It's not always possible to get rid of an enemy
It’s good if you just crossed paths with a person in life and, realizing that he can significantly spoil your existence, you immediately refuse to communicate with him without any losses.
But what if someone who likes to plot and is envious is your work colleague or mother-in-law, with whom you cannot completely refuse communication? After all, you wouldn’t fire a colleague or break up with a man because of his mother? In this case, you just need to remember how the Chinese talk about friends and enemies.
It is worth noting that initially this expression was used only in military affairs. But sometimes clashes between colleagues or within the family are somewhat reminiscent of a real war, right?
So, why do you need to place the enemy as close to yourself as possible, as the proverb says? There are three reasons for this.
Legal status of the non-compete agreement, or “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
Today, in a market, competitive economy, many companies are faced with the problem of valuable employees leaving the company.
, possessing equally valuable skills, client connections and information about the company's production secrets.
The concept of a trade secret is contained in Article 1465 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. From this article, the signs of a trade secret are
:
1. information of any nature about the results of intellectual activity in the scientific and technical field and about the methods of carrying out professional activities
2. presence of actual or potential commercial value
3. their unknownness to third parties, if third parties do not have free access to such information on a legal basis.
An employer who has invested the necessary knowledge and experience in a valuable personnel does not want his employee to go to competitors and bring them profit
at the expense of the former employer and the company's production secrets.
For these purposes, employers began to introduce into their activities such a method of protecting their interests as a “ non-competition agreement.”
" Such an agreement is concluded between the employer and the employee in the following cases:
1. When an employee has valuable information.
2. When the employee’s personal qualities are of value.
The non-compete agreement is designed to protect the rights of the employer and the company's competitiveness in the market, but it is also discriminatory
in relation to the hired employee, because it is customary to include the following obligations of the employee:
1. do not disclose confidential information obtained while working for the company,
2. maintain loyalty to the company,
3. do not disseminate negative information about the company within a certain period,
4. do not apply for similar positions,
5. not engage in own practice in this area.
All these conditions are a significant limitation of legal capacity
employee (rights to work and free choice of profession, to carry out entrepreneurial activities).
This agreement is widespread in the West. However, the legislation of Western countries establishes that such an agreement should not contradict current legislation and violate the legal rights of employees
.
At the same time, the terms of the agreement must have reasonable limits and can limit the employee’s rights only to the extent necessary to protect
the legitimate business interests of the employer. This measure is expressed in the territory, terms and payment of compensation for the restriction of rights. It is these categories that the court is guided by when considering disputes about the reasonableness and legality of a non-competition agreement between an employee and an employer (if the latter is possibly abused).
Russian legislation does not contain such a concept as a “non-competition agreement”. Moreover, the conclusion of this agreement will be a violation of Article 37 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation
, which enshrines the free right to work and to dispose of one’s abilities.
The employer has the right to include a non-competition clause in the employment contract with the employee, but it is impossible to hold him accountable for violation
.
If a separate agreement is concluded between the employer and the employee, then, based on Article 168 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, such an agreement will be a void transaction.
To protect the interests of the employer, Russian legislation provides for such methods as the introduction of a trade secret regime
, as well as the conclusion
of a non-disclosure agreement
. However, such methods have their own characteristics and are not synonymous with a non-competition agreement due to the different subject matter of the agreement.
Thus, non-competition agreements in our state can only be a kind of moral incentive
for employees and cannot guarantee the employer’s compliance with the terms of such an agreement, and certainly do not entail any liability for the employee for failure to comply with the terms of the non-competition agreement.
Understand your enemy
By starting closer communication with a person, you can understand him better, while recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of your enemy. This must be done very carefully so that he does not suspect anything.
Do not rule out the possibility that your enemy will play some role that is beneficial to him. For example, people, in whose heads unkind thoughts often arise towards others, really like to evoke pity, so that they are not severely punished. Another favorite behavior is feigned kindness towards everyone, which is also often misleading.
Don’t be fooled by anything: if you see that a person is unkind to you, start observing him and drawing your own conclusions, without entertaining your consciousness with illusions. Consider soberly the enemy who at any moment can do a dirty trick or make a denunciation to his superiors just for the sake of, for example, “promoting” you from your position.
Should the new president maintain contacts with our country's adversaries?
Barack Obama emphasizes: yes, this is necessary. Hillary Rodham Clinton is vague on this issue, but generally makes it clear that she is against premature negotiations with our adversaries.
As for John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, he did not address the issue in a recent speech at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. However, the Bush administration leaves no doubt about its approach to this problem: it prefers not to contact our enemies, but to stigmatize and isolate them in every possible way. That's exactly what it did with Iraq before the invasion, and that's exactly what it did with North Korea before returning to the six-party talks to eliminate its nuclear warheads, and that's exactly what it does with Iran today. Finally, no attempt is being made to 'engage' the new Cuban leader, Raul Castro.
However, one of our presidents, whose name is often pronounced during the current election campaign with respectful aspiration, did not shy away from dialogue with US opponents. I mean Ronald Reagan; and his approach in this matter seems very instructive.
In public, Reagan took pleasure in denouncing the USSR. At his first press conference after his inauguration, he attacked the Soviet communist leadership: it reserves “the right to any crime, lies, fraud,” and professes “treachery, deceit, extermination and bloodshed.” Another time - in one of his most famous speeches - he called the leaders of the USSR "the focus of evil in the modern world."
