When it awarded Tommy Koh the honour of “Great Negotiator” in 2014, the Harvard-backed Program on Negotiation wrote that he had “played central roles in some of the most complex international negotiations ever held”. Those negotiations had covered everything from climate change to maritime law, land reclamation to diplomatic relations. Whenever seemingly irreconcilable differences appeared, Koh managed to build consensus and find a way forward.

His first central role arrived unexpectedly, when he was serving as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN). Koh’s appointment at the age of 31 had made him the youngest ambassador in the UN’s history and he was still only in his early 40s when he was asked to become President of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III). Formal negotiations for UNCLOS III – a monumental agreement that has been called a “constitution for the oceans” – had begun in 1973. They would not be concluded until 1982, offering a glimpse of its contentiousness and complexity. When The New Yorker reported on UNCLOS III, it called Koh “one of the most often consulted and most hardworking men at the conference; some delegates considered him its most brilliant member”.

Koh later chaired the UN’s hugely important 1992 Rio Earth Summit (officially known as “The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development”), which, when it was held, was the largest ever gathering of world leaders. Treaties and documents signed at the Earth Summit helped build a global consensus for the first time on pursuing economic growth in ways that protected the environment – covering everything from biodiversity to greenhouse gas emissions.

He also served as Singapore’s Chief Negotiator for the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA) – “an important bridge across the Pacific built at the right place and at the right time,” as George Yeo, Singapore’s then-Minister for Trade and Industry, wrote. When it was signed in May 2003, the USSFTA marked the first-ever Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the U.S. and an Asia-Pacific country.

Today, among other roles, Koh is an Ambassador-at-Large for Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is also helping the Centre for International Law and the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore. In a conversation with Governance Matters, he reflected on what he has learned from a career at the negotiating table.

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Governance Matters: The open, globalised economy is facing challenges, ranging from supply chain reconfiguration to “friendshoring” and sanctions. Can FTAs and other types of trade agreements help?

Tommy Koh: I would like to start by looking at the big picture. There are some positives out there today, but many new negatives. The biggest negative is that the U.S., which has traditionally been a champion of free trade and globalisation, has instead fallen into what I would call “economic nationalism”. We saw former U.S. President Donald Trump withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We have also seen India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi choose not to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement which, again, can be seen as economic nationalism.

A second negative is a decline in support for multilateralism amid a general increase in concerns about sovereignty and nationalism. A third negative is that one of the most important achievements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was an agreement to have a mandatory dispute settlement system, yet that has been paralysed by the U.S.’s ongoing refusal to approve the appointment of appellate judges.

But still, there are positives. Singapore has recently negotiated FTAs with the European Union and with the Pacific Alliance [a Latin American trade bloc comprising Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru], for example. It is still possible to negotiate FTAs in this troubled world. What we are tending to see is more support for bilateral FTAs while support for multilateral FTAs is diminishing.

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Negotiating FTAs is incredibly complex, involving stakeholders on both sides at all levels of government, within business, and among special interest groups. How did you pursue a coordinated approach that could address all these dimensions while negotiating the USSFTA?

Because I had spent over 20 years in the U.S., I was very familiar with the country. I knew that negotiating with America is a very complicated business. If you negotiate an FTA with another country, you are negotiating with the administration, the Government. But when you negotiate with the U.S., because of what it takes to get an FTA ratified, you have to negotiate with the administration and also with Congress, business interests, and civil society. I knew that we would have to bring a lot of stakeholders on board, both in the U.S. and in Singapore. We had to approach that strategically early on.

I knew that negotiating with America is a very complicated business.

I needed to brief congressional leaders, members of the important committees, because I wanted them to have ownership – to be my champion, not my enemy. Starting with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, I became a good friend of the business community – all the way down to negotiating with a single company, Wrigley, which produces chewing gum. The sale of chewing gum has been banned in Singapore since 1992. Wrigley is located in Chicago and the congressman from Chicago at the time was chairman of the International Trade Committee in the House of Representatives. We needed him to champion the agreement, not oppose it. In order to get him on my side, I had to talk to him, understand his constituents, and arrive at some compromises.

Another set of people we had to try and get onside were the leaders of organised labour, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). When I was in the U.S., I once invited some of them to my home to have lunch with ambassadors from member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the only thing we could all agree upon was that my wife’s cooking was very good! Despite that we became friends, and for the FTA I encouraged my colleagues in Singapore’s National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) to reach out to them to assuage their concerns.

Some of the American trade union leaders from the AFL-CIO came to see the situation for workers in Singapore, that they are not suppressed and we have things such as the National Wages Council to protect their interests. These leaders were philosophically opposed to an FTA and could never support it, but we managed to reach a gentleman’s agreement that they would not campaign against it or punish members of Congress who voted for it.

