A Word on Words; 3906; Fredrik Stanton

liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs ellen johnson in the welcome once again to award on words my guest today is frederick's then frederick is the former president of columbia that expected it is written for the boston herald he's here today to share of witnesses bomb right negotiations agreements that changed the modern world royal primary sources such as letters diaries transcripts and interviews he tells the stories of eight separate episodes in modern diplomacy illustrating that words as much as weapons have changed the course of history every play then give rhetoric thank you it's well we learn words and i say modern history and then when we got back have been frightened some people say ancient history of the truth about his own he made decisions and i'm a negotiation we still benefit in the

modern world why these eight episodes well it's a good question are used to a couple of soldiers in choosing these negotiations or the prose of the book is that there are a number of important negotiations that have affected history and history is generally seen either through the lens of war or biography the skills in a missing piece of apostles the aid that i chose i picked because the individuals at the table had to have the ability to affect the outcome they have to have the ability of the decision it could simply be a dictation of terms or and unfurling of larger strategic forces the negotiations have to have a large footprint that still affect our lives today they have to alter the course of history in a way that we still feel in our lives that currently and finally of course there have to be enough documentation available our archive material available

to recreate the conversations that as they happen so that i could put the reader at the table as the exchanges took place so those were the three primary filters that i use to depict as negotiate we just briefly skim through eight grade try to avoid russian and come back and deal with who are here episodes into later alice let's just begin loman front of gold bars to try to get the french health was a lot of emotion yes it was a very a dark moment in the other revolution we were short of the supplies we're sure of gunpowder and we're short of money and france was a natural longtime enemy of of england and that we hope that france would form an alliance with the united states so we sent franklin over to a paris to negotiate it took him a great deal of time on the french were not naturally inclined to help america overtly they weren't interested in provoking a war with england so franklin

hadley uses words he had to get creative and he you know he had to cover and he used a form of of subterfuge to our finally convince the french that was in their interest to help us i wish they did that helped turn the tide revolution and also led to an debts that cosby a french revolution a short while when i come back to the legerdemain differs from a lesson talk about the french again with wind blown apart louisiana purchase a fascinating again weren't regarded back to just briefly of bombard story about war fights when he's coming in and burning continued be abolished or yes one of the interesting things about the book is you can track the commercials and growth trajectory of the united states and after the revolution of the louisiana purchase really sealed america as a continental power we were able to manipulate

tensions once again between france and england and exploit dumb and stuff or seen them opportunities so initially we negotiated only for the port of new orleans and we are we left with a half a comer was a very odd exciting negotiation and um it remains one of the best of a real state feels in the history this and it and then the congress of vienna our updating forty eight in fifty now yes napoleonic napoleon some adventures partly funded by the money he raised from selling louisiana the americans that resulted in his defeat end of the great powers of europe after defeating napoleon needed to redraw the boundaries of europe because nepal in a thrill moment and total upheaval and up what they did was they established a framework that kept the peace for hundred years essentially hundred years which was the greatest creative piece europe and scene in a thousand years a century since the roman empire and it helped

partly because it introduced the principle of legitimacy international affairs so it was also known as the dance and congress for its parties in scandals so it was an event that on certain levels would put hollywood's campbell's to shame but also i was really some of the world's greatest dum and then in terms of foreign policy and those might this negotiation more fun than any of the other seven but i will point out the austrian empire ahead is to a fifty percent income tax to pay for the party so they knew how to do it well i did it and they were in the twentieth century weren't yes the paris peace conference is famous as a negotiation that's considered a failure retrospective at the end of world war one of the leaders of europe and then in the world gathered once again to draw water out of the ruins unfortunately they were able to be a successful the congress of vienna partly because

they drew somewhat wrong lessons and the agreement that they reached so the seeds of war on several continents it's a great lesson that negotiation can achieve great things but it can also cause great harm if it's not done and it didn't woodrow wilson may have been the architect of his own identity he declined think the republicans well is part of the ocean to a man there's evidently congress as you point out with a treaty opting to be partly the nation's no way they were going to go with the senate voted down and the bun we monitor her world yes that's true in many ways i'm wilson was a great idealist but the dark side of that was that he held grudges me believe that people who didn't feel as he did were

were evil and that he really helped hold that against them and dump the minimum a less effective negotiator and the fact is in any negotiation unit multiple constituencies spent and he really ignored that it is at his peril and um it meant that the piece that he worked so hard to create a waffle sustainable and he he couldn't even bring united states and they actually if you look at the middle east today and think about the conflict saints engrained in the culture that area you're remanded hundred men rum punch was to have put the israelis and the egyptians together and talk about one china tossup oil but bush was a remarkable individual and one of the fun things about these stories is you see how the power and individual personality can

