The Choice Facing U.S. Diplomacy
GROSSMAN, LAWRENCE
The Choice Facing U.S. Diplomacy A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East—from the Cold War to the War on Terror By Patrick Tyler Farrar Straus Giroux. 628 pp....
...We are likely to find out very soon...
...America's "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran collapsed...
...Iran's nuclear threat...
...Along with the "democratic values" and "Judeo-Christian ethic" the two countries share, Indyk cites the very periodic elections that, in Tyler's view, interfere with the maintenance of consistent American policies...
...policy consensus of the kind that persevered and won the Cold War...
...Thus American policy has lacked consistency while Arab potentates, unburdened by free elections, have pretty much stood fast...
...The successful ouster of the Israelis from Sinai led Arab leaders to think, in Indyk's words, that "Washington merely needs to tell Jerusalem to jump and Israeli prime ministers will respond by asking 'how high?'" This has weakened the incentive for Arab countries to negotiate directly with Israel, encouraging them instead to demand that the U.S...
...He points out that Israel plays the diplomatic game at a disadvantage: Israel, not its Arab neighbors, is being called upon "to make the tangible concessions of territory," and Israel, alone among the nations of the world, is guaranteed unfair treatment at the UN, both conditions necessitating the security available only from big-power backing...
...Rather, he stresses the cultural gap: Americans tend to naively assume all problems can be solved and take a cando approach to them...
...Where Eisenhower clipping Israel's wings is Tyler's model for American policy in the Middle East, Martin Indyk's memoir, Innocent Abroad, argues quite the contrary that the 34th President's precedent created problems for later chief executives...
...But Indyk does not believe our political calendar is the primary impediment to American diplomacy in the Middle East...
...Far removed from Tyler's heavily researched journalism that treats over 50 years of U.S...
...In addition, he did "dozens of interviews for the book," not to mention "thousands of interviews and conversations" over a quarter-century of covering the Middle East...
...The disasters are laid out in detail, from the 1953 coup that toppled Mohammad Mossadegh's government in Iran through the 2003 decision to invade Iraq...
...Given his disappointing experience, it is somewhat surprising to hear Indyk criticize the Bush Administration for breaking off active engagement and urge Obama to restore U. S. diplomatic activity to get Israel and the Palestinians to reach a settlement...
...associate director of research, the American Jewish Committee Throughout the primaries, the general election campaign and his early weeks in office, President Barack Obama promised a wholesale change of United States policies in the Middle East...
...Repeatedly, American policymakers have devised plans that seem sound in theory, yet all too often they founder on the rocks of Middle East reality...
...Whatever course is chosen, will the United States in the Middle East turn out to be an Innocent Abroad in A World of Trouble...
...30.00...
...Patrick Tyler's A World of Trouble covers the period from the 1950s to the end of George W. Bush's tenure...
...toleration of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, spurred by the importance of the Jewish and evangelical electorate, is a major irritant in AmericanArab relations...
...He simply did not grasp that Arafat came to Camp David to extract more and more concessions from the Israelis, with no intention of reaching an agreement— an insight Indyk himself admits to having gained only gradually, but which first came to Clinton as he left the White House...
...Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty...
...diplomacy in the region and chart alternate courses Obama might pursue...
...the devastation of Lebanon...
...Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East By Martin Indyk Simon & Schuster...
...Tyler contends that U.S...
...While pressure on Israel may attimesprovideAmericanleaders"some psychic satisfaction," Indyk writes, "it will not make Israel more willing to take the risks involved in relinquishing territory...
...He is apparently unaware that the German Orthodox Judaism in which Kissinger was raised rejected Zionism...
...He is surely not surprised by Obama's stance, because a key theme of his book is precisely that each newly elected President insists on revising his predecessor's approach to the Middle East...
...At one point he veers off into borderline antiSemitism while excoriating Henry Kissinger, the German-born Jew who served as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Gerald R. Ford administrations...
...The answer is implicit in Tyler's naming Dwight D. Eisenhower as the President with the most effective Middle East policy...
...30.00...
...Tyler believes this uneven playing field along with abysmal American ignorance of the region's history and cultural patterns, accounts for our disastrous course there...
...troops in Lebanon, but in the face of considerable Congressional opposition he used the threat of UN sanctions to force an Israeli retreat from the Sinai Peninsula captured in the 1956 Suez conflict...
