Diplomacy: What is it Good For

I was on a radio show last night where I wound up in a debate about whether or not diplomacy was likely to be able to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue in a satisfactory manner. It occurred to me that one issue I was having that, in retrospect, often fogs these issues, is that my interlocutor wanted to conceive of diplomacy as a kind of poor man's coercive tool. Sloppy use of the term "soft power" (which is supposed to mean something quite specific and not really related to this) seems to me to have encouraged people in this error. Like military force is this really awesome coercive tool that maybe you're hesitant to use, so instead you might try diplomacy, but maybe diplomacy's not tough enough so we're back to force.

This is just the wrong way to think about it. The aim of diplomacy in this kind of situation is genuine bargaining aimed at reaching a mutually advantageous agreement. You're trying to cooperate and realize positive-sum gains, and diplomacy is the process by which those opportunities are identified and exploited. Obviously, such efforts sometimes fail and then maybe you look at coercion, but the diplomatic effort is not, as such, an attempt at coercion. If you think of it as one, you'll wind up thinking of it as a really shoddy attempt at coercion, and wind up rejecting it out of hand. But making a deal wherein you give someone money in exchange for something you'd rather have than the money it cost to buy doesn't exist on a continuum with knocking the guy over the head with a sock full of quarters and stealing his stuff -- they're entirely different kinds of interactions.

Comments

Diplomacy is win-win, coersion and war are win-lose or lose-lose. Part of the problem is that when the party you're dealing with has been painted as an evil enemy we often foolishly end up with one of our primary objectives being to MAKE THEM LOSE. Of course over the long term the win-win solution is likely to be a bigger win for us than winning in a win-lose contest, but the short term desire to punish often leads us to bad decisions.

Posted by Galen | May 2, 2008 2:52 PM

Best example of diplomacy with hostile powers: Cuban Missile Crisis. If GWB or McCain had been in JFK's shoes, we would have had nuclear war and millions would have died, but we would have remained "tough".

Posted by Tim | May 2, 2008 2:53 PM

Since you were discussing possible means of resolving the Iranian nuclear issue on the radio, what did you say about (i) what the Iranian nuclear issue is exactly, (ii) the current status of the Iranian nuclear program, and (iii) what would constitute a successful (or tolerable) resolution of the issue?

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 2, 2008 2:53 PM

I believe that the only outcome acceptable for the more vocal right leaning factions is Iranian regime change and anything that delays that result is too be opposed. Therefore, an Iranian nuclear weapons program actually is a good thing provided we are alert enough to obliterate that program before it can be used. Language that provokes the Iranians accelerates this process and hastens the day when obliteration is accepted as being necessary by the Western public.

Therefore, crafting win-win diplomatic solutions takes us in the wrong direction.

Also recall that the era of "balance of power" diplomacy has passed and is obsolete.

Cuba? That was an obvious failure. After all Castro is still in power.

Posted by Bill White | May 2, 2008 2:55 PM

This post's second sentence exposes the confusion that can arise from the wide-spread use of issue to mean problem

Posted by t jasper parnel | May 2, 2008 3:02 PM

Bill's characterization of the neocon agenda is pretty accurate. Although I'm not sure whether the objective is regime change per se or the establishment of an effective enough hegemony over the world that we can simply make demands and back them up with credible threats. The existence of a nuclear program is useful because it provides a domestically sellable justification for making demands and threats and following through on those threats. I'm convinced that the neocon policy goal for Iran is to find a way to justify bombing them to prove to the world that "look, we can bomb you and you can't do anything about it."

Posted by Galen | May 2, 2008 3:05 PM

Idiocracy.

Posted by blah | May 2, 2008 3:06 PM

But making a deal wherein you give someone money in exchange for something you'd rather have than the money it cost to buy doesn't exist on a continuum with knocking the guy over the head with a sock full of quarters and stealing his stuff -- they're entirely different kinds of interactions.

Well said.

Maybe Matthew will now rethink his attitude towards our (successful) policy with respect to the Sunnis in Iraq.

Posted by Al | May 2, 2008 3:06 PM

I think some coercive techniques, such as sanctions regimes, do fairly classically fall under the rubric of "diplomacy" since achieving a multilateral regime requires a lot of conferring with other countries.

