Introduction
America's Standing in the Past, and at Present
The United States in World Affairs
America's Moment in the Middle East?
Back to Basics: the Time is Now
The American Predicament
Absent at the Creation
Inconsistency: an American Virtue, or Policy Sin?
How the Game Should be Played
In Search of a Role
Caught in the Middle: the US and the Peace Process
Microprocessing the Process
The Middle Ground
Some Policy Implications for Jerusalem
Conclusions
About the Author
Notes
Can America as "honest broker" honestly broker a final peaceful end to the long-standing Palestine problem in the coming critical years? Is the US indispensable? Is it dependable? Our most specific ally interest here lies with the United States and its position in the contemporary Middle East. It also rests on the central role matter-of- factly preassigned to it in shepherding Arab-Israel negotiations through the two remaining post-Oslo stages: formal conflict resolution and permanent peace structure building. In offering an admittedly subjective interpretation of America's mixed performance thus far, and in emphasizing why it may be an uncertain entity if not a distinct problem for Israeli peace strategists in coming months, this paper attempts the kind of critical analysis Middle East peacemakers are themselves either less inclined or unable to undertake. The assignment here calls for testing some of the more elementary and most basic policy premises widely accepted and long since enshrined as conventional wisdom in Jerusalem as well as in Washington.
The following study is punctuated by exclamation marks and by question marks. The former address only a few of the standard, pat answers that go largely unquestioned and that are simply taken for granted when the role of the US as third part intermediary is discussed in the most general terms, either there or in Israel. For example: the presumed indispensable role of the United States for Arab-Israel peacemaking; or that genuine peace is readily attainable, just like the assumption that American and Israeli opposition will suffice to veto and abort independent Palestinian statehood down the road; or the rather simplistic notion held by so many Americans that "we and the vast majority of peoples of the Middle East share common aspirations of peace, social justice, and prosperity for ourselves and our children."1
Comprised of question marks, the latter cluster points to certain nagging but as yet conspicuously unanswered key critical questions, such as how firm is America's commitment to Middle East peace? Does it possess the staying power to see the negotiations through to the end? Is it fully prepared to pay the price of brokering peace and incurring the attendant risks? And, to be sure, does the Clinton Administration, emulating previous ones, operate according to a clearly-defined peace strategy, or alternatively, without an inkling of the desired "endgame" peace settlement and map?
In short, this monograph argues the peril for the US -- and, by extension, for the entire Mideast diplomatic process and for all concerned parties, above all Israel -- in combining the worst features of resolute clarity bordering on dogmatism mixed with flashes of so-called "constructive ambiguity" that cover up for vagueness and policy disarray. In the conduct of foreign policy, either extreme usually proves dysfunctional if not disastrous.
That necessary precautions against both absolute certitude and great uncertainty are not taken owes in large measure to the Washington scene and to the nature of Middle East decision-making. Most peace processors are either desk-bound and so bogged down in micromanaging the negotiations, or else so busy globetrotting from one venue for bilateral talks (track 1) to still another round of the multilaterals (track 2), to afford what are for them the luxuries of policy review, devil's advocacy, deeper introspection and middle-range planning. Whereas their immediate superiors of the high policy elite often give the impression of outpacing the less visionary technocrats and are off spinning grand designs for Benelux-like regional integration in a new Middle East order governed by rules of peaceful engagement, economic prosperity and a wave of democratization. Regardless of the cause or causes, what matters is that the Middle East policy process and public discussion both in the US and in Israel evidence little if any enthusiasm for a basic and necessarily troubling reassessment of the kind of policy issues that fall somewhere between the mundane and the millennial. And yet, such a reappraisal is mandated by changing conditions in the United States, in Middle East politics, as well as in the Arab-Israel equation, and also worldwide.
AMERICA'S STANDING IN THE PAST AND AT PRESENT
The American contribution over the years toward easing Arab-Jewish enmity and in establishing some kind of direct or indirect dialogue is an acknowledged part of the documentary record. Its commitment has been both long-standing and tangible and is measurable in any number of ways: from the man-hours spent and air mileage accumulated in dealing with the conflict, to the annual figures on economic and military assistance supplied to friends in the region. Similarly self-evident are those assets the US brings to the undertaking, and which therefore can be mentioned briefly:
* status -- As a superpower (for now,
the superpower) the United States starts out
with the obvious advantage of power and influence,
enabling it to exercise a mixed policy of threats
and incentives ("carrots and sticks"). Oftentimes
pressure, sanctions and other forms of overt
coercive diplomacy are entirely superfluous since
most of the actors in the Middle East are to some
degree dependent upon the US or else, especially
today, covet its potential friendship and aid.
* entree -- America's policy of studied evenhandedness, no longer burdened by Cold War complications, today yields Washington access to all the principal Middle East actors, including some -- like Syria and the PLO -- formerly regarded as implacably anti-American.
* interests -- Involvement by successive administrations in the destabilizing Arab-Israel dispute is virtually assured, in the first instance, by its threat potential for such considerations of national self-interest as the region's overall strategic importance, its oil reserves and commercial value, plus the reiterated pledge to ensure Israel's safety and survival on both moral and practical grounds.
* incentive -- These unexceptional motives notwithstanding, there is evidence of an underlying extra dimension further inspiring active US engagement in Middle East initiatives that goes beyond elections, profits, power politics and even Nobel prizes and which finds expression in such notions as "manifest destiny" and the biblical theme of "blessed are the peacemakers." To enter world history as having bestowed peace and tranquillity upon the "holy land," where so many would-be pilgrims of peace before have failed, strikes a special chord on many Americans and exercises a powerful appeal on individual presidents.
* group effort -- The American style of
organizational policy-making may have serious
flaws, but it also confers definite advantages when
applied to the Arab-Israel arena: a collective
memory going back more than fifty years;
* maturity -- Decades of active participation have provided US diplomacy with more than its share of frustrating experiences. Yet even stinging setbacks like the abortive Rogers proposals in the early 1970s, the 1982 Reagan plan and the Schultz initiative in the late 1980s have provided the present successor generation of American officials with an invaluable schooling in the intricacies and pitfalls of mediating a "rapprochement" between Arabs and Israelis. This extended learning process teaches sensitivity for the concerns as well as the limits of each side, the complexity of the issues and that "the devil is in the details," hence the importance of staff work and careful preparation. As a result the American approach of late reflects the qualities of both patience and persistence that only come with maturity, and which were not always quite so evident in the past. These also happen to be the prerequisites for any third party in coping with the endless list of recriminations, grievances, claims and counterclaims that are the hallmark of Middle East bargaining.
In sum, we can conclude that in principle, at least, the US acts and negotiates from a definite position of strength.
But from this finding to a description of the United States and the Clinton Administration as (a) indispensable, (b) securely in the driver's seat and (c) particularly insightful about what remains to be done, strikes me as excessive. It is also potentially dysfunctional and injurious for immediate peace prospects.
America's virtues and achievements aside, the overall balance sheet includes some cautionary signs as well as reservations about the qualifications and, hence, prospects of the US for directing affairs in the critical period that has begun. For purposes of analysis these constraints divide into, first, political, and second, conceptual, with the former subdividing, in turn, into the three "settings" of world, Middle East and domestic politics. Each merits separate discussion.
THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS
Because involvement in the Middle East at any given moment is a natural extension and function of America's broader international orientation, there is more concern than usual at the present moment about the role of the US in international affairs and its fitness for global leadership. One set of concerns traces to the very wellsprings and foundations of foreign policy, beginning with the renewed debate between conflicting schools of thought: idealism versus realism, interventionism versus isolationism.
Right now, with the November, 1994 congressional elections as a strong barometer, the pendulum is swinging away from activism and expenditure abroad. Public opinion survey findings consistently indicate that the national mood is shifting in favor of overseas disengagement and economic retrenchment, surely attributable in no small measure to the familiar syndrome of inflated promises resulting in disillusionment. For it is quite apparent in 1995 that people like Francis Fukuyama, George Bush and Charles Krauthammer were far off the mark in 1990-1991 in hastily pronouncing "the end of history," the advent of a "new world order" and a "uni-polar moment" inaugurating a peaceful age under benevolent American hegemony. If anything, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the larger systemic reality underscores the recurrent historical pattern of disorder, a warring and re-dividing world, and the renewed quest for global equilibrium through the balancing of power.
Close observers of the national scene are not at all certain that the United States is equipped at present with the dedication and resolve needed, in the first instance, to accept the challenge, or, in the second instance, to cope with it.
Presaging the larger trend toward a low-key foreign policy orientation, Leon T. Hadar's 1992 book, Quagmire, America in the Middle East, published by the conservative Cato Institute, recommended "constructive disengagement" from the region. More specifically, its author advocated, inter alia: ending economic aid to Israel, gradually reducing military commitments to the Jewish state and, most decidedly, refraining from entering "a new cycle of military commitment and diplomatic hyperactivity." He concludes the following:
Instead of letting itself be lured into new entanglements [by Israel foremost!], the United States should seize the opportunity provided by the end of the Cold War and the completion of the Gulf War to finally replace its decoying Middle Eastern paradigm with a more cautious and disengaged approach. . .
