The Diplomatic Myths and Illusions of the Middle East

Incorrect preconceptions and misguided conventional wisdom hamper American policy in the Middle East, Dennis Ross and David Makovsky write in Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East. Ross served as the chief negotiator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton and recently moved from a top State Department role to the National Security Council. Makovsky is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Peace and lectures at Johns Hopkins University. Makovsky recently spoke with U.S. News about foreign policy, Iran and the Obama administration. Excerpts:

What myths are you talking about?

There are two grand political schools of thought in American public life: the realist school and the neoconservative school. Both offer sweeping prescriptions from 50,000 feet. Neither of them does justice to a complex Middle East. The realist school thinks you can impose peace, and the neoconservatives think that you can impose democracy, and we tend to be skeptical, believing you can impose neither. There are [other] ideas also in the Middle East that have been perpetuated from generation to generation. A prime one is this idea of linkage, a belief of Arab leaders who come over to the United States and say if you only solve the Arab-Israel conflict, you will solve the whole Middle East.

Are they being disingenuous?

I tend to think they know better, but it's their way of trying to entice America by saying, "If you only solve this, you solve the whole Middle Eastern crisis." It's a way of trying to put the onus on America for solving this conflict because the benefits seem so tantalizing. It also has skewed American policy. [Americans] think the Arabs make their decision about America in a regional context, when our view is they basically make their decisions like every other country makes their decisions, based on their own individual national interests.

So would solving the conflict not make any difference?

I wouldn't say that. There is a value. This issue is evocative in the region. It is exploited by radicals. If there was progress, this would take a card out of their hands. But we don't think this would mean the end of al Qaeda or the end of these extremist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah. We're under no illusion that it will end extremism or it will solve the sectarian differences inside Iraq, just like it didn't stop the Iran-Iraq War and it won't stop Iran from wanting a nuclear bomb.

What's the problem with the realist view?

The realists tend to believe that the only thing that counts for America in the Middle East is oil. Everything else is expendable. Therefore, they have no problem imposing peace [between Israel and the Arabs] because Israel tends to be more of a strategic liability than an asset. They also tend to believe that you can negotiate with everyone and anybody. They tend to see the world through the prism of power, and therefore in their mind, if you would just give Hamas or Hezbollah a piece of the pie . . . you can buy them. The other problem here is that on Iran, the realists tend to believe that what worked with the Soviet Union in the Cold War will work with Iran: It doesn't matter if the mullahs have the weapons because deterrence will always work. The issue just isn't of Iran using a weapon but how it changes the balance of power in the Middle East. We think it'll trigger an arms race, that the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Turks—they'll all want nuclear weapons too. And we think there's a chance [Iran] might proliferate to nonstate actors like Hamas and Hezbollah.

How about the neoconservatives?

They believe that diplomacy is a waste of time and everything is about the use of force and regime change. Even if they are correct that engagement with Iran will not succeed, and we will see that, there could be advantages to America of engaging Iran, and failing that, we feel it will frame all our other options as being more legitimate. But they tend to pooh-pooh diplomacy as futile. And we think it has value even if it doesn't produce success. In the case of democratization, they draw too direct a line from Reagan and Eastern Europe to the Middle East. We think democratization is not just about an election. President [George W.] Bush's approach produced a Hamas victory. We think democratization is about building institutions—a more independent judiciary, women's rights, media rights, things that take more time. But if you want to use liberal means to get an illiberal result, you can do what the [Bush] administration did.

So what approach do you advocate on Iran ?

You want to engage, but you want to engage in a way that Iran should not be able—if this was a basketball game—they should not be able to play out the clock. They're going to want to talk to you forever. And while you're talking, they're spinning—spinning the centrifuges for nuclear fuel. We have to be careful that we play to our leverage, to our strength. Some wonder, with all the stirring protest movements in Iran, should we just wait a few years until things settle out. But we see the nuclear clock ticking. Ronald Reagan's approach in the '80s was right, which was negotiate the nukes with the Soviets but use human rights as a way of casting a spotlight on the legitimacy deficit of the regime. It will be easier now to persuade the allies of sanctions because this regime is obviously less legitimate.

Do you see this book's views informing the Obama administration?

It's still early days. It's hard to know. Part of the problem is that policymakers don't always make their policy assumptions very explicit. They just kind of gravitate to them. There are some people who say, "Oh, the heroes of some of these people are the Scowcrofts, Brzezinskis; they are gravitating toward the realists as a kind of counterforce to the neoconservatives." And it would be ironic if that was the case, given that the Democrats have always defined foreign policy not just as defining our interests but defining our values and trying to find an amalgamation of both.

Editor's note: Both Dennis Ross and David Makovsky have written news and commentary for U.S.News & World Report.

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