ANOTHER SUMMIT — ANOTHER SETBACK FOR PEACE?

(Washington, D.C.): It speaks volumes
about the upcoming diplomatic fandango in
Washington that President Clinton chose
to announce it just before the broadcast
of a slew of Sunday morning interview
programs focussed on last week’s crisis
in the Middle East. The best that can be
said of this summit is that it will be a
made-for-television spectacle — designed
to dazzle voters with images of
presidential leadership but devoid of
lasting beneficial results.

Unfortunately, it is more
likely that Mr. Clinton’s
keep-a-lid-on-it-at-all-costs-until-November
5 will actually make matters worse
for America’s most important ally in the
region, Israel, and for U.S. interests
there. That will assuredly be
the case if the United States is
perceived to have euchred the Israeli
government of Benjamin Netanyahu into
making concessions in direct response to
acts of civil disorder, rioting and
murderous mayhem. Such
perceptions will only invite more of this
behavior in the future.

Diplodebacles

There is plenty of reason to suspect
that this Clinton diplomatic initiative
will produce unintended and undesirable
outcomes as have most, if not all, of the
preceding ones. For example:

The North Korean Deal:
Witness the North Koreans’ refusal to
allow international inspectors into
nuclear-related facilities as required by
an agreement brokered in 1994 by Clinton
Assistant Secretary of State Robert
Gallucci. This agreement was forged
largely over the heads, and despite the
profound misgivings, of America’s South
Korean allies. Now Pyongyang’s
obstreperousness — combined with its
submarine-delivered aggression against
South Korea — is prompting grave concern
that the North is irreconcilably
committed to acquire nuclear weapons
capabilities even as it receives Western
financial support, oil, food relief and
advanced light-water reactors.

The Bosnian Deal: Or
witness the ignominious role now being
played by the United States as it
pronounces — in the face of considerable
evidence to the contrary — that the
elections recently conducted in Bosnia
were “free and fair.” This
standard was set forth in the Dayton
Accords brokered by Clinton Assistant
Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke
largely over the heads, and despite the
profound misgivings, of the
then-pro-Western government of Bosnia.

On 28 September 1996, the Washington
Post quoted a U.N. official involved
in monitoring the elections as saying: “This
was the most fraudulent election in
Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But with the Americans presiding and
ramming it down everyone’s throats, there
is little you can do.” The
practical effect of U.S. actions has been
to impugn this country’s commitment to
democracy even as it has doomed Bosnia to
the rule of nationalist extremists
determined to destroy that long-suffering
state it through partition and/or resumed
hostilities.

The Bottom Line

Neither the prospects for the durable
Middle East peace sought by all Americans
nor the security of the Jewish State will
be well served if the Clinton
Administration once again yields to the
temptation to ride roughshod over the
legitimate security interests of its
friends by forcing them to make
ill-advised concessions. Only slightly
less pernicious, but no less undesirable,
is the Clinton tendency simply to paper
over substantive differences in the
interest of having yet another handshake
photo-op or signing ceremony.

As the Center for Security Policy
noted last week⁽¹⁾:

“It is, after all,
only in times of crisis that the true
quality of friendship is tested.
Within the past few weeks, the
Clinton Administration’s failure to
resist Saddam Hussein’s aggressive
actions in northern Iraq may have
encouraged others in the Arab world
to believe that the United States
will not stand by its ally, Israel,
either. The need to ensure that there
is absolutely no confusion on this
score is all the greater in light of
ominous troop movements undertaken by
Syria and Egypt and a
higher-than-normal level of
anti-Israeli propaganda issuing forth
from the state-controlled Egyptian
media.

“No less clear should be the
fact that those demanding of
Israel new concessions in the face of
the present crisis — concessions
that would have the effect of
appeasing the nationalist ambitions
of Palestinian Arabs in the name of
‘reinvigorating the peace process’ —
simply do not grasp the harsh
strategic realities confronting
Israel today, and in the near future.
The Jewish State can ill afford to
rely upon their flawed judgment as it
struggles to deal with those
realities; it should be spared such
unhelpful advice from its true
friends in the United States.”

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Birth of a Nation?
Arafat’s Ambitions to ‘Liberate
Palestine’ Make Violence Inevitable;
Better Now than Later ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_92″>No. 96-D 92, 27
September 1996).