Just to link the OP to a relevant thread on this topic.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150808
I totally agree with the value of considering why people perceive us the way they do. However, I object to a presumption that any antipathy they feel is our fault – something we’re doing wrong that we need to fix. I believe my point is similar to C K Dexter Haven’s.
What I think you have done with your answer, is demonstrate exactly why many Arabs hate the US. Because they - and it would seem rightly in the case of your post - perceive the US as arrogant, self-interested, and bullying.
Improved international relations - in fact any relations - derive from cooperation and trust. Not “we have the power - do as we say.” Just because Arab states may be weaker does not mean they should be treated with arrogance, heavy handedness and disdain.
I thought America was supposed to be about freedom and democracy, and giving a voice to minorities and the oppressed, not “the power is with us - obey.”
Only earlier today the US’s Richard Burns was urging Israel to cooperate with the PA to help improve the Palestinian humanitarian situation as a step towards helping combat terrorism. How does that fit in with your world view?
Have you got lost in some 1970’s time warp – who is going to push an Israeli Army armed with first-generation tanks, aircraft, helicopters, Information access, etc. etc. etc anywhere. About 200 angry young kids driving around in dented Mercs waving AK47’s and rocket launchers. Cos that’s all I see opposing the Israel Army in the 21st century.
And I don’t think they could push their dented Mercs through an Israeli check point, let alone “push the Jews into the sea” <Cue Spielberg-esque imagery on the ‘Nightly News’… >
Really, that crap was old 20 years ago.
“The way to get the Arab states to like us would be to drop our support of Israel.” Really ? Nothing to do with 50 years of living in refugee camps, then ? Nothing to do with not having land, or a viable State, or any hope, or prospects …. ?
Nothing to do then with mass oppression?
Nothing to do then with Palestine ?
Nothing to do with your intellectual dishonesty ?
Jesus, you talk of Arab democracy … if only that Palestine was allowed to exist …
Futile Gesture:
What, we don’t get any credit for brokering the Egypt/Israeli Camp David accords in 1979? Even a little bit?
What, we don’t get any credit for coming to the aid of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s? (and by the way, there wasn’t even any oil there) Even a little bit?
What, we don’t get any credit for liberating Kuwait in 1991? Just a little bit?
What, we don’t get any credit for trying to broker the unsuccessful Palestinian/Israeli agreement in 1998? Just a little bit?
What, we don’t get any credit for getting rid of the Taliban in 2001? (Not that Afghanistan is “cured”, granted, but at least women aren’t being executed in soccer stadiums in Kabul anymore)
It’s very interesting how Americans are often accused of being overly simplistic, yet self-appointed “sophisticates” have no problem posing breathtakingly simplistic, shallow, non-nuanced analyses, such as the one quoted above.
Look, I know our record in the Middle East is at best spotty, to say the least. But along with a lot of bad things, we’ve done a little good.
Eva Luna
Hear, hear.
I’m not sure that there is a lot that can be done by the US in the near term to assuage Arab nation’s hatred of the US. The hypocrisy of the US position vis a vis Israel is pretty transparent. A couple of years ago, the US objected to Sharon’s position calling for a regime change in Palestine, but of course regime change just happened in Iraq. Reservations about Israel dropping a 2,000 lb bomb in a residential area to kill a terrorist leader were raised last year, but the US dropped four of them in an attempt to take out Saddam Hussein in a residential district. I’m sure the absurdity of tossing a bone to the Arab world with the roadmap to peace on the eve of an event that was sure to aggravate the Arab world didn’t go unnoticed.
As for calls to replace dictatorships in the Arab world with democracies, would anyone here call the governments of, for example, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia democracies? Yet the regimes in these nations are acceptable to the US, just as Iran was under the Shah. Like it or not, Iran is fairly democratic as far as things go in the Middle East, and they chose a fundamentalist Shia government. Were a true democracy (in the sense of the will of the people) to be allowed in Iraq, likely a Shia regime would be installed. This, however, has been declared unacceptable by the US. Understandable, to be sure, and frankly I wouldn’t want to see it happen, but calling it democracy is a bit self serving.
