Secrets of Power Negotiating by Roger Dawson

Author:Roger Dawson [Dawson, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4532-5411-0
Publisher: Career Press
Published: 2012-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 38

Information power

Why do countries send spies into other countries? Why do professional football teams study the replays of their opponents’ games? Because knowledge is power, and the more knowledge one side is able to accumulate about the other, the better chance that side has for victory. If two countries go to war, the country that has the most intelligence about the other has the advantage. That was certainly true in the Persian Gulf War: The CIA spies had photographed every building in Baghdad, and we were able to completely take out their communication systems in the first few bombing runs.

Know What the Other Side Will Propose

Governments spend billions of dollars finding out about the other side before they’ll go into an arms-control talk. It was interesting to see Henry Kissinger being interviewed before a summit meeting. “Mr. Kissinger,” the interviewer said, “do you think it’s possible our negotiators know what the other side will propose at the talks, before they actually propose it?” He said, “Oh, absolutely—no question about it. It would be absolutely disastrous for us to go into a negotiation not knowing in advance what the other side was going to propose.”

Can you imagine the cost of getting that kind of information? The CIA is very secretive about what it spends, but at an intelligence gathering conference in San Antonio, Mary Graham, the deputy director of intelligence and a 27-year veteran at the CIA, let slip that it spends $44 billion a year. If our government thinks it’s that important, shouldn’t we at least take some time gathering information before we go into a negotiation?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.