In the analysis of the negotiation process so far, we have focused on the negotiator’s qualifications and behavior, his personality and professional handling of the negotiation process. Let us not be discouraged in the process of working on our skills by the fundamental observation that brutal powermetrics usually have a decisive influence on the course of negotiations.
It’s time for the demoralizing truth: the might of the parties determines the outcome of the negotiations. First of all, it is the political strength of the countries that sit at the negotiating table, i.e. the so-called structural power. This structural power in international security negotiations will result from the size of military potentials and the strength of allied ties. In trade negotiations, it will result from the size of economic potentials and the volume of trade.
The history of diplomacy is full of cases when diplomatic negotiations were just a cover for the imposition of one’s will by the stronger. Not only after victorious wars. The Cold War order was largely based on intra-bloc discipline. And in the name of this discipline, the hegemonic states, not only the USSR, but also sometimes the US, but the USSR in principle, conducted negotiations with their allies on the basis of “proposals that could not be refused”, or even dictates. I have written extensively about this on the blog before. Soviet satellites had to suppress their discomfort, but discomfort with the style of American diplomacy of the past years persists to this day in the form of subcutaneous anti-Americanism, especially in left-wing political circles in Latin American countries. Just ask President Lula.
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The smaller the circle of participants in the negotiations, the greater the impact of general and structural power. It is much easier for Costa Rica to negotiate with the United States if it is negotiating jointly with other countries of the Organization of American States than if it has to negotiate with the United States alone. Multilateral negotiations, especially conducted through institutionalized channels, i.e. within international organizations, dilute the might of great powers.
The direct impact on the outcome of the negotiations is caused not so much by pure (structural) power, but by the so-called situational power. It’s all about bargaining power over things that are under negotiation. The point is who (in the strength of various external factors, including the time factor) is more interested in an agreement, who has more alternatives, including better BATNA, who has more control over the subject of negotiations.
The Americans learned the most about the strength of situational power in the negotiations regarding the end of the war in Vietnam. In the endgame, the only argument they could use was massive bombardment. Because the huge internal pressure for the withdrawal of American troops, i.e. the end of the conflict from the American point of view, forced the Nixon Administration to accept the deal, which already at the time of signing made the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime inevitable. Hanoi’s David could negotiate with Washington’s Goliath on equal footing, even dictate terms that Goliath had to accept in the end.
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An even greater disproportion in structural power concerned the negotiations between the American administration and the Taliban, initiated in Doha in 2018. Because the military potential of the Taliban had nothing to do with the American one. Yet the Americans entered into negotiations when they realized that their continued military involvement in Afghanistan was unsustainable.
In September 2019, there was a serious crisis in the negotiations. And the Taliban themselves wondered whether it was worth negotiating with the Americans at all, because they were convinced that sooner or later the Americans would have to leave Afghanistan anyway. After the resumption of negotiations, the agreement was concluded in February 2020.
Anthony Cordesman from the CSIS think tank observed: „Even by Vietnam War standards, the U.S. acted without having established the preconditions that could force the Taliban to adopt more than a cosmetic peace settlement. The U.S. had not created Afghan forces as effective as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), there was no equivalent to a massive bombing campaign that forced the Taliban to accept an end to the fighting, and the Taliban still controlled far more Afghan territory than the Viet Cong or North Vietnam ever controlled in South Vietnam. Moreover, there was not even the hollow shell of a successful election in Afghanistan. The Afghan central government could not achieve even a cosmetic unity until it was blackmailed into an agreement in May, and much of the country which supposedly was under the control of the central government was actually controlled by local power brokers.”
So the agreement was a mere cover for withdrawal. The chief negotiator on the American side, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, is a professional of the highest order, an excellent negotiator. Even the best-negotiated agreement, when confronted with the realities and logic of the development of the situation, had to lead to the return of the Taliban to power.
And in August 2021, the Taliban took control of all of Afghanistan effortlessly.
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So Davids can grow wings in negotiations with Goliaths, even if the asymmetry of potentials is huge. Therefore, the asymmetry of countries’ potentials should not discourage diplomatic negotiators from their efforts.
When preparing for negotiations in which we will have to face partners with superior structural power parameters, it is worth thinking in advance about a strategy to balance the impact of obvious asymmetries.
