Bush Admin Out Negotiates in Bali

For a bit more than 72 hours this week, the American delegation to the global warming meetings in Bali took their counterparts, especially those from Europe, to school on the art of negotiation and picked them clean.

An agreement reached on Saturday, one day late, calls for exactly what the U.S. sought: two more years of negotiations to develop an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Most importantly, from the U.S. perspective, there will be two more years of negotiations in which there is silence on how much greenhouse pollutants should be reduced, or by when. The Germans and others wanted specific numbers, ranging from 20 percent to 40 percent, though the impression is that almost anything, just so long as it was a number, would have been acceptable.

For the Bush Administration, as well as the oil, coal, auto, cement and other polluting industries that support it, this is a tremendous victory. Ditto for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria and the other oil producing nations who rely on continued shipments of crude to the United States to fill our tanks, while we fill their banks.

The greatest single threat to the continued profitability of carbon-rich corporations and countries is that the world might agree—today, right now, not later—that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced a certain amount, within a given time. The instant that happens, the money coming into their coffers will start dropping like an Olympic downhill skier and people start switch to wind, solar and other forms of non-polluting energy.

So from the perspective of those companies and countries, the Bush Administration saved their bacon. Looking from the outside it, it appears that the Bush negotiators were able to do this because negotiators from other democracies are, as a general matter, no match for those from the United States. That’s because the other governments are all parliamentary systems, in which the party that wins a majority in the legislative branch gets to run the executive as well. If the U.S. were a parliamentary system today, either Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats, would be President instead of George Bush, a Republican.

Parliamentarians are not very good at negotiating, because, as a rule, they don’t have to. By definition, a minister has an executive branch position because the party has a majority in the parliament; and, because they have a majority, they decide what becomes law and what doesn’t.

As a result, a minister—the same thing as a U.S. Secretary–simply decides to issue a new law and, voila! There is one. That’s a bit of an over-statement, of course, but not much of one.

Of course, for a minster to prevail, a proposal must make it through a cabinet. That’s nothing compared to the gauntlet that a proposal in the United States must survive. In the U.S., to become law a piece of legislation must be guided through a process in which it is theoretically subject to 93 different votes, and each is sudden death. Lose once, and the game is over. Then, if a bill passes both house of Congress, it must be signed by the President.

The same is true for the annual appropriations bills that provide money to keep the government running. Allocating cash to, say, Alaska instead of, say, Kentucky or for bridges instead of dams is also a process of negotiation. Indeed, the entire American political system is based on negotiating, so members of Congress get pretty good at it. It appears that somebody in or providing advice to the U.S. team in Bali was pretty good, too.

Consider, for example, what the world has witnessed first hand in the toe-to-toe battles of Bali: nothing.

Everything that the press and public knows is, at best, secondhand, and probably more distant than that. That may be because one of the cardinal rules of successful negotiation is to meet behind closed doors, which is exactly what happened in Bali. It wasn’t just the public excluded from the sessions, but most delegates –that is, people who represent entire nations with millions or perhaps even hundreds of millions of people–were barred from the behind-the-scenes negotiations.

Not surprisingly, neither the excluders nor the excludees were willing to identify themselves on the record, so who got in and who didn’t is a matter of speculation. Certainly reporters weren’t allowed in and, for that matter had a hard time figuring out where the meetings were being held because that, too, was a closely held secret. Indeed, presumably because they did not want to be caught in flagrante, the negotiators kept switching meeting rooms without notice.

The exclusionary policy didn’t apply only to the public and the press, but even to delegates. Most delegates were barred from the secret meetings because they were deemed unimportant to the process. Some nations—the United States, for example–were allowed not only to bring in delegates but supporting staff as well, while nations with tens or hundreds of millions of people were barred. (Knowledge is power, so a good negotiator wants his rocket scientist in the room and the other side’s not.)