change the course of history and dumb blonde she was i'm a very i'm intelligent current mayor and it was tough when i needed to be tough it was humorous we needed to be humorous and he brought his own background to this is really this is really an egyptian armistice a negotiation because he'd grown up in the segregated dumb united states to put him in a unique position to say to both israelis and egyptians let's let's put our politics aside and we can each talk about dumb our backgrounds in about oppression but we have work to do and so let's get it done and he had to really unique standing to want to do that and no one's a great story is one of great elements of that negotiation is how things work on a personal level how in the beginning now either of the parties would look at shake hands with or speak to another and up by the end of that not only did they have a fairly durable agreement but that also become essentially a certain level

friends and un pc this warmth that the gulf between them had a great deal to do with building that you know you'd sink had league of nations become a reality where it might have been an amusing so much later what the united nations was able to do through bunch and in this negotiation until he would might've been yeah but was a great believer in in the united nations which was a very old fragile institution at that time and there was a big worry that it would succumb to the same problems that they had i had to had done done in the league of nations and us owes an important test united nations and punch felt the responsibility on his shoulders and the fact that he was able to pull off was good not only for the middle east but also for their patients let's just talk about an hour into my hero our attention

existed in that time i can remember vividly undone and new deal in some depth with a demonstration on one side and khrushchev on the other and for the first time to the last minute about movies of them about the same or oval buffalo for some i think i get a better sense here of the russian side and then come back and talk about again both gorbachev concert and a crucial comes across as a human being yeah i you know i took great care to work to look at the end of the soviet side of things about a lot of the american literature has focused on the internal american deliberations on the choices they felt and i thought that was interesting also given the fact that there were a number of documents that were declassified in both the american and the soviet side that we now have access to that we didn't before you can re create what was happening in real time on both sides and

not only would both sides were doing for what both sides thought the other side were doing and you can sort of pull back the veil on this this is a critical moment in in turning point in history and then that loan reagan and gorbachev another generation of leadership opportunity to make progress in turn to nuclear they come together unlikely couple kassebaum and i think unlikely couple is is absolutely right i mean in many ways it was very satisfying to put the cuban missile crisis next to the negotiation of reykjavik partly because the missiles that were agreed to be eliminated episode of reykjavik included the missiles that brought the world so close to the brink of war in the cuban missile crisis but also demonstrates how the cuban missile crisis was a very careful harry moment where people wanted to

avoid catastrophe and that was a critical negotiation reykjavik was in advanced forward and it was a great example about how are using creativity easing pressure using all of the other means of statecraft at his disposal reagan and gorbachev were able to move forward and out and really break through the nuclear arms race in a way that would still benefit fraud you know you don't really know superficial reading of history just how things get started and i'm always wondered about reykjavik it's intimate so unlikely and then when you when you think of those words out a ring of miles later bring down that wall along you forget there is an

overall oregon grew at another time was going to have made progress i had not known until i read your book that gorbachev was worried and took the initiative and service kept going i found along the novelty ago and shown in our ability to we would go along and they allow media there won't be many journalists an iphone and it's interesting how one side takes the initiative unexpectedly well they chose iceland because it was some one of the reasons is because it was literally and symbolically halfway between moscow and washington and you touch on a very interesting point one of the reasons that the reykjavik summit was able to be so successful was that it wasn't at first expected to be very important it was supposed to be a very quick pre meeting to prepare for a major summit hopefully i'm in washington because of that

it didn't have the the scripting envy the staging that the large prominent so what often happens and the leaders were able to talk more candidly with each other than normally at that bad a sign that it was because of that that they could engage in a one on one give and take and get a sense of the other person as a person and that's what would facilitate the breakthrough and i'm led to this sort of race to the top to work to to break out of the cycle of the arms race but awad reasons it was so effective is it wasn't supposed to be important it was supposed to be a low key thing and allowed them to discuss freely what they needed to talk about for the eu just joining us i'm talking with frederick says about his book radio stations agreements that changed the modern world and then let's go back to the old ben franklin back to that

time when we were in desperate straits it gets to paris and bad news follows him is just wonderfully washington loses in new york he loses in new jersey in the french don't wanna deal only time to absorb the polite rules by yet the ceiling at the outset set of foreigners own is tolerant but not much more money yes that's right i think of the french nation was sympathetic with the american cause but dubbed the french government had no interest in being sucked into a war at the point with with england they wanted to support called the calmest some covertly out here and there but they didn't want to open breach with england so frankel had worked very hard to get dumped a level of french support that we really needed to keep the revolution going

out we were out of money we were out of gunpowder there are a lot of things that we couldn't produce domestically in the colonies because we know how much a manufacturing based we needed support from overseas for the war effort franklin after a while took matters into his own hands and used his cleverness to convince the french that down as much as they didn't want to see how war with with with england they also didn't want to see american reunited with england that was a greater fear of france and throughout a clever subterfuge he was able to bring them to that realization partly by convincing them that day he might be negotiating with england to ten the revolution and the turnover the other how much how much of a leader oh was the shift in the

