Sowing Crisis, page 10
Another characteristic of the region during the Cold War era was that it became a major concern of the new United Nations, which took upon itself the disposition of Italy’s former colony of Libya and of Britain’s former League of Nations Mandate of Palestine, and played a role in the decolonization of several other Middle Eastern states. Beyond this, 25 percent of the resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council over more than a quarter of a century after 1948 were devoted to one single Middle Eastern issue, the Palestine question and its various ramifications, as compared to all other issues and all other regions of the world combined.15 Clearly, the United Nations and the international community it purported to represent were deeply involved in Middle Eastern affairs.
What is striking about all the attention paid by the United Nations, and the League of Nations before it, to the Middle East is how closely the involvement of what was nominally an international community tracked with and reflected the policies and outlook of the era’s dominant power or powers. Thus the Mandate for Palestine promulgated by the League of Nations in 1922 to provide guidance for Britain in its governance of this territory incorporated verbatim the terms of the Balfour Declaration issued unilaterally by the British cabinet five years earlier. It was no more than a recasting in nominally international terms of a unilateral policy decision taken earlier by the British cabinet. The Mandate indeed consisted essentially of an extrapolation and amplification of the terms of the Balfour Declaration relating to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” In neither the Balfour Declaration nor the Mandate for Palestine were the words “Arab” or “Palestinian” utilized, nor was there any reference to the overwhelming 90 percent majority of the population of the territory who were Arab, except in describing them negatively and in a backhanded fashion as “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” This 90 percent Arab majority were described in the Mandate as having neither national nor political rights; only “civil and religious” ones.16 Thus, the language adopted by the League in the terms of the Mandate for Palestine perfectly reflected the utter obliviousness of the British to Arab national claims in Palestine. This obliviousness continued at least during the first two decades of their control over Palestine, until the 1936–39 Palestinian national revolt finally forced British policymakers to take grudging account of these claims.17
It is true, as the historian Susan Pedersen has shown,18 that the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations occasionally had different ideas than did the British Colonial Office as to how Palestine should be governed. In most cases, these ideas were even more sympathetic to the Zionists than were those of the British, although on occasion some members of the commission expressed disquiet about Britain’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that the League measurably changed or hindered the course of British policy in Palestine during the two decades when it was nominally responsible for supervising Britain’s execution of its mandatory responsibilities there. British concerns and interests indeed largely determined the behavior of the League toward all of Britain’s Middle Eastern mandates, as did those of France regarding its mandates in the region. In other words, the new “international order” embodied by the League of Nations affected only slightly the behavior of the dominant powers of the day.
The way in which the United Nations dealt with the Middle East differed somewhat from the approach of the League. This was a result of the much-changed international situation, specifically the Cold War and the wave of post–World War II decolonization. It was a result as well of the structure of the United Nations, which in important respects did not resemble that of the League of Nations. Unlike the latter, the new UN included all the major powers, and it had many more member states and a slightly more functional form of organization, with a powerful Security Council and an occasionally effective General Assembly. Finally, it was a function of the new Cold War architecture of international relations dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which had had a limited involvement with the League of Nations. For this reason, and in spite of changed international circumstances, the United Nations tended to reflect, as had the League, the interests of the dominant powers in the international system, which in the post–World War II era were increasingly the United States and the USSR. Because of the veto power of the permanent members in the Security Council, that body could only take action, in the Middle East or elsewhere, when all of them were in concurrence. In practice this meant that the Council was able to act relatively frequently in the Middle East during the first decade or so after World War II, before Cold War rivalries became all consuming, and while both superpowers were still concerned with diminishing British influence in the region. It was able to take action somewhat less frequently thereafter.
There was relatively limited friction over the Middle East at the United Nations between the United States and the USSR at the very outset of the Cold War, except for early tensions concerning the northern tier of Turkey and Iran. At this early stage both superpowers often seemed more concerned (for different reasons) with eliminating the residual—albeit still considerable —British imperial presence in the region than with dealing with each other. It is often forgotten that the United States and the USSR were on the same side as far as the conflict over Palestine was concerned in 1947–49: they both opposed Britain and supported the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel. In this sense, the new era symbolized by the United Nations did not differ significantly from the old one symbolized by the League of Nations: the November 29, 1947, General Assembly resolution to partition Palestine reflected the views of the dominant great powers, the United States and the USSR, rather than those of the still overwhelming Arab majority of the population of Palestine. Soviet military support, via arms supplied through Czechoslovakia, was essential to Israel’s resounding ultimate victory during the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948–49. The position of the superpowers was similar in 1956, when, in spite of the high tension between them over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, both the United States and the USSR opposed the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt. Indeed, as we have seen, it was not until after the 1967 war that the superpowers became fully and rigidly aligned on opposite sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Meanwhile, the Cold War became even more entrenched in the Middle East, and its impact came to be reflected at the United Nations, which increasingly became a forum for the superpowers to wage their propaganda war with one another.
