The Diplomat and the Drunken Guard: Negotiation Lessons from Sergio Vieira de Mello Open Access

The late Sergio Vieira de Mello (1948–2003) was a prominent humanitarian, peacemaker, troubleshooter, and United Nations diplomat. Because he was intelligent and handsome, and enjoyed danger, Samantha Power described him as “a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy” (Barker 2009). Friends and colleagues joked that he was so devoted to the United Nations that his blood ran blue (blue is the official color of the United Nations), and some say he was poised to become Secretary General Kofi Annan's successor. When Vieira de Mello was killed while serving the U.N. in Iraq, Brazil, the country of his birth, declared three days of mourning. His achievements have been highlighted in a Home Box Office documentary, and fascination with this man and his work prompted Power (2008) to write a remarkable account about his life's work called Chasing the Flame. In it she brilliantly describes the man who was, among other things, a negotiator par excellence.

Examples of Vieira de Mello's negotiation successes include securing the return of 370,000 Cambodian refugees and internally displaced people; disarming and resettling a group of forgotten Montagnards who fled from Vietnam to Cambodia; organizing relief for various groups of people in the former Yugoslavia (including negotiating the “Blue Routes” that brought aid to 350,000 residents of besieged Sarajevo); and, successfully negotiating with a range of mass murderers, including Khmer Rouge and Balkan leaders (Power 2008; Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation 2009). Vieira de Mello was such an impressive negotiator that by the time he left the Balkans for the first time in 1995, each warring faction—Bosniak (which included Bosnian Muslims and their Croatian and Serbian supporters), Croatians, and Serbians—was under the impression that he was its ally.

What made Vieira de Mello such a successful negotiator? I believe the story of how he bargained with an inebriated, gun‐waving Serbian guard as the Kosovo War came to its close is instructive.

The Kosovo War (1998–1999) created a massive humanitarian disaster that resulted in thousands of deaths and the displacement of approximately half a million people (Binet 2014: 238). Serbs, under the control of President Slobodan Milošević of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), deliberately targeted Kosovar Albanians through “a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons, and severe maltreatments” (BBC 2001). These attacks set the stage for a seventy‐eight‐day air campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), primarily aimed at ending the violence committed by Milošević's regime.

By June 3, 1999, Milošević finally submitted, and on June 10 the U.N. passed Resolution 1244, which granted Kosovo (then part of the FRY) substantial autonomy and authorized an international civil and military presence there via the U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. Under this arrangement, the U.N. became the interim administrator for Kosovo, while a NATO‐led peacekeeping force was in charge of security matters, and NATO and neutral or Eastern European partners committed some fifty thousand peacekeeping troops for Kosovo (Binet 2014: 238).

One day after adoption of Resolution 1244, Annan appointed Vieira de Mello as the United Nation's interim Special Representative to Kosovo. On very short notice, he had to quickly handpick a core team and head toward Pristina, Kosovo's capital (Kent 2015). United Nations officials in such situations face a bind: they must await Security Council instructions, but if they do not move expeditiously enough, they run the risk that other players will fill the postwar power vacuum and create further chaos.

Just days before U.N. Resolution 1244 was adopted, Serbian troops were still attacking Albanian Kosovars. Serbian army and police units began to evacuate Kosovo during the NATO bombing missions, but many continued to loot and torch property belonging to Albanian Kosovars on their way out. Vieira de Mello believed the U.N. needed to act swiftly to stabilize the area. In an interview, Staffan de Mistura (2015), Vieira de Mello's longtime friend and colleague and the current U.N. special envoy for Syria, told me that “Sergio thought that it would be important to send us there as soon as possible to give people a sense of normality.”

The first multi‐agency convoy destined for Pristina included twenty‐three trucks, heavily loaded with two hundred and fifty tons of “meals ready to eat, pallets of bottled water, wheat flour, blankets, tents, plastic sheeting and hygienic kits” (United Nations 1999). This was a colossal and precarious undertaking, said de Mistura (2015): “Even though it was ‘day two of the liberation’ the situation was rather dangerous.” The convoy had to zigzag to avoid landmines, encountered thousands of desperate refugees, was slowed down by scores of roadblocks manned by trigger‐happy soldiers, and relied on helicopters to protect it from snipers (de Mistura 2015).

