Presidential Optimism; Palestinian Pessimism

Stating one’s optimism for the future is not the same as recognising reality and formulating a plan to deal with the outcome of events. That is all that president-elect Obama has done. And it can only lead to more pessimism in Palestine.

Perhaps we have what can only be termed the ‘transition problem’ to blame. It seems absurd that a changeover of power should involve an almost total hiatus of the exercise of it for two months.

In the much more leisurely and less populated age of the late eighteenth century, then an orderly transfer of power of elected officials spread around a continent over a couple of months was permissible. After all, news of a war or natural disaster might take that long to arrive at the centre of power, and by the time a government might formulate a response to it the crisis could well have resolved itself.

But even then things were changing, and in Europe only a decade or two later, semaphore telegraphs were transmitting reports from the south to the north of the continent in hours, not weeks or months. In the 21st century, where a devastating war can be launched in minutes or hours to see the government of a major world power practically paralysed in both its reactions and policies borders on the ridiculous.

There can be little doubt that the Israelis chose their time with precisely that in mind. While the policies of the incoming administration on the Middle East were far from clear by the end of the presidential election, it was obvious that there would be at least some change. And with Obama’s insistence as the Wall Street crash hit on leaving it to the current President to deal with (on the grounds ‘there can be only one president at a time’, though the temptation to ‘leave them to their own mess’ must have been equally if not more influential on any decision to keep out of it) the opportunity must have been enticing.

But it should surely not be beyond the wit of even politicians to be able to come to some agreement on the diplomatic messages to be sent, or to announce that the two administrations were at least consulting. Why should it be impossible for an outgoing american administration not to offer up a warning on the lines that “if you are proposing X, the new government may not support you as we would” and for the two to signal that by saying that they were in close consultation?

I do not know, but I am sure that would happen in the British system, where e civil servants prepare for the likely policies and stances of a government of a different political persuasion before an election. And in one where ambassadors are not replaced at whim by a new administration and would be able to transmit just such advice.

It is at least partly this outdated method of changing governments that has led us to where we are now. And it is a place from which Obama, for all his claims that he has formed a team that will concentrate on the Middle East and the problems posed there, will now find himself on a diplomatic (and possibly military) journey of years and one whose starting point, and many of the way points for many miles of it, has been determined by another country.

The Middle East, and much of the world, will not be able to feel much optimism at the prospect of that journey. Even any feeling of optimism the prospect of a president of somewhat more liberal imagination and with some notion of engagement and negotiation might have engendered in November must now have dissipated, replaced by nothing more than a resigned hope that things may be prevented from becoming much worse.

In fact, in the last week of the dying administration, its atavistic members have ensured that any new policy will be treated with suspicion. We have seen the ‘leak’ that while the Bush administration headed off an earlier attack on Iran, it did so by agreeing to involve the CIA in ‘covert action’ there. A deliberate attempt, were it not that in fact Iranian diplomats are not so stupid, to make any US approach to Iran in the coming days suspect. And in the last few days, the Israelis have been planting stories mostly in the American media that an Iranian ‘suitcase-sized’ nuclear bomb is only months, if not weeks, away from perfection, and the need for Israeli pre-emptive strikes is even more urgent. That might, three weeks ago, have been dismissed as somewhat desperate propaganda, but it becomes much more frightening when it is purveyed by a state which faces the prospect of world revulsion and if not active sanctions against it, a growing distaste for co-operation among an increasing number of countries.

Obama’s thoughts, as relayed in the American media, remind me of an interview with a British civil servant seconded to the notorious American-run Iraq Transitional Authority just after the invasion. He was given a copy of the ‘plan’ for re-establishing Iraq’s finances, not then imagining it was effectively to be managed by the CIA from bales of dollar notes and suitcases. He was struck by its exemplar of pre-planning itself, as he read “The currency to be established by the occupying forces will be the US dollar, replacing” and turned the page to read, “the Deutschmark”.

If that is an example of the developmental planning that goes into American policies, obviously dusting off a plan for the re-establishment of a country in another continent that was sixty years old, can we really expect better of Obama’s team for the Middle East in the weeks—not months or years—they have to produce something viable and constructive? What yellowing inappropriate document from the years of the Palestine Mandate will they take from the secret shelves of the Sate Department?

I would like to think they will have the intellect, determination, and knowledge to do better, but another story from the same civil servant does not make me hopeful. He was also given a ‘plan’ for restoring the electricity supply to Baghdad. it listed the power stations, their presumed output before the war, and their output over the six months to come. It said nothing about how the mechanics of how that was to be achieved. “This isn’t a plan,” he told them. “It’s merely a statement of optimism.”

We cannot afford, even in the first month of Obama’s presidency, merely ‘statements of optimism’. But the development of a plan to bring some form of peace to the Middle East is going to need the exercise of intellects that the USA has previously shown little sign of nurturing.

Perhaps the Obama administration should conclude that it would be best to adopt just one of the previous president’s policies: abstinence. Not from sex, but from supplying Israel with money, weapons and ideological support. And above all abstain from interference, for it has done a great deal of harm, caused thousands upon thousands of deaths, in the last twenty years and no discernible good.