The most natural strategy is coalition building. You have to be able to rally around your arguments other countries that will be ready to face the stronger side. Such a natural coalition in negotiations within the European Union regarding the multiannual financial framework is always a group of countries being the largest net beneficiaries of the EU budget. These are usually smaller and weaker countries. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to form such a coalition, when the prospect is to embark on a course of political collision with the main players within the allied institutions. In order to join a coalition against France or Germany within the framework of the European Union on an important matter (we are not talking about technical trifles), one must have courage. Just like getting the support of countries that resist the solutions proposed by the US within NATO. I have seen it in my diplomatic practice. When I asked diplomats from Central and Eastern Europe to support us in a specific matter, I once heard that they cannot openly oppose Germany and France by siding with Poland, although they will discreetly support us.
Another obvious strategy is to appeal to the public. You can make the position of your own public opinion an argument in resisting pressure from the stronger. Declare understanding for its interests, but point out that subordinating to them during the negotiations will lead to internal destabilization, reshuffles on the political scene, etc. At the end of 2003, Moldova was subjected to enormous pressure from Moscow to accept the Russian plan to settle the Transnistrian conflict, the so-called Kozak plan. And the power in Moldova was then held by the pro-Russian communist party. But even for the communists, the Russian proposals were hard to accept. For a long time they allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Russians. In the end, they had enough. They asked the Americans confidentially if anything bad would happen if they rejected the Plan. And the Americans answered them that on the contrary. So the plan was made public. The Russian proposals sparked massive (and well-organized) protests from the population. The pro-Russian authorities of Moldova told the Russians that in this situation they had no choice but to say no.
You can also try to appeal to the public opinion of the other party. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviets supported disarmament and pacifist movements in the West (especially in Europe) with all their might (including financial support), hoping that with their help they would be able to influence the course of disarmament negotiations with the Americans to their advantage. With some result.
One can try to play off differences and tensions in the opposing camp. Such tactics were once used by the Soviets, and later by the Russians, in the CSCE/OSCE forum to weaken the common position of the West. They approached the French, and the Germans, and even the Italians, when they saw it as an opportunity to build opposition to the position pushed by the US. They rarely got anything serious.
Internal contradictions can also be used for disputes between state institutions within one state. Once, a good diplomat and a friend of mine from a large Western European country told me how they consciously played feuds between the State Department and the Pentagon in Washington in order to push through a solution favourable to them. But it’s a risky strategy.
You can try to limit the advantage of the stronger by referring to emotions. This is the essence of pity politics. Former colonies often refer to the guilt of former colonial metropolises in bilateral negotiations, not only in aid matters.
The weaker partner, if able, will use the card of historically close relations and the “programmed understanding” of the stronger one. The approach of British diplomacy in bilateral talks with the US was based on references to the “special relationship”, even in the years when closeness was very difficult. Some Lithuanian politicians in the past years thought that by referring to the common celebration of the Constitution of May 3 or the anniversary of the 1830 November Uprising, they would soften Poland’s position in bilateral talks concerning, for example, the rights of the Polish minority in Lithuania.
The power of tribunals and arbitrators can always have a balancing effect. Therefore, in a situation of extreme pressure from the party that is stronger in the negotiations, one can go for referral or only threaten to refer a contentious issue, and not necessarily related to the subject of the negotiations, to an international court or tribunal. We will not be sure that the decision will go our way, but a larger state always finds it harder to rely on the judgments of the law and tribunals than a smaller state.
You can play for time, hoping that a worry will appear on the agenda of a larger country that will change the context of our conversations with it. Major powers rarely define their goals in a single negotiation in isolation from other issues that involve them. As a rule, they try to take into account broader interests, and the influence of bargaining on setting precedents that can be used in other contexts. Therefore, the great powers should be pushed to be occupied with other problems, and the small states should present themselves as a potential ally in solving them.
One negotiates differently with even a small state, which is perceived as an indispensable ally, and differently with a small one, but politically useless. I saw how in the years 2003-2005 the Americans really wanted Poland to support their policy towards Iraq. And I saw how much it built our position in bilateral talks (but, although we tried hard, we did not achieve a breakthrough on the visa waiver at that time). Experts say that in the event of a dispute with a superpower in an important matter for us, let’s make concessions and regular bandwagoning all the way on secondary issues. Perhaps the sympathy gained in this way will alleviate the asymmetry of power in talks on an issue of primary importance to us. Of course, this rule doesn’t always work.
You can even resort to geopolitical blackmail by threatening to move to another geopolitical camp. This is how the leaders of some non-aligned countries during the Cold War upped the ante in talks with the superpowers.
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In ancient times, political negotiation was seen as the flip side of warfare. Negotiations were a form of waging war by peaceful means. So the bargaining position in the negotiations resulted directly from military capabilities. Negotiations were undertaken to achieve a political goal without resorting to military force. They were undertaken in order to gain time necessary for war preparations. Negotiations were launched to win allies or to guarantee someone’s neutrality. They were intended to cause confusion in hostile coalitions. But it was “naked force” that decided the settlement of political contradictions between states. And this “naked force” has always been the crowning argument in negotiations. And in disputes between states, willingness to enter into negotiations was often treated as a sign of weakness.
Today, the relationship between negotiation and military force is of a different nature. As noted by Professor Paul Meerts, the author of the recommendable monograph „Diplomatic Negotiation. Essence and Evolution”: “The world saw a shift from negotiation as a tool in warfare towards warfare as tool in negotiation.” Armed force, coercion, sanctions have become a form of negotiating pressure, a form of so-called coercive diplomacy.
Sometimes the use of military force for its own sake (conquering another country) becomes merely a means of coercive diplomacy. And not since yesterday. Putin initially wanted to annihilate the Ukrainian state. But as Russian aggression bogged down, all he could demand was that negotiations take into account the situation “on the ground” (that is, the extent of Russian occupation). This is not the first such case.
Finland lost the winter war with the USSR in 1940, although the losses it inflicted on the aggressors allowed it to go with an open visor to peace negotiations. The Soviets demanded in February 1940 more territory than they had demanded before the start of the aggression, and more than the Soviets managed to seize as a result of hostilities, but they abandoned their plan to install a puppet government in Finland. The terms of the peace were painful for Finland, the negotiations in March 1940 lasted several days, they were a diktat, but they allowed Finland to keep its independence.
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A self-confident state may, in order to build a situational advantage in the negotiations, not resist the temptation to influence the course of the negotiations with the fait accompli method. And – for the simplest example – in talks about the demarcation of the border, unilaterally set it first in the field. It’s a brutal negotiating stance. But it carries a risk, because it can lead to a break in talks, retaliation and a negative international reaction.
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The asymmetry of interest in the success of negotiations is very often manifested in accession negotiations to the European Union or NATO. Candidate countries tend to be more interested in concluding negotiations quickly and successfully than Member States. In the case of joining the EU, the negotiations are obviously much more complicated and arduous than in the case of joining NATO. But in both cases, negotiations boil down to confronting the candidates with the conditions of membership, which the candidates can only correct, and to a rather small extent.
When joining the EU, Poland could dramatically bargain until the very end for the amount of the milk quota or reference crops, but the possibilities of bargaining were, as a rule, determined by the European Union. Because the essence of the decision is only the parameters of the process of adapting to EU regulations reflected in the so-called transitional periods. The regulations themselves cannot be changed in the negotiation process. The candidate country must come to terms with its own negotiating weakness. And even if it wants to and must negotiate hard, it must remember that it is the other side who sets the “red lines” and ultimately decides on the success of the negotiations.
When negotiating the terms of EU membership, Poland played hard. We asked for 40 derogations. No other candidate country in the group with us dared to take such a bold approach. And negotiations with Poland, if only for this reason, were more difficult than with other candidates. It is not surprising that shady opinions began to appear that the so-called “big enlargement” could be carried out without Poland. Fortunately, these voices were silenced by Germany, for which enlargement without Poland made no sense (for obvious political reasons).
The negotiations were undoubtedly frustrating for Poland. More than once the EU side drove our negotiators to such passion that they wanted to go out and slam the door. And they left (even people as polite as Ambassador Jan Truszczyński) slamming the door. Before the EU summit in Copenhagen in December 2002, all the applicants laid down their arms one by one and ended the accession talks with concessions. But not Poland. At the Copenhagen summit, Prime Minister Miller was initially offered four minutes to convince his partners. It turned out that the summit participants had to listen to the Polish arguments all day.
Nevertheless, conducting negotiations from the candidate’s perspective is undoubtedly psychologically often quite humiliating.
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The history of accession negotiations of even such economic powers as Great Britain, Sweden or Spain shows that the candidates are always in a weaker position. Paradoxically, the much smaller Norway was able to negotiate its membership much harder in the early 1970s (membership which never happened) than the powerful Great Britain.
