An Opportune Moment For Peace Talks

Last week I wrote in Open Zion that this is an opportune moment for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, followed by some suggestions for how to take advantage of that opportunity:

I get the exhaustion that everyone feels each time reports of “new” efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together emerges. Especially since, as usual, the contradictory statements of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans make for a confounding experience. But having said that, and while certainly there are plenty of suspicions still in the way, we are at the most opportune moment to restart serious talks in the last five or six years, if not more.

Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East is now paying dividends. Secretary of State John Kerry is pushing hard to create the conditions for a return to negotiations, while the Arab League has revised its Arab Peace Initiative to be more flexible to meet Israel’s demands. More importantly, the political winds in Israel seem to be blowing in the same direction: members of Israel’s government have accepted the change and called for Jerusalem to begin negotiations (not unexpectedly Tzipi Livni, but even the Prime Minister’s Office and Netanyahu himself have hinted at the moment); Labor has publicly stated its willingness to serve as a safety net should the coalition fall on account of real negotiations; and the opposition in the Israeli Knesset has done what it should have been doing all along—critiqued the official government policy and pushed back against it.

Lots of work remains to be done, of course, to overcome serious obstacles. These include: Israel’s insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state; Yair Lapid’s ambivalence on the peace process; the inability to mobilize Israeli public opinion on the issue; Hamas; events in Syria and or Iran; a deflation of will in the Obama Administration in the face of resistance from the Israeli or Palestinian governments; and timidity on Mahmoud Abbas’s part.

We cannot overstate these impediments and difficulties. But if this is an opportune moment to restart genuine peace talks, it’s also time for us to recognize that standard methods must at the least be supplemented by new initiatives and ideas. Let’s be honest: Yes, there are spoilers out there who might derail the process; no, settlement projects won’t be halted beforehand; yes, Palestinian rhetoric in Arabic will continue to rail against Israel; no, the Arab states aren’t going to suddenly love and accept Israel.

But there are some things that can be done outside of existing conditions that might help smooth the process from here.

First, Washington will need to recommit itself, firmly, to the peace process. It seems like it might have done this already, but given new developments in Syria, growing American interest in Africa, and plenty of other foreign policy issues for the administration to deal with, the temptation to put the peace process back on cruise control and leave it “for now” might be strong. American will and commitment are needed to keep Israelis and Palestinians on track.

Second, real American pressure will need to be applied on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority (I think Hamas can be left aside for the moment). Carrots are great and necessary, but if the history of U.S. involvement in the peace process has taught us anything, it’s that sticks are relevant, too. Regarding both, real consequences in the international diplomatic arena (e.g., initiatives in the United Nations or other international organizations) are a good choice: the consequences for either actor are serious (loss of international political support) but won’t be life-threatening.

Third, a genuine and powerful leftist movement in Israel must be constructed outside of existing parties and groups (which is not to say these are irrelevant or should not be part of such a movement). There are already indications that Israeli leftwing groups are aware of this, but I’d argue that this needs to be translated into concrete action: the formation of grassroots movements across the country that will mobilize in the political arena and promote an agenda that calls for an end to the occupation not through dreamy slogans but through awareness of the actual costs to Israelis, which in turn will change the balance of external forces to influence the Knesset and the government.

This is the reality in which we’re operating. It’s time to simply accept it and work around it.

Why Israel Struck in Syria

This weekend’s Israeli strike on Syrian targets is being given lots of attention by Western media and other analysts. As was the case with the January election, the tendency is to make assumptions and use Western prisms to explain Israeli behavior and from there assume many things about possible American behavior. This is normal to some extent, and the lack of complete information and Israel’s (relative) silence on the matter do make it necessary to guess. But a better sense of the history and decision-making processes behind Israel’s actions would lead to a more accurate explanation of the strikes.

First and foremost, the Israeli strikes on Syria are about preventing Hezbollah from obtaining “game-changing” weapons. In the most recent attack, this meant stopping Fateh-110 surface-to-surface missiles sent by Iran. Israel’s ability to maintain a decisive qualitative edge in military technology, resources, and ability to control the timing of any fight over its enemies is its own red line. If the Syrian civil war endangers this ability, then Israel will become “involved,” but it will remain a limited and specific involvement.

