Bush in the Levant
Jan 9th, 2008 by MESH
From Jon Alterman
The Bush administration has been mugged by reality. After vowing to transform the Middle East, the administration is submitting to it, resorting to the sort of process-driven incremental diplomacy that previous administrations had pursued and that this administration had disdained. Five years ago, there was a sense that things couldn’t get any worse in the Middle East and we should push for change whatever the consequences. Now, there is a keen appreciation of how many ways things could actually get much worse, and how much better off we are working with people we know and with whom we share at least some interests.
President Bush is spending several days in Israel and the West Bank, where I expect him to preside over some sort of agreement, whether it’s principally economic (having to do with the movement of people and goods both within the West Bank and between the West Bank and other places) or whether it has to do more with settlements. There is going to be something that will stand as the Bush administration’s agreement on this trip.
But it seems to me that none of what he will achieve is anything like a game changer. He can merely suggest that things are in play, which is really what the parties most want. I’m very skeptical of broader progress on Palestinian-Israeli issues because it seems to me that neither the Israeli side nor the Palestinian side has any consensus on what it’s trying to achieve or how it plans on achieving it, what measure of diplomacy and violence will have to be used in the coming months and years. I understand all of the arguments that it’s leaders who forge consensus through their leadership and so on, but it seems to me that a lot more has to be in place before final-status negotiations begin for them to possibly be successful. There is certainly much to negotiate in the interim, but that’s not really a job for presidents. The fact is, whatever high-water mark President Bush tries to set on this trip, he will only draw attention to how much lower that mark is than when he took office in 2001.
I think it’s interesting that the president isn’t planning on going to Jordan, because the Jordanians have been such important U.S. partners in both Arab-Israeli peacemaking issues as well as Iraq issues. I suspect the king calculated that a trip would hurt more than it would help and this represents shrewd triangulation by the Jordanians rather than a snub by the Americans.
Overall, I expect President Bush to come in for a fair bit of criticism on this trip and to be on the receiving end of a fair number of lectures. Most leaders in the region with whom I’ve spoken seem to consider him both naïve and callous, and they’ll use the home-court advantage to sensitize him to their perceptions of reality.
To sum up, President Bush is no longer trying to transform the Middle East from afar; he’s trying to manage it in incremental ways by arm-twisting and jawboning leaders in intimate, private sessions. There will be small successes along the way, but all of the Middle East’s problems are far too immense, complex, and diverse to be solved on this trip. Analytically, I think the president is in the same place that he’s been for years, and he deeply believes that the Middle East will pose a continual threat to U.S. interests until it is more democratic. On this score, he differs with his father. But President Bush has also come to realize that the pursuit of vital U.S. interests requires a deeper sense of partnership than many allies have found in this administration.
Writing in Foreign Affairs eight years ago, former Bush Vulcan and current World Bank president Robert Zoellick wrote, “effective coalition leadership requires clear-eyed judgments about priorities, an appreciation of others’ interests, constant consultations among partners and a willingness to compromise on some points, but remain focused on core objectives.” That’s what we will see on this trip, and it is a return to Bush administration first principles—not Bush 43, but Bush 41.
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One Response to “Bush in the Levant”
I agree with Jon’s assessment that the Bush Administration has scaled back ambitious plans to transform the region and that the president’s Middle East trip will likely result in only marginal accomplishments. But I would like to quibble with the posting’s explanation as to why Jordan was not on Bush’s Mideast itinerary. Jon suggests it’s because the King thought a trip would “hurt more than it would help.”
It’s my understanding that in fact, the Jordanians lobbied for a Bush stopover. In Jordan, the trip no doubt would have been well received by Palestinians, who are pleased that the Administration has seemingly decided to reengage on the peace process. A Presidential trip also would have been popular with East Banker elites. Besides, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met in Jordan with King Abdullah only last week, a visit that was highly publicized by the monarchy in the government-controlled press.
Jordan’s Islamists, led by the Islamic Action Front (IAF), leveled quite a bit of criticism at the King for meeting with Olmert. Likewise, today, the IAF parroted the Hamas statement that Bush’s trip to the region was “nothing more than tourism.” But it seems to me that the King believed this kind of criticism to be an acceptable price to pay, especially given how poorly the IAF performed in parliamentary elections a few months ago. Indeed, for a number of reasons, IAF popularity in Jordan has plummeted, and the party—the most vocal local critic of the close U.S.-Jordanian relationship—is in complete disarray.
In any event, Jordan’s King Abdullah visits the United States, on average, twice a year, and is welcomed in the Oval Office at least once a year. The King will likely meet with President Bush in Washington this spring. And if King Abdullah gets his way, the President will visit Jordan on his final trip to the region, this May.