Historically the policy of the US has been crafted (if that is the right word) from the need for ad hoc responses to perceived challenges or threats coupled with the transient winds of domestic politics and public opinion. While this evil coupling has provided the basis for American policy throughout the world for all the years since Theodore Roosevelt dragged us kicking and screaming onto the world's stage, no where has the ill effects been more pronounced than in the Mideast.
While it is quite likely that the President will genuflect before Islam and do some oratorical abasement to atone for the presumed wrongs committed to the mythical entity called the "Muslim World," that will be no substitute for taking a firm, action oriented stance on several critical issues.
The US will have to decide either to defecate or get off the pot with respect to such matters as the Israel-Arab conflict, the status of democracy and human rights in countries ruled by the banner of Islam, the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran. All of these must be spoken to in terms which are concrete enough to be understandable by the several audiences attending Obama's speech and broad enough to serve as genuine guidelines for our policy over the next several years.
Anything less will not serve the interests of the US. Or the concerns of the countries in the region.
To effectively address the points mentioned, the American president must detach our future policy from the legacy of ad hoc-ness and domestic politics carried off in distant lands. To say this task is well onto impossible is to state the self-evident.
It is to be hoped that Mr Obama or his advisers and speechwriters have acquainted themselves with both the ad hoc and politically (ideologically) driven dynamics of the past as well as the way in which Arabs (and Israelis) have misused and distorted history to justify present and projected policies of their own. It is to be hoped that the President and his people have glanced at the sorry record of reactive ad hoc measures which, along with flourishes of idealism, created the dilemma in the Mideast.
The Belfour Declaration of 1917 was an ad hoc and poorly considered wartime measure. The later division of the spoils of the Ottoman Empire into protectorates under the control of the British and French were also ad hoc measures meant to exploit the ruins of the Turks for the benefit of Europeans and were complicated by invocation of the Wilsonian ideal of "self-determination of peoples."
The combination of revulsion and guilt which accompanied knowledge of the horrors of the Nazi "Final Solution" created Israel as a monument to atonement and an ad hoc reaction to the reality that the British no longer had either the will or the means to police its Palestinian "Mandate." A second stimulus to which the creation of Israel was an ad hoc response was Arab intransigence.
The Arabs have been quite willing to engage in self-imposed amnesia concerning their own culpability in the creation of Israel not by international accord but rather in the flames and blood of war. It was Arab negotiators who rejected the assorted partition plans which would have provided more land for the Arab Muslims than they were left with at the end of hostilities. It was Arab leaders who encouraged Palestinians to flee the nascent state of Israel. It was Arab Muslim figures who assured their fellow Arab Muslims that they would soon return behind the victorious Arab forces.
President Harry Truman made the fateful decision to grant recognition to Israel despite the advice of far sighted diplomats including George Marshall. His action as is made clear by his own words was based on ideals (although political benefit could not have been totally out of his mind.) It might be mentioned that the US was aware that the Soviet Union was likely to recognise Israel and if it did so ahead of the US this would prove injurious to short-term American interests in the rapidly blooming Cold War.
For just over a decade, American policy in the Mideast was largely divorced from short-term considerations and immune to domestic political winds. In its policy formulation and execution the US was primarily guided by the perceived needs of the containment policy as it applied to the region. This meant the need of precluding Soviet influence growing in the area with the view to assuring the availability of Mideast, that is Persian Gulf, oil for the European theater of operations in the event the Soviets moved West and nuclear usage was averted.
Domestic politics became increasingly entangled with foreign policy in the wake of the 1956 Suez War. The US moved quickly and effectively to force an end to the Israeli-Franco-British aggression even though Egypt's strongman, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had placed himself at the top of the Foster Dulles' list of Men I Want To See Gone.
The government of Israel responded by fostering the creation of an ever more effective lobby that made itself critical in Democratic Party calculations. This domestic consideration as well as assorted ad hoc factors caused a sea change in American policy ranging from ending the arms embargo on Israel by JFK to the furnishing of offensive weaponry under LBJ and the willfully blind eye turned to the country's nuclear development program under both LBJ and Richard Nixon.