To the extent that there are always messages inherent in the foreign and security policies of states, yes, this was a message to Iran that Israel takes its red lines seriously and will act to reinforce them. But Israel has a long standing security posture that is very aggressive, relies on prevention and carrying the fight to others’ territory, and requires limited actions and reprisals designed to avoid escalation (though that certainly has happened at times). The strikes on Syria are only part of this historical pattern.

That pattern was seriously debated among Israel leaders at the beginning of the state. David Ben-Gurion, the towering figure of early Israeli politics (though he was physically short in stature) represented the more militarist position, arguing that military attacks on enemy targets were simply important tools of statecraft and even necessary. Moshe Sharett, the professorial-looking counterpart to Ben-Gurion, argued for a policy of moderation, contending that even limited strikes would lead to escalation and condemn Israel to years of fighting and undermine prospects for peace.

Ben-Gurion did not just defeat Sharett in that debate, but he succeeded in inserting his preference for limited attacks and counter-attacks into Israel’s security doctrine. The aim, he argued, was to degrade the enemies’ ability to attack Israel and let them know Israel would act to defend itself. It was also, in the form of larger assaults (1956, 1967), about getting the jump on its enemies before they would be able to harm Israel. With a small territory and population, Jerusalem’s believed that Israel simply could not withstand an invasion or an extended war.

In the first years of Israel’s existence, this military doctrine was represented by limited on-the-ground incursions into neighboring states. Ariel Sharon’s Unit 101 was created in 1953 for this very purpose, to strike swiftly at military targets and then slip back into Israel. Unit 101’s horrific attack on the Palestinian village of Qibya, in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, in which many civilians were killed, let to its disbandment and incorporation into other special forces units. (This is also demonstrates some of the problems with even limited military actions.) Later, air strikes supplemented this strategy.

The growing threat of non-conventional weapons and the advances on weapons technology, particularly missiles and air defenses, has prompted Israel to modify this security posture to include a variety of other tactics, including a more active presence in other countries and hitting supply and transit routes and targets. But these, too, are mostly updated version of older policies.

Even more necessary is to avoid the temptation to use the Israeli strikes as the basis for arguing for American military intervention in Syria, whether by imposing a no-fly zone, ground troops to secure Syria’s chemical weapons, or some other action. This was especially the buzz on Twitter Saturday night when word of the attack came out.

But Israel’s abilities, goals, and responsibilities are very different from America’s. Israel has the ability to conduct limited and concise attacks on specific targets, and to engage in a brief war; but it doesn’t have the capability—and it’s doubtful it has the popular or political will anymore—to sustain a drawn-out presence in a neighboring country. Its goal is to prevent weapons and technology from reaching its primary enemy in this specific arena, namely, Hezbollah (the Syrian military is no match for Israel). It doesn’t see itself as responsible for everything else, including interfering in the succession process being played out so violently, protecting civilians from the horrific atrocities being committed against them, and influencing the outcome of the civil war and, from there, the region. All this is reserved for later consideration or others to deal with. Jerusalem defines its responsibilities, rather, as its immediate security needs and the near-term future effects of its actions.

Washington’s abilities are much greater, its goals are much broader, and its responsibilities are much bigger. Comparing Israel to the US under these conditions isn’t helpful for understanding America’s actions thus far or its capabilities for doing more. Adam Elkus tweeted a series of important ways that Washington can learn from the Israeli experience, but it’s about thinking in specifics, rather than too-general policy ideas.

Any analysis, then, that assumes Israel was acting to send a message to Iran, or that the strikes demonstrated the foolishness of the American position on imposing a no fly zone or other form of military engagement are flawed because they ignore the bases for Israeli policy.

Explaining the Carter administration’s Israeli–Palestinian Solution

I published a (longer) article entitled, “Explaining the Carter administration’s Israeli–Palestinian Solution.” (html or pdf) It will appear in Diplomatic History. I think Carter’s approach laid the groundwork for the entire peace process that followed in the ensuing decades.