Such a message, that not too long ago would have
been dismissed as unthinkable, immoral or
impolitic, finds a receptive audience in the
transformed Washington of 1995.
Even in those increasingly rare instances when the
United States at mid-decade is still prepared to
commit itself to affirmative global action,
commentators express concern in particular over an
enduring American character trait: namely, the
tendency to adopt a cautious and conservative
legalistic-moralistic stance in dealing with
complex international problems. Thus, in a
description pregnant with implications for the Arab-
Israel issue, former national security adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski summarized the style of
Secretary-of-State Warren Christopher, "to litigate
issues endlessly, to shy away from the unavoidable
ingredient of force in dealing with contemporary
international realities and to have an excessive
faith that all issues can be resolved by
compromise."
This brings us to the reservations increasingly expressed in the American media and abroad about the incumbent administration's foreign policy competence as mirrored by its lackluster crisis performance in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda and Somalia, by its waffling on policy toward China, Japan and North Korea, by its reticence on UN peacekeeping missions -- not to mention other standing issues on the global agenda ranging from environmentalism to the international refugee problem. Judging from the mounting evidence of vacillation and drift, how sound are Middle East hopes predicated upon the unqualified resoluteness of the United States and upon its staying power and patience reserves?
Continuing in this vein, but without in any way engaging in the popular sport of "America bashing," it is absolutely incumbent upon all those vitally concerned with Israeli prospects for security and peace in our time to raise a number of other, but possibly unpleasant, direct queries about US diplomacy as it relates, more specifically, to the Middle East. How high is the Clinton Administration's standing, for instance, with governments in Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus and Riyadh, whose active cooperation and direct participation are needed, or in Baghdad, Khartoum, Teheran and Tripoli where restraint at a minimum would permit the peace process to go forward? How influential were the president and his advisers at the start of 1995 in averting the formation of a "blocking coalition" comprised of Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia that runs counter to the declared strategy of pressing forward rapidly with normalization and confidence-building in the Middle East? And from Jerusalem's perspective, what degree of top priority should the American public always be counted upon to give Israeli security concerns? Will it heartily support an American military presence on the Golan Heights? Or possibly in the West Bank, as part of a UN dictated international guarantee framework? A formal US- Israel bilateral defense pact in return for territorial withdrawal in 1996?
One finds a remarkable tendency for presidents and administrations under siege (Nixon, Carter, Bush and now Clinton) to become almost fixated with registering a dramatic achievement on the Arab- Israel front, thereby redeeming themselves politically. Nevertheless, global flashpoints suddenerupting elsewhere can be expected to derail this Administration's aim of unqualifiedly rededicating itself to the principal cause of peace in the Middle East. Further scandals, policy failures and criticism at home would have the same distracting effect. Thus throughout the course of 1994, other foreign policy issues like Rwanda, Haiti, North Korea, Bosnia and Chechnya vied with Middle East peacemaking for public and government attention, as did such domestic, social issues as the struggle over national health reform, adjusting to a Republican dominated Government, and even the Whitewater and O. J. Simpson investigations. In short, these various linkages -- domestic with foreign, international with regional -- strongly indicate that President Clinton is not free, even if he were so inclined, to concentrate his prestige -- and America's influence -- on this single issue, however appealing or compelling. This insight is readily confirmed by the experiences of Presidents Nixon and Carter. Their enthusiasm for Middle East peacemaking was blunted by "intrusions" like Cambodia, Vietnam and Watergate for the former, and by Afghanistan and the Iranian revolution in the case of the latter.
To summarize, all too often National Security Council or State Department policy planning papers on Arab-Israel peacemaking, much like those of research institutes and academic think tanks, address the political peace process as though: (a) it takes place under controlled laboratory andenvironmental conditions rather than being hostage to, and seriously affected by, other seemingly "extraneous" and uncontrolled events taking place around the Middle East negotiations; (b) it were the overriding preoccupation of Washington "maximizers" fully at liberty to devote themselves -- their unlimited time, thought and attention -- as well as America's material resources to achieving yet a further string of well-orchestrated and magical "breakthroughs." Reality, at home and abroad, of course teaches otherwise and conveys the contrary theme of perfectly natural, and understandable, US limitations, hesitations and distractions.
AMERICA'S MOMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
Whether the United States will indeed be at the forefront of the peace drive, or recedes into the background, is both a major question mark and a key determinant governing the ultimate fate of the September, 1993 Oslo diplomatic initiative. Equally critical a variable is whether or not the Middle East as a distinctive political region and sub-system will provide the kind of hospitable environment necessary for exercising American influence in shaping and then institutionalizing peace.
One invaluable contribution the United States might be expected to make on behalf of Middle East peace, and is uniquely positioned to do so, is precisely to assure that all the regional actors are "on board" and supportive. For with the endorsement of the Arab countries and with a stable Middle East, an Israeli-Palestinian joint framework has at least a 50-50 chance of taking hold. But without this conducive environment, any such limited bilateral accord, is vitiated, for all practical purposes, if not doomed. Our next question, therefore: can the US be counted on to deliver the Middle East?
Now that the Cold War contest has ended, and both
Iraq and Iran have been successfully reined in by a
policy of "dual containment," the prevailing wisdom
sees the US paramount expressing a sense of
satisfaction. Even before the upbeat news of the
Oslo agreement seemed to provide further
confirmation, Martin Indyk, in May, 1993, former
head of Near East and South Asia Affairs at the
National Security Council and current US ambassador
to Israel, confidently asserted two truths: the US
is "the dominant power in the region" and is
"uniquely capable of influencing the course of
events."
Historically, the United States has entered a third stage in its political relationship with the Arab Middle East. In the initial phase of the Anglo- American partnership (1943-1956), being unschooled in Middle Eastern affairs and deferential to London's sensitivities, official Washington adopted a "pin-stripe" approach, allowing its British ally to set the tone for policy on such issues of the day as Arab nationalism, Arab unity and the choice of conservative monarchs as preferred clients. During the second, post-Suez phase and for more than thirty years, Washington still failed to design a "made-in-America" policy. Instead, it again largely defaulted -- not to an ally this time, but to its chief adversary, the USSR. The pattern of Soviet-American rivalry in the eastern Mediterranean indicates a reactive US diplomacy, with the initiative left largely to the Kremlin or its local proxies, which perhaps best explains the record of sudden crises and political surprises in the period 1957-1991.
It is really only now that for the first time in a half-century, the US is at liberty in theory and in practice to frame its own distinctive Mideast strategy, unrestrained by either ally or adversary. It can create a strategy meeting four strict criteria: clarity, comprehensiveness, constancy over time, and consistency with American self- interests. The Arab perspective of the 1990s, as constituting for them a new historical departure free of external great power encroachment, does not make the task of regional orchestration any easier; if anything, it imposes upon Washington still another, fifth criterion: sensitivity to local concerns, imperious attitudes toward Egyptian and Arab national priorities in the face of anti- Communist containment strategy providing a powerful case in point. Absent this quality, any great power pretensions on America's part risk being frustrated by the special nature of this expansive region: its great diversity and contradictions, its propensity for the sudden stroke and its proven defiance of outside intervention, no matter how benevolent or well-intentioned.
The larger concern, however, is that the United States has already entered into this third and most challenging era without having first paused to rethink the ends, ways and means of its Mideast policy. Rather, it has allowed preoccupation with Saddam Hussein, the emphasis on continuity during the transition from the Bush to the Clinton presidency and the ongoing conduct of separate ties with each respective country on the basis of traditional policy foundations what we earlier referred to as the staple of ready-to-wear "unquestioned answers" to govern its ad hoc response to Middle East challenges.
BACK TO BASICS: THE TIME IS NOW
Having a sixth sense of exquisite timing is as much to be prized in the art of modern diplomacy as in the military sciences, in the same way that sensitivity for the transience of time is critical for both professions. Any strategist pausing too long to study shifting battlefield conditions and to re-deploy his troops instead of pressing home a momentary opening risks forfeiting the initiative to the enemy, and with it prospects for an immediate, decisive breakthrough. The obverse, rushing forward to exploit the advantage and the opponent's disarray, of course carries with it the danger of overextending one's own forces and resources, of substituting tactical maneuver for strategy in the heat of battle, resulting in a loss of momentum and, even worse, possible entrapment.
