Gunslingers
“The United States should follow the British example. It should initiate diplomatic contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah. The Obama administration should also look carefully at how to reach moderate Hamas elements and engineer a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.” ~Roger Cohen
I’ve said before – somewhere – that it makes very little sense to embark on any diplomatic endeavor or peace talk if you don’t first invite all the gunslingers to the table. If you go to the table to talk peace, it makes little sense to leave out the very actors with whom you wish to achieve peace. So not negotiating with Hamas or Tehran or Hezbollah simply doesn’t make any diplomatic sense. Critics of such talks say that they would somehow “legitimize” these players. Would they legitimize them any more than waging war on them does? Didn’t Israel’s two failed wars of recent years, the first against Hezbollah and the second against Hamas, have a legitimizing effect on these groups?
More to the point, Hamas is an elected political party within the occupied territories. Elections certainly carry more weight than peace talks or negotiations in shaping world opinion. Tehran’s nest of vipers have been at this now for three decades – do they really require more legitimacy than longevity provides? In fact, I might say that refusing to negotiate with them gives them even more leverage, or at least places them in a better position to rattle off propagandist nonsense day in and day out.
In any case, the logic behind not inviting your opponents to the table for peace talks is only one of many precedents set in our foreign policy that essentially cause more harm than good to American interests. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil is all well and good until it banishes from the realm of possibility hearing, seeing, and speaking with those who wish to do you harm and who might, just possibly be dissuaded through negotiations.
A second folly is the maxim: “The American Government does not negotiate with terrorists.” This is ludicrous in a plethora of ways, the foremost being the abstraction required of such a sentiment. There is the possibility, even with terrorists, that negotiations might actually lead to some form of resolution. This is not guaranteed by any means, but as with virtually every aspect of life and politics, these things are rarely universal and should be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
At some point Fatah departed from the realm of terrorist group and entered the realm of legitimate political organization. At some point Hamas will follow this same course. One could imagine that involving these groups in diplomatic talks might actually result in hastening that process; pacifying them, or entangling them in the web of actual diplomacy and governance that forces not just legitimacy in terms of international recognition, but legitimacy on the grounds of actual responsibility.
In some senses Americans have already legitimized a number of terrorists groups by putting them on the government’s payroll, as was the case with the Anbar Awakening. Americans essentially hired insurgents to do their dirty work, while at the same time bribing them into peace. Surely direct talks with hostile governments or “rogue” states and pseudo-military organizations would have less of an adverse effect than the potential blow back from actually paying our rivals.
I suppose, in the end, if the overarching goal in the Middle East is American hegemony – and it is – than we’re damned with perpetual entanglement in the region and the nightmare politics that this intervention inevitably results in. This being the case, we may as well bring everyone to the bloody table and have it out. Not involving the gunslingers who have it in for us the worst is just denial and idealism at their worst. It’s not smart diplomacy because it’s not diplomacy at all. Bringing everyone to the table wouldn’t amount to some horrible weakness or compromise on America’s part. It would be smart and realistic and completely out of character.
An interesting counterpoint for your reading pleasure: http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2009/03/cohen-on-hizballah.htmlReport
Thanks for the link, Max, but he really doesn’t say anything new. Obviously if Hezbullah didn’t want to talk with us that would put an end to any type of talks. Obviously they’re an “armed resistance” movement, but that doesn’t mean they always will be, or that being such should in any way disqualify them from talks. In fact, if anything it further necessitates talks.Report
This post must be an example of the “smart” conservatism that you’re flogging in the previous one. You use the word and its synonyms enough to transmit that message.
So, if you’re so smart, tell me what we are going to negotiate with Hamas and with Hezbollah. What demands of theirs can we possibly meet? What are their demands besides the extermination of the state of Israel and the rule of god’s law in Palestine?
Your post is chock-full of fallacies. For example not every insurgent group in the Middle East can be fairly called “terrorist.” The Sunni tribes you dismiss with a wave of your “smart power” are a good example of that.