The abstract:

“This article challenges critics of the Camp David accords who acknowledge only limited accomplishments or contend the United States was covering for Israeli settlement expansion while seeking to thwart Palestinian self-determination. President Jimmy Carter and his administration sought to create a new pathway toward peace given the unwillingness of Israel’s right-wing government under Menachem Begin to support Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Palestinian statehood. Carter officials saw the U.S. ideas as a middle way that might get the ball rolling and open a door to peace, however partial and however tentative the process might be at the beginning. Their best-case scenario was that the new U.S. approach would start to transform what the parties thought was possible with regard to the Palestinian question.”

The Anti-Chemical Weapons Norm Is Not in Danger

The cruel violence of the Syrian regime should not have surprised anyone, nor should the fact that it continued to engage in it without concern for the ambiguous threats issues by the US and others. Regimes like Bashar al-Asad’s have nothing to gain and everything to lose by compromising and giving up some of their power.

Now that the regime may have used chemical weapons against the opposition, some analysts and advocates are calling it a “game changer,” arguing that American credibility is on the line, requiring the United States to intervene. And if it doesn’t intervene after the small-scale use of chemical weapons in Syria, Jonathan Tobin asks, how can we trust Washington’s promises to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?

Others have rightly pointed out the absurdity of calling for intervention now, after the regime has tortured and killed tens of thousands of Syrians with conventional weapons and methods. To this, Max Fisher responds that more is at stake now—namely, the norm against the use of chemical weapons in the international system.

But if we are going to think about what constitutes a “red line” that might trigger a more direct military intervention in Syria, I’m not sure that strengthening the anti-chemical weapons norm is a good enough reason: because the norm against the use of chemical weapons is not endangered of being undermined by what happens in Syria.

Since World War Two very few states have used chemical weapons. The US used them in Vietnam. Evidence suggests Egypt used some in the 1960s during its involvement in the Yemeni civil war, while Libya used some in a 1987 conflict with Chad. Iraq used it against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War, and also against the Kurds in 1988. Beyond this, there is little evidence that many states have considered using them in many circumstances.

The reason is because the norm against the use of chemical weapons is very strong. The Chemical Weapons Convention, with 188 member-states, is the most formal representation of this. But consider, too, what a norm is. It is a “standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity,” which incorporates a logic of appropriateness—a sense that specific behaviors are required as some sort of baseline for states to participate in international political life. The overwhelming majority of states want to be recognized as “good citizens” of the world.

Customary practice, the norm of sovereignty, and the laws of war have all entrenched the use of violence under particular circumstances. In the case of conflict, good citizenship requires controlling levels of violence, and that means that violence must based primarily on the use of conventional weapons. Indeed, the evidence suggests states are increasingly moving to control “excess” violence toward this end.

When it comes to chemical weapons—or nuclear or biological weapons—the exceptions to the norm proves the rule. Even a cursory glance at those states that have used them indicates that their interest in violating the norm is specific to their conditions, leaders, and motivations. If the US doesn’t intervene immediately in Syria because of the use of chemical weapons, no state that wouldn’t already be thinking of it will look at Syria and believe that Washington doesn’t care about chemical weapons, and therefore decide to use them. What matters are the particular regime dynamics at play in a given place and time.

This isn’t an argument against intervention or against considering the need to maintain the norm as a reason for intervention. It’s to say that intervention is a big deal, and we need to be careful about why we might go in. And if we’re thinking about implications and comparisons, instead of focusing on the use of chemical weapons at this point in time, I think the lesson is rather very strongly about the need to deter mass killing near the beginning, before regimes come to believe they either have impunity to attack their own citizens or feel cornered enough to try anything.

One Sunni Imagination: The US-Shia Alliance

On a long drive in Jordan, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent – let’s call him Amr – shared his grand theory of Middle East politics. His perspective would make Vali Nasr proud because for Amr, the basic divide in the Middle East is the Sunni-Shia divide (though with an American-Zionist twist).

