Negotiating with the Devil

Thursday night saw us visit Politics and Prose for a talk with Robert Mnookin about his new book Bargaining with the Devil. Mnookin is a professor at Harvard Law School and his book is about the decision to negotiate with an opponent who is deemed untrustworthy, immoral, or even evil. His book is a series of stories about the application of this question to Politics, Business, and even Family disputes.

I thought his talk was interesting as he touched on the contrasting conclusions reached by Winston Churchill in the decision not to bargain with Hitler and that of Nelson Mandela in his decision to bargain with the apartheid government of South Africa. He also touched on his own experience in a public educational debate soon after 9/11 on the side of NOT negotiating with the Taliban over the turning over of bin Laden rather than issuing an ultimatum. As the question period opened, there were amny thoughtful questions asked about whether one should negotiate in certain situations where it became clear that Mnookin's response was more about what to keep in mind when making the decision of whether to bargain, perhaps even a set of priorities to consider without really illuminating any clear yes or no. And perhaps that is obvious as the "right" answer cannot really be known. His shortened version was basically when asked when should you bargain with the devil: not always, but more than you think. I suppose I could agree to that though I would probably lean towards more often depending on what the alternatives to bargaining are.

I had some questions myself which I did not attempt to ask. In light of the ongoing healthcare debate and Obama's campaign process to hold negotiations on C-Span, I wonder what Mnookin's thoughts are on when it is appropriate to leverage publicity as a tool in negotiation with an untrustworthy adversary. My other question I was reminded of when he spoke of Churchill and the political debate during the campaign about negotiating with foreign dictators. That is are we even drawing the right conclusion from Churchill's decision not to negotiate with Hitler. I mean Hitler's actions instigating a World War eventually concluded with the downfall of his government, the desimation of his country and his own death. In hindsight, his actions had he know the results would be crazy, and those results are now public knowledge. If we are not negotiating with someone is certifiably insane, and I do not really think any of the current round of dictators qualify as such (just maybe in Norht Korea, but I doubt it), then shouldn't we expect our adversary to make different decisions? And none of our current adversaries are in the position of strength that Germany had at the time relative to its adversaries. It seems that using Germany and Hitler as a Historical example simply places a benchmark on an extreme end of a scale. In that case, the adversary made an obviously wrong decision which has now enlightened the world as to its consequences, but the example in and of itself is so extreme that any other scenario is by definition further down the scale of leverage and known quantities as to make negotiation a much better alternative.