But enough carping about details. Here are the main problems with your post:
There is no “political wing” of Hezbollah. Haven’t your heard that Muslim fanatics, and even Islam in general, do not distinguish between religion and politics? Monotheism means what it says to these folks. There may be Hizbollah members of parliament and Hamas may have participated in elections, but it’s all a shadow dance to fool “smart” people” like you.
Second fallacy: there are no moderates in Hezbollah or Hamas. Who are the moderates? Are they the ones not fighting? Then why talk to them? They have no power to negotiate anything.
Why don’t you write about lit-crit? It’s something you know and you’d probably be a lot better at it.Report
Roque, you should also read that link. There is a ‘political wing’ of Hizbollah, although as Abu whatshisname rightly points out, both the political and militant wings answer to the same authority.
Hamas is structured similarly, although with the recent violence the old organization is fraying as the party seems like it may be getting ready to split, with a moderate faction breaking off from Khaled Meshaal’s harder line.
I thought the main substantive point of that link, ED, was to remind us that, while it may in principle be sound to engage diplomatically with enemy entities, that’s presuming we have something they want — which for Hizbollah, unlike Hamas (and perhaps Iran) is manifestly not the case.Report
What demands of theirs can we possibly meet?
Colonists out of the West Bank.
What are their demands besides the extermination of the state of Israel and the rule of god’s law in Palestine?
Atm they are happy to initiate a decade’s peace in exchange for the aforementioned, perhaps even more.Report
i always found the stupidest part of the don’t negotiate argument was the idea that we can give or not give legitimacy to a group in some other country. a group gets legitimacy from their own forking people not from us. if people like hez or hamas which many do, then they are legitimate. done. we get no say, over who others find legitimate. i imagine it is this kind of The World Revolves Around the US attitude that drives the rest of the world crazy about us.
but then as RN as pointed out we can’t negotiate with them. a country like Egypt or china will never change, what can we talk to them about. or those commie bastards in Viet Nam, we just can’t talk to them.Report
“a decade’s peace in exchange for the aforementioned, perhaps even more.”
Would you be in favor of Hamas declaring a permanent truce with Israel in exchange for a promise that Israel removes its West Bank settlers for ten years — and possibly longer? Just curious.Report
Yeah, but 10 years should do it. Hamas will either succeed in forging an independent Palestinian nationstate in that length of time (in which case they’ll change or die, as they can’t exist except in their current environment) or they’ll fail and take the blame, falling from favour because of it (like the kleptocrats of Fatah did).
Either way, if you’re worried about Hamas that’s problem solved.Report
It’s amusing that ED Kain refuses to respond to the objections I raise to his specious arguments. I wonder how he can justify this to himself, given the high-minded mission statement he puts up for his blog. Am I spewing vitriol, or something, again? Or is it only that he can’t argue with people who he thinks are wrong? It’s very childish in any case.
Max, I did read that link. I just don’t agree that there is a “political wing” in reality. I’m saying that such a thing is part of the strategy of such Islamist groups to take and hold power. Their goals are to establish their god’s law in the universe (or whatever). Whether they’re in parliament or run for elections doesn’t change that. Therefore, negotiations are impossible because in the end we’re not talking about any rational demands that can be met or countered with other demands in the normal give-and-take of negotations. We’re talking about a world-view that opposes ours. Nobody can or will negotiate their world-view. This has nothing to do with bestowing legitimacy on anyone.
The above goes double for “moderates.” Both Hezbollah and Hamas are militant. If there are Hezbollah or Hamas members who don’t want to fight any more, great. But it would be pointless to negotiate with them for the simple reason that they already quit fighting.
People like ED Kain and James haven’t realized–or won’t–that Islamists are insurgents. They’re opposed to the Western world order, which means that the very principles that underlie this world order are anathema to them since they do not derive from god’s law.
Applied to war and peace, this means that truces, like the one James says he proposes, are meaningless. From our point of view, the Islamic way of war is based on deceit. They are not obliged to fulfill their agreements with the enemy if circumstances change and suddenly they have the advantage. This is well-known. If I were Israeli, I certainly would not support a government that exchanged land for promises, or even less, for recognition of my right to exist. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect them to do so.
If James disagrees, then I’ve got a deal for him: he gives me his bank PIN number for safe-keeping and I’ll promise never to use it. As an extra, I’ll recognize his right to exist at no extra cost to him! He should be able to take the risk since it’s only money and he’s willing to risk the physical security of millions of Israelis for the promise of a ten-year truce. He’s a real problem-solver. Sign him up for NSC director! Ten year truce…that should do it…problem solved…next problem! In three weeks we’ll have peace on earth and good will towards men!
I’ve already shown James and ED Kain that the settlement issue is not the central problem. It’s not reasonable to demand that Israel dismantle the settlements outside of a final peace treaty. One would think that the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza would have closed this kind of argument off forever. Israel withdrew 100% from Gaza and got rocket attacks in return. The 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon got them the same results. After these experiences, how can you blame them for not giving up the settlements in return for promises that have proven to be empty ones.Report
It’s a big mistake to try to reduce Hamas, Hizbollah, and other resistance movements to simple Islamist terror groups, and doing so does Israel and the US no favors. And it shouldn’t take you long to see that when you simply proclaim that these organizations operate from an intractable ‘world-view’ that cannot moderate, you are engaging in the same idle and ill-informed speculation of which you’re always accusing ED. Exactly why do you believe that, unlike all other militant-political movements in the world, it’s the Arab ones that are utterly in thrall to principle?
We need only consider Hizbollah during the Gaza war to see the manifest falsity in your notion of an apolitical extremist group. Hizbollah made a conscious, political choice, as an organization, not to strike Israel in the north. The way you describe the mindset of Hizbollah and Hamas leadership, we should be expecting all war, all the time. Yet this doesn’t happen. So are you wrong, or did these two groups just forget how ideological they are supposed to be?
As for negotiation with elements within these groups that want to cease violence, or have ceased violence — the saga of never-ending violence in the Middle East owes a great deal to the notion that parties seeking to renounce violence aren’t dangerous, and therefore aren’t worth talking to. Besides the obvious problem that this attitude is an incentive for extremists in Hamas to *continue* violence, it is incredibly short-sighted to imagine that anyone in Hamas will be content to forgo violence for very long. Hamas doesn’t believe that if they fire enough rockets, Israel will disintegrate. They fire rockets precisely because of people like you, who incoherently condemn their violence on the one hand, and advocate ignoring them and cutting them out of the political process on the other.Report
Thanks, Max. You said all that very well.Report
Here’s the thing I don’t get with any of this–Islamists political groups always fail. Politically. They can not govern. They are currently across a broad swath of the Middle East/Central Asia more popular bc they are seen as less corrupt than the dictators that otherwise the region. But if and when they ever get a hold of power they don’t govern well. (Hezbol. could be considered a potential counter-example). The Iranian ayatollah autocracy being the classic example. They can’t form an alternate to the globalization paradigm (they become nation-state seeking Islamists as opposed to Third World socialists statist counter-revolutionaries) and then eventually they will try to impose public sharia which burns their legitimacy with urban populace and the young (see Iran) or they go milder like the AKP in Turkey and get on with governing.
I imagine Iran will be the first truly secular Muslim country in the world. [I’m not counting a military-imposed secularism like in Turkey or Indonesia]. Once the religious establishment goes political and fails politically-economically (as it inevitably will) then their religious authority is lost with the failed political legitimacy. Same thing happened in Western Europe during the Reformation. Papacy tries to form a politico-religious empire, fails, and then loses not only the political fight to nation-states but the religious fight to a more individual-personal strain of religion.
Why do we realize that their economic vision is a failed one, their politics is flawed, and yet are so scared of these guys? I just don’t get it. Let them dig their own graves and fall into them.Report
Max,
It looks like you’re speaking for ED Kain now, so I’m glad to respond. Too bad he thinks that because we disagree, we can’t debate anything.
I never said or even implied such a thing as the above. I don’t like having words put in my mouth. And I was quite clear that it’s not a matter of “being in thrall to principle” –we all are in thrall to principle to some extent. It’s a matter of world-view, which is a very different thing.
I don’t even say that all Arab militant groups are Islamicist. I mentioned the Sunni tribes of Iraq as an example of a militant insurgent Arab/Muslim group that is not Islamicist. I say that these militant groups are Islamic fundamentalists. I say that these groups have an opposing world view to ours, which makes negotiation useless, along with the other reasons I mentioned above. I say Hamas and Hezbollah are militant Islamicist groups. I can say this because that’s how they describe themselves and that’s what they proclaim in their charters, etc. The “Islamic” part makes them opposed to our world view, which means that negotiations are useless.
Where do you get the idea that they can be reduced to militant resistence groups?
I say that it’s a big mistake to reduce Islamic groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to simple resistence groups, which does nobody any favors. It shouldn’t take you long to see that when you simply proclaim this, you’re engaging in the idle an uninformed speculation that you accuse me of doing.
Where did you get the idea that I believe that Hizbollah is “apolitical?” I said I doubt the sincerity of the so-called political wing, which is nowhere near saying that they’re “apolitical.” Being “political” means that they are engaged in the political process, which means that they are not violent. An armed, violent group with political ends–i.e., that wants power–is not the same thing as a political group. If you have an armed group that uses violence to get power, you by definition have a group that’s outside the political process. In the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, the political wings do not renounce violence, recognize Israel, and agree to abide by agreements between Israel and the PA. Therefore, they cannot fairly be termed “political groups.” They’re simply one more aspect of the violent and armed groups themselves.
By saying that they are Islamicist and have an opposing world view to ours, I do not imply “all war all the time.” It’s yet another instance of your putting words in my mouth. They are capable of making political and military calculations, as anyone else can. If they’re in a position of weakness, like they are now, nothing in their belief system obliges them to blindly keep on fighting. They can declare a truce, which is for the purpose of rearming and reorganizing for the next attack. Ten years happens to be the limit placed on truces by Islamic law. Nothing you’ve said contradicts this. As for why Hezbolah didn’t intervene in the recent Gaza operation, I’m sure that they did make a political and military calculation, as well as receive instructions from Iran, and so forth. I really don’t know the answer but I never said that I thought they were “apolitical” and incapable of political calulations.
So now it’s “people like me” who are the cause of Hamas militancy? Are you serious? I say they fire rockets because they want to kill Jews; I do condemn this; I do not advocate ignoring them; I advocate defeating them; I do advocate leaving them out of the political process until they meet the demands of the Quartet. Such demands only represent the minimum conditions any group needs so as to become “political” and not a violent insurgency. I can’t see why this is such a far-out position to take. Can you help?Report
Roque – Seriously, until those colonies are gone we have no hope of peace. The IDF will have to remain in order to protect them. Isn’t that fairly obvious?Report
James-Seriously, until there’s peace, we have no hope of removing the settlements. Virulent Jew-haters like Hamas would have a launch pad within range of Tel Aviv otherwise. Isn’t that fairly obvious?Report
Hamas stopped firing rockets during the ceasefire, resuming only when Israel attacked them with missiles.Report
Chris Dierkes,
The fact that Islamists can’t govern without imposing a police state or that they can’t organize an economic system without simply selling off primary resources doesn’t mean that their world view is not dangerous. You should consider the power of ignorance guided by blind faith. The Muslim/Arab world is the most ignorant in the world, according to the UNDP. They willing to use extreme violence to achieve their ends. Since they’re attacking us, there’s no way we can simply ignore them.
There’s an added danger since the anti Capitalist, anti American, and anti Semitic aspects of the Islamicist world view attracts leftists in the West.Report
Israel stopped attacking until Hamas started firing rockets.Report
Wow, you know more about the matter than the Israeli government itself does? Clearly I’m talking to a very well informed man!
According to their own accounts Israel broke the ceasefire by firing missiles at what they claimed were Hamas weapons tunnels, killing civilians in the process. Israel itself, of course, was arming up with white phosphorous and American high explosives at the time.
Until the ceasefire was breached Hamas had honoured it, with rocket-fire slowing to a trickle delivered by the Salafists, Islamic Jihad & the rest of the even-more-extremists.Report
The Muslim/Arab world is the most ignorant in the world, according to the UNDP.
Dubai included?Report
James,
Tell the truth: Are you about 16 years old?Report
I’m 7 months old.Report