Nolan Martin :
Hello and welcome to the NEGOTIATEx podcast. My name is Nolan Martin. With me is my partner, Aram Donigian. Aram, you want to kick it off for today?
Aram Donigian :
I will, Nolan. Great to see you. We are joined today by Mickey Bergman, the CEO of Global Reach, a non governmental, non profit organization that negotiates the release of political prisoners and hostages around the world.
With over 17 years in various aspects of strategic diplomacy, Mickey coined the term fringe diplomacy to describe the new field he is forging, an innovative discipline exploring the space in international relations just beyond the boundaries of states and governments capacity and authority. Mickey manages relationships and private diplomacy efforts in North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, Russia, Iran, Gaza, Venezuela, and Africa.
Nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and 2023, alongside the late former Governor Bill Richardson, Mickey has led his teams at Global Reach and the Richardson Center to facilitate the release of more political prisoners than any other organization. Mickey creates new political capital by leading professional exchange programs to frontier countries, such as North Korea, Myanmar, Cuba, Lebanon and others.
Prior to his work with Global Reach, Mickey was Vice President and Executive Director of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, Executive Director of the Global Alliances Program at the Aspen Institute, and is a professor at Georgetown’s University School of Foreign Service, where he teaches about emotional intelligence and international relations.
He was also a consultant to the Clinton global initiative. In the Shadows: True Stories of High-Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad came out in June 2024. He has also published numerous articles and opinion pieces in the New York Times, The Washington post and others.
He was recently honored with the 2023 James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, American Hostage Freedom Award, and serves on the Center for Strategic International Studies Commission on hostage taking and wrongful detention. Mickey is a native of Tel Aviv, and former combat officer in the Israeli Defense Forces. He holds a master’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.
Mickey, welcome to the NEGOTIATEx podcast.
Mickey Bergman :
Thank you so much for having me around, Aram and Nolan, it’s great to be here.
AD :
So Mickey, we often like to start by understanding one’s journey in the field of negotiation. Curious about what drew you into this line of work. And specifically, could you share a little bit about the late? Former governor Bill Richardson’s influence and impact on you.
Mickey’s Path To Becoming A Hostage Negotiator [02:39]
MB :
Yeah, it’s actually like everything else. It’s a funny coincidence and stories. It’s not like I grew up thinking, oh, I want to be a hostage negotiator. I never knew that field existed. Certainly not political prisoners.
AD :
Although can I say, Mickey? If children knew that field existed, they might say they want to grow up and be a hostage negotiator. I can see that.
MB :
When I got the award from the Foley foundation, the one that you mentioned, they filled my daughter in this little tribute video, she was nine at the time. And the director interviewed and ask her do you know what your dad does? And she’s yeah, he negotiates for the release of the wrongfully detained. And he was like, wow, do you think it’s a good thing? And her response was, well, I mean, it’s good. I guess if I can’t find anything else to do, I might take over.
So I’m not sure that’s the dream of every kid, but I actually, as a recent graduate from Georgetown University, I started working at the Clinton Global Initiative just when it started in 2005. And I did some projects flew that in Darfur on the border of Sudan and Chad. And one day I get a phone call to my office with a very grumpy kind of voice on the other side.
So just make it Bergman. So yeah, this is governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. I need you to pack your stuff and get your ass to Santa Fe. You’re coming to call too. And I, it’s not that I didn’t know Governor Richardson, I didn’t know the man existed at that time, and I had about 48 hours to figure out whether this is an opportunity of a lifetime or the dumbest thing I do before my head gets separated from my body because I was not even an American citizen yet.
I was, I’m Israeli. I came here after service in the military and Sudan and Israel 2006, 2007, not. Not at a place, at a good place, a state of war. And so I consulted with some of my colleagues and friends at the Clinton Global Initiative and others and decided that I’m going to fly to Santa Fe, have lunch with the governor, out of respect, and then after lunch explain to him the situation and very respectfully bow out of the mission.
