Some people entertain the illusion that you can negotiate with evil- that if you just manage to select the correct "process" or "protocol," or can figure out how to "frame the issues" properly the ravening nature of the skull behind the smiley-face will somehow be mitigated...
Yet even a cursory study of history belies that naive and happily foolish belief-- just look at the bloody road to the second World War- a road littered with the tattered remains of treaties & protocols & agreements between nations. Every one of them irrelevant once the bullets started flying and men started dying.