The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements That Changed the World

What makes a good diplomat? Is it the person, or is it the way that person projects power or, alternatively, instills trust? Is it a matter of seizing an opportunity or an ability to create that opportunity? Or is it someone who is simply very good at communication? Sir Henry Wotton famously quipped around 1604 that an envoy “…is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” This statement, made perhaps as an aside and reported only by one of Wotton’s rivals, has since provided a common caricature of the diplomat: a dissembler, almost always a man, who is willing to go against principles in pursuit of national interest.Henry Kissinger, who defined diplomacy as the “art of restraining power,” took a broader view. Like Wotton, he focused on the diplomat’s role in pursuing state interests but as a shaper of policy for the lofty goal, in his case, of supporting a balance of power among the major powers. Jimmy Carter’s diplomacy, on the other hand, embraced his deeply held beliefs about human rights protection and the promotion of high moral standards as the basis of his engagement.Stuart Eizenstat’s book The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements That Changed the World is a gift to anyone interested in the answers to these questions or negotiations in general, whether direct or indirect, bilateral, multilateral, or multiparty. It also is an excellent resource for teaching, especially in the areas of international relations or peace and conflict studies. The book, written by an expert negotiator, explores in depth over 20 cases of American negotiating prowess. It covers a lot of history, stretching from the opening of relations between the US and China in the late 1960s and early 1970s to the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the 2023–2025 war between Israel and Hamas (which had not terminated at the time of the book’s publication). Along the way it charts a course of American diplomatic engagement in ending war and building peace on nearly every continent, illuminating both successes and failures in the effort over the past 60 years.The collection of cases is impressive, starting with Henry Kissinger’s role in creating an opening in relations between China and the United States, as well as his negotiation with Le Duc Tho over the end of the Vietnam War. Other cases include:There are also two chapters in which Eizenstat himself plays a leading role—one on the compensation of Holocaust victims or their heirs and the other on negotiations over climate change.Eizenstat divides the cases into several categories which, while somewhat overlapping, usefully distinguish among the many roles that the US plays in international negotiations: direct party to a negotiation, mediator and peacemaker, war fighter, leader of multilateral processes, trade negotiator, and—for the lack of a better term—deliverer of justice. The variety is impressive, as are the careful research and the myriad interviews that Eizenstat conducted while writing the book with both principal negotiators and their colleagues. These are personal views of negotiation, presented largely from the point of view of the negotiators themselves, and convey well the moments of triumph and disappointment. They are not, of course, the complete story, told from multiple and opposing points of view as in a William Faulkner novel. However, they are rich narratives, each enlivened by a detailed history of the case, followed by an almost play-by-play rendition of the negotiation.The lessons Eizenstat draws from these cases would be helpful to anyone overseeing or planning a negotiation, although a few may be difficult to follow. The first—choose the right negotiator—is perhaps the hardest. As an American professor and diplomat born in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad knew the important actors, issues, objectives, and culture of the United States and Afghanistan. He indeed seemed to be the right negotiator for the US-Taliban negotiations in 2018, but he was dealt a bad hand. The US government made its wish to withdraw from Afghanistan known, which diminished its leverage and gave the Taliban an advantage in the negotiation. In other cases, there is a serendipity involved in negotiator selection. Negotiators may come to the task as a result of the job they hold, such as president or secretary of state or undersecretary for economic, business, and agricultural affairs, as was Eizenstat when he took over the climate change negotiations in 1997. In these cases, the position makes the diplomat, whether or not they are the best choice. It is a happy circumstance that combines the right position with the right qualities for the assignment. And sometimes, the conflict chooses the negotiator. In the negotiations over justice and compensation for Holocaust victims, Eizenstat’s commitment and deep subject matter expertise made him the obvious choice, at least in President Clinton’s eyes.The Afghanistan example illustrates the difficulties negotiators might face with another lesson of the book: to gain and keep the confidence of the president and the White House (or whatever authority the negotiator answers to). Most of the negotiators featured in the volume benefited from a close relationship with the US president because they were themselves current or former senior members of the US government. This tight connection among senior officials does not guarantee that the diplomatic endeavor will hold in all circumstances. Former senator George Mitchell enjoyed sustained support from President Bill Clinton in his mediation of the Northern Ireland conflict. However, in his subsequent role as the US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace (a story not covered by the book), the Obama administration’s backing was more intermittent and diffuse, with competing views in the administration driving policy in different directions. As a consequence, despite his reputation and ties to senior officials Mitchell could not count on the president’s full-throated support and he stepped down after two years without making much progress on resolving the conflict.Other lessons that Eizenstat draws from past negotiations are as critical but perhaps more achievable. He offers lessons on careful preparation, understanding the other side (or sides), good personal relationships, risk-taking, creativity, openness to using back channels, and building on partial agreements—all of which, he notes, are excellent elements of tradecraft in international negotiations. Among these lessons, two areas stand out: the need to cultivate ripeness and leverage. Ripeness, in William Zartman’s words, is the moment when the conflict parties might be willing to turn to negotiation because they are in a painful stalemate. Leverage, on the other hand, is the power that parties bring to the negotiation to help them get what they want. It can be tangible (wealth or arms) or intangible (legitimacy or the ability to shame) and it can wax and wane in the course of the negotiations.Both ripeness and leverage are important parts of the negotiation process, but they do not come easily, even to the most powerful country in the world. The cases in this book underscore the point that the United States, despite its multitude of resources, is not always the dominant party in its negotiations. In most of the cases, the principal negotiators devote much effort to ripening the situation before negotiations begin, not through force but through a careful cultivation of relationships and strategic identification of the benefits—to all parties—of a negotiated outcome. Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic role in the rapprochement between China and the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s involved days of pre-talks and a secret visit to Beijing before he and his Chinese counterparts agreed to discussions. Baker engaged in a similar coalition-building exercise as he negotiated the unification of Germany in 1990. Crocker’s eight-year engagement in southern African peacemaking was largely an exercise in convincing the parties—including the Cuban government—that they had more to gain from a peace agreement than from continuing the fight. These negotiations—and many others including the Oslo Process and the Abraham Accords—were intensive commitments to undertake a long-term process to change attitudes and behaviors and reframe issues. That the negotiators were ultimately successful in producing significant reshaping of international and regional systems is due in large part to their dogged effort to ripen the environment.The chapters covering conflicts in which the US was an active party (Kissinger in Vietnam, George W. Bush in Iraq, Trump and Biden in Afghanistan) present quite different situations. Although Eizenstat highlights the skillful negotiation strategies in these cases, there is an element of being on the back foot, of not being able to determine outcomes, of being swept along by forces out of control. The long, slow process of ripening the negotiation environment is not possible under these circumstances. In part, the lack of control is a result of the American political cycle, with its predictable round of presidential elections and the ever-present descant of political opposition. Eizenstat quotes John Negroponte reporting that weeks before the November 1972 election, the principal North Vietnamese negotiator remarked to Kissinger, “You are in a hurry to get out, aren’t you?” Le Doc Tho understood that President Nixon wanted to put the war behind him for domestic political reasons and could not take the time to develop a political process that would include the government of South Vietnam or lead to a more gradual transfer of power.Eizenstat’s cases show a variety of ways in which the US was able to develop and deploy leverage in pursuit of its goals. On occasion, this leverage included the deployment of real force. While the US was interested in achieving a diplomatic peace between the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbs in 1995, it was also prepared to bomb the Serbs in order to change the situation on the ground. In this case, the US used its leverage to maintain pressure on the Serbian belligerents and convince the Serbian leadership to negotiate. Baker was an expert at creating leverage through building coalitions. His success in creating and nurturing German reunification after the Cold War depended largely on his ability to convince France and Britain and reassure Russia that the outcome would benefit both Europe and Russia. His shuttle diplomacy (not covered in the book) before the Madrid talks on Arab-Israeli relations was a masterclass in building leverage through creating visions of different futures for the parties.However, leverage also exists in the eyes of the beholder. If your counterparts know that you are more anxious for a deal than they are, they will use this knowledge to their advantage. The American rush to “get out” of Vietnam not only prevented the ripening of a political process, it also robbed the US of leverage, much as the rush to leave Afghanistan would 50 years later. Like in Vietnam, the US was a direct party to the conflict in Afghanistan. At the beginning of the conflict, the country itself brought unforeseen challenges to the invading forces: the lack of infrastructure, the strength of the resistance, the weak foundation on which to build a democratic government, and the absence of a social compact between the government and the people. These were still challenges 20 years later in 2018 when the Trump administration entered talks with the Taliban—without the Afghan government—and were compounded by an American desire to disengage. Khalilzad, the US negotiator, tried to hold the Taliban to their commitment to start talks with the Afghan government but he was undercut by this evident desire and had little to help him in the negotiations.Coming back to the original question of what makes a good diplomat, it is evident from these cases that sheer power is not the answer. In Afghanistan, despite American military power, the negotiations failed to result in an agreement that supported American interests. The absence of ripeness and leverage in the negotiations and the subsequent withdrawal of American troops in 2022 resulted in a peace deal that essentially abandoned American efforts to build democracy that had been expended for 20 years. The US is powerful when it wishes to be and when its leaders have the political will to exercise that power, as with the negotiation of the Abraham Accords in 2020, a diplomatic effort by President Trump’s son-in-law that brought a new, if controversial, configuration of relationships in the Middle East. However, the sheer extent of American power is not enough to guarantee success in negotiation or mediation, as Stanley Hoffman pointed out in Gulliver’s Troubles, or the Setting of American Foreign Policy. In the absence of leverage and the will to use it, the US can be tied down like Gulliver, perhaps not with a thousand ropes but a few strategically placed ones. Eizenstat’s book makes clear that leverage comes largely from building up coalitions of like-minded states and entities. In these negotiations, relationships matter.An implication—probably not intentional—of the book is that negotiation is a man’s game. The paucity of women diplomats highlighted in the book is puzzling, especially in an age when we have had three female secretaries of state: Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright, and Hilary Clinton. Each of these women faced difficult circumstances during their tenures and oversaw highly complex (world changing) negotiations. Their stories, or the story of Wendy Sherman, who was a principal in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiation, would have enriched the book and clarified that negotiation is not a gendered activity.Finally, a good diplomat has the courage to change the situation he or she inherits. The stories in this book feature people who were able to envision a different outcome to the status quo and to put together a strategy to reach it. They also feature people who were major risk-takers. Sometimes this involved establishing relationships with enemies (Kissinger in China) or pariah states (Crocker with South Africa, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action/Iran negotiations). Sometimes the risk involved negotiation directly affecting American interests (Baker and German reunification, Aronson and Colombia, Eizenstat and the climate change negotiation, Carter and Iran); and sometimes the risk was to the core reputation of the diplomats themselves (Holbrooke in Bosnia, Mitchell in Northern Ireland). In each case, the diplomats did not walk away from the tasks, even when events went against them. Eizenstat’s stories emphasize that in addition to strategic vision, nerve, and management skills, successful diplomacy requires patience, persistence, and commitment in the face of long, complicated, multi-issue, multiparty processes. This book is full of people who were willing to keep showing up, day after day, in difficult circumstances, in pursuit of changes they thought would benefit the US, its citizens, and the world.