Palestine and the Dream of Peace

Neither Israel, Hamas nor the Palestinians are working for peace. If Israel wanted peace it would have throttled the so-called “settlers” years ago and protected the Palestinian population. Hamas made it’s aversion to peace obvious in the brutality of their Oct. 6 attack – they got what they wanted in Israel’s brutal response. The Palestinians are caught in the middle but constantly irritated by incursions on their lives and homes. The surrounding countries made peace almost impossible by excluding refugees and keeping the Palestinians as an uprooted and largely homeless people whose needs are focused on their devotion to their lost land. Peace? It’s been no more than a cruel joke. What Israel and Hamas are looking for is ethnic cleansing, to push each other out dead or alive – yes it’s different from genocide but it stinks nevertheless.

I served this country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a Muslim country, and on my way home, so I could visit Israel, flew directly from Tehran, in Iran, to Tel Aviv in Israel – yes it was possible in those days. I have friends on both sides. Only peace, shalom or salaam, could stanch my tears. There is in fact a local group of wonderful people who include both terms for peace in their title. And I have been working with a group of Jews in the Capital Region also seeking peace. Oh may that goal prevail. Or am I and many like me doomed to bathe in our own tears.

So what?

No American president until Biden has willingly twisted Israel’s arm. It’s time. I think Biden should condition all forms of continued American support on ending the settler program, returning lands taken by settlers from settled Palestinians, and a total cease fire, provided Hamas observes the cease fire and returns the hostages. If Hamas doesn’t observe those terms, blame for whatever happens to Gaza’s people is on Hamas, and let the press keep asking when Hamas will stop. Israel doesn’t understand the blame dynamics but America could turn the PR on its head. If the Israeli government doesn’t listen, the Israeli people will pay a horrible price, but we’ll have done our best to prevent it. I want to see Israel survive. But it can’t be at any price. This conflict hurts America, innocent Muslims and American and worldwide Jewry. I’m not interested in arguments about who was in Palestine first – that’s irrelevant to people trying to live there. The conflict has to stop regardless of who is “right.”

Frankly, I don’t think there are any honest brokers in the Middle East. But America does have a stake because it has been deeply involved and because most of us care for a variety of reasons about what happens to Israel and what happens to Palestine and Gaza. And because of our historic support of Israel, America does have the ability to affect developments there. We should use it.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 9, 2024.

Can Biden Engineer a Regional Settlement?

Sometimes lawyers want to holler what seems like the obvious truth. But beware the reactions.

I’ve considered the possibility that Biden and Israel should have called Hamas’ bluff by promising to let relief supplies in whenever the hostages were released and returned, which is similar to proposals being considered at the UN.

I’ve also considered making our aid and military supplies to Israel contingent on getting and keeping so-called “settlers” out of the West Bank. That’s been official American policy for years but telling Netanyahu that has never been enough.

However, Biden’s working for regional peace, preferably a two-state solution – much bigger goals that would be much better for this country. Both Israel and Hamas have rejected it, but nothing short of a two-state solution, proposed in a 1947 UN resolution, can lead to lasting peace in the area or get the US out of constant Middle Eastern battles.

So it’s crucial to understand the impact of proposals. A cease-fire for hostage release deal, if it worked, would take the pressure off both sides for reaching a two-state solution and create the opportunity to rearm and renew violence. Threatening to withdraw support for Israel over the “settler” issue would invite more Hamas attacks whether it succeeded for failed.

We have significant power over Israel, but, once issued, ultimatums will no longer work as bargaining chips for a deal to settle the regional dispute. Israel has been trying to incorporate the entire West Bank by “settling” it. Hamas, instead of a two-state solution, has been committed to crushing Israel and eliminating any homeland for the Jewish people forced out of Europe by the Holocaust. Both sides need to change their behavior for peace to be possible, which is the objective of a regional, preferably two-state, solution. Throttling either side in advance takes any deal off the table.

Biden’s been avoiding careless choices that could compromise regional peace. Diplomats aren’t wimps – they know what they can give and threaten in high-stakes negotiations and when to play which cards.

Biden’s looking for more than making Israel wise up and behave. Israel has longstanding diplomatic and commercial relations with Egypt and Jordan. The Abraham Accords widened those relationships without getting the full regional settlement Biden’s looking to nail down. Unilateral ultimatums outside of peace negotiations could make peace impossible and threaten millions of lives in the process. So it’s important that he stay focused on the regional goal.

