On Saturday, October 17, at The Washington Institute’s annual Weinberg Founders Conference at Lansdowne, I was privileged to serve as master of ceremonies for the announcement of our second annual Book Prize for outstanding books on the Middle East published in the previous year. This is a major literary award, one of the most lucrative for non-fiction works in the world. And this year’s winners—chosen by a three-person panel of jurors that included Washington Post/Newsweek columnist Lally Weymouth; former State Department counselor (and SAIS professor) Eliot Cohen; and Emory University Middle East professor Ken Stein—merited every dollar in prize money… and more.

The first prize, worth $30,000, went to Ronald and Allis Radosh’s A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel; the second ($15,000) went to Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization; and the third ($5,000) went to Martin Indyk’s Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. What a broad, fascinating and provocative array of books! They include a history of what was perhaps the most contrary decision an American president has ever taken on Middle East policy (Harry Truman’s decision to buck the Foggy Bottom establishment and recognize the new Jewish state of Israel); a bold and courageous account by an Iraqi intellectual cum public servant about what ails Muslim societies and how to fix it; and a wonderfully introspective retrospective on a scholar-diplomat’s time on the front lines in the Middle East (and the no-less-violent battles about the Middle East back in Washington). I have no role in these decisions—we are scrupulous about having an independent, omnipotent jury whose members don’t even know the identities of their fellow jurors—but I was thrilled with how their deliberations came out.

For more information on our Book Prize winners, click here.

In his June 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was one of Israel’s requirements for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,immediately rejected the requirement. However, if there is to be a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity.

Palestinians have three official objections to Israel being recognized as a Jewish state, as well as a fourth objection about which they do not speak openly, but which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The three official objections are as follows:

1. It is not the task of the Palestinians to determine the nature of the Israeli state, but that of the Israelis.
2. Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would jeopardize the position of the Israeli Arabs, who form 20 percent of the Israeli population.
3. Israel did not demand recognition as a “Jewish state” in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

The fourth Palestinian objection—which they do not assert openly lest it destroy the chances for a peace treaty with Israel—is that many Palestinians simply do not accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). For the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.

These attitudes, partially latent during the heyday of the Oslo peace process (1993-2000), were reinforced by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which transformed what had been a conflict between two peoples over the same piece of territory into a religious war between Muslims and Jews, and which greatly strengthened Hamas in the process. Indeed both Hamas and non-Hamas religious leaders stressed that the Palestinians were fighting the Jews, just as Muhammad had fought the Jews who they allied with his enemies as he sought to unite the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Islam.

What the Palestinians—and other Arabs—fail to understand is that Zionism arose as a national movement among Jews in Europe in the 19th century. Very much influenced by the national unification movements of Germany and Italy (as were the Arab nationalists of the time), as well as by the increasingly precarious position of the Jews in Eastern Europe who were beset by pogroms in Czarist Russia, Zionist thinkers such as Hess, Lilienblum and Herzl asserted that just as the French had France, the Germans had Germany and the Italians had Italy, the Jews deserved a state of their own where they could lead a “normal, national life,” and the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel, then occupied by the Ottoman Empire, was chosen as the site of the future Jewish state. To be sure, the land which the Zionists wanted was already populated by Arabs; however, the Arabs who lived there at the end of the 19th century had not yet developed a national identity (that was come during the British mandate of 1922-48), and at the time primary saw themselves as Muslims or Christians, or as “Southern Syrians” or as Ottoman subjects.

This being the case, one can respond to the Palestinian reasons for not recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” in the following manner:

1. While the Israelis alone can and should define the nature of their state, as the existential nature of the state is a central factor in the conflict (unlike, for example, the conflicts between France and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries), then Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish State becomes central to ending the conflict.
2. There are many minorities in the Middle East, and the often negative treatment of these minorities, whether religious (such as the Copts in Egypt and the Shi’a in Saudi Arabia) or national (such as the Kurds in Turkey and the Azeris) is, in fact, linked to the nature of the country in which they live. However these minorities could be protected by treaty arrangements (currently they are not, although Turkey has begun the process of trying to address its Kurds’ aspirations)—so long as they swear allegiance to the state. Indeed, should a Palestinian state which recognizes Israel as a “Jewish state” emerge, that could make it easier for Israeli Arabs to solve their own identity problems, which have become increasingly serious in recent years, as some Israeli Arab leaders have openly backed Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria in their conflicts with Israel. Thus, as part of a peace treaty between a Palestinian state and Israel, the protection of the rights, albeit not the national rights, of the Israeli Arabs could be stipulated.
3. While acknowledgment of Israel as a Jewish state was not a component of Israel’s peace treaties with either Egypt or Jordan, in neither case was Israel involved in the type of existential conflict with these countries as it currently is with the Palestinians—a conflict in which it often appears that the assertion of one people’s national aspirations negates those of the other people. Thus it is necessary for both sides to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s national aspirations. For the Palestinian side, this involves recognizing Israel as a Jewish State.
4. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, it is necessary for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state to replace the image of the Jew as dhimmi, or second class citizen, with the image of the Jew as a member of a national group exercising legitimate national rights, just as the Palestinians themselves do. Once this is done, the chances for a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state will be greatly enhanced.

   Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

If early returns hold up and the March 14 coalition emerges victorious in Lebanese parliamentary elections, sending a resounding defeat to Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, then one of the most important “unsung heroes” in the vote will have been… Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden’s surprise visit to Beirut on May 22 was not just gutsy. By reminding Lebanese voters that Washington will review financial assistance and other aspects of our relations with Lebanon depending on the outcome of the election, Biden played Middle East hardball. Lebanese voters—especially the critical swing Christian voters—seem to have gotten the message. They cast their ballots in droves for candidates opposed to the Hezbollah-backed alliance and, in so doing, appear to have turned the tide in the election. (Of course, those voters had ample reason to say “enough” to Hezbollah and its Aounist allies, but Biden may have pushed them over the top.)

Biden’s Lebanon foray is a salutary reminder for the Obama administration in its overall engagement with the Middle East. Elsewhere in the region, the administration seems to be directing a policy devoid of sticks (except toward Israel’s settlement policy, which is another story altogether). The President’s Cairo address to the world’s Muslims, for example, included not a single hint of “negative incentive”; while he eloquently made the case for religious freedom, democracy, women’s rights, and peaceful nuclear energy, there were no suggestions of negative repercussions for any country that rejects the President’s entreaties. After the polite applause is forgotten, the result is likely to be indifference on the part of most Arab and Muslim leaders (except, again, on settlement policy).

In Lebanon, Biden’s timely reminder to locals of what they might lose by cutting deals with radicals and extremists suggests that Chicago politics is alive and well in the Middle East. The Chicagoan in the White House should pay attention.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

It’s time to remind new authors (and their publishers) that the May 1 deadline for the 2009 Washington Institute Book Prize approaches. This prize, inaugurated last year, is awarded annually to three outstanding new books that have illuminated the Middle East for American readers. It is also one of the most rewarding prizes in publishing. Gold Prize is $30,000, Silver Prize is $15,000, and Bronze Prize is $5,000. Watch one of last year’s jurors, Michael Mandelbaum (who is also a member of MESH), announce the 2008 prizes in this clip (if you don’t see the embedded video, click here).

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Or read the Book Prize citations for the 2008 winners here. You may also watch Yaroslav Trofimov, author of The Siege of Mecca, accept the 2008 Gold Prize here.

The deadline for the 2009 competition is May 1, 2009, for books published during the year prior to the deadline. Read the full rules here.

Last year’s prizes went to scholars and journalists, university press books and trade hardcovers, works on history and politics. For the new crop of books, The Washington Institute Book Prize has a fresh new panel of three independent jurors, to keep things interesting. If you’ve authored or published a book over the past year, don’t miss the opportunity to submit.

The Gaza conflict was born the day Hamas took control of the Strip; the clock started ticking the day the “calm” began six months ago. Unlike all of Israel’s other neighbors, save Hezbollah, Hamas is an existential adversary of Israel, not a competitor for some slice of territory or for the affection of Washington. This current round of fighting might not be determinative but it certainly provides the international community—led by the United States—with an opportunity to achieve certain objectives that are necessary to a successful outcome of eventual peace diplomacy. These include:

• Reaffirming the internationally recognized conditions for engagement with Hamas. It is essential that, apart from vital humanitarian goods, the conflict not provide a back-door opening for third-parties to whittle down the conditions for engagement with Hamas—conditions, one should recall, that parallel the conditions that governed U.S. engagement with the PLO twenty years ago.
• Tightening the international sanctions regime on Hamas. Here, the most important objective should be to secure an end to financial and other support provided by some states, either directly or through non-profit organizations, that finds its way into Hamas coffers. There is no reason why Arab or Muslim states, for example, should be exempt from recognizing the Quartet conditions on Hamas engagement, though for some reason they seem to consider themselves apart from this international consensus.
• Strengthening the Palestinian Authority. The best long-term hope for reasserting legitimate government in Gaza is through a successful PA, an authority that provides security and well-being to its citizens and their neighbors. This means that the United States should take the lead in improving and enhancing the “train and equip” mission for PA security forces, speed up the Blair agenda of economic and administrative reform and, perhaps most of all in the near term, ensure that the expected desire of some donors to assist the people of Gaza in the wake of the current fighting goes to PA institutions, not to Hamas or NGOs that survive on Hamas’ good graces.

It is unlikely that the current fighting will end Hamas control of Gaza, but—if handled properly on the diplomatic front—it could begin a new countdown to that day.