During his eight years in the White House, Reagan dramatically increased US military spending, ordered the invasion of Grenada, deployed new generation missiles in European allies, and provided assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen and the Nicaraguan Contras. In March 1983, he announced the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative - the so-called Star Wars program.
All this is well known. We know much less about Ronald Reagan's other face - the man who persistently sought to negotiate with the rulers of the 'evil empire'. The Reagan Presidential Library and Museum houses a trove of documents documenting his efforts to engage with U.S. adversaries, including a series of messages to Soviet leaders, often handwritten to emphasize their personal character.
What idea did Reagan want to convey to Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko? He wrote to each of them: despite all the disagreements between the USA and the USSR, they also have many topics to talk about. “The fact that we don’t like each other,” he emphasized in one of his speeches in January 1984, “is not a reason to refuse dialogue. In our nuclear era, such contact becomes an urgent necessity.'
In April 1981, Reagan wrote to Brezhnev that he was lifting the embargo on grain exports to the USSR and was seeking to establish a dialogue between the two countries: “The peoples of the world, despite racial and ethnic differences, have much in common. . . . Shouldn't we be concerned about removing the obstacles that prevent our peoples from achieving their most cherished goals?'
After the death of Brezhnev's successor Andropov in February 1984, Reagan immediately sent a message to the new Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko: "I have no more important task than to establish relations of constructive cooperation between our great countries." In another letter, Reagan noted that the USSR and the United States should look for "specific areas in which we can develop our relations in a more positive direction."
Reagan's willingness to "talk to the enemy" was met with strong opposition within his own administration. Thus, the president's close friend, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, was categorically against this idea. Nevertheless, Reagan insisted on his own. The United States needs to be strong, he explained, but the purpose of this strength is negotiations.
As Reagan's desire to establish a negotiating process with our country's main adversary grew stronger, aspects of the "evil empire" that he had not even suspected were revealed to him. So, he realized that the Soviets were frightened by his actions. Indeed, as we now know from British and American intelligence reports, the autumn of 1983 was the most tense moment of the Cold War since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was then that the United States conducted the Able Archer military exercise, during which the operation of command structures and communications facilities was tested in the event of the use of nuclear weapons during the war: this raised fears in the Kremlin that Reagan was preparing for a surprise attack on the USSR.
Reagan was simply dumbfounded. In his memoirs, he Fr.
But was he wrong with this new conclusion? Reagan asked the emissaries visiting the United States again and again: Are the Soviets really afraid of American power? And time after time he received the same answer: yes, it is so.
In March 1984, Reagan wrote to Chernenko that he had heard that the Soviet leader hoped that history would remember 'us as leaders of good intentions, wisdom and kindness. Nothing is more important to me and we need to take steps to make that a fact."
Nothing came of these initiatives. The elderly Soviet leaders did not know how to interpret the president's unofficial moves against the backdrop of his such hostile public rhetoric and such threatening actions. Reagan, however, was not embarrassed by Moscow's refusals. He persistently sought to negotiate with Soviet leaders - only they died one after another.
When, on March 6, 1985, the Kremlin anointed a young and energetic general secretary, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Reagan was determined to make another attempt. After Chernenko's funeral, an information memorandum was prepared for Vice President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State George Shultz for conversations with the new Soviet leader in Moscow. It said: 'We understand that this is a difficult time. But we would like it to turn into a period of new opportunities."
When Bush and Shultz met with Gorbachev, the secretary of state looked him in the eyes and said: “President Reagan told me to look you straight in the eyes and tell you: “Ronald Reagan believes this is a very special moment in human history.”
Six months later, Reagan was walking down the plane in Geneva: he had arrived for a meeting with the new Soviet leader. In his memoirs, he admitted: 'The blood was pulsating in my veins. I couldn't wait to get started. In fact, preparations for this summit began five years ago, when we began to strengthen our economy, renew our resolve and rebuild our defense posture. I felt ready to go."
From the very beginning of his tenure in the White House, Reagan clearly understood: the basis for negotiations should be force, but without dialogue with the country's main opponents you will not achieve much. Even if the enemy seems to be the embodiment of evil, you can find common ground with him. And change cannot be ruled out—your opponent’s political system may be repressive to the core, but it will not last forever. The main thing is to believe in your own ideals, show patience and perseverance. And have a dialogue. Dialogue with the enemy does not mean giving up your own positions: it allows you to understand his motives, take a closer look at him and determine what to do next.
And with a certain intelligence and luck, you may eventually have an amazing interlocutor like Gorbachev. “As we shook hands,” Reagan writes in his memoirs, “I couldn’t help but admit that there was something likable about Gorbachev. There was warmth in his facial expression and demeanor.'
And these two, to the surprise of their contemporaries, brought the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.
In general, dialogue with the enemy is worthwhile: this is the legacy of Ronald Reagan.
Melvin P. Loeffler
—
co-chair of the University of Virginia program 'Governing America in a Global Era', author of the book 'For the Soul of Mankind: the United States, the Soviet Union' , and the Cold War")
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NATO is a threat to the world. History filmstrip for class X, 1985 (Studio “Diafilm”, State Committee for Cinematography of the USSR)
The Great War of Words (Time, USA)
'Star Wars' and the Phantom Menace (Time, USA)
Moscow's military machine: all the best - the army (Time, USA)
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.
