THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

August 31, 1989

 

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Dr. Harold Saunders

The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036-2188

Dear Dr. Saunders:

Thank you for your letter of August 22nd and the enclosure
which once again I read with great interest.

I listened sympathetically to your characterization as a
practitioner drawing upon your own experience; but I thought
there might be a few older written works that might bear on the
kinds of ideas that you are developing right now. I do not
have those books right in front of me (and I may. be mistaken)
but at least one or two of those titles may deserve your close
inspection.

About your (P.5): negotiation is a substitute for the use of
force but it by no means implies the irrelevance of military
power. Better that it be kept latent since its actual exercise
seems always to exact a higher price than had been bargained
for. But there is an implicit larger context to the description
of negotiation as a "peaceful alternative to force" (P.13).

Your readers may not understand as well as you do how much con-
flict underlies negotiation, and the limited circumstances in
which adversaries will accept negotiation as an alternative.

I will look for an early opportunity to continue this
dialogue at closer hand.

rs Sincerely,

  

GAD. 3/03

Wed Aug 30 10:14:13 1989 1

/prilib.1:Burton J.W. ~ SYSTEMS STATES DIPLOMACY AND RULES ~ Cambridge University Press ~
/prilib.1:Butterfield H. ~ DIPLOMATIC INVESTIGATIONS ~ Harvard (1966) ~ date: 1972 05/11