Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President
December 3rd, 2008 by Sarah
The Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations have joined efforts to conduct research, travel the region, and develop non-partisan policy recommendations for the President-Elect Barack Obama. You can purchase your own copy of “Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President” online, and executive summaries of all the chapters, along with two full chapters, are available as well.
In the chapter “Time for Diplomatic Renewal: Toward a New U.S. Strategy in the Middle East,” Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations and Martin Indyk of the Brooking’s Saban Center recommend a change in focus in the region from Iraq to Iran. The authors insist that Obama offer direct official engagement with the Iranian government, without preconditions, while developing incentives to stymie the country’s nuclear program. In addition, the authors recommend that Obama promote peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Syria and Palestine, with an emphasis on diplomatic tools.
In the chapter “Development in the Middle East: Managing Change, Building a New Kinds of Partnership,” Isobel Coleman and Tamara Cofman Wittes warn that Obama cannot simply set aside concerns over democracy and development in favor of securing other interests. The authors recommend using U.S. economic and political leverage to help build a more stable and prosperous Middle East that “gives a vast and rising young generation hope for the future and reason to resist dark visions purveyed by regional radicals.” Importantly, Obama must realize that political evolution takes time, and that “the United States, while retaining significant influence over the region’s authoritarian rulers, cannot dictate terms to them.”
In addition, authors Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack make recommendations for U.S. strategy in Iraq, while Suzanne Maloney and Ray Takeyh focus on a policy toward Iran, and Bruce Riedel and Gary Samore explore how to manage nuclear proliferation in the region. Steven Cook and Shibley Telhami address the Arab-Israeli conflict and Daniel Byman and Steven Simon focus on counterterrorism.
Posted in Diplomacy, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Mideast Peace Plan, Palestine, Syria, Terrorism, US foreign policy | Comment »
The Real Risks of Engagement
November 26th, 2008 by Sarah
Martin Kramer casts some concern about the new “engagement” craze sweeping foreign policy circles.
“And in the best American tradition, these risks [of engagement] are repackaged as opportunities, under a new name. It could just as easily be called appeasement, but the public associates appeasement with high risk. So let’s rename it engagement, which sounds low-risk—after all, there’s no harm in talking, right? And once the risk has been minimized, the possible pay-off is then inflated.”
According to Kramer, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran “understand our desire to engage them as a sign of weakness—an attempt to appease them—which is itself an enticement for them to push harder against us and our allies. And since they believe in their narrative of an empowered Islam with the fervency of religious conviction, no amount of insistence by us that we will go only so far and no further will stop them.”
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute similarly asserts that “if all diplomacy required were Washington’s good intentions, the world would be a magical place. It is ironic that some U.S. diplomats trust the Islamic republic more than many Iranians themselves do.”
Posted in Diplomacy, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, US foreign policy | 1 Comment »
POMED Notes: Tehran’s War on the West by Proxy
November 21st, 2008 by Tariq
On Wednesday November 19th, The Hudson Institute held a day long conference entitled, “Iran, Hezballah, and Hamas: Tehran’s War on the West by Proxy.” Participants included Martin Kramer, Scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Harvard’s Olin Institute; Tony Badran, Research Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Shmuel Bar, Director of Studies, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya; Jonathan Schanzer, Director of Policy, Jewish Policy Center; Matthew Levitt, Senior Fellow and Director, Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.
Panelists agreed that Iran was a serious threat to regional peace, but while most panelists argued that Hezbollah and Hamas were fronts for Iran and interested only in continued violence, a minority disagreed, saying instead the situation was more complicated.
For POMED’s notes on this event, click here.
Posted in Event Notes, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Islamist movements, US foreign policy | Comment »
Choose Your Poison
November 10th, 2008 by Jason
The Middle East Online has two articles which between them offer up all the serious impediments to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. All that’s left is for us to choose which impediment sounds the most bleakly forboding. One focuses on the internecine Palestinian conflict, which gets points on today’s news that Hamas will boycott the Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Fatah.
Not to be outdone, the other article focuses on Israel’s dizzying political structure, which ensures that the country will either be ruled by “an unstable coalition of unwilling partners”, or else by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has “openly sworn off the Annapolis Agreement.” Don’t tell that to Secretary Rice, who triumphantly said today that “the Annapolis process is now the…parties’ answer to how we finally end the conflict….”