On a personal level, Amr, a pious Sunni, expressed only disgust for Shiites, deriding them as false Muslims. Yet Christians and Jews were okay.

In the region, he lamented the rise of Shiism and, in particular, the rise of Iran, the heart of the Shiite world. Iran, already in control of Iraq, is seeking control of other Arab states as well, such as Bahrain and Yemen.

The pivotal Sunni-Shia moment was the hanging of Saddam Hussein on December 30, 2006. Saddam was not hanged on just any day but rather at the start of Iraqi Sunnis celebrating Eid al-Adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice), a major Islamic holiday. In Amr’s eyes, this was done as an intentional slight to Sunnis and to demonstrate a marked shift of power in Iraq, from Saddam’s (Sunni) rule to the post-2003 (Shia) regime.

Saddam’s last words were especially important: “Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians.” Not only were his executioners merely agents of neighboring Shia Iran, but by pairing “Americans” and “Persians” he also asserted that Iran was acting in concert with the United States.

Yes, while it might sound odd to American ears, Amr argued in the course of the discussion that Iran was working with the United States. After all, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq handed the country to Iran.

An Iran-US-Hezbollah-Israel alliance against the Sunni world.

When Sunni Iraq had a nuclear program, Israel bombed it in 1981. The United States invaded in 2003 to end Iraq’s alleged nuclear pursuits. Yet with Shia Iran, Israel and the United States have taken no military action despite years of complaining about Iranian nuclear research.

The United States was perfectly willing to intervene militarily in Libya against Muammar Qaddafi, a Sunni. But despite intense pressure, Washington has held back on the question of intervening in Syria where the regime is dominated by Alawites, a Shia offshoot. Israel, too, seems to favor the maintenance of the Asad regime.

In Egypt, the United States abandoned a Sunni, President Hosni Mubarak, and has accepted the rule of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. While one might think the Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni organization, Amr sees it as under the control of Iran. That explains Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s visit to Egypt and the general warming of ties between Egypt and Iran after decades of tension. When Morsi and Shafiq were in the presidential run-off (2012), Washington and especially then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, made sure that Shafiq lost.

In Lebanon, why has Israel not killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader? The Israeli Mossad can hit leaders all over the world but cannot find a leader right next door? The answer must be that Israel and Hezbollah are cooperating.

Amr’s story, interesting in its own right, reminds us that political theories need not be un-done by inconvenient facts. Perhaps because of our human tendency to fit information to our pre-existing worldview, contrary information gets ignored, manipulated, re-defined in a way that does not challenge our core approach. So the fact that Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006; that Israel attacked a Syrian nuclear site in 2007; or that the vitriol between Iran and Israel/US is regular and heated matters little for Amr’s grand theory.

Somehow I think that even if Israel or the United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities tomorrow, Amr would find a way of accounting for that seeming anomaly without altering his basic theory.

The story also helps make clear the difficulty for the United States in the region. In general today, the United States is excoriated both for what is seen as too much involvement (e.g. Iraq 2003+) or too little (e.g. Syria today). Washington has been so involved for so long that any action or non-action is interpreted in a nefarious manner. With stories like this one, I don’t imagine the challenge of U.S. foreign policy will change anytime soon.

The Resurgence of American Diplomacy in the Middle East

When President Barack Obama announced his trip to Israel, there was widespread speculation for the motivations. I thought it was a grab-bag of reasons, including for domestic political purposes, to connect (finally) with the Jewish-Israeli public, to improve personal relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to talk about Iran and Syria.

On these grounds the visit has already been a success. But it seems the trip was about American regional diplomacy at least as much as it was about the American-Israeli relationship. This makes sense: In his second term Obama is looking to shape his legacy, and can now be more proactive—as opposed to reactive, as he was at the onset of the Arab Awakening—in foreign affairs without having to worry about re-election. It’s clear now that the point of the visit was to set the conditions for an improvement in the U.S. position in the region.