I think the positive-sum subset of diplomacy is really "negotiation." There may be some hardball tactics employed in negotiation, but ultimately either side can walk away and you aren't going to get someone to agree to a deal unless you convince them it's in their interests.

Posted by Greg Sanders | May 2, 2008 3:08 PM

What you say is not wholly correct, as it presupposes a certain clean-cut delineation between the categories of diplomacy and war. Diplomacy as you conceive of it presupposes good will on the part of your negotiating partner. In the case of something like climate change, you hope that your negotiating partners have the collective good at the forefront of their minds. But in the geostrategic context, it's rarely like that. One party usually has some sort of leverage over the other. In the absence of such leverage, the parties have no incentive to cooperate. For example, Milosevic routinely blew holes in all well-intentioned negotiation attempts throughout the Balkan wars precisely because he gambled that the West wasn't willing to somehow compel him to stop. He felt it was in his best interest to fight for Serbian lebensraum. Why negotiate in that context?

The Bush administration has recklessly used force, and by doing so, they've clearly delineated the limits of American power for all to see and take advantage of. But I think you're making a mistake to try to draw some sort of clear distinction between diplomacy and force. If you don't conceive of them as existing in the same continuum of options, neither is very likely to succeed on its own.

Posted by Damir | May 2, 2008 3:18 PM

Al,

exactly what attitude towards our deal with the Sunnis is he supposed to rethink? I have never seen him indicate that it was problematic that we used diplomacy.

The issue with out deal with the Sunnis is whether we exarcebated the long term situation in the region by finding a fix to the short term problem. That is a completely different issue to the one that Matthew makes above.

Posted by Lon | May 2, 2008 3:18 PM

"But making a deal wherein you give someone money in exchange for something you'd rather have than the money it cost to buy"

It just occured to me how odd it is that the self proclaimed "free market" party is adamantly opposed to free market Coasian bargaining at the national level.

Posted by TheF79 | May 2, 2008 3:22 PM

thanks

Posted by izmir evden eve | May 2, 2008 3:26 PM

Al,

There are many more Shia in Iraq than Sunnis. Further, there may well come a time when buying off some Sunnis will, therefore, just get us stuck on the probably losing side of a civil war. Finally, at some point the Sunnis we've bought off will likely reconsider the utility of being associated, perhaps too closely, with a foreign ally. For years the US dropped bags of money on Lebanese politicians, to use but one example out of many, and it did little if any good.

Posted by djeri | May 2, 2008 3:28 PM

I'm very sympathetic to the post, but doesn't it imply that protection money paid by a shopkeeper to the mob is not coercive? I understand that we'd be paying Iran not to develop a weapon system rather than paying them not to use said weapon system against us, and that anyway we're more likely to blow up Iran's shop than vice versa but that doesn't seem to get at the crux of the analogy.

Posted by washerdreyer | May 2, 2008 3:42 PM

Fundamentally, is it any surprise that the people who think that any form of compromise is weakness when it comes to their domestic game of hardball should act any differently when they take their game on the international circuit? Remember, this is the crowd that says "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

Hm... I'm taking this over to Kos and discussing it a little futher.

Posted by Jeremy | May 2, 2008 3:46 PM

Matt,

That's a great summary of how diplomacy works when the parties are trying to establish something mutually beneficial (say, the EU).

The problem is how one deals with intrangience or brinkmanship. Take North Korea, for instance. There we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of paying (in fuel and food) for non-proliferation. Quite aside from the Kim regime's non-compliance, this encourages escalation as a negotiating tactic. If we pay them to behave, then the worse they can make the consequences of their misbehavior seem, the more we will pay to keep them in line.

Negotiation requires sticks as well as carrots. The Bush administration has demonstrated the perils of overusing the stick, but we can't let that drive us to overuse of the carrot.

Posted by heedless | May 2, 2008 3:47 PM

Well, less than a month ago, Matthew was claiming that our paying the Sunnis to be on our side constituted us having "substantially surrendered " to the Sunnis.

But, of course, that was completely the wrong way to look at things. We have engaged in "genuine bargaining" with the Sunnis and have reached "a mutually advantageous agreement". (They have stopped trying to kill us, have turned against al Qaaeda, and have pledged allegience to the central government, in exchange for us paying them money, stopping killing them, helping them against al Qaeda, and getting the central government to make some concessions.) Which is exactly what Matthew claims here in this post to be the essence of diplomacy.