Saying that dropping US support for Israel would result in Arab nations trying to drive the Jews into the sea, IMHO, falls into the same category as calling the Arab nations surrounding Israel ‘savages’, as was fairly common ~30 or so years ago in Israel.
Here’s a related question: How important is it that Arab countries “like” us? It seems to me that there are a number of countries out there that don’t particularly seem to care if anyone “likes” them. Sometimes I think that we try so hard to be “liked” that some of the people in charge in Arab countries have in the past taken us for easy marks. Do other countries care a whole lot if we like them or not? This is a real question that perhaps those with detailed experience in countries other than the U.S. could address. Do you care if your nation is “liked,” whatever that means?
I think some of the questions asked in this thread are answered by this strangely prescient article by respected islamic commentator Bernard Lewis back in 1990.
It kind of strikes a chord with where I stand on this issue.
He thinks there’s a clash of civilisations going on between the only two universalist religions in the world - christianity and islam.
One section that stands out:
This is hard to characterize. I think the picture of Iran is a complicated one in popular view. First the Iranian Twelver Shiite system is strange to Sunnis, they don’t have the clerical systems among the Sunnis to begin with - states have failed in their attempts to create that whole cloth - so in that sense a ‘theocracy’ is impossible for them. And strange.
As far as people understand Iran, what I often hear is that at least in Iran the Reformers openly contest and win elections. It looks, stress on looks, more dynamic than your average Arab state, with some exceptions perhaps.
Iran’s failure to blossom per se is another matter - sometimes excused on a variety of grounds, sometimes blamed on Shi’ism. I don’t know there is a clear train of thought. Not a topic I broach so in the end all the above I will characterize as being based off of relatively limited convos.
I would think you would find the world a tough place to live in if there is no one who likes you. People who don’t consider you an enemy are much less likely to attack you. It’s a much cheaper way to prevent an invasion than pouring endless amounts of money into a military.
Moving target.
Before 2000 I was off the opinion that you have an absolute majorit of Arabs willing to give peace a chance. Enthusiastic, no, not really, but willing to give it a shot if the Palestinians got a respectable, non-humiliating deal.
Then you have the hard core, that might be from 5-30% that really can not accept Israel.
That’s my baseline. Obviously the past three years have been an eternity and few will admit to supporting Israel. War mentality, if only sympathetically.
However, given people despertely want hope for a better future, I think one can salvage, although sooner is better than later.
There is always going to be the hard core, however with a peace deal that addresses the core demands for the Palestinians, I think you can get to a stable peace, from which one can build something durable.
The core demands are
(a) 1967 territories. The settlements go. All of them. If one wants a durable peace, not a Versailles treaty, this is necessary. The Palestinians are obsessed with the Land, giving up more is a humiliation.
(b) al-Quds/Jerusalem capital. They have to have a finger in Jerusalem (not the new burbs, the city) to be able to stand up - obviously some shared sov. over the old city. THis can be staged to address Israel’s very real and legit security concerns.
© Symbolic right of return with payoffs to those giving it up: some symbolic number of old folks get to return, some finessing on security vetting, that sort of thing. Israel goes for this (and the Ps go for the security vetting and limited number of returnees, symbolic level) you have a deal.
With the above you have something that the Palestinian moderates can take to the bank and sell to their people as something less than wanted but quite decent. Something that people will go for, and can take w/o humiliation.
Israel can drive home a harder bargain, and I suspect Likoud will try to, but that will be a Versailles peace that will only regenerate war.
