U S Negotiating Behavior

Informed by discussions and interviews with more than fifty seasoned foreign and American negotiators, this landmark study offers a rich and detailed portrait of the negotiating practices of American officials. Including contributions by eleven international experts, i assesses the multiple influences--cultural, institutional, historical, and political--that shape how American policymakers and diplomats approach negotiations with foreign counterparts and highlights behavioral patterns that transcend the actions of individual negotiators and administrations.

After two decades of hostile confrontation, China and the United States initiated negotiations in the early 1970s to normalize relations. Senior officials of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations had little experience dealing with the Chinese, but they soon learned that their counterparts from the People's Republic were skilled negotiators. This study of Chinese negotiating behavior explores the ways senior officials of the PRC--Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and others--managed these high-level political negotiations with their new American "old friends." It follows the negotiating process step by step, and concludes with guidelines for dealing with Chinese officials. Originally written for the RAND Corporation, this study was classified because it drew on the official negotiating record. It was subsequently declassified, and RAND published the study in 1995. For this edition, Solomon has added a new introduction, and Chas Freeman has written an interpretive essay describing the ways in which Chinese negotiating behavior has, and has not, changed since the original study. The bibiliography has been updated as well.

Even before it led opposition to the recent war on Iraq, France was considered the most difficult of the United States' major European allies. Each side tends to irritate the other, not least at the negotiating table, where Americans complain of French pretensions and arrogance, and the French fulminate against U.S. hegemonisme and egoisme. But, whether they like it or not, the two nations are going to have to deal with one another for a long time to come. Charles Cogan's timely and insightful study can't guarantee to make those encounters more fruitful, but it will help France's negotiating counterparts understand how and why French officials behave as they do. With impressive objectivity and authority, Cogan first explores the cultural and historical factors that have shaped the French approach and then dissects its key elements. Mixing rationalism and nationalism, rhetoric and brio, self-importance and embattled vulnerability, French negotiators often seem more interested in asserting their country's "universal" mission than in reaching agreement. Three recent case studies illustrate this distinctively French mélange. Yet agreement is by no means always elusive. Cogan offers practical suggestions for making negotiations more cooperative and productive--although he also emphasizes the long-term damage inflicted by the crisis over Iraq. Drawing on candid interviews with many of today's leading players on the French, American, British, and German sides, this engaging volume will inform and stimulate both seasoned practitioners and academics as well as students of France and the negotiating process. This book is the recipient of the Prix Ernest Lémonon from L'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 2006

"The foreign affairs book of the season ... an absorbing review of the nitty-gritty of Soviet-American diplomacy over the years."—Stephen S. Rosenfeld, The Washington Post "Vast in its historical sweep. . . . Focusing on the period since the Bolshevik Revolution, Whelan stresses five themes: the nature of negotiating behavior, its principal characteristics, elements contributing to its formation, aspects of continuity and change during more than 60 years, and the implications of the record for U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s. "The bulk of the book traces Soviet diplomacy under Chicherin and Litvinov, the enormously complex and detailed wartime conferences with Stalin, the descent into the cold war, the transition to peaceful coexistence with Nikita Krushchev (including fascinating details on the Cuban Missile Crisis), peaceful coexistence with Leonid Brezhnev (including extensive chronological analysis of the SALT process) and finally, judgements about how U.S. policy should be informed in future un- dertakings with the Soviets."—Nish Jamgotch, Jr., The American Political Science Review

Explores four recent US-Japanese negotiations - two over trade and two over security-related issues - looking for patterns in Japan's approach and behaviour. Each study explains the cultural, as well as the political, institutional and personal factors, and assesses their influence.

Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement.