Chapter 19: Negotiations and Stepping Back

The two parties entered the White House East Room which was meticulously prepared for high-stakes negotiations. Both sides arrived with full contingents; seasoned advisors, legal experts, and political operatives poised to spar across the long, gleaming table. No one was there to compromise; each party was determined to emerge victorious, as if this were a high-stakes poker game.

Negotiations over the oil contracts were underway, with stakes higher than anyone dared to admit aloud.

I settled into what I hoped passed for a neutral corner, intending to wear neutrality like armor. Any hint of favoritism from either side would be a kiss of death and Mercer, Frisch, & Associates would fall faster than retail giant Kmart, which was in its own death spiral just as the negotiations began.

Neither side wavered from its initial stance at first, offering little in the way of meaningful trade concessions. Tensions rose. The King and his advisors made a deliberate show of standing more than once, a gesture that suggested that they were ready to walk out and declare the talks over. It sent a ripple through the room each time, a stark reminder that the agreement was hanging by a thread.

Each side would glance in my direction on more than one occasion, as if seeking a perspective that might help move the negotiations forward. I was obliged to remain strictly neutral. One party represented my country, and the other was a personal friend. Demonstrating even the slightest favoritism wasn’t an option. My role was limited to offering just enough calm encouragement to foster dialogue and help ease the impasse.

And what was the stalemate, one might ask? There were several truthfully. None were deal-breakers individually, but they formed a formidable obstacle taken together.

The United States sought to secure a fixed price per barrel of oil. The King had no objection to that, however he insisted on receiving the equivalent dollar amount in modern armaments and military technology, including the necessary training to operate them, instead of payment in hard currency.

He was determined to prevent his kingdom from becoming the next Kuwait, overrun by a militarily superior neighbor. He wasn’t asking for U.S. troops on his soil or for protection under a mutual defense pact. The king simply wanted the means to defend his nation on his own terms.

The American contingent strongly opposed the proposal. There was deep concern that the King might use U.S.-supplied armaments to launch aggression against his neighbors, not for defense. The recent Middle East war was frequently cited as justification for these fears.

The nations in the region all shared the same mindset from the US viewpoint; volatile, expansionist, and untrustworthy. The two largest kingdoms, Iraq and Iran, had set the precedent. I could see how that perception might seem reasonable without a deeper understanding of the region’s history and complexities, but it was dangerously simplistic.

The talks were going nowhere at the end of the first day of negotiations; neither side was getting what it wanted. The United States was failing to secure a new source of oil for its energy-hungry economy, and the small, oil-rich Middle Eastern nation was not getting the defensive military equipment that it needed for self-protection. The negotiations were called off early so that the King could rest, as he was still recovering from the injuries that he suffered in the recent attack on his motorcade.

I was asked to stay behind as the President and his advisors wanted to consult with me about the negotiations. I reluctantly agreed, and soon wished that I had declined again. Members of the President’s negotiation team were frustrated that things weren’t going their way and were looking for someone to pin the blame on for the lack of progress.

I reminded them once again that these were not ignorant Bedouins who they were negotiating with. I had to reiterate that Salim and Ali were Cambridge University graduates, and that the King himself had studied engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the fifth highest-ranked technology college in the world and the best in Switzerland. These facts fell on deaf ears, of course; they were more interested in finding someone to blame.

I told them to get to know their opposition, and start earning their pay instead of relying on others to do their job for them, in response to their blame game. I didn’t make any friends that day, needless to say. The temptation to skip the next day’s negotiations was strong, but I had promised the King, Salim, and Ali that I would be there as an observer, not as a negotiator.