Negotiations require much more than what everybody thinks they know about all the various parties. Diplomats have to make everyone believe they’re being treated with respect. Otherwise, angry people resist settlements and often fight on blindly when they should be calculating carefully.

A smarter, more patriotic and less impulsive president than Trump was could have kept Iran in check, and made the Middle East much friendlier. Biden is showing how a smart president, with lots of experience in foreign affairs, with foreign players and the process of negotiation, may be able to do more for international peace than an impulsive armchair diplomat.

It’s a separate question whether the public will be able to appreciate and give Biden credit for what he’s trying to do. I hope Biden can stick to his guns and get the job done. That will be a diplomatic feat worthy of much honor.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on February 20, 2024.

Middle East – Israel v South Africa in the ICJ – the Genocide Case

South Africa brought a case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

The US never joined the ICJ largely out of fear of prejudice driven by this country’s challenges to behavior in large parts of the world.

In prior commentaries, I have tried to make clear the emotional impact of having been the target of Nazi genocide, Netanyahu’s threat to the future of Israel, the damage done by encouraging the so-called settlers to take land from the Palestinians much as Americans took land from Native Americans, and the need for a solution that respects Palestinian as well as Israeli interests. Let me add that I do not hold either the Palestinians or the Jews  responsible for the misbehavior of Hamas or Netanyahu any more than I hold the Russian or Chinese people responsible for the  autocracies that rule them. The leadership of all of them disgusts me. But extending my disgust to the people of those nations is a prejudice I will not allow, the kind of prejudice that threatens the fundamental principles of our own country and that opens a very real path to genocide around the globe. Our hatreds need to be contained and our actions more focused.

But let’s be clear, whether or not what is happening is genocide, Hamas bears some of the guilt. For half a century, whenever Israel and others appeared likely to reach a peace deal or adopt a two-state solution, Hamas bombed, killed and tortured others to make any and all proposed deals impossible to conclude. Both Israel and Hamas resisted the kind of two-state solution that might have made peace possible. Hamas repeated its use of violence in October to stop progress on what looked like the beginning of a regional solution, and, once again, a deal seems to have melted into thin air. Their brutality mimicked ISIS’ with public beheadings, rapes, torture and taking of hundreds of hostages – all with the obvious intent of provoking the massive response they got. But by designing an attack so that Israel would defend in ways that raised international legal questions, Hamas was trying to push the world to fight Hamas’ battle. The Middle East will not calm down as long as the nations and terrorists there are able to use other countries, including the US, and international bodies like the World Court, to fight their battles for them. What I fault Biden and his predecessors in both parties for is their failure to issue an ultimatum to Israel that our aid depended on pulling the settlers out of Palestine.

Yes, Hamas is smaller but they have been attacking forever and this attack was brutal. We fought a Revolution against the Red Coats, clearly marked British soldiers. Hamas not only sparked a predictable response but violated international law by hiding among the very people it was supposed to protect and defend so that Israel would inevitably injure civilians. Who then is genocidal? Hamas refuses concessions, elections, or anything short of the elimination of Israel. A pox on both sides. If Israel is to be pushed into the sea, Hamas should be drowned under it.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on January 30, 2024.

Missiles in the Middle East

Let me suggest opening this link, and scanning to the map on the last page. It’s stunning. Missiles are now all over the Middle East. And since Iran can’t find protection under an American nuclear umbrella, they cannot accede to American demands without a region-wide solution. Another way of saying that, is that withdrawal from the JCPOA had permanent consequences. In this as in so many other ways, the arrogance of Trump led to changes which make everything harder.

How to think about Iran

People simplify countries into good and bad, leading us to bluster about military options, and overlook better ways to get things done.

It seems required that all discussions of Iran begin with statements about lack of trust and the badness of what they are doing. But goodness and badness aren’t genes baked into each country’s DNA. Despite American complaints about Iranian government, Iran waited a year after this country reneged on the multi-national nuclear agreement before acting in conflict with its no-longer application terms. They were not, in this case, untrustworthy.

Much of the Iranian population is very westernized. Despite some of the leadership’s language, Iran is not a country of America haters, or nearly as authoritarian as much of the Middle East. Iranians have been voting for decades except when our country dislodged their democratically selected leader and substituted the Shah. Iranians don’t have as much power as they want but they have a great deal more than most of the people of the region. Until the current occupant of the White House took over, they pushed their leadership in our direction.

