THE PURPOSES OF DIPLOMATIC COMMUNICATION

In most cases, the purpose of negotiation between two or more governments is to change or sustain each other's objectives and policies or to reach agreement over some contentious issue. However, such negotiations may have other pur­poses or side effects as well. Before analyzing the techniques diplomats employ in bargaining and securing agreements, these other objectives should be noted.

First, a large amount of diplomatic communication between governments is undertaken primarily for exchanging views, probing intentions, and attempting to convince other governments that certain actions, such as attending a confer­ence, lowering tariffs, or proffering diplomatic support on a particular interna­tional issue, would be in their interest. Here there is no hard bargaining, and diplomats or government officials do not ordinarily employ threats or offer re­wards. The majority of routine diplomatic contacts between governments are of this nature, and almost all visits by heads of states are undertaken not for bargaining, but simply for "exchanging views" and "consulting."

Second, bilateral diplomatic meetings or multilateral conferences may be arranged for the purpose of stalling or creating the illusion that a government is seriously interested in bargaining, even though it really desires no agreement. During the conduct of warfare, one state may agree to armistice negotiations to assuage public opinion, while it simultaneously steps up its military campaigns. By agreeing to negotiate, it may be able to draw attention away from its other activities.

⁹ John W. Burton, Peace Theory: Preconditions of Disarmament (New York: Knopf, 1962), pp. 184-85.

174 The Instruments of Policy: Diplomatic Bargaining

Third, a government may enter into diplomatic negotiations primarily for the purpose of making propaganda; it uses a conference not so much to reach agreement over a limited range of issues as to make broad appeals to the outside public, partly to undermine the bargaining position of its opponents. In an age when "secret diplomacy" is viewed with suspicion and many diplomatic negotiations are open both to the press and public, a conference that is certain to receive extensive publicity around the world offers an excellent forum for influencing public attitudes. Soviet negotiators have earned a reputation for employing some international conferences for propaganda purposes, but any time two or more governments cannot agree—or do not wish to agree—upon the issues under consideration and yet desire to gain some advantages from their efforts, they are likely to use the proceedings primarily to embarrass their opponents and extol their own actions and attitudes. The open forum of the General Assembly offers one important arena for attempting to influence non-diplomatic opinion. Indeed, many observers of United Nations affairs note that most speeches made in that body are designed primarily for public domestic and international consumption, not for the information of other delegates. The many conferences on disarmament and arms control since World War II have similarly been exploited for propaganda purposes.

The trained observer can readily discern when a party to diplomatic negotiations is exploiting a conference or meeting primarily (since all "open" diplomacy involves some propaganda) for the purposes of influencing the atti­tudes of the general public rather than for changing the bargaining positions of its opponents. Persistent use of slogans, epithets, vague phrases (such as "general and complete disarmament") and repetition of totally unacceptable positions indicate that bargaining is not the real purpose of the discussions. Other techniques include repeated attempts to discredit the opposition, deliber­ate and frequent misrepresentation of the other party's positions, widespread discussion of subjects not on the agenda, or inconsistent statements. John Foster Dulles remembered how, when he was attending the Moscow Foreign Minister's Conference in 1947 as an observer, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov would make lengthy speeches at the meetings, each inconsistent with its predecessor. In one instance he would proffer friendship to the defeated Germans and promise them help in reconstructing their economy; in the next he would please the anti-German sentiments of the Soviet population by demanding stiff reparations from the Germans; and to the Poles he promised generous portions of German territory.¹⁰ An American delegate at one series of disarmament meetings in 1960 noted to the Soviet negotiators that they had employed the vague phrase "general and complete disarmament" 135 times in about two hours of speechmaking.¹¹ The plenary sessions of the Paris negotiations on the Vietnam war dragged on for four years, each side putting forth proposals that had been repeatedly rejected, and sometimes not even considered, by the other. The

¹⁰John Foster Dulles, War or Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p. 67. ¹¹ Joseph L. Nogee, "Propaganda and Negotiation: The Case of the Ten-Nation Disarma­ment Committee," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 7 (1963), 515.

175 The Instruments of Policy: Diplomatic Bargaining

North Vietnamese in particular did not use these sessions for bargaining, for their government was committed to securing American withdrawal from the war and the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime by means other than diplomacy—primarily through military offensives. The Paris discussions were exploited for propaganda purposes; the Vietnamese envoys used postsession press conferences to castigate the other side and to prove the reasonableness of their proposals, when in fact they were demanding capitulation. This four-year charade thus had little to do with diplomacy. It was designed to give the appearance of negotiation when in fact the real bargaining was being conducted in the battlefields and in the North Vietnamese efforts to bouy the antiwar opposition in the United States.¹²

Diplomacy, however, is used primarily to reach agreements, compro­mises, and settlements where government objectives conflict. It involves, whether in private meetings or publicized conferences, the attempt to change the policies, actions, objectives, and attitudes of other governments and their diplomats by persuasion, offering rewards, exchanging concessions, or making threats.

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