• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

THE 50% SOLUTION How to Bargain Successfully with Hijackers, Strikers, Bosses, Oil Magnates, Arabs, Russians, and Other Worthy Opponents in This Modern World I. William Zartman ANCHOR BOOKS ANCHOR PRESS/DOUBLEDAY GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 1976 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The 50% solution. Bibliography Includes index. CONTENTS: Zartman, I. W. The analysis of tiation.-Permanent negotiations: Felice, F. B. de. tiations, or the art of negotiating. Morse, E. L. The gaining structure of NATO: multi-issue negotiations in an inter-dependent world. Strauss, A., et al. The hospital and its negotiated order.-Structural analysis and its ternatives: Schuler, G. Henry M. The International oil negotiations. Wriggins, W. H. Up for auction: Malta bar- gains with Great Britain, 1971. Rothchild, D. Racial stratification and bargaining: the Kenya experience. [etc.] 1. Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes- Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Negotiation-Addresses, says, lectures. I. Zartman, I. William. JX4473.F53 341.5'2 ISBN: 0-385-09656-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: Copyright © 1976 I. William Zartman All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 2. UP FOR AUCTION: MALTA BARGAINS WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1971 W. Howard Wriggins, Columbia University Most studies of international bargaining have been concerned with encounters between major powers (see, for instance, Ikle 1964, Schelling 1960, Kecskemeti 1964). Bargaining, however, can be just as useful a frame of reference for con- sidering encounters between small, weak, and poor on one hand, and major industrialized countries on the other. Even where relative political or economic power positions are highly asymmetrical, this approach can help one to understand what the respective parties are attempting to accomplish (see Zartman 1971). Moreover, the preference· of many students of international politics for system-type analysis often leads to ig- noring the room for maneuver that statesmen in fact can some- times create for themselves if their strategies are shrewdly designed and carefully implemented. Indeed, even states with few perceivable assets, apart from location, can gain major benefits if the fault lines of the international system are favor- able and their bargaining strategies make the most of their cir- cumstances. The elements of power at the disposal of a bar- gaining party define certain outside limits to the outcome. But it is the ingenuity and skill with which these elements are deployed or withheld that actually shape the outcome. It is as Up for Auction 209 much a matter of bargaining strategy as it is of pre-existing elements of power. The bargaining encounter between Malta and Great Britain in 1971 is a case in point. It underlines how much Malta was able to gain under what appeared to be rather unpromising cir- cumstances. It also demonstrates a number of bargaining strategies that small countries situated in certain circumstances can in fact pursue. Classic ploys of attempting to withhold assets coveted by outsiders were combined with gradually in- tensifying the pain the outsiders experienced during the haggling to remind them that many conveniences taken for granted in the past could not be taken for granted any more. A number of outside players were drawn in, transforming what hitherto had been a limited bilateral negotiation between a large country and a small country into a multipartite bargain- ing game with the smaller finding allies among the newer par- ttctpan. t s. saymg . "no, b u t . " or " yes, b u t . ." f or much longer than most reasonable men could stand almost led to a final rupture more than once. But as Dom Mintoff himself was reputed to have said, "Each time we came back we were offered more." In the end, the island's cash income was dra- matically increased as a result of the nine months of haggling. Malta's short-run interests were well served. Whether · they will prove to have been as well served in the longer run remains to be seen. MALTA'S REMARKABLE GAINS In this process, the tiny island, with only 350,000 inhabit- ants, unilaterally abrogated a treaty of mutual defense and assistance with Great Britain that should have run until 1974, and induced the British to begin dismantling major electronics installations. The British reduced their forces on the island from some 3,500 troops and 7,000 dependents to a handful of 30 men. As a result of the negotiations, NATO and Great Britain together agreed to pay £ 14 million annually (or three times the annual rent before the negotiations began) for the use of port, air, and electronics facilities, and the use to which these facilities could be put was narrowed. Additional cash grants of £4 million were obtained from Italy and Libya, a fur- 210 Structural Analysis and Its Alternatives ther increase of some £2.5 million resulted from back-dating the start of the