The United Kingdom, which in every respect had the potential to qualify for serious treatment, had a situational power on the European Union forum that was relatively weaker than it would appear from dispassionate power measurement. Even when Britain threatened to leave the EU. Let us recall that it was the Labor Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who wanted to put the issue of membership to a referendum for the first time. In this way, he wanted to pacify members of his own party (trade unions) who were reluctant to the membership in the EEC. But the party leadership did not seriously think about leaving. However, it announced the renegotiation of the terms of UK membership in the EEC. And it led, under the threat of an unfavorable referendum result, to negotiations. But the negotiating position of the British turned out to be extremely weak. As recalled by Sir Michael Palliser, in the years 1971-1973 the head of the UK Delegation to the European Communities, and in the years 1973-1975 the Permanent Representative to the Communities: “We achieved some modest improvements in the budgeting arrangements (…) but basically things were very much as they were before”. Nothing was achieved, for example, on the fisheries issue, which was crucial for the UK. Some British diplomats regarded the negotiations as a severe failure.
Nevertheless, the leadership of the Labor Party was not saddened by the outcome of the negotiations. Because it wasn’t about winning the negotiations. The negotiations were a veil. As stated by Palliser: “(It was) an operation which enabled Wilson (…) to present it as an achievement.” Because Wilson wanted to keep Great Britain within the Community. And he won the referendum on membership held in 1975.
Prime Minister David Cameron wanted to copy this operation. And the renegotiation of membership terms was equally brutal for the UK as before. But the referendum in 2016 brought defeat to supporters of UK membership in the EU. The Cameron plan turned out to be the stupidest political idea in Europe in this millennium.
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The European Union does not always negotiate from a position of strength, as it might seem in accession negotiations. Sometimes, in negotiations with third parties, the European Union, for quite different reasons, has a greater interest in success than its partners, consciously or not, but negotiates from a weaker position. I observed this closely during the European Union’s negotiation of a new enhanced partnership agreement with Armenia in 2015-2016. EU negotiators were so traumatized by Armenia’s withdrawal from the already negotiated association agreement in 2013 that they were obsessively afraid that Armenia would abandon the negotiations again under any pretext. They made far-reaching concessions regarding the supremacy of Armenia’s commitments as part of its links with integration groups in the post-Soviet area and the principles of a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The paradox was that the Armenian political leadership needed an agreement like a Bedouin needs water in a desert, which as the EU ambassador in Yerevan I was well aware of. But Brussels officials were not ready for such a poker game. Their priority was to force Armenia to stop using the name “Cognac” for its brandy. They were ready to let go of everything else.
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How politically humiliating the NATO accession process can be, the politicians and diplomats of Sweden and Finland found out in 2022-2023. Both countries met all membership criteria. Both were a clear added value to the Alliance in every respect. Basically a no-brainer. And suddenly Turkey emerged perching, making demands, forcing them to negotiate some protocols. And it was Turkey, which is seen by serious analysts as the Alliance’s weak link. The only NATO country, apart from Hungary (also slow to ratify the accession of the Nordics), which was not invited by the US to the Democracy Summit in 2021. The country whose NATO membership John Bolton openly said should be subject to critical review, which in plain language meant that they should be kicked out of the Alliance if Erdogan’s rule continues.
And it was this Turkey that decided to show its situational advantage for the sake of keeping Erdogan in power. And he stayed in power and enjoys a safe place in the Alliance.
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Situational advantage is usually obtained by controlling the subject of negotiations. Armenia from 1994 to 2020 effectively controlled the area of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas. This undoubtedly gave it a negotiating advantage against Azerbaijan, which was economically stronger and increasingly surpassing Armenia in terms of military potential. After the defeat in the 44-day war in 2020, Nagorno Karabakh came under the care of “Russian peacekeepers”, and Armenia lost not only control over the adjacent areas and part of Karabakh, but also the military ability to defend the country. It has lost any bargaining power in peace negotiations. It was Azerbaijan that began to dictate the terms of peace. In 2023 Azerbaijan conquered by force (with the Russian acquiescence and the Turkish protective umbrella) the whole of Nagorno Karabakh. The West was unable to do anything about it.
A classic example of when “control of what is negotiated” gives the weaker party an advantage was the US-Iranian negotiations for the release of American hostages after the Islamic Revolution of 1980-1981. Conducted through Algeria, they led to the release of the hostages, but the American position, especially after the failed attempt to rescue the hostages in 1980, was extremely weak.
