Talking to Enemies

Michael Walzer on Talking to Enemies

The announcement that Israel and Syria are negotiating with one another through Turkish mediators was called “a slap in the face” by an American diplomat who spoke anonymously to the New York Times (May 22, 2008). The Bush administration is against talking to enemies, although it has made an important exception with regard to the North Koreans. I think, by contrast, that talking to enemies is always a good idea.

First, it helps us understand what the leaders of the enemy state are thinking and possibly also what they are doing; it is a source of information. A diplomat is a kind of spy, but protected, as spies are not, by the international convention called “diplomatic immunity.” We lose spies all the time, but we rarely lose diplomats.

Second, negotiation is a form of engagement—like war, but less dangerous and much cheaper. Negotiation allows for strategic and tactical maneuver, for cautious probes and daring initiatives. Diplomats are like generals, though their mistakes are commonly less costly. Not always, you will say. Chamberlain at Munich is the standard argument against talking with enemies. President Bush invoked this argument in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, when he must have known that the Israeli-Syrian talks had already begun. In his Jerusalem speech, Bush was equating diplomacy with surrender. But the equation is only sometimes accurate, and wars also can end in surrender: think of Saigon, 1975. Diplomacy is more often a search for the kinds of compromise that bring real gains to both sides (and humiliation and defeat to neither). Good diplomats, after prolonged and difficult negotiations, produce real benefits, and we don’t have to pay for a triumphal parade when they come home.

Third, negotiation is a form of commerce, in which commodities of all sorts can be exchanged—land, water, air rights and rights of passage, prisoners, weapons, food, oil, formal recognition, membership in trade associations and other international bodies. Diplomats are like merchants, and merchants, as Kant famously said, are men of peace: “The spirit of commerce…cannot co-exist with war.” The more intricate the exchanges, the more stable the peace. So diplomats should be talking all the time, like good businessmen. Not every profitable deal is politically wise or just; sometimes diplomats must say no when a businessmen would say yes. But what they shouldn’t do is walk away from the table.

But what if our enemies are very bad people: brutal tyrants, patrons of terrorists, religious zealots? Doesn’t negotiation give them legitimacy? Doesn’t it imply that they are normal members of international society? It may do that if we make a lot of noise about never negotiating with the bad guys and then open negotiations with these bad guys—it would seem that these guys are not so bad. But when negotiation is ordinary, commonplace, and ongoing, it has no such meaning. When diplomats shake hands with tyrants every day, they are not endorsing tyranny. It isn’t even a human touch, because diplomats always wear gloves. The United States had diplomats in Moscow during the worst years of Stalin’s rule, talking and talking, and this did not in any way legitimize the Stalinist regime. It was indeed an evil empire, which we “recognized” politically and ideologically as an enemy and diplomatically as a partner.

Terrorist organizations are a different story, however. We don’t recognize them as partners, and we don’t—and shouldn’t—talk to them. Why is that right (if it is)? Brutal tyrants stand in for a country, and we hope that they will one day be replaced even while we deal with them. Regimes come and go; the country remains, and we need to sustain a relationship with it: information, engagement, and exchange are continuously useful. But a terrorist organization is, so to speak, brutality-in-itself. It doesn’t represent or stand in for anything else.

We don’t hope for its replacement but for its defeat and disappearance.
The case is the same with murderers at home: state officials don’t negotiate with criminal gangs. There is no business to be done. But even this rule isn’t absolute. We make an exception when the gang is holding hostages–its members may not care about innocent lives, but we do. In such a case, the goal is to save the hostages and then, if we can, capture or kill the gang members. There is no ongoing business to be done.

That is the standard doctrine, and yet Israel, a strong exponent of this doctrine, is not only negotiating with Syria but also with Hamas (through the mediation of Egypt). This approach seems to be the right one, not only because Hamas is holding an Israeli soldier, but also because it isn’t just a terrorist organization—though it is that—but also the government of the Gaza strip. It is a kind of regime standing in for a kind of country. The significance of those two words, “kind of,” is reflected in the fact that the negotiations with Hamas are also negotiations with the Egyptian mediator (which could, but so far hasn’t, cut off the movement of weapons into Gaza). But the negotiations with Syria are only negotiations with Syria; they aren’t also negotiations with Turkey.

So talking with enemies is a statist doctrine or a doctrine for countries. It has a long and honorable history. This is what diplomacy is about—its purpose is to sustain long-term relations, engagement and exchange, right now and down the road, with states and countries, for the sake of peace. Negotiations don’t always work, and sometimes it is important to acknowledge that they aren’t working. Still the fundamental political maxim applies: try, try again.

Michael Walzer is the co-editor of Dissent