The multi‐agency convoy and Vieira de Mello arrived in Pristina within hours of one another and found the gate leading to what was supposed to be their warehouse closed. Instead of being safeguarded by a U.N. official, it was blocked by an apparently intoxicated, cursing, Kalashnikov‐waving Serbian guard (de Mistura 2015).

During the Bosnian War (1992–1995), Serbs had been fed a steady diet of anti‐U.N. propaganda, which continued during the war in Kosovo. In Bosnia, Serbian leaders had instructed their foot soldiers to kidnap U.N. peacekeepers and tie them to military hardware and structures to prevent NATO from bombing them. The U.N. and NATO initially also had a special “dual key” arrangement during the Bosnian War, in which the consent of both organizations was required before NATO could conduct military strikes in response to violations of ceasefires and peace agreements (Chollet 2005). In this context, both organizations were often seen as closely interlinked. The guard's animosity toward U.N. officials at the warehouse was therefore not surprising. By the time he encountered Vieira de Mello's team, NATO had already launched two massive bombing campaigns in the region, largely against Serbian targets.

Perturbed by the guard's behavior, U.N. officials considered calling in the British Army to help them out (de Mistura 2015). The warehouse was particularly important to Vieira de Mello, because he knew that Serbs had already burned down the only other U.N. warehouse in Kosovo (Power 2008). If the U.N. could not secure this building, how would it be able to govern the rest of Kosovo?

Instead of calling upon NATO forces to help out, however, Vieira de Mello volunteered to negotiate with the guard. But first he approached his colleagues and demanded a stiff drink. According to de Mistura, “He asked us to give him some slivovitz,” a plum brandy popular in Central and Eastern Europe. This surprised his colleagues: they knew he enjoyed a drink every now and then, but not during the middle of the day and while working (de Mistura 2015). They also knew that he generally preferred whiskey. Nonetheless, Vieira de Mello pressed forward with his request, and finally, one U.N. official produced a bottle of slivovitz. “After that,” de Mistura said (2015), “someone found two glasses from one of the U.N. trucks and also handed them to Sergio.”

Cautiously, Vieira de Mello started to make his way toward the guard. Unfortunately, although Vieira de Mello spoke many languages, Serbian was not one of them. He was able, however, to communicate with the guard using body language, a series of hand gestures, and a Serbian word or two that he had picked up a few years earlier while serving in the region. First, he held his hands high up in the air to demonstrate that he had no weapons (de Mistura 2015). He then poured some slivovitz into the first glass and drank it, poured more into the second glass, and motioned toward the guard that this one was for him.

The guard seemed skeptical at first, but Vieira de Mello was familiar enough with Balkan culture to know that it would have been rude to reject his offer. He looked into the guard's eyes and toasted in Serbian, “živeli” (Power 2008: 272). The guard then lowered his Kalashnikov and downed his glass of slivovitz.

Eventually the Serb, via a U.N. translator, began to recount his story. For almost a year, at the instruction of the Yugoslavian government, he had been guarding the warehouse, but he was angry that he had not been paid. He also told Vieira de Mello that his friends and family members had already fled Kosovo, but that he was staying behind until he was paid the money he was owed (Power 2008; de Mistura 2015).

After listening intently to the man describe his grievances—and thus identifying both the man's problem and his true interests—Vieira de Mello took a large, final gulp of the slivovitz, and walked over to one of the U.N. vehicles, took a few hundred dollars from a tin petty cash box and handed the money to his new acquaintance. The guard wasted no time in taking the money, slung his Kalashnikov over his shoulder, and left. Vieira de Mello eliminated the threat and gained access to the facility through negotiation and without force.

I believe if we look closely at the deceptively simple story of Sergio Vieira de Mello and the drunken Serbian guard we can draw important lessons from a master negotiator. I have identified in particular eight actions that Vieira de Mello took that day that, I believed, led to his success. They are

• He identified his best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA).

