In 22 years of negotiating with the Americans, bilaterally and multilaterally, I have never felt mouse-like. These were negotiations among people who had very common objectives; we were working together. I think more often than not we had the good ideas and had to explain to the Americans what we were doing and why, and they'd say, “Yes, we like that; let's do that.”
One of the reasons we were a very effective player in the multilateral system from the late 1940s through the 1980s was that we were very good at preparing the ground by putting forward good ideas early in the game and therefore leading negotiations toward areas that were of interest to us. So never, never did I feel mouse-like, nor did I see them as elephant-like.