new arrangement, and the island received concessional development loans of some £ 7 million in addi- tion. These gains were all the more remarkable because Great Britain and other NATO strategists were clear that Malta was "important but by no means indispensable" to NATO's mili- tary activities in the Mediterranean. During the century and a half after the British gained possession of the island following the defeat of Napoleon, Malta has been a critical naval base on the route of empire. Its heroic role during World War II had dramatized its position in the narrow waist of the Mediter- ranean, separating the western from the eastern basins. In the 1970s, however, it was manifestly less important. NATO's major navies all had cruising ranges unknown in the days of sailing ships; Grand Harbor itself was so small as to be unable to safely accommodate NATO's American aircraft carriers. To be sure, two RAF squadrons were stationed on the island, and used it for air surveillance of Soviet naval activity in the east- ern Mediterranean; a major radar installation also kept watch. But NATO had comparable alternatives in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and France, permitting antisubmarine reconnaissance over the whole area, and surface surveillance posed few difficulties. How then was it possible for the Prime Minister of Malta to do as well as he did? What were the factors that led to this re- markable outcome? THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS The following analysis will suggest that variables at three levels of international politics were at play, and the Prime Minister showed himself adroit at using all three to his advan- tage. In terms of the world state system, he rightly perceived that changes in the overall world strategic balance, par- ticularly the changing balance of naval forces in the Mediter- ranean region, gave a certain plausibility to ploys _that would not have been taken seriously ten years earlier. In his bilateral relations with Great Britain, he showed the utility, in the short run, at least, of certain negotiating tactics which, while greatly Up for Auction 211 annoying the British, managed to draw Russia and Libya into the game. Their obvious interest brought in Britain's NATO partners in their train. Third, in domestic politics, despite only a one-vote margin of parliamentary safety at home, he suc- ceeded in holding his majority and so confusing his opposition that he ended the nine months of uncertainty with substan- tially more popular support than he had had immediately fol- lowing his election. BACKGROUND: INTERDEPENDENCE AND ECONOMIC CONSTRAINTS Although Malta gained its formal political independence in 1964, it faced sharpening domestic economic problems and continued to be intimately linked with Great Britain for its economic well-being. The Maltese had become used to a stan- dard of living considerably above their neighbors' in either Sicily, Tunisia, or Libya. Its "fortress economy" had been comparatively prosperous. Substantial British maintenance payments for facilities and expenditures by its men and their families accounted for nearly one fifth of the total annual GNP of some £ 100 million in 1971, the year of these negotiat- ions.! At the time, these transfers met nearly half of Malta's deficit in its balance of Malta itself possessed no raw materials useful for helping to pay for imports, except cement and sunshine. At the time of independence, both Maltese and British officials recognized that the British official and service presence was likely to decline considerably over the next dec- ade. Malta could no longer depend for the longer run on Brit- ish service expenditures to help meet its deficit on current ac- count. Concurrently with the 1964 mutual assistance treaty signed at the time of independence, a financial agreement was en- tered into that committed the British to provide annually some £5 million sterling of "development assistance," as the British called it (while the Maltese came to consider it "rent for the use of facilities"). For its part, Malta agreed to remain in the sterling area and to keep its reserves in sterling. Specific condi- tions were then defined to slow the pace at which workers in the dockyards and in the base facilities would be fired as Brit- 212 Structural Analysis and Its Alternatives ish activities on the island declined. It was hoped that the "eco- nomic assistance," plus investment incentives and promotional activities designed to lure capital and tourists, would render the economy much less dependent on Britain by 1974.3 The run up to the election in June of 1971 revealed con- trasting approaches to the island's economic future and to the relationship with Great Britain. The government, headed by Dr. Borg Olivier of the Nationalist party, generally took an op- timistic view of Malta's future. He argued that under his regime, Malta had moved from economic stagnation in the late fifties to a fairly steady annual growth of 6-7 per cent since the midsixties.

Load more

  29

Copy Link