• He focused on the individual.

• He found a common enemy/connection.

• He built trust incrementally.

• He broke down communication barriers.

• He focused on his goal and managed his emotions.

• He listened to the other party.

• And he traded things of unequal value.

These are not all necessarily new lessons—most of these ideas are well‐established in the negotiation literature. Nonetheless, I believe it is instructive to see how, in an unexpected and tense high‐stakes bargaining situation, this seasoned diplomat used them to defuse the situation and achieve his goals.

Knowing and understanding your BATNA before venturing into a negotiation is critical. Your BATNA will help you determine whether you should seek a negotiated agreement or whether you should consider exploring alternatives to achieve your goal (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991).

Before Vieira de Mello engaged the guard, it looked like he had a solid BATNA—as the head of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo, he had the capacity to ask NATO forces to remove the guard, which some of his colleagues suggested.¹ But such a plan could have had potentially serious consequences. Many Serbs already distrusted the U.N. and they hated NATO. If the situation had escalated and the guard had been killed by NATO officers working at the behest of the U.N.—irrespective of the guard's own behavior—it would have reflected badly on the mission. Vieira de Mello was determined that the U.N. would be seen as neutral. He needed to secure the U.N. warehouse without resorting to violence, so realizing that his BATNA was insufficient, he chose to negotiate.

In his decades of service to the United Nations, Vieira de Mello had not only learned how to bargain, but he had developed, in de Mistura's words (2015) “a strong element of moral authority.” He was also “charismatic” and had the ability to make “people feel important” (de Mistura 2015).

Negotiation author Stuart Diamond has argued that actors who have the most external power in a situation (in this case, those would be the people with guns) are often less effective negotiators because their knowledge of their own power renders them less willing to attend to the other party's needs (2010). Being a good negotiator, Diamond wrote, entails understanding that irrespective of your goal, the negotiation “is about them” (Diamond 2010: 6).

Vieira de Mello paid special attention to the individual people involved in the negotiation. He knew that, although they may have represented a group or specific organizations, they had their own independent thoughts and feelings, and he did not expect anyone to behave in a certain way simply because of his or her group affiliation. He could easily have assumed that the guard's animosity simply reflected broader anti‐U.N. sentiments among Serbs and that negotiating with him, especially in his inebriated state, would therefore have been futile. But instead of taking things at face value, Vieira de Mello peeked behind the curtain to see what was behind this particular individual person's anger.

Some negotiation experts have recommended that negotiators identify a common connection that they share with their counterparts (even an enemy) that could help adversaries unite and build trust between them (Diamond 2010). Vieira de Mello's first point of connection with the Serbian guard was the slivovitz, something they could indulge in together and, considering the guard's obvious intoxication, something he was presumably likely to enjoy. By choosing slivovitz rather than a liquor that he himself enjoyed, such as whiskey—which he reportedly always had in good supply, even in the middle of a war zone (Power 2008)—Vieira de Mello focused first on his counterpart's interest (see Lesson Two). Vieira de Mello further created a bond with his adversary by suggesting they toast to each other's health.

The deeper the animosity between adversaries, the harder negotiators have to work to build trust. In this particular negotiation, Vieira de Mello threw his hands up into the air when he approached the guard. His gesture announced, in effect, “I know you might mistrust me, but I mean you no harm, I only want to talk to you.”

Then, he toasted the guard in the man's own language: “živeli,” which is Serbian for “cheers.” He communicated that he knew and respected some of his counterpart's culture and traditions and, in so doing, he directly challenged the Serbian propaganda that portrayed the U.N. as the enemy.

Vieira de Mello's approach throughout this incident was incremental. In highly conflictual situations in particular, it takes time to build trust—trust is easy to lose and much harder to earn.

During negotiations, how you say something can be more important than what you say. Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart” (Thomason and Grondona 2015: 74). Vieira de Mello did not speak enough Serbian to engage in a full conversation with the guard, but he was able to break down initial barriers with a few colloquialisms and then turn to an interpreter when the conversation became more complex.

