MANY AMERICANS TEND TO STEREOTYPE Muslims as uncivilized, unwashed, barbaric, and irrational people who command our attention only because some of their leaders have the good fortune to rule territory containing over two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves. They remember the three wars waged by the Arab states to try to exterminate Israel, the seizure of American hostages by the fanatical Ayatollah Khomeini, the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics by the Palestinian commandos from the Black September organization, the endless and senseless slaughter by rival Muslim militias in Lebanon, the bombing of civilian airliners by Syria and Libya, and the attempted annexation of Kuwait by a Hitler-like Saddam Hussein. No nations, not even Communist China, have a more negative image in the American consciousness than those of the Muslim world.
Some observers warn that Islam will become a monolithic and fanatical geopolitical force, that its growing population and significant financial power will pose a major challenge, and that the West will be forced to form a new alliance with Moscow to confront a hostile and aggressive Muslim world. This view holds that Islam and the West are antithetical and that Muslims view the world as two irreconcilable camps of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb—the house of Islam and the house of war where the forces of Islam have yet to prevail. It foresees the forces of resurgent Muslim fundamentalism orchestrating a region-wide revolution from Iran and other states and prompting the need for a comprehensive Western and Soviet policy of containment.
This nightmare scenario will never materialize. The Muslim world is too large and too diverse to march to the beat of a single drummer. Many mistakenly assume that the Muslim world is equivalent to the Middle East. But more than 850 million people—one-sixth of humanity—live in the thirty-seven countries of the Muslim world. These nations have 190 ethnic groups who speak hundreds of distinct languages and dialects and who belong to three main religious sects—the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Sufis—and dozens of minor ones. They cover a 10,000-mile-long swath of territory extending from Morocco to Yugoslavia, from Turkey to Pakistan, from the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union to the tropics of Indonesia. More Muslims live in China than on the Arabian peninsula, and more live in Indonesia than in the entire Middle East. The former Soviet Union, with over 50 million Muslims, has more than any Middle Eastern country except Turkey. At current birth rates, there will be more Muslims than Russians in the former Soviet Union in the next century.
Only two common elements exist in the Muslim world: the faith of Islam and the problems of political turbulence. Islam is not only a religion but also the foundation of a major civilization. We speak of the “Muslim world” as a single entity not because of any Islamic politburo guiding its policies but because individual nations share common political and cultural currents with the entire Muslim civilization. The same political rhythms are played throughout the Muslim world, regardless of the differences between the individual countries. Just as all Western countries have parties that advocate the free market, the welfare state, and socialism, the Islamic countries have groups that subscribe to the main political currents of the Muslim world—fundamentalism, radicalism, and modernism. This commonalty of faith and politics breeds a loose but real solidarity: when a major event occurs in one part of the Muslim world, it inevitably reverberates in the others.
The rivalries in the Muslim world have made it a caldron of conflict. The short list of these conflicts includes Morocco versus Algeria; Libya versus Algeria; Libya versus Chad; the Arab world against Israel; Jordan versus Saudi Arabia; Syria versus Jordan; Syria versus Lebanon; Saudi Arabia versus the small Gulf states; Saudi Arabia versus Yemen; Iraq versus Syria; Iraq versus Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; Iraq versus Iran; the Arab Gulf states versus Iran; Pakistan versus Afghanistan; India versus Pakistan and Bangladesh; and Indonesia versus Malaysia and New Guinea. Since many countries are artificial composites of several nations or ethnic groups, potential internal strife pervades the region. Many states in the Muslim world are future Lebanons waiting to happen.
Demographic, economic, and political trends make conflict increasingly inevitable. The global population explosion centers in the Muslim world. The population of the Middle East alone will double by the year 2010. At the same time, the economies of the region will not grow sufficiently to prevent a drop in living standards, thereby undercutting the meager ability of governments to buy off threats to stability and peace. In many areas, basic resources—such as water—will become ever more scarce, prompting disputes or even wars over their control. National borders, many of which are artificial creations of the European colonial powers, have increasingly been challenged, both between countries and from minorities within countries. Brittle political regimes, mostly authoritarian dictatorships or traditional monarchies, depend on their monopoly of force rather than support of their people to stay in power. Political liberalization has led more often to fragmentation than to democracy.
All of these conflicts and problems have unfolded in the most militarized region of the underdeveloped world. In 1990, the countries of the Muslim world spent a total of over 8 percent of their GNP on the military, while the Western figure was less than 5 percent. Iraq allocated over 8 percent of its GNP to the military; Syria, 11 percent; Saudi Arabia, 17 percent; Egypt, 8 percent; and Pakistan, 7 percent. More ominously, the area has become the focal point of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. Some of its most aggressive states—Iraq, Syria, and Libya—already have the capacity to build chemical weapons. Of the fifteen developing countries armed with ballistic missiles, nine are part of the Muslim world. Iraq and Pakistan have made great strides toward developing their own nuclear weapons, and Algeria has embarked on a similar program. The two most perilous nuclear flash points—Israel versus its Arab neighbors and Pakistan versus India—involve countries of the Muslim world.
I have visited thirteen of the thirty-seven Muslim countries over the past thirty-eight years—Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, and Syria. I have also traveled to the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Their leaders and people are proud of their heritage. Most of them have staunchly opposed communism. Whittaker Chambers once observed, “Communism is never stronger than the failure of other faiths.” Islam has stood up to that test in many ways better than Christianity has. Except for the former South Yemen, Soviet influence in the Muslim world was based not on the appeal of Communist ideas but on the persuasive power of Soviet arms sales to such countries as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia, and to Egypt before 1973. More often, religious opposition to the ideology of communism was an insurmountable obstacle to Soviet expansionism in the Muslim world.
Few Americans are aware of the rich heritage of the Islamic world. They remember only that the sword of Muhammad and his followers advanced the Muslim faith into Asia, Africa, and even Europe and look condescendingly on the religious wars of the region. They overlook the fact that Islam has no doctrine of terrorism and that only three centuries have passed since Christians engaged in religious wars in Europe.
While Europe languished in the Middle Ages, the Islamic civilization enjoyed its golden age. The Muslim world made enormous contributions to science, medicine, and philosophy. In his book The Age of Faith, Will Durant observed that key advances in virtually all fields were achieved by Muslims in this period. Avicenna was the greatest writer on medicine, al-Razi the greatest physician, al-Biruni the greatest geographer, al-Haitham the greatest optician, Jabir the greatest chemist, and Averroës one of the greatest philosophers. Arab scholars were instrumental in developing the scientific method. As Durant commented, “When Roger Bacon proclaimed that method to Europe, five hundred years after Jabir, he owed his illumination to the Moors of Spain, whose light had come from the Moslem East.” When the great figures of the European Renaissance pushed forward the frontier of knowledge, they saw further because they stood on the shoulders of the giants of the Muslim world.
