The Art of Negotiation

Key Notes:

• The fate of the greatest states depends on good or bad negotiations and the degree of the capacity of the negotiators employed.
  

*Negotiators = Work with Monarchs and Ministers of State

• Monoarch’s and ministers of state must examine carefully the natural or acquired qualities of those citizens whom they despatch on missions to foreign states to entertain their good relations with their masters, to make treaties of peace, alliances of commerce or of other kinds;

!Goal: to hinder other powers from concluding such treaties to the prejudice of their own master and to take charge of those interests which may be affected by the diverse conjectures of those events.

The Science of Negotiation

• Every Christian prince must take as his chief maxim not to employ arms to support or vindicate his rights until he has employed and exhausted the way of reason and of persuasion. – It is in his best interest to add to reason and persuasion the benefits conferred- one of the surest ways to make his own power secure and to increase it.
• He must employ good laborers in his service, such indeed as know how to employ all these methods for the best,

!To employ all methods for the best, and how to gain the hearts and wills of men, for it is in this that the science of negotiation principally consist

*Ephesians 6:12 – wrest (v.) Old English wræstan “to twist, wrench,” from Proto-Germanic wraistjan (source of Old Norse reista “to bend, twist”), from *wreik- “to turn,” from PIE root *wer- (2) “to turn, bend.” Compare wrist.The meaning “to pull, detach” (something) is recorded from c. 1300. Meaning “to take by force” (in reference to power, authority, etc.) is attested from early 15c. Related: Wrested; wresting.“sport of grappling and throwing,” = 1520s, “seize and hold fast,” originally in reference to a ship, by means of a grapple, from grapple (n.). Extended sense of “battle, struggle in close contact” (usually with with) is from 1580s of persons, 1630s of immaterial things. *Bend a person’s will to your own advantage Pale = Wrestle (All other holds intended to persuade the opponent to concede defeat through pain or fear are permitted and are an integral part of the contest)

• Our nation is so warlike that we can hardly conceive of any other kind of glory of honor than that one in the profession of arms. – with zeal to the profession of arms in order to gain advancement but they neglect the study of the various interest that divide Europe.- The frequent source of wars.

The Untrained Negotiator

• Instead of gradual promotion by degrees and by the evidence of proved capacity and experience
• We often see men who have not left their own country
• Who never applied themselves to the study of public affairs
• Being of meager intelligence
• Appointed to speak over-night to important embassies in countries of which they the now neither the interest, the laws, the customs, the language and event the geographical situation
  

Negotiation Demands

• All penetration
• All dexterity
• all suppleness
• Widespread understanding and knowledge
• Correct and piercing discernment
  

Diplomacy As An Expert Craft

• Embark on this career for the sake of titles and emoluments
• Having the least idea of the real duties of their post
• Have caused grave harm to public interest during their apprenticeship to this service
• Novices in negotiations become easily intoxicated with honors done in their person to the dignity of their royal master
• Novices make veiled threats – which are only a mark of weakness
• Such ambassadors do not fail to bring upon themselves the aversion of the court to which they were accredited
• They resemble heralds of arms rather than ambassadors whose principal aim is ever to maintain good correspondence between their master and their princes to whom they are accredited
• In all cases they should represent the power of their sovereign as a means of maintaining and increasing that of the foreign court, instead of using odious comparisons designed to humiliate and contemn (condemn)
• These misfortunes and many others which are the result of a lack of capacity and the foolish conduct of many citizens employed by princes to deal with public affairs abroad
• Observations on the manner of negotiating with sovereigns and with their ministers, on the qualities necessary for those who mean to adopt the profession of diplomacy, and on the means which wise princes will take to secure a good choice of men well adapted at once to the profession of negotiation and to different countries where they may be sent
• The use and necessity of princes to maintain the continual use of negotiation in the form of permanent embassies to all great states both neighboring countries and those most distant
  

The Usefulness Of Negotiations

*The blunder of the smallest of sovereigns may indeed cast an apple of discord among all the greatest Powers, because there is no state so great which does not find it useful to have relations with the lesser states and to seek friends among the different parties of which even the smallest state is composed. History teems with the results of these conflicts which often have their beginnings in the small events, easy to control or suppress at their birth, but which when grown in magnitude became the causes of long bloody wars which have ravaged the states of Christendom.

!James 1:15-20

• There is indeed no prince so powerful that he can afford to neglect the assistance offered by a good alliance, in resisting the forces of hostile powers which ar prompted by jealousy of his property to unite in a hostile coalition

The Diplomat An Agent of High Policy

• The enlightened and assiduous negotiator serves not only to discover all projects, and cabals by which coalitions may arise against his prince in the country where he is sent to negotiate but also to dissipate their very beginnings by giving timely advice.
  

*Assiduous = showing great care and perseverance; constant, incessant, to sit down to sit by

*Advice = opinion, view, judgment, (PIE Root = “Weid” to see) Counsel worthy of being followed; to consider
Advisement = examination, inspection, and observation (Ie: Prophecy – to Counsel with the wisdom, will, and mind of God)
Wise, Wisdom, Wit, = To know (Shed light; make transparent; illuminate) – to help see all angles, varying views, deliberate, reflect

• It is easy to destroy even the greatest enterprises at their birth; and as they often require several springs to give them motion, it can hardly be possible for a hostile intrigue to ripen without knowledge of it coming to the ears of an attentive negotiator living in the place where it is being hatched.
• The able negotiator will not how to profit by the various dispositions and changes which arise in the country he lives.

*(Profit = mid-13c., “income derived from an office, property, transaction, etc.;” c. 1300, “benefit, spiritual benefit, advantage;” from Old French prufit, porfit “profit, gain” (mid-12c.), from Latin profectus “growth, advance, increase, success, progress,” noun use of past participle of proficere “accomplish, make progress; be useful, do good; have success, profit,” from pro “forward” (from PIE root *per- (1) “forward”) + combining form of facere “to make, do” (from PIE root *dhe- “to set, put”). An Old English word “gain, profit” was gewinn.

From mid-14c. as “use, usefulness.” The specific sense of “the advantage or gain resulting to the owner of capita; from its employment in any undertaking, acquisition beyond expenditure” is from c. 1600. Profit margin “what remains when costs involved are deducted from profit” is attested from 1853. Profit-sharing is by 1881.

• Not merely to frustrate designs hostile to the interests of his masters but also for the positive and fruitful purpose of bringing to an apt result those other designs which may work to his advantage