Aren’t the positions all mapped out ahead of time? Does a head of state * really * ever deviate from the action plan their aides have mapped out?
Even for lower level discussions like this, what’s really on the table for “discussion” and negotiation? Is the face to face really just an opportunity to get some media face time for the politicians and administration officials involved.
Well, Churchill and Roosevelt came to decisions that were not foreordained by their staffs all the time during the period 12/8/1941-4/12/1945. Some of that is documented in Churchill’s History of the Second World War and an assortment of Roosevelt biographies. Eisenhower too felt no compunction about going beyond staff positions as appropriate to the circumstances.
Well, it makes sense that the lower the level of discussion, the less authority the negotiator has, and therefore, the more limited the options.
…but I wouldn’t call Dr. Rice a “lower” level discussion: a cabinet-level office is second ONLY to the President himself in its assigned area of responsibility (which is why they are senate-confirmed appointments). Even a VP, for example, can only conduct negotiations as an assigned agent of the President, and has not real negotiation authority of his own. In practice, cabinet officers don’t negotiate with foreign leaders unless they are sent by the President as an agent of his authority (in which case, the limits of their authorization is probably spelled out to them), and if an President sends an agent with a certain mandate, it doesn’t necessarily matter much if it’s the VP or a private citizen
While it’s true that, politically and psychologically, this isn’t the same as a negotiation with the President himself, there would be a lot of pressure for a President to respect the terms agreed by his representative – more pressure, in fact, than for the Senate to ratify a treaty signed by the President: a President who reneges on the offers of a personal representative would sacrifice some of his personal credibility, along with the nation’s, but the 100 senators have different agendas, didn’t personally assent directly or indirectly during the negotiations, and might not mind making a given President look bad. For this reason, even direct Presidential negotiations are not necessarily “done deals”.
Of course, in today’s communications environment, any agent can consult with his superiors, even during a short recess, which changes the nature of such negotiations. While no method is perfect, a secure cell phone, relayed to an embassy or government plane by special cell repeaters brought for this purpose, could be pretty secure – as secure as the whispers traded between negotiators at the site or to/from/in their hotel. Secure faxes (etc.) have been around quite a while, too.
Certainly, before any two heads of state sit down for “discussions” the agenda and negotiating positions will have been ironed out by staff. And even as the heads of state are meeting, dozens of staff meetings between the two sides could be taking place over specific points of contention.
But there are certainly examples of heads of state sending their staffs scrambling by going off the talking points. A notable example is the 1986 Reykjavik Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, where Reagan horrified his advisers by at one point proposing to eliminate all nuclear weapons.
Heh, my naval history professor joked that the advent of real-time long distance communications took all the fun out of being a Naval officer, and in practical terms, is both a blessing and a curse for modern military field commanders, depending on the situation and the leadership.
Yaknow, I can almost see a world leader grinning and whispering something like “Wanna see what happens when you kick an anthill?” to the other guy and then saying loudly “I propose we elimnate all nuclear weapons!”
I have at my disposal from grad school a fair number of transcripts of high level meetings during the Cold War that have been declassified. Unfortunately, most seem to be difficult to find online. Really, the discussions tend to reflect the personalities involved.
As far as Reagan-Gorbachev, you can read a snippet of the noteworthy Reykjavik talks – see here. It was, all in all, a pretty freewheeling summit.
The most interesting one I’ve read was President Kennedy’s first meeting with Khrushchev. I think it was in Vienna. The first talk was just supposed to be pleasantries, kind of an icebreaker to improve US-Soviet relations, but Kennedy was baited into a debate about communism versus democracy. It pretty much all fell apart from there. Kennedy came out feeling like he’d had his ass kicked. I can’t find a transcript online, but here is a discription.
I have no experience with Presidential level negotiations, but I assume that they’re similar to executive negotiations at lower levels of the government, only with more symbolic importance and more underling resources.
And based on that, I’d say with two heads of state ‘negotiating’, it could be that
These aren’t completely exclusive of course, so any one set of negotiations could have elements of all of them. How much of each really depends on the CEO’s personality and leadership style. Plus of course, government CEOs will still have chunks of their day taken up with ongoing CEO stuff (lots of signing things that they don’t have time to read).
may I expand on the OP to include the question:" what happens when high level discussion occur between union leaders and managment?"
There is always great drama–will the coal/auto/whatever industry be paralysed by a strike? Negotiations run for days, nonstop into the middle of the night–and a compromise is reached.
Well, duh–everybody knew in advance that the company couldn’t afford the union’s demands, and everybody knew in advance that the union doesnt want to lose jobs. Why does it take days and nights of nonstop “negotiation”. What is there to talk about? It may take several days to reach a decision, but it can’t take several days to say " Okay, let’s only close one factory, but give a pay raise to the other ones." But what do the people who are physically seated at the table do for all those long nights?