Can the United States Change Course in the Middle East?

by Patrick Seale

Released: 11 Nov 2006

The visit to Washington this week of Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Prime Minister, will provide President George W. Bush with an opportunity to correct the catastrophic slide towards the abyss of America’s policy in the Middle East.

But will Bush seize the chance? Can he, at this eleventh hour, summon up the intelligence, the will and the courage to change course? In spite of cataclysmic changes in the American political landscape, there is little ground for optimism.

Few observers of the American scene expect a radical change of strategy in spite of the Democratic victory at the mid-term elections and the replacement of Donald Rumsfeld, the abrasive, hard-driving Defence Secretary, by Robert Gates, a cautious security professional and former director of the CIA.

Some optimists believe the tide in Washington is turning against the pro-Israeli neo-cons, who have dominated America’s Middle East policy since 9/11, in favour of the so-called ‘realists’ led by such former public servants as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, who advocate a return to a more even-handed policy in the Middle East.

Great hopes are being placed on the return to centre stage of James Baker, who, as George Bush Senior’s secretary of state, was the principal architect of the 1991 Madrid peace conference. Baker is now wrestling with the challenging task of rethinking American strategy in Iraq. He is co-chairman, with Democrat Lee Hamilton, of the Iraq Study Group which is due to report early in the New Year.

But to correct American policy in the Middle East would require something like a political earthquake in both Washington and Israel -- and there is no sign as yet of any such upheaval. The changes required are so radical as to seem both unrealistic and unrealisable. In both countries, hard-liners are still very much in charge.

What would be the basic requirements for a change of course?

First, the United States would have to extricate itself from Iraq as speedily and honourably as it can. But this will be no easy task. The Iraq war has caused colossal damage in terms of human casualties, material destruction and the squandering of financial resources. It has spread political instability across the region as well as fomenting terrorist violence and sectarian strife. Perhaps the greatest casualty of all has been the loss of America’s reputation and moral authority.

In spite of this disastrous balance sheet, there is still no consensus in the United States that the invasion and occupation were a colossal mistake that can only be corrected by a full withdrawal. Fanatical neo-cons, such as William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, are even urging the United States to send in still more troops.

Friends of Israel would no doubt argue that the smashing of a major Arab state has improved Israel’s strategic environment by removing any threat from the East. But the price paid by America has been very high indeed, and will continue to be paid for many years unless the United States recovers the independence of its Middle East policy.

A radically different approach is also required to deal with the running sore of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has done so much to inflame Arab and Muslim opinion. But here, too, a change of policy looks unlikely because of in-built obstacles in both the United States and Israel.

A change of course would require President Bush to commit himself in the coming year to an all-out attempt at resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. He would need to spell out detailed parameters for a settlement, much as Bill Clinton attempted to do.

As a preliminary measure, Bush would have to force Olmert to lift his cruel siege on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and halt all settlement activity. Bush has had many opportunities to do so over the past five years, but has fudged them all. Is it at all probable that he will now have a change of heart?

Israel, in turn, would have to grasp, once and for all, that its future in the region -- indeed its very existence -- can be assured only by a policy of peaceful coexistence with its neighbours. It must revise its security doctrine of seeking to dominate the Arabs and the Iranians by overwhelming military force. Above all, it must be ready to give up what remains of its 1967 conquests -- that is to say the Palestinian occupied territories, Syria’s Golan Heights and small pockets of Lebanese territory.

But nothing of the sort is likely to happen.

On the contrary, Olmert has moved closer to the hard right by bringing an Arab-hating racist, Avigdor Lieberman, into his cabinet. Traumatised by its failure to crush Hizbullah during the 34-day Lebanon war this summer, Israel’s current mood is to expand its army and seek still more weaponry in anticipation of a second round, rather than to respond to the many Arab calls for peace talks.

As America confronts its many problems in the Middle East, now is the time for Arab leaders to throw their weight into the argument and make their voices heard in Washington. Fresh vigour needs to be breathed into the Saudi peace plan endorsed by the whole Arab world in March 2002. But such is the debilitating affect of inter-Arab disputes and rivalries, and such is the Arab habit of passivity, that any concerted Arab effort seems as unlikely as any real change in either the United States or Israel.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2006 Patrick Seale

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Released: 11 November 2006
Word Count: 903
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