We’d benefit from thinking about the Middle East and Iran differently. Iraq and Iran fought a war that cost at least half a million lives, with two or three times that many casualties. American defeat of Iraq removed any Iraqi threat to Iran and made Iran more powerful, which many here regret.

But also, Israel and Iran were cooperating before the U.S.-Iraq wars. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and Iraq was their common enemy. So after we defeated Iraq, Iran and Israel saw each other as the most dangerous countries in the region, leaving Iran facing Israel and Saudi Arabia in the new Middle East.

Saudis aren’t angels. They’re decades behind Iran in their treatment of women and have caused us much more trouble. Saudi support for militant Wahhabi Islam brought 9/11 about, produced Osama bin Ladan, al Qaeda and led to the war in Afghanistan, and Saudi Wahhabi schools are radicalizing the Islamic world. Our alliance with Saudi Arabia has been very costly.

So assuming we suffer the pain and cost of defeating Iran, which countries would drive the new Middle East: Israel, Saudi Arabia or Turkey? The longstanding working relationships between Iran and Turkey have helped stabilize both. Turkey is now playing East and West against each other. It seeks entry into the EU while becoming increasingly authoritarian. If Iran were defeated, would Turkey draw closer to the west, to Sunni Islamic countries or would Turkey be more vulnerable to the Russian bear? The answer isn’t obvious. A defeated Iran would be in chaos, and the risks that could pose to all countries in the area as well as ourselves could be very severe. In other words, war is not an independent decision without understanding or controlling the aftermath.

Defeating Iran may only solidify our reputation as the world’s most warlike country. Plus, demonizing Iran is diverting us from China’s threat to the security of other countries in the Far East. If those countries lose confidence in American support, the world balance of power could change in an instant. How to make America puny again.

The AUMF and War in the Middle East

Among the problems with the outdated Authorizations for the Use of Military Force are the countries trying to get Uncle Sam to fight their wars, the difficulty in telling who did what, and in knowing what even our own Administration is up to. Remember that one American Administration took us into Vietnam on the basis of attacks on American military vessels that never happened, and another Administration took us into Iraq on the basis of similarly cooked evidence.

Nor is it easy to tell what the current Administration is doing. The Administration tells us it is confronting Russia by implanting weapons in their power grids.[1] But Trump Administration officials warned the former secretary of Homeland Security not to bring up its efforts to confront Russian interference with upcoming American elections.[2] Are we facing them or bowing to them? As Bret Stephens put it, “the Trump administration has credibility issues, to put it mildly, which is one reason why electing a compulsive prevaricator to the presidency is dangerous to national security.”[3]

Should we support the Administration’s warlike stance toward Iran, on the assumption that we have accurate information that Iran torpedoed two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, including one that is Japanese owned, or should we believe the Japanese that the ships were attacked “by a ‘flying object’” from the air, not torpedoes in the water?[4] Is the best comparison the cooked attack in the Gulf of Tonkin in the Johnson Administration or the cooked claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the George W. Bush Administration?[5]

And what is all this for? Trump says he wants to stop Iran from going nuclear but Obama had already done that for the foreseeable future. Trump instead released Iran from its obligations under the nuclear agreement. The difference seems to be that Trump wants the credit. But he keeps threatening Iran and getting mad when they don’t lie down and play dead. Worse, Iran is disciplined and intelligent enough to find ways to fight back. Trump seems to figure that Iran alone has no right to fight back, though that way of thinking is likely to involve us in a totally unnecessary war, unnecessary because the agreement he terminated did a pretty good job.

The fist pumping and showing off of military hardware is supposed to make Trump look tough, but it risks the lives of American men and women, not to protect America, but to protect Trump’s reputation, whether as tough guy or as bully depending on whom you ask.

American lives should not be spent in the Middle East. There’s little evidence that we can do any good. Its oil is no longer important and would be better left in the ground. It’s run by a bunch of petty dictators, most of whom would fade into insignificance without American aid and involvement. Moreover, by comparison to most countries in the Middle East, Iran has a relatively stable democratic system. Iran’s clerics have certainly imposed limits but nevertheless the people have a major voice in the choice of the Prime Minister and the legislature. Let Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states fight their own battles.