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Paul Meerts (remember: “Diplomatic Negotiation. Essence and Evolution”) stated that “negotiations between equal powers are as a rule not very effective. Some power difference is needed in order to get the negotiation process to flow.” Of course, it all depends on the context. The balance of power can be a favorable factor in negotiations regarding actions towards third countries, the distribution of mutual obligations in such actions. France and Great Britain quite efficiently agreed on the division of territorial spoils after the Ottoman Empire (the Sykes-Picot Pact in 1916). The relative balance of potentials made it possible to start the process of limiting the strategic armaments of the USA and the USSR (SALT negotiations). Although, of course, there was no full symmetry in this balance, also in terms of the specificity of the offensive potentials.
It is from the experience of the negotiation process that the concept of the balance of interests was born. The first reference to this concept can be found in the Peace of Utrecht of 1713, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession, defined from today’s perspective as the first world war. The balance of interests was based on the Franco-English deal of 1711 and an attempt was made to link all of Europe (without Russia and Turkey) to the parameters of this deal, establishing a regime regulating the political relations of states (to a similar degree as the Peace of Westphalia regulated religious relations).
During the negotiations on the Peace of Utrecht, the principle was adopted that the meeting room should be arranged in such a way that no one would feel particularly privileged. In contrast to the negotiations on the Peace of Westphalia, where the problem turned out to be the unequal status of the participants, which was solved by adopting the principle of sovereign equality of states, which is still in force today, as the foundation of international relations. Even in the preparations for the negotiations on the Peace of Westphalia, the unequal status was not questioned, although there was some dispute over the shape of the hierarchy. German subjects who had the right to participate in the election of the emperor claimed a better status. And France and Sweden, as the future guarantors of Peace, also believed that they should mean more, because they were to have greater obligations. After the Peace of Westphalia, the principle of equality of the parties became established.
But in political practice to this day, power disparities make some states “more equal” than others. In the case of glaring disproportions, such as in the relations between the hegemon and the vassal, the negotiations are feigned and become a cover for political dictates. This is how relations between the USSR and its satellites looked like. The total (military, economic, etc.) dependence of these countries on the USSR washed out their structural power in the negotiations. I wrote earlier on the blog about the specifics of negotiations in the Eastern Bloc at the end of its existence. An additional factor depriving these countries of their bargaining power was the lack of public legitimacy. The lack of internal cohesion of the state is, in general, a factor that weakens its negotiating power. The First Polish Republic, torn apart by internal disputes, experienced this in its relations with Russia in the 18th century, until the loss of independence. And today, if the country is in a state of deep division, if the government is contested and its position in the negotiations does not reflect the social consensus, it is difficult for it to conduct effective negotiations.
In specific situations, the weakness of the state excludes it from any negotiations. It is significant that France, defeated in the Napoleonic Wars, quickly joined the powers deciding on the parameters of peace at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, but Germany was excluded from any negotiations in Versailles after World War I. Which they later used as a pretext to question the entire European order. The victorious powers in World War II, taught by experience, decided that the German state had to be dismantled first, in order to think about a peace treaty only after its reconstruction.
Turkey rejected the Treaty of Sevres of 1919, in the preparation of which it was omitted like the Germans in the preparation of the Treaty of Versailles. Turkey was ready to fight for its rights. And unlike Germany or Hungary, it won its way. The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 offered it much better terms of peace, and above all, it was treated as an equal partner in its preparation.
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So during the negotiations, despite the principle of equality of the parties, they were always equal and more equal parties. We have mentioned how the Congress of Utrecht made the principle of equality of the parties an axiom, but at the same time its decisions were made with the dominant role of France and England. Nothing could be decided without these two countries.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, a rather complex geometry of “narrow circles” emerged. The central one, where key decisions were made before the Congress, was the “four” (Russia, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia), which was later joined by France, creating the “big five”. There was also a “six” to which Spain was added, but Spain had no influence on the main decisions. There was also the “eight”, in which there was a place for Sweden and Portugal, but its role was insignificant. The so-called consultative circles, which included Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, Naples, and the Netherlands, did not play a major role, either.
