Brad DeLong has been on fire of late. Without much context, I present to you my favorite paragraph of the week (from this very worthwhile post):

…if you had told any Republican in 1980 that 2008 would see (a) a Negro with an Arabic-Swahili name beating a veteran figher pilot in the presidential polls and (b) gay marriage as the big cultural issue of the day, said Republican would have blown several gaskets. And if you had said that this would have been the result of an “Age of Reagan” said Republican would have melted down completely.

Reagan-worship has always struck me as a strange thing. Though his presidency perhaps hastened the end of the Cold War, and though many people found his sunny bromides inspiring, my memories of the end of his administration are dominated by the disgrace over Iran-Contra, with the president coming off as either a senile grandparent or a mendacious schemer.

Since Brad DeLong¹ took the time to visit my humble little corner of the internet, I figured I’d take the time to write on negotiations a little further (and pull this out of the comments into its own post).

Quoth DeLong:

Only the truly shortsighted think that negotiations are “the art of extracting maximum advantage from your adversary.” Negotiations are the art of getting to the best situation possible—which may or may not involve “extracting” anything.

True enough, that was some sloppy phrasing on my part. Negotiations, especially in international relations, are not a zero sum game. There may or may not be any “extraction” involved because it’s not as if my adversary gaining something results in me losing the exact same amount. With that said, if there exists a situation where two sides are irrationally committed to irreconcilable goals, negotiations do start tending towards a zero sum arrangement.

I, for one, don’t have much faith in the rationality of Ahmadinejad.² He may not be the madman caricature that the right has made of him, but he’s a nasty populist demagogue, and demagogues will behave in the interest of keeping themselves in power, not necessarily in the interests of their country.

Since I’m not a proponent of regime change as policy, I recognize that we will have to negotiate with this unsavory man. Best, then, to do it from a position of relative strength. Sanctions and pressure have led to increasingly dire conditions in Iran, which have in turn caused Ahmadinejad’s party to lose ground in the most recent Iranian elections. Why stop now?

“The best situation possible” is economics talk, pareto optimality if memory serves. It’s a crucial concept to keep in mind while thinking about likely and desirable outcomes of any negotiation. But it’s what you keep in the back of your mind as you tussle for maximum advantage. It’s not something you bust out when faced with a tough, adversarial negotiating partner across the table.