Meanwhile, I completely agree with Paul Barker, another former Peace Corps Volunteer who served this country in Iran, like I did, and who wrote the LA Times that before this Administration “leads the U.S. into yet another disastrous war, our lawmakers must repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force and secure the passage of the Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act. The U.S. can ill afford to stumble into yet another forever war in the Mideast.”[6]

[1] David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html.

[2] Eric Schmitt, David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, In Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell Trump, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/russia-2020-election-trump.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer.

[3] Bret Stephens, The Pirates of Tehran: If Iran won’t change its behavior, we should sink its navy, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/iran-oil-tanker-attack.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage.

[4] Eliot Higgins, Was Iran Behind the Oman Tanker Attacks? A Look at the Evidence, June 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/iran-tanker-attacks.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article.

[5] Id.

[6] Paul Barker to the LA Times, , 5/18/19.

Realism in Foreign Policy

May I have the luxury of going back to basics?

It’s important to understand the different dynamics of foreign policy. Countries often see foreign affairs through the lens of the balance of power. If the balance gets out of whack, conquest is likely, further upsetting a regional balance.

Balance of power thinking can be important but we often miss the complexities. Seeing communist states only as Red blinded us to the hostilities between Vietnam and its larger neighbors. Whether or not we could have defeated Vietnam, we never had to fight them to protect our own interests. In fact, the war in Vietnam was a great gift to China much as the war in Iraq was a gift to Iran.

Before the first Gulf War, Iran and Iraq balanced each other in the region. And Iran and Israel had a decent working relationship. It was true that Ahmadinejad said some hateful things, but both countries understood that public language between countries often had little to do with their actual policies. In that case, Shi’a Iran was trying to suppress the potential enmity between it and its Sunni neighbors. But that was largely confined to talk.

When the U.S. defeated Iraq, it upset the regional balance of power in Iran’s favor. Israel then surprised everyone by screaming about the danger of Iran. Cooperation no longer mattered. Iran was large, without significant local enemies. And Israel wanted the U.S. to need Israel as its regional agent. Friendship between Iran and the U.S. made Israel less important. Woops. For all its bluster, that made Israel feel both vulnerable and reckless. Ironically, power is often greatest before it’s exercised, and Iran’s clerics actually had a broader view of Iranian interests, but the U.S. refused to discuss it with them.

Ideological rivalry was the major dynamic of the cold war. We built radio towers and beamed broadcasts into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Unscrupulous politicians can use ideological and ethnic divides to stir up trouble. Ideological unity can hold people together. But like the balance of power, ideological unity is fragile, and keeps changing. In the Middle East, before Trump, we largely tried to balance the ideological power of Islam with a commitment to democratic revolution and to Israel. But we’ve always limited our commitment to democracy by our own economic preferences, leading others to perceive us as hypocritical.

The European Union reflected a third approach. France and Germany fought a succession of brutal wars culminating in World War II in which France was overrun and which made refugees of a large portion of the continental population. In response, after the war, statemen in Europe brought the two countries and others in Europe together in a customs union which united former adversaries and built a sense of unity among them. The E.U. gave America the blessing of a powerful ally plus the freedom not to worry about divisions among the countries of western Europe. A declining E. U. also weakens American power.

Rock, paper, scissors? Nothing is pure or stable. Thinking about foreign affairs in terms of a single demand, issue or policy while ignoring everything else is equivalent to an infant’s temper tantrum. Thinking about Iran as if all we need to know is its clerical ideology, as if that can be simplistically defined as an axis of evil, is an invitation to disaster.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, May 15, 2018.

 

The Middle East, European Colonialism and the Result of Blank Checks

Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of our Nature, argued we’ve become less bloody over the centuries. But so many issues involve life and death. For two weeks this country has been discussing how to stop school shootings. This week let’s address life and death in the Middle East. Next week, events permitting, let’s discuss two issues that threaten life worldwide.

I can count on hate mail whenever I speak about the Middle East. But let’s put some things in perspective.

The world’s refugee problem swamps most countries’ willingness to take people in. Our government wants to restrict immigration and we fight over who and why. Reaction to flows of refugees threaten democratic governments across Europe and contributed to the vote for Brexit. In addition to their own disputes, the American military footprint has aggravated war and population displacement in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine among many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Stepping back historically and geographically, most countries are dominated by conquering populations. This country conquered and decimated Native Americans to create our bi-coastal America. A succession of warring populations, Huns, Visigoths, Franks, Saxons, Vikings and more, fought for Europe long before the modern wars.

This has hardly been a good way of solving problems or competition for land. But even more harm lurks in the suggestion that we undo it.

