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What the U.S. Can and Can't Do in the Middle East

(Jewish Review of Books) Shlomo Avineri - The U.S. has been and can be extremely powerful and helpful when either of the following scenarios unfolds: 1) a shooting war erupts and threatens to unleash dire regional or even global consequences; or 2) the contending parties have already made, on their own, significant steps towards reaching an agreement but still need a helpful push from the outside. In the first case, the U.S. can function as an effective firefighter and bring about a cessation of hostilities. In the second, it can act as a midwife and help clinch the deal. Towards the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in the last stages of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and during the Gulf War in 1991, America exerted intense pressure to make Israel stop its military operations on a dime. The Israeli-Egyptian peace and the 1993 Oslo negotiations were both initiated by the two sides with the U.S. left completely out of the loop, while the U.S. served as a midwife for the final agreements. The U.S. can, then, be of assistance. But when a shooting war or bilateral negotiations are not already underway, it falls flat on its face. Every American attempt to reach an agreement in the absence of these conditions has ended in spectacular failure. Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, in Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, discuss a number of basic myths and illusions such as "linkage," "engagement," and promotion of regional democracy. They show how the linkage theory is faulty, both factually and historically. The writer, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, served as director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry in the first government of Yitzhak Rabin.
2010-02-26 08:30:55
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