United States-Taliban Peace Talks: Was Interest-Based Negotiation Theory And Practice Applied?

Abstract

This paper draws on the work of Roger Fisher and William Ury, the leading Harvard University researchers and practitioners of principled or interest-based negotiation. Publication of International Mediation: A Working Guide (1978) and the founding of the Harvard Negotiation Project (1979) coincided with the signing of the Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel in 1979. Though subsequently known for their scholarship in various contexts, it is conflict management (ie, peace negotiation, hostage negotiation, and diplomatic negotiation) that underpinned much of Fisher and Ury’s early work in interest-based negotiation. The context of this paper is international negotiation, specifically the United States-Taliban direct talks in Doha from 2018 to 2020. This paper will use the Arab Israeli peace process to illustrate the section on interests, and the United States-Taliban direct talks in Doha will be used to illustrate the sections on people, options and criteria, respectively. The structure of the paper uses the broad framework of interest-based negotiation, or the ‘Fisher and Ury model.’ This paper discusses the extent to which principled or interest-based negotiation was used in the Doha peace negotiations. The paper’s thesis is: ‘while elements of the Fisher and Ury model were applied in Doha, key elements of the process were not followed.’