The following summary is part one of Robert Satloff's
presentation to a June 18, 2010, Washington Institute Policy Forum on the
impact of the Gaza flotilla incident. Part two will address the reverberations
of the Gaza episode on Arab actors.
Listen
to online audio of this event, which also included presentations by Michael
Eisenstadt, Soner Cagaptay, and David Makovsky.
Rather than look at the Gaza flotilla incident in isolation, it is more useful
to view the series of events of the past three weeks as a window into the
content and direction of U.S. Middle East policy in the Obama administration.
The NPT Review Conference
It is important to recall that the Gaza incident had the unintended
consequence of wiping from the headlines much discussion about the U.S.
decision to accede to the final resolution of the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT) review conference. Indeed, if Gaza had not occurred, there would
be much more intense focus on how the decision to acquiesce in a deeply flawed
NPT document gave clarity to the administration's priorities.
Only weeks before the NPT conference, numerous administration spokesmen --
including both the vice president and the national security advisor -- had
publicly stated that there is "no space between the United States and
Israel on security." It is difficult to imagine that any senior
administration official will again utter that line after the U.S. decision to
accept the NPT document so clearly exposed the space between the two countries
on perhaps the most important item on their security agenda: nuclear policy.
Perhaps the "no space" line was exaggerated to begin with; after
all, there is often space between any two countries, even two allies, on
matters of security. Still, it was abundantly clear that the administration
placed a higher value on its goal of maintaining international amity on the
NPT and avoiding the sort of messy diplomatic breakdown that occurred on the
Bush administration's watch at the 2005 review conference than on protecting
Israel's equities and ensuring that the final document focused on actual
violators of NPT obligations -- such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea -- rather
than on the status of a nonmember. The clean-up effort after this decision was
sad to see; it is embarrassing for the United States to say that it
"deplores" and "condemns" a document to which it just gave
its assent.
Gaza Flotilla Incident
Just hours after the NPT decision came the Gaza incident. On this, there is a
set of competing perceptions. The Obama administration argues that it stood by
Israel and protected it from UN jackals who wanted to create another
"Goldstone moment." In this, the United States rightly points to the
high level of intense, personal communication between Washington and Israel on
the composition of the latter's inquiry as evidence of the sound working
relationship between the governments.
Yet Washington still has not made a public, ironclad commitment to prevent the
UN from creating its own inquiry. And the United States did not stop the
Security Council from adopting a condemn-first, ask-questions-later approach
on the Mavi Marmara incident. Usually, one has to painstakingly piece
these diplomatic puzzles together to get a clear picture of the facts
involved. In this case, however, a single document puts on full display the
utter hypocrisy of the Security Council's operation in this matter: the text
of its May 31 presidential statement (as issued by the UN's Department of
Public Information; the statement and supporting documents can be found at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/sc9940.doc.htm).
In paragraph one, the document notes that the Security Council not only
expressed "deep regret" at the loss of life aboard the Mavi
Marmara, but also "condemned those acts which had killed at least
ten civilians and wounded many more." Then, in paragraph six, the
statement notes that when the assistant secretary-general for political
affairs, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, briefed the council earlier in the day on
the events off the Gaza coast, he made clear that the UN had "no
independent information on what transpired." In other words, by its own
admission, the Security Council said it had no idea what actually happened on
the Turkish vessel, but that fact did not stop it from issuing, with U.S.
acquiescence, a presidential statement condemning Israel.
Iran Sanctions Resolution and the Folly of Linkage
Ten days after the Gaza episode, the United States scored a diplomatic success
by gaining Security Council assent to a new resolution tightening sanctions on
Iran for refusing to change course on its nuclear program. Time will tell
whether the council's new sanctions and the additional sanctions to be imposed
by the United States, European countries, and other "like-minded
nations" ultimately impact Iran's strategic calculus.
So far, however, one fact is abundantly clear: once again, the "linkage
argument" has been shown to be totally wrong. The sanctions vote was a
laboratory experiment -- Israel had just committed an act condemned around the
world, and the advocates of linkage normally argue that U.S. diplomatic
interests should suffer from America's close connection to Israel. In fact,
the Gaza crisis had no impact on the Iran sanctions vote. The "no"
votes were "no" votes before the crisis; the "yes" votes
were "yes" before the crisis. The Iran debate occurred as though
Gaza never happened.
Implications for U.S. Policy
Where does Washington find itself following this flurry of activity since late
May?
Without a Turkish ally: Turkish prime minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made a choice: in his view, Hizballah is a
responsible actor in Lebanon; Hamas is a legitimate resistance group; and Iran
and Syria are Ankara's strategic partners. The question for the United States
is whether and how to exact a price for Erdogan's brazen decision to spit in
its face by leading the opposition to the Iran sanctions effort.
Some will say now is the moment for critics of Erdogan to push for passage of
the Armenian genocide resolution in Congress. Without offering a view on
specific legislation, however, Congress should think twice about using this as
a tool to punish Erdogan. After all, the last thing the United States should
want to do is give this Islamist leader -- a man who welcomed Sudanese
president Omar Hassan al-Bashir by saying that it is inconceivable for a
Muslim to commit genocide, a man who has succeeded in bringing anti-Semitism
from the fringe of Turkish politics into the mainstream -- an excuse to wrap
himself in a nationalist flag.
But any sense of proportionality and strategic interest dictates that
Washington needs to exact a price from Erdogan. Indeed, if the United States
punished the Israeli government because of the embarrassment caused when some
mid-level bureaucrat issued a Jerusalem zoning decision in the middle of Vice
President Biden's visit, one can only hope that U.S. officials are working
overtime to consider ways to erode the standing of the Turkish prime minister
and his ruling party and strengthen the majority of Turks who still share our
common values. The goal, of course, is not petty vengeance but rather
strengthening the parties inside Turkey -- and the majority of Turkish voters
-- who reject the ruling party's Islamist shift of Turkish politics and
Turkish foreign policy.
On the precipice of another U.S.-Israeli crisis:
The next potential crisis would make the events of March seem like a mild
squabble. Two deadlines loom in September: the expiration of the indirect
"proximity" talks and the expiration of Israel's moratorium on new
construction in West Bank settlements. Of course, a decision by Palestinian
Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to move from indirect to direct talks would
almost surely give Israeli leaders the excuse to extend the moratorium, but
the events of recent weeks make that less, not more, likely. Indeed, as a
result of the Gaza incident, Abbas will be spending much of his time fending
off efforts by Turks and others to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, on terms that
will torpedo any prospect for Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.
Are Washington and Jerusalem prepared to reach mutually acceptable
understandings on settlement construction -- some variation of the Sharon-Bush
formula, perhaps -- in the event that the most Abbas can do is prevent a
terrible reconciliation deal with Hamas? At the moment, it is not clear that
Washington and Jerusalem even want to reach such understandings.
Without much time on Iran: Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates recently stated that Iran could have a nuclear bomb in
as little as one year. This is a sobering comment, despite all the talk about
how technological difficulties have slowed Iran's nuclear program. The
Pentagon and U.S. intelligence more generally have always erred on the long
side of such estimates, not the short side. If Gates says it is possible
within a year -- he actually said one to three years -- it is a serious
matter. That means (a) the UN Security Council has probably approved its last
round of Iran economic sanctions, given the record of how long it takes to get
a resolution through the council's machinery; (b) the time available for the
new sanctions to compel a change in Iran's behavior is very limited; and (c)
if the president is going to fulfill his commitment to prevent Iran from
achieving a nuclear weapons capability, the clock is ticking very fast.
In this regard, the administration's NPT posture only makes sense if it is
part of a strategy to build up international goodwill in advance of tough
punitive, and perhaps military, measures to deal with an egregious NPT
violator. But if it becomes apparent that Obama's administration is not
willing to use all aspects of national power to fulfill this commitment --
perhaps the most categorical foreign policy commitment of his presidency --
then it is almost certain that Israel will take measures on its own. So, if
the past year has seen some fireworks on the U.S.-Israeli front, the next year
is likely to be even more combustible.
Robert
Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute.