Carrots and Sticks

Now that the U.S. has warmed up to the idea of multilateral talks with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, American diplomats should focus on finding the right person to face the Iranians at the negotiating table. Common sense would dictate choosing one of the following to take on such a daunting task: a top-level State Department official, an experienced international peace-maker, or perhaps an expert in U.S.-Iran relations. But why not turn to someone who truly understands how to influence human behavior, who battles with incentives and deterrents every day?

A teacher.

Teachers (who coincidentally would be available for negotiations during the next few months) are experts in getting people to do things they don't want to do, what educational psychologists euphemistically refer to as "behavior modification." This is the same principle that underlies the current crisis with Iran: we want them to stop their nuclear program, they would like to continue it.

Let's translate this to an educational situation:

Teacher: Mahmoud, please stop stockpiling those building blocks.
Mahmoud: I'm just putting them all together so I can improve my city.
Teacher: I know you say that, but you're really planning to throw them at Ariel as soon as I turn my back on you.
Mahmoud: It's not fair! You let Ariel stockpile all the blocks that he wants!
Ariel: I neither confirm nor deny the existence of building blocks in my cubby.

In such a situation, a teacher might turn to the same "carrot and stick" strategy (not to be confused with the carrot-on-a-stick) that is being touted by the U.S. and Europeans to deal with the Iranian crisis. Teachers can present the carrot either through positive reinforcement, by adding something positive like a reward or praise, or negative reinforcement, by taking away something negative. The main carrot currently being offered to Tehran is an assured supply of nuclear fuel, which would allow them to continue their program, albeit dependent on Russia or another uranium-enriching country.

The stick, or deterrent, is what educational psychologists refer to as "punishment". Punishment, according to perennial bestseller Teaching Special Students in the General Education Classroom is the "presentation of an aversive event following a behavior" (119). Examples of punishments used in the classroom include the loss of earned rewards or privileges (such as recess), or "time-out," in which the student is removed from an activity that is reinforcing the negative behavior. Most educators agree that punishment is most effective when combined with positive reinforcement. Although I certainly wouldn't be opposed to turning Ahmadinejad's chair to face the wall indefinitely, the main deterrents threatened by the EU and the UN are economic sanctions on Iran, which don't seem to garner a lot of support from China and Russia (The U.S. already has economic sanctions in place). Of course, there's also the threat of military action, which Bush is reluctant to take off the bargaining table, even though any such action would be highly unlikely, considering the current U.S. military commitment and success rate in the Middle East.

At this point you may be asking yourself, how long does he plan to string along this hard-won analogy? What can U.S. negotiators learn from teachers? Why am I still reading this???

Good teachers use the carrot-and-stick strategy, but that alone is not what makes them successful. There are at least two other ingredients necessary for success: 1) an underlying respect for the person whose behavior is being "modified", and 2) a deeper understanding of human psychology that comes through experience. First year teachers who manage their classrooms by the book often find their students quite difficult to control; I am convinced that it takes several years of experience to create a teacher who can deal successfully with most behaviors (even then, there are always new challenges).

My hypothesis is that in international relations as well as teaching, what matters more than whether or not you have presented adequate incentives and deterrents is whether you understand the psychology of your negotiating partner. This can indeed be difficult for countries like the U.S. and Iran, who have not maintained diplomatic ties in 30 years. Nevertheless, the U.S. needs to make an effort to understand what drives Iran and its fundamentalist president, in order for negotiations to yield anything besides a heightened sense of belligerence.

At a certain level, this analogy --like all others-- breaks down. Treating Iran as paternalistically as a teacher would treat a student will only fuel Ahmadinejad's fire. In a response to the EU carrot-and-stick plan, he made the following statement, quoted in Newsweek:

"Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolate and get gold from him?"