Brzezinski's Dopey Prescription for Palestinian-Israeli Peace

Zbignew's Net Game: Zbignew Brzezinski in his policy-making prime, seen here, far left, in a 1978 photograph at Camp David as President Carter chats it up with a decidedly unsporty Menahem Begin, who was the Israeli prime minister at the time. (White House photo)

It's unfortunate that formerly mighty job titles keep giving mighty bores mighty platforms to broadcast their mite-sized musings. Cue in Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Energizer bunnies of the killer-bore set.

Scowcroft was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, Zbigniew Brzezinski the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Between them they've worked for the least effective presidents of the second half of the 20th century (luckily for them both, George W. Bush's staff will always exceed them in tainted credentials).

It was Brzezinski's idea, for example, to send in a military force to free the hostages in Iran in 1980. The romantic in Brzezinski has always had a weakness for Rambo-like bang-bang ventures, so he created the original rapid-deployment Delta Force when he was with Carter and itched to use it. A hostage rescue seemed like a perfect opportunity, nutty though it was to send in American troops into the heart of hostile Iran. He launched "Operation Eagle Claw." What Americans got in return was a disaster as helicopters smashed into each other in the Iranian desert, eight Americans were killed, the hostage crisis carried on and American prestige, already battered, crashed along. That's Brzezinski for you--not quite a grand chess master, and not quite in touch with reality beyond the television studios that keep tapping him for Big Name interviews.

And that's the Brzezinski who, joined by Scowcroft, is now using a Washington Post column to tell Barack Obama what to do in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Once you get past the first and second paragraphs' Brzezinski trademarks ("profoundly historic," "euphoria is ephemeral," "endeavor"), you get to this incredible sentence: "In perhaps no other region was the election of Obama more favorably received than the Middle East."

Really?

There's no question that in poll after poll Obama outdid John McCain in the rest of the world. But there was one exception: The Middle East. Brzezinski and Scowcroft haven't been reading the very paper they're writing in. This from the Post in mid-October:

One caveat comes in the report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which points out that Obamamania is largely absent in the region where U.S. influence most needs a boost: the Middle East. Only 34 percent of Lebanese, 31 percent of Egyptians and 22 percent of Jordanians said they have confidence in Mr. Obama to do the right thing in world affairs; in Pakistan the figure was 10 percent. Israel is one of the few countries in the world where at least some polls have shown Mr. McCain leading Mr. Obama. Many Israelis fear that Mr. Obama will be too soft on Iran; many Arabs predict that he will be too soft on Israel. The new administration, whether that of Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain, may have to accept anti-Americanism in Pakistan as the price of staying on the offensive against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

So right up front, Scowcroft and Brzezinski send their credibility packing.

The next couple of paragraphs are recaps of the disastrous Bush years, recaps that any average hack can cough up. Then come the recommendations: "A key element in any new initiative would be for the U.S. president to declare publicly what, in the view of this country, the basic parameters of a fair and enduring peace ought to be." You mean like Bush did with his "Road Map for peace" in 2002?

"That initiative should then be followed -- not preceded -- by the appointment of a high-level dignitary to pursue the process on the president's behalf, a process based on the enunciated presidential guidelines. Such a presidential initiative should instantly galvanize support, both domestic and international, and provide great encouragement to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples." You mean the way Bush dispatched Colin Powell, then Condi Rice, to be his "high-level dignitaries" to pursue the process and instantly galvanize support?

No, those are the failed policies of the last eight years recast. Dispatching "dignitaries" isn't what's going to make the difference. Only the personal involvement of the president will make a difference. Brzezinski ought to know. The only breakthrough mediated by the United States took place when Jimmy Carter staked his reputation on a deal between Israel and Egypt in 1979. He got the deal. Bill Clinton did the same in December 2000, just days before he was to leave office (compare that with Bush's inactive nullity in his last days) when he summoned Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack to Camp David and came within a razor's edge of a final peace agreement before both belligerents (not just Arafat) balked.

Brzezinski 's strategic analysis is flawed, too. "Resolution of the Palestinian issue," he writes, "would dissipate much of the appeal of Hezbollah and Hamas." Simply the combination of the two, Hezbollah and Hamas, under the same problem banner, reveals the usual American impulse to conflate all the region's problems as one, as if local issues are irrelevant. It's exactly the kind of American presumption (the presumption to know what ails the region and to prescribe those top-down solutions without consideration for players on the ground) that's undermined American credibility, prevented mutual understanding and made breakthroughs virtually impossible.

Hamas is a Palestinian issue. Hezbollah is a Lebanese issue. Local politics in either case drive the two groups' motives. Hezbollah hasn't cared about Palestinians, except rhetorically, for years. (Nor have Arab nations, for that matter.) What they care about is preserving their power base in Lebanon and using Israel as the eternal excuse to keep their weapons. And isn't it odd to suggest, as the two authors do, that "if the peace process begins to gain momentum, it is difficult to imagine that Hamas will want to be left out," when Hamas is the only duly elected majority in the Palestinian territories?

Brzezinski's other prescriptions are equally dissonant by omission:

The major elements of an agreement are well known. A key element in any new initiative would be for the U.S. president to declare publicly what, in the view of this country, the basic parameters of a fair and enduring peace ought to be. These should contain four principal elements: 1967 borders, with minor, reciprocal and agreed-upon modifications; compensation in lieu of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as real home to two capitals; and a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.

But what do those "minor, reciprocal and agreed-upon modifications" mean? Where does that leave the Israeli wall, which has effectively annexed up to a quarter of the West Bank and sundered Palestinian communities all along its fault line? And where's any mention of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, one of the fundamental dividing issues between the two sides? And why "a nonmilitarized Palestinian state"? Who's to say that an independent Palestine ought to be denied any of the rights afforded any other nation on earth?

One of the many reasons John McCain would have been a disastrous choice as president is his world view. It's outdated. It's warmed-over cold war. Brzezinski, who's McCain's senior by almost a decade (he was born when Calvin Coolidge was president), doesn't even bother microwaving his world view to thaw the ice age out of it.

But Brzezinski-Scowcroft-type sermons still have an audience. They still shape policy, as they have for the last few decades of disastrous American involvement in the Middle East. For the United States to regain its authority and positive influence in the region, Obama could do little better than a radical break with the old order.