That was the agreement I had with my wife and I went to Santa Fe. We had the lunch. It was fun. And then I said, governor, I need to tell you something. Not only am I Israeli, I’m an officer in reserves and the IDF, if things go bad, they go really bad, really quickly. I don’t want to risk the mission.
I think it’s better for me not to go. And he looked at me, he’s no. I vouch for you with the Sudanese. I told him that I know you for six years. They have a problem with you, they have a problem with me, and we’re all leaving. And then he stopped and he started laughing. He said, you know what I’m famous for?
And I was like, what is that governor? He’s I get people out of jail. So worst comes to worst. You spend a couple of months in the Sudanese jail, think what it’ll do to your career, . And then my wife likes to tell the story, the end of it, which is her picking up the phone when I called her from Santa Fe with jet engines in the background, telling her I have to go with this guy and so that’s how it started.
And I went with him to Khartoum, a very small delegation, very specific mission, but it blew my mind because I saw how he does. And yes, he was governor, but he went as a private citizen. It was at the request of the Save the Afur coalition at the time. And I saw how he’s able to leverage his personal relationship with the then president Bashir to get a ceasefire, a unilateral ceasefire to allow the rebels to have a political unification conference and some of the tactics that I saw with him in negotiations there that I had to intellectualize, but for him.
It was an instinct. It was a gift, a natural thing for him. And every time I would tell him the years after, when I worked with him for 17 years, and he’s governor, what you did here is this. And he’s and that’s what this riff raff, you just do it. Because for people that have that as an instinct, as a gift, they don’t need to intellectualize it. They don’t understand why we spend time trying to analyze and understand it so we can learn from it. That’s how I started. And that’s also a little piece of governor Richardson’s personality and influence.
AD :
I know there was great affection there. It’s quite a loss. I know you referred to him as Gov, probably both a term of endearment and respect. I would like to have been like just on that phone call when you negotiated with your wife with the jet engines in the background and saying, hey, I’m not coming home. I’m heading to Khartoum.
MB :
Yeah, so there is a, it’s even gets more funny with this because what I told her was, hey, no, I talked to the governor. I think it’s safe. I’m going to Khartoum. It’s all good, but I will never set foot in Darfur. That’s too dangerous. Then fast forward three days and she sees a report on CNN with the governor in Darfur and me in the background.
NM :
Got him. Can you tell us a bit about Global Reach, the type of work that you call fringe diplomacy, and maybe an example of what it looks like once you get involved in a hostage or unjust imprisonment situation?
A Non-Profit’s Journey To Secure Safe Returns Without Government Interference [07:28]
MB :
Yeah. So Global Reach, we are a non for profit non government organization. We work on behalf of families of hostages and prisoners at their request at absolutely no costs to them. We raise our funds elsewhere. The non government part of it is really important as well, because that means that we do not work for any government.
We do not receive funds from governments. In the past with the Richardson Center, we did have grants from foreign governments every now and then because we needed to survive. But we don’t take money from governments in global reach, not definitely not from the US government, which means that our fiduciary responsibility is to the families.
They are the clients, they’re the ones that we work on, and it doesn’t mean that we’re going counter to government, especially the US government, it just means that we collaborate when it makes sense, and sometimes we butt heads a little bit when that makes sense, because from our perspective, we have one job and that is to get the person back home.
We are advantaged by this because every person inside the government, policy people, staff and stuff, they have a whole vast array of interests that they need to keep, and it’s very complicated. If it’s a prisoner in Russia or in Iran or in Venezuela, there’s so many bilateral issues that come to play.
And we respect those, but we have no authority in what’s saying them. We are just focused on that. So we’re able to insulate the issue itself into a humanitarian issue, which sometimes is an advantage that the government doesn’t have. Because as you can imagine, let’s say, we were, we decide with the Russians.
We’re the American government inside the Russians. We’re going to meet in Turkey. We’re going to talk about the prisoners. And we have five Russians, five Americans, before the first word is even said. The weight of the war in Ukraine, nuclear stability, all of the bilateral issues make it impossible to have a conversation that is insulated.
