What America Should Not Do in the Middle East: Act Before It Gets the Software Right
The question of what the next administration should not do in the Middle East turns on one basic issue: before you change the hardware (the actual policies) try to get the software (the approach) right. For 16 years America has been failing: eight years of botched peacemaking under Bill Clinton; eight years of botched war making under George w. Bush. So for starters the software must borrow the diplomatic equivalent of the Hippocratic oath. Above all do no harm but beyond that avoid failure. Because of our flawed conceptions, we are neither admired, respected, let alone feared in a part of the world increasingly critical to our national interests.
So what are the elements of the new software? First see the world as it is not the way we want it to be. It’s not a land of diplomatic opportunity; it’s an investment trap in an angry and dysfunctional Middle East. We can’t fix it or run away from it. Let’s get real about what we can really do. If we’re lucky and tough, fair, and smart, we’ll have what America has had in the past – moments of success. We need to avoid over engaging because we think we know how the region behaves. Bill Clinton had no business going for a make or break deal at Camp David in July 2000; neither Arafat, Barak, let alone America were ready for it; and George w. bush had no business launching a war of choice without knowing what he was doing, without sufficient forces, or a proper assessment of the most likely reactions of the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds, let alone their neighbors. We are now trying to extricate ourselves from a trillion dollar social science project called Iraq. Maybe Iraq will emerge as a democratic polity; I hope so. But that’s really not the question. The issue is what will or has it cost us.
We also need to be clear about our priorities. Governing is about choosing. And we need to identify those priorities and then try to own the issues we want to try to affect. This means working with our friends, the Arabs and the Israelis, and others but not allowing their priorities to dominate ours, or to let others shape our tactics and strategies when it’s not in our interests. In short we need an American narrative about what constitutes our interests and how important the Middle East really is to the next administration and to the American people. The next president must begin to articulate that narrative and sell it early and often to build the base of support for whatever he wants to do. None of this guarantees success. But without these adjustments, particularly a policy that is tough, smart and fair, and which keeps our national interests paramount; we will certainly guarantee another string of failures.