There are many sound, intelligent and practical ideas in Kristin Lord’s new Brookings report on reforming U.S. public diplomacy, titled “Voices of America.” These include cross-cutting suggestions for effective public-private partnerships in public diplomacy; bureaucratic improvements, such as appointing deputy assistant secretaries in all regional bureaus at State with specific PD responsiblity; and a review of how our international broadcasting could more effectively be integrated into our global public diplomacy effort. The “big idea” in the report is twofold: don’t create a major new government institution (a rejuvenated USIA or, my own preferred option, a Cabinet-level Department of International Cooperation) but instead establish a new more modest and streamlined public-private entity called USA-World Trust that can nimbly do PD at arm’s length from the federal government. In making this proposal, Brookings joins a list of other think-tanks and other semi-official agencies calling for some form of new quasi-government/quasi-private agency to solve the PD riddle.

All this is interesting and useful… but regrettably unsatisfying. The tactics are there; what is missing is mission, purpose and strategy.

In the post-9/11 era, the purpose of public diplomacy is not some amorphous desire to have America better understood or even the more pointed objective of winning the support of international public opinion for U.S. foreign policy. Yes, that is all part of it but there is so much more. Indeed, there is a unique public diplomacy mission of our age, just as there was a unique public diplomacy mission of the Cold War era. Today, that mission is how to identify, nurture and support mainstream Muslims in the ideological and political contest against radical Islamism and how to win backing for such efforts from nations and peoples in non-Muslim societies around the world. Everything that is new and special about America’s public diplomacy effort should be targeted toward that goal.

Alas, there is none of this in the Brookings report—no discussion of radical Islamism (or any of its terminological variants); no discussion of the ideological contest that undergirds the “war on terror;” no discussion of the role that mainstream Muslims play on the front lines of this battle; and no discussion of the vital role that innovative public diplomacy can play in helping our allies defeat these enemies of peace and freedom.

That is a shame. A lot of brainpower went into this report, and many of its conclusions, if implemented, would improve the machinery of our public diplomacy effort. But this is, at its core, a report whose animating idea is that America’s public diplomacy problem in the world is largely of our own making. It took the Bush Administration seven years before, as enunciated by Undersecretary Jim Glassman, it recognized that public diplomacy is mainly about “them” (empowering mainstream Muslims to compete with and defeat radical Islamists) and not about “us” (harnessing our best researchers, pollsters, and marketeers to improve the American brand). We have suffered too much to go backwards. This report, while avoiding the worst PD excesses of the early Bush years, is at best a lateral step at a time when we need to be moving forward on what is surely one of the most critical issues of our era.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Over the past week, MESHNet, the closed-forum companion to MESH, conducted a poll of MESHNet members, asking them who would make the best Middle East envoy of the Obama administration (if it is decided to appoint one). The structure of the poll emulated an earlier poll administered to a panel of Israeli experts, taking the same nine candidates and the same scoring system. MESHNet members (persons with a professional interest in the Middle East, 179 in number) were asked to rate the candidates, from “most suitable” for the job (a score of 5) to “least suitable” (a score of 1). Sixty-three MESHNet members responded to the poll question. Here are the results, comprised of the average score for each candidate:

In parallel, MESH asked a number of its members to assess whether the appointment of a special envoy is advisable. Their nine responses appear below. (Respondents did not have prior knowledge of the poll results.)

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Alan Dowty :: Would it be wise for the new administration to dispatch a special envoy to the Middle East? Yes, by all means; it has become standard practice, and not sending an envoy would evoke cries of despair and dismay from near and far. It has become de rigueur to create the impression that the United States is making an all-out effort to achieve settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, whether success is expected or not.

Furthermore, if only to satisfy the need to create the impression of seriousness, the envoy needs to be on the A-list—like the names proffered in the poll. A low-level appointee would, again, evoke hue and cry.

And in order for this impression to be convincing, the appointed envoy must actually be allowed to make a serious effort. Perhaps neither the envoy nor the administration really believes that chances for success are great, but the onlookers are too sophisticated to be fooled by a charade. The effort must be real.

And so long as the envoy is making a serious effort, why should the negotiation not be directed at the most tractable channel, the one where a slight possibility of success actually exists? Not the Israel-Palestinian channel; though a majority of both publics probably still favor a negotiated, two-state solution, there is presently no Palestinian negotiating partner who could credibly implement such an agreement.

But on the Syrian front, there is a glimmer of daylight. The strategic logic of a deal between Israel and Syria is such that the last six Israeli prime ministers have all given it their best shot. Maybe the time has come.

So who, among the august personalities posited, should be the deus ex machina? It must be someone with infinite patience, infinite optimism, and an infinitely thick skin to withstand the inevitable barbs from all sides. Are such qualities likely among the high fliers on the present list of candidates? Unfortunately, such a combination of humility and prominence is a rarity of nature.

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Robert O. Freedman :: Obama’s two predecessors took opposite positions on the question of whether or not to appoint a special envoy to the Middle East. Bill Clinton had a special envoy, Dennis Ross, who was active during the entire period of the Clinton presidency and whose book, The Missing Peace, recounts his experience as special envoy. By contrast, George W. Bush chose not to have a special envoy and was widely criticized, justifiably or not, for paying insufficient attention to the Middle East.

In my view, Obama should appoint a special envoy for a number of reasons.

First, Obama will have many important priorities when he first takes office. In addition to the problems facing the U.S. and world economies, which can be expected to take up much of his time, there are serious problems in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Russia. There simply will not be sufficient presidential time to spend on helping to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if the conflict were ripe for settlement, which it is not. Under these circumstances, appointing a special envoy will enable Obama to demonstrate his continued interest in the process—as opposed to Bush, whose interest was, at best, episodic—and thereby reassure the parties to the conflict that the United States is concerned about helping to try to find a solution for it.

A second advantage of a special envoy is that it will enable Obama to gather information about the positions of the various sides to the conflict. Neither the Israeli-Palestinian nor the Israeli-Syrian conflicts is at this point ripe for settlement. The Israeli elections are scheduled for February 10, and there are serious disagreements among the three major parties, Kadima, Likud and Labor, as to how to move forward. At the same time, the split between the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas which controls Gaza, is growing greater by the day, as the cancellation of unity talks in Cairo so clearly demonstrated. Meanwhile, Syria is obfuscating as to whether it would be willing to cut ties with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in return for Israel giving up the Golan Heights. With none of the conflicts appearing ripe for settlement, a special envoy could serve Obama by gathering information as to the positions of the parties, and imparting it to Obama. He would then have a firm base of information from which to operate when he finally has the time to devote to the Middle East.

Perhaps most importantly, a special envoy could advise Obama on whether or not it is worth investing scarce presidential time on the Syrian-Israeli conflict, as Bill Clinton did, albeit without success. Given the Israeli elections, the special envoy might best spend his or her time, at least initially, in trying to determine whether or not Syria is willing to pay the price of peace—cutting ties with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—or is just using the talks with Israel to try to improve its position with the United States. Should Bashar Asad of Syria not be serious about peace, as many skeptical Americans and Israelis believe, then the United States can discover this early in the Obama presidency, allowing the special envoy to devote his or her efforts to working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the other hand, if Asad is indeed serious about paying the price of peace, then the geopolitical advantages to the United States of a Syrian split with Iran and its proxies would be well worth the time spent on Syria by a U.S. special envoy.

In sum, even if Obama does not have the time to immediately deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict, his appointment of a special envoy will, at the minimum, commence his administration’s involvement in trying to help find a solution to it.

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Adam Garfinkle :: As I have written before and elsewhere, the idea of appointing a special envoy to, not the “Middle East,” but to the Arab-Israeli arena early in the tenure of the next administration is a good one—but not necessarily for the reasons often advanced. The reasons for appointing someone prestigious but politically shrewd do not include actually advancing the so-called peace process, and they are not based on the myth of linkage—the empirically unsupportable idea that an Arab-Israeli diplomatic settlement would have a dramatic positive bearing on other regional problems. The real reasons are these:

1. Despite whatever progress has been made in the post-Annapolis process, the situation remains unripe for a breakthrough for lack of strong and credible leadership on all sides. Yet the optic of U.S. engagement remains important for other reasons. It makes it easier politically for several important Arab states to cooperate with the United States against Iranian intrigues. Supporting the morale of moderates on all sides may prevent things from sliding backwards. It can help keep the Europeans and others from baying excessively at the diplomatic moon in hopes of miracles that don’t exist. And it may have some benign overwash on the tricky process of extracting ourselves from Iraq. The optic of leaving Iraq cannot be allowed to become one of failure or regional disengagement; that’s why some exiting U.S. troops should go to Bahrain or Qatar or Kuwait and not home, and it’s another reason why diplomatic engagement in the Levant can be at least marginally useful. We should want to spread out the newspaper headlines.
2. The optical approach will help keep the issue off the president’s own desk; he has more important things to do both at home and abroad, and he doesn’t need an albatross of diplomatic futility hung around his neck so early in his tenure.
3. A special envoy can help keep up the optic of engagement while the president’s new team gets chosen, nominated, enmeshed in hearings and finally confirmed—a process that can take many months thanks to the ongoing dysfunction of Congress.
4. That envoy could be a useful point-man to help smooth what could be a rough Palestinian political transition in January—in case no one else is in place to do that job.

It is crucial that any special envoy understand the real purposes of his (or her) assignment, and not go forth as if tilting at windmills. That might only make things worse, and end up burdening the president rather than freeing him (temporarily at least) from this mess. As a famous 20th-century American philosopher once put it, “These things must be done delicately.”

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Josef Joffe :: First, forget the usual suspects like Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright or the likes of James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. The only American of weight who understands the duplicities and obsessions of the Middle East is Henry Kissinger. The handicap of his age can be turned into an advantage. Tell the players to come to New York, since Henry can’t shuttle as he used to in 1974. They’ll behave better than in Ramallah or Jerusalem.

But is it wise to appoint an envoy? The Middle East is like Detroit and General Motors: There is no solution, but any American administration has to act as if there were, as if yet another bout of shuttling or another $25 billion will make GM competitive with Toyota. And so with the Middle East.