There were therefore widespread complaints in Congress about the dictate of the “big five”. Their right to impose their deals on others was questioned. In order to relieve these tensions, several so-called working committees (e.g. for Switzerland, Tuscany, Sardinia, Genoa, international rivers, statistics, diplomatic procedure) were created. Smaller participants could have the impression that they were co-deciding about the future of Europe. But the frustration remained. It was this frustration which caused Spain to refuse to sign the Final Act of the Congress. This did not affect its durability. And the Viennese arrangements turned out to be extremely durable.
At the Versailles Conference of 1919, a special role was sanctioned for five states that were part of the so-called Supreme Council (France, UK, USA, Italy, Japan), composed of heads of state/government and foreign ministers of the five. Politically, however, it was the “Big Four”, i.e. the leaders of France, Great Britain, USA and Italy which was assigned the leading role. But as a matter of fact, decisions were made in the US-France-UK triangle.
The arrangement of the world after World War II, as we remember, was decided by three superpowers.
For centuries, therefore, the tension between the factor of inclusivity and the factor of effectiveness has persisted in negotiation diplomacy. Inclusivity was a condition for the legitimacy of the arrangements and the legitimacy of the results of the negotiations. Being present at the table takes away the right to question the results of negotiations. Where there were no important players at the table (such as Germany in Versailles or even Russia), there was a risk that the arrangements would be questioned. Let’s recall that questioning Versailles became the foundation of the German-Soviet alliance in the 1920s and up to the Nazi rule in Germany. But the effectiveness of negotiations depends on the ability of the politically strongest players to reach an agreement. What the strongest agree on is not always to the taste of the other participants. So there is tension. The greater the impact of the agreement on the regulation of international relations, the greater the tension. But there is no international order without legitimacy.
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A natural consequence of the process of democratization of international relations is that no one today can openly decide about the fate of the world, Europe or other countries in a narrow circle. Although atavisms still exist. Putin wanted to decide the fate of Ukraine and the geopolitics of Central and Eastern Europe only with the Americans. However, no one will accept the new edition of Yalta or Potsdam today. “Nothing about us without us” has become the norm of political correctness. But the side effect is an ever-increasing cacophony of international debate. It is increasingly difficult to work out a consensus in multilateral negotiations and to make decisions in international organizations.
Consensus-building must always start with the formation of the seeds of shared views. Most often, larger states feel not only entitled to do so, but also obliged (at least morally and politically). So sarcastic sayings have been coined: “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
No one can forbid the formation of narrow consultative circles. The problem arises when these narrow circles close in on themselves, stop talking to other partners, act in a non-transparent manner, and try to ruthlessly push a view (position) established among the few in official decision-making forums, i.e. in international institutions.
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The UN Security Council is a body where the inequality of the negotiating parties is sanctioned by the UN Charter. The permanent Council members have more rights than the non-permanent members. They can veto any decision. As a result, they are perceived as “more equal”. The decisions of the Security Council are determined by the results of talks between the permanent members. But these talks were basically not held during the Cold War years.
It was not until the fall of 1989 that regular P-5 consultations became a habit. Even an informal chairmanship system was introduced in this group (the next host of the meeting was the chairman).
From the American perspective, however, the staged character of the consultations was still in force. The Americans didn’t put a draft or a matter on P-5 right away. I saw it up close in 1996-1997, when Poland was a member of the Security Council. First, the Americans conferred with the British. If they came to a common position, they presented it to the French in an informal P-3 format. When their views were harmonized, the position was consulted with members of the Security Council belonging to NATO and the EU, or connected with the US, such as Japan, by allied ties. Sometimes, however, even earlier, the case was brought to the Russians to see if the proposal was threatened by a Russian veto. The Chinese were left last in the P-5 because, even when they had doubts, they abstained more often than they blocked resolutions. Once the situation within P-5 guaranteed success, the project was passed to the other members of the Security Council.
Of course, the Americans sometimes went to the vote with the draft resolution knowing that there was no unanimity within the P-5. This did not always have a good political effect, even when there was no threat of a Russian or Chinese veto. Thomas Pickering, already quoted many times on this blog, was angry with the then US Permanent Representative Bill Richardson that he went to vote on the resolution on Iraq in October 1998 knowing that France, Russia and China would abstain from voting. The resolution passed, but showed Iraq that the P-5 was divided on the issue and that Iraq could play on those divisions by circumventing restrictions at the time.