Over time, however, largely because of the growth of the power of the nonaligned bloc at the UN, the increasingly hegemonic United States was either obliged to find means to subordinate the United Nations to its policies, or had no choice but to bypass it entirely. Subordination notably took the form of the United States repeatedly using its veto power in the Security Council in support of Israel to paralyze the efforts of the world body.19 Sometimes the United States achieved the same end more subtly, as on the last day of the June 1967 war, when U.S. ambassador Arthur Goldberg suddenly asked for a recess in the urgent Security Council meting called to vote on an already-agreed-upon draft cease-fire resolution. This was intended to halt the Israeli army’s offensive after it had overcome the resistance of Syrian troops in the Golan Heights and was moving rapidly through Quneitra toward the Syrian capital. The nominal purpose of this recess was for Goldberg to “consult with his government,” but in fact it was meant to stall the United Nations Security Council, and to give Israel more precious time to continue its advance toward Damascus just a bit farther, to the intense frustration of the Soviets and their Arab allies.20 Something similar happened in 1973, as is discussed in chapter 4. We have much more recently seen another egregious example of these stalling tactics, this one in the post–Cold War era, once again subordinating the United Nations to American purposes, in the delay imposed by the United States on Security Council consideration of a cease-fire in Lebanon during August 2006. This constituted yet another transparent American effort to enable Israel to continue a military offensive and achieve more of its strategic objectives.
Insofar as the tactic of bypassing the United Nations was concerned, the Rogers Plan of 1968–70 for a cease-fire on the Suez Canal and the launch of Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy of 1973–76, and the Camp David Accords of 1978 were all part of an essentially unilateral U.S. approach to Arab-Israeli negotiations that largely ignored the UN, and indeed any multilateral forum, or any other major power. As we will see in more detail in chapter 4, the primary objective of these efforts was to achieve exclusive influence for the United States and to freeze the Soviet Union out of peacemaking, and ultimately out of the Middle East. These efforts were essentially unilateral, although Kissinger did agree to convene a purely symbolic single session of the Geneva Conference on Middle East peace including representatives of the USSR and the United Nations in December 1973. This was no more than an empty piece of playacting. Thereafter, Kissinger again deliberately ignored the Soviets and the UN (although Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko attempted to make his country relevant by repeated visits to the area) and returned immediately to the unilateral American shuttle diplomacy that produced two Egyptian-Israeli disengagement accords and the Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement between 1973 and 1976. This shuttle diplomacy was meant primarily to establish the paramount position of the United States in the Middle East at the expense of the Soviet Union, and weaken the latter, rather than to resolve fully the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is true although in both cases these accords solidified and made more permanent UN-established cease-fires. Proof that resolving the larger Arab-Israeli conflict was not a priority for Kissinger can be found in his studiously avoiding giving serious attention to those aspects of it involving Lebanon and Jordan. Most notably, he never addressed the question of Palestine, which is the core issue of the entire conflict. Regarding these essential matters, Kissinger engaged in crisis management when necessary, but he made no serious effort to deal with them in a manner that would have furthered a just permanent resolution of the overall conflict.
Before, during, and after Kissinger’s stewardship of American policy, the United Nations thus served the interests of both superpowers when they were in accord on halting a major or minor round of Arab-Israeli violence. Otherwise, it was largely ignored by the United States, which was gradually acquiring a dominant position in the region and was determined to monopolize and control peacemaking efforts in ways that enhanced American influence and diminished that of the USSR. It did so irrespective of whether that facilitated the achievement of a lasting peace between all the parties concerned. It was argued by some during the latter decades of the Cold War that to be lasting, Middle Eastern peace would have to be comprehensive and involve the United Nations. Moreover, they argued, given the ties of several key Arab states to the Soviet Union and the latter’s power and influence in the region, it would be impossible to achieve a comprehensive settlement without the Soviets, who with their Arab friends urged such a comprehensive approach. Nevertheless, American policymakers tended to avoid such a settlement, for several reasons. Among them were the intensity of the rivalry between the superpowers, the hostility of Israel to the UN and to any multilateral forum with the Arabs in which it believed it would be at a disadvantage, and in particular the desire of the United States to expand its own growing regional dominance. Whether it was achievable or not, a comprehensive settlement was never reached during the Cold War, nor has it been up to this day. I will come back to other aspects of how the Arab-Israeli conflict was affected by the Cold War in the next chapter.
THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE
MIDDLE EAST SINCE THE COLD WAR
These two contrasting American approaches to the United Nations and the international community—subordination and bypassing—could be seen at work during the last phase of the Cold War, and also after its end. This was the case during the last two Gulf wars, that of 1991 to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and that of 2003 leading to the current American occupation of Iraq (the first Gulf war, it is often forgotten, was that between Iraq and Iran from 1980–88). In the former instance, the United States essentially made a unilateral decision as to what action to take. It then took advantage of the winding down of the Cold War, the imminent dissolution of the USSR, and the hostility that the odious regime of Saddam Hussein inspired in virtually all its neighbors and most of the rest of the world, to fashion a United Nations–sanctioned coalition to drive Iraqi troops out of occupied Kuwait. Although the UN was involved, it was in a strictly subordinate capacity. The Kuwait campaign was very much an American-directed, American-controlled effort, albeit operating under the flag of a Security Council resolution. American monopolization of decision making was made much easier by the weakness of the declining Soviet Union and by its incapacity to project power into the Middle East (although Middle East expert Yevgeni Primakov made a last-minute trip to Baghdad as an envoy of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in a futile effort to avert war).21 In the waning stages of the Cold War, the United States both had a large measure of freedom of action and was able to obtain international sanction for its efforts.
By contrast, after the end of the Cold War in a situation where there was no longer another superpower confronting it, in its 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States was obliged to bypass a recalcitrant Security Council, where it would probably have faced three vetoes from permanent members: those of Russia, China, and France. It thus went to war (together with Britain and a few other allies) without any formal international endorsement. The United States thereby acted in violation of the UN Charter and international law, but otherwise without the slightest practical hindrance. Since then, the United States has obtained much of what it wanted regarding Iraq from a bullied and compliant United Nations in the way of Security Council resolutions blessing and legalizing some of its unilateral (and illegal) actions ex post facto. This included one such resolution (UN Security Council resolution 1546) stating in effect that the U.S. occupation of Iraq was not an occupation. It asserted as well that an Iraqi government that had virtually no control over most of the most important decisions made in its country (these were made in Washington and by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad) was sovereign, and could freely request the maintenance of U.S. forces, now placed under a nominal UN mandate.22 Over time, that government, while still almost entirely dependent on U.S. forces, has begun to exhibit a small degree of independence from its American patrons, although nothing it had yet done at the time of writing in August 2008 made it appear fully “sovereign.”
The Iraq campaign was one of a sequence of efforts following the events of September 11, 2001, whereby the Bush administration proclaimed that it had the right and the obligation to engage in vigorous unilateral actions, launching wars and actively intervening militarily in the Middle East and its peripheries, like Afghanistan, acting together with ad hoc coalitions of allies put together for each occasion. A few years after 9/11, however, it appeared to some observers as if Washington might be following a more multilateral approach in the Middle East. Certainly, other powers like France, Germany, Russia, and China, which were vigorously opposed to the 2003 war in Iraq, drew lessons from that bitter and divisive episode and the harshness of the Bush administration’s response to their criticisms, and thereafter became much more careful to avoid overtly opposing the United States in the Middle East. There was even a degree of multilateral cooperation in some areas of the region, such as with France over Lebanon or with the European Union over Iran’s nuclear program, although much of it was on the ad hoc basis favored by the Bush administration, and these efforts were anything but comprehensive, often rigorously excluding Russia and China, and still treating as pariahs major Middle Eastern powers like Syria and Iran.23
Even when the United States did act in a more multilateral fashion as in these cases, however, its new policies often went along with others emerging from the strong ideologically grounded drive of the Bush administration. Thus, while U.S. undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns was sent to meet with the Iranians together with European envoys in July 2008, the first such high-level contact since the Iranian Revolution, the Bush administration continued to try to weaken, isolate, and destroy those Middle Eastern forces, such as Hamas and Hizballah, that it defined as “terrorist” and thereby as irreconcilable enemies, and that were seen as proxies for Iran and Syria. At the same time, there was no halt to efforts by the administration to free its actions abroad of any limitations, whether legal, congressional, or international.
How little had changed in the Bush administration’s single-minded pursuit of the Moby Dick of Middle Eastern terrorism was demonstrated with crystal clarity in early August 2006 over Lebanon. Then, in rejecting an immediate UN cease-fire in its support of an expansion of the Israeli offensive against Lebanon, this administration’s isolation and unilateralism, and its unheeding stubbornness, were as great as at any time in the past. Indeed, the Bush administration’s go-it-alone tendency in the face of expert advice and common sense has rarely been more in evidence than over its obsession with Hizballah in Lebanon, then and later. The shambles of its wrongheaded policy over Lebanon culminated in 2007–8. A confrontational American approach unwisely supported by Saudi Arabia and Egypt (together with the dangerous brinkmanship of other regional actors like Iran and Syria) gravely inflamed the situation in that country to the point that it appeared by mid-2008 as if Lebanon were headed toward a renewal of its civil war in the midst of spiraling regional rivalries. Thereupon, as ominous sectarian clashes in Beirut and other parts of the country escalated in May 2008, almost overnight the hard-line American approach was effectively sidelined. The United States was left mutely and helplessly on the margins, as Qatar and the Arab League eventually won the support of all regional actors (notably Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) and brought about an accord between all the Lebanese factions. This produced a coalition government that included Hizballah, seen in Washington as the terrorist arch-villain of the piece.
