ON OCTOBER 16, 1962, American U-2 spy planes conducting reconnaissance over Cuba discovered what was later confirmed to be the construction, with help from the Soviet Union, of missile sites capable of launching nuclear weapons. The mere existence of missile sites in nearby Cuba was neither unexpected nor problematic, but two specific features of these sites were of particular concern to the United States. First, they would be capable of launching offensive missiles that could target the US mainland.1 Second, the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads. As it happens, the Soviet Union had promised publicly and privately that offensive missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons would not be stationed in Cuba. It was now clear that these assurances had served only to deceive and to delay discovery of the missile sites. This set off what in the United States would come to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.2
As the conflict escalated, the world started to inch closer to a nuclear war than it has at any other time in history. On October 18, US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) organized a group of advisers, later dubbed the ExComm (Executive Committee of the President of the United States), that would convene secretly to assess options for how to respond to the threat. This group of more than a dozen people included the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretaries of defense and state, the national security advisor, the CIA director, and Robert Kennedy, who was both attorney general and JFK’s younger brother.
Early on it became clear that there were two primary options for a US response. The first, which we might call the aggressive option, would entail immediate air strikes to take out the nascent missile sites, possibly followed by a land invasion of Cuba. The second option, which we might refer to as the gradual option, called for the imposition of a blockade to keep additional military equipment from reaching Cuba, followed by diplomacy and coalition building in South America and the United Nations; in this option, military strikes would be the measure of last resort. There were reasonable arguments on both sides, and both options were risky. The discussion among ExComm members revealed that there was not even agreement about which option would be more likely to lead to further escalation by the Soviet Union.
At the start of ExComm deliberations, almost everyone supported the aggressive option. Robert Kennedy was in the small minority who considered this to be too risky a strategy because it immediately limited options for both sides. He also felt that there was a strong moral argument to be made against a superpower unilaterally and preemptively attacking a small country. In the days that followed, the tide shifted, and the majority of the ExComm came to the conclusion that the gradual option was superior. From a historical perspective, almost everyone agrees that the shift from aggressive to gradual was wise. The reason is that we have learned a lot since 1962 about what was happening at the time in the Soviet Union and Cuba, and almost every piece of new information suggests that an aggressive (air-strikes/invasion) strategy would have been even more disastrous than the ExComm had imagined. In other words, every incorrect assumption the ExComm made was wrong in the same direction: it underestimated the risk of escalation in the event of a military strike. For example, the ExComm assumed there were roughly 10,000 Soviet troops in Cuba at the time; in fact, there were over 40,000. Consider how this increases the likelihood that the United States ends up killing so many Soviet troops that the Soviet Union feels it must retaliate. Also, the ExComm believed that although there were missiles in Cuba, the nuclear warheads were yet to be delivered. In fact, the nukes were already in Cuba, and the arsenal even included “tactical” nuclear weapons, the kind one might use on an invasion force. Finally, the ExComm took it as an article of faith that no Soviet nuclear weapon could be launched without explicit authorization from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In fact, Soviet commanders in Cuba had the authority to use nuclear weapons at their discretion, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro had decided that nuclear weapons should be used if there were an invasion. US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had been part of the ExComm, would later explain the implications of this: “No one should believe that had United States troops been attacked with tactical nuclear warheads, the United States would have refrained from responding with nuclear warheads. And where would it have ended? In utter disaster.”3
Disaster may have been avoided, at the outset, by moving to the gradual option, but choosing diplomacy is never a panacea. Just because the military option is terrible and you have opted to negotiate does not mean you will be able to reach an agreement—especially when you are negotiating in the shadow of time pressure, uncertainty, mutual mistrust, and deep-seated antagonism. How do you approach a negotiation in which no one is willing or able to back down, and when each delay and every misstep takes you closer to the brink of nuclear war?
Instead of a preemptive military attack, the United States set up a naval blockade of Cuba, which they termed “quarantine” for political and strategic reasons. Then, in concert with a growing group of allies, and the threat of military escalation, the United States began to pressure the Soviet Union to negotiate an end to the crisis. An outcome acceptable to the Americans would require the Soviet Union to dismantle the missile sites and remove the missiles from Cuba. How could the United States convince the Soviets to do so, especially when they had shown a willingness to take grave risks for military advantage, while the United States had so far shown an unwillingness to escalate matters or flex too much muscle?
The key to resolving the crisis was not just a different approach from what had initially been favored, but an entirely different perspective on how the conflict should be viewed. What made the difference was JFK’s willingness to consider Khrushchev’s point of view, and to investigate precisely why the Soviet Union felt compelled to transfer nuclear weapons to Cuba even when it risked starting a war. There were, it turns out, a number of such reasons—and understanding them was pivotal.
