The False Religion of Mideast Peace (and why Im no longer a believer)

Excerpt:

Such forceful U.S. diplomacy succeeded in the past. Indeed, it's a stunning paradox that with the exception of the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, every other successful accord came not out of direct negotiations, but as a result of U.S. mediation. The Oslo accords, often touted as the miracle produced by direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, proved to be a spectacular failure. All that's missing now, the argument goes, is the absence of American will.

I understand the logic of this view, and having spent more than 20 years in frustrating talks with the Arabs and Israelis, I can also see how it can be emotionally satisfying. But because I know a thing or two about failure and don't want to see the United States fail (yet again), I simply don't buy the argument. If I genuinely believed America could impose and deliver a solution through tough forceful diplomacy, I'd be more sympathetic -- but I don't. And here's why:

Ownership: Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic advisor, said it best: In the history of the world, no one ever washed a rental car. We care only about what we own. Unless the Arabs and Israelis want political agreements and peace and can invest enough in them to give them a chance to succeed, we certainly can't. The broader Middle East is littered with the remains of great powers that wrongly believed they could impose their will on small tribes. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran … need I continue? Small tribes will always be meaner, tougher, and longer-winded than U.S. diplomats because it's their neighborhood and their survival; they will always have a greater stake in the outcome of their struggle than the great power thousands of miles away with many other things to do. You want to see failure? Take a whack at trying to force Israelis and Palestinians to accept an American solution on Jerusalem.

The negotiator's mystique: It's gone, at least for now. When Americans succeeded in Arab-Israeli diplomacy, it was because they were respected, admired, even feared. U.S. power and influence were taken seriously. Today, much of the magic is gone: We are overextended, diminished, bogged down. Again Summers: Can the world's biggest borrower continue to be the world's greatest power? Our friends worry about our reliability; our adversaries, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, believe they can outwait and outmaneuver us. Nor does there appear much cost or consequence to saying no to the superpower. After Obama and Mitchell's fruitless first year, I worry that the mediator's mystique of a Kissinger or a Baker, or the willfulness and driving force of a Carter, won't return easily.

Domestic politics: The pro-Israel community in the United States has a powerful voice, primarily in influencing congressional sentiment and initiatives (assistance to Israel in particular), but it does not have a veto over U.S. foreign policy. Lobbies lobby; that's the American way, for better or worse. Presidents are supposed to lead. And when they do, with a real strategy that's in America's national interests, they trump domestic politics. Still, domestic politics constrain, particularly when a president is perceived to be weak or otherwise occupied. This president has been battered of late, and his party is likely to face significant losses in the 2010 midterm elections. Should there be a serious chance for a breakthrough in the peace process, he'll go for it. But is it smart to risk trying to manufacture one? The last thing Obama needs now is an ongoing fight with the Israelis and their supporters, or worse, a major foreign-policy failure.

U.S.-Israeli relations: America is Israel's best friend and must continue to be. Shared values are at the core of the relationship, and our intimacy with Israel gives us leverage and credibility in peacemaking when we use it correctly. But this special relationship with the Israelis, which can serve U.S. interests, has become an exclusive one that does not. We've lost the capacity to be independent of Israel, to be honest with it when it does things we don't like, to impose accountability, and to adopt positions in a negotiation that might depart from Israel's. It's tough to be a credible mediator with such handicaps.

more:-

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/19/the_false_religion_of_mideast_peace?page=0,0

I'll give it a serious read tomorrow.
:thumbsup:

"......It's tough to be a credible mediator with such handicaps...."

he spreads the blame around, and quite rightly so. He truly was one of the white hats during the Camp David talks, unlike Dennis Ross and others who alternated between grandstanding and barracking for Israel.

It is a good piece - I could not imagine many reasonable people disagreeing with him. I agree with his conclusions, and it seems like the issue is going to continue to fester for much of the foreseeable future.

A very long read, nine web pages, but well worth it.

:kick:

I gave it a quick look and it's definately a print-it-out-and-read-it-at-work job for tomorrow. Just on the quick look I gave it, it looks far more interesting than much else that's been posted in this forum recently...

He makes sound points about issues that ought to be considered carefully, for example that diplomacy ought not be "faith based". Sound strategy is not arrived at by blinkered deduction from dogmatic principles. One might as well roll dice.

Dramatic peace breakthroughs are not the norm, they are the exception, the norm is various degrees of festering antagonism, based on real grievances, in the context of long term trends which occasionally force dramatic change. The desire to instigate and participate in gratifying political dramas does not of itself lead to effective change.

He does well too to point out the self-interested incompetence of the political leadership on both sides. The current stalemate will continue while that lack of political will and legitimacy persists, until at some point the pressure of long-term trends becomes too great to ignore, initiating a crisis.

The recent decline in US prestige and power under Bushite rule is a critical point as well, and those of us that pointed out that it would be the likely result of impetuous Bushite wars of choice take some satisfaction in having tried to warn about it.

He ignores, however, the recent erosion of the positions of both sides in the dispute, nor does he address the question of how current trends might develop in the future, he appears to see the situation as static and stable, or at least he does not speculate much about future changes. For his purposes, that might have seemed the best choice. I suppose it is uncomfortable to examine candidly how the current situation came to be, what sort of change it represents relative to ten or thirty years ago, and where it is likely to go in the future. It is not a pretty picture, and when you put it in the context global issues it is even less so.

I will state that I think the present situation is very unstable, and likely to disintegrate further along one or more of several perverse and related trends: overpopulation, ecological decay and insufficiency, economic resource strangulation.

changing demography in Israel, for example. I agree that it is likely that the circumstances that you list will force change, but I do not see that change being of the positive or peaceful variety.

I suppose I'm just whining a bit because he is not alarmist enough for my tastes. But really he is just being professional according to his experience, I suppose.

I am not optimistic either. There is a lot of bad stuff going on and nobody wants to talk about it because they are all bunkered down and focussed on the arcana of the dispute, the giant propaganda war. Ten years ago there was room for a bit of optimism, there was still some goodwill to be drawn on, now I think of Yeats "Second Coming".

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

If - if - Israel were finally to offer to end the occupation and withdraw to its own borders, or even to a close approximation of them, enough the Palestinians would be keen to make peace that it would stick.

Unfortunately, I think Miller is entirely right about domestic politics. Imposing a solution would involve threatening to end America's friendship with Israel. I think this would be a great thing if it happened, but it would be completely politically inviable.

You claim, "If - if - Israel were finally to offer to end the occupation and withdraw to its own borders, or even to a close approximation of them, enough the Palestinians would be keen to make peace that it would stick." I wouldn't try to push that on Progressive Muslim. She wouldn't accept it. And Violet Crumble, who I know isn't Palestinian, believes that there won't be peace unless Israel accepts Right of Return. What is it that you know that they don't?

For any peace settlement, the occupying armies must not only withdraw and relinquish control, return the more recently stolen lands, but also give up control over the border of the occupied lands that are not also borders with the territory retained by the invaders.

Whatever government(s) controlled Gaza and the West Bank would have control over all their borders. just as the invaders control theirs. Relations with Jordan and Egypt and access to the sea would not be under the control of the foreigners whose brutality won them control of the rest of the region in question.

Of course, the foreign settler state there will never allow that, any more than they will allow the return of those they drove into camps, since that would allow the indigenous people a chance to rebuild their infrastructure and culture and regain actual independence.