I can, however, also choose to take the risk of cooperating with you on some matter even if I do not trust you. While he was the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, when asked if he trusted Yassir Arafat, said, “I don’t know what it means to trust. He is the Palestinian leader, not the Israeli leader, and he is determined to do whatever he can to achieve Palestinian objectives. The real question is not whether we trust him. The question is whether there is a potential agreement that could be better overall for both sides, a win-win, not a zero-sum game” (quoted in Goldberg 2001, 66). Cooperation or coordination is the general goal, but there are many ways to achieve it, some of which do not depend on trust. Hence my actions are not simply determined by the degree of my trust, although they are often likely to be influenced by my trust or distrust.

XREF: Distinguishes cooperation from trust as distinct concepts; relevant to negotiation, game theory, and international relations.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 100