end the military situation in the united states and much of it had to do with saratoga son live burgoyne is wiped out on that five thousand men seeded loss loss loss not big victory and now british maybe you are thinking of our own which makes the french protection for the first time we all want them joining back up since i don't have to do with that's triggering yeah that's exactly right it was a it was incredibly important it was a real turning point because it demonstrated that america have the ability to defeat the army of of the greatest empire birth of the time on the field of battle and it gave credibility to the american cause that it hadn't had before a military level and that did two things as you pointed out that allowed us to go to france and say look we

can do this we're real were able to beat the british if we have the supplies we need it also allowed frightened to go to the french and say you know this may be a moment where in england i might not want to double down on its defeats and they provide us with an offer of that that would be tempting to answer provide credibility both in terms of why the french one and support the us and why the french want to avoid the alternative it was an incredible one turning point for years is why the old man who lived there so the show we figured we were through his british spy in europe and they showed the bears once in the world and franklin's show notes of this i won't talk with them the idea was in the back of his hand for time suddenly knowing that the french spies are watching and he says while only witnessed one where the four legged again to negotiating the range target that's right it was it was a turning point

in a revolution and it was it was if you can point to one moment da dum lead to you know our country's independence the swiss would've been wonderful and his agreeing to meet with what worth even though he didn't discuss about any specific proposals and then and he had no interest in the piece with england but he had an interest in leaving the french under the impression that he was interested in the piece with england and it worked like a charm and then and then thomas jefferson succeed the president said he wants louisiana director and we still had to do with a french to get it i'm in here is is this storm like this giant bomb right in the middle of our our side and so that more negotiations there now a ballpark yes napoleon wanted to eat he he took louisiana from from this the spanish who had previously and he

intended partly afford to be a foothold of a potential french empire and the new world which is something that we were can tolerate he also gave orders out to shut down all comers some american commerce going down mississippi which both the american economy a century the whole so it was the first major international crisis of the united states and it was it's most profitable we we turned what could have destroyed the country into something that turned it into a continental power fire the master livingston woes that initially negotiating in their zimbabwe will come winter delivers forty minute information dollar of santorum in francs and of course that's ridiculous from the first offer long beard on but then they get serious your talk of about four i

got serious because ballpark knows his enemy ms oatley also how valuable it has some point he says you go of a sudden you know who has that character is going to be the leader of the ff of the world what was it that broken down finally did get into serious negotiations will you write he was aware of had slipped its value is as he said it and he predicted accurately one of the fun things about writing the book and doing the research is is seeing these these predictions come true when he said whatever nation holds the valley the mississippi one day be the most powerful the earth has ever seen fine he said but my calculations don't extend that far in the future he was concerned with war against england and he said i need money for this war against england that so that's on the horizon and that was part of the pressure and many of these negotiations you see time pressure working its way through the up the negotiating process and that was the case here it was quite clear

that does france and england would soon be at war and when of course every powerful navy which could have taken a wheezing of the album itself so there was it was a three dimensional chess game going on and the us was able to manipulate the difference between france and england are two great powers of the time and to add to its benefit the napoleon numb to a certain degree newt was going on but god he his eyes were world england and what we paid from a twelve million dollars yes cavemen frank yeah but we also assume dumb some deaths that that the french owed us from something called a quasar war prison and what we had for long as susan all part of arkansas guard our kansas louisiana minnesota missouri montana nebraska north dakota oklahoma south dakota and wyoming for a real estate deal as you said yeah it was so big they didn't really know what the extent of it was that they had a very hard time finding what the outer

boundaries were it was simply this this vast not expensive wilderness and it changed our country forever and that of course the course of of europe as well as the world this company is left i don't like to deal with with what i said earlier in the eu cuban missile crisis another crucial i think that you point out the most hope our leadership shown voyage when robert kennedy and that sounds insane ignore the first let it know the second love of threatening letter and was one of the first and that seems to work the thing that i am struck by is how frightened khrushchev was on his brother chris is very close to kennedy says sentiment about world destruction on an almost echoes of time with jack in new zion it has been a big question as mr khrushchev was going to get

absolutely crucial because their weaknesses that's right it's one of the fascinating things about the cuban missile crisis is how the internal deliberations in moscow mirror those in washington and there was a moment in fact we're both leaders worried that the other side had lost control of their governments and i can be worried that darker shadowed lost control of his military chain of command because soviet troops fired on me too thank you will end up khrushchev worried that does that the kennedy actually had lost control of the military was yes that's right and that and that that kennedy would would actually fallen in sort of a crew so some both leaders were were isolated in a sense they were scared they realize that the stakes could not be higher and they have to make these choices under pressure and so they were

adversaries but they were both in very similar situations and after a point they have to rely on each other to extricate the world from what what what happened and so interesting that house telling john sculley the journalist and georgia both cigar flows sort of obscured the ground a bureaucrat we're used to back channel information to make it all work and fascinating book thank you so much for riding it thank you so much for coming think it was a great pleasure to appreciate thank all of you for watching from talking to fred richman about his book great negotiations on johnson in beaumont your own words he agreed oh geez