It has been interesting to be a negotiation professor and negotiator over the past few weeks, to say the least.  I try to take a very clinical approach and force my students to identify the tactics, strategies, and interests motivating the various parties. Daily, we see textbook displays of bilateral distributive negotiation tactics of if/then threats, padding, red herrings, overwhelm, etc.  Understand that these tactics and the distributive style of negotiations have their place and usefulness, but they are generally short-term. So, the students naturally ask a fundamental question: What is the long game of what we see internationally?  

Foreign policy and world order are being reset from the Triple D strategy to the Great Powers Strategy of Pre-World War II.  The long-term goal is to create a triangle of three Great Powers: the United States, Russia, and China.   

Diplomacy, Development, Defense – Triple D – was the foreign policy that the United States and the Allies, including the Soviets, following World War II.  The US and Allies developed it from the lessons learned from the centuries of European wars and the disaster of diplomacy, the Treaty of Versailles.  Triple D was the embodiment of multi-lateral integrative negotiations in foreign affairs.  Before the end of World War II, foreign affairs were conducted using a distributive bilateral model of  the Great Power Strategies (GPS), which means that a few Great Powers (GP) would use their militaries and economies to push other considerable powers around and use territorial land grabs and shifting alliances to improve their positions over the other GPs.  Smaller nations would be moved around, traded back and forth, and never truly have a seat at the table.  The hope was that as the power position improved, so would trade, and thus, economies improve.   These GPs included the Russian Empire, British Empire, Prussia, Spain, France, and, to a lesser degree, the Dutch and Portuguese.  If you think to yourself – hmmm, none of those are GPs now, and two don't even exist – you are right.   Also, if you believe those economies and those militaries are not current leaders – you are correct.   The Great Power Strategy helped push all of those former GPs to extreme heights of global dominance but also into severe economic crises, leadership crises, out-of-control defense spending, shifting military battles and alliances, and colonial uprisings around the globe.  The capstone was the win-lose Treaty of Versailles, which was nothing more than a formalization of the GP Strategy.  That tragic distributive treaty based on position instead of interests ensured World War II, the constant conflict in Israel–Palestine, the first Iraq War, and the GWOT.  Despite President Wilson's attempts to reset the foreign policies of Europe away from a GP strategy, Europe ignored his pleas, and the US population turned to an isolationist policy.   In the decades following, nationalist, isolationist, and GPS would seem to work with the highly rapid growth of industrialization and a booming economy in the United States. Still, soon, a depression that was fermenting in Europe and Asia would help trigger the destabilization of governments and eventually a Great Depression. 

Negotiating judicial and legal exchanges in Mongolia.

Enter World War II, the most significant example of the “Payback Phenomenon” in negotiations because of the lopsided Treaty of Versailles.  The Second World War would mean a traumatic end to the GP strategy, with the United States and now the Soviet Union positioned to destroy each other with nuclear devices.  The two powers and their various allies realized that the GP Strategy would lead to a nuclear cataclysm.  Thus, the warriors of World War II, hardened by war and death, developed the Triple D strategy, and the political will of the United States demanded globalization.  The first prong of Triple D is a strong and global military capacity.  This was based on the lesson from Pearl Harbor and the first years of war.   We were not a significant military power at the start of WWII and were generally considered 15^th or 17^th in overall might.  The US had to retool the entire economy, initiate the draft, and sink billions into rapid militarization.  The second prong of Triple D is Development.  We believed that if a foreign nation's people had basic food, shelter,  medical supplies, and assistance with organic economic development, they would be less likely to align against us or, at a minimum, destabilize their region.  Essentially, pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of war.  The third prong is Diplomacy.  Following WWII, we went from 59 diplomatic posts to 271 posts.  We learned that we must communicate and converse with our allies, enemies, and neutral states as well as negotiate multi-laterally to ensure long-term compliance of agreements.  We knew that personal relationships opened up markets and opportunities and prevented miscommunication. 

