(Foreign Policy) Aaron David Miller - On Sept. 13, 1993, I watched Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shake hands at the White House. I believed that act would transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was perhaps the worst analytical judgment I'd make in an extended State Department career. My faith in fixing things was rooted in the nature of diplomacy itself - the talking cure, a profession often driven by a legitimate desire to avoid war and conflict if possible, as well as by the belief in the capacity of nations to solve their mutual problems by meeting somewhere in the more enlightened middle. And in its uniquely American manifestation, diplomacy is also driven by the conviction that if only Washington would lead, most challenges in the world could be overcome. Enter the recently rolled out "historic understanding with Iran." What I've learned - the hard way - is that really good deals are few and far between, that real transformations are rarer still, and that most diplomacy rarely offers up comprehensive solutions. The writer is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
2015-04-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive