Bush, The Nudge-In-Chief by Harvey Sicherman, Foreign Policy Research Institute

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BUSH, THE NUDGE-IN-CHIEF
by Harvey Sicherman

February 1, 2008

Harvey Sicherman, Ph.D., is president of FPRI and a former
aide to three U.S. secretaries of state.


BUSH, THE NUDGE-IN-CHIEF

by Harvey Sicherman

President Bush's long-awaited and much-demanded personal
engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian tangle has finally
begun. Visiting Jerusalem and Ramallah in early January
2008, he announced his role: Nudge-in-Chief. Then, refreshed
by visits to the wellsprings of Christianity, the President
reiterated his (faith-based) conclusion that a treaty
enshrining the two-state solution could be reached by the
end of his tenure. But this was not the main purpose of his
regional visit.

The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on
Iran's nuclear weapons program had angered and confused U.S.
allies in the Gulf. And simultaneously the evident success
of General Petraeus' surge in Iraq was in danger of being
wasted by the paralysis of the Maliki government. Here, too,
the President exercised the nudge, trying to keep in play
his main policies, including the by now heavily discounted
"freedom agenda."

RENEWING THE FAITH
Bush's visit to the Middle East came six weeks after the
relaunch of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process at
Annapolis. Each of the players had then returned to old bad
habits, as if to reassure their audiences that no new acts
were in store. The Israeli bureaucracy announced new
apartment construction for areas of greater Jerusalem,
angering the Americans and Palestinians while taking no
action on old promises to dismantle illegal outposts. Rocket
firings from Gaza and the killing of two Israelis on the
West Bank by security men employed by the Palestinian
Authority reminded the world of the unfulfilled Palestinian
pledges to suppress violence. Meanwhile, no final status
talks commenced. And those supposed supporters of the
Annapolis process, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, facilitated the
movement of Gaza pilgrims to Mecca through Egyptian rather
than Israeli or Palestinian Authority checkpoints, thereby
harming both Abbas' plans to gain some credit and Israel's
desire to keep money from reaching Hamas-controlled areas.
The hope of Annapolis was fading fast.

Bush began the revival in Israel, one of those few countries
where the President remains popular. He was received with
the goodwill and enthusiasm that befitted a friend. Neither
a beneficiary of the U.S.-Jewish vote nor known as a
supporter of Israel before becoming President, Bush had
taken Israel's side in the second intifada, on the Iranian
threat, and during the second Lebanon War. His 2005 letter
to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon endorsed retention of
some of the 1967 territories and negated the return of large
numbers of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Bush also
supported Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza.

Still, the United States and Israel disagreed on important
matters. Most of Israel's leaders had never been
enthusiastic about the Iraq War (Iran was the real threat)
and regarded U.S. promotion of Arab democracy as naive, even
dangerous. Prime Minister Olmert's proclamation
notwithstanding, neither Israel's security establishment nor
popular opinion saw in Abbas' Palestinian Authority a
partner capable of delivering peace. And on Syria, the
Israelis appeared ready to deal with Damascus even at
Lebanon's expense, possibly because, unlike Bush or the
French, they put little stock in the lasting power of
Beirut's tenuous democracy.

The Americans had their own differences with the Israelis. A
negotiated rather than unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was
preferred by the State Department. For its part, the White
House was deeply disappointed by Israel's mishandling of the
2006 Lebanon War, fumbling an opportunity to deal a heavy
strategic blow to Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria. Both countries
had been at odds over Israeli arms exports to China. And
there were doubts in Washington over the Olmert government's
staying power and capacity to deliver on its promises.

George W. Bush swept much of this aside in his by now
characteristic mix of direct talk and brimming confidence.
On the evening of January 9, 2008, after meeting with
Olmert, Bush described a three-track process ("the vision
track," the "Roadmap issues," and "help the Palestinians"
prepare for statehood. Later he would add a fourth, "support
from other Arab states"). He would not "butt in and actually
dictate the end result of the agreement." Instead he would
be "nudging them forward_." The next day, after nudging both
sides, Bush read a written statement that summarized the
U.S. outline of a final agreement. The two-state solution
meant a "homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel
is a homeland for the Jewish people." Israel should have
"secure, recognized, and defensible borders"; the
Palestinian state should be "viable, contiguous, and
sovereign and independent."

Bush added a "painful political concessions" category to
this familiar theology that included "mutually agreed
adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect
current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state
is viable and contiguous." Translation: no Israeli return to
the 1967 lines and territorial swaps to compensate the
Palestinians for the largest Israeli settlement blocs. Bush
also wanted "new international mechanisms, including
compensation, to resolve the refugee issue." Translation: as
implied by the earlier reference to Israel as a Jewish
State, no wholesale return of Palestinian refugees to
Israel. Finally after repeating Israeli and Palestinian
obligations to the Roadmap, Bush took a pass on Jerusalem,
thereby returning the contested city to its traditional
position in the order of issues to be negotiated--last. This
certainly eased Olmert's coalition situation.

Bush's "nudge" had a preplanned effect, and largely on the
Israelis. Olmert agreed to commence final status talks even
though neither he nor Abbas had fulfilled, had any intention
to fulfill, or could fulfill entirely the Roadmap's
strictures on settlements or violence. Some of the illegal
settlements would be removed. Abbas, for his part, had been
freshly strengthened by international pledges at the Paris
Conference in December that exceeded $6 billion in
assistance if Palestinian reforms and changes on the ground
would warrant it. Other than reaffirming support for Prime
Minister Fayyad's reform plans, Abbas had little to give and
gave nothing. Bush's appointment of Lt. Gen. William Fraser
to monitor the Roadmap, and the Blair Mission to prepare the
Palestinian Authority for statehood, were reminders of how
much there remained to do and how little time--Bush's time--
was left to do it.

The United States, however, could not help either Olmert or
Abbas with their most pressing political and military
problem--Hamas-run Gaza. There, assisted by Egypt's
reluctance to seal the border and benefiting from
Hezbollah's experience, the various gunmen and militias were
rapidly becoming a more disciplined and capable force, using
Palestinian civilians in Gaza as shields and Israeli
civilians as targets. Their inaccurate missiles and mortars
were improving in range and number. Thus, even while Bush,
Olmert, and Abbas spoke of peace, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and
others were fighting a war of attrition with Israel. During
Bush's eight days in the Middle East, the Palestinian side
fired eighty-four rockets into Israel; the IDF, for its
part, took an increasing toll of the leaders and organizers,
killing thirty. Hamas sought a cease-fire to allow them to
consolidate and become a redoubt like Hezbollah in southern
Lebanon before the 2006 war. Israeli wanted to prevent Hamas
from achieving a Hezbollah capability but without using
either massive firepower or a large ground invasion. The
outcome of this struggle carried significant consequences
for the "two-state" solution. A Hamas victory in Gaza would
make it impossible for Israel to leave the West Bank lest
Hamas attempt to duplicate its success. An Israeli
reoccupation of Gaza would extinguish Palestinian hope for
independence anytime soon.

RESOUNDING THE ALARM
Bush's next stops were dictated by events in Washington. On
December 3, 2007, the White House had published a
declassified part of the November NIE on Iran and its quest
for nuclear weapons. The NIE found that Iran had stopped its
known nuclear weapons program in Fall 2003; that this had
come about primarily because of international pressure; but
that Tehran still kept "open the option to develop nuclear
weapons," the latter judgment asserted with "moderate to
high confidence."

NIEs, composite documents reflecting some sort of consensus
by sixteen intelligence agencies, have become a sore subject
in Washington during the Bush Administration. An earlier one
from 2002, warning of Iraq's WMD capability, turned out to
be quite erroneous. Another, from 2005, claimed Iran was in
hot pursuit of nuclear weapons. The new one seemed to
invalidate it. Moreover, the NIE, while concentrating on the
"weapons program" relegated to a footnote the observation
that the authors "did not mean Iran's declared civil work
related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

Various analysts, the IAEA, and European officials were
quick to point out that the footnote had indeed been the
real focus of policy. Warheads and missiles, the other
components of a nuclear weapons program, meant little if
there were no enrichment. Hence, the U.N. Security Council
had been sanctioning Iran because of its refusal to cease
such enrichment. Was the NIE therefore implying that, the
weapons program having ended, Iranian intentions were now
benign?

Well, no. But the political implication was to deny the Bush
Administration a reason to attack Iran's nuclear facilities
on the grounds that they were part of a military program.
This was a stunning blow to the President's own rhetoric
about the Iranian danger, and the need to keep "all options"
on the table. Washington was rife with rumors that the
latest NIE took revenge on an Administration that, in the
eyes of many intelligence analysts, had abused the product
earlier. As had been the case since 2003, such open warfare
diminished confidence at home and abroad in the White House
and the CIA.

Bush's visit to the Arab Gulf States therefore had as its
largest purpose a negation of the NIE by resounding the
alarm about Iran and reassuring the loose anti-Iranian
coalition that the United States would neither slacken
pressure for further economic sanctions nor publicly exclude
the military option.

FREEDOM AS DESTINY
The Gulf States and then Saudi Arabia, where the President
spent two days with King Abdallah, offered legendary
hospitality made even more opulent by the recent rise of oil
prices. Bush's strictures on Iran found a ready enough
audience but there were doubts whether the military option,
if there were one, would be exercised by the United States
or Israel. Inevitably, the President's hosts had also begun
hedging bets against the uncertainties of an American
election year through private and public overtures to Iran,
suggesting that better relations were available if Tehran
were open to compromises. Bush's foreign policy had simply
not been very helpful in the eyes of the various kings and
princes of the Sunni Arab world who saw American blunders in
Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian issue redound to Shiite
and Iranian advantage. Incomprehensibly, Washington was also
pushing a "freedom agenda" that promised to reduce the
domestic authority of the very family dynasties allied with
the United States.

Bush pressed on, nonetheless. His centerpiece speech on
January 13 in the shimmering ballroom of the $3 billion
Emirates Palace Hotel reprised his views of the world and
the Middle East. The region was at risk because of a lack of
freedom and justice. (This latter phrase was a concession to
Muslim sensibilities that "freedom" properly understood
meant "justice.") Everyone who believed in these principles
had to oppose the fanatics and the Iranian regime: "the
fight against the forces of extremism is the great
ideological struggle of our time." Bush also repeated his
faith that God was on the side of those who fought for
freedom.

There were a few needles. Bush reminded his audience that
the "talent of the people" was a greater resource than "oil
in the ground." The Gulf States, however, owed their success
to oil in the ground; foreign technicians to pump and sell;
and "guestworkers" outnumbering their own citizens to do the
rest. These royal and princely successors to fishermen,
small merchants, and desert chiefs had never relied on the
talent of the people, although all had pledged themselves to
prepare more capable societies--especially Saudi Arabia--
against the day when oil ran out or was replaced as the fuel
of choice. That, however, was a distant horizon.

The President drew his favorite analogy. Just as the United
States had transformed Japan after World War II into a
democracy in a land where that was thought impossible, so
this could be done in the Arab lands. The system might not
look like the American one but it could be democratic.
Bush's audience must have wondered whether this meant the
United States would have troops in Iraq for the next fifty
years. And they surely wished that their societies would not
become democracies like the one they saw in Iraq.

NUDGE-IN-CHIEF
Bush concluded his visit with a quick trip to Egypt, where
he and President Mubarak gave the usual cliches the usual
recycle. The President spent but a few hours with the
Egyptian leader, provoking unseemly comparisons with the two
days lavished on the Saudi King. Egyptians bridle at the
idea that the United States should regard Saudi Arabia as
the "leader" of the Arabs, but neither Riyadh nor Cairo have
distinguished themselves lately in helping American
interests. The Saudi-brokered Mecca Accord between Hamas and
Fatah legitimized Hamas, quite contrary to American
expectations. Then Hamas violated it by seizing Gaza. For
its part, Egypt has disappointed and angered both the United
States and Israel through its reluctant enforcement of
border control. As if to remind Washington of this reality,
on January 23, Hamas broke through the Egyptian border,
using recently smuggled cash to afford the besieged
population a massive shopping spree, and probably also
included the infiltration of new combatants and weapons. In
the wake of Bush's visit, Hamas and behind it Damascus and
Tehran threatened to veto not only Cairo's freedom of action
on the Palestinian issue but also the Annapolis process.

The Nudge-in-Chief promised to return in the spring. But the
President will have to come to grips with the inevitable
decline in his leverage as his last year runs out. Bush has
proposed daunting objectives: a democratic Palestine at
peace with Israel; an Iran that renounces nuclear ambitions
and terrorism; a pacified Iraq; a free Lebanon. To make
headway on these matters, the United States must do at least
the following:

(1) Spend the next ninety days in making palpable
changes for the better on "the ground" between
Israel and the Palestinians, a project that must
be preserved against the storms from Gaza.
Otherwise the parties are unlikely to be ready for
more than a "nudge" in the late summer when both
of them and the United States will have to make a
run for final agreement.

(2) Go beyond the U.N. economic sanctions with
European and Asian allies to hurt Iran while
persuading Tehran that the U.S. military option is
still available. Otherwise the anti-Iranian
coalition will continue to dissipate and pressure
to make deals with Iran will mount.

(3) Press the Maliki government very hard to
realize the promise of the Petraeus strategy while
fending off demands for premature troop
reductions. If not, the benefits of the "surge"
may be lost and both the Sunni and Shiite militias
will resume their depredations.

By the standards of statecraft, the Bush Administration is
now playing with a weak hand. In the time remaining,
however, the President can leave to his successor a stronger
hand than he has now. Given the stakes, both Republican and
Democratic candidates should pray Bush succeeds.


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