The analogy holds just as true for American policy- makers in light of the dazzling peace offensive recently conducted in the Arab-Israel theater of conflict that has produced the diplomatic equivalent of a "blitzkrieg" in the 1993 Oslo and 1994 Cairo accords. Indeed, the past year represents arguably the most active and sustained mobilization of statecraft yet witnessed in the century-old politico-military war of attrition for mastery over Palestine. But in pausing to catch their breath, Middle East peace strategists operating out of Washington find themselves caught in the classic dilemma. Realism and experience alike counsel, on the ohand, the impossibility of freezing a given situation and of calling unilaterally for a time-out. Moreover, the slightest lull in the peace dynamic could render it hostage to an array of resistance forces: whether in the guise of reactionary elements in the various warring camps keen upon arresting the forward thrust of Arab-Israel reconciliation, or distractions on other domestic or international fronts, but also fatigue, inertia, smugness or naivete on America's own part. Objectively, however, on the other hand, there is an equally strong argument to be made nonetheless for greater caution and circumspection. Clearly, all sides to the Middle East dispute, and in particular the United States as a concerned party and honest broker, needed time after Oslo for taking stock of the new situation.
Surveying a transformed political landscape strewn in 1994-5, with the ruins of formerly-entrenched but now abandoned positions -- Israeli and Palestinian mutual non-recognition, to cite merely one illustration -- and a casualty list of outmoded assumptions, the full impact of recent developments by right ought first to have been internalized before regrouping and then embarking on the next phase of the diplomatic campaign. Instead, the US, much like the other combatants, immediately began gearing up in late 1993 for the coming round of interim and final status negotiations without any such preliminary reassessment; and also apparently without a revised, integrated plan for waging peace that goes beyond the generalities of a just, durable and comprehensive settlement.
Administration officials, for instance, gave few indications that they were taking seriously the emergence of an independent Palestinian state, or were preparing in earnest for just such an eventuality. This, even though students of autonomy have been arguing ever since 1977 that Palestinian sovereignty is a distinct possibility, and almost inherent in the dynamic of self- government advancing through transitional phases. Nor, after Oslo, does the prospect seem so far- fetched or distant. But the argument here goes further than mere American complacency. It argues that decisions taken today, with Washington's concurrence, not only prejudice but complicate the declared task of reaching a settlement with the agreement of concerned parties.
Thus, in July 1994, Israeli and Jordanian negotiators meeting under the auspices of the Trilateral Economic Committee, with America's direct patronage, reached agreement on a series of bilateral principles "mutually beneficial and supportive of the two countries," including civil aviation fly-over rights, a dead Sea theme park and cooperative tourist projects in the Jordan Rift valley. Like these measures, the provision for "the opening operation and supervision of banking subsidiaries of Jordanian banks in the West Bank" appeared, like the text of the subsequent peace treaty between the two countries, to take for granted that Israel and Jordan will continue after a final-status accord to be riparian states and to share a common border as direct neighbors, free of an intrusive Palestinian state. Nevertheless, serious policy debate by a fully responsible US peace sponsor already now ought to be asking some serious and far-reaching questions centering on the scenario of Palestinian statehood, and what it would mean for the US (economic and military guarantees?), for Israel (a new set of security concerns?), for the status of Jerusalem and for Middle East regional politics, as well as economic integration, were full Palestinian sovereignty to lie at the end of the peace road now taken. Just how plausible is Jordanian-Palestinian cooperation? Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian amalgamation? These "soft" options, no matter how appealing, really do require hard questions. . . and sooner, rather than later on. Yet, this particular type of debate, that ought to focus on middle-range issues somewhere between the immediate pressing round of talks and the futuristic new Middle East order, is not presently being openly or extensively waged on the American side.
Because the United States operates from basically the same mind-set as before, past experience argues it will have considerable difficulty and discomfort in fulfilling even the minimum assignment defined here as guaranteeing a safe regional setting and delivering a pro-peace Arab coalition. Both, to be sure, are essential if comprehensive conflict resolution is to proceed on schedule and without derailment. It is also safe to assume that whatever predicaments the future and the Middle East have in store will not owe to any single factor, but rather, again, stem from flaws endemic to US foreign policy in general, others to US Middle East policy in particular.
One disturbing general trait is an excess of rhetoric, whereby Washington spokesmen repeatedly tend to oversell the US, its role and objectives. By way of illustration, the above cited May, 1993 address by Martin Indyk is really one of the most authoritative, thoughtful and, therefore, revealing documents laying out the Clinton Administration's initial thinking on the Middle East. Viewing the area as finely poised between two alternative futures -- one bleak and under the sway of extremists; the other, peaceful -- the N.S.C.'s director of Near East and South Asian affairs expressed Administration confidence on two points: the first, that the more positive scenario would unfold, in which "Israel, its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians would achieve an historic reconciliation that would pave the way for peaceful coexistence, regional economic development, arms control agreements and growing democratization throughout the Middle East;" the second, and closely related, that as "a full partner" pursuing peace "with vigor," "we hope to be able to tilt the balance" in favor of this goal by "seizing the moment."
Over the course of decades this "fulcrum" theory of
American necessity has become almost an article of
faith with Washington insiders, the argument being
that only a vigorous American presence could induce
distrustful Israelis and Arabs to make the
necessary kinds of painful concessions. In
precisely this view, Middle East expert William
Quandt, writing in 1993, maintained "Nothing in the
historical record suggests that the parties will
reach agreement if left alone in direct
negotiations."
Never mind that US efforts have rarely been sustained, but more often than not indicate a pattern of abrupt stops and starts. Also set aside for the moment those not infrequent instances when Middle East diplomatic initiatives were actually impeded due to the vagaries of the US electoral cycle, executive-congressional policy differences, diversions elsewhere or the long pauses while freshly-appointed, successive US special envoys had to be briefed on the nature and background of their hazardous Arab-Israel assignment. Even without these, two other problems arise with respect to this particular item of conventional wisdom. The doctrine of indispensability is both (a) exaggerated and (b) inaccurate. Worth recalling is the fact that neither the Sadat initiative nor the Oslo accords were coordinated with Washington -- let alone authorized except post facto.
As noted by students of American diplomacy, there
is a certain general tendency toward speaking in
absolutes and with "pie-in-the-sky" hyperbole.
Thus, Inis Claude observes wryly: "the United
States has talked 'Never' and 'Always', but has
practiced 'Sometimes.'"
Time and again, America's Mideast regional strategy and its position toward the Arab-Israel dispute have been outpaced by events and dislodged from their policy moorings because of initiatives taken independently by other parties, yielding a chronology of political setbacks, surprises and sudden crises. The litany of region-wide upsets includes early military coups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen dating back to the late forties and early fifties; destabilization threats in Lebanon (1958) and Jordan (1970); regimes overthrown in Libya (1969) and in Iran (1979); civil wars in Lebanon (1975) and Yemen (1994); interstate conflicts between Israel and the Arabs (1967, 1973, 1982), Iraq and Iran (1980-1988), Kuwait (1990-1991). All of these events have in common that they (a) owed little to America's sponsorship or prior consent; (b) caught official Washington off guard; and (c) were judged at the time they happened to be both contrary to expressed US preferences and inimical to its own best interests. Collectively, they hardly represent a model for aptitude and regional stewardship.
Further American semi-significance is manifest in the single field of Arab-Israeli negotiations. Contrary to the preferred self-image of a United States as always present at the creation, there is considerable counter-evidence of limited yet important success achieved without direct American sponsorship. Merely for the sake of historical accuracy, one recalls such milestones as the secret Israeli negotiations with King Abdullah of Transjordan after 1948 that advanced as far as a draft peace treaty, and the tacit security regime maintained subsequently with his grandson and successor, Jordan's King Hussein. Then, there are the direct, yet discreet contacts of many years' standing between Israel and King Hassan of Morocco. But what better example of a non-US brokered dialogue than the 1977 Egyptian initiative and President Anwar Sadat's journey to Jerusalem? Piqued at having been kept in the dark, its strategy of working through the Geneva international conference in tatters, an embarrassed Carter team saved face by "bandwagoning," belatedly underwriting and endorsing the Begin-Sadat direct bilateral approach.
Further reinforcing the theme that not all Mideast
diplomacy has unfolded under the aegis of the
United States is the secret Oslo channel entered
into at the initiative of Israelis and Palestinians
themselves in 1993, and with the aid of small
Norway. Drawing an operative conclusion from this,
Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, reflecting vestigial
concerns lest the US step in and force Israel into
further concessions, later volunteered: "We
initialed the agreement in Oslo with the
Palestinians, the PLO, without any sponsors."
Therefore, "We do not need uncles, fathers,
grandmothers and grandfathers. This is a
responsibility we took on together, and we have to
implement it."
Consistent with the point being made here, the
Israel-Jordan breakthrough achieved in the first
half of 1994 likewise testifies to the ability of
the protagonists to pursue direct channels on their
own. Singularly important were the Peres-Hussein
negotiations in Amman on 3 November 1993, followed
by a critical meeting between the King and Rabin
himself on 19 May, 1994, and only then involving
the US directly.
What these instances teach is that the United States certainly has made, and still can make, an important contribution. Nevertheless, this stops short of uncategorically claiming its full participation is absolutely essential; or, alternatively, that this involvement is both necessary and decisive at every single stage. Thus, for example, there is room for making the argument that America need not be required to be in at the onset of each initiative, but that its importance as (a) facilitator and (b) guarantor, generally has assumed greater salience in later stages of the diplomatic process. At least in the instance of the 1977 initiative, even though omitted from the inceptive phase, the US presence proved invaluable in the second and third stages, helping to resolve the Egyptian-Israeli impasse at Camp David and not relenting thereafter until the peace treaty was ratified and implemented. In other words, daring to question the standard, pat answer of America as indispensable, if nothing else, serves as a healthy corrective and provides some useful distinctions.