To the extent that it can be known, the degree to which U.S. delegation followed some of the unwritten rules of Congressional negotiation appears to have been extraordinary. Some of these rules, in no particular order, are –

• When the other side rejects your offer, reduce it. (“Don’t want to remain silent on how much emissions should be cut and by when? OK, we put the Kyoto Protocol on the table.”)
• At some point, express outrage, whether real or feigned, and leave the room abruptly, preferably slamming the door. (No way to know whether this happened.)
• Never have the final decision-maker in the room–always have somebody outside with whom the other side’s offer must be cleared. (“Gee, that sounds OK to me, but I’ve got to take it back to….”)
• Negotiate the small points first, saving the most important for last, when the other side is tired. Give the other side as many inconsequential wins as possible, so that when the score is tallied it looks like they’re way ahead. (“OK, OK, the forestry stuff is acceptable. For places like Brazil and Indonesia that should count for a lot more than SUV emissions. That gives your side a bunch, and we don’t have any wins at all.”)
• Even if you’ve already agreed to something, put it on the table anyway. Ignore objections. (“Yes, I know we were the ones who originally proposed a technology transfer program six years ago, but nobody said we intended to pay for it.”)
• Make sure the other side believes you don’t care whether an agreement is reached, unless it’s on your terms. (“Hey, we will still be in office in 2008 so we can talk about this then if you want to.”)

When deal is reached, rake in your share, and as you do, start negotiating for a piece of the other side’s pile in the spirit of “Well, I’ve got my half. Now let’s talk about yours.” (“OK, so we agree there will be no binding numbers, but I think we should re-examine ….”)

Very importantly, put the negotiations in the hands of the person on your side with the biggest bladder. (No, I’m fine John. But if you want to take a break while the rest of us keep talking, that’s no problem.”)

Some of these sound silly, especially the one with the bladder, but they are real, and they are part of the process. And, seriously, members of Congress have walked away from a negotiating table to relieve themselves, only to find that in their absence some of their bargaining chips went missing.

Of course, winning by being hardnosed can have long term consequences, not necessarily good. Some bruised feelings were already visible in Bali, for never in the 13 years since the first Conference of the Parties, as these meetings are called, has the conduct of the United States engendered such ill will.

For example, at a press briefing Thursday by U.S. negotiators, a reporter’s question was predicated on a statement critical of the United States. When he described these facts, it triggered a spontaneous burst of applause–and nobody gets into that room without a press badge, so these were not environmental activists. Then on Saturday, the U.S. delegation itself was booed by onlookers.

Yes, the U.S. negotiators demonstrated that they’re tough, not folks you’d want meet in an alley in a dark night, so to speak. So what.The general rule is that the 800-pound gorilla wins, and given the size of the American economy and the vast amount of pollution that it produces–and that’s just from within the U.S. borders, not counting all the pollution from the tennis shoes, toys, furniture and the flood of other goods from China, India and other nations–the but this wasn’t a gorilla fight. It was an attempt to negotiate an agreement to safeguard the future of life as we know, and the future of every human being alive on the planet. Just how do no numbers, no dates and no binding commitment contribute to, to borrow a phrase from the preamble to the Constitution, the “general welfare” of America and her people?

Does it improve the lot of Americans to be devastated by more Katrina-like storms? Are those in the West better off with a snow pack that continues to disappear, or in the South with crops that continue to wither in drought? Are heat waves that claim hundreds of lives in the best interests of the American people?

Moreover, while no politician or political party want to govern by public opinion polls–or admit that they do–a succession of surveys have shown that Americas are gravely concerned by global warming, that they want action, and that they are willing to pay high prices to get it.

So how is it that the U.S. delegation journeys to Bali, stakes out a position that demonstrably places the American public at increased risk and runs contrary to their will? The answer is that, unlike the Congress, the President of the United States is not required to negotiate. He, like a parliamentary minister, can simply declare what the position of the nation will be, regardless of what the American people want, what’s good for them or what the Congress might attempt to say about it. The decision is unilateral, non-negotiable and final.

So Americans can take pride in the considerable negotiating skills of their representatives in Bali. But can they–and this is a literal question–live with the result?