Posted in Hamas, Israel, Mideast Peace Plan, Palestine | Comment »
MENA’s Shaky Balance of Power
October 16th, 2008 by Jason
Some geopolitical power balancing first thing in the morning…
At MESH, Tamara Cofman Wittes writes about the broad regional conflict in the Middle East between the “revisionist coalition” comprised of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah; and the “status-quo coalition” that includes all major Arab states, Israel, and the U.S. She notes that the latter is increasingly shaky, as all players have been discredited in the eyes of the Arab street: “The Arab regimes are implicated by our failed foreign policies in the region, and we are implicated by their failed domestic governance. If we don’t help each other, we are both in trouble, and we know it.”
Wittes notes that the Arab regimes are focusing on regional issues like Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine to distract attention from domestic grievances. She says the best way to undermine the revisionists is to foster “far-reaching political, economic and social reforms that create a new relationship between Arab governments and their citizens.”
Posted in Democracy Promotion, Diplomacy, Hamas, Hezbollah, US foreign policy | Comment »
Succession Tensions in Palestine
October 7th, 2008 by Jason
We blogged a few weeks ago about the impending succession crisis in Palestine. The first salvo has been delivered. Yesterday Hamas announced that it will cease to recognize Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president after Jan. 8 and replace him with one of its own leaders. This comes just ahead of an Egyptian-led power-sharing negotiation. Abbas accused Hamas of attempting to undermine the national dialogue and further increase tensions between the rival parties. The Hamas resolution demands that Abbas hold new presidential elections before next April.
Posted in Elections, Hamas, Palestine | Comment »
2008: Palin On Democracy Promotion
September 29th, 2008 by Matt
In her now infamous interview on foreign policy with Katie Couric, Sarah Palin did sort of attempt to address democracy-related issues for the second time in her life week at the United Nations. Unfortunately, this instance wasn’t scripted beforehand. Couric inquired as to how Palin would specifically try to spread democracy throughout the world, which specifically yielded the following highly specific response also:
“Specifically, we will make every effort possible to help spread democracy for those who desire freedom, independence, tolerance, respect for equality. That is the whole goal here in fighting terrorism also. It’s not just to keep the people safe, but to be able to usher in democratic values and ideals around this, around the world.”
Couric then pressed Palin on the chance that this could result in unforeseen or unpalatable events, such as the Hamas victory in Gaza’s democratic elections, which Palin countered with:
“Yeah, well especially in that region, though, we have to protect those who do seek democracy and support those who seek protections for the people who live there. What we’re seeing in the last couple of days here in New York is a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel … and we’re hearing the evil that he speaks and if hearing him doesn’t allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the Mideast, then nothing will.”
Which caused Jeffrey Goldberg to, um, rear his head and come into the airspace of his keyboard.
Posted in Democracy Promotion, Election 08, Hamas, US foreign policy, US politics | Comment »
A Call for Sophisticated Diplomacy
September 3rd, 2008 by Sarah
Glenn Kessler at The Washington Quarterly declares that “no region of the world has been more shaken by U.S. policy over the past decade than the Middle East” and calls for sophisticated diplomacy that has been lacking in recent years. Among his recommendations, Kessler argues that the U.S. must engage Hamas in order to create a viable peace plan, to talk with Iran, and to mend America’s tarnished image.
Posted in Hamas, Iran, Israel, Palestine | Comment »
The Jordan/Hamas Detente
September 2nd, 2008 by Jason
Saad Hattar at Bitterlemons cogently analyzes the impact and timing of Jordan’s recent rapprochement with Hamas. He argues that the combination of lame-duck administrations in Washington and Israel, and Mahmoud Abbas’s perennial fragility atop Fatah, has led Amman to strengthen diplomatic and security ties with Hamas, and even to consider resurrecting the old notion of the ‘Jordan option’ if prospects for a Palestinian state continue to dwindle.
