Middle East Strategy at Harvard

The MESH roundtable on the theme of “The First 100 Days” concludes today. MESH members have been asked these questions: What priorities should the next administration set for immediate attention in the Middle East? What should it put (or leave) on the back burner? Is there anything a new president should do or say right out of the gate? And if a president asked you to peer into your crystal ball and predict the next Middle East crisis likely to sideswipe him, what would your prediction be? MESH members’ answers have appeared in installments throughout the past week. (Read the whole series here.) Today’s responses come from Philip Carl Salzman and Michael Young.

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Philip Carl Salzman :: The new administration does not have the luxury of a blank slate. American policies, resources, and commitments have already filled up most of the space. Therefore…

Accept the fact that America’s main investment and hope is Iraq, a country of central importance to the Middle East. Stability and example in Iraq would not only be the fulfillment of past American efforts, but the best hope for future political and economic progress in the Middle East. A strong Iraq, friendly to the United States, would be a powerful influence and counter to Iran and Syria.

Avoid trying to be the hero who finally solves what no one else has been able to solve in the sixty years of ongoing efforts: the Palestinian problem. All previous attempts have seen the situation go from bad to worse. Minimizing the worse possibilities is the most realistic course. In any case, the Palestinian problem, central to ideological discourse in the Middle East, is in fact a minor problem of a minor population.

Afghanistan is a frontier fight, not critical to the Middle East—however important it may be to the prestige of America and the West, now that they have committed to making it into a real state and civil society. The project must be pursued, and pursued vigorously, but not at the expense of the more important commitment to the central Middle East.

Look to hitherto peripheral players, Russia and India, who may increasingly contribute to future developments in the Middle East, Russia in a negative way, and India potentially in a constructive way. Both are giants on the borders of the Middle East, and both are feeling their oats and itching to benefit from their weight. The new administration must find ways of discouraging Russia and encouraging India.

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Michael Young :: A priority of any new administration will be to take a pill against a rampant disease afflicting the Middle East policy community: engagement-itis. Everybody today advocates engagement: of Iran; of Syria; of Hamas; of whatever the Bush administration failed to engage. But no one seems to have clearly defined how engagement should happen and what it must bring about—neither the wonks of the campaigns nor the think tank mavens dying to be offered a policy position.

Depending on who the United States engages, the calculations will differ. Talking to Iran offers different gains than talking to Syria, for example. An American opening to Tehran may be inevitable in the coming months, because the United States wants to avoid a military confrontation in the region over Iran’s nuclear program—whether Washington or Israel does the bombing. The next administration will also need Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan, which will emerge as a battleground in the coming years.

However, for the United States to successfully engage Iran, Washington will need leverage. That means consolidating its gains in Iraq while downgrading its military presence and getting the Europeans and Russia on board in imposing further sanctions on Tehran. A rather tall order. Whether the United States wants to attack Iranian nuclear facilities or not, not having leverage over Iran elsewhere may make more likely the administration’s resorting to the military threat to compensate—belying the claim that engagement will necessarily calm tensions in the region.

One source of leverage over Iran is to weaken its ally Syria. There has been an argument making the rounds that it is time to talk to the regime of Bashar Asad. But talk to Asad about what? The engagers first suggested the United States should try this to break Syria off from Iran, and by extension from Hezbollah and Hamas. But then Asad made clear he wouldn’t break with anybody. Why should he? His dubious relationships are what bring everyone to his doorstep, hat in hand.

So the engagers backtracked and suggested it was a good idea to engage Syria because this might advance Syrian-Israeli peace. But Asad again made plain that his priority in talking to Israel was to normalize relations with the United States and break Syria out of its isolation. And if Asad does that, why should he split with Iran if this was never an American precondition?

Iran will be at the heart of the administration’s problems in the coming year, but Syria will be the Iranian Achilles’ heel that everyone ignores. If the screws are tightened on Syria, Iran could be denied a useful ally in the Levant. But is that going to happen? No. So don’t be surprised if Iran, Syria, and Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as they find themselves having to deal with a United States eager to engage but with little leverage or lucid ideas on how to do so, begin manipulating the dynamics of the one place that serves as everyone’s default game board in the region: Lebanon.