Consider the Soviet perspective. First, the United States already had nuclear-capable missiles stationed close to the Soviet Union, in Turkey and Italy, which were as threatening to the Soviets as the missiles in Cuba would be to the United States. Second, there was a significant “missile gap” at the time, with US nuclear capabilities (i.e., the number of missiles, bombers, and warheads) being an order of magnitude greater than those of the Soviet Union.4 The US arsenal was also more technologically advanced. Third, the biggest problem with the Soviet arsenal was a scarcity of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States in the event of war. The Soviets knew this problem could be overcome in a few years, but in the meantime, they believed a nuclear deterrent in the form of shorter range missiles stationed closer to the United States was badly needed. Finally, there was the issue of how the CIA kept hatching plans to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro, something the Soviet Union and Cuba found more than a little irksome.
Understanding this perspective went a long way in helping to end the crisis, but even then the path ahead was not easy. In the days that followed, as public and private diplomacy took shape, there were multiple crises and numerous decisions made under tremendous uncertainty. On one occasion, the US military deployed depth charges to force a Soviet submarine to surface, unaware that it was a nuclear submarine and that they had almost triggered a protocol that would cause it to launch its weapons. At another point during the crisis, Fidel Castro reached a moment of such despair that he sent Khrushchev a letter proposing a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States. Khrushchev, wisely, ignored the advice.
Ultimately, despite the important (but limited) use of military assets, and even after the missile sites became operational, it was not a military response but a negotiated agreement that resolved the conflict. The key elements of the deal were as follows. The Soviet Union would remove the missile sites under UN monitoring—which they did the following month. In exchange, the United States would end the quarantine and make two promises. First, the United States would deliver a “no-invasion” pledge regarding Cuba. Second, and crucially, the United States would dismantle the missiles based in Turkey and Italy that the Soviets considered threatening. But there was a twist. Fearing that this last concession would make the United States look weak, the Americans demanded that the removal of US missiles be a secret element of the deal; Khrushchev was told that if he publicized the American concession on missiles, the United States would no longer be able to follow through on it. In other words, Khrushchev could get a good deal, but he would not be able to declare victory. The possibility of a nuclear confrontation in the event of impasse may have tipped the scale in favor of doing the deal; Khrushchev agreed.
The US missiles were removed the following year, but Khrushchev lost his job soon after, at least in part because of the perception that the United States had “won” the standoff. Only decades later would the United States acknowledge publicly that JFK had, in fact, made a quid pro quo offer to remove US missiles in exchange for the removal of Soviet missiles.
A successful end to this crisis would be unimaginable if not for President Kennedy’s ability and willingness to consider the conflict from Khrushchev’s point of view.5 From the US perspective at the time, it would have been easy to see the Soviet Union as nothing more than an immoral state that was acting in an irresponsible and provocative manner, under the cover of lies and misdirection, to gain military advantage.
But the more important consideration from a negotiation perspective is always this: How does the other side see their own behavior? In fact, there would have been little appetite to even attempt diplomacy if JFK had not made an effort to consider the reasons why the Soviet Union would find its own actions justified. And once negotiations were under way, a solution was possible only because the United States understood the real motivations and concerns of the Soviet Union. This is the power and promise of empathy.
The mistake people make is to think that empathy is what you use when you want to be nice, or that it is an instrument of the weak. This reflects a dangerous flaw in understanding. For negotiators, the reason to empathize with the enemy is not because it is somehow the “nice” or “liberal” or “enlightened” approach to dealing with nasty people. We need to empathize because it makes it more likely that we can achieve our own goals. In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, the negotiated solution would not have been possible—or imaginable—if President Kennedy had not empathized with Premier Khrushchev. Unless Kennedy acknowledged that the Russians might legitimately feel threatened by the US missiles in Turkey and Italy, the removal of these missiles, which was pivotal in resolving the conflict, would not even have been a concession worth considering. Why bother making such a concession if the real reason the other side is behaving this way is that it is evil or irrational?
In negotiations of all kinds, the greater your capacity for empathy—the more carefully you try to understand all of the other party’s motivations, interests, and constraints—the more options you tend to have for potentially resolving the dispute or deadlock. In other words, when you empathize, you are not doing others a favor, you are doing yourself a favor. If the employer who refuses our request for a raise is immediately written off as callous, if the business partner who makes aggressive demands is too readily seen as greedy, if the political opposition is too quickly labeled evil or ill-intentioned, we limit our own options. Your boss may have real constraints. The business partner may genuinely believe her requests are reasonable. Your political opponents almost certainly believe that they are the ones doing what is best for the country. When we fail to explore their perspectives, we are unlikely to de-escalate conflict, find common ground, help each other address core concerns, or think creatively about how each side’s interests might be met. Empathy expands the set of options you have for resolving conflict and reaching agreement. Empathy does not guarantee success, but a lack of empathy usually guarantees failure.
