hussein’s interest in negotiations was strong enough for Kissinger to propose in December 1973, before the Egyptian and Syrian agreements, that Israel enter into talks to return at least some of the West Bank to Jordan.33 The Israeli government, however, nixed the idea, rejecting any such territorial concessions.34
Undeterred, Hussein and Kissinger discussed making a new offer in January 1974, following the successful conclusion of the Sinai Disengagement Accords with Egypt. Yet the two ultimately agreed that the planned talks would have to wait. In the wake of the 1973 war, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) had initiated an oil embargo against the United States and its allies. At the same time, skirmishes along the Israeli-Syrian border threatened to break out into renewed warfare. Regional leaders, including Jordan’s king Hussein, concurred that an agreement would have to be struck between Israel and hard-line Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad before any Jordanian-Israeli accord moved into the realm of possibility.35
Kissinger returned to the Jordanian capital of Amman in early March 1974 (before he began the Israeli-Syrian shuttle in April). He judged that Israel could reasonably negotiate only one agreement at a time (with Syria next in line), but he hoped to set the stage for a Jordanian-Israeli deal over the West Bank. Controlled and occupied by Israel but overwhelmingly populated by Palestinians, the West Bank had become a focus for Palestinian statehood by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). At that time, Israel, the United States, and Jordan vigorously opposed giving the PLO a role in any future talks, considering it a terrorist organization, one committed by charter to the destruction of Israel and hostile to the Jordanian government. Although interpretations of his real views of the PLO range widely, Kissinger himself held that “the PLO’s principal weapon was terror against individuals or groups identified with peace negotiations. Its policies were radical and pro-Soviet.”36
This American-Israeli-Jordanian opposition to a PLO role ran counter to the growing prestige of the PLO, in part as a function of its “heroic” resistance to Israel, in much of the Arab world, which increasingly saw the PLO as the true representative of the Palestinian people.37 (Kissinger saw this view emerging elsewhere as well: “more and more bystanders—European governments, American intellectuals—were putting forward the PLO as the fashionable key to unlock the West Bank. I was sure that it would bolt the door to a settlement.”38) As a result, he consistently stressed the view that “everybody’s interest would be served best by establishing as rapidly as possible a Jordanian presence on the West Bank. This would make moderate Jordan the negotiator for the Palestinian phase of the peace process.”39 Kissinger’s emphasis on speed was derived from his judgment that the Jordanian option was a rapidly fading opportunity as the PLO’s appeal for formally representing the Palestinians grew.
He saw the stakes for potential talks as high because, when appropriately structured, an Israeli-Jordanian agreement could preempt future PLO claims to West Bank territory and enhance the prospect that moderate Jordan (and not the PLO) would represent the Palestinians in future Arab-Israeli peace negotiations (if and when a Geneva conference took place). As he stressed, “we think the best way to handle the Palestinian issue is through negotiations between Israel and Jordan. That is what we’ve said publicly many times; that’s our real policy. Therefore, we see a Jordanian negotiation as important.”40 If successful, such a negotiation would “turn the debate of the Palestinians into one between the Jordanians and the Palestinians rather than between the Palestinians and Israelis.”41
With the end of Egyptian-Israeli hostilities, the Arab oil embargo against the United States and its allies was lifted in March 1974. However, to keep the pressure on the United States to broker an Israeli-Syrian accord, the embargo-lifting move was made subject to an oil ministers’ review on June 1. When the Syrian disengagement deal was concluded on May 31, and oil continued to flow, Kissinger’s negotiating activities refocused on Jordan.42 High-level American attention was almost immediate: in June 1974, President Nixon traveled to the Middle East and, in Jerusalem along with Kissinger, pressed Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to negotiate an agreement with Jordan over the West Bank.43
Kissinger sought to create a sense of urgency for the Israeli-Jordanian negotiations. To Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan, he highlighted the fading opportunity: “There are two possible strategies—to bring the Jordanians into the West Bank, or to stonewall with Jordan and sooner or later all hell will break loose with the Palestinians.”44 To Yigal Allon, Israel’s foreign minister, Kissinger essentially said that the Jordanian option was now or never: “Israel did not have the option of freezing the status quo on the West Bank in expectation that a Jordanian negotiation would always remain available later on. If Israel did not deal with Hussein now, PLO leader Yasser Arafat would be recognized as the spokesman for the West Bank within a year.”45
So why, with direct presidential backing and with the widely heralded Egyptian and Syrian disengagement agreements with Israel to his credit, was Kissinger unable to broker what he regarded as an important deal with smaller and weaker Jordan, a deal that would have involved only a modest Israeli territorial withdrawal (likely ten to twelve kilometers immediately west of the Jordan River)? Much of the answer can be found by realistically comparing how attractive “no” increasingly looked to the key parties (Israel and Jordan) relative to the consequences of “yes.”
