Voices from the Arab press: Why ‘Nani o shiyou’ negotiations fail
Whenever I hear Arab officials negotiate with their Japanese counterparts, the Japanese phrase nani o shiyou? (What should we do?) always comes up.
By MEDIA LINEABU DHABI’S Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan gestures with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a meeting in United Arab Emirates.(photo credit: REUTERS)WHY ‘NANI O SHIYOU’ NEGOTIATIONS FAILAl-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, June 13We are living in a period of unprecedented uncertainty and witnessing growing geopolitical tensions on both the regional and global levels. This requires us to improve our negotiating skills.Whenever I hear Arab officials negotiate with their Japanese counterparts, the Japanese phrase nani o shiyou? (What should we do?) always comes up. The Arab negotiator enters the negotiation room without a clear vision of what he wants or what his best alternative is. When both sides fail to reach a consensus, he reluctantly asks: “What should we do?”One of my favorite negotiation stories pertains to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaign. Weeks before the election, the Roosevelt team prepared and printed large amounts of flyers and posters. Just before distributing them, they discovered a seal on Roosevelt’s photo, indicating that his image was copyrighted and owned by a private studio. With their backs against the wall and just weeks left until election day, Roosevelt’s campaign manager proposed to pay the studio a large sum of money in exchange for the rights. The negotiator on Roosevelt’s team, however, pursued a different path: He wrote a letter to the studio’s manager and suggested that he “donate” his rights over the photo to the campaign, which would, in turn, increase the exposure and publicity of the photographer’s work and his studio. The owner happily complied.This story is a great example of how the framing of an issue can generate dramatically different solutions, and how negotiations require out-of-the-box thinking. In general, it is important to build relationships and articulate a clear vision for common goals before delving into the negotiations themselves. I am reminded of the words of one of my university professors, who claimed that he did not like the English term “win-win” to express successful negotiations because it framed negotiations like a war. Instead, he suggested using the term “happy-happy,” because it can remind negotiating parties that the ultimate goal is to make both sides happy and content with the outcome.This is what we must remember today as the world around us continuously changes, forcing us to protect our interests and promote our national goals. – Issam BukhariERDOGAN’S FOREIGN ADVENTURESAsharq Al-Awsat, London, June 14Few people know that Turkey has a military base in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia, and that its largest embassy abroad also happens to be in the Somali capital. The only thing that combines Libya, where Turkey is already present, and Somalia, where it is covertly establishing a presence, is that the two countries are torn by wars. Furthermore, until recently, Turkey had a foothold in the Sudanese island of Suakin, where it had planned to establish a military base, but this plan fell through with the collapse of Omar al-Bashir’s regime and the rise of a new government in Khartoum.The question therefore is: Are these Turkish enclaves abroad a product of an explicit foreign policy or just coincidence? The answer is that with Erdogan, nothing is mere coincidence. In the early years of the Syrian war, he was reluctant to cross the border with Turkish forces. Today, his forces are present in Syria, but they lost most of their major battles to the Russians and the Assad regime, as well as to the Americans.In the wake of a continued deterioration in the standard of living of most Turkish citizens, and after the Turkish military’s defeat in Syria, Erdogan is keen to revamp his image. This is what brought him to send troops to Libya; draw a maritime border in the waters of the Mediterranean despite Greek objections; announce oil discoveries; and establish a presence in Somalia. His ultimate goal is to raise the morale of the Turkish people, who’ve been hit by two years of economic shocks under his rule.However, one must not underestimate the damages caused by these Turkish military adventures in the region, which are often funded by the small state of Qatar, which is searching for a regional player it can climb on. In essence, the Turkish president is following in the footsteps of Iran through his own expansionist project in the region. Based on the Iranian model, Turkey has been using foreign militias in its war in Libya, and there are even rumors of its backing of mercenaries in Yemen.Erdogan ultimately hopes to build a major regional power parallel to Iran, and perhaps replace it, given the fact that the US blockade on Tehran has already significantly weakened the mullah regime. Turkey, with its 80 million people, has regional roles in Central Asia but has not succeeded in overshadowing Russia or Iran. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which commands huge oil reserves, Turkey is a country without significant financial resources alongside a large economy that is dependent on Russian tourism, European trade and remittances sent back from the West.It is for this reason that Erdogan relies so heavily on Qatari support to save him from every crisis he faces, such as the financial impact of COVID-19, which sent the Turkish lira into a plunge until Doha supplied Ankara with $15 billion in aid. Erdogan continues hedging his bets on this alliance and sailing through the uncharted waters of the Middle East’s great power politics. – Abdul Rahman Al-RashedIRAN’S RISKY PLAN BAl-Rai, Kuwait, June 12Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium indicates that it is pursuing a Plan B for its expansionist project, which it can no longer afford. The only way in which the mullah regime can guarantee its survival is by pursuing this alternative plan. In essence, the Iranian leadership is replicating the North Korean experience, which has pushed the Korean people into deprivation, starvation and oppression. However, the mullahs don’t care about the price – their only priority is to preserve the Islamic Republic that emerged after the fall of the shah in 1979.Granted, this doesn’t mean that Iran’s expansion project will stop. But it will likely take a different form in the coming month, in the wake of the Iranian financial downturn. In this regard, the so-called Plan B is more of a parallel project than an alternative project. The question is this: How will the Iranian regime reconcile its expansionist project with its immense costs? How will the mullah regime preserve itself without leading to its ultimate downfall? The mullah’s move toward Plan B is a direct response to this dilemma.The Iranian regime won’t be able to rescue itself from its financial crisis even if Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the [US] presidency in November. Biden’s staff would consist of the same people who negotiated the JCPOA under president Barack Obama. Iran’s problem is that its possession of nuclear weapons will not protect it at all. Plan B is nothing but a crazy adventure that could lead to war in the region at a time when the Islamic Republic is losing its cards one by one.This is already apparent in Iran’s increasingly diminished role in Iraq, where a new government, headed by Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has taken power. This government no longer allows Ismail Qani, the successor of Qasem Soleimani, to act in Iraq as if it were a suburb of Tehran. Similarly, Syria provides another example of the diminished Iranian role. Iran is no longer the main player in Syria, as it was in recent years. It appears that the Russian-Israeli understandings regarding the future of Syria are much greater than the mullahs believe, especially with Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in the position of prime minister over the course of the next few years.In Lebanon, it is clear that Hezbollah, which is nothing but a brigade in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, is not experiencing its best days. Despite controlling the government, the party is unable to fulfill any of the public’s demands. This includes Lebanon’s Shi’ite population, where there is latent anger because of the financial situation the country has reached. A large part of the misfortunes of the Lebanese people is credited to Hezbollah, which isolated Lebanon from its Arab and international allies.Would escaping to Plan B benefit Iran? If we exclude the suffering that the Iranian citizen will face, taking a step toward obtaining nuclear weapons seems more like an unwarranted adventure. The nuclear weapon appears to be a redemption card for the Iranian regime, at least on the surface. But the question arises: What about the reaction of the American-Israeli alliance, which is stronger than ever before? – Kheir Allah Kheir AllahTranslated by Asaf Zilberfarb.
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