Talking With Enemies
During a Democratic candidate forum (I won't call it a "debate") last week a "You-Tube" participant asked if the next president should meet with the leaders of "rogue nations" such as North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela during the first year in office. (This question illustrates how more questions of real substance come from the general public than from reporters)
Sen. Barack Obama said he would, and Sen. Hillary Clinton said she would not be used for "propaganda purposes". Obama cited the examples of former Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, both of whom met with Soviet leaders.
At first, it might seem like the Illinois senator has it right: after all, why not talk with your adversaries? It can't hurt, and you might solve some problems and establish friendlier relations.
A closer look indicates that an ill-conceived summit meeting can hurt, and the examples of Kennedy and Reagan do not make Obama's case at all.
Every President from Franklin Roosevelt to George H W Bush met with Soviet leaders, but the USSR was then a world power of comparable size and strength to the United States. It made sense for American presidents to deal with Nikita Khruschev and Leonid Brezhnev as equals in the international arena. However, none of the "rogue nations" today are in any sense another Soviet Union; for a future US President to have a "summit" with Castro (whichever one is well enough to attend) or Kim Jong-Il would confer upon the rogue leader an unearned status as the equal of an American president. Hillary Clinton correctly noted that this would be a propaganda coup for the rogue.
Since the President of the United States does not routinely meet with the leaders of every nation on earth, a meeting with a rogue leader might be perversely portrayed as a reward for bad behavior. Certainly some foreign politicians, such as President Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela, trumpet their contempt for this country as source of acclaim from anti-Americans the world over. A public meeting with such a politician might be an occasion for him to scold the President of the United States before the international press.
The record of past summit meetings is not entirely benign, as Obama apparently believes, but is actually quite mixed. For example, the Vienna meeting between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khruschev in the Spring of 1961 was disastrous: the Soviet dictator perceived our young president as weak, and proceeded to place missiles in Cuba within the next few months. On the other hand, President Lyndon Johnson's meeting with Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, N J, after the Six Day War did cool down tensions between the two great powers. Similarly, President Nixon's state visit to Mao Tse Tung (aka Mao Ze Dong) in Peking ( aka Beijing) in 1972 opened the way to a drastic improvement in US-Chinese relations, which continues today.
For the next President to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is especially problematical, since the latter is not really the highest authority in Iran! The true boss is Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the head of the Guardian Council, who is not known to receive foreign visitors at all. A true summit with Iran may not be possible.
Still, it might bet worthwhile for the next President to meet with Ahmadinejad if the Prime Minister of Israel would be a full-participant in the talks. There is historical precedent for such a 3-way summit: President Carter brought Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin to Camp David in 1977, and the result was a peace treaty that has already lasted 30 years. Getting peace talks going between Israel and Iran is much more important than arranging them with the Palestinian Authority, although it might also be much harder. Since Iran is willing to talk to the US, but not to Israel, the next president could play a useful role in bringing them together.
Meeting between the US President and foreign leaders can be productive, but there must be an agreed agenda and the real potential for substantive progress on specific issues. Otherwise, such gabfests are no more than photo opportunities and public posturing.
Sen. Barack Obama said he would, and Sen. Hillary Clinton said she would not be used for "propaganda purposes". Obama cited the examples of former Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, both of whom met with Soviet leaders.
At first, it might seem like the Illinois senator has it right: after all, why not talk with your adversaries? It can't hurt, and you might solve some problems and establish friendlier relations.
A closer look indicates that an ill-conceived summit meeting can hurt, and the examples of Kennedy and Reagan do not make Obama's case at all.
Every President from Franklin Roosevelt to George H W Bush met with Soviet leaders, but the USSR was then a world power of comparable size and strength to the United States. It made sense for American presidents to deal with Nikita Khruschev and Leonid Brezhnev as equals in the international arena. However, none of the "rogue nations" today are in any sense another Soviet Union; for a future US President to have a "summit" with Castro (whichever one is well enough to attend) or Kim Jong-Il would confer upon the rogue leader an unearned status as the equal of an American president. Hillary Clinton correctly noted that this would be a propaganda coup for the rogue.
Since the President of the United States does not routinely meet with the leaders of every nation on earth, a meeting with a rogue leader might be perversely portrayed as a reward for bad behavior. Certainly some foreign politicians, such as President Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela, trumpet their contempt for this country as source of acclaim from anti-Americans the world over. A public meeting with such a politician might be an occasion for him to scold the President of the United States before the international press.
The record of past summit meetings is not entirely benign, as Obama apparently believes, but is actually quite mixed. For example, the Vienna meeting between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khruschev in the Spring of 1961 was disastrous: the Soviet dictator perceived our young president as weak, and proceeded to place missiles in Cuba within the next few months. On the other hand, President Lyndon Johnson's meeting with Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, N J, after the Six Day War did cool down tensions between the two great powers. Similarly, President Nixon's state visit to Mao Tse Tung (aka Mao Ze Dong) in Peking ( aka Beijing) in 1972 opened the way to a drastic improvement in US-Chinese relations, which continues today.
For the next President to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is especially problematical, since the latter is not really the highest authority in Iran! The true boss is Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the head of the Guardian Council, who is not known to receive foreign visitors at all. A true summit with Iran may not be possible.