For some time analysts have been convinced that the U.S. is on its way out of the Middle East, retreating or simply impotent in the wake of the Arab Awakening. But this argument rests on a consideration of American hard power only, reads Obama’s hesitation in his first term into his second, and ignores Obama’s own modus operandi.

To understand Obama’s foreign policy we need to look at the preference he’s had for engaging with Republicans on domestic policy. Here he’s adopted a patient, low-key role. His habit has been to let other prominent individuals or groups engage in public battles over a given issue, and at some moment near the end move quietly in to offer suggestions—not orders or demands—to both sides of a dispute. In this way, he persuades them that butting heads has not worked, but that compromise will.

Obama’s trip to Israel was an exercise in in this type of American soft power. First, during his time in Israel, he charmed Netanyahu, a man with whom he previously had very tense personal relations. Having created space with its leaders, Obama then gave a stirring speech to Israeli students at the Jerusalem Convention Center. He highlighted the Jewish connection to the area, bore witness to the Jewish/Zionist struggles over time (including their contemporary security concerns), and called on them to act now in the name of Israeli Jewishness and democracy, and justice for Palestinians. These themes were echoed in a shorter speech at Yad Vashem. His visit to sites of memory and identity in Israel also validated Jewish-Israelis’ Zionism.

While critics argue that this is pandering or represent the usual ignoring of Palestinians, connecting with Israeli public opinion is important. No final agreement will be ratified in Israel unless politicians know enough Israelis (particularly Jewish Israelis) are on board with it. Given the skepticism of the Palestinians and the peace process more generally among that cohort, laying the groundwork isn’t just good politics, it’s essential.

Second, at the very end of his trip, Obama brought together Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan through a phone call that, for all intents and purposes, settled the most outstanding of their immediate disagreements (an Israeli apology for and compensation over the deaths of Turkish citizens killed during the attack on the Mavi Marmara in 2010).

It’s not clear that Obama promised either of the two anything specific, but what he did do was remind Netanyahu and Erdoğan that the region is at a critical moment, and that the two countries have common interests that trump these kinds of disputes. Like a mediator, he made sure that they knew all of their interests—including that of the United States—required coordination, even if it didn’t include full agreement on all issues.

Third, Obama appears to have convinced the Israelis that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank really is their only partner for peace, particularly as Hamas’s regional stature continues to rise. To this end, the Administration has managed to unblock $500 million in aid to the PA, which Congress had previously frozen, at the same time that Jerusalem has decided to resume transfer of tax revenues to the PA, also frozen after Mahmoud Abbas asked the United Nations General Assembly to grant the Palestinians non-observer member state status.

Finally, Obama has publicly discussed bringing the Arab states more directly into the peace process. This will provide political cover for the PA to make unpopular decisions about concessions during talks. But tying the Arab states to the negotiations further isolates Iran, and also gives them a stake in the outcome.

The conventional wisdom is that the Israelis and Palestinians aren’t interested at this point in resolving their conflict, and that the Arab Awakening, Syria, and Iran are forcing the White House to wait on events more than seek to manage them. But Obama’s trip to the region has demonstrated that this isn’t true.

Certainly there is a long way to go before Israelis and Palestinians make peace, before Saudis and Israelis overcome decades of hostility, or even before Israelis and Turks return to full normalized relations. But even still, it’s clear that Obama is preparing a network to support Washington’s leadership vis-à-vis Iran and Syria, and to better respond to the Arab Awakening.

He’s done all this quietly, by lowering expectations beforehand, and by convincing Israelis, Palestinians, Turks, and Arabs that they share common goals. This is the essence of persuasion. Obama’s ability to project American hard power in the region might be fading, but that’s not the case with American soft power.

Changing the operative principle of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?

I agree with Shai Feldman that if Israeli-Palestinian negotiations start up under President Obama, the way in which talks are conducted needs to change:

Requirement 5: Change the operative principle of negotiations. The principle upon which Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from Camp David to Taba were based—nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon—should be dropped. It had a toxic effect because it meant that any progress achieved was held hostage to the most difficult issues. Instead, the opposite principle should be adopted: whatever is agreed upon should be implemented. This will allow Israelis and Palestinians to see progress on the ground. And however small that progress might be, it will be very significant given the present pessimism among Palestinians and Israelis alike.

