The following is very powerful stuff. I hope people who support Bush are able to take some of this on board.
Kennedy was deeply influenced by Barbara Tuchman's classic, The Guns of August, which recounted how a seemingly isolated event 92 summers ago — an assassination in Sarajevo by a Serb terrorist — set off a chain reaction that led in just a few weeks to World War I. There are vast differences between that August and this one. But Tuchman ended her book with a sentence that resonates in this time of crisis: "The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit."
Preventing just such a trap must be the highest priority of American policy. Unfortunately, there is little public sign that the President and his top advisers recognise how close we are to a chain reaction, or that they have any larger strategy beyond tactical actions.
Under the universally accepted doctrine of self-defence, which is embodied in Article 51 of the UN Charter, there is no question that Israel has a legitimate right to take action against a group that has sworn to destroy it and had hidden 13,000 missiles in southern Lebanon. In these circumstances, American support for Israel is essential, as it has been since the time of Truman; if Washington abandoned Jerusalem, the very existence of the Jewish state could be jeopardised., and the world crisis whose early phase we are now in would quickly get far worse. The United States must continue to make clear that it is ready to come to Israel's defence, both diplomatically and, as necessary, with military equipment.
But the US must also understand, and deal with, the wider consequences of its own actions and public statements, which have caused an unprecedented decline in America's position in much of the world and are provoking dangerous new anti-American coalitions and encouraging a new generation of terrorists. American disengagement from active Middle East diplomacy since 2001 has led to greater violence and a decline in US influence. Others have been eager to fill the vacuum. (Note the sudden emergence of France as a key player in the current burst of diplomacy.)
American policy has had the unintended, but entirely predictable, effect of pushing America's enemies closer together. Throughout the region, Sunnis and Shiites have put aside their hatred of each other just long enough to join in shaking their fists — or doing worse — at the United States and Israel. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, our coalition troops are coming under attack by both sides — Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. If this continues, the US presence in Baghdad has no future.
President Bush owes it to his nation, and especially the troops who risk their lives every day, to re-examine his policies. For starters, he should redeploy some US troops into northern Iraq to serve as a buffer between the increasingly agitated Turks and the restive, independence-minded Kurds. Given the new situation, such a redeployment and a phased drawdown elsewhere is fully justified. At the same time, the US should send more troops to Afghanistan.
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? This would clearly be in Israel's interest.
Talks with Iran would be more difficult. Why has the world's leading nation stood aside and allowed the international dialogue with Tehran to be conducted by Europeans, the Chinese and the UN? And why has that dialogue been restricted to the nuclear issue — vitally important, to be sure, but not as urgent at this moment as Iran's sponsorship and arming of Hezbollah and its support of actions against US forces in Iraq?
Containing the violence must be Washington's first priority. Finding a stable and secure solution that protects Israel must follow. Then must come the unwinding of America's disastrous entanglement in Iraq in a manner that is not a complete humiliation and does not lead to even greater turmoil. All of this will take sustained high-level diplomacy — precisely what the US Administration has avoided. Washington has, or at least used to have, leverage over the more moderate Arab states; it should use it again, in consultation with and on behalf of Israel.
And we must be ready for unexpected problems that will test the US; they could come in Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan or even Somalia — but they will come. Without a new, comprehensive strategy based the most urgent national security needs — as opposed to a muddled version of Wilsonianism — this crisis is almost certain to worsen and spread.
Richard Holbrooke is a former US ambassador to the United Nations.
