Israel Matzav

The three myths of US Middle East policy

At the brand new Jewish Review of Books, Shlomo Avineri reviews Dennis Ross and David Makovsky's Myths, Illusions & Peace.

The authors focus mainly on three myths: 1) “linkage,” 2) “engagement,” and 3) promotion of regional democracy. The connection of the first two with the supposedly innovative approaches put forth by the Obama administration (in which Ross himself now plays a part) is what gives this book its special significance.

Ross and Makovsky view the myth of linkage as the most pernicious of the three, and call it “the mother of all myths.” They show that it is not really new, and that the “realists” who currently espouse it have a venerable lineage, going back to the 1940s. According to this “realist” view, the problems that the United States faces in the Arab world—and by implication also among Muslims in general—stem from the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once this conflict is solved—and solved, so the proponents of this approach usually, though not universally, suggest—by satisfying Arab demands, the tension between the Arabs and the US will disappear. In political terms, what this has meant for decades is that Washington must compel Israel to dismantle all settlements and return to its pre-1967 borders. The subsequent establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital would at once put an end to the estrangement of the Arabs from the US, enhance the standing of America in the region, and (realists being realists) insure an unimpeded flow of oil from the Arab Gulf states to the West. Waxing sanctimonious, some of these realists occasionally add that this would also be in Israel’s “best interests.”

This myth was initially identified with basically conservative groups, business-oriented, sometimes connected with oil interests, and ensconced among the State Department “Arabists.” Occasionally, it was also tinged with strains of genteel anti-Semitism, viewing Jews generally (in American society, as well as in the Middle East), as slightly pushy and disruptive of the established order. It was these “realists” who sought unsuccessfully to thwart President Truman’s recognition of Israel in 1948. At that time, some even viewed the social democratic dominance of the Jewish community in Palestine as being a dangerous prelude to Soviet influence on the politics of the Jewish state.

The right-wing tincture of the “realists” has faded in recent years, and this position is now much more identified with a left-wing approach (how “realists” can really be left-wing if left-wing politics is identified with universalist humanist ideas is a separate issue). Not to put too fine a point on it, this attitude was also, at least in part, responsible for President Obama’s masterful—yet fawning—speech in Cairo.

The book sounds fascinating and it's been out long enough that Amazon actually has some reasonable prices to buy it.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:36 AM