Let me emphasize the Settlements, , were part of the reason the process collapses, and why all hell broke loose after the Fat Boy visited al-Aqsa. Expansion of settlements while Israelk was supposed to be preping for handover was seen as bad faith, and I think rightly so. It’s all well and good to blame Arafat et al, who deserve blame it should be emphasized, however if you forget the role of the settlements in poisoning the process, you fail to understand much of what has driven the Palestinians these past three years – the conclusion that their land is going to be stolen one way or anohter so they may as well die fighting for it. In the end after the assasination I think the process was characterized by a lot of bad faith all around.
Fix the bad faith and you got something.
Of course, that’s the hard part.
With whatever modicum of respect I can muster, the following is crap.
While it is wonderful for your little word game to equate a region and a culture with two totalitarian political movements, it’s also superficial and fallacious.
Primo, the actual structural equivalence is not to either of the two movements above, coherent, backed by strong states, but to the atomized societies of 1919. A collapsed Germany and central Europe, and Eastern Europe desperately searching for answers. Weak, impotent and prostrate before the Western Powers – at least for the time being. Although for the Arab world I would not add, time being.
An appropriate reaction for a policy maker – and one that might have spared us the Versailles Peace and all the wonderful results thereof, would be to think, “how do we get the German peoples on our side? How do we, from our position of strength address legitimate grievances constructively in the context of our own security needs.”
Pro-actively addressing problems from a position of strength is an intelligent and appropriate response.
That is the actual equivalence, which I would think anyone moderately learned should be able to discern should they not be blinkered by hatred and bigotry as I think you commentary on this subject reflects.
Rubbish. Although dropping US support for Israel would likely cause a financial crisis in Israel, there is no Arab state, not even Syria that is going to tangle with Israel.
Not since 1973 has even Syria made a move in that regard. Nobody is going to budge.
This of course ignores the fact that it would be perfectly reasonable to not state this as dropping support, but adopting an even handed approach on certain key issues, e.g. the Territories – still giving the X billion a year, but forcing an end to settlements, for example.
I smell the stink of the logic of Versailles.
The response is a crock.
(a) Anger at Israel exists on a popular level, Arab governments make exploit it, but it exists on a real popular basis and only part of it comes from propaganda. A lot comes from the facts on the ground, the occupation and the addition to the sense of Arab humiliation.
(b) Yes, magically replace military dictatorship, or one party dictatorships with democracy. Magically. Of course the US supports many of those dictatorships insofar as they conveniently toe the line in sticky situations such as (i) Israel (ii) hunt for terrorists often aka the opposition etc.
© Work on internal social problems: yes indeed, that would be a good thing, except the internal social problems rather clearly exceed the capacity of the weak states to work on. Simply demanding them to “work” on such is a recipe for… well more of the same. Something along the lines of demanding the Weimar Republic to get into shape w/o offering a helping hand on the reparations, etc.
I’m not going to bother with december’s trotting out the usual sins of the Islamic world he holds so dear to his limited understanding.
In any case, I believe the question of liking, as I noted, was badly phrased. A real question is what policy changes might work to get a better dynamic in the region, while still addressing core US policy goals. Intelligent, rational change from a position of strength are not weakness, they are statesmanship.
Now I also disagree with a characterization of US policy in the past 50-60 years as truly all that bad. Miscalculations were made during the cold war in regards to support – I think there was potential for perhaps detaching some pan-Arabism away from the Sov. orientation of the day, but that gets to a global structural error IMO in re Cold War policy. However policy up to the 1960s was quite decent and the US was fairly well regarding. The hotbed of the 1970s might have blown everything up regardless, so what can we say? I will add that for all my respect for Bernard Lewis, I do not care for his accounts of recent history. He is a masterful historian of the Medieval period (his training), but frankly I do not think he is out of his water on modern issues(*). Sadly it speaks to the poverty of popularizers of MENA scholarship that we regularly turn to a Medievalist for commentary on the region – I can think of no other region in which this happens. China Guy doesn’t see Ming specialists commenting on Communist Party and Taiwan developments, I am sure, but such is the poverty of our attention to the region a Medievalist is our most quoted specialist.
