Engineer Memoirs
Q:
You have to know what you are willing to give away?
A:
Yes, although I always went into negotiations with the idea that I wouldn't give
anything until I was absolutely driven. Perhaps not always. That's a little harsh.
But there are two theories. One is to load the agreement up with a lot of stuff that isn't
really needed, and then be willing to give a lot of it away. The other is to boil it down
before you go in so that it doesn't appear as onerous to the other side. Under the
second approach, you have to be tougher on holding the line. If you had stripped away
all the things you might ultimately be willing to give away and made that your initial
presentation, you didn't have as much flexibility.
Q:
Who were the hardest negotiators?
A:
The ones that I had the most trouble with were the Arabs. But that, I think, was
because I didn't fully understand the way they approached negotiations. There was a
cultural difference.
I mentioned the fact that when I made that trip with Harold Brown, they kept me up
half the night. I think a westerner or a western country would not do that because they
would feel that it was not courteous to take somebody right off a plane and put him
through a drill like that.
The Saudis have a lot of manners in some respects. They can be very polite. But this
business of putting heat on the guy you're negotiating with is SOP [standard operating
procedure] for them.
It appears to me that in the Arab culture, it's an accepted form of dialogue, when
you're negotiating with somebody, and it's not considered rude or inconsiderate to
make life awkward for the other guy.
[Major General Richard M.] Dick Wells, whom you may have run into when he was
Deputy Chief of Engineers, used to tell the story about his negotiations with the Saudis
when they wanted him to agree to award a contract to some relative of theirs for food
service. He did not believe that it was the right way to do it. As far as he was
concerned, they had hired the Corps of Engineers to come over there to Saudi Arabia
to award contracts in accordance with the practices of the Corps of Engineers, and not
to become engaged in the sort of favoritism that was practiced in Saudi Arabia on their
own contracts.
Dick said that they plunked him in a chair in the afternoon, facing out a west window,
hammered at him for an hour and a half about this. I don't think he gave up on it right
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