Those achievements represent what the Muslim world has been in the past. They also point to what it could become in the future, if the deadly cycles of war and political instability can be arrested. We should adopt policies to channel the long-term historical evolution of the Muslim world in constructive directions. At the same time, we should tackle the immediate problems—such as Persian Gulf security and the Arab-Israeli conflict—that threaten to trigger further bloodshed. Unless we succeed in meeting these challenges, the cradle of civilization could become its grave.
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The Muslim world is a vital civilization searching for its historical identity. In the 1950s and 1960s, it escaped the bonds of colonialism. It subsequently drove down the ideological blind alleys of nonalignment, pan-Arabism, and reactionary fundamentalism. In the 1990s and beyond, these countries will renew the search for their place in the world. The United States needs an active policy to affect that evolution in constructive ways.
The greatest stumbling block to developing such policies has been the tendency to lump all these countries into one category. Many Americans, weary of the endless array of fanatics chanting anti-Western slogans in the streets, tend to view all Muslim nations as adversaries. The Muslim faith represents a thread of unity that binds the politics of these countries together, but it does not weave them into a cohesive bloc. The policies of each country in the Muslim world have less to do with Islam than with how Islam has interacted with its national culture and traditions.
Some political solidarity does exist among Muslim nations. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Moscow’s relations with Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia chilled, and those with states such as Saudi Arabia went into the deep freeze. The perception that the United States backs Israel uncritically—providing billions of dollars in aid but not demanding action on the Palestinian issue—has been a major impediment to closer U.S. ties with all Muslim countries. Generally, however, while Islam provides these nations with a common worldview, it does not come with a ready-made political platform.
Islam is not monolithic politically. Every great faith is susceptible to multiple interpretations that support multiple political approaches or orientations. In the West, Christianity once blessed monarchies through the belief in the divine right of kings and now provides a key pillar of democratic thought through the belief in the fundamental dignity of the individual. The reinterpretation of the Christian political tradition accompanied the transformation of the dominant form of Western government. Islam is also susceptible to varied interpretations and evolutionary change, as made evident by the fact that such disparate figures as Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Anwar Sadat, and Zia ul-Haq have all claimed its mandate for their rule.
To operate in the Muslim world, U.S. policymakers must maneuver within a snake pit of venomous ideological conflicts and national rivalries. Even among fundamentalists, doctrinal clashes are sharp and sometimes violent. In tiny Lebanon, fundamentalist terrorists were unified only in the loosest sense, with virtually every cell differing with the others over doctrine. We should recognize that the Muslim world’s diverse political movements fall within three basic currents of thought:
Fundamentalism. Painfully familiar televised images—blind-folded U.S. hostages paraded before our embassy in Teheran, 241 Marines killed in the truck bombing of their barracks in Beirut, and the ghostly figures of Americans kidnapped and held prisoner in southern Lebanon—sum up the political thrust of extreme Islamic fundamentalists on the world scene. They are motivated by a consuming hatred of the West and a determination to restore the superiority of Islamic civilization by resuscitating the past. They seek to impose the shari‘a, the code of law based on the Koran that recognizes no separation of church and state. Though they look to the past as a guide for the future, they are not conservatives but revolutionaries. Before they build the new, they intend to destroy the old.
Radicalism. Dictators and one-party states—legitimized by radical nationalistic ideologies—control several of the countries in the Muslim world. Some, such as Libya’s Qaddafi, resemble Mussolini’s dictatorship. Others, such as Syria’s Hafiz Assad and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, command brutal totalitarian regimes that would have made Stalin proud. Just as hostile to the West as the fundamentalists, the radicals trade on their opposition to “imperialism” to mobilize support among the people and often made common cause with the Soviet Union to undermine the United States and its allies. Their power rests not on the charisma of their leaders, but on the ruthless efficiency of their police and security apparatus. In the town of Hama in 1982, for example, Assad brutally slaughtered twenty thousand men, women, and children who dared to oppose his rule.
Modernism. Most prominent but least visible, the modernist political current seeks to integrate the countries of the Muslim world into the modern world, both economically and politically. Tolerance marks the key thrust of modernist Islam, with the nations of the West not condemned as “unbelievers” but embraced as other peoples “of the book.” Some modernist states, such as Turkey and Pakistan, are democracies. Others, such as Egypt and Indonesia, are relatively open societies but fall short of Western democratic standards. The ballot box, however, is the recognized source of political legitimacy. The central message of modernist political leaders is that their countries must combine the best of the West with their own nations’ cultures and social mores.
We should never equate the actions of Islamic extremists with the faith of Islam. The extreme fundamentalists are highly visible, but their electoral appeal is weak. Though their numbers have grown in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Algeria in recent years, they have taken power only in Iran, where they have been discredited by a decade of thuggery and pointless carnage in the Iran-Iraq war. Fundamentalists can fill the streets in the Muslim world with vocal demonstrators, but they cannot yet take power through the polls.
The people of the Muslim world are candidates for revolution. They are young: over 60 percent are under twenty-five years of age. They are poor: their average per capita income, including the oil-rich Gulf states, is only $1,600 a year compared with $21,000 in the United States. Most have no voice in their government: only 27 percent of the people in the Muslim world live in democratic countries. Muslim fundamentalists appeal to the people less for what they stand for than for what they stand against—the status quo, which provides no relief from the present and no hope for the future, and the empty materialist ideologies of Soviet communism and Western consumerism.
We should support the modernists in the Muslim world, in their interest and in ours. They need to give their people a positive alternative to the ideologies of extreme fundamentalism and radical secularism. The refusal of the Kuwaiti royal family to adopt meaningful democratic reforms after the liberation of their country from Saddam Hussein is a shocking example of the insensitivity of too many nonelected authoritarian rulers in the Muslim world. In supporting a friendly but nondemocratic ruler, we should make it clear that we do not support government systems that give no voice to the people over whom they rule.
In charting our course, we must know who are our friends and who are our enemies. Though this might sound like a truism, U.S. policymakers have repeatedly honored this basic principle in the breach. Trading arms for hostages with the extreme fundamentalist regime in Iran and selling billions of dollars of arms to the radical leaders of Iraq are just two recent examples of the United States viewing its sworn enemies through rose-colored glasses. Those who would praise Syria and Iran for winning the release of some Western hostages in Lebanon would repeat the error. You do not praise a kidnapper for releasing his captives. Damascus and Teheran should not derive any benefits for doing today what they should have done seven years ago. It is unlikely that the Assads, Rafsanjanis, and Qaddafis of the Islamic world will choose to become Muslim Havels.