The creation of Israel was plainly the result of European refusal to accept its Jewish population. Historically, the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, and the Moors in Spain, before Ferdinand and Isabella Christianized it, were much more hospitable to Jews. The twentieth century brought the fate of the Jews to a head. Europe could have solved its integration problem. But seeing the handwriting on many walls in the 1930s, people like Justice Brandeis, then on the U.S. Supreme Court, were telling friends in Europe to get out quickly. But where to? Franklin Roosevelt, despite close personal and professional relationships with many Jews, blocked boatloads of Jewish refugees from our shores for political reasons.

So the west solved its problem by exporting it – to Palestine. Everyone was a victim in this process. Jewish refugees were uprooted and they in turn uprooted Palestinians. What to do?

At about the same time, Britain was facilitating the breakup of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. It cost something like a million lives and uprooted many times that. The two countries still find it difficult to get along, but undoing 1948 is not on the table. It cannot be.

It is not true that whatever is, is just. That was proposed by the conservative philosopher Robert Nozick and I most emphatically reject it. But redressing all the wrongs of the past comes at a cost which will involve many who themselves were neither perpetrators nor victims and sometimes both. The argument about who was right and who was wrong in Palestine is not a soluble argument. No one was treated as they should have been. But even more important, fixing those wrongs implies a fight to the death of everyone there. That I cannot wish.

I cannot support complete and utter conquest for either side. We might once have insisted on an enforceable compromise. America once played a role as an honest broker and could have maximized the chance for peace. But we could not continue to play that role while giving Israel a blank check to violate its promises about settlements. The result, I fear, is going to be tragic. It may simply be too late to avert widespread disaster.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, February 27, 2018.

Peace Corps and Legal Services

The Trump Administration hasn’t included the Peace Corps in its proposal for fiscal year 2018. It proposed cutting the international affairs budget by nearly a third.[1] It struck funding for the Legal Services Corporation which provides funds for poor people to defend what little they have. And, as we are all aware, it has advanced its war on truth by trying to cut the budget of National Public Radio. None of that will save much in the budget but it will damage the country and make life coarser and less secure for the people in it.

On Feb. 27, 2017 “retired three and four star flag and general officers from all branches of the armed services” wrote congressional leadership “to share our strong conviction that elevating and strengthening diplomacy and development alongside defense are critical to keeping America safe.”

These generals and admirals told Congress from their own experience “that many of the crises our nation faces do not have military solutions alone – from confronting violent extremist groups like ISIS in the Middle East and North Africa to preventing pandemics like Ebola and stabilizing weak and fragile states that can lead to greater instability” as well as “refugee flows that are threatening America’s strategic allies in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Europe.”

These military officers made it plain that “The military … needs strong civilian partners in the battle against the drivers of extremism– lack of opportunity, insecurity, injustice, and hopelessness.” From their experience, “The State Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps and other development agencies are critical to preventing conflict and reducing the need to put our men and women in uniform in harm’s way.…”

The Trump Administration’s blueprint for FY2018 for 150 international affairs budget functions included no budget proposal for the Peace Corps. According to the Congressional Research Service, the nearly quarter of a million Peace Corps Volunteers who have served in 141 countries provide a form of “public diplomacy” for America, not to mention the “short-term … [postings for] emergency, humanitarian, and development assistance at the community level … including post-tsunami Thailand and Sri Lanka and post-earthquake Haiti.”. And they bring back with them and help the rest of us understand other parts of the world that few of us get to see. Both the specific attack on the Peace Corp and the general attack on diplomacy are part of the foolish short-sightedness of the current Administration.

Apparently the Administration doesn’t like poor people in the United States any more than abroad, as it made clear by trying to end the Legal Services Corporation. In commentary in the Times Union, Dean Alicia Ouellette of Albany Law School just stuck to the facts:

“People facing life-altering crises — parents losing custody of their children, families facing wrongful foreclosures, veterans wrongly denied benefits, the elderly scammed of life savings by fraudulent businesses, farmers struck by natural disaster — need the help of lawyers.”[2]

But for the Trump Administration, if you’re too poor to hire an attorney, you don’t deserve justice.  It’s not just the people who are deprived of their rights; it’s the public as well. According to a Massachusetts study, government funding of various types of legal representation showed returns of from two to five times the amount expended on counsel, depending on the area of legal services, not including the very significant benefits to state residents.[3] Those benefits can be very significant. Dean Ouellette cited a study by the New York City Bar Association showing savings to the city of more than half again the cost of providing legal help to people who can’t afford it in a variety of non-criminal matters. Other studies similarly show that the cost of erroneous convictions vastly exceeds the cost of providing counsel.[4]

For this president, no injury to the public or to the vulnerable is too great.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, April 11, 2017.