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In the years of the Cold War, a narrow circle of consultations was formed within NATO in the shape of the so-called Quad (USA, UK, France, Germany). It operated at full speed in the 1970s and 1980s, survived NATO enlargement in the 1990s, and only started to spin in 2004-2005, when the Americans became angry with Germany (and France) about their position on the intervention in Iraq. The diplomatic Quad met in different editions depending on the issue (CSCE, disarmament, etc.), functioned in deep secrecy, but today even former American diplomats write about it openly in their memoirs. I’ve come across it myself and learned the hard way that if Quad worked out a common position, no one in the NATO family had the strength (or perhaps political courage) to stand up to it (not even Turkey, though that’s a specific case).
In the European Union, the German-French duumvirate was seen as the driving force behind decisions. However, it was not always able to push through common positions, also in the field of foreign policy. Germany and France reached an agreement in 2021 to bring about a European Union summit meeting with Putin, but their idea was blocked by Poland and other smaller states.
When the Union’s common foreign and security policy began to be formed, especially after the Franco-British summit in St. Malo in 1998, it was thought that the so-called directorate, i.e. France, Germany and the UK would provide the necessary leadership. Consultations within the three were intense, although British diplomats sometimes complained that they felt like an add-on to a Franco-German duumvirate. But even these consultations in such a narrow group were unable to make the common policy more dynamic.
After Brexit, the Germans and the French tried to advance Italy to the role of this “third”. But Italy in some sections of foreign and security policy is not of greater importance. Poland under the rule of PiS did not have a chance by its own fault to fill the gap after Great Britain, even if the war in Ukraine predestined it as a key flank state for a prominent role. In the EU, Poland has traditionally “qualified” itself to the so-called G-6 (and G-5 without the UK).
Various formats of narrow consultations have worked within the framework of the OSCE. They were centered around the incumbent chairman of the organization. But the most significant for the decision-making process in the OSCE in this millennium were the talks within the US-Russia-EU triangle. During the OSCE summit in Astana in 2010, I found myself (representing the Council of Europe) in a room where I should not normally be, because only the heads of delegations, i.e. presidents, prime ministers, and in the worst case, foreign ministers, were allowed to enter. Involuntarily, I could observe how high officials of the US State Department, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the EU External Action Service negotiated the text of the final declaration of the summit with just three of them. Because the documents that the summit was supposed to adopt and on which the delegates worked for weeks in Vienna and Astana turned out to be unacceptable. It was necessary to look for an emergency solution in the form of a short and general declaration. And these three felt a special responsibility for “saving” the summit.
Perhaps, if the role of neutral states had not been exhausted, if the leadership of the organization rested in the hands of a state capable of leading, there would be no need for such a sense of special responsibility on the part of big states.
Smaller and even medium-sized countries can rarely count on being included in small groups that will work out a common view, which will then become the view of the entire organization. One piece of advice remains: make sure you have good access to countries that form or may create such a group. Talk to them. Have interesting diagnoses and valuable ideas, and then they will always talk to you.
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Sometimes narrow circles of consultation may overlap, complicating the development of a common position. Already at the beginning of the CSCE process, France (and not only France) wanted a mechanism for coordinating positions within the European Community (and later the Union) to function there. It wanted the habits of political cooperation within the Community to be strengthened in this way. The Americans believed that NATO should be the main forum for coordinating the West’s position. But their position was weaker not only because the so-called second (economic) basket did not fall within the competences of the Alliance to a large extent. The West thus had two coordinating circles. But the Americans did not want to let go and strove to ensure that the last word, as the voice of the West, belonged to NATO.
As Ambassador Rudolf Perina recalled: “The European Union would come out of its caucus and say that it took them 5 hours of negotiations to reach agreement on some text, and if we changed a single dot it would all come apart. Well, then of course, we changed the dot.” So the negotiations had to start all over again, now with the Americans in a full-fledged role. And the EU turned out to be too tired to go again and renegotiate among themselves. This made the Canadians happier, but it was very frustrating for the Irish, for example. It was impossible to please everyone. Today, apart from strictly disarmament issues, the European Union coordinates its position in the OSCE without looking back at NATO.
