In diplomacy, beware the double positives…

In its obituary of the famed and beloved Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser back in 2004, the New York Times wrote:

In the 1950’s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin came to Columbia to present a paper about the close analysis of language. He pointed out that although two negatives make a positive, nowhere is it the case that two positives make a negative. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Dr. Morgenbesser said.

Austin was clearly unprepared for Morgenbesser. But he was also clearly unfamiliar with diplomacy in which the double positive can be deadly. 

For example, on one level, if you are an ally like Israel, you might think that the only thing better than being visited by one senior U.S. official (say, Secretary Gates) would be another visit in the very same week from another senior official (say, National Security Advisor Jim Jones). Even better would be adding yet another bit or two of senior level attention, say that of Mideast Negotiator George Mitchell or NSC Mideast guru Dennis Ross. But four times the high-level visitors are hardly four times the fun, or to put it another way, one high level visit is an honor but four in a week is a serious sign of trouble.

While all the visits to date have produced upbeat official statements at their conclusion, behind the scenes it is clear that concerns about the Israeli stance on Iran and the Netanyahu stance on settlements has pushed this relationship to what may be one of its lowest ebbs in modern memory. As one Israeli said to me, “We spent half the Bush administration complaining our issues weren’t getting any attention. Now, we’re starting to look back on being neglected as the good old days…”

Also, of course, too many envoys raises another question, “if your government speaks with one voice, how come I am hearing so many voices?” This is related to another classic set of double-positives encountered in politics and diplomacy, the problem of too many chiefs. For example, having copresidents of an organization doesn’t mean having twice as much leadership, it usually means half as much…or less. 

Which brings us to another instance this week in which the positives have been signs of the negatives: the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, which is cochaired on the U.S. side by both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. As Glenn Kessler wrote in the Post today:

On Monday, about 200 senior Chinese officials traveled to Washington and heard soothing words of reassurance from U.S. officials: The dollar is still sound, your investments are safe and we are working really hard to restructure our economy.

Such is the nature of the U.S.-China relationship today. Behind all the reassuring language is a nervous sense that the fate of the world economy is increasingly dependent on the United States and China working together.

In other words, it’s our turn to sing “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” which, of course, means, in the best interpretation, that our partners the Chinese are worried and at worst means, “worry!” (How things have changed since we were beating them up about their economic management.) Certainly every reassurance we offer is more a sign of an underlying concern than it is a true positive statement about the economy. Thus, the more positives, the more worries. 

This, in turn, brings another Morgenbesser anecdote to mind, also recounted in his Times obit:

In the 1970’s, a student of Maoist inclination asked him if he disagreed with Chairman Mao’s saying that a proposition can be true or false at the same time. Dr. Morgenbesser replied, ‘I do and I don’t.’

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