Condi's Waterloo

On the diplomatic front, the United States cannot abandon the field to other nations (not even France!) or the United Nations. Every secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright negotiated with Syria, including

those Republican icons George Shultz and James Baker. Why won’t this administration follow suit, in full consultation with Israel at every step? This would clearly be in Israel’s interest. Instead, administration officials refuse direct talks and say publicly, “Syria knows what it must do” – a statement that denies the very point of diplomacy. (Richard Holbrooke, The Guns of August, washingtonpost.com, August 10, 2006)

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has had far-reaching repercussions on many countries and diplomats one of whom is surprisingly secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice. So far she was toeing the foreign policy as was dictated by President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives. There was no occasion for any disagreement or conflict between her and the president. But the outbreak of the Hizbullah-Israel conflict in Lebanon brought her to a difficult juncture where she differed with her boss’s policy.

According to www.insightmag.com of August 8-14 (posted on 8/8/2006), “The U.S. response to the Israeli-Hezbollah war was said to have divided both the administration as well as the family of President George W. Bush. At the same time, it marked the first time since Ms. Rice became secretary of state that the president has overruled her. For the last 18 months, Condi was given nearly carte blanche in setting foreign policy guidelines, a senior government source familiar with the issue said. All of a sudden, the president has a different opinion and he wants the last word.” Ms. Rice wanted to end the Israeli strikes against Hizbullah stronghold in southern Lebanon. The administration, influenced by the neo-conservatives, on the other hand, thought it was an opportunity to eliminate Hizbullah from the Middle-eastern political scene. They believed, if the U.S. gave a green light to Israel to mount a fierce invasion against Hizbullah and overrun it, or at least demolish its infrastructure and its capability to launch attacks and its missiles, it will create suitable conditions for Israel and also will have a salutary effect on the insurgency raging in Iraq. But they miscalculated once again.

Israel launched its fierce attack against Hizbullah, as had been planned, but it seems to have hit a proverbial brickwall; it failed to subjugate and destroy Hizbullah quickly. The situation in Iraq also has further worsened without any letup in the daily violence. In spite of the Shia-Sunni sectarian rift which fuels the sectarian civil war, the population en masse is behind Hizbullah and the anti-American feelings have further hardened.

In the long run, Israel might have conquered Lebanon but it would have had to fight from village to village and street to street and paid a very heavy price for its misadventure. Addressing Israel, the Hizbullah chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said, “We will be waiting for you at every village, at every valley. Thousands of courageous holy warriors are waiting for you.” The events on the ground have shown that Nasrallah’s speech was not merely rhetorical. Israel lost heavily, compared with its losses in the past wars against the Arabs, without making a perceptible dent in Hizbullah’s armor. The missiles continued flying into Israeli cities.

According to www.insightmag.com, “The disagreement between Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice is over the ramifications of U.S. support for Israel’s continued offensive against Lebanon…Mr. Bush believes that Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah would encourage Iranian adventurism in neighboring Iraq. Ms. Rice has argued that the United States would be isolated both in the Middle East and Europe at a time when the administration seeks to build a consensus against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” The isolation that Condi is wary of, has already taken place. There is no country in the world, excepting Britain and Israel, which is supporting U.S. in its foreign policy. Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain, is in deep political trouble in his own country. He is under overwhelming pressure from the British politicians and cabinet members to cut his American apron strings and call for ceasefire in the ongoing war.

The U.S. stands to gain a political capital by engaging Syria and Iran in direct diplomatic talks. It will then receive support from the European nexus, China, and Russia to negotiate not only with Iran and Syria but also with North Korea, Application of brutal force goes only that far in producing reasonable results unless one is thinking of the “unthinkable,” nuking the rogue states. Use of nuclear weapons is the recipe for a nuclear world war in which no single country will be a winner. Every one will lose. In the World War II, only America had the atomic bombs and it used them against Japan to end the war. The current situation is extremely fateful. The Christian Rightists are already proclaiming the advent of the Armageddon and the end of the world. They are waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ who will establish the Kingdom of God after the Armageddon.

The Lebanon war has further polarized the popular opinions and the politicians in the U.S. Jim Lobe (Washington bureau chief for Inter Press Service) wrote on August 11 (‘New Middle East’ out of control), “Indeed, since the outbreak of the Lebanon crisis four weeks ago, a succession of former top Republican policy-makers – including Brent Scowcroft the national security adviser to former presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush; the younger Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage; and Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas – has called publicly for a major reassessment of U.S. Middle east policy and its conduct of the ‘global war on terror.’ Their common message is the necessity of pressing Israel for a quick ceasefire in Lebanon, engaging directly with Syria and Iran on both Lebanon and Iraq, and restarting a serious peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Secretary of state, Colin Powell, in the first Bush administration could not stand on his own and was completely overwhelmed by the hawks, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., and was dropped in the second administration. Condi may not face similar consequences because there is a significant plank of Republicans who sympathize with her. Her hard work has finally produced a resolution on which both US and France agree and which might be voted in the UN today.