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Testing Sincerity:Henry Kissinger's Opening Encounter With the Chinese Leadership
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Testing Sincerity:
Henry Kissinger’s Opening Encounter With the
Chinese Leadership
Abstract
Because in strategic contexts actors may costlessly renege on verbalized commitments, many analysts reject negotiation talk as an empirical basis for understanding political interaction. Practitioners likewise focus on deeds (e.g. missile deployments, troop movements, defense expenditures), which more likely than “cheap talk” signal sincere intent. Dialogical or pragmatic analysts, on the other hand, apply the tools of linguistics and formal logic in systematic examinations of negotiation talk. They propose to finesse the problem of insincerity by imposing upon themselves the burden of showing the consistency of actors’ possibly insincere utterance with their prior commitments and structural circumstances. This paper presents a dialogical analysis of the initial conversations between US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou En-Lai in February of 1973. The Chinese leaders test Kissinger’s sincerity by attempting to trap him in contradictions or drive him into implausible conversational commitments. This practice lends support to the heuristic proposed by dialogical/pragmatic analysts for finessing the problem of insincerity.
Introduction. In the strategic setting of poker, players distrust opponents’ verbal descriptions of their hands. They know that talk is cheap. Because opponents may lie freely about the contents of their hands, players rely on opponents’ bets as more reliable indicators of hand strength. To be sure, the possibility of a bluff renders betting an imperfect guide to hand strength. But, because bets are costly to the bettor, they are quite a bit more reliable than a bettor’s verbal representations. Political practitioners likewise distrust the words of their adversaries – and sometimes even those of their allies. Because others can costlessly renege on any commitment they express verbally, practitioners consider deeds (e.g. missile deployments, troop movements, defense expenditures) more reliable than words as indicators of intent. Talk is just as cheap in the strategic contexts of politics as in the strategic context of poker. Skepticism toward words also motivates analysts to reject negotiation talk as an empirical basis for understanding strategic political interaction. Like practitioners and poker players, analysts focus instead on the payments and payoffs – the costs and benefits of
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| | Authors: Duffy, Gavan. and Goh, Evelyn. |
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1
Testing Sincerity:
Henry Kissinger’s Opening Encounter With the
Chinese Leadership
Abstract
Because in strategic contexts actors may costlessly renege on verbalized
commitments, many analysts reject negotiation talk as an empirical basis
for understanding political interaction. Practitioners likewise focus on
deeds (e.g. missile deployments, troop movements, defense expenditures),
which more likely than “cheap talk” signal sincere intent. Dialogical or
pragmatic analysts, on the other hand, apply the tools of linguistics and
formal logic in systematic examinations of negotiation talk. They propose
to finesse the problem of insincerity by imposing upon themselves the
burden of showing the consistency of actors’ possibly insincere utterance
with their prior commitments and structural circumstances. This paper
presents a dialogical analysis of the initial conversations between US
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and
Zhou En-Lai in February of 1973. The Chinese leaders test Kissinger’s
sincerity by attempting to trap him in contradictions or drive him into
implausible conversational commitments. This practice lends support to
the heuristic proposed by dialogical/pragmatic analysts for finessing the
problem of insincerity.
Introduction.
In the strategic setting of poker, players distrust opponents’ verbal descriptions of their
hands. They know that talk is cheap. Because opponents may lie freely about the
contents of their hands, players rely on opponents’ bets as more reliable indicators of
hand strength. To be sure, the possibility of a bluff renders betting an imperfect guide to
hand strength. But, because bets are costly to the bettor, they are quite a bit more reliable
than a bettor’s verbal representations.
Political practitioners likewise distrust the words of their adversaries – and sometimes
even those of their allies. Because others can costlessly renege on any commitment they
express verbally, practitioners consider deeds (e.g. missile deployments, troop
movements, defense expenditures) more reliable than words as indicators of intent. Talk
is just as cheap in the strategic contexts of politics as in the strategic context of poker.
Skepticism toward words also motivates analysts to reject negotiation talk as an empirical
basis for understanding strategic political interaction. Like practitioners and poker
players, analysts focus instead on the payments and payoffs – the costs and benefits of
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