But I think it is also important to note that his new principle creates a new problem. Negotiating parties may want to see the whole picture before they make fundamental concessions. That is, before Israel concedes Palestinian sovereignty in many parts of East Jerusalem or before the PA accepts the right of return in theory but not (really) in implementation, they may want to see the big picture and make sure they get reciprocal concessions of equal value.

In other words, Feldman assumes the issues can be disentangled and that may be true to an extent with initial measures and minor issues. But I wonder especially if on the core issues that will be hard to do. Both sides may need to construct hypothetical scenarios of mutual concessions before they commit. Since you cannot always negotiate about parallel issues at exactly the same time or pace, you may end up with breakthroughs at different times, in which case you may have to wait for other issue baskets to ‘catch up.’

We may really need both principles with clearly demarcated areas in which they apply.

Questions for Cook on Syria

Steven Cook wrote a fair, succinct summary of Syria and the most recent wave of debating US intervention. I was struck by his closing.

Clearly, President Obama has determined that whatever problems Washington will have to confront as a result of inaction in Syria pale in comparison to those associated with becoming a party to someone else’s civil war.  This is not terribly surprising for a president who campaigned on relieving Washington of the burdens of foreign wars and interventions, which clearly resonated among many Americans this past November.  Yet, it is unlikely to end the debate about Syria, especially as the rivers of blood continue to flow.  After all, the United States cannot credibly claim to be on the side of those demanding freedom or an agent of regional stability if it stays on the sidelines as Syria burns. (my emphasis)

Maybe I am reading too much into his wording, but this reminds me of a regular argument of those favoring intervention: More active US intervention in Syria means the opposition will be grateful to the US so they will be more pro-US after Assad. (I’d be interested to see what exactly the US could hope to get in return in this best-case scenario. But that is really another question, and I haven’t even raised my “first” two questions.) The implication is that by holding back, President Obama is squandering the possibility of Syrian opposition gratefulness and its subsequent payoffs.

This thinking raises two questions for me:

1) As Cook noted earlier in this same post, “the side of those demanding freedom” is not a unified side. It is a mosaic of many groups. So does this argument still hold water if the “side” is not really a side at all? Because I can imagine ways in which the fragmentation would reduce the gains of intervention for the US. That is, let me assume for the moment that the US would get benefits from actively intervening; the opposition would owe Washington. Yet given a fragmented opposition, there remains the possibility you back the wrong part of the opposition and that some other wing – feeling neglected or undermined or whatnot – gets mad and sees you as the new, post-Assad enemy. Or, that the group the US backs actively is or becomes nasty or anti-US or tied to jihadists.

2) What are the other cases that should give us confidence in this dynamic? What are the best previous examples where an intervention “investment” paid off after the regime fell? What in history should lead me to even assume that more active US intervention in Syria now means the opposition will be grateful to the US so they will be more pro-US after Assad? Is Libya an example and if so, what have been the gratefulness benefits for the US?

Any thoughts?

On the US Coordinating Syria

I published a post over at The Monkey Cage: “If Pundits Can Agree about Syria, Why Won’t the U.S. Act?”

Why I oppose Hegel for Secretary of Defense

I think nominating Hegel for Secretary of Defense is a terrible idea.

1. He is dead. And not recently dead. He died in 1831. I imagine it would be hard to run the Pentagon if you are dead. Not impossible but, as we say in Boston, wicked hard.

2. Not only is he dead, but he is buried in Berlin. Do we really want the Secretary of Defense running DOD from Germany? OK, Germany is a NATO ally but that is a far cry from Secretary Panetta running off to California every weekend.

3. Is someone generally associated with the idealist camp properly qualified to run a modern military? To run the most advanced military in the world?

4. Though he was friends with Schelling, it is not that Schelling, so Hegel’s knowledge of issues like bargaining and nuclear doctrine was probably quite limited.