Retired U.S. diplomat sees essential role for United States in Middle East peace efforts

Retired U.S. diplomat sees essential role for United States in Middle East peace efforts

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

The United States remains indispensable to any realistic efforts to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israelis, according to former U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller.

Miller, who spent much of the last 25 years working at the U.S. State Department as an adviser to six secretaries of state, spoke at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy May 7 to lay out the arguments made in his recent book, “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

	AARON DAVID MILLER

Looking back over the last two administrations, Miller found fault with both approaches to the region. “We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton about how to make peace,” he said. “We stumbled for eight years under George W. Bush about how to make war and to protect our interests. And after 16 years, we are neither liked, feared nor respected in a part of the world that is increasingly critical to our national security interests.”

The last serious U.S. effort to promote peace between Arabs and Israelis, Miller asserted, came under President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker. Citing his book, Miller listed two conclusions for what it takes to achieve peace in the Middle East: You cannot make bricks without straw; the raw material — that is, the political will — must be present on the ground. And you need a brick maker; an outside power, like the United States, is essential.

For the United States to be successful as a broker, Miller added, the “brick maker” must possess the four “t’s”: toughness, trust, timing and tenacity. These virtues came together three times in the past few decades, he said. The first was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy to disengage the hostile forces following the 1973 war. The second resulted in President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 Camp David accord, where Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty. The most recent example of successful U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East came in 1991 when Secretary of State Baker engineered the Madrid conference that brought Israel face to face with its other neighbors as well as with representatives of the Palestinians.

Asked by an audience member about the enduring 60-year relationship between the United States and Israel, Miller said its resilience was facilitated by what he called Israel’s five “lawyers,” themes that have strengthened the U.S.-Israeli alliance. First, many Jews living in the United States feel a deep commitment to Israel, he said, and work tirelessly to support it. Second, the pro-Israel lobby is very sophisticated and effective. Third, evangelical Christians have a “value affinity” with Israel and have become strong backers of Israeli causes. Fourth, Arab leaders have been as ineffective as the Israeli lobby has been effective over the years, which has basically ceded the field of U.S. opinion (including elected officials) to Israel. And fifth, Israeli prime ministers have held sway over contemporary U.S. presidents to a degree incommensurate with Israel’s size or political power.

“The relationship [between Israel and the United States] is a permanent fixture,” Miller said, but he urged Americans to recognize the difference between a “special relationship” and an “exclusive relationship.”

Finally, Miller, who is currently a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, emphasized the significance of achieving peace in the Middle East. “The Arab-Israeli issue is not the key to protecting our interests,” he said. “But it is an issue that bangs around in the Arab and Muslim world with an intensity and a ferocity that creates tremendous rage and emotion.” America, he concluded, “needs an effective policy to deal with these challenges.”