Engaging the Arab World

Our relationship with the Arab world is perhaps our most important and difficult foreign policy priority today. I believe this challenge provides a good illustration of how constructive engagement could work. Let’s make clear up front that it wouldn’t involve giving Arab governments and peoples everything they want or reversing all (or necessarily any) of the policies that offend them. It would involve instead identifying new opportunities for collaboration where our interests intersect, and operating to maximum capacity within that zone of commonality of interests. That’s the sweet spot of collaborative foreign policy.

In a certain sense it involves shifting the frame of reference for the relationship in a way that is more favorable or conducive to the achievement of U.S. policy objectives. Let’s look specifically at the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to illustrate how this approach might work in the real world. I assert that shifting the frame of this dispute – and America’s role in it – does not require us to side with the Palestinians on every critical point of contention with Israel. Instead, we would work together identify other things of value to the Palestinians (loans, development assistance, a vote at the UN, etc.) and help bring them to fruition. Over time the "frame" for the bilateral or multilateral relationship shifts to incorporate more of the collaborative (and perhaps less of the conflictual) areas of interaction.

The United States implemented this approach on a small scale with the French in the late 1990s, and with some success. In that relationship as much as in any other, we have a tendency to to allow all-or-nothing issues to dominate our consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic. Washington and Paris had reached a serious impasse over the strategic redesign of NATO. The Clinton administration had adopted the view that without French submission to U.S. will in NATO, we would refuse to cooperate with them elsewhere. The French were all too happy to oblige, mostly because they knew that without their support, NATO strategic reform was dead in the water. The same can be said of the pre-Iraq diplomacy in the UN in 2003. The Bush administration basically said, "Either you back us on invading Iraq, or we’re crossing you off the ‘ally’ list." Again, the French knew our chances for success in Iraq were severely diminished without broad UN and international endorsement (which was impossible without French agreement), and they were willing to take the gamble.

The potential Achilles heel of constructive engagement, however, is that when any party approaches diplomacy as a zero-sum game, everybody loses. That’s the potential risk to applying a model that worked with France to the Arab world. For the approach to work, it assumes that aggressive factions in the Arab world have or at least will develop an objective, non-ideological understanding of their interests. We have to trust that as the weaker partner they will not take a zero-sum approach. For example, we would have to expect that if we were offer the Palestinians a $20 billion dollar “loan” for infrastructure improvements and apply pressure on Israel to disband West Bank settlements, Hamas actually would stop sending missiles and suicide bombers into Israel. That makes this a phenomenally difficult strategy to pull off politically, because it will require unprecedented persistence in the face of outrageous violence that will take some time to get under control.

It won’t work at first, no question. The first year of constructive engagement in the Middle East would not likely result in less violence despite the more magnanimous approach by our side. The hope is that over time, the "enemy" is enticed by the benefits of further collaboration into modifying its behavior. The bottom line is that there is no other workable alternative. We all see where decades of aggressive and violent retribution by the Israelis has got them. The same can be said of our own "war" on terror. Are we safer? Can we hope that our bombs will result in fewer bombs from their side? I do not believe that is possible in the long run, despite the fact, as President Bush emphasized in his farewell address to the nation, that we have avoided another attack on American soil since 9-11. Clearly, we cannot ignore the threat in hopes that it will go away on its own. The ultimate question we face, however, is whether we have the courage to suffer short-term failure and loss in order to achieve long-term success.

Constructive Engagement

The use of soft power as a competitive advantage for the United States will require us to move away from a proclivity for confrontation and conflict and toward a strategy of constructive engagement. This should involve not only the rebuilding of damaged alliances with other democracies. It must include engaging our enemies in dialogue, as Barack Obama has rightly suggested. At this point, I believe it is important to define what constructive engagement is and is not before we get into the specifics of foreign policy initiatives this approach would naturally suggest.

First, it is not appeasement, as John McCain, George Bush and many on the Right have suggested. It is also not merely paying lip service to collaboration and internationalism while refusing to compromise on all issues, which is closer to the approach of the Clinton administration. Both approaches would result in failure – appeasement because it sacrifices national interests for agreement, and Clintonian internationalism because it results in ineffectual coalitions and little meaningful progress on most issues.

Constructive engagement must begin with a clear and thorough assessment of national interests. It requires definition of those core interests on which we will accept no compromise. We must also determine areas where we have limited flexibility (and what those limitations are), as well as those where we might have a view but would be willing to compromise in exchange for progress on matters more vital to our national security. Constructive engagement must also involve real interaction with both our friends and our enemies. It involves careful listening and analysis to understand what motivates the other side, not just telling them what we want – or more recently, demand – that they do. It is important to emphasize, though that engagement is not an end in itself. We must always engage with a view toward the achievement of clearly defined policy objectives and the advancement of core national interests, even if those are aims as “idealistic” as the spread of democracy, human rights and free markets.

Not Dead Yet

The United States of today is not the United States that emerged victorious at the end of the Cold War. Nor is it the United States that received an outpouring of support and solidarity following the tragic attacks of 9/11. Our standing in the world, our power to advance our interests and our freedom of action are all diminished. Last January, I posted an excellent article by Parag Khanna from the New York Times Magazine that asked whether or not the United States is on the way out as the world’s only superpower. Khanna’s article tackles an issue explored in greater depth by Fareed Zakaria in his book The Post-American World. While I believe it is too early to sound the death knell on the American Age in world history, it is now a question that is receiving serious consideration.

The main reason I believe we need not yet reconcile ourselves to going the way of the British Empire has less to do with hard power than soft power. Despite the fact that our military might is severely constrained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our war-waging capabilities still far exceed those of any other country. And while China, India and other countries are rapidly growing in economic power, America’s economy will remain at the center of global trade and investment for many years to come. Nonetheless, our ability to use military and economic power to pursue policy is less than what it was 10 or 15 years ago, and our edge in hard power is likely to shrink further in the coming decades.

I am much more optimistic when it comes to soft power, despite the extent to which that resource has been diminished by the disastrous war in Iraq and the “for us or against us” ethos of the Bush administration. China, the most-cited of our growing rivals, offers an excellent case in point. Despite the rapid expansion of China’s economic might, there are few nations that hope to emulate its society or form of government. Chinese institutions, cultural traits, language and other soft forms of influence have little appeal outside its borders and likely won’t without the type of radical change that seems improbable. Certainly, China has begun to build warmer relations with much of the developing world, especially in Africa, but the impetus here is commercial, driven by access to the resources that China so badly needs to fuel its hungry economy.

What we need for the future, therefore, is a foreign policy strategy that focuses on those dimensions of soft power that have been sorely neglected in recent years but still hold the promise of an enduring competitive advantage for the United States. This means that rather than building new weapons systems and turning to the military as our first and best option in advancing American interests, we must be investing in our ability to wage a war for the hearts and minds of the world. It does not mean that we should abandon a strong defense or allow our ability to use force in defense of our nation and our interests to erode. We should not, however, continue to chase even greater advantage in hard power (which will likely spend us into long-term weakness and further erode our global dominance) at the expense of developing the tools of peaceful influence.

Six More Weeks

It’s official: For the second consecutive year, I must inform my loyal readers that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter. Given the fact that we have not seen the grass here at the Woodchuck’s Corner since the first week of January, Phil’s prediction is hardly a stretch.

So, pull up the wool socks, let the beard grow and throw another log on the fire. Winter won’t be finished with us any time soon.