INCONSISTENCY: AN AMERICAN VIRTUE OR POLICY SIN?
Despite America's repeated desire to be of help,
and more often than not to take the lead in Arab-
Israel peacemaking, there are reasons why relying
less on Washington may be advisable for the parties
concerned. One of these is a strong tendency
toward inconsistency in external behavior, evoking
Churchill's famous 1930's description of the
British government of the day as "in strange
paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to
be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for
fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."
Although examples of an American pattern of irregular policy shifts are numerous, suffice merely to note on a global plane the embarrassing series of reversals on Bosnia or, closer to home, in Middle East peacemaking over the years, recall the untimely pattern of lurching attention between endorsements of direct Arab-Israeli negotiations as the only format and the expressed preference for multilateral conference diplomacy that characterized the American stand throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Yet consistency -- leading to credibility -- is the very quality we are told to prize more than any other in a third party intermediary.
Explanations for policy inconsistency on the part of the US are certainly not lacking. These range from philosophical -- a society torn between the impulses of activism and retreat -- to situational, with pragmatism teaching the wisdom of responding on the merits of each case at any particular moment, and certainly as warranted by the complexities of Middle East and Israel-related issues. Another way of accounting for contradictory patterns or signals over time is the levels-of-analysis approach which attributes erratic behavior, respectively, to the impact of: (1) competing interest groups with rising or falling influence over policy choices; (2) organizational politics, dominated by interagency rivalry, and the importance of government institutions for policy formulation; (3) the decisive role of individual decision-makers, their personality, idiosyncrasies and preferences. The competition among the pro-Israel and Arab lobbies, the authority of State Department "Arabists" in the '50s and the determination made by President Truman personally to recognize the Jewish state in May 1948 provide "thumb-nail" sketches of each of these three interpretations.
More important are the two different types of policy variance identified in American Middle East and peacemaking policies. One we can term "zig- zagging", the other -- "double vision." By the former, we mean a pattern wherein the US actor shifts course, often in midstream, exchanging one position for another. It is customary in American politics for each incoming president and administration to embark on a new policy course, which often translates into little more than reversing course -- as opposed to entering into a radical and highly original departure. good an illustration as any of "zig-zagging" took place in January, 1977, when Jimmy Carter and his advisers consciously sought to distance themselves from the Nixon-Kissinger bilateral, step-by-step approach to the Arab-Israel conflict and a Middle East strategy of exclusion vis- -vis the USSR, substituting for these a policy whose pillars emphasized the exact opposite: Soviet-American cooperation in co- sponsoring a multilateral Geneva format aiming at nothing short of a comprehensive settlement of the conflict. Earlier instances which also come to mind were the cycles of flirtation and estrangement toward Egypt's Nasser in the Eisenhower-Dulles era, and opting for a dialogue with the PLO that was then suspended; more recently, the reversal of attitudes from enmity to amity toward Syria's leader, Hafez Assad, and vice versa in the case of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.
"Double vision" is inconsistency of a different sort. A "zig-zag" course suggests sharp, even radical reversals and departures: from one moment to the next, from one polar extreme to another as charted over extended periods of time. Whereas double vision represents the sheer difficulty at any single given moment of getting a policy off of dead-center. Its emphasis is on dualism, and on the existence at one and the same moment of internal policy contradictions. Like the oscillating magnet of a compass, there is a terrible tension, a wavering at the center. Pursuing the navigation metaphor, for all that steering a zig-zag course may be slow, fuel- inefficient and time-consuming, it is still progress of sorts. The difference is between decision and indecision. For this other kind of inconsistency leaves policy-making "dead in the water" so to speak, without a clear sense of direction or feeling of motion; the result is immobilism and drift.
Total vision is the monopoly of the dogmatist. Whatever else, an open call for a Palestinian state -- or, by the same token, categorical rejection of full Palestinian sovereignty -- in the end must be respected for its candor and for its complete absence of ambiguity. Split vision, by contrast, is the affliction of the individual rational pragmatist, or of a policy group of pragmatists, where at least two sides or, preferably, both sides of an issue are readily acknowledged and legitimately debated as a prelude to selecting one or the other. Current in Washington policy circles, for example, are two equally valid yet opposite schools of thought: "Syria firsters," who would give priority to making progress in talks with Damascus, in contrast to other officials keen on advances along the Palestinian channel. Whereas double vision, as its name is meant to suggest, too frequently deprives US Middle East policy (and any outsider vitally concerned with the US position, or contradictory positions!) of any sharpness, focus or real definition. The situation of policy disarray is only compounded whenever American officials take refuge either in generalities and platitudes, or willfully engage in "constructive ambiguity." What, for example, does US endorsement for the provision in UN resolution 242 of "withdrawal from the territories" really mean: total withdrawal or territorial compromise? And while we're at it, what do US spokesman mean by the latter term? Do they mean to suggest a separation, or do they use it as a buzz word comparable to exchanging "peace for territory?"
In order to give this notion of double vision concrete expression as well as currency, three examples have been chosen. Each corresponds to one of the three central facets of present-day American involvement with the Middle East. First, with regard to the nature of how politics are played in this region; second, definitions of the US role; lastly, the Arab-Israel negotiating process.
One absolute prerequisite for surviving in the Middle East, let alone mastering it, is to determine the rules of the political game in this particular, distinctive part of the world, or at a minimum, how one intends to proceed and to conduct oneself. In the instance of the US, two schools of thought seem to be constantly vying with each other. One school insists that as a superpower, America has the right to insist that relationships be conducted by US standards. Here is then Assistant Secretary of State Djerejian in 1993:
We call on all concerned secular or religious
activists and governments alike to practice the
respect for human rights, pluralism and tolerance
of others inherent in the Islamic, Jewish and
Christian traditions. These are values we
Americans cherish and, without attempting to impose
our own model on other governments, these are
values we are convinced will well serve the peoples
of this turbulent region.
Representing the opposite viewpoint are Middle East
veterans like New York Times journalist
Thomas Friedman who, in his best-selling book
From Beirut to Jerusalem, referring to
center-periphery relations inside Syria in the
Seventies and the use of brutal force by the
Damascus regime to eliminate any traces of dissent
from the inhabitants of Hama, describes his
education in Arab politics, "The only rules become
Hama rules, and Hama rules are no rules at all."
I am suggesting here that much of America's
frustration with the Middle East traces to this
core problem with basic behavior norms, producing
two tiers of split vision inconsistency. At the
first tier, when America seeks counsel with itself,
decent individuals like former Secretary of State
George Schultz may adhere to a higher standard of
conduct, only to then suffer the shock of being
rewarded with duplicity on the part of local
actors, as happened in May 1983 when he left the
area convinced he had gained the personal
endorsement of Syria's Assad for a US-brokered
peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon only to
find it condemned by Damascus. Still at this tier,
other officials may actually concede the Middle
East to be a particularly tough and dangerous
neighborhood -- "too much Hafez Assad, not enough
Hubert Humphrey"
These incongruities then produce a somewhat
surrealistic competitive situation at the second
tier of US interaction with Middle East states and
leaders. They may meet across a single game board,
but which is in fact half chessboard, half
"sheshbesh" (backgammon); so that each
player the US on the side it controls, the
regional actors on theirs goes on playing by an
entirely different set of rules!
Object lessons in perfidy -- and there are many -- include Sadat's false pledge in 1978 to Jimmy Carter, assuring that he, Sadat, would persuade King Hussein to sign on to the Camp David effort, even though the former had nor real intention, desire or need to do so. Then there is Hussein's own assurances to State Department envoys in 1982 of his enthusiasm for the pro-Jordanian Reagan plan and that he would "go public" in endorsing it -- assurances upon which he then reneged. Also noteworthy is the 1983 case of the US marines in Beirut as part of a multinational force, when respect by the local warring factions for their useful, non-combatant presence and physical safety was taken for granted in Washington.
Moreover, in seeking nonetheless to exert its influence on the Middle East and to play a leading role there, America's preference is usually for having it both ways. Again, this is due at least in part to the duality of a country which sees itself as both rand conservative, but also partly to the very nature of policy-making that is not restricted necessarily to the Middle East per se -- such tendencies as muddled thinking and muddling through, as close-minded "groupthink," as an innate desire "to decide not to decide" prompted by the wish to avoid risks inherent in issues of excruciating complexity or controversy. Whatever the cause, or causes, the end product is usually something along the lines of President Clinton's guidelines for a regional policy of "continuity and change." What often results is the embarrassing scene of a great power pulling in different, perhaps even contradictory, directions.
One earlier example of inconsistency induced by double vision took place in the 1970s when the policy establishment was incapable of squaring the triangle between the US, the Cold War and the Arab- Israel conflict. Straddling the ongoing policy debate maintained during the Nixon-Ford era and continuing into the Carter presidency, one group associated with Dr. Henry Kissinger perceived mediating the conflict as the best means toward achieving the greater goal of expelling the Russians from the Middle East. Whereas people like Cyrus Vance were equally convinced that the Kremlin had to be coopted as the necessary preliminary to any kind of Arab-Israeli diplomatic breakthrough. More often than not, the end result found American officials working at cross-purposes.
An interesting reflection of the US wanting to have its cake and eat it too lies in the specific issue- area of arms policy toward the Middle East, both before and since the end of the superpower contest. At the declaratory level, the American position is at once principled and unequivocal: the US has consistently voiced opposition to weapons proliferation and encouragement for strong, enforceable, multilateral arms controls.
The problem starts, however, at the operational level. An initial, serious loophole is Washington's narrow concentration, which focuses on banning from the Middle East "weapons of mass destruction." For one thing, it may already be too late. For another, notwithstanding the specter of nuclearization, in Middle East as well as global terms the parallel and more immediate devastation from conventional armament is no less lethal -- as witnessed during the Iran-Iraq war in the eighties and, most recently, in the renewed civil war between the Yemens. There is thus something disingenuous as well as opportunistic about downplaying the urgency and importance of conventional arms restraint, especially when in the 1990s the US came to dominate the lion's share accounting for well over half of the volume of trade -- of the global arms market.
Considerably more objectionable, though, is that duality which causes successive administrations to urge (but without any genuine sense of urgency) decelerating the flow of tanks, fighter planes and the like to the Middle East, while at the same time actively competing for the lucrative regional arms market.
Far easier to condone when defense assistance was justified as being a direct function of strategic containment against the Soviet threat, US arms sales policy, if anything, is only intensifying in the present decade under the no less compelling domestic economic incentive, making the United States the leading exporter to the region while enjoying, if anything, a widening margin against all other competitors. By right, such leverage uniquely positions the US to assume a leadership role, were it really to wish to do so, in insisting upon multilateral supplier curbs and as the catalyst for genuine and comprehensive (i.e., conventional as well as nuclear) region-wide arms control. Instead, believing it enjoys the best of both possible worlds -- the "raison d'etre" for one strain of double vision -- the Clinton Administration advocates weapons restraint in its declaratory policy while encouraging all the while, in fact, arms proliferation. A case, therefore, of the stabilizer as quintessential destabilizer.
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE: THE US AND THE PEACE PROCESS
If American leaders exercise the right to be consistently inconsistent in dealing with one of the core regional issues -- the clash between the Arabs and the Israelis -- it derives from a slightly different mix of considerations. Here the motivation ranges from negative-passive (merely avoiding a recurrence of strife, with its ripple effect upon stable oil prices and commercial enterprises) to active-positive (doing the impossible by inspiring peace). Committed more-or- less by these interests and concerns, and long since implicated in peacemaking efforts, the US "position" is driven by internal tensions.
Perhaps most symptomatic is policy agreement on two points: sensitivity toward Israel, on the one hand, and on the other an equally strong desire for friendship with the Arab countries as well. But because these twin values and their respective proponents are so easily and so often at loggerheads with each other, they require constant fine-tuning and delicate calibration through a balancing formula of "even-handedness," but which is itself viewed suspiciously in Mideast parlance as a deviation from the commitment to Israel and a "tilt" toward the Arab and Palestinian side. Indeed, inner tensions like this make it harder to speak of an American stance and the US position in the singular when divergent interests or tactical approaches are pursued in tandem, or for the US to speak with the confidence of a monolithic, purposive actor. Accordingly, Arab-Israel affairs are American double vision writ large.
It is in this context that the "multiple advocacy" or "two schools" phenomenon resurfaces. One of its strongest manifestations is the constant tug-of-war between insider proponents of the need for the US and all sides to proceed with alacrity, versus those favoring, instead, a more guarded and measured gradualism on the question of what priority to assign peacemaking. For anyone conversant with the long, tragic and bloody history of the conflict, the argument for giving absolutely top priority to terminating it, as soon as humanly and politically possible, has great cogency. Whenever left in the past to fester unattended, on at least six previous occasions (1956, 1967, the 1969-1971 war of attrition, 1973, 1982, the 1987 "intifada" uprising), the violent post-1948 truce in and around Palestine has escalated into a peace-threatening crisis situation. Logic therefore dictates that world leaders, and especially the United States, concentrate on creating openings, on accelerating the momentum and on applying pressure where required in aiming for a major breakthrough and definitive settlement before the proven powder keg detonates once again.
In effect, impatience at the glacial pace of peacemaking when Arabs and Israelis are left to their own devices leads members of this activist school to stress (a) the wisdom, (b) the necessity, (c) the urgency of not waiting for any such auspicious hypothetical moment to develop, but rather to seize the opportunity, not to let go and thus to force the issue. For all intents and purposes, this was really the model governing the 1974-5 Sinai I and Sinai II disengagement agreements, Camp David and the 1991 Madrid conference. Applied to the present, this "full court press" thinking inclines the Clinton Administration to repeatedly dispatch Secretary Christopher and others on high intensity shuttle diplomacy missions to Amman, Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem. This concept has also been applied to the narrower Israeli-Palestinian track. "Full speed ahead" diplomacy provides the underlying rationale that has made it possible as of late to even contemplate side-stepping entirely or, at least, abbreviating the transitional five-year period mandated for proceeding incrementally from interim-phase autonomy to a final status arrangement on the West Bank as an elegant way of avoiding the unplesantries only now appreciated, all too belatedly, in tcursory and enigmatic Oslo references to West Bank elections and IDF re- deployments.
No less persuasive, however, than direct and
assertive diplomacy is the counter-argument in
favor of gradualism. Known in the days of
Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy as the "step-by-step"
formula, or "salami tactics," and in the refined,
scholarly literature on conflict resolution as
"ripeness,"
Bitter experience (the 1948 Bernadotte plan, the Rogers initiative, the Jarring mission, the 1 October 1977 Soviet-American communique) teaches, so it can be argued, that supporting solutions either artificially contrived or unilaterally imposed on unwilling parties is a sure-fire formula for diplomatic failure. According to this viewpoint, aside from setting back Arab-Israel peace prospects, excessive and ill-timed activism only stands to damage America's own interests and standing as the indispensable, credible third party. It is far better -- so the "ripeness" theory maintains -- for US policy to carefully test the waters, to lay the groundwork, to think things through. Gradualism, in contrast to activism, sets its sights more modestly at taming rather than overwhelming the conflict. Accordingly, it eschews shortcuts and breakthroughs; it opts instead for a slower, painstaking, incremental process; and awaits the moment when conditions for a genuine settlement are fully ripe, and auspicious, and the parties themselves are as interested as the US in negotiating an end to their quarrel. Under gradualism, in short, Washington's job lies more in the realm of atmospherics -- removing psychological barriers between Arab and Jew, promoting confidence- building in the region -- and in facilitating pre- negotiation, or "talking about talking."
Academics are usually the first to preach the virtues of caution and gradualism in the face of issue complexity and actor intransigence. In an article completed shortly before the Oslo accords, for example, one scholar wrote in praise of the Madrid framework:
The genius of the current process is that it is
evolutionary. Long-held views are being gradually
reshaped. Differences are being narrowed, albeit
at times at an imperceptibly slow pace. The slow
pace, however, is important because it allows
national leaders to prepare public opinion for
change.
Implicit in this stratagem, however, are three questionable assumptions about the time variable: as though it can somehow be made to stand still; it is on the side of peace; regulating it is the prerogative of superpowers. The only trouble with waiting for the right (or ripe) moment, of course, is that it usually never comes.
Compounding the discomfort of American policy- makers is the awareness that both strategies in effect clearly share a potential for failure. In the case of immediacy, it compells American leaders, especially those in politics seeking instant gratification and recognition, to opt for a "quick fix". In the case of gradualism, on the other hand, there is always the attendant risk of over-ripeness: being overtaken by events, missing opportunities, or, as in the forced substitution of Oslo for Madrid, having carefully laid plans upset by supporting (and supposedly supportive) actors.
American thinking, being of a divided mind, often
produces a form of compromise known in Latin as
"festina lente," hastening slowly.