A contributing factor involved government turmoil in Israel and the United States. Having failed to anticipate the near-disastrous 1973 war, Golda Meir had stepped down as Israeli prime minister in June 1974, to be replaced by Yitzhak Rabin. Following President Richard Nixon’s June tour through the Middle East, the Watergate scandal forced him to resign on August 9, 1974. Vice President Gerald Ford took over and kept Kissinger as both his secretary of state and national security advisor. Hence both the new Israeli and U.S. administrations were coping with recent national traumas.
Emphasizing the vital importance of a Jordanian-Israeli deal, King Hussein was the first head of state to visit Washington after Ford became president (soon followed by other Middle Eastern leaders). The Ford-Hussein communiqué affirmed that the “discussions between his majesty and the President and the Secretary of State were a constructive contribution . . . [toward] addressing at an appropriately early date . . . a Jordanian-Israeli disengagement agreement.”46
From August to October, Kissinger and Ford attempted to revive the Jordanian-Israeli negotiations. Yet Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir’s successor, faced a sharply divided cabinet and country. His coalition government held but a one-vote majority in the Israeli Knesset, and he had pledged that no changes to the status of the West Bank would be made without an election or plebiscite.47 Both the Egyptian and Syrian disengagement agreements, heavily pushed by the Americans as well as the Israeli government, were quite unpopular, especially among some segments of conservative and religious Israeli groups.48 With respect to a possible Jordanian deal, many Israelis strongly opposed reestablishing any Arab authority on the West Bank.49
To counter this, Kissinger was said to have “put the United States’ full diplomatic support” behind the plan for an Israeli-Jordanian accord, ordering “scheduled shipments of tanks and other arms to be held up, their release to be linked directly to Israel’s acceptance of the disengagement plan.”50 To no avail: for Rabin, the political risks of saying “yes” to a Jordanian deal were too heavy. Fearful of an electoral backlash that would bring down the government, the Israeli cabinet was not even prepared to open negotiations with Jordan.51 Kissinger’s intensive shuttle from October 9 to 15 (with multiple stops in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco) also failed to produce any movement. (Kissinger was later reported to have admitted to the king that he had miscalculated “our manipulative capabilities.”52 And he acknowledged ambivalence over how hard to press for the Jordanian option or a second Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Others offer more devious interpretations.53)
Although King Hussein had pressed for a deal, Arab heads of state assembled at a summit in Rabat, Morocco, on October 28 and unanimously endorsed the PLO as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” For Hussein to defy his Arab peers by undertaking any West Bank negotiation with Israel was now unthinkable; as he proclaimed, “when my tribe goes astray, I follow it.” To Kissinger, the realistic negotiator, “Hussein was [now] out of the picture. . . . [G]iven the PLO’s vociferous rejection of Israel’s right to exist and its active use of terrorism as an instrument of policy, the Rabat decision guaranteed a nineteen-year impasse on West Bank negotiations.”54
For Kissinger, pursuing negotiations toward an Israeli-Jordanian disengagement deal may have been a decent bet early on. At the point, however, when it became clear, in terms of the interests at stake for both Rabin and Hussein, that “no” decisively dominated “yes,” thus violating the minimum condition for agreement prospects to be realistic, it made sense for Kissinger to abandon the attempt and to shift his negotiating attention elsewhere.