[1] Congressional Research Service, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21168.pdf.

[2] http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Funding-legal-services-for-the-poor-benefits-all-11049978.php.

[3] INVESTING IN JUSTICE A ROADMAP TO COST-EFFECTIVE FUNDING OF CIVIL LEGAL AID IN MASSACHUSETTS, A REPORT OF THE BOSTON BAR ASSOCIATION STATEWIDE TASK FORCE TO EXPAND CIVIL LEGAL AID IN MASSACHUSETTS, at 19-24 (2014) available at http://www.bostonbar.org/docs/default-document-library/statewide-task-force-to-expand-civil-legal-aid-in-ma—investing-in-justice.pdf.

[4] James R. Acker, The Flipside Injustice Of Wrongful Convictions: When The Guilty Go Free, 76 ALB. L. REV. 1629, 1631-36, 1708-09 (2012/2013).

Foreign Roots of the Tragedy in Florida

The tragedy in Florida is linked to issues abroad. One candidate sometimes suggests we could solve our problems by isolationism, keeping our troops home, and sometimes by wiping out our adversaries with overwhelming force. His adversary has won over American military leadership with a fairly hard-nosed approach to international politics meshed with the belief that part of America’s international strength comes from our ideological appeal and social justice. What’s going to work?

The Middle East has been getting more violent. And the U.S. has been struggling to figure out how to handle it. George H.W. Bush was careful not to unravel power relations there when he rolled Iraq back from Kuwait. George W. Bush was less cautious, eliminating the Iraqi power structure without a plan to replace it. Since then we’ve been fighting multiple wars in multiple countries. Wars with guerilla tactics like these are costly. Al Qaeda and ISIL or DAESH have learned to motivate individuals or small groups outside of traceable networks. Military forces work poorly against that kind of enemy. We may be a superpower against some obstacles, but not all. The history of warfare has been a multi-millennium cycle of upstarts defeating the super powers of prior ages with new tactics.

What if we disengaged from the Middle East? I doubt Americans have the stomach for it. Israel, our so-called “ally,” continually breaks its promises to America, so the Israeli mouse drives both American Middle Eastern policy and its consequences. America cannot be an honest broker in the Middle East while backing a government of heedless buckaroos who learn nothing from the failures and constant irritation of seven decades of war, eviction of Palestinians and indiscriminate retaliation. Still less can we be an honest broker by engaging in the same tactics that make refugees of millions and radicalize too many. Who are we to criticize the Israelis when our policies have been more and more like theirs? We too pay the price. Our removal of Premier Mossadegh and replacement with the former Shah of Iran contributed to the Revolution of 1979 and subsequent demonization of America. U.S. military moves created chaos in the Sunni world, pushed Turkey toward autocracy, and helped destabilize Europe with a flow of refugees not seen since the World Wars.

Pulling out would leave a power vacuum that those we despise and sometimes fear would fill. If Russia or China were fool enough to move in, the throw weight of Islamic extremism would refocus on them. The short-run consequences, however, could be

Our policies toward the Middle East need to be rethought in light of new realities. Power relations in the Middle East have been drastically reshaped in the last fifteen years. And Saudi Arabia has been playing a double game, supporting radical Islam in return for denying the clerics the keys to governmental power, creating a Hobson’s choice for us. Obama has tried to avoid both disengagement and warfare, but his efforts to reshape thinking about the Middle East have, not surprisingly, run into a barrier of incomprehension. The U.S. should not be driven by the unreliable machinations of paranoid premiers, two-bit dictators and fractured armies in a region of declining importance to the U.S.

America accomplished a great deal in the past as a model of a fair and decent state. Foreign policy isn’t merely a contest of muscle and fire power. Its complexity requires a lot of patience. It took half of century to wait out the Soviet Union. Much as some Republicans want to credit Reagan’s grand gestures, that victory was hatched under Truman and pursued by eight presidents of both parties, without any know-it-all buckaroos upending decades of careful policy. Can we do it again? We’re going to find out.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, June 14, 2016.