When we step into this, we talk about all these issues. They talk to us about all these issues. We have no authority. So it’s fine. You sit there, you let it simmer. We actually learn a lot from it. But our mandate and authority is just to talk about that. And they respect that over time. It takes there’s a learning curve there, but then we’re able to insulate the issue.
We find define what a pathway looks like to bring somebody home. And then if we have that, we need to convince our own government. That it’s worthwhile. And that’s a really hard part. A lot of the negotiations are not actually with the captors. They’re actually with our own government, but that’s a Nolan to the second part of your question.
One of the first things that we have to do when we get a new case, after we do our due diligence, which I can talk about as well to assess whether it’s a case we can actually take and be effective with, we have to come up with what we call the theory of return. And the theory of return is that script, the pathway, the story we tell ourselves of the fastest way to get somebody home.
And depending on that theory of return, we build a strategy and then the ways and the means to get there. And almost every single case is very different in the theory of return. Sometimes the theory of return gets a little bit crazy. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward and that allows us at times to solve the problem ourselves and bring the person home physically, like we did with Danny Fenster or Taylor Dudley from Russia.
But a lot of the times it’s our ability to, as I said, define what a deal is and then figure out to bring it to our government and convince them why it is the best way at this time to get somebody home.
NM :
When you go to these countries, in these hostile countries, typically as you view them as an American, how are you welcomed? Do they facilitate you in speaking with the government? How exactly I’m just trying to figure out how that actually happens?
Strategic Diplomacy & Risk Management In Hostage Negotiations [11:06]
MB :
Yeah. So we have one of the famous jokes that we would tell each other when we go on a mission with governor Richardson at the time, it’s like, hey, if we get caught, there’s no government Richardson to take us out. So we need to be very careful. And yes, there are risks. in this, but we calculate the risks.
The first principle, we don’t go to a country unless we’re invited by leadership because otherwise we’re putting ourselves in risk where that we’re just going to make the problem bigger. So we insist on being invited by leadership. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to do that when Otto Warmbier was taken in North Korea, it took us about six months.
Six months for me to actually travel to Pyongyang and those six months was not me trying to figure out schedule. It was us trying to work with the North Koreans of what is the reason and the way to get invited in order to talk.
Because as you can imagine, none of these countries I’m going to say, oh yeah, I know. You’re welcome to come to negotiate over a political prisoner. We have, because what political prisoner there is an all political prisoner. There’s just say criminals, Danny Fenster from Myanmar took us three months to be able to get the invitation.
And it’s important because once you’re invited by a leader, again, things can go wrong, we’re not arrogant enough not to believe that the things can go wrong because they can, and they have in the past at times, but there’s an ability to mitigate that risk. You’re a guest of a leader, you respect that sometimes it means that you say things that are for the purpose of bringing somebody home, not because necessarily it’s your conviction.
And that’s kind of part of this. And I have this, my wife hates when I say that, but I have a weird line in the sand when I determine where I should go and where I should not go. And that is if something bad really happened in the five seconds before it happened. Do I know why it happened and by who? If the answer is yes, then I can mitigate.
If the answer is no, I can’t go. So for me, being an American, being an Israeli, being Jewish, funny enough, in North Korea, nobody wants to go after me because I’m Israeli or Jewish. They want to go after me because I’m American. It feels really good. But in Iran, even when we’re invited by the president, we have been invited by the president.
That doesn’t mean that if something bad happens, we know who’s doing it and what are they doing it because i’m american Because i’m Israeli because i’m Jewish who is doing it the revolutionary regard the supreme leader the prime minister. So, I can’t physically go so when we negotiate with the iranians we do it in a third country.
You’ve already started to answer my next question which is describing the key characteristics and challenges of high stakes negotiations just for listeners. Is there anything, you would add that they need to understand when you’re operating in these environments in terms of what the situation often looks like.