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We talked about the tension between efficiency and inclusiveness. Sometimes, however, efficiency should not be confused with exclusivity. A good example is the participation of the Soviets (and now the Russians) in negotiation formats concerning the Middle East conflict. After 1973, the role of the USSR as a player in the Middle East declined sharply. Egypt changed sides and became politically affiliated with the Western camp. The only ally left for the Soviets was Syria. But Syria basically did not want to participate in the peace processes with Israel. The Soviet Union (and later Russia) was not needed at all to mediate in negotiations normalizing Israel’s relations with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian authorities. Yet the Americans wanted the Soviets to feel included. They were introduced to the Middle East formats on a preventive basis to prevent obstruction from outside (not only within the UN Security Council, where they could block any Middle East resolution on the basis of political defiance). As American diplomats said, the US attitude was guided by a principle whose authorship (in a different context) was attributed to President Lyndon Johnson: “It’s always better to have the Russians inside the tent pissing out rather the other way round.”
On a similar basis, the Russians could not be missing when finalizing the Dayton agreements regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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So politics, power, strength, political advantage. Are negotiating skills therefore irrelevant in diplomatic negotiations? Nothing could be more wrong. I did not give all this good advice to the emerging generation of negotiators in order to discourage them now from working on themselves.
Negotiation skills matter. Not only to annoy the stronger side, to attack its weak sides on and off the negotiations (the so-called mosquito tactics). Because efficient, intelligent, skilful attacking weak points (in political argumentation, in substantive argumentation, in negotiating behaviour) can bring good results. As a rule the case of Talleyrand is often invoked to comfort the hearts of negotiators. He turned France, which was broken and defeated in the Napoleonic Wars, into a state co-deciding about the fate of Europe at the negotiating table of the Congress of Vienna.
Diplomats of smaller and even medium-sized countries are often the only hope of making up for the asymmetry of power. The great powers can afford mediocrity and even amateurish level of negotiating. Smaller ones – never.
Many politicians think that they would be perfectly fine in dealing with the outside world without diplomats. Because diplomats slow down, look at the problem from all sides, split hair. And yet so rarely can politicians do without them. Because they are often too self-absorbed to make concessions. And even if they quickly agree on something privately, without diplomats they are rarely able to translate it into details, implementation procedures.
Politicians believe that only they can accelerate. But acceleration has its limits. In the summer of 1985, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze wanted acceleration in disarmament forums. They wanted immediate success in Stockholm, Vienna, Geneva. But each dish has its necessary preparation time. You can easily use a pressure cooker, but there are certain limits you can’t cross. Likewise every crop has a growing season. It can be accelerated, but only to a limit. Thus, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were made aware by their own and foreign diplomats – diplomats must be given the necessary time, otherwise nothing will grow, nothing will be properly cooked.
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The political factor is revealed in negotiations through decisions made by politicians: heads of state, government, foreign ministers or other members of government. They are the ones who accept the guidelines for the negotiators, and ultimately the shape of the arrangements. These are often difficult decisions. But only politicians can make them. Unlike diplomats, only politicians have the mandate to bring these agreements to the attention of the public, the political class, and the elites. And only they can be held accountable to public opinion (and sometimes to history).
The key word used in explaining the reasons for the success of the negotiations is political will (or lack of it if negotiations fail). This mythical political will is the ability to make difficult, responsible decisions, without which there will be no compromise. No matter how hard the diplomatic negotiators try, if there is no such ability, an agreement cannot be reached, even if the negotiators are ready to bring it on a platter.
Political decisions require elementary leadership skills. Without leadership, no negotiations, even bilateral ones, will lead to a compromise solution. There is no such thing as the internal negotiation logic or algorithm that will guarantee success. Unless in minor, technical matters, devoid of any political dimension. But even then, an impasse that will be beyond the negotiators’ ability to break is quite easy.
We live in a world with a leadership deficit. This leadership deficit has opened the door to the destabilizing influence of paranoid leaders who are not afraid of the consequences of their own thuggish actions, like Putin.
Leadership crisis has many sources. They include objective ones, such as the increase in the number of subjects of international relations and their emancipation, the shrinking effects and the growing costs of instruments of international coercion, the growing role of public opinion and the human being as an agent of international politics, and the increasing complexity of the matter of international relations. Among them there is also a simply human factor: the quality of the political class. The most talented and honest are not eager to practice politics. The political class is composed of those who really want to become politicians, not of those who really should. And those who really want to, from childhood, do so that they cannot see and do anything outside politics.
The crisis of leadership also concerns diplomats. Because diplomacy has long ceased to be an elitist profession. And the diplomats of the old school are pushed to the margins by bureaucrats of flesh and blood. The institutionalization of international coexistence is conducive to this.
About the institutionalization and perpetualization of international negotiations in the next post on November 20, 2023.