But then this illustrates the problem in the US for the last decade has been a lack of an understanding of how to engage the region, in what framework? Islamism especially, how to address it.
(*: Lewis’ coverage of the post-Colonial period in the linked article reflects precisely what I refer to showing his penchant for the 3000KM high intellectuals view and not much knowledge or perhaps appreciation of the mucking around, the CIA and other interventions, etc. His analysis of the turn to the Soviets is simply poorly informed - it was and is fairly easy to see this in the context of a number of strains of 3rd Worldism thought that extended well beyond the Islamic world at the time, sense that Western Majors manip. the commodities markets [some truth in that perhaps], calc. on the part of the ‘revolutionaries’ who were overthrowing the sclerotic old regimes that the Sovs were offering a better deal on aide and the like, etc.)
. "Back in, let’s say, the 1950s, the equivalent thread might have been: How do we get the Soviet Union to like us?
Back in, let’s say, the late 1930s and early 1940s, the equivalent thread might have been: How do we get the fascist states (like Germany and Italy and Japan) to like us?"
History is not your strong suit, obviously. These examples are of totalitarian states who were either at war with the US or a major geo-political threat just short of war. The Arab world doesn’t come in that category. The US has important shared interests with Arab countries including oil and intelligence co-operation as well as certain conflicts of interest. To put the Arab world into the totalitarian template of the mid-20th century is foolishness of the highest order not least because it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it shapes US policy for a long period.
Allesan,
My question: is there an Israeli majority behind the solution outlined by Collounsbuy which seems an eminently sensible one. My sense is that there is not especially on the issue of East Jerusalem. My impression is that the majority of Israelis haven’t abandoned the idea of an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. What do you think?
Also I get the impression that most Israelis ,including many on the left ,buy the Barak spin which blames the failure of the Camp David talks almost totally on the Palestinians. This is both false and deeply harmful to any future negotiations. Here is a truly excellent article in the New York Times which takes a more nuanced look at what happened during the negotiations:
http://www.peacenow.org/nia/news/sontag3.htmlCol, I agree with a great deal of what you say concerning the settlements - expanding them was idiociy, albeit poltiically neccesary idiocy. Bear in mind, though, that you’re talking about over 200,000 people, many (perhaps most) of whom were born there and know no other home. The attitude of many Israelis is, if your’re going to be uprooting people, then why should they be Jews?
I do sense a bit of a problem with your post, though. You say that Arabs are “obseesed with the land”. Well, why can’t we be obssesed as well? Why can they appeal to anger, humiliation, history and so forth, but we have the disadvantage of being reasonable? We have pride, cynicism and paranoia to deal with, ourselves, and that’s a trio not to be trifled with. You hear a lot about the Arab street, but you never hear anything about the Jewish street - which does exist, and deserves as much respect as its opposite number. Why do Arabs get to be governed by their emotions?
It’s an attitude you seem to unwittingly share with many foreign observers, and I find it patronizing. It implies that the Arabs are primitives and must be appeased, while Israelis are civilized and thus must be reasonable. I don’t buy it. I respect my neighbours more that that.
P.S. A “Versailles Peace” is not the only alternative. There’s also an “Iowa Peace”. I hope we don’t have to come to that.
Well, they happened. Necessary? … They happened. The bad part is the expansion post Oslo and Madrid.
Turn it around, put yourself in a West Banker’s shoes. You see the Israelis getting 1948, and 1967 lands. What do you think.
In the end, uprooting 200k settlers for your last real shot at normalizing millions of Israelis lives seems reasonable.
Both sides have to give, the Israelis have all the cards right now, except violence. So, we know from the past 3 years that you can continue to scratch each others eyes out, or something else can be done. Now sometimes I wanna throw the lot of you into the sea, (I mean Israelis and Palestinians, hell Jordanians too) and bring in Turks, I like their Araq…
Well, let me be serious, reasonable is an advantage --and for the Palestinians they have to be reasonable and rational as well. But in the end, until one addresses the core positions on each side, you get nowhere.