The key to a U.S. policy of discriminating engagement is to undertake strategic cooperation only with modernist regimes and to limit our ties with extreme fundamentalist and radical regimes to tactical cooperation. Because we share common goals with the modernists, our cooperation should cover the full range of economic and security issues. Because our values and interests clash with those of the extreme fundamentalists and radicals, our links with them should not move beyond the requirements of the moment. We should work with them when their power earns them a place at the table, but we should not enter a wide-ranging partnership with them. We should not completely isolate the radicals and fundamentalists through trade embargoes and similar policies, but we should not naively try to search out “moderates” in regimes such as Iran’s or to court leaders such as Iraq’s by taking no position on their border disputes with their neighbors. While we should not cut them off, we should certainly not build them up. We should adopt a hardheaded policy of quid pro quo cooperation on a case-by-case basis.
Many observers in retrospect condemn U.S. policy during the Iran-Iraq war. They express shock that we alternately helped one side and then the other depending on the tide of battle. They are only partly right. Our interests demanded that neither side emerge as a clear-cut victor, and the Reagan administration acted correctly in playing both sides. In allowing arms sales to Iraq, the mistake was to exceed the amounts needed to check Iran’s offensive capabilities, thereby enabling Saddam Hussein to become a military menace after the war. We should maintain a deliberate distance when engaging in unavoidable tactical cooperation with such regimes. The hard lesson of our experience with Iraq is that today’s tacit friend can become tomorrow’s mortal enemy. In the case of Saddam Hussein, it cost $100 billion and 148 American lives to reverse the error.
Today, many analysts contend that a “window of opportunity” exists to developing cooperative relations with President Assad of Syria. Prudence argues otherwise. We should have no illusions in dealing with Assad. He did not join the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq because of a change of heart. Instead, he saw the chance to knock his rival, Saddam Hussein, out of contention for the title of champion of the radical Arab world. Syria also won a free hand in Lebanon and cashed in with a $3-billion aid package from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. We must remember that Assad still seeks to advance his geopolitical goals through military might and remains one of the principal supporters of international terrorism.
To affect the historical evolution of the Muslim world, we should not fashion a grand “Muslimpolitik” that applies one policy to all these countries. Instead, we should identify key pivot points for our presence. We should cultivate partnerships with select modernist countries that share common interests or parallel agendas and that carry real weight in the region. By working with them on political and security issues and by providing advice and assistance to further their economic development, their gradual emergence as success stories within the Muslim world will enhance the prospects for modernist forces throughout the region. Over one or two decades, they could become economic and political magnets, poles of attraction moving the entire region in a positive direction through peaceful change.
Four countries stand out as the most logical partners with which to pursue this approach:
—Turkey—the geographic and cultural bridge connecting the Muslim and Western worlds—has had a working democratic government for nine years and provides more troops for NATO than any other member of the alliance. We should prod our European allies to admit Turkey into the European Community and the Western European Union. At the same time, we should encourage Turkey to take advantage of its historical and cultural ties to become more involved economically and politically in the Middle East. If the Arab-Israeli peace process moves forward, the issue of regional water supplies will move to the top of the agenda. In cooperation with the United States, Turkey, a water-rich country, could ease the problems of Israel, Syria, and other water-poor countries in the area through new aqueducts.
—Pakistan—the only major U.S. strategic partner situated between Turkey and Japan—has cooperated with the United States in recent decades to support the Afghan resistance, as well as to facilitate the rapprochement with China in 1972. Though Islamabad’s policies sometimes clash with ours—especially regarding nuclear proliferation—no other country has shown comparable courage in serving as a frontline state against Soviet aggression. In order to avoid a potential nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, we should urge New Delhi to end the massive violations of human rights by its security forces in the province and to negotiate an autonomy agreement with Kashmiri leaders. After winning democratic elections in 1990, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif moved Pakistan decisively toward free-market reforms, including lower tax rates, denationalization, and deregulation. As Islamabad implements these reforms, we should encourage U.S. businesses to invest in Pakistan, thereby reinforcing the process of reform.
—Egypt—whose population represents 35 percent of the Arab world—remains the only Arab state to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. Ten years after the Camp David accords resulted in its expulsion from the Arab League, Cairo has reemerged as its natural leader. In advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process, we should form a united front with the Egyptians, who have earned a great deal of political capital through their actions in the Persian Gulf crisis. Also, as a result of the debt cancellations and aid packages Egypt received during the Gulf War, Cairo has a critical but momentary opportunity to set its economy on a free-market course without the danger of large-scale domestic unrest. We should help the Egyptian leaders adopt the right reforms so that future aid will feed Egypt’s people, not its voracious bureaucracy.
—Indonesia—a 2,000-mile-long archipelago with the fifth-largest population in the world—has begun to make important strides economically, though it continues to be ruled by an authoritarian regime. Since President Suharto took power in 1967, Indonesia’s per capita income has risen from $50 to $500 today. He adopted successful programs to slow his country’s explosive population growth. A pioneer in free-market reforms in the Muslim world, Indonesia has opened its markets, lowered tariffs, and cut bureaucratic red tape. One of the world’s largest oil exporters, Indonesia’s earnings from nonoil exports exceeded those from oil exports by a two-to-one ratio by 1991. In addition, it has not defaulted on or rescheduled any loans from the United States or international lenders since 1967. This fiscal responsibility and commitment to free-market principles should be rewarded with a close U.S. partnership.
This does not mean that we should place on the back burner our relations with other modernist and pro-Western regimes. King Hassan, one of the Muslim world’s most enlightened rulers, has instituted progressive policies in Morocco and has worked closely with the United States on strategic issues. The Saudi monarchy has also forged important ties with the West, despite its authoritarian domestic system. But neither of these states represent viable pivot points. They lack the political weight to tip the evolution of the Muslim world in one direction or another.
Our policy of selective partnerships will not yield immediate success, but over a generation the United States could have a profound—though unintrusive—effect on the historical evolution of the Muslim world. Some extreme fundamentalist and radical regimes, particularly Iran and Syria, have recently entered severe economic downturns. Though their leaders could hold on to power through repression, they might have to strike a new bargain with their people because they lack the resources to buy social peace. If internal pressures erupt, these countries might look elsewhere for direction. If modernist states have succeeded, other nations will be more likely to see them as models.