Vieira de Mello was known for using his linguistic skills to make others comfortable. He was fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish, Italian, French, and conversational in a few other languages. Even when he did not know the local language, he learned a few basic words, which he pronounced perfectly (Kent 2015). It gave him insight into cultural sensitivities, it made counterparts feel more comfortable, and it enabled him to connect with a broader range of officials and individuals in the countries in which he served.

Everything you do as a negotiator should bring you closer to reaching your goal. Many of Vieira de Mello's colleagues were understandably angry with the threatening and foul‐mouthed guard who was obstructing their efforts to promote peace and save lives. But Vieira de Mello kept calm and did not bombard the Serb with demands that he should immediately leave the site. His goal was to save the warehouse without inflaming the situation and risking violence, and he believed he could best achieve that by persuading the guard to leave of his own accord.

Negotiation experts have long warned negotiators that their own emotions can distract them from their goals (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991). Vieira de Mello was known for managing his own emotions during negotiations, particularly his own fear. His fearlessness as a negotiator enabled him to reach out to seemingly unapproachable individuals, including the guard. “Fear,” Vieira de Mello cautioned, “is a bad advisor” (Power 2008: 364).

A negotiator cannot address the other party's interests (see Lesson Two), without listening to the other party. The negotiator may not agree with the other party, but it helps if she or he can acknowledge his or her counterpart's perspectives and demonstrate that he or she understands the other party's concerns. By listening to him, Vieira de Mello was able to grasp that the guard's anger was less the product of Serbian animosity toward the U.N. and more reflective of the man's own anxiety about his own and his family's welfare. The guard also believed he had been cheated by the Yugoslavian government, who did not pay him what they promised, and wanted someone to hear his story—in other words, he needed to “vent” his frustration.

Nicola Dahrendorf (2015), another of Vieira de Mello's colleagues, said in an interview that “Sergio listened, and he listened to arguments … he got the issues within seconds.” But, she explained, although he listened and acknowledged the concerns of others, he did not necessarily concede his own interests. “He made people feel like he was going to go along with them, and then he made up his own mind and then just did it,” she said. “People did not always like that, but at least they felt consulted” (Dahrendorf 2015). His willingness and ability to listen to and to acknowledge other people's perspectives, I believe, were instrumental in Vieira de Mello's ability to bargain successfully with a whole range of individuals, including such well‐known war criminals as former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzić and Ratko Mladić, and former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary Khieu Samphan.

Giving away something that you value less in exchange for receiving something that you value more is one of the best ways to achieve mutual gain. Negotiators can do this when they determine how their interests—and the value they place on them—differ from their counterparts’ interests, a process that Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton referred to as “dovetailing” (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991: 75–76). The good negotiator can then identify potential trade‐offs (Diamond 2010). After listening to the guard, Vieira de Mello knew exactly what he had to do. The next logical step was to trade things of unequal value.

The petty cash that Vieira de Mello offered had great value to the guard but comparatively little to the representative from the world's most important international governmental organization, who sought to provide humanitarian relief to half a million beleaguered Kosovar civilians. For a relatively small amount, Vieira de Mello was able to avoid a situation that could have escalated at potentially great reputational cost to the U.N. In the end, he achieved his goal and secured the warehouse. And the guard was able to return to his family after receiving at least some of the money he was owed alongside a dose of empathy from a U.N. diplomat.

This was not Sergio Vieira de Mello's most glamorous negotiation, but it exemplifies how a skilled negotiator puts best practices to use—in the field and “on the fly.” He understood that negotiation is about people. He charmed them and found out what “made them tick.” He knew that the personal interactions between negotiators are as important as or more important than the substance of the negotiation: “how they like each other, do they trust each other, will they hear what each other has to say?” (Diamond 2010: 34).

As violent conflicts continue to rage around the world, we need more problem solvers like Vieira de Mello, people who can open up communication between warring factions. When he died in 2003 in Iraq's first major suicide bomb attack, the world lost a true peacemaker and a brilliant negotiator.