Core on the Israeli side: (a) security for core Israel [1967 in essence] (b) Jerusalem as undisputed capitol.
Core on Palestinian side: (a) 1967 West Bank and Gaza (b) Jerusalem as capitol © some recog of right of return.
© is the sticker, and maybe (b), but easier to finesse (b).
In essence, it is in both sides interest to establish a peace that leaves one’s core intact, else we are in the logic of Versailles, where one side feels it got a very raw deal and it has to stew. That is not a recipe for normalization.
I absolutely reject the above characterization.
What I do see on the side of the Palestinians is a deep sense of hurt, and lack of confidence. I see this as little different than say Germans in 1919-1930. Nothing to do with primitiveness, but addressing core sense of pride, etc.
If you look at my list it is very clear I think the Palestinians have to be reasonable, e.g. accepting a finessed right of return that gets them some symbolic returns w/ Israeli vetting for security, sharing Jerusalem in a way that responds to Israel sec. needs, e.g. access to the wall, etc.
All this implies a rational negotiator, however both sides have their emotional needs to address. For Israel it’s security largely, fear. For Palestinians it’s something of the same, but preservation of the little they feel they have left. In some ways very similar, but mirrored.
Very obviously the sketch I made is one in which Israel is in the driver’s seat, but magnanimously. In the end where is the risk? Violence, you already have plenty of fucking violence. Hostile P pop? Already have that. If it doesn’t work, those nice little Merkavas just roll back in. Israel, despite its obsession with security, really is as secure as it will ever get in the present logic.
If it comes to that then you will never, ever have peace. Nor respect. Ethnic cleansing is not what civilized peoples do any more. If you did that, you have to get rid of your citizens as well as the occupied guys and then what claim does Israel have to its place in the world?
I want to pull this thread in a new direction. I think what we need now is time and patience and a little muscle to show off. We need to show people that Iraq was a warning, but also a promise. We need to make it the jewel of the region, and we need to show the Arab/Egyption world another way. And by our deeds in Iraq now, we can show that we are not a hostile power against their peoples. We’re going to need hard work and a little luck, but it just might work.
One thing we don’t need is diplomacy, which may help in the short term in one crisis, but won’t do anything for long-term opinions and needs. Go fig.
>> And by our deeds in Iraq now, we can show that we are not a hostile power against their peoples
Well, we are seeing American troops firing on Iraqis demonstrating against the USA almost daily as is being discussed here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=180545
Not helpful.
Othre than being possibly one of the most stunningly uninformed opinoins I have read to date, upon what do you base this opinion? What substantive analysis of diplomacy drives this…interesting observation?
The alternative also exists of granting a Palestinian government sovereingty over the West Bank and leaving the Jews there. Jewish citizenship in the New Palestine could be a negotiated requirement; after all, the Arabs would still hold the majority of the votes in New Palestine. If the Holy Land must be Balkanized, there’s no reason we must accept it being Kosovized.
Of course, the Jews living there would be opposed to this, but if you presented them with the option of “Leave or become citizens of the New Palestine,” but at least you could say they got an option to stay in their homes. Physically forcing them to leave does nto strike me as being as fair a solution.
What I DO know for sure is that the paint-by-numbers solution of the Dayton accords is comical at best.
No that is a terrible idea. The settlers are widely hated, and I mean really hated. Leaving them in place is begging for an incident, an incident that would bring down the house of cards. When the time comes, then perhaps Jews may come and settle in the West Bank and vice versa, but in the immediate settlement period, leaving settlers in place is a recipe for disaster.
I note, by the way, the analogy to Kosovo is inexact, insofar as Kosovo is a case of two long intermingled communities, whereas the settlers are new intrusions. Of course in the past, pre-Balfour and the like there was Jew-Muslim-Xian intermingling but that ended in the 1950s with the pop exchanges and mass flight/expulsions.