Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President

President Obama faces critical, complex, and interrelated challenges in the Middle East that demand his immediate attention. 1)An Iran apparently intent on approaching or crossing the nuclear threshold as quickly as possible. 2)A fragile situation in Iraq that is straining the U.S. military. 3)Weak governments in Lebanon and Palestine under challenge from stronger Hezbollah and Hamas militant organizations. 4)A faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace process. 5)American influence diluted by a severely damaged reputation. Iraq cannot continue to be the priority - instead, Iran should be, and a military option should not be taken off the table. Promoting peace between Israel and its neighbors should be the second priority. This will require addressing the political strength of Hamas. The third goal should be to reduce our dependence on the region's oil.

This is a provisional review, based on the parts of the book that can be accessed on the Brookings Website, which I may revise after receiving the complete book. This is an important book which includes very good analysis of main issues and therefore should be read by all interested in Middle East issues and ways for handling them. However, this book misses the opportunity to break out of traditional thinking. It includes a number of significant new insights, but fails to leap from optimizing on a given curve to a new space, namely a comprehensive MIDDLE EAST GRAND DESIGN. If the authors had applied selectively the real lessons of the Congress of Vienna they might have arrived at a radically different and more promising grand-strategy: moving towards an overall Greater Middle East settlement aiming at stabilization so as to provide time for peaceful Islamic-type modernization and economic development, leaving political development to local processes without any Western pressures. Integral to such a grand-strategy is cooperative containment of fanatic and revolutionary actors (which the book seems to view too optimistically), if necessary by force, trying discourse first but not relying on it. Based in part on the Arab Peace Initiative, settling the Israeli-Arab conflict should be a critical part of a Middle East Grand Design. But this involved a close linkage between Israeli withdrawals and real normalization of relations with most Arab and Islamic countries, together with reliable security arrangements. For Israel to give up its bargaining cards for peace with Syria and tne Palestinians only, while the Middle East remains turbulent, is a bad idea because of assured instability of local peace agreements in a sea of volatility. Thus, without mutual security guarantees a Palestinian state is likely to try and swallow Jordan, and all of the Middle East is thrown again into violence. A large scale innovative intervention with historic processes is essential for putting the Greater Middle East on a new trajectory towards a better future, without much bloodshedding on the way. This the book fails to realize and suggest adequately. Yehezkel Dror Professor of Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Crazy States: A Counterconventional Strategic Problem