CIAO DATE: 09/07
The National Interest
Grasping the Nettle
John C. Hulsman
Abstract
One can only look on at the ruination of the Bush Administration’s Middle East policy with a sort of sick bemusement. In the past year the newly won gains of the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon have literally gone up in smoke. Israel has failed to destroy Hizballah in a short, nasty summer war; instead the rejectionist organization is the toast of the Arab world. Iran successfully flouts international will, moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapons program. The Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large on the frontier with Pakistan. And Iraq is . . . well, Iraq. The international standing of the United States is at its lowest ebb in memory, while radical Islamists have been the beneficiaries of colossal American blunders in the region. Everything looks very black indeed.
Existing U.S. and Israeli strategies are rooted in denying the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the problems that plague the Middle East. This approach has failed. The way forward is to concentrate on solving the ongoing, seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, because the many problems of the region are so interlinked, can create, in turn, momentum for dealing with the other regional disputes that feed it.
As is too often the case, the Washington establishment is confusing caution with wisdom, urging the United States to be tentative, just when circumstances demand that it should be bold about the peace process. An August 29, 2006 editorial in the Washington Post is emblematic of this fallacy. While acknowledging that both Hizballah and Hamas are “chastened” following this summer’s conflict (as is Israel): The article urges that no big steps be undertaken. The silver lining of the ghastliness of the present situation, on the contrary, is precisely that sensible people, whatever their views of the conflict, are beginning to reassess some of the intellectual shibboleths that have helped produce the diplomatic futility of the past decade.