At the same time, we must not embrace the modernist states so tightly that our relationship becomes a target for their domestic critics. Because the memories of colonialism in much of the Muslim world make Western influence a sensitive issue, our special relationship must not be patronizing. We should address modernist leaders not as errand boys, but as full and equal partners. The quickest way to nail their coffins shut would be to create the impression that they are merely convenient mouthpieces for the West.
Americans respond with outrage and confusion when a friendly foreign government is forced by domestic politics to oppose our policies. When Mexico votes against us in the United Nations, for example, most Americans decry its actions as irresponsible. But despite these votes—which are typically dictated by domestic opinion—the Mexicans remain valued and important U.S. partners. Another recurring example can be found in our sometimes difficult relationship with the Philippines. On my visit to the Philippines in 1953, I expressed concerns to my host about reports of a speech by a prominent Filipino senator attacking U.S. foreign policy. My host reassured me that the senator was very pro-American. When I responded that he had a strange way of showing it, my host answered, “You don’t understand Filipino politics. The recipe for success in the Philippines is to give the Americans hell and pray that they don’t go away.” Regardless of the rhetoric in its domestic debates, the Philippines has been a crucial U.S. friend ever since its independence in 1946.
We must also accept the fact that at times it does not serve our interests for our friends in the Muslim world to support our positions on issues that are highly sensitive politically in their countries. When the United States bombed Libya in April 1986 in retaliation for terrorist attacks against American servicemen, many leaders in the region denounced us in public but cheered us in private. We should learn to look the other way when circumstances force our friends to give lip service to our foes.
The vital importance of developing special relationships in the Muslim world was evident during the Persian Gulf War. Troops from six Muslim nations—including Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, and even the moderate elements of the Afghan resistance—joined the U.S.-led coalition. Though their contribution may have been minimal militarily, it was critical politically.
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The Muslim world poses one of the greatest challenges to U.S. foreign policy in the twenty-first century. As the cold war has waned, traditional rivalries frozen for forty-five years have begun to thaw. In a region where virtually every neighbor is at best a rival and at worst an enemy, potential instability poses a major threat to our interests. In two key zones of conflict—the Persian Gulf and the Arab-Israeli dispute—the need for U.S. action has become particularly pressing.
The victory in the Persian Gulf War has spawned dozens of easy recipes for enhancing the security of the region. If the United States is to forge an effective policy to strengthen Gulf security, it must recognize that the inherent complexity of the politics of the Muslim world will likely frustrate comprehensive solutions. Our policy must first avoid three fatal illusions:
The illusion of a comprehensive security framework. Many academics argue that the Middle East needs a security pact. Some want to involve the United Nations, while others want to create an organization patterned on NATO or CSCE. But the deserts of the Middle East are littered with the skeletons of failed regional security arrangements:
—In 1950, Britain, France, and the United States issued the Tripartite Declaration, which provided unilateral guarantees of Middle East borders in return for pledges of nonaggression. The system collapsed when Britain and France used force to seize the Suez Canal in 1956.
—In 1951, Britain and the United States formed the Middle East Command to coordinate the efforts of all powers inside and outside the region who wished to strengthen its defenses. It failed after proving too unwieldy to work.
—In 1951, the West European powers and the United States launched the Middle East Defense Organization to develop defense plans for the region and to enforce limits on outside arms sales. It soon fell into disuse.
—In 1955, Britain, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and later the United States formed the Baghdad Pact to provide regional security. Four years later, all of these nations, with the exception of Iraq, revamped the organization, changing its name to the Central Treaty Organization. Both pacts fell victim to anti-Western coups in some member countries and languished in neglect.
—In 1957, the Eisenhower Doctrine announced that the United States would use armed force if necessary to protect the countries of the Persian Gulf from “armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.” Though useful, the doctrine could not cope with the rise of threats of aggression by local powers.
—In 1980, the Carter Doctrine declared the Persian Gulf to be a “vital” U.S. interest and that any attempt by an outside power to seize it would be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. Since the United States lacked the forces required to back up its words, the doctrine represented a hollow warning at the time.
—In 1981, the Reagan administration sought to organize a “strategic consensus” in the Middle East in order to blunt the threat of Soviet expansionism. It failed because countries considered the threat from outside the region insignificant compared to threats from within the region.
The absence of stable regimes in key countries, the dearth of shared values, and the lack of a perceived common threat render the current fascination with comprehensive security systems for the Persian Gulf futile. Any such organization—which would inevitably grant veto authority over collective actions to every member—would short-circuit when local conflicts or even internal threats overloaded its capacity to respond. In the Muslim world, security structures sometimes serve as useful forums for discussion, but the rubber meets the road only through concrete arrangements made at the bilateral level.
The illusion of regional arms control. America’s obsession with arms control flowered fully in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. Some analysts advocated a moratorium on arms sales to the Middle East. Others promoted the idea of an arms sellers’ cartel to manage the flow of weapons into the region. Still others proposed strict restrictions on exports of technology related to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons or to ballistic missiles. A few even wanted to craft arms control treaties that would make the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.
There are four reasons why conventional arms control proposals are inadvisable and unfeasible. First, a moratorium on arms sales would impede the ability of all states in the region—both friendly and hostile—to equip themselves to meet their legitimate defense requirements. Second, since most Middle East countries face multiple potential threats and varied terrain, no cookbook solution can create the equivalent of the CFE treaty or enable a cartel to determine the appropriate arms levels for each state. Third, the economic incentives for arms exporters—not only the former Soviet Union but also other powers such as China, Brazil, and North Korea—would soon lead to evasions or violations of agreed-upon limits. Fourth, conventional arms control, especially if imposed on the region by outside powers, would likely have the perverse effect of prompting countries to develop weapons of mass destruction as force equalizers.
Instead of comprehensive approaches, the United States should pursue a policy of discriminatory arms control that seeks to restrict arms flows only to states, such as Syria and Iraq, that pose threats to their neighbors. Arms sales to defensive powers, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, enhance rather than diminish regional security. Top priority should go to restricting the availability of nuclear and ballistic-missile technologies. The Convention for the Limitation of the Spread of Missile Technology represents a good first step. We should not, however, delude ourselves about how much it can achieve. It can slow down but not stop the diffusion of weapons technologies. Maintaining the balance of military power remains the best formula for Middle East security, and selling arms represents an indispensable instrument in preserving that balance.
