The status quo is certainly shifting in the Middle East. Prospects for the resolution of long-frozen poisonous conflicts are emerging, with at least a reason to hope that resolution can take place within representative political structures rather than through violence, repressive autocracies, or foreign domination. And the US can support this process in a variety of constructive ways.
Jim Hoagland is being cautious about this Beirut Spring, not solely based on his first-hand experience in Lebanon over decades. His optimism is also tempered by some useful lessons he draws from the last two years in Iraq. As he notes:
Exaggerated optimism about Iraq -- mine included -- gave rise to post-invasion bitterness and exaggerated pessimism inside and outside the administration. The overreaction -- the swift, continuing alternation in perception between "success" and "failure" -- obscured the need for a speedy transfer of responsibility to Iraqis and helped delay elections there. The political runways in Iraq were overshot, successively, in opposite directions.
So what should the US be doing? Hoagland recommends the same recipe the US has begun to follow in Iraq -- first and foremost, staying focused on the really important goal, which is to facilitate the tortuous process by which the Lebanese themselves reach a new modus vivendi that will serve as the foundation for reconstructing their political system. From the US, what is required is a sense of balance, patience, and taking advantage of opportunities to collaborate with other nations with influence in the situation.
The best way to aid Lebanon's rebirth as a nation is to keep the focus on the intricate set of political negotiations over power-sharing that the Lebanese themselves must initiate, manage and make succeed once the Syrian boot is off their neck.Hoagland's warning about avoiding the roller-coaster of excessive enthusiasm and despair is not only a way of saying we must give the Lebanese opposition the time and space to negotiate with the other Lebanese political groups. It's also important that Americans don't lose their heads if things get sticky; to think that Syrian push-back or the political expression of Hizbollah require rushing in to ensure a desired outcome. The US won't be doing either itself or the Lebanese any favors if it allows itself to get sucked into one side or another of their semi-eternal multifaceted internal power struggles. As Hoagland notes, without even mentioning the Palestinians, whose presence in Lebanon has played a far from insignificant role:
[...]
France and the United States have found common cause to press Syria's Bashar Assad to withdraw troops that were first sent to Beirut in 1976 with the approval of both powers. "Paris wants to stabilize Lebanon, and Washington wants to destabilize Syria," a diplomat in Europe said to me recently. "There's something for everyone."
Each of Lebanon's three large population groups -- Christians, Sunnis and Shiites -- has competitively and disastrously relied on outsiders to provide a margin of domination that none can achieve alone.I personally have a good deal of sympathy for the reported reluctance of the Bush Administration to begin discussing the possible expansion of the UN's Interim Force in Lebanon to potentially fill the vacuums left by Syrian withdrawal and/or disarmament of Hizbollah. Lots of time to get to the point of asking "who, what, when, whether and how much." Offering the prospect of another outside force in the middle would seem to just encourage the Lebanese to continue their old ways of using outsiders for their own purposes.
The Bush Administration also appears to be alive to the same danger in Iraq -- of being pulled in by one group or another to "sort things out." A danger all the more acute given the necessity of some form of US military presence in Iraq for some time to come. Complete neutrality among the contending factions is clearly impossible -- all the more so when some of those factions are trying to kill your troops. Nor am I proposing the US is or should be indifferent to the broad outlines of a final outcome.
A delicate tightrope to walk, but one that will be easier to navigate if there is a widely shared view -- at least within the less extreme of American political groupings -- that US policy should focus on supporting a participatory process in which the locals sort out their own conflicts.
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