Empathy vs. Sympathy: The Essential Distinction In High-Stakes Negotiations & Beyond [13:42]
MB :
There are several principles for me that I’m doing, the negotiations that we do is very different than the traditional government national interest negotiations. I’m a huge believer in the elements or the role of personalities. Characters and narratives in negotiations, it falls under the larger umbrella of emotional intelligence, which I’m sure we’ll dive into a little bit further in the interview, but in this conversation, but there’s something important for listeners to get as we step into this, and that is the notion of empathy and sympathy, and there’s a difference between them and it’s critical. Empathy is really our ability as an individual to step genuinely into somebody else’s shoes. To understand how they see the world, how they see their role in it, and therefore how they calculate things that’s empathy.
Sympathy is when you take an extra step and you actually start aligning your objectives with theirs. And in my line of business, empathy is a must. And sympathy is a trap. And in our world, whether it’s high stake negotiations or our domestic, our current societal political environment, it lacks in empathy.
And when people don’t practice empathy and they’re not used to it, they very often confuse empathy or conflate empathy and sympathy. So anybody who shows empathy is accused of sympathy. What do I mean by that? I’m Israeli. I was born and raised in Israel. I served in the IDF for six years. I, always, growing up.
And as far as I can remember, believed in the need for Palestinian state to be established in Israel. For me as an Israeli growing up in Israel, it was the reasoning for that was for the sake of the state of Israel. We needed a Palestinian state over the years, I’ve met a lot of Palestinians. So my own agenda in this have been mixed.
It’s not only for Israel It’s also for them now that I get to know them and they’re good people But people confuse people who conflate empathy and sympathy confuse that immediately accused me as a self hating Jew or whatever other nice little comments that you can get in tight as you can get on social media. And that to me is a sign of people who don’t understand the difference between this.
And even in our society, I know this is not a topic for us, but right now we have one of the reasons we have such a tension in our society is because we don’t deploy empathy. Towards our neighbors, our family, our crazy uncle, all of these kind of things. All of those opinions come out of a certain worldview and the fear and emotions that we have to address. I know I went a little bit long on this, but I do think that empathy and sympathy is critical to get to wrap our heads around as we engage in this.
AD :
I agree with so much of what you’re saying, right? We’re so quick even with neighbors to vilify others without taking the time to truly understand where they’re at this power of empathy. We’ll get into some other qualities shortly, too. These situations you’re involved in would love to get some just quick examples I know that’s got to be hard because there’s so much detail around them and your book is filled with examples and stories that flow through just to illustrate for our listeners some of the nature of some of the negotiations that you’ve been part of.
Let me just ask you some really quick bulleted questions. What could you tell us about an exciting negotiation you’ve been part of? Perhaps one where the outcome appeared highly dubious until it just suddenly came together.
The Key To Successful Negotiations In Complex International Contexts [17:02]
MB :
Sure. I think that, by the way, I have to say again, not to pull on the fun of it, but there is a, with every single win that we have, there is losses embedded and with every great losses, and we have a lot of losses, there are little wins. And we have to take that as a part of this, and we’re having a light conversation. The topic is very heavy at times, most of the time.
I think one of my favorite stories of successful negotiations. And it was actually Danny Fenster, who is a journalist from Detroit, who was held in Myanmar by the military government over there, that was 2021. So about three years ago. And the reason for that is because we were able to, the US government after the coup in Myanmar stopped communications with the military government.
There was an embassy there, a very vibrant embassy, significant one with great ambassador at the time and always good foreign service officers there. But the policy was not to talk to the government. And if you can’t talk to the people who are holding your American, how are you going to convince them to get person home. And it’s a longer story, but it took us about three months to get invited. Then we had to negotiate with our own state department because they didn’t want us to go.
And there’s a reason why they didn’t. It’s not because they didn’t want us to come home. They wanted him to come home. They worked really hard to try and get him home, but they were worried that they couldn’t articulate that to us. They were worried that if we go to the leader of the military government and we ask them for Danny Fenster, he will ask for something in return from the US government that the US government is not willing to give, and that was not our orientation.
We had a whole history in Myanmar of engagement there with Aung San Suu Kyi before and with the different elements of society. And the key to us, once we got invited and we went in, I knew we had one meeting with the leader.
