July 21, 2006

Strategic Failure by the West in the MidEast?

Philip Stevens:

These are genuinely dangerous times. Israel is far from alone in believing that Hizbollah had Iranian and Syrian sanction for its rocket attacks and the abduction of two Israeli soldiers. Syria is still smarting from its enforced departure from Lebanon. From Iran’s perspective, Hizbollah has at once diverted attention from the nuclear dispute and reminded the west of its capacity to make serious mischief.

George W.Bush has highlighted Syria’s role. Tony Blair has laid more of the blame on Tehran. The British prime minister also talks of a rising extremist threat across the broader Middle East. The shared message is that, whatever the specifics of the present fighting, all this is about a much bigger threat.

President Bush has thus declined to restrain Israel’s military operations in spite of the feeling among US allies that they are disproportionate and, in significant measure counterproductive. Bombing the Lebanese army and weakening the government of Fouad Siniora will not drive Hizbollah from southern Lebanon.

European diplomats aver that the ferocity of the Israeli response owes as much to the weakness of Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, as to the traditional use of massive force as a deterrent against future aggression. Israel, though, has persuaded Mr Bush that Hamas and Hizbollah should be seen through the prism of his own war on terrorism. The terrorists, in this flawed but, for Mr OImert, useful analysis, are all the same.

As a simple description of the many fires smouldering in the region, there is something to be said for Mr. Blair’s “arc of extremism”. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, Iran remains defiant about its nuclear ambitions, Iraq has fallen to sectarian civil war, Hizbollah threatens to destroy Lebanon’s fragile stability, Hamas is fighting Israel in Gaza.

Much more dubious is the attempt to draw through these conflicts a single thread of extremism. That is to ignore their complexities and the myriad grievances and rivalries. These set Sunni against Shia, Arab against Iranian as well as political Islam against the west. Al-Qaeda and Hizbollah are not allies.

The multiple threats, though, do hold up a mirror to the strategic failures of the US and Europe. The west is not to blame for al-Qaeda nor for the noxious regime in Syria. It has played its part in creating the conditions in which fundamentalism and extremism flourish.

The results of the unconscionable refusal in Washington to think beyond the removal of Saddam Hussein are painfully obvious in Iraq. That country now resembles Lebanon at the height of its civil war. The fighting in Gaza speaks to the abandonment by the US of sustained engagement to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr Bush has paid lip service to the two-state solution set out in the so-called road map. So, too, has the Israeli government. Condoleezza Rice’s US state department has shown occasional interest in reviving talks. But for most of the time Washington has endorsed Israeli unilateralism.

Even as Ms Rice prepares to travel to the region, officials with intimate knowledge of the diplomacy say that Israel is receiving two sets of messages from Washington. Ms. Rice presses for Israeli restraint and urges diplomatic as well as military means. Elliot Abrams, the president’s Middle East adviser, offers Mr Olmert a presidential blank cheque.

Europeans cannot escape blame. As the initial promoters of the road map, they have stood more or less idly by as Israel has redrawn its 1967 borders in the West Bank with the tacit support of the US. So much for a European foreign policy.

Here lies the danger in casting the various conflicts as a grand struggle between the forces of modernism and reaction across the greater Middle East. Mr Blair’s arc of extremism becomes an excuse for inaction, a diversion from the tasks at hand. Exhortation replaces engagement, emotional rhetoric hard commitment.

What moderates – those in Iran and Lebanon as much as in Palestine [ed. note: and I'd add, in Israel too)– need from the west is a sustained and even-handed effort to secure a settlement that guarantees Israel’s security and gives Palestinians the state they have been promised.

Mr Blair used to understand this. There was a time when the prime minister used every conversation with Mr Bush to press the case for US re-engagement. All the while Israel was building its barrier deep in the occupied West Bank and Hamas was building support among Palestinians.

As for Iran, the US must recognise that diplomacy is not synonymous with appeasement. However unpalatable the regime, Washington cannot ignore the reality of Iranian influence – the more so as the debacle in Iraq has greatly strengthened that influence. Sometimes, as the US well understood during the cold war, you have to talk to your enemies. Ms Rice has moved the administration in that direction. Half a step is not enough. [my emphasis]

I endorse pretty much every word (save I can't opine on whether Abrams is trying to scuttle Rice, as I haven't a clue, really--and, anyway, it would be too fatiguing and tiresome and perhaps woefully predictable to bother finding out). Most important, however, is Stephen's call for key US and European players to engage in less exhortation, and more engagement; less emotional rhetoric, and more hard commitment--vis-a-vis grappling with the mestastasizing crises rippling through the region. But Condoleeza Rice appears to have left behind such tactics of consistent engagement and "hard committment" (perhaps deemed old-fashioned residues of her earlier Scowcroftism, and thus too often ingloriously relegated to the dust-bin), and instead increasingly veered more towards 'transformational diplomacy', which strikes me mostly, as Stephens says, as "emotional rhetoric" and "exhortation." It's time to get in the weeds and have our Secretary of State pull Israel and Lebanon back from the brink, in a very hands-on, pragmatic, unemotional and realist fashion--and it's then time for her to return to the Iran portfolio in earnest. Meantime, Cheney and Rumsfeld appear to have disappeared for the past week, in large part, though I noted Cheney was doing a spot of fund-raising in Iowa or such. While normally I'd be pleased, all told, I'm frankly wondering who's minding the Iraq brief in Washington these days, as things are getting very ugly there indeed, and most everyone in Washington (save Chris Hill, of course) seems focused on the Lebanese-Israeli situation. Perhaps Bush would do the unthinkable, and bring back Richard Armitage at this critical juncture, to breathe new life in the Pentagon and be able to assist Condi on some of the more military-centric diplomatic security issues percolating through the Middle East? Boy is the bench thin, and new talent desperately needed! Just a thought...