Suppose, however, that Kissinger had somehow been able to reach a disengagement deal making Jordan responsible for representing the Palestinians. Given the sustained swell of support for the PLO in the Arab world and elsewhere as the real voice of the Palestinians, a good case can be made that such a Jordanian agreement would have proved unsustainable. Some go even further, arguing that “what was achieved in 1993 [the Oslo agreement] might have been achieved in 1974, and much bloodshed prevented, had [Kissinger] not worked against the Palestinians.”55 Such speculative judgments, of course, are less about Kissinger’s negotiating approach than about the accuracy of the assumptions that underlay and drove his actions. As we will again see with respect to American policy in Indochina, a negotiation strategy and tactics can be no better than the substantive premises on which they are based.
The Jordan negotiation “failed” in the sense that the agreement sought by Kissinger eluded him, at least during the time frame under consideration. Yet, as with failed efforts to negotiate a halt to Pakistan’s nuclear program, our examination highlighted the crucial importance of the “deal/no-deal balance” as a key tool for realistically analyzing the prospects for a negotiation to succeed or fail. In each instance, a strong case can be made that there was no zone of possible agreement: for different reasons, no-deal was a better option than any plausible deal for at least one crucial party. Yet does this kind of “failure” mean that it was a mistake for Kissinger to have entered the Jordanian or Pakistani talks at all or to have persevered when deal prospects looked bleak?
In general, the greater the potential value of a deal appears relative to the cost of impasse for each of the parties (as well as any costs of engaging in negotiation), the greater the odds of success and the more it makes sense to engage. By contrast, when success odds appear low and/or the costs of negotiating are high, entering or prolonging a negotiation may be ill-advised and counterproductive. This could be the case, for example, if the other side simply used negotiation as a delaying tactic to rearm, get reinforcements, or watch the costs to its counterpart mount ruinously during the process. And the costs of entering negotiation can include setting a bad precedent, activating potent opposition from key groups “behind the table,” and risking greater “deal fatigue” for future negotiation attempts.
Yet, even where the deal/no-deal balance appears adverse, entering a negotiation may make sense for at least four reasons. First, the alternative to a negotiation (for example, war) may be much costlier, and even low odds of a deal may be worth testing. Second, by entering a negotiation, one may glean new information that may shift the perceived odds of success. Third, the deal/no-deal balance may not be static; for example, changes in the underlying situation may influence these odds while negotiation is ongoing. Fourth, as we soon explore in more detail, one may act away from the table to tilt the deal/no-deal balance favorably.
In our judgment, therefore, Kissinger’s decision to test a Jordanian negotiation made good sense. Yet the Israelis showed no interest in a deal (for clear electoral reasons). When the Arabs made the PLO the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, King Hussein was clearly out of the game. At that point, the chances of a deal vanished and Kissinger wisely abandoned the effort to negotiate an Israeli-Jordanian agreement. Similarly, in our view, it was worth seeking a negotiated halt to Pakistan’s nuclear program.
In sum, steering between the poles of what Kissinger caricatured as the “theologians” (for whom negotiation is generally useless except to ratify overwhelming superiority) and the “psychiatrists” (for whom negotiation is ever and always desirable for mutual understanding), the “realistic” negotiator seeks to craft agreements that serve each party’s interests better than if no deal were struck.
A realistic orientation provides a systematic way to size up the potential of a situation to support a deal (or not). One should scan widely for all relevant factors: the actual and potential parties; a nuanced understanding of how each sees its interests; possible accords and the value they offer; and an appraisal of the consequences of impasse. Only when the deal-versus-no-deal (or the “yes-no” or “deal/no-deal balance”) can potentially be favorable does the realistic negotiator see the possibility of agreement.
We see the deal/no-deal balance as fundamental to a “realistic” negotiation approach: when no-deal appears irrevocably superior to the value of a deal in the eyes of one or more parties critical to agreement, the necessary condition for a deal is not met. At that point, attempting different tactics, venues, or negotiation process choices will prove futile. Unless other reasons for negotiating appear compelling (to delay, to hope for an exogenous event to shift the balance, to placate a key constituency), the realistic negotiator will focus efforts elsewhere.
Kissinger’s ideal negotiator, therefore, is both strategic and realistic. This carries powerful implications, as the next chapter illustrates, for negotiating not only “at the table” but also away from it to change the game and favorably tilt the odds of success.