We had a bunch of meetings before with other ministers. Again, we didn’t go to negotiate the release of a political prisoner. We went to negotiate a solution for COVID vaccines for children, because that was in the middle of the pandemic. But we knew that there was one meeting with the leader. And I had a failure with Aung San Suu Kyi three years before, because I assessed her wrong in a part of a negotiations with her.
There were two Reuters journalists that she was having and that was a terrible outcome for us. We had to run away from the country before we ourselves get detained. Ironically, that failure, that fight, public fight with Aung San Suu Kyi gave us an in with the military government that took over when they removed her from power.
And so when I went this time. I swore to myself, I’m not going to fail this. And so I studied the leader. I studied the general. I watched every single video I can find of his speeches, his interviews. He doesn’t speak English. I promise you, I don’t speak Myanmar. That’s not what I was looking for. I was looking for something about him, his character, something that I think that I can grab and that we can orient our meetings and our agenda towards, and what I found when you think of a general, a head of a military that just removed the great Aung San Suu Kyi, who unlike me, actually won the Nobel prize, not just nominated to be a charismatic, bombastic, like a leader.
And that’s not what I saw. I saw a man who is small in size, soft in his voice, an introvert, clearly an introvert in this, which is just unique enough to pique our interest, to figure out, okay, how do we do this then? What do we do with this? And we realized that when we have this last meeting with him, one, we never raise the issue of Danny Fenster with the general in front of other people, because then he’ll have to dig in and we won’t get what we want.
We need to isolate him and the governor in one on one. And so the plan was, we do, we talk COVID, we do all these things and then towards the end of the meeting, the governor says, hey, general, can you and I just spend some time, you, me and your translator, just five minutes. And then I gave, I wrote a few talking points for the governor and a piece of paper that he would take with him there and accidentally leave behind because it’s a trait of the business.
You always do it. So you write it like that. It was my handwriting. They don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But the first point for the governor is to sit with the general to say, general, I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I’ve met tons of leaders, heads of states, heads of militaries. They tell you’re supposed to be loud and you’re supposed to be bombastic.
You have a different kind of leadership. You have a quiet kind of leadership. It’s extremely powerful, my friend. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. And with that specific message, we sent two non verbal messages to him. Number one, this is not just a meeting on the agenda that the governor goes to.
He spends time, he invested in him, he learned him a little bit. He saw him, he studied him. And second, and most important to me, it was a message that’s saying that thing that you might think is a source of insecurity for you, I see as a strength, because we all know that The expectations from leadership are such, and if you don’t have that personality, you have some sense of insecurity in this.
And that meeting from five minutes turned into 45 minutes conversation. I know about it because the governor left afterwards and told me how as soon as he said that, the leader took his glasses off, and they went into a very personal conversation about leadership. How the general never wanted, never intended to be the head of the state.
He wanted to be the military. And that his family is mad at him because now their lives have changed and all of this kind of very personal stuff, which allowed the governor to move into the second point, which was, look, I’m going to get criticized publicly for being here. People say that I appease you, that I legitimize you.
I don’t care. I’m a politician. I have thick skin. Let them criticize me. I’m here because I love the people of Myanmar and I love the country and I want to help. But if you want to help me with my critics, there is this kid here. Danny Fenster that you’re holding. If you give him to me, it will shut up all of my critics.
And the leader asked him a couple of questions, whether Danny Fenster is a big deal and the governor said, yeah, it’s a big deal if you’re releasing to him, but I don’t want you to do that because of that. I want you to do it for me as a friend and on the spot, the leader decided to give us Danny Fenster.
Now he said, it’s going to take him two weeks and we can’t tell anybody, which was a whole other story and it’s in the book and it’s funny, it was successful at the end, but that was one of the best examples that I have in negotiations, how emotional intelligence actually turns. We gave nothing. There was no request from the US government. There was nothing in return. It was just that.
NM :
Hey everyone, Nolan here. I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already. And also join us next week for part B of this awesome interview.