Something of this is mirrored in the address
delivered by then-Secretary of State James Baker at
the opening session of the Madrid conference on 1
November 1991. Although the conference itself had
required eight months of careful orchestration,
Baker candidly noted "Our work -- making peace
through negotiations -- has just begun." In
undertaking this new assignment, Baker volunteered
the United States as willing to be "a catalytic
force, an energizing force, and a driving force;"
except that in the next breath he lowered the heat
and intensity of this commitment by qualifying that
"we also know that our critical contribution will
often be to exert quiet, behind-the-scenes
influence and persuasion." Spokesmen for the
Clinton Administration unconsciously reflected the
same uneasy juxtaposition. Vice President Gore's
plea for the participants "to redouble their
efforts" and "to stay in continuous session"
because only through "prompt agreement and rapid
implementation . . . could the hope of peaceful
reconciliation be kept alive"
The above discussion offers a refinement to the image of the United States as perennially caught in the middle of the Middle East dispute. Usually this is seen in terms of the withering cross-fire every erstwhile mediator is subjected to by the feuding parties themselves. As a superpower the US has certainly experienced being criticized both for exerting too much interference. . . and not enough intervention. But as we have observed, in addition, US peacemaking continues to be handicapped by the crosscurrents that are part and parcel of its own internal policy debate, and by the self-inflicted welter of competing interests, opinions and approaches on how best to proceed.
Resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the last several decades has proven so elusive not only due to the fact that Arabs and Israelis remain divided over withdrawal, peace and security, but because the US, too, is of a divided mind on the same central issues. Should Israel be compelled to withdraw from all the territories except for minor border alterations; or does "territorial compromise" mean what it says? By "peace" does the US position mean full normalization, including an exchange of ambassadors, open borders, joint ventures and an end to anti-Israel diatribes; or, rather, stability, non-belligerency and a cessation of hostilities for the time being at least, even as the Middle East arms race is allowed to continue unabated, with the US in the forefront of the supplier nations?
That the regional protagonists themselves are reluctant to be pinned down and therefore seek watered-down formulas for as long as possible is perfectly understandable in the context of hard bargaining, since Middle East diplomacy often times serves as a war of attrition by other means. But for the United States, in its self-defined role as broker and prodder, at some point taking a stand and making its own position on any of the agenda issues crystal clear to all sides becomes critical to its prospects for success. Strict neutrality is an untenable position for the long run, and especially regarding "final status" issues pertaining to the durable, comprehensive peace package issues as they move to the fore.
Nor does America's predicament necessarily stop here, as simply an existential given or policy constant. For in making their peace with double- vision policy inconsistency, decision-makers at all levels involved with the Arab-Israel problem tend to engage in political escapism. Here, relief is found in two all too-convenient bureaucratic forms of evasive inaction. One is procedural in nature, the other substantive.
An understandable desire to avoid undue risk-taking or outpacing more cautious, more constrained regional actors need not represent official American policy. What is important is that the aim of the US to remain engaged but without acting too quickly or too decisively tends to produce a pattern of spurts, of stops and starts rather than a linear progression. Moreover, under this style and posture of peacemaking, the strong tendency of American participants is, rather conveniently, to become overwhelmingly preoccupied with matters of organization, of structure, of process.
And because the first order of busiis usually procedural, the focus is on one of two extremes: on watershed events and "shining moments" -- a Camp David, a ceremonial diplomatic "happening" at Geneva, a media spectacular in Washington, in Cairo, or in the Arava; or, thereafter, on the less glamorous although no less important ongoing, routine execution of initiatives. Either way, both summit diplomacy and regularized negotiation have traditionally put a greater premium on the more mundane aspects of Middle East accommodation; such things as agenda-setting, as arranging and conducting the meetings (itineraries, hotel reservations, etc.), publicity (or evading the press!) and protocol. Not that the substantive issues are totally ignored. Rather, when speaking of "parameters" and "modalities" the reference is usually all too often to third-order technical, legal and logistic details on the scale of travel, baggage and security arrangements, media coverage and the formal wording of diplomatic instruments to be initialed and circulated. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger observes:
Nothing so warms the heart of a professional
diplomat as the imminence of a major conference.
It provides a testing ground for all the arcane
knowledge acquired in a lifetime of study about
procedures, about abstruse points of protocol,
about "auspices" and "chairmanship." All these
were involved in assembling Geneva.
Far less attention traditionally has been given by American officials to matters of substance, or to staking out a specific US position on the larger, cardinal issues.
Partly, this can be attributed to the unique
quality of Middle East negotiation. Who should
know better than Dr. Kissinger? Reflecting on his
personal experience in promoting an Israeli-Syrian
interim agreement on the Golan in 1974, he likened
it to merchants haggling endlessly over the price
of a carpet in a Middle East bazaar.
One often hears American observers speak accusingly of their Middle East interlocutors, for whom procedural matters assume not only symbolic but also substantive importance. Truth be told, many on the US side share much the same sensitivity and preoccupation; process and procedure -- micromanaging and maneuver -- invariably come to loom larger for them than "the big picture" of how peace will look, or what price it will extract at the end of the process. At the present, post-Oslo stage, added incentive, as well as rationale, for concentratingon procedural details arises from the extraordinarily complicated network of negotiation that has come about.
Today, keeping your eye on the ball is not limited to a single diplomatic court. Due to the proliferating number of bilateral and multilateral commissions, working groups, subcommittees and control panels, Israel, and the US, find themselves engaged -- often simultaneously -- in as many as twodozen different sets of negotiations that not only complicate the process and are immensely time- consuming, but require the United States -- as facilitator and overseer -- to pay far greater attention to coordination, a function that it usually performs exceedingly well. Nevertheless, the US can be likened to a motorist on a highway without a road map, and with only the most general notion of the final destination, "peace."
The American tactician and technocrat do merit understanding to a certain extent. There may be a natural aversion to zeroing in on the larger conceptual questions about the ultimate design for so elusive a Mideast peace, and surely the annals of Arab-Israel conflict settlement confirm that "the devil is in the detail." Yet the very mixed fortunes of those efforts that have been made at resolving this conflict also stress the corollary that "the divine is in the design." How many initiatives associated with US diplomacy auspiciously arise only to fade shortly thereafter into memory as having led nowhere, gridlocked and exhausted by quarreling over minutest detail (selecting the site for the meetings, the official ranking of negotiators to be chosen by the respective sides, the wording of letters of invitation, etc.) combined with the notable absence of any overarching game plan?
The lower -- and middle -- echelon administrator may perhaps be excused his tunnel-vision. But what of those higher officials on the policy planning staffs at State and the N.S.C., as well as their immediate political superiors? How do they visualize the final outcome of the Palestine endgame? What is their specific, detailed conception of the American peace formula? Which of the three core principles or strategies do they advocate for fleshing out the Middle East peace map on the ground: autonomy, federalism or partition? If the latter, will the territorial compromise yield a two-state or a three-state solution? In other words, who is to be the co-partitionist alongside of Israel -- the Palestinians, Jordan, or both? And where are the final political borders to be drawn? Will partitioning be limited to the West Bank of the Jordan River? Or will it encompass all of historic, geographic and demographic "Palestine" east of the Jordan - the greater Land of Palestine - as a single economic unit? Furthermore, what of the 1948 and 1967 Palestinian refugees? Does solving their plight mean repatriation in Israel? Resettlement around Israel? Or indemnification by Israel? And what of the security dimension? Is the United States prepared to bear the burden of contributing a strong, hence credible military presence? International security guarantees, with active American participation? A separate, formal and legally binding defense pact with Israel? And, finally, what indeed should be Jerusalem's fate? A re-divided city? An internationally administered "corpus separandum" or free city? Or Israel's undivided capital?
One dignified face-saver among many, aside from concentrating on technical details, is when US team members exercise their prerogative and influence by thrusting economic issues to the top of the Mideast negotiating agenda. Whereas what is needed, if not at this point then shortly, is a comprehensive political plan, and a larger, longer-term vision. Sadat may have had this ability; but very few others on the American or Israeli side share his skill.
Time and circumstance no longer cater (if they ever did) to those in Washington seeking safety in dealing with smaller details, however important in their own right. Even so, at rare moments when necessity does deflect attention from the procedural to the substantive, interestingly, a second form of policy-making escape or release can be found. It lies essentially in capturing and then holding the middle ground.
To understand how it works, imagine again our persistent traveler in quest of peace. In driving, he could move safely in a single lane (resoluteness). Alternatively, he could seek a margin of safety by hugging the edge or shoulder of the outer lane (extremism). Then again, he could snake and weave in and out of the two lanes (zig- zagging). But instead, on the substantive issues the US is akin to a motorist straddling the median sdividing both lanes. However hazardous and irresolute, a "middle-of-the-road" strategy is attractive to decision-makers caught in compromising situations, for it seems the least offensive and seeks to cover all bets.
In rational bargaining theory this hedging on substantive questions comes under the heading of "squaring the difference," and can be defended as expressing the liberal, democratic principles of "equity" and "compromise." Squaring the difference in terms of US practices toward Arab-Israel affairs may assume different forms, some more elegant than others. One favorite ploy, as already noted, is to abide by whatever the other sides indicate is acceptable to them, and building on the few points of consensus. A second is to intentionally popularize ambiguity as constructive in the sense of providing watered-down formulations that are entirely innocuous and seemingly inoffensive. Both techniques are forms of abnegation, since they permit the US broker to avoid for as long as possible taking an official stance; in the diplomatic vernacular the usual expression is that Washington "awaits clarification."