UPDATE: Oh brother....from the WaPo:

President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors.

When hostilities have broken out in the past, the usual U.S. response has been an immediate and public bout of diplomacy aimed at a cease-fire, in the hopes of ensuring that the crisis would not escalate. This week, however, even in the face of growing international demands, the White House has studiously avoided any hint of impatience with Israel. While making it plain it wants civilian casualties limited, the administration is also content to see the Israelis inflict the maximum damage possible on Hezbollah.

As the president's position is described by White House officials, Bush associates and outside Middle East experts, Bush believes that the status quo -- the presence in a sovereign country of a militant group with missiles capable of hitting a U.S. ally -- is unacceptable.

The U.S. position also reflects Bush's deepening belief that Israel is central to the broader campaign against terrorists and represents a shift away from a more traditional view that the United States plays an "honest broker's" role in the Middle East.

In the administration's view, the new conflict is not just a crisis to be managed. It is also an opportunity to seriously degrade a big threat in the region, just as Bush believes he is doing in Iraq. Israel's crippling of Hezbollah, officials also hope, would complete the work of building a functioning democracy in Lebanon and send a strong message to the Syrian and Iranian backers of Hezbollah.

"The president believes that unless you address the root causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East, you cannot forge a lasting peace," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "He mourns the loss of every life. Yet out of this tragic development, he believes a moment of clarity has arrived."

One former senior administration official said Bush is only emboldened by the pressure from U.N. officials and European leaders to lead a call for a cease-fire. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded yesterday that the fighting in Lebanon stop.

"He thinks he is playing in a longer-term game than the tacticians," said the former official, who spoke anonymously so he could discuss his views candidly. "The tacticians would say: 'Get an immediate cease-fire. Deal first with the humanitarian factors.' The president would say: 'You have an opportunity to really grind down Hezbollah. Let's take it, even if there are other serious consequences that will have to be managed.' "

Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, said Bush's statements reflect an unambiguous view of the situation. "He doesn't seem to allow his vision to be clouded in any way," said Rosen, a Democrat who has come to admire Bush's Middle East policy. "It follows suit. Israel is in the right. Hezbollah is in the wrong. Terrorists have to be eliminated, and he sees Israel fighting the war he would fight against terrorism."

Many Mideast experts warn that there is a dangerous consequence to this worldview. They believe that Israel, and the United States by extension, is risking serious trouble if it continues with the punishing air strikes that are producing mounting casualties. The history of the Middle East is replete with examples of the limits of military power, they say, noting how the Israeli campaign in Lebanon in the early 1980s helped create the conditions for the rise of Hezbollah.

They warned that the military campaign is turning mainstream Lebanese public opinion against Israel rather than against Hezbollah, which instigated the violence. The attacks also make it more difficult for the Lebanese government to regain normalcy. And what seems now to be a political winner for the president -- the House overwhelmingly approved a resolution yesterday backing Israel's position -- could become a liability if the fighting expands to Syria or if the United States adds Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan as a country to which U.S. troops are deployed.

"There needs to be a signal that the Bush administration is prepared to do something," said Larry Garber, the executive director the New Israel Fund, which pushes for civil rights and justice in Israel. "Taking a complete hands-off, casual-observer position undermines our credibility. . . . There is a danger that we will be seen as simply doing Israel's bidding."

Robert Malley, who handled Middle East issues on the National Security Council staff for President Bill Clinton, voiced skepticism about whether the current course would pay off for either Israel or the United States. "It may not succeed with all the time in the world, and Hezbollah could emerge with its dignity intact and much of its political and military arsenal still available," said Malley, who monitors the region for the International Crisis Group. "What will you have gained?"

"Root causes." A "moment of clarity". Not allowing his "vision to be clouded in anyway". This is thinly dressed-up Hewittism, that is to say, resort to faith-based verities in the midst of highly complex, significant international crises, ones that simply cannot be defined in such simplistic, overarching, essentially messianic terms. We must do better, and the President must be persuaded to emerge from this cocoon of empty evangelicalism as foreign policy strategy. What is concerning, alas, is that the Secretary of State has been seduced by much of this talk too, but she is smart and able, and about to hear an earful from key Arab allies, and better understand (one hopes) the regional subtleties, which might help shake her back to reality some, and so the President. Here's hoping.