Last year I wrote some pieces about How to Negotiate. These and other pieces with an implicit or explicit Negotiation theme are linked here.

Such as this one:

It does not follow that being bloody-minded or even threatening force actually works. So much depends on context, the objective balance of forces, how far one’s bloody-mindedness is intelligently marshalled to focus on a specific objective, how one balances different Objectives, and just sheer technique on the day. Russian examples aplenty.

Nor, of course, am I saying that Might is Right.Or the smart way to go, or to bet.

My (very) basic point is simply this.

That confidence and determination play a big part in negotiating. And that if you are prepared to inflict pain on your negotiating partner(s) (or at least credibly threaten to do so) plus are ready to endure pain (or at least credibly project a willingness to do so), you have a much wider set of options – and possible outcomes.

Just as in negotiation, so in defending yourself.

If someone is attacking you, is it best only to defend yourself efficiently so he/she gives up in frustration?

Or to hit back so hard that the cost to the attacker of continuing the attack is felt by the attacker as much too high?

Enter Tim Larkin, martial arts teacher:

"Probably the most controversial thing that we advocate is to focus on stopping someone via causing an injury, rather than trying to block an attack," he says, in a soft southern drawl surprising from a man built like an all-American wrestler and who boasts he can teach people how to kill "in four moves".

"The person who survives a violent attack usually does so by fighting back and injuring the other person rather than protecting themselves," he adds. "When you look at the videos of real violence, real fights, it is the people who try to block or protect themselves that end up getting stabbed, kicked or punched to death."

… must civilians really be armed with such knowledge? After all, everyday citizens have a right to defend themselves, but only if it that response is proportionate.

Mr Larkin’s response is typically uncompromising: "Here’s the issue with ‘proportionate response’: it is a great theory, but the only ones who are actually concerned by it are law-abiding citizens. Most of the time you’re facing someone who is going to use a disproportionate level of violence, and most likely you’ll be facing multiple attackers."

So many international negotiations are all about this sort of thing – or the threat of escalating to disproportionate response if one side overdoes things. See Israel/Palestine/Iran, passim. Northern Ireland was another one which dragged on for decades and still flickers into violence when some micro-factions just won’t give up.

Here is a very nasty Negotiation in the north Caucasus region, between Islamic militants and death squads allegedly backed by the Russian state: both sides taking and inflicting horrible pain. Alas, in this case no end is in sight.

As I wrote back in April 2008:

How bloody-minded are you ready to be to get what you want, via negotiation or otherwise?

If the answer is ‘not very’, do not be surprised if others more bloody-minded than you get more of what they want – at your expense.

Last words with Tim Larkin, on how a gunman mowed down 32 students at a US college without being attacked himself:

"Right after that a bunch of my Israeli friends called me and they said, ‘Why didn’t they swarm him?’ When a population lives with the threat of violence, they know how to use it against perpetrators when necessary. Here in the West we’re not willing to do that, and it leaves us frighteningly vulnerable."