The illusion of redistributing regional wealth. As soon as the guns fell silent in the Persian Gulf War, Western policymakers began calling for share-the-wealth schemes that would transfer billions of dollars from the oil-rich Arab states to the poorer Arab countries. The Gulf Cooperation Council quickly fell into line, endorsing a proposed $10-billion regional development fund. Unfortunately, the past history of such efforts provides few reasons for high hopes. Their focus has traditionally been political patronage rather than economic development. Funds, dispersed through government-to-government aid programs, have usually been spent without sound economic rationales, subsidizing staterun enterprises or wasteful infrastructure projects.
The problem of rich versus poor in the Arab world has less to do with the distribution of oil revenues than with the overall poverty of the region. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states appear rich only because of their tiny combined population of 20 million. The perception that these states have endless cash reserves is based on the image of jet-setting Arab princes, not the reality of their significant but not limitless wealth. The entire Saudi GNP—$82 billion—represents less than what the U.S. government spends on Medicare in a single year. Moreover, even if all oil revenues were redistributed equally among all Arabs, the region’s per capita income would reach only $2,300, compared with $20,000 in Western Europe. The answer to the problem of Middle East poverty lies in free-market economic development rather than Robin Hood-like money grabs or handouts that would permanently consign the poorer nations to an international welfare role.
There is no single magical solution to the security dilemmas of the Persian Gulf. Unless Saddam Hussein’s lieutenants overthrow him, the military threat to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will remain acute. Because the Persian Gulf possesses 65 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves—and because it is projected to be the only source of significant exportable oil in the world for the next twenty-five years—we have no choice but to remain engaged in the area.
Since World War II, the Soviet Union has sought to stake a geopolitical claim to the Persian Gulf. It tried to carve off parts of Iran in 1946 and established close relations with Iraq after Arab radicals took power in 1958. It sought to hijack the fundamentalist revolution in Iran in 1979 by infiltrating Communists into its government, a plot that might have worked if the chief of the KGB residence in Teheran had not defected to the West. In the Persian Gulf War, the Soviets faced a dilemma. Gorbachev had to decide if supporting the principal pillar of Soviet regional influence, Iraq, was worth forfeiting any chance for large-scale economic assistance from the West. Moscow’s internal crisis gave Gorbachev no viable alternative to reluctantly acquiescing to the U.S. position at least in the short run. One of our top priorities in working with the new noncommunist leaders in the former Soviet Union should be to convince them that their long-term interests will be served by supporting us unequivocally in our search for peace in the Middle East.
In the Gulf War, the U.S.-led coalition scored a knockdown but not a knockout. We won round one, but Saddam Hussein’s strategy is to go the distance. Because he knows that he cannot fight us toe-to-toe, Saddam will try to win on points by staying in power, recovering gradually, retaining his weapons of mass destruction, and waiting for the United States to lose patience and throw in the towel. While we should allow Iraq to purchase some humanitarian supplies, we must keep the sanctions in place as long as he remains in power. We should insist that Iraq fully comply with the U.N. resolutions calling for the destruction of its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons facilities. If Saddam Hussein persists in playing cat and mouse with U.N. officials, we should bomb sites suspected of containing equipment and material related to producing weapons of mass destruction.
We should view with skepticism Iran’s expressed interest in closer ties to the West. While a moderate Iran would help stabilize the region, the extreme fundamentalists clearly want Teheran to reclaim the throne as the dominant regional power. Those who blame the United States for the poor relations with Iran miss the mark. Iran has continued to finance international terrorist networks that target the United States, including those that bombed the U.S. embassy and the Marine barracks in Lebanon in October 1983 and that downed Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988. Its extreme fundamentalist regime, which has used its embassies to coordinate anti-Western terrorist groups, has been linked to more than four hundred terrorist incidents worldwide. Moreover, Iran played a spoiler role in the Persian Gulf War, pitting each side against the other until Iraq’s fate had been clearly sealed.
As President, I authored what was called the Nixon Doctrine. It stipulated that we would help train and supply the forces of friendly developing countries combating internal threats instigated by foreign foes but that we would intervene with our own forces only when our friends were threatened by an external enemy that overwhelmed their capacity to respond. While some interpreted this doctrine as an indication that the United States was getting out of the underdeveloped world, it actually outlined the only sound basis for a sustained U.S. engagement in the third world as a whole and in the Persian Gulf in particular.
Until the fall of the shah in 1979, the United States could protect its interests through Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two pillars of our Gulf policy for more than a decade. With a hostile regime in Teheran after 1979, we lacked a major regional player who could act as a surrogate and therefore had to take steps to ensure our ability to protect vital Western interests. President Carter concluded initial agreements to allow prepositioning of U.S. equipment and supplies in regional states and created the Rapid Deployment Force, which later became the U.S. Central Command. President Reagan followed up with extensive, low-profile cooperation in the Gulf to establish the infrastructure needed to support a major U.S. intervention to defend Saudi Arabia and the southern Gulf. Without these facilities, Operation Desert Shield/Storm would have become a modern-day Gallipoli.
The key to Gulf security is sturdy U.S. bilateral military ties in support of cooperative defense efforts among the moderate Arab states. While many have called for institutionalizing U.S. security relations and even for the establishment of a new Central Command headquarters in a Persian Gulf country, the same results can be achieved without a high-profile U.S. presence. We should use our influence behind the scenes to ensure that Egypt and other Muslim countries work out multilateral arrangements to bolster the defense of the weaker Gulf states. We should also negotiate informal agreements for the prepositioning of equipment and supplies for any potential future U.S. intervention. Maintaining too high a profile would undercut our objectives. We would fatally undermine our friends and our interests if we appear to treat the Persian Gulf as our own protectorate. Our presence, rather than the threat posed by our adversaries, would become the central issue for our friends.
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Our two immediate interests in the Middle East—oil and Israel—are not always fully compatible. On the one hand, our commitment to Israel has sometimes carried a high price in terms of our access to Persian Gulf oil at free-market prices, as the 1973 Arab oil embargo demonstrated. On the other hand, our commitment to the security of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states has at times complicated relations with Israel. While the decision to sell Awacs early-warning aircraft to the Saudis in 1982 prompted a bitter fight with supporters of Israel in Congress, those arms sales—and other informal security cooperation—proved indispensable during Operation Desert Shield/Storm.
Our interests require a difficult geopolitical calculus: we must both ensure the survival of Israel and work with moderate Arab states to enhance the security of the Persian Gulf. The Arab-Israeli conflict represents a central obstacle. For forty-five years, both sides have poured endless resources into arms to destroy each other rather than investing in their economies to improve the welfare of their citizens. They have waged five wars—in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982—and engaged in countless military skirmishes. This conflict, exacerbated but not created by the cold war, has repeatedly pitted our key interests against each other. The only way we can square the circle is to press forward actively with the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Time has never been on the side of peace in the Middle East. An Arab-Israeli war has broken out in every decade of the postwar period because a political stalemate was permitted to develop during peacetime. The peace process is not a panacea. But it is critical to the U.S. position in the Muslim world. Although many exaggerated the degree to which the U.S. led victory in the Persian Gulf would enhance our diplomatic influence in the region, President Bush’s skillful leadership has opened an opportunity for progress. While still not hopeful, the situation at least is no longer hopeless.
