Americans and Westerners have to realize that Arab personal relationships are as important as anything else when conducting business or negotiations. Arabs are relationship focused, and they prefer to deal with friends, families or persons well known to them. They want to know their business partners well before ever talking business. The business relationship is based on trust, and trust takes an initial investment of time (probably months’ worth). As "time is money" to the American, it means an investment up front of time and money in terms of the requisite networking. Incidentally, Southerners tend to do quite well with the Arabs. They don’t mind drinking tea or coffee, asking about the kids, commenting on the weather before jumping into brass tacks. Southerners intuitively take a slower pace, so they often get along quite well. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this is a far more efficient way of dealing with Arabs. You get absolutely nowhere covering your six-point plan with deadlines in thirty minutes of total conversation. You may as well not come.

American culture of course is far more deal-focused, and this makes us relatively open to doing business with strangers. To us, business is business and this has little to do with private life. Business to Arabs, however, is an extension of private life, an enlargement of their personal relationships forged on trust. The good part about this is that once relationships are forged, Arabs keep coming back—preferring to work with those they know and have worked with before. If someone has stuck it out with them through good times and in bad, this speaks far more to the Arab than the prospect of utilitarian advantage or the promise of a temporary windfall. Arabs tend to be loyal, as well as generous business partners.

Finally I should mention the difference in time orientation already alluded to. Americans may not realize it about themselves, but they are incredibly impatient, as well as efficient. By that I mean Americans are time-conscious and precise about appointments and this is sometimes to a fault. We hate to "waste" time; we sometimes feel guilty if we aren’t rushed, or if we feel too relaxed on the clock. Arabs are more casual about time in general. They find it hard to imagine why you would dock someone’s pay for an hour he didn’t work. If the wedding reception starts at eight, don’t be surprised if the doors open at nine and the host doesn’t show up until ten. As frustrating as it is sometimes, Americans come to realize just how tightly wound they are. Successful businesspeople and diplomats in the Arab world are those who learn to slow it down some. If you don’t learn how, you’ll set yourself up for failure, or at least a distinct disadvantage. Arab culture favors long negotiations and slow deliberations. Arabs also exchange pleasantries at some length before ever mentioning the business at hand. To do otherwise is to be impolite, and to negatively prejudice those you are dealing with and hope to persuade. Arabs also use silent intervals for contemplation, whereas Americans show little tolerance for silence during negotiations and are likely to blow the deal by interrupting, just when a decision is pending.

None of what I’ve said militates against American security interests in the region, nor mitigates our need for Saudi and OPEC oil. What I’ve said, however, should remind us that we aren’t the only game in town—or at least, there are other players. International relations have often been likened to a game of chess, which is a pretty good analogy since chess is a game involving skill and strategy between two players. Trying to play solitaire at the game of chess doesn’t make much sense, but Americans are sometimes guilty of this. Americans are given to a tendency to over-generalize and to universalize without evidence or justification; that is, to see the world through the prism of our unique, and indeed exceptional experience. We look at others but on a flat surface, and often never really see them past the contours of our own reflection.

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