The Foreign Service Journal, December 2008

22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 epairing the wreck- age of American policy in the Middle East is the most urgent and complex foreign policy challenge President Barack Obama will face. The Bush administration’s radical plans for creating a “New Middle East” through pre-emptive war, regime change, other coercive measures and democratization have failed dramatically. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deepened. The war in Iraq, waged at a staggering human and financial cost, has produced neither stability nor democracy there, but has upset the regional balance of power to the advantage of an assertive and potentially nuclear Iran. And the war in Afghanistan looks omi- nously like another quagmire. Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to undermine Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have backfired. And terrorism, which has propelled U.S. policies in the region, has hard- ly been defeated. These failures, along with the abuse of detainees, have fueled strong anti-American hostility and undermined our influence. Our new Middle East policy should be based on real- ism. It should start with a clearer understanding of the troubled history of the region and its relations with the West. It should pay respectful attention to the views of Middle Easterners, and abandon fantasies of American hegemony and rapid transformation through democrati- zation. And it should put aside simplistic classification of regimes as good or evil. A return to realism also calls for a renewal of diplo- macy as America’s principal tool of national security and a better understanding of the limits of military power. Such a rebalancing will require changing our hugely dis- proportionate assignment of resources — and therefore bureaucratic power — to the military. It will mean restoring the leadership of the Department of State and the Foreign Service, and redressing the gross deficit of resources, staffing and leadership within our civilian national security apparatus. The next administration will not have the luxury of dealing with these problems piecemeal, or in phases. All present immediate dangers, and there are many link- ages. A new strategy must be comprehensive, integrat- ed and sustained. Success will take years, but the pro- cess of articulating and launching a new policy to restore confidence and cooperation should begin immediately. New policies should address the following problems. F O C U S O N I D E A S F O R T H E N E W A DM I N I S T R AT I O N T IME FOR R EALISM IN THE M IDDLE E AST O NLY RENEWED , SUSTAINED A MERICAN DIPLOMATIC LEADERSHIP AND PARTNERSHIP CAN REDEEM OUR REPUTATION AND STABILIZE THE REGION . B Y P HILIP C. W ILCOX J R . R Ambassador Philip C. Wilcox Jr. was a Foreign Service officer from 1966 to 1997. Among many other assign- ments, he was chief of mission in Jerusalem and ambas- sador-at-large for counterterrorism. He is currently president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.