Negotiation Lessons from the Under Secretary for Thugs

Abstract

Bill Richardson has had a remarkable career. He has been an eight-term member of Congress,United States ambassador to the United Nations,United States secretary of energy,and a two-term governor of New Mexico,becoming along the way a force within the Democratic Party, a leading Hispanic American politician,and a presidential hopeful in 2008. In the course of that career,he has developed a particular professional sideline — negotiating with international adversaries of the United States, a rogue’s gallery that has included Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein, two generations of North Korean Kims,and two Congolese Kabilas — both father and son — as well as an assortment of warlords and tribal leaders.Often the subject of those negotiations was the release of hostages and political prisoners,a task at which Richardson has been surprisingly successful, leading one wag within President Bill Clinton’s administration to label him“the Under Secretary for Thugs.” But “thugs” is not the word that Richardson uses to describe his negotiating counterparts — he chooses to call them“sharks”instead,a perhaps more apt and somewhat less pejorative term. Sharks, after all, are forces of nature that must feed their hunger or die.The people with whom Richardson negotiated also had a hunger that needed to be fed — a hunger for power. Sharks, as Richardson reminds us, are to be found not only in the waters of the Third World, but also in both houses of Congress, the White House, state capitals, town halls, and sometimes even our own homes.