Our commitment to the survival and security of Israel runs deep. We are not formal allies, but we are bound together by something much stronger than a piece of paper: a moral commitment. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Israel is not a strategic interest of the United States. Our cooperation in intelligence sharing and military prepositioning and exercises is helpful but not vital. While Israel’s armed forces have brilliantly proven themselves on the battlefield, the Persian Gulf War—where they contributed not by participating in but by staying out of the conflict—proved their limited utility in the most important regional contingencies. Our commitment to Israel stems from the legacy of World War II and from our moral and ideological interest in ensuring the survival of embattled democracies. No American President or Congress will ever allow the destruction of the state of Israel.
Many supporters of Israel argue that the United States should back to the hilt the hard-line positions of the current Likud government. They insist that Israel cannot return to the Arabs any of the occupied territories—the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights—without endangering its security. Others even endorse the Likud leaders’ biblically based claim that the West Bank—which they call Judea and Samaria—belongs historically to Israel. All advocate support for Israel’s adamant refusal to talk with Palestinians linked with the PLO, to enter negotiations about the final status of the occupied lands, and even to contemplate any settlement that would reverse the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
While we are right to support Israel’s survival and security, we would be wrong to back the current Israeli government’s extreme demands. Without engaging in “moral equivalency” between offensive and defensive states, we should understand how the occupied territories came into Israel’s possession through the 1967 war. Aggressive military moves by Arab states created the crisis—perhaps even made the war inevitable—but Israel launched the first attacks. Former prime minister Menachem Begin said in August 1982, “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” Because the war resulted from actions by both sides, the subsequent U.N. Security Council resolutions—242 and 338—demanded not unilateral concessions, but bilateral trade-offs of land for peace.
There are three reasons why we must press forward with the peace process based on the land-for-peace formula. First, the Arab-Israeli conflict totally distorts our foreign aid budget. In 1991, the 60 million people of Israel and Egypt received more than 40 percent of the almost $15 billion the United States allocated to foreign aid, while the over 4 billion people in the rest of the underdeveloped world competed for the leftovers. Since the mid-1970s, the United States has given Israel $49 billion in direct and indirect foreign aid. In addition, Israel received $16.4 billion in loans between 1974 and 1989 that were subsequently converted into grants. To balance the Middle East equation, the United States has provided Egypt with $28 billion in foreign aid between 1980 and 1991. Besides having underwritten large portions of the Israeli and Egyptian defense budgets, we also canceled $6.8 billion of debt that Cairo could never hope to repay. By channeling such a disproportionate amount of assistance into coping with the Arab-Israeli conflict, we lack sufficient money to help the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, the struggling economies in Latin America, and the destitute peoples of Africa and South Asia.
Second, the Arab-Israeli conflict poisons our relations with the Muslim world and undercuts our ability to cooperate with countries with modernist, pro-Western leaders. Israel’s occupation of Arab lands—and particularly its increasingly harsh treatment of the Palestinians—polarizes and radicalizes the Muslim world. It undermines the moderates, such as President Mubarak of Egypt. All Muslim leaders support the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and view the harassment of Israeli occupation forces in the so-called intifada as legitimate armed resistance, not terrorism. While many may criticize the leadership of the PLO, especially after its shameless support for Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, they have not backed away from the Palestinian cause and will never drop it from the agenda. President Sadat could not have signed the Camp David accords without Israel’s commitment to establish “transitional arrangements for the West Bank and Gaza for a period not to exceed five years.” Under the agreement, Palestinians were to receive local autonomy as soon as arrangements could be worked out, with negotiations over the final status of the territories to start within three years. With that timetable, the entire process should have been concluded in 1984. Nothing has happened. To put it bluntly, Israel stonewalled the United States and Egypt.
Third, more than any other flash point, the Arab-Israeli conflict poses the danger of dragging the United States into a war involving the use of nuclear weapons. While any future conflict between India and Pakistan could cross the nuclear threshold, the likelihood of direct U.S. involvement remains low. But we would almost certainly become engaged in a future Middle East conflict. I vividly recall a meeting with legislative leaders during the 1973 Middle East war. In the opening rounds of the conflict, the tide of battle had run against Israel. Meanwhile, the Soviets had initiated a massive airlift to Egypt and Syria. When a congressman asked whether the United States would take measures to counter Moscow’s actions, I flatly answered, “No American President will ever let Israel go down the tube.” I subsequently ordered a massive airlift to prevent Israel’s defeat and later put U.S. nuclear forces on alert to forestall a threatened unilateral Soviet intervention in the region. If war comes, the U.S. commitment to Israel will inevitably mean our direct or indirect involvement. Particularly since Israel has built nuclear weapons and its Arab adversaries possess chemical and biological arms, the United States cannot afford to let the peace process languish.
Both American and Israeli interests would be best served by a settlement based on land for peace. If Israel retains the occupied territories, it will corrupt its moral cause. One of Israel’s founders and a leader whom John Foster Dulles once described as an “Old Testament prophet,” David Ben-Gurion, rightly observed that the “extremists” who advocated the absorption of Arab lands would deprive Israel of its mission: “If they succeed, Israel will be neither Jewish nor democratic. The Arabs will outnumber us, and undemocratic, repressive measures will be needed to keep them under control.” While the more than 4 million Israelis and the more than 1 million estimated Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union will exceed the 2 million Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories, it is destabilizing and dangerous to keep the Arabs captive. If Israel annexes these lands, its security problem will become a national problem, as intractable as those in multinational states such as Iraq and Yugoslavia. Israel would inevitably become a binational garrison state, thereby not only corrupting the spirit of the Jewish nation but also undermining the moral purpose that undergirds the U.S. commitment to its survival.
Ironically, Israel’s current leaders appear reluctant to pursue peace at a time when the circumstances for striking the best deal are the best they have been in the forty-four years of Israel’s existence as a nation.
—Iraq, crushed in war, isolated in the Arab world, and burdened by debt and reparations, can no longer pose a conventional offensive military threat to Israel.
—The PLO, discredited by its alliance with Saddam Hussein and cut off from former creditors such as Saudi Arabia, has lost its appeal for many Palestinians, as well as its supporters abroad.
