Monday
Jul312006
What would Kissinger do?
Monday, July 31, 2006 at 3:00AM
By Ellen Ratner
The Syrian Embassy in Washington, D.C. is less than three miles away from the State Department but it might as well be in Antarctica given the amount of communication that has taken place between the Syrian Ambassador to the United States and our State Department.
According to Ambassador Imad Moustapha, he has not had contact with the diplomats from the United States in a year and a half. Jim Pinkerton, my Fox News sparring partner, and I did what our State Department refuses to do, we paid a personal visit to Ambassador Moustapha. We also did something else our State Department refuses to do, we went to the Ambassador's homeland to see Syria for ourselves. The Ambassador was cordial and extended the warm hospitality of his culture by sharing Syrian coffee and pleasant conversation with us. He did not say much for a former academic but certainly seemed open to discussion.
The same was true when we went to Syria. Everyone talked freely, and offered opinions with respect to the state of the strained U.S.-Syrian relations. The college students we met at the University of Damascus, when asked who their favorite American journalist was, enthusiastically stated, ''Thomas Friedman.'' Yes, they knew he was Jewish. They appreciated his insight and candor. The Syrian college students were more engaged with U.S. policy (and one of their favorite American actors, Will Smith), than we are with their leadership. Go figure.
The current crisis in the Middle East is neither child's play nor a time for tit-for-tat and gratuitous flexing of egos. The crisis has all of the elements that began World War I, a pointless war, that resulted in an even larger war.
Diplomacy, or lack thereof, can get caught up in that all too familiar junior high school/family feud dynamic. Sunday's edition of the New York Times details historical negotiations that have been bogged and broken down to the peril of all parties. Sometimes the breakdown is a matter of form over function. The Times list includes the shape of the table in the 1969 Vietnam talks, the speaking time allotted for Jordan and Palestinian leaders in the 1991 Middle East talks, and the location of the 2001 Israeli-Palestinian truce talks – all resulting in negative outcomes.
But leadership involves getting beyond these dynamics. Leadership means getting beyond, ''I am mad so I won't talk to you.'' Leadership means talking to people you don't want to talk to. Making sure there is some kind of ongoing diplomatic relationship with a country that might hold the keys to securing a cease-fire, as well as tone down Hezbollah, does not seem to be rocket (or even missile) science.
As I write this article, Secretary Rice is winging her way back to the United States after a weekend of terrible violence in Lebanon with mounting civilian casualties. The State Department says they canceled her trip to Lebanon. Lebanon said they canceled Secretary Rice. But, if you look at the map, there are other countries in the region that America's diplomat in chief could have visited. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and of course, Syria are all stakeholders in this current conflict.
What would former statesmen and women have done in the same situation? I cannot imagine that Henry Kissinger would not have hopped on a plane and landed in Syria, even if Syria had said that they did not want him. In fact, he made at least ten trips to Syria and countless others to the region while he sat in Secretary Rice's chair. In 1973, he helped obtain a cease-fire between Egypt and Israel and then he spent months shuttling back and forth working to achieve real and measurable peace with Egypt. Kissinger also worked with the Syrians so that the border with Israel would be secure.
Children play a game of ''let's pretend.'' Governments can't afford to.
Secretary Rice and President Bush are pretending that Syria isn't in the game or even in the room, except when they want to parade out a boogeyman to blame for instability in Iraq. They have written Syria off as being part of any solution.
This is not new behavior for the Bushies. The word around the State Department right after Bush became president was, ''Do the opposite of whatever the Clinton administration did.'' This explains why Korea and the Middle East were initially ignored. Eventually however, they both got the attention of this administration. It looks as if Secretary Rice would like to return to the ''talk to the hand'' school of international relations. It is time to stop worrying about protocol and egos and start exhibiting real leadership before things get beyond anyone's ability to stop the spiraling violence.
The Syrian Embassy in Washington, D.C. is less than three miles away from the State Department but it might as well be in Antarctica given the amount of communication that has taken place between the Syrian Ambassador to the United States and our State Department.
According to Ambassador Imad Moustapha, he has not had contact with the diplomats from the United States in a year and a half. Jim Pinkerton, my Fox News sparring partner, and I did what our State Department refuses to do, we paid a personal visit to Ambassador Moustapha. We also did something else our State Department refuses to do, we went to the Ambassador's homeland to see Syria for ourselves. The Ambassador was cordial and extended the warm hospitality of his culture by sharing Syrian coffee and pleasant conversation with us. He did not say much for a former academic but certainly seemed open to discussion.
The same was true when we went to Syria. Everyone talked freely, and offered opinions with respect to the state of the strained U.S.-Syrian relations. The college students we met at the University of Damascus, when asked who their favorite American journalist was, enthusiastically stated, ''Thomas Friedman.'' Yes, they knew he was Jewish. They appreciated his insight and candor. The Syrian college students were more engaged with U.S. policy (and one of their favorite American actors, Will Smith), than we are with their leadership. Go figure.
The current crisis in the Middle East is neither child's play nor a time for tit-for-tat and gratuitous flexing of egos. The crisis has all of the elements that began World War I, a pointless war, that resulted in an even larger war.
Diplomacy, or lack thereof, can get caught up in that all too familiar junior high school/family feud dynamic. Sunday's edition of the New York Times details historical negotiations that have been bogged and broken down to the peril of all parties. Sometimes the breakdown is a matter of form over function. The Times list includes the shape of the table in the 1969 Vietnam talks, the speaking time allotted for Jordan and Palestinian leaders in the 1991 Middle East talks, and the location of the 2001 Israeli-Palestinian truce talks – all resulting in negative outcomes.
But leadership involves getting beyond these dynamics. Leadership means getting beyond, ''I am mad so I won't talk to you.'' Leadership means talking to people you don't want to talk to. Making sure there is some kind of ongoing diplomatic relationship with a country that might hold the keys to securing a cease-fire, as well as tone down Hezbollah, does not seem to be rocket (or even missile) science.
As I write this article, Secretary Rice is winging her way back to the United States after a weekend of terrible violence in Lebanon with mounting civilian casualties. The State Department says they canceled her trip to Lebanon. Lebanon said they canceled Secretary Rice. But, if you look at the map, there are other countries in the region that America's diplomat in chief could have visited. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and of course, Syria are all stakeholders in this current conflict.
What would former statesmen and women have done in the same situation? I cannot imagine that Henry Kissinger would not have hopped on a plane and landed in Syria, even if Syria had said that they did not want him. In fact, he made at least ten trips to Syria and countless others to the region while he sat in Secretary Rice's chair. In 1973, he helped obtain a cease-fire between Egypt and Israel and then he spent months shuttling back and forth working to achieve real and measurable peace with Egypt. Kissinger also worked with the Syrians so that the border with Israel would be secure.
Children play a game of ''let's pretend.'' Governments can't afford to.
Secretary Rice and President Bush are pretending that Syria isn't in the game or even in the room, except when they want to parade out a boogeyman to blame for instability in Iraq. They have written Syria off as being part of any solution.
This is not new behavior for the Bushies. The word around the State Department right after Bush became president was, ''Do the opposite of whatever the Clinton administration did.'' This explains why Korea and the Middle East were initially ignored. Eventually however, they both got the attention of this administration. It looks as if Secretary Rice would like to return to the ''talk to the hand'' school of international relations. It is time to stop worrying about protocol and egos and start exhibiting real leadership before things get beyond anyone's ability to stop the spiraling violence.
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