Still, it might bet worthwhile for the next President to meet with Ahmadinejad if the Prime Minister of Israel would be a full-participant in the talks. There is historical precedent for such a 3-way summit: President Carter brought Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin to Camp David in 1977, and the result was a peace treaty that has already lasted 30 years. Getting peace talks going between Israel and Iran is much more important than arranging them with the Palestinian Authority, although it might also be much harder. Since Iran is willing to talk to the US, but not to Israel, the next president could play a useful role in bringing them together.
Meeting between the US President and foreign leaders can be productive, but there must be an agreed agenda and the real potential for substantive progress on specific issues. Otherwise, such gabfests are no more than photo opportunities and public posturing.
Labels: Hillary Clinton, Obama, summit
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 9:45 AM
1 Comments:
Good comments, but the analogy with the Israel-Egypt "peace" is ill advised as explained by Daniel Pipes.
Rethinking the Egypt-Israel "Peace" Treaty
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
November 21, 2006
Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of one thousand Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state. In contrast, a meager 2% saw Israel as "a friend to Egypt."
These hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled "I Hate Israel," venomously antisemitic political cartoons, bizarre conspiracy theories, and terrorist attacks against visiting Israelis. Egypt's leading democracy movement, Kifaya, recently launched an initiative to collect a million signatures on a petition demanding the annulment of the March 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Also, the Egyptian government has permitted large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into Gaza to use against Israeli border towns. Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli legislator specializing in Egypt-Israel relations, estimates that fully 90% of PLO and Hamas explosives come from Egypt.
Cairo may have no apparent enemies, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military build up. According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6.5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-04, more than any other state in the Middle East. In contrast, the Israeli government bought only $4.4 billion worth during that period and the Saudi one $3.8 billion.
Egypt ranked as the third largest purchaser of arms in the entire developing world, following only population giants China and India. It has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice the size of Israel's.
Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat, U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in a good mood at the Egypt-Israel treaty signing ceremony, March 26, 1979.
This long, ugly record of hostility exists despite a peace treaty with Israel, hailed at the time by both Egypt's president Anwar El-Sadat and Israel's prime minister Menachem Begin as a "historic turning point." U.S. president Jimmy Carter hoped it would begin a new era when "violence no longer dominates the Middle East." I too shared in this enthusiasm.
With the benefit of retrospect, however, we see that the treaty did palpable harm in at least two ways. First, it opened the American arsenal and provided American funding to purchase the latest in weaponry. As a result, for the first time in the Arab-Israeli conflict, an Arab armed force may have reached parity with its Israeli counterpart.
Second, it spurred anti-Zionism. I lived for nearly three years in Egypt in the 1970s, before Sadat's dramatic trip to Jerusalem in late 1977, and I recall the relatively low interest in Israel at that time. Israel was plastered all over the news but it hardly figured in conversations. Egyptians seemed happy to delegate this issue to their government. Only after the treaty, which many Egyptians saw as a betrayal, did they themselves take direct interest. The result was the emergence of a more personal, intense, and bitter form of anti-Zionism.
The same pattern was replicated in Jordan, where the 1994 treaty with Israel soured popular attitudes. To a lesser extent, the 1993 Palestinian accords and even the aborted 1983 Lebanon treaty prompted similar responses. In all four of these cases, diplomatic agreements prompted a surge in hostility toward Israel.
Defenders of the "peace process" answer that, however hostile Egyptians' attitudes and however large their arsenal, the treaty has held; Cairo has in fact not made war on Israel since 1979. However frigid the peace, peace it has been.
To which I reply: if the mere absence of active warfare counts as peace, then peace has also prevailed between Syria and Israel for decades, despite their formal state of war. Damascus lacks a treaty with Jerusalem, but it also lacks modern American weaponry. Does an antique signature on a piece of paper offset Egypt's Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, and Apache attack helicopters?
I think not. In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy:
Once signed, agreements signed by unelected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel.
These agreements would be permanent, with no backsliding, much less duplicity.
Other Arab states would inevitably follow suit.
War can be concluded through negotiations rather than by one side giving up.
The time has come to recognize the Egypt-Israel treaty – usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy – as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes.
Nov. 21, 2006 update: Some survey technicalities that did not make it into the article for reasons of space: The telephone poll was conducted between August 31 and September 3 by the Egyptian cabinet's Information and Decision Support Centre.
Nov. 29, 2006 update: The Egypt-Israel treaty was the highlight of Jimmy Carter's presidency, so this rethinking has obvious implications for his credentials as someone who understands the Middle East. That's a particularly relevant point these days, as Carter is hawking his new book on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Incidentally, back in 1985, I reviewed Carter's first book on this topic, The Blood of Abraham, for Commentary magazine.
Dec. 4, 2006 update: For an excellent summary of Israeli worries about Egypt by Yuval Steinitz, see today's "Not the peace we expected," where he runs through the diplomatic, terrorist, military, and political dimensions of the problem.
Mar. 1, 2006 update: Jeffrey Azarva looks at the worrisome security dimension of the Israel-Egypt relationship in "From Cold Peace to Cold War? The Significance of Egypt's Military Buildup."
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