Every student who has ever attended a mock United Nations knows this – negotiations are never zero-sum games with all or nothing gains and losses. As the word suggests, negotiation itself means to talk and arrive at the best possible outcome for the parties involved.
In today’s uncertain time of international and regional conflicts, negotiations are the need of the hour.
The word ‘negotiate’ originates from the Latin word ‘negotiari’, meaning "to do business or trade”, although the act of negotiation goes further back than its Latin roots.
According to researcher John Graham, humans used “collective imaginations and their long-term relationships to survive and develop even better ways to live”.
An important early text on negotiation is the famous treatise ‘The Art of War’ by the Chinese Sun Tzu. In it, the skills of understanding the opposition, the art of listening, building rapport, and reaching a compromise are seen to be essential when interacting at a negotiating table.
Later works of the Indian strategist Chanakya and the Italian Machiavelli similarly emphasised prioritising one’s state above all, and maintaining open information corridors throughout any confrontation.
In the 20th century, businesses have focused on conducting negotiations to get a better economic or trade deal. The impactful book ‘Never Split the Difference’ by Chris Voss outlines the various stages of negotiations and comments on important points of ‘identifying the black swan’ and ‘creating the illusion of control’ as central to this powerful conversation.
In the geostrategic world, negotiation is key to sustaining relationships between nation-states.
There are many historical examples where the right people have signed off on the right deal and saved the suffering of a mass of humanity. These include the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which re-created the map of Europe, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which recognised the United States. The Korean Armistice of 1953 effectively ended the Korean War, and the Taif Agreement of 1989 united competing Lebanese factions.
All of these agreements followed intense negotiations between warring parties but eventually introduced a peaceful era, however marred by sporadic violence.
According to those in the business of political negotiations, there are crucial factors to consider before finalising a political treaty.
Dr Kastner, a professor of international law, suggests that four factors are central to successful negotiation: having clear stakeholders, a trusted mediator, and identifying the right time when all parties concerned are ready.
The fourth criterion is the most important. It clarifies that negotiators need to understand the concept of the peace to which they are aiming. Peace could be seen in different ways by all parties. While most of us understand it as the end of conflict, this is rarely the case. Most often, negotiations point to potential peace in the long run, but they set the stage for it.
With Oman as a central negotiator in the current regional conflict, the complexities of negotiations need to be understood by even the layperson, so that the aspiration for peace is mutually understood by all stakeholders, which includes everybody who is impacted by regional political strife.
Sandhya Rao Mehta
The writer is an Associate Professor, Sultan Qaboos University
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