American Secretaries of State Project
The American Secretaries of State Project (SOSP) is a collaborative effort of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Negotiation Project, the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School. SOSP illuminates and chronicles the negotiation experiences of former U.S. Secretaries of State.
Interview Highlights
"I first had to persuade my own government, and then I had to persuade NATO, and I had to persuade the Russians."
Madeleine K. Albright
Secretary of State 1997-2001
"Soft power and diplomacy does not have as much effect at achieving a political result if it does not have hard power backing it up."
Colin Powell
Secretary of State 2001-2005
“You have to start by knowing where you want to end up”
Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State 2005-2009
"I think that the United States has to conduct a global diplomacy - we've got to do more than one thing."
George P. Shultz
Secretary of State 1982-1989
"I think that every negotiation - it's a negotiation because you are trying to affect the conclusions of the other side and you are trying to find something that that both sides find sufficient in their interest - that's the essence of negotiation"
Henry Kissinger
Secretary of State 1973-1977
“If you want to get outcomes that protect America’s values, interests, and security you have to be willing to deal with people you don’t agree with - and you have to listen to them”
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State 2009-2013
“I happen to think that most successful negotiations come about as a consequence of experience on the part of the negotiators - Think that having experience ie very important”
James A. Baker, III
Secretary of State 1989-1992
"There are fixed things, folks, that anybody who's thinking of negotiating you've got to process. You've got to know what your bottom line is, what the other person's bottom line is, you've got to know what people want, the dynamics, the history."
John Kerry
Secretary of State 2013-2017
"Transparency really is important and valuable in negotiation, whether in private or later in diplomacy."
Rex Tillerson
Secretary of State 2017-2018
Each of the diplomats was interviewed about the powerful negotiation tactics they utilized in managing foreign affairs, advising the president on foreign policy, and executing treaties.
The Secretaries of State Project also highlights the most demanding and consequential negotiations encountered while the secretaries of state served in the nation’s highest foreign policy role.
Learn More About the Secretaries of State
Click here for biographies and key insights from the Secretaries of State interviewed as part of the project.
