The world's most effective negotiator?
Examining President Reagan's legacy of negotiation
We can quibble about what kind of president Ronald Reagan was, but his negotiation skills changed the world for the better.
If one looks back on the history of the 1980s, we usually do it with rose-neon-colored glasses. Romantic in some respects. Silly in others (hairstyles and fashion in particular).
The reality was that we were embroiled in what nearly everyone deemed a permanent or perpetual conflict: the Cold War — USA vs. USSR.
Yet, as T.S. Eliot remarked in Four Quartets, “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
Reagan was remarkable in one sense: he was able to stay in his adversary's world. This is something that the late Jim Camp, once known as the World's Most Feared Negotiator, taught.
Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary.
In his dealings with his chief adversary, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan employed another of Camp's principles of negotiation.
Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective.
But on the homefront, Americans in the 1980s tended to be either confused or scared—or both—when it came to the Soviets. The Russian Bear was not to be poked.
In the decades which had passed since WWII, the vision of the Soviet bloc, even though borne of a demonic ideology, had begun to penetrate through into our spacious skies and fruited plain.
Recall: the sole reason the Soviet Union existed was to wage war against the West and the Soviets prosecuted this Cold War quite well for most of the 20th Century.
For example, by the time of his death in late 1982, Leonid Brezhnev, who had ruled as General Secretary of the Communist Party for nearly 20 years, had already enlisted tens of millions of global citizens to the Soviet cause to defeat the West.
Across the world, various nations consisting of millions of square miles of territory became functionaries of the Marxist-Leninist regime in Moscow—from southeast Asia, to Africa, and to North America.
Reagan had a vision. “Tear down that wall!”
Previous American presidents could never articulate such a vision.
Where FDR first sought and achieved collaboration with his wartime ally, Stalin, he sought appeasement with the USSR in a postbellum world.
Truman then attempted “containment,” a policy advocated by American diplomat George Kennan, eventually leading to the Korean War quagmire.
Eisenhower got us out of the Korean conflict, advocating the strategy of “peace through strength,” while Kennedy and LBJ settled on the idea of “coexistence” with the Soviets.
Nixon was a bit more bold with Brezhnev and pursued “détente.”
Jimmy Carter, though, backslid, preferring the “ostrich strategy.” Carter declared in 1977 that Americans “have gotten over our inordinate fear of Communism.”
The actions of these pre-Reagan administrations were often tactical and used to serve a short-term objective. The strategy—long-term—was often dubious.
Jim Camp taught that, “[r]esults are not valid goals.”
Gorbachev fixated on results. Reagan was concerned with vision.
Jim Camp championed vision, noting that, “[a]ll action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action.”
Outwardly, the Soviet regime spoke of peace. Gorbachev declared that he intended to ban all ballistic missiles on a global scale and his mission was to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Yet this vision and the truth were at odds.
The progenitor of the Communist state, V.I. Lenin, wrote, “Telling the truth is a bourgeois prejudice. Deception on the other hand is often justified by the goal.”
Pat Buchanan, former Communications Director in the Reagan Administration wrote, “Lenin's party exists to advance Lenin's revolution,” thus, “negotiating true peace with the West would be tantamount to suicide.”
Gorbachev was not an adept negotiator as it turns out. His vision did not get through to his American adversary, Mr. Reagan, nor did it resonate with his countrymen.
Only a few years later, the Soviet Union would eventually crumble under Gorby’s unwatchful eye.
Reagan understood yet another principle which Jim Camp advocated.
Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary.
Reagan was always a bit “unokay.”
In the Jim Camp Master Negotiator Interview Series with Michael Senoff, Camp suggests to Senoff that maybe we should all be a little unokay. He gives TV detective Columbo—frumpy and disheveled—as an example.
Camp also posits that Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, would go out of his way to look gangly and “weird” for the troops in the field. Camp told Senoff that Lincoln “did it on purpose to put [the troops] at ease.”
Same thing with The Gipper. “You know if you remember, if you think about people like President Reagan who used to struggle for answers,” said Camp.
But Reagan delivered on his side of the negotiation with the Soviets. The American people benefitted and Western culture survived—at least temporarily.
In mere months after Reagan left office, the symbol of Communist hegemony, the Berlin Wall, was eventually torn down and the Soviet Union disintegrated.
Those tens of millions of people who once flocked to the wicked ideology were now free of the shackles that Communism imposed upon them.
I cannot be so bold as to guarantee you a victory in any sort of war, the Cold War or otherwise, but understanding the principles of negotiation from the mouth of Jim Camp—the fellow who literally reinvented the FBI's concept and practice of negotiation—can certainly apply to your daily life.
Michael Senoff's exclusive audio interview series with the world's all-time top negotiating expert, the late Jim Camp, consists of 9 downloadable mp3 audio recordings over 7-plus hours and is nothing short of life-changing.
To get a cool $400 off the entire package (regularly $597), go directly to the page Michael set up for our readers only:
As always,
Brian