Daniel Pipes takes issue with President Bush's claim that the Middle East is more hopeful and more promising than in 2001, and lists some of the ways things have degenerated:
- Iran has nearly built nuclear weapons and appears to be planning for a devastating electro-magnetic pulse attack on the United States.
- Pakistan is on its way to becoming a nuclear-armed, Islamist rogue state.
- The price of oil reached an all-time high, only to collapse due to a U.S.-led recession.
- Turkey went from being a stalwart ally to the most anti-American country in the world.
- Iraq remains an albatross (or a pair of shoes?) around the American neck, incurring expenses, fatalities, and with an immense potential for danger.
- Rejection of Israel's existence as a Jewish state has become more widespread and virulent.
- Russia has re-emerged as a hostile force in the region.
- Democracy efforts have collapsed (Egypt), increased Islamist influence (Lebanon), or paved the way for Islamists to attain power (Gaza).
- The doctrine of preemption has been discredited.
Let us hope that historians will not look back on the Obama Administration and compare its Middle East policies unfavorably to the Bush years.But what of the next administration? The question still remains: what will Obama do?
Again, Pipes looks to the advisors:
"If one hopes the Obama administration will ignore such despairing pablum," Pipes warns, "One also fears that the Brookings-CFR mind-set will dominate the coming years."One preview is on display in Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, a major study issued jointly by two liberal lions, the Brookings Institution (founded 1916) and the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921). The culmination of an 18-month effort, Restoring the Balance involved 15 scholars, two co-editors (Richard Haass and Martin Indyk), a retreat at a Rockefeller conference center, multiple fact-finding trips and a small army of organizers and managers.
This reader is struck by two major deficiencies. First, while the book covers six topics (the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Iraq, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation and political and economic development), its specialists have almost nothing to say about Islamism, the most pressing ideological challenge of our time, nor about the Iranian nuclear buildup, the most urgent military danger of our time. They also manage to bypass such issues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Arab rejectionism of Israel, the Russian danger and the transfer of wealth to energy-exporting states.
Second, the study offers defeatist policy recommendations. "Bring Hamas into the fold" advise Steven Cook and Shibley Telhami, arguing that the terrorist organization be included in a "Palestinian unity government" and be urged to accept the ill-fated Abdullah Plan of 2002. It is hard to imagine a single more counterproductive policy in the Arab-Israeli theater.
On the topic of Iran, Suzanne Maloney and Ray Takeyh dismiss both a US strike against its nuclear infrastructure and the policy of containment. Instead, in a far-fetched "paradigm change," they urge engagement with Teheran, the acknowledgment of "certain unpalatable realities" (such as growing Iranian power) and crafting "a framework for the regulation" of Iranian influence.
As these examples suggest, a spirit of weakness and appeasement permeates Restoring the Balance.
The question of whether civilization should confront Islamism with strength or attempt to appease it with weakness is being answered in Israel. Appeasement has led to more deaths than war.
Let us hope that historians will not look back on the Obama Administration and compare its Middle East policies unfavorably to the Bush years.
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