A third propensity at times has been to avoid friction with Israel, minimizing if not entirely eliminating areas of difference. Thus until very recently at least, the entire sensitive subject of Israel's "nuclear option" and reluctance to join the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) has been kept off the bilateral agenda by mutual agreement.
An extreme variant, particularly after 1977 when
the Likud governments of Menachem Begin and
Yitzchak Shamir adopted hardline positions not
viewed with favor by Washington, has been to
embrace those elements of the Labor Party's
political platform possessing the virtue of at
least sounding eminently reasonable. Such ideas
as: the territorial compromise formula, the
"Jordanian option," the indispensability of the US,
extending possibly as far as benign pressure on
Israel ("arm-twisting") in order to justify
concessions, military hardware as consolation for
territorial withdrawal, "peace for territory."
After the historic 180-degree Oslo turn-about in
Labor's strategy, belatedly adopting a "Palestinian
option," this meeting half-way newly featured the
wedding of the internationalist liberalism of
Clintonites in espousing democratization in the
Middle East with the socialist liberalism of Shimon
Peres, with his rhapsodic visions of a "new Middle
East" founded on economic integration ala the
European model and precedent.
Fourth, and last, holding the middle ground by the
US can literally mean splitting the difference down
the middle; what Zartman terms the "50% solution."
Consequently, in the first rather than last analysis, the key to America's contribution to the Arab-Israel peace in the next round lies in a four- fold matrix: the questions asked and the answers provided; but also the questions not posed and the answers not put forth.
Throughout this paper the intent has not been in any way to denigrate sustained and basically well- intentioned efforts on the part of successive US governments, to minimize the previous American contribution or to marginalize its role in the future. Neither do we second-guess with the benefit of hindsight; nor presume to instruct Washington policy-makers as to the politically wise, logically correct or morally right course to take. Rather, from the beginning the aim of this exercise has been to discuss some of the constraints -- most of them self-inflicted -- under which US peacemaking continues to labor. Above all, that the closer we come to the terminus of the long odyssey culminating in Arab-Israeli normalization, and perhaps even genuine peace as well, the less American leaders can expect to continue having (and halving!) it both ways. It must surely be obvious that uneasy and artificial compromises, "hastening slowly" and (un)constructive ambiguity carry a heavy price and have their own negative tradeoffs. Invariably they neither satisfy nor appease anybody, let alone resolve basic dilemmas.
SOME POLICY IMPLICATIONS FOR JERUSALEM
Washington and the making of American policy toward Mideast and Arab-Israeli affairs have stood at the center of this analysis. It is only proper that our own academic excursion end by tabling several policy-oriented observations about the implications for Israel. In particular, some considerations about future US performance.
As matters now stand, it must be taken as unlikely in the extreme that the Clinton foreign policy team of its own volition will initiate any thorough- going review of its entire regional Middle East strategy, and especially as related to its peace position. For one thing, it is too deeply committed to, and engrossed in, the current peace process that is unfolding and playing itself out. Barring such a fundamental reassessment, therefore, the United States must be regarded as an uncertain entity. Its reactions to unfolding events (a succession crisis in Jordan, for instance) are unpredictable, the extent of its true commitments very much contingent, its bedrock stance on core issues yet to be defined -- and if defined, still to be disclosed.
In making this determination, greater weight is assigned to deeper social and domestic political forces presently at work in the United States, and to domestic agenda priorities as well as global forces far beyond America's control, than to the role of individual personalities within the incumbent Administration. Concern is heightened in 1995 by an administration very much on the defensive, and by the deeper implications of the Republican Party opposition's dramatic takeover of congressional control and positioning itself for a direct challenge to Clinton's policies. More specifically, confident US leadership in world affairs is by no means axiomatic. This is true at least in the short-term and until the latest installment of the ongoing American "grand debate" over foreign policy works itself out in a revised, updated post-Cold War national consensus. Nevertheless, until then, and therefore for the time being, precisely when the fate of "Eretz Yisrael"/"Filastin" is to be decided, the United States cannot entirely be counted upon. And, this is primarily so because of America's own profound hesitancy toward any new or deepening specific, pre- existing international commitment with the potential for turning into a political or military entanglement. It thus follows that:
1. This American sensitivity will be heightened vis-a-vis the Middle East a region associated ever since the early fifties in the American mind with instability and irrationality. This latter image is strengthened all the more by such media themes as Arab political violence, suicidal terrorism aanti-western, anti-American Islamic fundamentalism.
2. As eager as official Washington is for a satisfactory resolution of the nagging Palestine problem in all its aspects, its primary contribution is more likely to be in the role of facilitator, in the stage or stages leading up to the settlement and in the form of moral support, official auspices and the other good offices it is in a position to proffer -- and even this is only to the degree that it is not otherwise preoccupied with more pressing issues, or international crises elsewhere (North Korea, Iran, and the Balkans).
3. The US figures to be less dependable as guarantor in the post-settlement phases of implementation, transition and routinization that are certain to prove no less sensitive or complex than the negotiations themselves, and possibly riskier still for Israel and its security.
4. The last thing Israeli leaders should press for is a formal bilateral defense pact with the United States as the "quid pro quo" for withdrawal from all or most of the Golan and West Bank. Such a treaty, and, even more, any direct stationing of American troops inside Israel would have an adverse impact. Under current conditions and in the present public mood, it would be extremely difficult to sell the idea to any one of the five groups - the American public as a whole, the media which both interprets and molds opinion, the professional military, a decidedly cautious and conservative Republican Congress, the White House itself -- whose endorsement would be necessary. Besides requiring a major public relations campaign, the very picture of American boys -- however indirectly needed to protect the Jewish state contradicts both the Israeli national ethos and bedrock policy which have always underscored self-defense, with the American commitment limited to supplying the military hardware necessary for defending the country.
5. On a sliding scale of direct US involvement, even the fallback security option of America's voluntary enrollment in buttressing Israel's treaties with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the PLO by means of international guarantees is fraught with problems. An entire issue in itself, the contribution of merely one brigade has wider implications for US troop deployment in other theaters and worldwide military preparedness. Moreover, the proposal would have the hardest time meeting existing stringent guidelines set forth by the Clinton Administration for US peacekeeping mission anywhere: inter alia,, broad bipartisan support at home, a UN or other multilateral sanction and operational framework, adequate provision for funding, an invitation at the behest of the host countries or parties, assured safety of US personnel in the performance of noncombatant functions and, not least, an explicit deadline for their presence. One final complication is that were an Israeli-Syrian agreement with US guarantees on the Golan to precede a final settlement with the Palestinians, given Congressional as well as public reluctance to insert American military personnel in potentially threatening situations, it would in all probability eliminate comparable participation by the US in a second peacekeeping assignment anywhere else, as in policing demilitarization of the West Bank or the Gaza strip for example.
6. Still lower on the scale of commitment, yet just as highly questionable, is America's potential contribution to the economic component of an Israeli-Palestinian peace package. Given structural problems in the American economy, original assessments by the Oslo conspirators- signatories that envisioned a massive injection of American, Middle Eastern and international investment capital seem, in the perspective of 1995, highly exaggerated if not entirely misplaced. Large-scale economic and financial assistance -- irrespective of whether to Israel alone, to the impoverished Palestinian self-governing authority alone, or to both -- from the US government (as distinct from corporate or private funding) cannot be assumed by Jerusalem planners. The whole elaborate peace blueprint appears like a wobbly house of cards if an "economic miracle" in Gaza and throughout the West Bank is meant to be the "sweetener" or principal incentive, along with a new, economically-integrated Middle East under American patronage, assuring that cooperative peace structures with Israel will indeed be honored on the Arab side.
Lest Israelis fall prey themselves to close- mindedness and groupthink, with their own particular set of unchallenged conventions and unquestioned answers, a reappraisal by Jerusalem of its relationship with Washington is both well- advised and timely. In doing so, some additional caveats and topics for legitimate and even healthy public debate deserve to be vented.
First, it would be wise to declare a moratorium on references to the adjectival "special" and "strategic" in characterizing the US-Israel relationship. Usage of both terms is greatly overdone, including in academic circles. It is also probably counter-productive, lulling Israelis into a false sense of security and, what is far worse, of complacency to the point of voluntary dependency.
In complete fairness to the American government and people, they ought not to be held up as the panacea for whatever troubles Israel. Absent the Soviet threat, the "special" and "strategic" labels lose their rationale save, of course, for a genuine "clash of civilizations" and global realignment pitting the Muslim faithful against the non- believers and positioning Israel, most unfortunately, in the eye of the storm (and therefore a scenario definitely not to be fostered, or relished, by Israel). In this context, retooling for a possible accommodation with the Palestinians and with the neighboring Arab states by 1997, and for marking the first half-century of Israel's own independent statehood by 1998, ought to have the salutary effect of recasting Israel not as exceptional in the uncomplimentary sense of a burden, but as unexceptional, self-sustaining and democratic; and therefore fully compatible with an American foreign policy of retrenchment.