Posted in Hamas, Israel, Jordan, Mideast Peace Plan, Palestine, Political Islam | Comment »
Palestinian Division and the Peace Process
August 27th, 2008 by Adam
Gamal A. G. Soltan in the Daily Star describes the nationalist-Islamist divide among Palestinians as “the Middle East’s cold war,” but argues that efforts to reconcile the factions should not be abandoned, as lasting peace cannot occur with rivaling Palestinian “mini-states.” The author argues that “the Middle East peace process is the main factor that could produce the desired effect.”
Daniel Levy in the Daily Star argues political infighting among the Palestinian leadership threatens Israeli interests in a two-state solution and permanent borders. Levy warns that “as Palestinians lose hope in the peace process, and look despairingly at both the Fatah and Hamas leaderships, there is a danger of extremist Al-Qaeda-style alternatives emerging.” As such, Levy recommends that Israel take a “hands-off approach to Palestinian domestic politics,” create “practical working arrangements”, and attend to the “chronic erosion of the rule of law in Israeli society.”
Walid Salem also touches upon the conflict between Fatah and Hamas in relation to the Israeli release of prisoners. Because Israel is dealing with the Palestinian Authority for Fatah prisoners, and Hamas for the rest, Salem warms that “a side effect of this is that it will certainly give Hamas a new weapon in its propaganda war against Abbas, enabling the Islamist movement to portray him as the representative of Fatah only and not all the Palestinian people.”
Posted in Hamas, Israel, Mideast Peace Plan, Palestine | Comment »
Signaling New Changes in the Region
August 25th, 2008 by Sarah
Rami Khouri in The Daily Star argues that the recent talks between Jordan’s Intelligence and Hamas signal that both sides are “making preliminary moves to adjust to changing circumstances.” Resuming normal relations with Hamas is a dramatic change in Jordan policy and “may also hint at underlying changes in Palestine and in the Hamas-Syrian-Hizbullah-Iran camp.”
Posted in Diplomacy, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Jordan, Syria | Comment »
Democracy For Peace
August 8th, 2008 by Adam
In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Natan Sharansky and Bassem Eid suggest that peace between the Israelis and Palestinians requires democratic reform and an empowered civil society in the Palestinian Territories. The two suggest that Israeli and American passivity towards Fatah’s corruption and flattening of civil society allowed Hamas’ political rise and made peace unlikely. They suggest peace efforts not be based on who is ruling, but on how they rule. Sharansky and Eid conclude by saying, “It is high time that Palestinian civil society be fully recognized by the international community as a prerequisite to peace, not as an obstacle to it. If Palestinian civil society is not empowered, the Fatah-controlled West Bank may soon be ruled by Hamas, and Fatah leaders there may find themselves one day having to rely on Israel’s Supreme Court to save them.”
Posted in Democracy Promotion, Hamas, Israel, Mideast Peace Plan, Palestine | Comment »
Palestinian Political Suicide
August 6th, 2008 by Adam
Rami Khouri sees the fighting between Fatah and Hamas as dark days for the Palestinian national movement. He further states that this fighting is incomprehensible as economic sanctions have, “…reduced Gaza not just to a prison-like encampment, but to a ward of paupers.” According to Khouri, the fighting is the latest example of how the Palestinian liberation movement has been discredited by the ineptitude of its political leadership that is unable to avoid internal infighting and remain cohesive. However, Khouri concludes on an optimistic note by saying, “This is a dark day for the Palestinians, but not the end of the line. When they hit bottom - and they are almost there - the Palestinians will find better leadership that can regain their cohesion and credibility, and their self-respect.”
Posted in Hamas, Palestine | Comment »
Problems in Palestine
August 5th, 2008 by Adam
An editorial in the Daily Star claims that the recent infighting between Hamas and Fatah illustrates how much the two groups have imperiled the Palestinian cause. Instead of Israel, the Palestinian groups’ inability to put partisan differences aside and keep focused on their struggle represent a greater threat to the Palestinian people. The editorial warns that continued political bloodshed and internal violence threatens the Palestinians’ “very right to existence.”
Posted in Hamas, Israel, Palestine | Comment »
Setback to Democracy Promotion
July 30th, 2008 by Sarah
Rami Khouri in the Daily Star looks to the advice of Robert Pelletreau, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and ambassador to three Arab countries, to review why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the oil situation, and efforts to expand democracy are worse off now than before Bush became President. Democracy promotion “has been set back by our headlong push for elections in countries with little or no popular experience in political participation. The result has been clerical-led factions being elected in Iraq, Hamas winning parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories, the Muslim Brotherhood gaining ground in Egypt, Hizbullah becoming a stronger political force in Lebanon and even the word ‘democracy’ now being widely treated in the region as an American implant.”