We developed the Triple D strategy because we learned brutal death and economic loss lessons under the Great Powers Strategy. Triple D was based on valuing the interests of promoting trade, democratic rule of law, human rights, democratic capitalism, and economic opportunity.  In other words, values over just monetary gain.  It worked; regardless of minor trade imbalances, the United States economy is strong, diverse, robust, the center of innovation, and the US dollar is the reserve currency for the world.  It is so strong that the US boasts multiple trading markets and hubs for technology innovation, medical discoveries, and education.   The Triple D Strategy is not void of problems, imbalances, and inequality – no system is, but it created the environment for American Exceptionalism. 

Reverting to a Great Power Strategy moves the American public from interest-based negotiations to position-based negotiations that value short-term economic gains over long-term values-based success.  Position-based negotiations are always more costly and take more energy to sustain.

In a corporate environment, the Great Powers strategy or distributive negotiation works when the interest is short-term or immediate gains in the stock market or board room.  It works on one-time real estate transactions, buy-outs of a corporation, and hostile take-overs but rarely is successful for long-term multi-issued negotiations that require long-term cooperation.   Generally, following a distributive negotiation strategy, the parties have to convert to an interest-based approach to ensure long-term stability. That is why there were so many European wars from 1600 to WWI; the Great Powers shifted alliances to hold or gain positions.  The alliances never lasted and cost the powers and their smaller allies time, talent, and money. The Great Powers Strategy allowed an upstart nation, the US, to build capacity while the Great Powers pushed each other around. 

As Americans, we love to win.  We relish the scoreboard and are delighted to watch when the camera pans the losing side fans.  The problem is that excitement is short-lived.  Imagine the lack of fun if we only played the same teams week after week and in only one sport for the entire year.  Eventually, that joy, exuberance, and pride would fade, and we would question why we were playing the same game.  The Europeans asked this question at the end of WWII. They decided to get out of the game.

Neither approach prevents the government from controlling costs and reducing waste.  Triple D does require us to win the peace as much as we win the fight.  After the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, America has not been the best at staying committed and finishing the job of development and diplomacy, i.e., Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Somalia, etc. Our failure to be consistent and complete with Development has created resentment, hate, and mistrust around the globe. Our inability to spend a little on development ensures that we spend exponentially on defense.  Integrative settlements -soft power- are always cheaper than military force to ensure compliance to a distributive conclusion.   

The current change back to a Great Powers strategy between Russia, the US, and China is designed to align the US with Russia against China. These opening moves against our long-term allies will knock them off balance and force them into compliance.  It will work with our European allies in the short term, even if most deals have been in facial or political theatre.  The question remains: Will it survive in the long term?  Did the Great Powers Strategy serve England in the long term?  Did it serve Prussia in the long term?  Did it serve France in the long term?   A reset to Great Powers Strategy is based on the belief that, unlike Europe of the 1700s and 1800s, the US has a stronger economy, more robust innovation, and military superiority.  The English thought the same when they said the “Sun never sets on the British Empire.”  Ask yourself, is the Pound Sterling or Dollar the reserve currency of the world?  Ask yourself, is the British Navy number one in the world?  Ask yourself if Spain still controls South America's affairs.  All of them played the Great Powers game.  

In other words, imagine using the Great Powers Strategy in a marriage or dating relationship where every discussion or problem becomes someone wins, and someone loses.  That relationship is bound for separation, protective orders, and divorce court.  This contrasts with an integrative approach where the married couple looks for joint wins, trade-offs, and sometimes win-lose, even those tempered with grace.  That relationship is bound for a silver and gold wedding anniversary.  Triple D Strategy is the integrative approach to international dating. 

As someone who negotiates daily, domestically and internationally, as well as teaches negotiations, I bet that the return to the Great Power Strategy (distributive strategy) will see glorious short-term gains with a traumatic incident of the Pay Back Phenomenon producing uncertainty in economic markets, a dramatic increase of military activities globally, an attack on American soil, and negative financial impact for American consumers.  Hopefully, our American Exceptionalism of innovation, can-do attitude, unity, and opportunity will push us through future crises and return to values-based Diplomacy, Development, and Defense.