I think I actually spent more time negotiating within Singapore than with the U.S., and I think my U.S. counterpart experienced something similar. People wonder how that is possible, but this was a major negotiation and securing an agreement required us to change some policies and laws. I had to persuade my friends in various government agencies to take ownership. To do that, I had to demonstrate that this agreement overall would be in Singapore’s national interest and that it would be worth making some concessions in order to get there. I spent a lot of time talking to different ministries, and to some extent also the private sector, because I wanted to consult the business community and hear their interests, their concerns, and if they had any suggestions for me as the chief negotiator.

Negotiation is the art of compromise. You cannot have 100% of what you want, and neither can your counterpart. There must be a spirit of give and take, a willingness to understand each other’s interests.

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What is your response to people who view compromises as weak, or abandoning one’s principles?

Negotiation is the art of compromise. You cannot have 100% of what you want, and neither can your counterpart. There must be a spirit of give and take, a willingness to understand each other’s interests. With Wrigley, for instance, we could not lift Singapore’s ban on chewing gum, but we decided on a compromise: we would allow medicated chewing gum to be sold in pharmacies.

Of course, with the USSFTA some people said I sold out. I received plenty of criticism. When I arrived in Washington, D.C. for the first round of negotiation with the Americans, I received a phone call from a friend, Professor Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, who believed strongly in multilateralism and the WTO and thought bilateral agreements undermined these forums. He asked me why I was doing this. And I said that I was still a champion of the WTO, but that multilateral agreements can take a long time, and that it is OK to complement the WTO with bilateral agreements. He was not satisfied.

He scolded me about the deal itself: “Do not concede to the Americans because they are bringing labour and environment into trade.” In an ideal world I would agree with him, but there would not be an agreement unless I gave the Americans what they needed to win domestic support. What else was there to do? We do not live in an ideal world; we live in the real world.

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What do you think the key differences  are between negotiating multilaterally and bilaterally?

The obvious first difference is that instead of negotiating with one party, you could be negotiating with 160 parties, such as the UN Law of the Sea Conference, or roughly 180 countries, as at the Earth Summit. That makes it more complicated and gaining consensus more challenging. But if you happen to be the Chair, as I was for those two negotiations, it is your job.

In situations of this sort of complexity, what I always tried to do was enlist other capable colleagues to help me do some of the negotiations. In the USSFTA, we had 21 negotiating groups because the agreement had 21 chapters. In the Law of the Sea conference there were three main committees. I also created what I called the President’s Collegium. This was a group of conference leaders representing all the different regions and interest groups. If a problem appeared, I had that group to help me solve it. It was a lot of work and it required a lot of energy. I would meet them every day. But I felt that they could help me bring about a consensus.

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What are the qualities you look for when putting together a team of negotiators? How do you think about balancing subject-matter expertise with soft skills?

In the case of the USSFTA, the Singapore delegation was about 50 people at its peak. The different ministries and agencies that were involved in the negotiation appointed these people – I did not appoint them. But I was their leader, so my first job was to get to know them, to encourage them to come together and become a team so that we could all work for the same objective. That took time. And if I felt that one of my colleagues, regardless of age, was very capable, I would give them extra responsibilities.

One of my colleagues was Daren Tang, then a young lawyer. Both my Deputy Chief Negotiator, Ong Ye Kung, and I agreed that Daren was very capable. But other colleagues were surprised when we appointed him as a negotiator on services. They asked us, “How come you are giving this young guy such an important responsibility?” We did it because we felt he could deliver, which he did. I was not surprised when Daren went on to become Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

With the Earth Summit, I was fighting against the clock. There was a Rio Declaration of Principles on Environment and Development and a very, very complicated action plan of hundreds of pages, full of brackets, to get through. I decided the only way to do this was for me to set up a number of negotiating groups, led by capable men and women from different regions of the world. One of the most complicated issues was around financing – developing countries were looking to developed countries for financial support. I appointed a friend from one country to chair the financing committee; he did not deliver. So I appointed another friend from a different country, who also did not deliver. Then I appointed a very senior person from Brazil, who delivered.

I felt very bad that I had to replace the Chairman of this key negotiating group several times, but if I did not do that, I might not get an agreement. Sometimes you have to have a sense of who the most competent leaders are, who the most creative  people are, and also the people who enjoy the confidence of colleagues.

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Can you say a bit more about what a “capable” colleague looks like? Can you share an example of somebody who stood out with their negotiating skills?

Ideally, I am looking for someone with all three dimensions of intelligence: cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence. In a multilateral conference, I need people who are culturally sensitive, because, if not, you might inadvertently offend somebody from another region.

A good example of a capable colleague would be Satya Nandan, who was the representative of Fiji and became one of the most important leaders of the Law of the Sea Conference. He was unusual because by nature he was rather shy. But he was very bright and laser-focused on solving problems. His most important contribution to the success of the conference came about by accident.