Posted in Democracy Promotion, Egypt, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine, US foreign policy | Comment »
2008: Separating Terrorism From Islamic Extremism
July 17th, 2008 by Matt
Over at TAPPED, Ezra Klein homed in on a particular passage on Islamic extremism in Barack Obama’s interview with Fareed Zakaria that Klein says shows a distinct difference between McCain and Obama on this issue:
“One of the clear distinctions between the Left’s approach to terrorism and the Right’s approach to terrorism is that the Left wants to limit the scope of the conflict, while the Right wants to expand it. So though it was only al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11, Romney and Giuliani and McCain and plenty of their colleagues want to zoom out from al Qaeda to terrorism, and from terrorism to Islamic extremism. Rather than this being an effort to hunt down al Qaeda, it becomes a war to hunt down al Qaeda, destroy Hezbollah, eradicate Hamas, overthrow Saddam Hussein, change the regime in Tehran, crush the Muslim Brotherhood, and confront Syria, and whatever else Bill Kristol thought of while eating his Cheerios that week.”
Posted in Election 08, Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism, US foreign policy, US politics, al-Qaeda | Comment »
POMED NOTES: Does the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Still Matter
July 1st, 2008 by Sarah
The Saban Center for Middle East Policy invited Shibley Telhami, a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center and Steven Kull, Director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, to discuss polls from the Arab world and beyond on attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestianian conflict. Both speakers agreed that public opinion supports a more even-handed approach by the U.S. to resolving the conflict. Martin S. Indyk, Senior Fellow and Director of The Saban Center, introduced the speakers and moderated the event.
For POMED’s full notes, click here.
Posted in Arab media, Event Notes, Hamas, Mideast Peace Plan, Public Opinion, US foreign policy | Comment »
Engagement in the Middle East
June 30th, 2008 by Sarah
Daniel Levy at Prospects for Peace asks the $64,000 question of whether recent rocket fire will lead to an escalation between Hamas and Israel and to an end to the cease-fire.
Sameer Lalwani notes at the Washington Note the pressures on both sides to “play spoiler in order to preempt a resolution that leaves them weakened or excluded from power.”
However, regardless of how successful Israel’s engagement with either Syria and Hamas will ultimately be, a New York Times editorial credits Israel for its latest diplomatic moves. “With its security and even survival at stake, it would have been irresponsible to continue to let Washington’s ideological blinders constrain Israeli diplomacy.”
Meanwhile, Mona Yacoubian and Scott Lasensky at The Council on Foreign Relations argue that the U.S. should change its policy toward Syria to include conditional engagement in order to further U.S. interests of stability in Iraq and Lebanon, promoting peace and stability between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and heading off Iranian influence.
Posted in Diplomacy, Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Palestine, Syria | Comment »
The Turn in Israeli Policy
June 24th, 2008 by Adam
Israel’s recent regional undertakings have been very effective diplomatic gambits, according to Marc Ginsberg at Huffington Post. “Israel has secretly accomplished more diplomatically in the past few months with its adversaries than anything that Condi Rice could have or would have brokered in years — a glaring testament to the ever-shrinking influence of the U.S. in the region…”
On the other hand, Martin Peretz, sees these negotiations as doomed to fail. Peretz asserts that Israel’s negotiations with Syria are a gift and that they are unlikely to produce anything tangible for Israel’s security situation. The Israel-Hamas ceasefire will also have negative consequences in that it emboldens Hamas while marginalizing Fatah in the West Bank.
Posted in Hamas, Israel, Mideast Peace Plan, Palestine, Syria | Comment »
Reinforcing Extremists
June 19th, 2008 by Sarah
In light of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times argues that hard-liners in Israel, Palestine and America all reinforce each other. “So while Israelis denounce Hezbollah and Hamas, they helped create them. And while Palestinians denounce the separation barrier, their suicide bombings built it.”
Posted in Hamas, Israel, Terrorism | Comment »
