Wednesday, January 11, 2017

GOOD PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS - A HELP OR HINDRANCE IN NEGOTIATIONS



In a recent article in Foreign Policy Magazine titled: "How Trump can play nice with Russia without selling out America" (January 6th 2017), Michael McFaul, the U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014) expresses concern over President-elect Trump's desire to foster better relations with Putin. He writes "Better relations should never be the goal of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia or any country in the world. Diplomacy is not a popularity contest".

McFaul's perspective appears to be that better relations could negatively impact negotiations and the protecting of our interests. He seems to think that with better relationships, we are more likely to make deeper concessions in order to maintain the relationship. His perspective makes sense if we see negotiation as an adversarial face-to-face confrontation, haggling over who will extract greater concessions from the other.

And therein lies the problem!