First of all, the so-called core of the problem, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has never been less at center-stage than it is now. It is dwarfed by the struggle for hegemony that pits Iranian ambitions (with Hamas and Hezbollah in tow) against the United States, Israel and the Sunni regimes. This is the central strategic issue. This is where, short of war, coalitions must be harnessed and containment strategies be organized. This is where regional conflict threatens to spill into the global arena. On that enlarged stage, extending from the Levant to Tehran, the Israeli-Palestinian issue has shrunk to almost negligible dimensions, which do not require the bulk of America’s attention and resources.

Moreover, there is no two-state solution at hand because neither party actually wants one. Why such a counter-intuitive judgement? Israel has learned that it cannot relinquish strategic control over the West Bank, given the sorry aftermath of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. It is “never again,” even if a deal could be struck with Mahmoud Abbas, as it could not with Hamas. No imaginable Palestinian Authority can at this point assure a no-threat West Bank; hence, Israel cannot leave.

Nor does Abu Mazen have an interest in seeing the Israelis leave. For it is the IDF that guarantees not only his political, but his physical survival. This is a heartening irony—Israel protecting a Palestinian president. But there is no Palestinian state in this surprising twist of history.

Perhaps one day, Marwan Barghouti, currently in an Israeli jail for multiple murders, could acquire the leadership status that would allow him to prevail against Hamas and rule the West Bank, perhaps even Gaza, with an iron hand. But the time scale is askew here. “Envoy time” is measured in months, the evolution toward a new and stable political order in the lands of the Palestinian Authority should be measured in years—many years.

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Mark N. Katz :: It has been widely reported that on November 18, Obama called Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and told him that the United States “would spare no effort to facilitate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.” Obama, then, should definitely appoint a special envoy for the Middle East.

As previous administrations have learned, efforts to achieve peace between Israel on the one hand and the Palestinians as well as neighboring Arab states on the other are extremely difficult and time consuming. Nor is there any guarantee that these efforts will succeed—as several previous American diplomatic initiatives have shown.

Because of the time commitment needed for seriously trying to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, neither the president nor the secretary of state should get immersed in the nitty-gritty negotiations that will be required. There is simply too much other important business for both of them that will not receive sufficient attention if either (or even more unfortunately, both) become overly involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Nor is this a task that the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs should undertake either, as this would leave precious little time for him or her to deal with America’s many other important relationships in, as well as the other problems of, this region.

In short, for there to be any hope of an American-brokered Israeli-Palestinian settlement, it will have to be undertaken by someone whose sole task it is to try to achieve one. If this effort is successful, the president can—rightly—take the credit. But if it is unsuccessful, the blame can be assigned not so much to the president as to (yes, you guessed it) the Middle East envoy.

Of course, even with a Middle East envoy working on it full-time, the attempt to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian settlement will still take up more of President Obama’s time than he may now anticipate. Although his desire to facilitate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is noble, he may find that there is a trade-off between “sparing no effort” on this and getting much of anything else accomplished.

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Walter Reich :: The Arab-Israeli conflict has always been at least as complex as a game of three-dimensional chess. Not only are the problems between Israel and the Palestinians excruciatingly hard to solve. So are the problems between Israel and many of the other Arab parties.

Moreover, the strains within each party—among the Israelis, among the Palestinians, and among the Arabs in general—are very great, and each of them could cause any peace deal to unravel, implode or even explode.

As a result of this, no party has reason to feel confident that a peace deal would actually hold for very long. What would Hamas do before the ink on a peace agreement has dried? What would Hezbollah do? And what would stop the Arab world as a whole from renouncing the treaty once Israel withdraws, even if it’s based on the 2002 Saudi peace initiative, which was endorsed by the Arab League? During a visit to Ramallah last July, then-candidate Obama reportedly told the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, that “the Israelis would be crazy not to accept” the Saudi initiative,” which, he told Abbas, “would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.” Would it?

And would it now that the complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been escalated from the level of three-dimensional chess to an even higher level by the fact that a truculent Iran, which is totally opposed not only to peace with Israel but with that country’s very existence, has, according to nuclear inspectors, finally produced enough nuclear material to make, with further purification, a nuclear bomb? What would Iran do if such a peace deal were signed?

Some argue that, despite this complexity, it’s precisely because of the specter of a nuclear Iran that a peace deal is finally possible: many Arab countries, especially the Saudis, are frightened of this, they argue, and would put muscle behind a peace deal. Moreover, they say, getting a deal, even on paper, might make it easier for the United States to leave Iraq.

Maybe so, and maybe Obama should indeed enter these dangerous waters by naming a Middle East envoy and starting negotiations actively and energetically right away. The risks might be great, but the rewards might be even greater.

Yet the challenge for Obama has grown enormously as a result of the global financial meltdown, which has complicated all of his agendas, both domestic and foreign. Can he afford to take a major, well-publicized gamble and get stuck in the familiar morass of failure? An immense amount of hope has been invested in him and his capacities to save America and the world during this period of economic crisis. Can he afford to dissipate this hope by failing in a very visible and early bid to solve a problem that, until now, has proved insoluble?