Most of us see ourselves as being relatively understanding and empathetic, but we fail to act this way when we are dealing with people who have done things that we find abhorrent or inexplicable. Yet, these are precisely the situations where empathy is most needed. You already understand your friends; the key to resolving conflicts lies in understanding your enemies.
It is important not to confuse empathy with sympathy. The goal is to understand what is causing someone to behave a certain way; it does not mean you have to approve of their goals or actions. There is a difference between explaining the other side’s behavior and justifying it. If we are to engage with them in any manner other than all-out war, and perhaps even then, we must seek to understand why they believe their actions are appropriate, no matter how inappropriate we may believe them to be. When you are dealing with difficult negotiations and ugly conflicts, it is not necessary to agree with the other side, but it is crucial to understand them.
As he reflected on what future generations might learn from this brush with disaster, Robert Kennedy described the crucial role of empathy, and the importance of taking the other side’s concerns into consideration:
The final lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country’s shoes. During the crisis, President Kennedy spent more time trying to determine the effect of a particular course of action on Khrushchev or the Russians than on any other phase of what he was doing. What guided his deliberations was an effort not to disgrace Khrushchev, not to humiliate the Soviet Union.6
At the height of the crisis, soon after the quarantine was put in place, a Soviet ship came close to the line of interception. JFK decided against stopping the ship and having it boarded. Instead, he let it pass, taking the advice of an ExComm member who pointed out the possibility that the quarantine line had not yet been communicated to the ship’s crew. The thinking was that perhaps it would be better to give the other side some time to think through and understand the consequences of their actions. Similarly, during the crisis, before an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba by a Soviet missile, the ExComm had decided that any such action would be cause for an immediate US military attack. According to Secretary of Defense McNamara, an action such as firing on Americans “would represent a decision by the Soviets to escalate the conflict. And therefore, before we sent the U-2, we agreed that if it was shot down we wouldn’t meet—we’d simply attack.”7 However, when a spy plane did get shot down, the president ignored military leaders who advised immediate retaliation. It might have been an accident, JFK reasoned: Khrushchev was unlikely to have ordered such an attack when tensions were so high. Perhaps it would be better not to assume the worst of intentions too quickly. It turns out JFK’s assessment was correct, and the order had not come from Khrushchev.
One way to reduce the risk of dangerous escalation is to create greater slack in the trigger for retaliation. Instead of punching someone the moment he pushes you, it may be useful to first figure out whether it was really a push, whether it was intentional, and what the reason was. If your antagonist keeps shoving you, or if you are sure it was deliberate and ill-intentioned, then a physical response might be appropriate (although there are, of course, other options). More generally, while it may be useful to have thought about the precise conditions under which you will retaliate, it is also important to leave some room for discretion. During the crisis, JFK reduced the likelihood that a mistake or misunderstanding would lead to escalation by giving some benefit of the doubt to the other side and by making sure they understood what lines were not to be crossed. If, instead, JFK had insisted on retaliating after even a single perceived transgression, the conflict would likely have escalated to dangerous levels.
Slack does not come without cost. The greater the slack in the system, the more likely it is that you are seen as weak or irresolute if you choose not to retaliate. This could provoke even greater aggression if the other side is ill-intentioned or opportunistic. At a fundamental level, there is always a trade-off between strategic flexibility and credibility. In pursuit of flexibility, President Kennedy risked losing credibility each time he gave the Soviet Union the benefit of the doubt.
Credibility—the degree to which others believe that we will follow through on our commitments—helps us convince others to behave appropriately. Strategic flexibility—the option of changing our minds if sticking to a previous commitment seems unwise—allows us to make the best choice at the moment of decision. We typically want as much credibility and flexibility as possible. However, the more we invest in strategic flexibility, the less credibility we will typically have, and vice versa. For example, committing publicly to a strategy increases your credibility but reduces your flexibility because it is harder to back down. Private commitments provide greater flexibility, but signal less credibility and commitment.
There will be times when you feel that losing some credibility is acceptable because following through on an earlier commitment (e.g., a deadline or ultimatum) would be disastrous. In other instances, you might decide that you must stick to your commitments, even if doing so is costly. In my experience, while it is impossible to completely eliminate the trade-off between strategic flexibility and credibility, it can be managed more or less wisely. You can avoid many such conflicts if you follow a simple rule: do not make ultimatums that you do not intend to follow through on, and absolutely avoid making ultimatums if you can achieve your objectives without them. In other words, to the extent possible, ultimatums should not be used unless they are both necessary and real.