Second and related, foreign relations strategists in Jerusalem are advised not to count unduly on the American Jewish community and the pro-Israel lobby in coming years. Least of all, should they be activated and sent to do battle on behalf of either controversial or lost causes like a formal defense treaty or direct American peacekeeping with poor prospects for earning either public or official US consent.
Third, the United States, with such a large stake in the success of Middle East conflict resolution in general, and of the Madrid-Oslo-Washington-Cairo framework in particular, will be strongly disinclined to endorse any claim by Israel to assert the right of reversibility. In fact, by mid- 1994 the "Gaza & Jericho First" process was sufficiently advanced, and the truly critical precedents (IDF military deployment, early Palestinian administrative and policing empowerment) already established, that the process is already essentially irreversible, at least, from Israel's standpoint. Because whatever the provocation, grievance or infraction, and irregardless of the merits of Jerusalem's case, any protest by Israel on strictly legal or procedural grounds that would have the effect of freezing the accords will be interpreted in America as an act of bad faith on Israel's part. There is a strong likelihood that any such move will be viewed as an unacceptable pretext for not going through with the pledge of a phased withdrawal from the West Bank, and assumedly from the Golan Heights as well.
In a political (as opposed to a legal) sense, therefore, the privilege of reversibility resides exclusively with the Palestinian and Arab side. Verbal protestations notwithstanding, the Rabin government is fully committed to the Oslo process in the strategic sense and the Palestinian (possibly Palestinian-Jordanian) option; as a consequence, for all practical purposes Israel has deprived itself of any effective leverage other than perhaps temporarily delaying the timetable of phased autonomy and militarwithdrawal. For added measure, independent of major or minor violations by the PLO (continued non-revocation of the anti- Israel Arab boycott, non-cancellation of offensive clauses in the PLO covenant), a significant percentage of Cabinet ministers are on record as advocating that the interim phase providing for a trial period of mutual testing agreed upon in the Oslo and Cairo documents be speeded up, or perhaps even be dispensed with.
Fourth, were the issue of Jerusalem indeed to be the last impediment blocking the coveted endgame of a negotiated comprehensive settlement, the US should not be counted on to back Israel's consensual claim to undisputed political control. Rather, Washington more likely would resort once again to the favored ploy of splitting the difference, appealing to Israel to not let the opportunity slip by and to make just that one more concession needed to bring a war-weary nation the inestimable boon of peace.
Fifth, whereas hitherto one consistent theme of US policy was principled opposition to an independent Palestinian state - taking refuge in such constructive ambiguity as "homeland", "entity," "authority" or "in association" with Jordan, Israel's signature to the Oslo accord provides the US policy establishment with the moral justification, whenever expediency calls, for revising this traditional position. The notion of Palestinian statehood, in other words, is no longer anathema in Washington circles. Hereafter, US thinking will be less resistant and considerably more receptive to the "third state" solution, so long as, firstly, Hashemite Jordan's interests and survival are provided for, and, secondly, Israel's security concerns are addressed by a panoply of substitute devices (early warning systems, surveillance equipment, a UN tripwire, etc.).
For the reasons discussed in this paper, Israel is advised against encouraging, let alone imploring, the United States and the Clinton Administration to once again cling to its pre-13 September 1993 self- image of indispensable peace broker and ultimate arbiter of the Arab-Israel dispute.
Already in June 1994, an internal Foreign Ministry
study drafted by the Policy Planning division that
found its way into the local press suggests that
even official Jerusalem policy establishment elite
are not unmindful of coveats raised in the course
of this present study about the true effectiveness
of an inner-directed United States and a limping
Clinton administration as a Middle East peacemaker
standing "four-square" behind Israel. Pointing to
a string of disconcerting "flip-flops" over human
rights in China, the North Korean nuclear threat
and Haitian refugees, an unidentified ministry
official characterized the document's main finding:
"Israel cannot count on American determination to
ensure success of the [Mideast] talks."
In essence, the lingering question of determination and resolve on the part of the United States in the coming one to two critical years for Middle East peacemaking could work itself out in either of two unsatisfactory ways for Israel. The first, that the US indeed opts for unassertiveness under a host of guises and mitigating factors, leaving the sides and especially Israel to fend for themselves in a sentiment akin to a "plague on your houses." Conversely, however, it is equally plausible that determined "going for broke" in brokering Mideast peace, any peace -- even a harsh one -- a strongly assertive and impatient American broker might choose to demonstrate its firmness and resolve primarily toward Israel in satisfying Palestinian and Arab world desiderata.
Whatever else, one of the truly historic and positive achievements of the Israeli diplomatic initiative which has produced the post-Oslo constellation of forces is the opening of direct channels in the Middle East. Israel's own self- interests, and best prospects for a genuine, lasting settlement, rest on the iron principle of bilateral negotiation with its immediate Arab and Palestinian neighbors -- yesterday's implacable enemies, today's only directly concerned parties and tomorrow's essential peace partners.
Aharon Klieman is professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and visiting scholar at the University of Chicago (1994-5). This research project was conducted under the sponsorship of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
1. Remarks by former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Edward Djerejian in congressional testimony, 27 July 1993.
2. In his book, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Fouad Ajami notes how Egypt, always in the vanguard, led the revolt against the West in the 1950's only to then succumb to a "puzzling dependency" on America as the 1970's drew to a close. p. 18.
3. The fruits of this ongoing involvement by American diplomats have been nicely collated in a report edited by Kenneth W. Stein and Samuel W. Lewis. Making Peace Among Arabs and Israelis. Lessons from Fifty Years of Negotiating Experience (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, October, 1991).
4. Leon T. Hadar, Quagmire, America in the Middle East, (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 1992). pp. 194-195.
5. Brzezinski is quoted in The Economist, 13 February 1993, p. 58.
6. In a speech delivered before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on 18 May 1993.
7. William B. Quandt. Peace Process. American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1993), p. 428.
8. The Secretary's remarks were presented to a joint gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University's School of International Affairs, 20 September 1993, the text of which, like other official statements quoted in this paper, are courtesy of the United States Information Agency in Tel Aviv.
9. Inis Claude, Jr. American Approaches to World Affairs (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986), p. 16.
10. Yitzchak Rabin, quoted in The International Herald Tribune, 4-5 December 1993.
11. A detailed chronology of the secret contacts leading up to the Hussein-Rabin public summit and Washington decleration on 25 July, based on interviews with many of the direct participants on both sides, is offered in a special report compiled by Elaine Sciolino and Thomas L. Friedman, published in The New York Times issue of 31 July, 1994.
12. In a speech attacking the Baldwin Government before the House of Commons on 12 November 1936. Winston S. Churchill. The Second World War. Vol. I. "The Gathering Storm". (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1949), p. 194.
13. From a prepared statement by Edward Djerejian to a committee of Congress on 9 March 1993.
14. Thomas L. Friedman. From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 157. Alternatively defining "Hama Rules" as simply "Rule, or die" (p. 104), the author offers a telling illustration of tribal logic: "When I am weak, how can I compromise? When I am strong, why should I compromise?" (p. 194).
15. Thomas L. Friedman, "Pessimism on the Mideast Has Taken a Hard Knock," The New York Times, 20 September 1993.
16. The inspiration for this idea, which the author gratefully acknowledges, derives from a caricature of "Uncle Sam" squaring off against Saddam Hussein across such a divided game board during the Kuwait crisis, drawn by the Israeli political cartoonist "Shilo" in the daily Ma'ariv, 6 January 1991.
17. The thinking behind "ripeness" is spelled out by Richard N. Haass in his book about the US and regional disputes. Conflicts Unending (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990; especially Chapter 7, "Ripeness and its Implications for Policy."
18. M. Graeme Bannerman, "Arabs and Israelis: Slow Walk Toward Peace," Foreign Affairs. Vol. 72, No. 1 (1993), p. 152. From a decisionmaker's perspective, much the same thinking is embodied in a comment made by Edward Djerejian's successor as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. On 1 March 1994 Robert Pelletreau told a congressional subcommittee that on the basis of the Oslo-Cairo declarations, "This process may take some time, but it is important that the parties get it right - to ensure a lasting agreement".
19. In a videoconference hookup between the White House and economic conferees hosted by the Israel Forum in Jerusalem, 1 March 1994.
20. In his speech, given on 18 May 1994, Indyk coupled his call to the parties to "seize the moment" and achieve "an early breakthrough" with the standard caveat, or damper, that even with the offer to "step up" America's role, "returning to the table is not enough", for "We cannot and will not substitute ourselves for their direct involvement with each other in the give-and-take of negotiations."
21. Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 755.
22. Kissinger, p. 1074.
23. Ideological traces of mainstream Mapai and Labor party socialism applied to a futuristic vision of full Israeli assimilation into a prospering and progressive Middle East region are to be found in Shimon Peres, with Arye Naor. The New Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1993).
24. I. William Zartman. The 50% Solution (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1976).
25. David Makovsky, "Study: Don't count on US to Mediate with Syrians." The Jerusalem Post, 20 June 1994.