But Matthew got his head in the sand with regards to Iraq so he doesn't even seem to grasp the relevance of his statement here to our policy in Iraq.

Posted by Al | May 2, 2008 3:52 PM

have pledged allegience to the central government

I'm not at all sure this has happened in any sense, and if it has I'd be very interested in hearing about this kind of allegiance where a cessation in payments would likely lead to them taking up arms against the central government in short order.

Posted by washerdreyer | May 2, 2008 4:12 PM

There is no "Iranian nuclear issue" to resolve in a satisfactory manner there is always and everywhere the "issue" of the murderous psychopaths who have controlled the U.S. Government for decades. Ask the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia,Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Serbia,Bosnia, Panama, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti etc. etc. Ask these people what the "issue" is.

Posted by Bill Jones | May 2, 2008 4:31 PM

where a cessation in payments would likely lead to them taking up arms against the central government in short order

I don't know why that would be the case, but in any event, I don't see how that's a flaw that doesn't affect all deals "wherein you give someone money in exchange for something you'd rather have than the money it cost to buy" (to use Matthew's words). That is, any deals of the type Matthew is talking about suffer from the same inherent flaw - if you are going to give someone money in exchange for them acting in a certain way, you risk them acting in different ways if you cease paying them. Indeed, that's generalizable to any diplomatic negotiation, even if no money is involved: to the extent that you stop acting in a way that pleases the other party to the diplomacy, they may act in a way that displeases you.

Posted by Al | May 2, 2008 4:33 PM

In some cases you're buying things which can be bought for cash. An actual, as opposed to feigned, allegiance to a central government doesn't seem like it is one of those things, because an actual allegiance isn't something which would go away when cash stops flowing. It can in many cases be achieved via certain participatory rights, but this then gets into the issue of whether sufficient numbers of Sunnis can accept those or still won't accept anything but a Sunni-dominated central government.

Posted by washerdreyer | May 2, 2008 4:51 PM

Al, you're confusing bribery with diplomacy. Sometimes diplomacy involves a bit of bribery, but you pars pro toto is risible.

Posted by novakant | May 2, 2008 5:11 PM

So much for "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"

It's become "Trillions for defense, but hundreds of millions for tribute."

Inflation, I guess.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 2, 2008 5:31 PM

Iam an avid proponent for using diplomacy. It is an art form that requires skill and patience. Not every one is adept at negotiations simply because of the mind-set or the perception thereof. First of all in this day and age we are accustomed to instant gratification. Diplomacy takes time. And patience is not something most of us have. Secondly diplomacy is perceived by some as a waste of time or as a weakness; it is neither. The proof is that thinking got us where we are today.

Compromise is not a weakness, it is fair for all concerned. There is no such thing as diplomacy without (some sort of) compromise. We see how "successful" Bush has been demanding my way or the highway.

It is well documented, but not widely reported, that Iran sent messages via Switzerland using back channels to Bush right before the US attack on Iraq or shortly thereafter. They were willing to concede to all demands, but Bush & Cheney said NO!

The reason Bush does not want to leave Iraq has to do with location and oil. Without regime change the US cannot take command over Iran's oil. Additionally Iraq and Iran are strategically located -- a pivotal point -- vital for the neocon's plan to control the Middle-East. Kissinger said, 'whoever controls the oil dominates the world.'

Thus explains why Bush refuses to leave and refuses to negotiate. Wheretofore the continuance of the neocons plan necessitates getting McCain in office. I do not even want to think of the consequences thereon.

Diplomacy has always been America's strength. Might isn't. Diplomacy worked. Might doesn't.

The world admired us at one time for our dedication to human rights and freedom.

Today America is scorned for its hypocrisy and feared for its stupidity!