—Syria, economically feeble and financially broke, can entertain no illusions after the Persian Gulf War that its Soviet-made weaponry could prevail against Israel.
—Jordan, squeezed between the twin threats of political radicalism and economic collapse, cannot pose a real threat to Israel and wants a deal that would restore its ties with the West after its support for Iraq in the Gulf War.
—Egypt, the only Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel and the principal moderate Arab power, has regained its position as the leader of the Arab world.
—Given the massive influx of Soviet émigrés into Israel—now arriving at a rate of 30,000 per month—Arab leaders know that this will be their last chance to prevent Israel’s annexation of the territories through new settlements.
—Moscow, too preoccupied at home to play its traditional role as spoiler of the peace process, will have no choice but to follow whatever course the United States chooses.
Israel’s strong hand will inevitably weaken over time. Exploiting Israeli obstinance, the PLO may rehabilitate its image. Syria will tap new sources of support among the Gulf states. Some leaders in the former Soviet Union could resuscitate the Kremlin’s historical policy of seeking a foothold in the Middle East. As the death toll in the suppression of the Palestinian uprising surges past eight hundred, the erosion of Israel’s political standing abroad will accelerate. The Israeli people—40 percent of whom now support talks with the PLO and would accept a Palestinian ministate in the occupied territories—appear to recognize that the status quo has become intolerable. Israel should negotiate now when it is stronger than any of its potential enemies rather than waiting until the increased strength of its enemies forces it to do so. The essence of successful statecraft is to strike a deal at the most favorable moment. For Israel, that time is now.
U.S. mediation is the sine qua non of success in the peace process. The idea that the issue should be turned over to the United Nations is a nonstarter. Israel will not—and should not—submit its fate to a stacked jury. Though U.N. forces have played a useful buffer role in other hot spots, their track record in the Arab-Israeli conflict has been abysmal. Four times U.N. troops have come to bat in the Middle East. In all four trips to the plate, they have struck out.
Many Israeli moderates, as well as the hard-liners, hesitate about accepting a land-for-peace deal. They suspect that the return of land will be permanent but the peace will be temporary. They view skeptically the idea of international guarantees, especially since those offered after the 1948 and 1956 wars evaporated when the chips were down. They strongly believe that a prospective settlement must not depend on trust between the two sides. They are only partly right. No such trust exists or can be generated through a treaty. But a peace between adversaries is possible. This peace must be grounded in concrete security arrangements reinforced with a balance of power. A peace based on power is a sturdy one. If peace depends on trust, the peace disappears when the trust evaporates. If peace depends on power, the peace endures even in the absence of trust.
Any U.S.-mediated peace settlement must have four objectives: (1) full diplomatic recognition of Israel by its neighbors, (2) secure borders for Israel, (3) return to Arab states of territories captured in 1967, and (4) self-government for the Palestinians.
In the past, interim agreements—some of which have lasted more than fifteen years—have avoided the issue of Arab acceptance of Israel’s existence. That is no longer acceptable. If Arab leaders will not accept the reality of Israel after forty-four years, they are interested not in a peace settlement, but in a temporary armistice.
Israel faces two potential threats that security arrangements must address—full-scale invasion by conventional forces and small-scale strikes by guerrilla and terrorist units. To cope with the conventional threat, the United States should work at two levels. First, if Israel agrees to return the occupied territories, we should enter a mutual security treaty with Israel stipulating that a conventional attack on Israel will be treated like an attack on the United States. After the Persian Gulf War, there can be no lingering doubts about our willingness to fulfill such a pledge. We had no alliance with, no commitment to, and no deep sympathy for Kuwait. Yet we moved manpower equivalent to the population of two cities the size of Madison, Wisconsin, halfway around the world to free the country. Although President Bush had to lobby for votes on the Persian Gulf War resolutions in Congress, senators and congressmen would line up to support Israel.
Second, the United States needs to craft additional measures to ensure that the loss of land would not mean a loss of security for Israel. In all the returned territories, for example, conventional forces with offensive capabilities should be prohibited. The Golan Heights and the West Bank would in effect become buffer zones. While Syria might administer the Golan Heights and Jordan the West Bank, neither state could station military forces on these territories, thereby neutralizing their utility as a launching pad for invasion or harassing artillery strikes. We should also insist on a thinning out of Arab forces stationed along current cease-fire lines and on international or joint U.S.–Israeli–Arab League reconnaissance and early-warning stations in the territories to frustrate any plans to seize the buffer zone through a surprise attack. An international force—equipped not to observe, but to enforce the agreement by arms if necessary—could be deployed as well. With the right security measures, a land-for-peace deal can enhance rather than diminish Israel’s physical security.
Confronting the guerrilla and terrorist threat will be more difficult. Israeli hard-liners argue that the return of the West Bank would allow irregular Palestinian forces to fire mortars—some of which are small enough to fit in a knapsack—on Israeli cities from positions a couple of miles across the border. That concern is genuine, but could be addressed with security measures. Today, Israeli checkpoints along the cease-fire line with Jordan prevent the smuggling of small arms and munitions into the West Bank. There is no reason that a similar control regime—staffed partly by Israelis—could not remain in place on the ground, as well as at airports. Moreover, a peace settlement should explicitly recognize an Israeli right of retaliation in the event of unconventional attacks coming from the current occupied territories, thereby creating an incentive for Jordanian and Palestinian leaders to keep their own people in check.
To achieve Palestinian self-government, the United States should seek to resuscitate the Camp David formula—local Palestinian autonomy in association with Jordan phased in over a multiyear transition period. Although this means convincing King Hussein to retract his 1988 renunciation of the Jordanian claim to the West Bank, such flexibility is not unknown in Middle East diplomacy. In the meantime, elections should be held in the occupied territories to select Palestinian representatives for the peace talks. Israeli leaders have insisted on advance approval of those who might serve in that role and on blackballing anyone with any association—no matter how distant—with the PLO. That is unreasonable. We did not like negotiating with Stalin or his successors, but since they held power, we had to deal with them. Unless Israel comes to terms with its enemies, no peace agreement will enhance its security.
Both the Israeli and Palestinian hard-liners must abandon their ultimate aspirations. Although some adjustments in the pre-1967 control lines should be negotiated to provide secure borders for Israel, the Israelis must give up their settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In turn, Palestinians must accept the fact that refugees from the 1948 war—who together with their descendants now number 3 million—will not return to their homes in Israel proper. To an extent, the PLO has already accepted that reality in public statements. At the same time, the Israeli settlers withdrawn from occupied territory and the Palestinians who lost their homes in Israel proper should be compensated for their property. We should persuade the Saudis and the Gulf states, as well as Japan, to provide the financial salve that will ease the sting of these concessions. The control of East Jerusalem—a neuralgic issue for both sides—cannot easily be settled. At a minimum, the Israelis should Vaticanize the Muslim and Christian holy places, but dividing the city along pre-1967 lines has become nonnegotiable.
