ABSTRACT
When we examined the aims and policies of states in a system, we saw that they make compatible and incompatible demands on it. Compatible demands are natural subjects for diplomacy. Although a buyer and a seller, for instance, are ‘on opposite sides of a table’, the essential common interest of both is in the transaction, and their compatible interests can be fairly met by a process of bargaining and negotiation. Incompatible demands, for instance when states differ about what would be just in a given situation, are less tractable; but they can still be discussed, and perhaps some accommodation or compromise reached. In practice a great deal of the diplomatic dialogue between states today is concerned with incompatible demands. Negotiation in such cases is either the search for a compromise, or else is designed to transcend the dispute and to bring in a new element that makes a wider agreement palatable to both sides. Diplomatic negotiations remain possible so long as the incompatible demands of the states concerned are essentially interests, even though suitably clothed for public presentation in declarations of principle. Public polemics about specific territorial claims or even about the price of oil usually dress up the demands of a state in general principles which are more politically respectable; but stripped of this clothing, the demands are a matter of state interest. Even if a state is prepared to use force to maintain the most important of these interests, persuasion is still possible.