The same problem exists on the other side of the table; they too must navigate the tension between maintaining their credibility and changing their minds when it is the smart thing to do. This is why, from JFK’s perspective, the risk was not that Khrushchev was evil or irrational. The risk was that even smart, reasonably well-intentioned people can fall into the trap of having to fight when the only other option is to back down and look weak. As a result, much of what guided JFK’s strategy was an effort not to put Khrushchev in a position where he had to choose between those two options. As Robert Kennedy wrote in his memoir of the crisis:
Neither side wanted war over Cuba, we agreed, but it was possible that either side could take a step that—for reasons of “security” or “pride” or “face”—would require a response by the other side, which, in turn, for the same reasons of security, pride, or face, would bring about a counter-response and eventually an escalation into armed conflict. That was what [the President] wanted to avoid. . . . We were not going to misjudge, or miscalculate, or challenge the other side needlessly, or precipitously push our adversaries into a course of action that was not intended or anticipated.8
A few days into the crisis, once the “gradual” strategy had been decided upon, President Kennedy had to address leaders of Congress to give an update on what had been discovered in Cuba and what the United States planned to do about it. The session did not go well, as members of Congress lambasted the president’s strategy as insufficient, too weak, and likely to embolden further Soviet aggression. The president and his team were understandably upset about this reaction. Robert Kennedy was among those who felt strongly that the ideas emanating from Congress were naïve, terribly short-sighted, and a danger to humanity. It was at this point that JFK said something to his brother that I find to be especially telling about the character of the president. As Robert Kennedy recalled:
He was upset by the time the meeting [with congressional leaders] ended. When we discussed it later he was more philosophical, pointing out that the Congressional leaders’ reaction to what we should do, although more militant than his, was much the same as our first reaction when we first heard about the missiles the previous Tuesday.9
As JFK pointed out, members of the ExComm had been given many days—behind closed doors—to think about the problem, to debate it, to change their minds, to sleep on it, and to grapple with the complexities of seemingly straightforward choices. It was after all of this that they had come to the conclusion that the aggressive approach was unwise, and that the gradual approach, however imperfect, was a better idea. The question JFK was asking his brother to consider was this: How can we expect Congress to be, on day one, where it took us so many days to get? Despite his own misgivings about the congressional reaction, JFK reminded his brother that they ought not to hold Congress to a higher standard than they held themselves.
JFK was essentially pointing to what social scientists have referred to as the “curse of knowledge.” The “curse” describes the following phenomenon: Once we know something, it becomes very difficult for us to understand what it feels like not to know it. That is, once we have learned something, or reached a conclusion, we seem to lose the ability to put ourselves in the mind-set of someone who has not yet had that realization—even though we were that person not so long ago. The curse can derail even the best efforts of those who are in the right and well-intentioned: parents who are trying to motivate, teachers who are trying to educate, leaders who are trying to inspire, and negotiators who are trying to persuade. In all of these domains, we do ourselves no favors when we forget that what is obvious to us will not be so obvious to the other side, and that it does not mean there is something wrong with them.
The curse of knowledge reminds us that, as deal makers and diplomats, we ought not to simply walk into the negotiation with a set of prepared arguments that we hope will win the day. We also have to prepare our audience for our arguments. We need to think about what the other side needs to have seen, felt, experienced, or understood before they will even be receptive to the merits of our arguments and perspective. The greatest of arguments, the best of proposals, and the wisest of ideas will still fall short if we have not brought them to a point where they are capable of hearing, understanding, and evaluating what we say.
Each year, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard University presents a Great Negotiator Award. The recipients have ranged from diplomats, to corporate deal makers, to artists. At some point during the Q&A that takes place on the day of the event, the recipient is inevitably asked to address the following question: What are the characteristics of a great negotiator? Having heard a dozen award recipients answer this question—people who have negotiated across many different cultures and in very different contexts—something stands out. There is one trait that everyone has mentioned in some form or another: empathy. Whether you are negotiating a business deal, an ethnic conflict, a job offer, a spousal dispute, or an international trade deal, it is essential that you try to understand how others see the situation.
By exploring the other side’s perspective, we expand the set of options for de-escalating conflict and achieving mutually acceptable outcomes. It is not always easy. There will be times when the other party’s actions leave little doubt that they are up to no good—meanwhile, your situation is precarious and getting worse by the day. How is empathy supposed to help you then? In the next chapter, we consider precisely such a situation, and take a look at how negotiating with empathy can work wonders.