The conference started in 1973. But it was not a typical conference because it began without a draft text on which to base negotiations. In 1976, at a conference session in Geneva, I could sense that people were frustrated. And I proposed that we entrust the Chairman of each main committee with preparing draft articles for the treaty that would govern their domain. This gave each Chairman incredible powers, but what else was there to do? My proposal was accepted.

The Chairman of one of those committees was a very nice gentleman from El Salvador, who was seriously short-sighted. And when he was walking along the corridor of the UN complex in Geneva, he did not see a glass door and walked into it. He was hospitalised and because of the injuries he sustained, he asked his Rapporteur for help drafting the text. Nandan proved his worth working at night with the help of only one young member, a staffer from Iceland named Gudmundur Eiriksson. He did a super job and produced the draft treaty articles, most of which became part of the convention.

In his very quiet, unassuming way, he helped us to solve some of the most difficult issues in the conference. Nandan’s technique was different from mine. He would prepare a text, then he would show it to the negotiating parties. Talk to each of them, get feedback, go back to the drawing board, and amend the text. Come up with a revised one. Get feedback again, make another revision. Nandan would go around until he got a text that everybody could agree upon. I personally preferred to speak about issues in the meeting, but his technique was always to begin with a text. And it worked.

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What advice would you give to negotiators? How can they put themselves in the best position to secure a successful outcome?

Rule number one: be prepared. There is really no substitute for hard work. No matter which country you are negotiating with, you must be better prepared than your negotiating partner. I would tell my young colleagues, “Do not be afraid of negotiating with America. It does not matter that they are a bigger country. When you are at the negotiating table, the real question is: who makes the more persuasive argument?” Preparation gives you power. When you are chairing a conference, for instance, you must master your brief. When I was working with a 300-page document, I had to basically memorise that text.

Rule number two: understand that a negotiation requires a spirit of give and take. I remember one bilateral negotiation when some of my young colleagues kept passing me notes saying, “Do not concede on this point.” When we had a debrief after the meeting, I would say: “If I win every point, and he loses every point, how can he go back and tell his bosses that he got a fair outcome?” In any negotiation, I must safeguard my core interests. But other than that, if the other side makes a proposal and it does not injure my interests, I should concede. Otherwise, the outcome would not be fair and balanced. And if it is not fair and balanced, his principal might reject the agreement.

My third rule would be: get to know your counterparts and, if possible, create a bond of friendship so that you do not see each other as enemies but as partners seeking to find an agreement. I always invited my negotiating partner to a meal, because I felt that eating together is a bonding experience, and it is easier in that context to review difficult issues than in a formal setting.

I will give you an example. There was a land reclamation case between Singapore and Malaysia. Fortunately, the chief negotiator on the Malaysian side, Tun Ahmad Fuzi, and I had been colleagues in Washington, D.C., so we had a warm friendship. Also, my late colleague from the Attorney General’s Chambers, Sivakant Tiwari, was a good friend of the Malaysian Attorney-General, Tan Sri Gani Patail. Many difficult issues were resolved with the four of us either over a coffee or a meal, where we could be quite frank with each other and say, “I have no flexibility on this issue,” or “Let us think outside the box.” When you have that kind of friendship and goodwill, even intractable problems become solvable.

At an event at Harvard University, some years ago, a person asked me, “You represent one of the smallest countries in the world. When you negotiate with a big country like the U.S. or China, can you negotiate effectively? Is this not an asymmetrical relationship?” I said, “Yes, it is. But the secret is, I do not suffer from an inferiority complex. I am willing to walk away from a negotiation if I feel the other side’s demands are unreasonable. I am not desperate for an agreement. And if you try to bully me, we will walk away. That is the secret.”

I am willing to walk away from a negotiation if I feel the other side’s demands are unreasonable. I am not desperate for an agreement. And if you try to bully me, we will walk away. That is the secret.

In the case of the USSFTA, during the first round in Washington, D.C., right in front of the media, I said to my American friends that we would like an FTA but not at any cost. I quoted a favourite American phrase: “A bad agreement is worse than no agreement.” And I meant that.

Not all countries can do that. At the UN, many small countries have no agency because they are receiving foreign development assistance. When I was a very young diplomat, one of my colleagues from Africa had a serious problem. His country had a dispute with France, but because they were receiving French foreign aid they could not speak out firmly about it. He asked me to say something on their behalf. I still had to be tactful in order not to offend France, but this country had a good case and I was able to raise it because we were not beholden to other countries as they were. In Singapore, our first generation of leaders in the 1960s made a wise decision when they decided that we would neither beg for nor receive foreign aid. They saved us from a dilemma that many other developing countries face.