A settlement with those general provisions would serve the core interests of both sides. Nothing is sacrosanct, however, about those particular security arrangements. They are only one possible approach. But we must recognize that it is possible for measures to be negotiated that will cope with the difficult security problems inherent in an Arab-Israeli land-for-peace deal.
Our tactics are another matter. We should not start the process by trotting out a comprehensive U.S. peace plan. Both sides will instantly shoot it down. Instead, we should engage in broad discussions with each side to explore their ideas for an adequate security framework. We should then determine what kind of settlement would be fair and feasible. Only after we identify the general outlines of such an agreement should we embark on the contentious task of crafting provisions and language for a formal treaty. At that point, we should lean on both sides for the needed concessions. Our leverage, though limited, is significant. Israel needs billions of dollars to facilitate the settlement of Soviet émigrés. The moderate Arab states—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Jordan—need U.S. arms sales and security cooperation. Saudi Arabia and Moscow can put pressure on Syria.
We should not impose a settlement but rather convince the parties of the merits of its terms. In the power politics of Middle East diplomacy, that requires more than eloquent talking points. It also means pointedly reminding obstinate leaders of what the United States can do for and do to their countries. Progress in the peace process has come only when the parties believed the status quo was more painful than a potential compromise. While heavy-handed bullying would be counterproductive, we should remember that we have the leverage to make the status quo more painful than a proposed settlement.
As they approach the prospective Arab-Israeli peace talks, U.S. policymakers should observe five basic rules:
Emphasize substance, not process. With the difficulty in convincing Arabs and Israelis to sit down at the conference table, the talks threaten to become bogged down in the minutiae of the process rather than grappling with the critical substantive issues. All leaders in the Middle East are masters at avoiding concessions by erecting procedural obstacles. The idea that a peace settlement can be reached if only both sides negotiate face-to-face is well intended, but totally unrealistic. The problem is not a lack of understanding between Israel and its neighbors. On the contrary, both understand each other too well. They want totally different things. The Arabs want land without peace. The Israelis want peace without giving up land. Israel and Syria do not have to meet face-to-face to understand that both want the Golan Heights.
Pursue a phased, not a comprehensive, agreement. Progress in the peace process comes not in great strides, but in small steps. Each side will attempt to forge links between issues. Syria, for example, will not grant full recognition to Israel until movement takes place on the Palestinian issue. No single agreement will overcome every issue that has arisen during the years of tension that have divided the two sides. It is therefore better to narrow the agenda early in the process to the key items that represent achievable and significant objectives.
Maintain strict secrecy in negotiations. The American people instinctively agree with President Wilson’s famous call for “open covenants, openly arrived at.” But secrecy is indispensable to success in the peace process. Unless covenants are arrived at secretly, there will be none to agree to openly. Without secrecy, none of the parties will feel free to float potential compromise formulas. If negotiating positions leak to the news media—thereby exposing leaders to attacks by domestic critics—both sides will instantly set their maximum demands in concrete.
Conduct talks only at the highest levels. Success in mediation will come only as a result of the direct, active, and sustained personal engagement of the President. Although the secretary of state can serve as an effective surrogate, the President must clearly indicate that the U.S. position has his personal imprimatur. I took this approach during the negotiations that led to the Syrian-Israeli disengagement accords after the 1973 war. President Carter did so in negotiating the landmark Camp David Agreements in 1978. If the peace process is delegated to an assistant secretary of state or to another one of a long succession of personal envoys, no Middle East leader will take it seriously. History is strewn with failed missions of special presidential representatives who broke their picks on the hard rock of Arab-Israeli hostility. Only negotiations at the highest level have any chance of succeeding.
Prepare for the long haul. The 1974 disengagement agreements took four months of virtually nonstop shuttle diplomacy by Henry Kissinger to achieve. Egypt, Israel, and the United States signed the Camp David accords only after eleven months of often-contentious talks, including two summit-level meetings. Because of the geography of the Sinai, those agreements were relatively uncomplicated compared to what will be required for the remaining occupied territories. Any settlement will require not a quick sprint of negotiations but rather will come at the end of a diplomatic marathon. The optimal time to put negotiations on the front burner is during a nonelection year in the United States. In election years, political pressures will stymie any significant progress.
In coping with the Arab-Israeli conflict, we must recognize a key fact of international life: a treaty can change the behavior of states, but not the attitudes of people. Peace in the Middle East is not a matter of Arabs and Israelis learning to like each other. They have hated each other for centuries and will continue to do so. At most, it means learning to live peacefully with their differences. A lasting settlement requires that they be separated and kept apart by concrete security arrangements that, if violated, will cost the aggressor more than he could ever hope to gain.
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As we develop our policies to engage the Muslim world, we must begin with respect and understanding for peoples who feel that they have been misunderstood, discriminated against, and exploited by Western powers. We should not try to impose our values on them. Though the Muslim world lags behind the West in political development—only two Muslim nations have democratic governments—our civilization is not inherently superior to theirs. The people of the Muslim world were more resilient against the appeal of communism than those of the West, and their widespread rejection of the materialism and moral permissiveness of Western culture redounds to their credit.
For five centuries—from 700 to 1200—the Muslim world led the Christian world in terms of geopolitical power, standard of living, religious toleration, sophistication of laws, and level of learning in philosophy, science, and culture. Decades of warfare turned the tables. As Durant wrote, “The West lost the Crusades, but won the war of creeds. Every Christian warrior was expelled from the Holy Land of Judaism and Christianity; but Islam, bled by its tardy victory, and ravaged by Mongols, fell in turn into a Dark Age of obscurantism and poverty; while the beaten West, matured by its effort and forgetting its defeat, learned avidly from its enemy, lifted cathedrals into the sky, wandered out on the high seas of reason, transformed its crude new languages into Dante, Chaucer, and Villon, and moved with high spirit into the Renaissance.”
Just as knowledge from the East helped trigger the Renaissance in the West, the time has come for the West to contribute to a renaissance of the Muslim world. If we engage the modernist states of the Muslim world as full and equal partners, and if we seek to resolve the difficult security issues plaguing the Middle East, we can lay the foundation for such a rebirth. If we work together and combine the best of our civilizations, the next period of our history will be one of constructive cooperation, not destructive conflict.