Foreign policy wisdom begins with naming something properly, seeing past surface appearances and discerning the true nature of a situation, and then applying a judicious mix of soft and hard power. Of course, the wisest win without fighting at all, which is also to say that “winning” is a derivative of how one conceives and receives conflict.
In my experience, there are three forms of conflict resolution. The first, as Roger Fisher and William Ury famously argued in their 1981 book Getting to Yes, involves adversarial negotiation. There are two parties with two positions. It’s a zero-sum game. My win is your loss. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and everyone is wearing Milk-Bone underwear. Might is right.
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