...Arab societies are far more cynical, and come to the table with the assumption that most problems are too complex to solve...
...Or Tyler's narrower vision of the national interest that assuages Arab distrust of America through the application of pressure on Israel...
...Although the Obama Administration's inclination to resume direct involvement in Middle East diplomacy is clear, its direction is not...
...Reviewed by Lawrence Grossman Coeditor, "American Jewish Year Book...
...A veteran journalist, Tyler has reported on the Middle East for the New York Times and the Washington Post...
...Charging him with virtual disloyalty, Tyler writes that Kissinger "focused advocacy more for Israel's strategic goals than for those of the United States," because "he and his family were deeply connected" to the Jewish community...
...He tells a good story too...
...As an insider, Indyk contributes much to our knowledge of these events...
...They are "reluctant to push Israeli prime ministers beyond the limits dictated by their often vociferous opponents...
...Because popular elections also occurinlsrael, "there is a natural tendency for American Presidents to sympathize with the political travails of their Israeli counterparts...
...But there are deeper reasons for the special American-Israeli relationship...
...policy, Innocent Abroad is a firsthand account by a diplomatic practitioner...
...But despite the extensive footnotes and colorful stories, there is no mistaking Tyler's thrust...
...and the meetings at Camp David and Taba to forge an Israeli-Palestinian agreement ended in failure, spawning a new intifada...
...and above all the plight of Palestinians who still do not have a state of their own, and the anxieties of Israelis who have yet to attain security...
...494 pp...
...He does, however, recommend lowering expectations, relying more than in the past on "humility, flexibility, and agility," and launching peace initiatives early in a President's term to avoid scrambling for a settlement in its last moments...
...apply pressure on the Jewish state...
...Who might be guilty of those misdeeds...
...The object is "to reestablish America's standing as a benevolent and magnanimous power capable of engendering trust and exercising leadership...
...As a family," Tyler insists, the Kissingers "were committed to the Zionist cause, and that commitment formed the bedrock of Kissinger's view of the Middle East...
...the rise of radical Islam and the terrorism associated withit...
...These two books examine past U.S...
...During the Clinton Administration Indyk served as Middle East adviser on the National Security Council, assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, and twice as ambassador to Israel...
...He not only kept Soviet influence out of the region by dramatically landing U.S...
...Will it follow Indyk's prescription and be supportive of Israel with greater patience and realism than under Clinton...
...In a January 27 interview with the Al-Arabiyah satellite TV network, he went so far as to acknowledge that the U. S. had made mistakes in dealing with the Arab world and declare his Administration would demonstrate that "Americans are not your enemy...
...So are their consequences: the Arab masses' continuing inability to escape Third World poverty...
...Indyk differs strongly with the view, championed by Tyler, that American support for Israel is based solely on domestic political considerations and interferes with the pursuit of the national interest...
...It is limited to the Clintonyears, 19932001, when Yitzchak Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House Lawn...
...the Iraqi quagmire...
...Here is Indyk's explanation for his President's failure in the Middle East: "Clintonbelieved that no differences were so profound that reasonable people working together could not resolve them...
...Anyone who has sought to ward off an unwanted kiss, for example, will enjoy the vignette of President Bill Clinton "beside himself, obsessing over the prospect that Yasir Arafat, who was due at the White House the next morning, September, 13, 1993, forthe signing of the Oslo Accords, was going to kiss the President of the United States with those big, stubble-framed terrorist lips" in front of the news photographers...
...Or something else...
...In advocating a Middle East policy consensus that would not shift with each Presidential election, he warns that it would have to be protected "from the tactical maneuvering of politicians, domestic grandstanding, and demagoguery...
...While discussing the reluctance of Presidents from Lyndon B. Johnson through George W Bush to exert similar pressure on Israel to disgorge its territorial gains in the 1967 Six-Day War, he compares them invidiously to Eisenhower...
...According to the author, his is the first work "to take advantage of the combined new releases" of recently declassified documents, including those from the Richard M. Nixon collection...
...In response, Tyler urges constructing a firm, bipartisan U.S...
...Like A World of Trouble, Innocent Abroad acknowledges that Presidential elections every four years inhibit the formulation of long-term policies—witness Clinton's desperate attempts to secure a deal betweenlsraeli Prime MinisterEhud Barak and Palestinian leader Arafat before he left office, if only to assure his place in history...
Vol. 92 • January 2009 • No. 1