At the least, Obama should wait to find out who will win the Israeli elections in February. One candidate, Tzipi Livni, would surely support a major peace-deal initiative. Her opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, presumably would not—though American pressure might well cause him to change his mind. But events in the Arab/Muslim world, especially in connection with Iran, a major terrorist attack, a crisis elsewhere, or a worsening global economy, could well cause Obama to put all of his plans regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict on hold.

Given these risks and uncertainties, I don’t think Obama should name a peace envoy now. Certainly, he can wait until February. Meanwhile, this new American leader, who based his candidacy on the theme of change, is about to experience a lot of it, both domestically and internationally, and most of it not, alas, under his control.

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Robert Satloff :: Candidate Obama promised he would appoint a special Middle East envoy. President Obama’s decision whether to fulfill that promise depends a) on the purpose of the appointment and b) on the personality of the envoy.

Appointing an envoy makes a lot of sense if the purpose is to signal heightened, sustained and political-level interest on the part of the new Obama administration in key aspects of Arab-Israeli relations, recognizing that a breakthrough toward Israeli-Palestinian peace cannot occur until vital structural factors are put into place. These include building Arab acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state (i.e., putting flesh on the bones of the Arab peace initiative); developing Palestinian security forces as an effective instrument in the fight against terrorism, incitement and corruption; investing in the array of social/economic initiatives currently championed by Tony Blair; and extending the political legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas past the original end of his term of office to prevent a void of Palestinian leadership and an easy political victory for Hamas.

Appointing an envoy does not make sense if the idea is to signal American urgency for achieving an early peace breakthrough, the pursuit of which is both impractical and counter-productive in the near term. Nor does it make sense if the envoy views his/her mission as the vehicle to repair America’s relations with the wider Arab and Muslim “worlds,” which is a burden that Israelis and Palestinians should not have to bear.

Given this analysis, the personality of a proposed envoy is important. The particular choice should be someone endowed with patience, persistence, and a willingness to pass the baton to someone else – perhaps the president, perhaps the secretary of state, perhaps another envoy – depending on circumstances. This is not the job for someone who believes that the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be achieved on his/her watch or someone who views this responsibility as the path to a Nobel Prize.

More broadly, under certain circumstances, it makes sense to empower an envoy to be the lead person on both Arab-Israeli and the Iran issues, given that the Iran issue is the most significant strategic factor in Arab and Israeli thinking these days and that demands made of key regional states (i.e., Arabs ) on the Iran issue will be met in turn with demands made of America and Israel on the peace process. Efficiency suggests, therefore, that it is better for a single empowered envoy be capable of holding serious conversations on the issue with his counterparts abroad, who in most circumstances will be the same person. The danger here, however, is of feeding a negative concept of “linkage”–the idea that “if only Israel were to do x, y, z then all the problems of the Middle East would be solved.” This means that anyone asked to fill this broadened envoy portfolio would have to be someone inoculated from the linkage bug, someone who understands the Middle East as it is, not as we Americans would like it to be.

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Raymond Tanter :: Whether it is wise to appoint an envoy for the Middle East depends on the president-elect’s planned focus of attention, whether he intends to have a White House-driven or cabinet-driven administration, and whether he would like to encourage or suppress differences in recommendations to the White House within and from the State Department.

If the president-elect wishes to focus on the economy from the White House, he should have a strong secretary of state, which would argue against having an envoy for the Middle East. However, if the secretary of state were to be given a substantial part of the action on international economy, a Middle East envoy would be desirable. Likewise, if it looks as if policy-driving national security events from the region merit an overarching strategy developed within the White House, he may wish to have a less prominent secretary of state, a strong national security advisor, and an envoy who reports to the White House and State. And if the president-elect wishes to encourage a process of “multiple advocacy” at State, then an envoy with direct reporting to the White House and to the secretary of state would be warranted.

Consider historical examples to illustrate these principles. During the Nixon administration, the president desired highly centralized foreign policy formulation from the White House, at the expense of State. In this regard, Nixon’s national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, played the envoy role in the Middle East, as well as in virtually every other important theater.

In the Reagan administration, I was the White House liaison to Middle East envoy Ambassador Philip Habib, who had an office at State and reported regularly to President Reagan. Although Secretary of State Alexander Haig was at first not keen on sharing the action with the White House, his personal affinity for Habib and me minimized bureaucratic rivalry.

President Clinton chose resolution of Arab-Israeli disputes as the area in which he would make his foreign policy legacy, and so appointed Dennis Ross “Special Middle East Coordinator.” Having Ross at the White House allowed Clinton to organize a last-ditch effort at Camp David during 2000. Although the outcome left much to be desired, it was more the responsibility of Yasser Arafat than the division of labor among Americans or the fault of any of them.

