In the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller, a long-time State Department official and advisor to six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, details his apostasy from the “false religion of mideast peace”:
Like all religions, the peace process has developed a dogmatic creed, with immutable first principles. Over the last two decades, I wrote them hundreds of times to my bosses in the upper echelons of the State Department and the White House; they were a catechism we all could recite by heart. First, pursuit of a comprehensive peace was a core, if not the core, U.S. interest in the region, and achieving it offered the only sure way to protect U.S. interests; second, peace could be achieved, but only through a serious negotiating process based on trading land for peace; and third, only America could help the Arabs and Israelis bring that peace to fruition.
As befitting a religious doctrine, there was little nuance. And while not everyone became a convert (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush willfully pursued other Middle East priorities, though each would succumb at one point, if only with initiatives that reflected, to their critics, varying degrees of too little, too late), the exceptions have mostly proved the rule. The iron triangle that drove Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama to accord the Arab-Israeli issue such high priority has turned out to be both durable and bipartisan. Embraced by the high priests of the national security temple, including State Department veterans like myself, intelligence analysts, and most U.S. foreign-policy mandarins outside government, these tenets endured and prospered even while the realities on which they were based had begun to change. If this wasn’t the definition of real faith, one wonders what was.
Miller goes on at great length, detailing many of the failures that have led the peace process down a narrowing and increasingly barren path, only to conclude that the pessimism that he all but wholeheartedly embraces may be our best hope:
I remember attending Rabin’s funeral in 1995 in Jerusalem and trying to convince myself that America must and could save the peace process that had been so badly undermined by his assassination. I’m not a declinist. I still believe in the power of American diplomacy when it’s tough, smart, and fair. But the enthusiasm, fervor, and passion have given way to a much more sober view of what’s possible. Failure can do that.
The believers need to re-examine their faith, especially at a moment when America is so stretched and overextended. The United States needs to do what it can, including working with Israelis and Palestinians on negotiating core final-status issues (particularly on borders, where the gaps are narrowest), helping Palestinians develop their institutions, getting the Israelis to assist by allowing Palestinians to breathe economically and expand their authority, and keeping Gaza calm, even as it tries to relieve the desperation and sense of siege through economic assistance. But America should also be aware of what it cannot do, as much as what it can.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who probably didn’t know much about the Middle East, said it best: “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, then in half the creeds.” And maybe, if that leads to more realistic thinking when it comes to America’s view of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, that’s not such a bad thing.
Read the entire essay here; also be sure to read Stephen Walt’s well-argued and highly critical response (here).