America Needs the Trust of Its Friends, Not Its Adversaries

Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman spent hundreds of hours negotiating with Iranian diplomats, and she came away with a surprising conclusion: “I don’t think negotiations are ever about trust,” she told me. 

She was right, but not completely. You don’t need to trust an adversary to cut a deal with one. What you need is the trust of your friends. And the U.S. government isn’t putting nearly the attention it needs into building that trust.

With adversaries, even complicated negotiations require just two basic things: a way to see if the other side is keeping its word, and a way to make sure real costs and benefits hang in the balance. Understanding an adversary’s interests and pain points helps negotiators, and it also helps to respect that at least some of what an adversary wants is legitimate. But that is about information gathering. It doesn’t require trust.  

With allies and partners, though trust is a massive amplifier. Trust builds feelings of common purpose and shared benefit. It creates information sharing among like-minded governments. It creates the willingness to join in imposing consequences, and when they do, that supercharges adversaries’ incentives to comply.