If President-elect Obama decides to appoint an envoy for the Middle East, this person should have a writ that includes a larger region than the Arab-Israel zone, to coordinate contact groups of allies for interrelated problems, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Such contact groups might resolve pressing issues like the future status of the Iranian dissidents in Iraq, an Awakening Council model for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and developing leverage against the Iranian regime by reaching out to its opposition in advance of higher level American negotiations with Iran. An envoy would coordinate these issues as part of a strategic architecture for a similar area of responsibility as CENTCOM.

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Tamara Cofman Wittes :: Obama stated repeatedly during the campaign his intention to devote early and focused attention to the Middle East peace process. Since the transition period is mostly about structure and personnel, observers are naturally focused on the question of whether to appoint a special envoy for the peace process. But to my mind the question is misplaced.

In a bureaucracy, structure is power—but appointing an envoy does not necessarily convey much power or many resources to a diplomatic effort on behalf of Arab-Israeli peace. A special envoy without many staff, or one who is not situated at a senior level within (or above) the State Department bureaucracy, will not have the authority or capacity to mobilize efforts across the department, and will therefore not have as much impact as an envoy with his/her own office and a reporting line direct to the president or the secretary of state. So structure matters, and appointing an envoy does not alone produce the required structure.

Furthermore, effective peace process diplomacy is more than having the right mediator in the room with the warring parties; it must bring in key Arab governments, key U.S. military and intelligence resources, and key external stakeholders—meaning that, to be effective, a peace process envoy must be able to call on the full range of executive branch resources, from U.S. ambassadors at post to CENTCOM planners. Most crucially, an effective peace process envoy must be able to represent the president and bring the president’s personal engagement to bear at the right times.

Thus, the key question is not whether there will be a special envoy, but whether the person taking the point on Arab-Israeli affairs—whoever he may be—will carry with him the authority and credibility of the U.S. president. The local actors all have, or aspire to have, special relationships with Washington. They will not respond well to any diplomatic envoy who cannot both symbolize and operationalize a direct link to the American president. Whether the point person is a special envoy or the secretary of state is less important than whether she can speak on behalf of Obama, and whether she can bring Obama into the process at those critical moments when he needs to weigh in. So the identity of Obama’s peace processor will be crucial—much more crucial than her title.

The Islamic Republic has been pursuing a nuclear program for the better part of two decades. Concerns over Iranian intentions were among the reasons cited by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, for example, when he inaugurated Germany’s “critical dialogue” in 1992. Subsequent years have been littered with failed diplomatic initiatives, most notably: Reagan’s controversial outreach in 1983; critical dialogue; a broader European critical engagement; Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s apology; and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s offer to sit down with Iran if it suspended enrichment for the duration of talks, and her subsequent decision to reverse course and sign onto a generous incentive package. The constant throughout all of these initiatives has been continuation of Tehran’s nuclear program. Whether under ‘pragmatist’ president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ‘reformist’ president Mohammad Khatami, or ‘principalist’ (Persian: usulgarayan) president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there have been differences of rhetoric, but remarkable continuity of Iran’s nuclear investments.

The clock is running down, though. President Obama will need to make decisions which Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush deferred. After all, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that the Islamic Republic has now installed 4,000 centrifuges in its overt enrichment plant. According to Senators Dan Coats and Chuck Robb’s task force on U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development (for which I served as drafter), with just 6,000 P-1 centrifuges, fuel-grade 4.8 percent enriched uranium feed, and tails enrichment of 2.26 percent, the Islamic Republic could produce 20 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium in 16 days; i.e., in the period between IAEA inspections. That is not to say that Iran can produce a bomb in less than three weeks, but producing a crude-bomb’s worth of 93.1 percent highly enriched uranium is the most difficult process in an indigenous bomb program.

Early in his administration, Obama will have to determine whether the United States can live with a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic. If he decides the answer is no and if diplomatic and economic coercion fails to persuade Iran’s leaders to back away from their program, this would then mean commitment to a 1998 Operation Desert Fox-type operation. Any kinetic action against Iran would bring short-term gain at tremendous long-term cost: Iranians are nationalistic and would rally around the flag. While the Islamic Republic does not need nuclear arms for its defense, any military action against the Iran’s nuclear program would justify Tehran’s arguments in world opinion as the regime rebuilt.

Regardless, Obama’s policy positions and voting record suggest that he would never order any strike. This leaves both containment and deterrence as U.S. strategies. The problem here, though, is that across the political spectrum, U.S. officials speak of both strategies in rhetorical terms without acknowledging what they require. In this essay for the American Enterprise Institute’s Middle Eastern Outlook series, I explore what would be necessary to deter or contain a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran, and the consequences of speaking of either strategy without laying the groundwork for them.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

The late Peter Rodman said and wrote many wise things on a wide array of topics. One set of remarks that stands the test of time is the following presentation he delivered at a Washington Institute conference in 1992. The triggering event was Algeria and the debate over whether the United States was right to accede to the Algerian military’s cancellation of the second round of parliamentary elections that almost surely would have brought Islamists to power. But, as was usual with Peter, the context was much broader—it was how the United States should approach the rise of radical Islamist politics across Muslim societies. Peter’s message—no less appropriate today, a time when the United States looks approvingly at political rules that enable Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood to gain ground, than when uttered more than fifteen years ago—is poignant, moving, and timeless: “Our response to Islamic fundamentalism is not only a question of foreign policy, but of our faith in ourselves.”