The radical reposturing of the US from involved and concerned neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict to active supporter of Israel was given an enormous, completely emotional boost by the striking success of the IDF in the Six Day War of 1967. This support was solidified by the Arab response embodied in Fatah. The terror campaign waged by that group and so many others did nothing but assure that the US became increasingly linked with Israel.
Every outrage committed by the masked men of Fatah and the others made certain that the US would react with ever increasing and ever less questioning support of Israel. Once again domestic political and public opinion coupled with a reactive ad hoc approach to limit American freedom of action.
Even the Camp David Accords made possible not by American diplomacy so much as Egypt having reclaimed its testicles with the Yom Kippur War did not change the basic theme of American policy. The push of public opinion and the compulsion of reaction were further biased in favor of Israel by the Iranian Revolution, or, more to err on the side of accuracy, the takeover of the American embassy by Iranian "students" and resulting hostage affair.
Arab and Muslim terrorism, Arab and Muslim diplomatic intransigence, Arab and Muslim violation of the customary rules of international civility combined with the always alert, able and highly motivated Israel Lobby continued to press the US into an ever narrowing cone of options. From the Reagan administration onward (considering the actions of Arabs and Muslims, including Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the later years of terror attacks without effective response) no administration has been able (or willing) to break loose from the paradigm of challenge and response, the model of taking domestic ideologies and partisan concerns overseas.
The cone of options available to the US today is precisely two. We can keep on with what we have been doing. Or, we can reject the pattern of the past in the hope of creating a policy which will provide for a future.
This means that some hard truths have to be faced. More importantly, they have to be convincingly explained to audiences which have little accurate understanding of the US, the constraints of its political system or the impact of Arab and Muslim actions and rhetoric on large segments of the American public.
President Obama has to come to terms with just what long term American interests in the Mideast really are. Other than as a source of oil and instability, what is at stake for our national and strategic interests in this critter "the Arab and Muslim World?"
As a thought experiment, imagine that the US has developed alternative means of meeting our energy requirements. Given that, what is in play for us in the "Arab and Muslim World?" It would fade from view back to the same far periphery as it occupied during most of the last century.
Just how much do we owe Israel? Have we (and the West generally) not atoned sufficiently for our lack of concern over the developing Holocaust during the 1930's? Has Israel by its resolute and effective pursuit of self-defined national interests not become a major negative in forging some sort of final rapprochement in the Mideast?
Is it not well past time that the "Arab and Muslim World" admit their responsibility for creating the current mess? Is it not well past time for the assorted strongmen and semi-feudal rulers of the "Arab and Muslim World" to face the reality that the people surviving under their sway might want to experience the joys and tribulations of trying to determine their own future?
In a related way the US has to decide just how comfortable it will be with the inevitable turbulence which would be caused by our support for pro-democracy forces in Arab and Muslim states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and a dozen others. Can we live in a world in which the most extreme elements of the Islamist jihadist sort will inevitably gain power? Can we (or at least the high minded, post-nationalists among us) accept that the ancient Wilsonian precept of self-determination of peoples might well result in the energetic dis-assembly of currently existing states including Iraq and Afghanistan?
Can the strident Muslims of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference stop their constant complaints of religious persecution whenever and wherever someone writes or speaks anything which is less than laudatory regarding Islam and its adherents? Can these folks accept that the world is not big enough any more to accommodate both freedom of expression and those whose easily afflicted sensibilities demand full protection against any criticism or questioning?
Finally, can the current president convey the reality that there are no perfect solutions to any problem confronting the world? There seems to be some sort of magical thinking rampant in the "Arab and Muslim World" to the effect that the US can both develop and impose perfect solutions if only it has the will to do so. Somehow this pervasive meme has to be put to rest for once and all.
Taken together, this is too much of a burden for any one speech, any one president, any one administration, any one nation to carry. Reality demands that the already too high expectations held by all too many for the upcoming speech and the current president be lowered. Lowered drastically.
Still, it is not too much to hope that President Obama may take the first small, very small perhaps, step toward changing the foundations of American foreign policy in the Mideast at least. It is time for a change. A radical change.
It is time to create, not react. It is time to think in terms of our national interest and how meeting our interests can best meet the collective interests of the world. Well, all the Geek can say is, "Lots of luck."
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