To regain credibility and standing on the world stage means we must return to our traditions.

~~~~~~~~~~~````
The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. - Alex Carey

Posted by serena1313 | May 2, 2008 6:35 PM

Bill Jones, the people of Bosnia were being murdered by the government of Serbia. The United States has made a hash of several interventions, and has muddled through others, but it's breathtakingly and willfully blind to attribute everything bad that happens in the world to "murderous psychopaths who have controlled the U.S. Government for decades".

Posted by Damir | May 2, 2008 8:53 PM

Yeah, like there was almost certainly some number less than $3 trillion that Saddam would have taken in exchange for exile in the pleasure palaces of Dubai.

Posted by jayackroyd | May 3, 2008 12:19 PM

Bravo Damir.

Nobody killed more Muslims than Saddam, and the US has saved more Muslims than any other modern state.

Posted by Robert Powell | May 3, 2008 1:49 PM

Bravo Damir.

Nobody killed more Muslims than Saddam, and the US has saved more Muslims than any other modern state.

Posted by Robert Powell | May 3, 2008 1:51 PM

Al,
The problem with your analogy is that having the Sunnis ally with us temporarily, or even in an ongoing way, does not make Iraq itself safe or free. You are missing the forest for the trees. This war of attrition is draining our resources and our diplomatic and military leverage from other threats, including al Qaeda, and is not even making Iraq a stable, free country.

The point of MY’s use of the “surrender” terminology, as I read it, is that our occupation has neither real allies in the civil war nor a strategy for achieving a substantial success from the point of view of our security, only futile and transitory tactical moves. By contast, with Iran we have coherent goals and there is enough stability in the political dynamics there to make negotiating a more reasonable approach.

Posted by jason | May 3, 2008 3:38 PM

Dan Kervick: "Since you were discussing possible means of resolving the Iranian nuclear issue on the radio, what did you say about (i) what the Iranian nuclear issue is exactly, (ii) the current status of the Iranian nuclear program, and (iii) what would constitute a successful (or tolerable) resolution of the issue?"

Notice how Matt didn't answer these three questions, which are essentially the same as MY two questions?

Matt simply can't talk ABOUT Iran, he can only talk AROUND Iran. Because if he answers those questions, he blows his whole credibility.

Powell: "Nobody killed more Muslims than Saddam, and the US has saved more Muslims than any other modern state."

You're a fucking idiot, Powell. The US has now killed FAR MORE IRAQIS than Saddam ever did. And the Iraq-Iran war doesn't count because the US supported Iraq in that war as well.

There's no proof Saddam killed the sort of numbers in the Shia uprising that you and others have claimed. Nobody has found any serious mass graves. But there is little doubt that the US war in Iraq has been responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis - with an estimated 300,000 being killed directly by US military forces - and the displacement of four million.

Bottom line: nearly twenty percent of the Iraqi population has been killed or displaced by the Iraq war. The maximum number killed or displaced by the Saddam government over a period of ten years from the 1991 war to 2002 was something between 700,000 and one million - mostly Marsh Arabs and Kurds.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 3, 2008 6:47 PM

For twenty-six years the US and Iran did not have formal relations. However, because of the Iraq War, the US softened their position and initiated talks. As far as Iran's nuclear intentions, the official line is that they are still developing their "nuclear infrastructure" for civilian nuclear energy. However, in a short time it can be switched and used for military purposes, according to American security experts.

The report by the National Intelligence Estimate that Iran would not have a bomb for several years, bought us time to use diplomacy and other options. Russia and China are key players in resolving the nuclear issue. In the past, Russia delayed their nuclear assistance because Iran fell behind in their payments.

One more thing, many Americans believe an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities is similar to a surgical strike. Nothing could be further from the truth. To remove the possibility of an Iranian counterstrike much of Iran's Air Force, submarine fleet, surface boats, and anti-missile ships would have to be destroyed. If that were to happen, the 130,000 Americans serving in Iraq would be an easy target of retaliation.

Posted by EWard | May 3, 2008 10:26 PM

"Nobody has found any serious mass graves."

What blatant nonsense! Well matched with your ridiculous casualty-figures propaganda which was totally shot down by peer review on the basis of ridiculously small samples and no real control on the interviews. The real figure according to the UN, which is the most objective and best-methodology source, is about 25% of the propaganda number you spread. And the big majority of those were killed by terrorists, not the US.

I wrote "Nobody has killed more Muslims than Saddam", which would include all the Iranians and Kuwaitis (as well as Iraqis) in the wars of aggression launched by Saddam and OPPOSED rather than supported by us, as well as the Kurds, Shi'ia Iraqis, the many generic victims of neo-Stalinist police terror, and the Iraqis killed by Saddam's manipulation of the sanctions regime. No one has killed more Muslims than Saddam, while we have saved millions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It's as true as facts get.

If the Incredible Hack had any credibility to begin with, this sort of bullshit would destroy it.

Posted by Robert Powell | May 4, 2008 4:02 AM