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Remarks by Peter W. Rodman to the Soref Symposium on “Islam and the U.S.: Challenges for the Nineties,” Washington, April 27, 1992.

There is no kind of issue as agonizing to a policymaker as this one. People in government are used to dealing with tactics—the last cable, the next meeting. This kind of problem forces them to think not only about strategy but about basic questions of political philosophy. Thus they naturally turn to scholars for guidance. But they also cannot escape the responsibility to ask crude questions like: Does Islamic politics pose a threat to us? If so, what can we do about it?

More than a dozen years after the Iranian revolution, it is now clear that Islamic fundamentalism has spread to the Sunni world as well as the Shi’i, and is a growing factor in regions from North Africa to the West Bank to Afghanistan and Central Asia. It is filling the vacuum left by the discrediting of other outlets for popular frustration, pan-Arabism, nationalism, and socialism. On its face, it looks to replace those “isms” as the main strategic challenge to moderate or pro-Western governments in the region.

Ironically, as the end of the Cold War seemingly marks the final victory of liberal democracy in a 200-year struggle in European political thought, the West now finds itself challenged by an atavistic force hostile to all Western political thought.

Experienced scholars remind us that militant Islam reflects deep-seated social grievances and causes. They caution us against looking for a new “enemy” now that Communism is defeated. They suggest it is a historical phase that will probably have to be endured. This is wise advice. Yet there is little comfort for the policymaker in the idea that this new source of anti-American radicalism will play itself out in twenty years or so. We do have a right to defend our interests. In doing so, there are some guidelines a policymaker ought to follow.

• First, it is true that we should not initiate hostility where there is none, and we should coexist with whoever is willing to coexist with us. The burden of making our relationships hostile, if hostile they are to become, should rest with the Islamic forces themselves.
• Second, however, we cannot avoid taking Islamic ideology seriously. Where a radical anti-Western philosophy is coupled with concretely hostile policies, we have a problem. It is patronizing and even insulting to dismiss as mere rhetorical exuberance a philosophy one of whose central tenets is rejection of the West as corrupt and evil. Much of the Islamic world is indeed bitter and resentful at Western cultural influence, driven by what Bernard Lewis calls “the politics of rage.” Iran’s military buildup and support for terrorism make it still a strategic threat.
• Third, we must recognize that a political movement can come to power through democratic means and not itself be democratic. Constitutional democracy means, at a minimum, political pluralism, limitations on government power, guarantees of individual and minority rights, the possibility of alternating parties in office. No Islamic leader subscribes to this. Islamic parties, rather, seek (out of moral conviction) to make institutional changes that would negate the possibility of their removal once in power, not only through political action but by reshaping educational and cultural life. Such movements do not deserve enormous deference from us for their political virtue. There is an abject quality to much Western discussion of this issue, which reflects a collapse of belief in our own democratic values.
• Fourth, the way to encourage moderates and weaken radicals is not to try to find three guys in the leadership entourage to bribe with TOW missiles, but to demonstrate by our firm resistance that radical policies are counterproductive. Hostile foreign policy moves must be resisted and penalized. That’s the way to strengthen the hand of any moderates there may be.
• Fifth, Western fatalism as to the inevitability of the Islamic trend is a grave disservice to the millions of moderate, modern men and women in Muslim countries whose own reasons to fear fundamentalism are even greater than ours. Appeasement would sacrifice them as well as our own principles.
• Sixth, we should be wary of pushing friendly governments into risky experiments. It is not our job to accelerate the delegitimization of friendly governments that seem not to meet our standards, only to have them succeeded by something infinitely worse, as happened in Iran.

In sum, our response to Islamic fundamentalism is not only a question of foreign policy, but of our faith in ourselves. We should not be paralyzed by guilt as to our own presumed inadequacies or those of our friends as we face a movement whose most basic tenets reject the best of what the West has to offer. We may well have to coexist with it in a literal sense for a long period, but the notion of coexisting peacefully is more our concept than theirs. The rage against us is too great, as is the concrete threat of the nuclear, conventional and terrorist weapons it continues to marshal against us in the service of its rage.

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Remembrances of Peter Rodman are posted here.

Peter Rodman, a member of MESH, passed away on Saturday. I met Peter in 1980 in Santa Monica. I was very junior, he had already worked at the highest levels in government, and was just back from a long trip. But he immediately joined into a serious conversation and worked to include me in it. This seriousness and decency would be visible to me for the next 25 years. In Washington, no matter how high he rose, or what difficulties he faced, he kept the human qualities that made him admirable. He will be sorely missed.

Remembrances are invited from colleagues.