But the cognitive dissonance of those who would have the U.S. government actively promote democracy around the world, and who would have the President of the United States speak openly of his desire to overturn the established political order in dozens of places around the world, goes deeper still. Bush apparently never figured out that full-throated American support for would-be reformers often undermined their standing in the eyes of voters. Under the pro-democracy Bush, the relatively more pro-American politicians in, for example, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, and, Lebanon, all fared poorly.

Bush speeches were often marked by sweeping assertions and moral clarity. Obama, however, is the master of subtlety. He mentioned neither Lebanon nor Hezbollah in his Cairo speech. Likewise, the name “Ahmadinejad” never passed his lips, and yet, when the president accurately characterized Holocaust denial as “baseless”, “ignorant”, “hateful” the obvious mental image in the minds of hundreds of millions of listeners was of a certain skinny, bearded man in a Members Only jacket, arguably the most famous Holocaust denier in the world.

Now, some have declared the United States the clear winner of the election in Lebanon, and have singled out Obama’s speech as crucial to the equation. This past weekend, Lebanese votes dealt a clear setback to Hezbollah and its Christian Maronite ally, Michael Aoun, and handed power to a diverse coalition under the leadership of Saad Hariri, son of the late-Rafiq Hariri, the multibillionaire and former prime minister whose killing in 2005 prompted a series of protests (beginning on March 14th, hence the name of Saad Hariri’s coalition — “The March 14th alliance” — and the Cedar Revolution).

Among those willing to credit Obama’s new approach with these fortunate results is blogger and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, who weighed in earlier this week in Salon under the deliberately provocative title: “Obama Wins an Election in the Middle East.”

The evidence surely cannot support such an assertion, a point which Cole freely concedes. Elections are decided on the basis of local, even parochial, issues — jobs, quality of life, and vague notions of “right track vs. wrong track” — and it would be premature, at best, to suggest that the Obama speech, or even a series of subtle changes to U.S. foreign policy initiated over the past six months, were decisive factors.

Nor should we overlook the not-very-subtle threat issued by Vice President Biden during a recent trip to Beirut. At a press conference held in advance of the elections, Biden explained, “We will evaluate the shape of our assistance programs based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates.”

Cole continues:

Even before Biden’s visit and Obama’s speech, most of the Lebanese public had probably already made up its mind about the arrogant and presumptuous Hezbollah-dominated opposition. The March 14 Alliance won because of the strength of the local economy, the desire for tourism, and anger at Hezbollah for streetfighting in 2008 that left 11 dead, more than a year of protests and sit-ins, and the Hezbollah bloc’s ultimately successful attempt to strong-arm its way to effective veto power in the government.

[...]

Above all, this election was a referendum on which policies would lead to peace and prosperity. Whether they had their eye on Biden’s stick or on Obama’s carrot, the Lebanese voters made it clear that they did not believe [Hezbollah leader Hasan] Nasrallah could deliver.

These caveats aside, it is still useful to contrast the before and after pictures from the Bush years with what has happened in the past week.  We might have still more grist for the mill from today’s elections in Iran.

“It’s Obama’s time in Beirut, not Khamenei’s” declared Cole. Within a few hours (barring a run-off), we’ll know better if it is still Khamenei’s time in Tehran.

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The recent news from Beirut is also promising. The Syrians and Americans have apparently agreed on a presidential candidate for Lebanon, army commander Michael Suleiman. Apparently there has been serious cooperation on this front for some time and hopefully it can continue into other areas. The overlap between American policy and Syrian influence is considerable. Syria shares a large border with Iraq and has accepted a large number of Iraqi refugees. Unfortunately, refugees are not the only things crossing the Syrian border. Weapons and insurgents have been coming into Iraq from Syria since 2003, sometimes with tacit support with Syrian regime.

Syria also has been meddling in Lebanon for years. Since the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, Lebanon has become a battleground for American interests, represented by the Prime Minister Siniora’s government, and Hezbollah, backed by the Syrian government. Political assassination and turmoil has been the result of this fight by proxy in Lebanon, a crucial battleground of influence in the Middle East for decades.

Finally, Syria would be a crucial linchpin in any Israeli-Palestinian-Arab peace deal because of their proximity to Israel, their claim on the Golan Heights, and their cozy relationship to Hezbollah. The Annapolis conference that concluded this week dealt with this particular overlap of Syrian and American/Israeli interests, but it may a crucial foundation in which to build diplomatic relations that can integrate all of the issues mentioned above. The progress on electing a Lebanese President is already a good start. With the United States seemingly compromising in Lebanon, perhaps Syrian collaboration on Iraq or an Arab-Israeli peace deal may be a distinct possibility.

Greater cooperation with the Assad regime will also rob Iran of a crucial ally in the region. The Alawite government of Syria has been towing the Iranian line in Middle East politics recently, but by co-opting them, the United States could better isolate Ahmadinejad. US-Syrian détente would not only be practically useful (as enumerated above), but symbolically would strike a blow against the hard-liners in Iran who see themselves as being the dominant future power in the Middle East. By prying Syria away from Tehran, the United States would send the message that is it willing to do what it takes for peace in the Middle East. Additionally, it would show the Arab countries that the United States is going to be the major power in the region for the foreseeable future.

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The pressure on the Administration to call for a new round of top-level Middle East peace talks is substantial. A few of the main drivers are: (1) that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group correctly identified Israeli-Palestinian peace as a potential linchpin of a larger Middle East settlement, which could calm Iraq while effectively containing Iran; (2) that any serious conversation with Arab or Muslim leaders about the US role in the Middle East invariably includes a diatribe against our support for the “Israeli occupation;” (3) that the longer Palestinians live without a single, sovereign, responsible government, the more their political life comes to resemble Iraq’s civil war; and (4) that the Israelis themselves have for the first time put partitioning Jerusalem on the table.

It is also significant that the Israeli and US governments have developed a closer working relationship under Bush and Olmert than under previous leaders. This fact may have persuaded the President that he can broker a diplomatic triumph at Annapolis to temporarily clear Iraq from the headlines and even salvage the foreign policy legacy of his presidency.

But consider for a moment the less auspicious circumstances of a November summit.

The letter’s authors correctly caution against sidelining Hamas or Syria from the dialog, which would increase their likelihood of playing a spoiler role and result in “escalating violence from the West Bank or from Gaza, either of which would overwhelm any political achievement.” Yet it is not clear that Hamas or Syria will participate in comprehensive final status talks with Israel under any circumstances. And even if they do, recent history suggests there will be other spoilers, who will find a way to upset any deal from which they do not extract maximum profit.

One likely spoiler is a resurgent Hezbollah, a powerful quasi-state operating outside the effective control of the Lebanese or Syrian governments. Hezbollah has the ability to rain terror on Northern Israel and possibly even drag the Israelis into another incursion into Syria or Lebanon. An even more troubling potential spoiler is Iran, which would undercut any Israeli-Arab progress it perceived as a threat to its ambitions in Iraq or its bid to unite and lead the Muslim world on an anti-Israel platform.

All of this underlines the importance of inclusion. Yet we cannot dictate terms to Syria or Hamas, and they may not come prepared to make concessions, assuming they come at all. Likewise, even if we somehow wrangle a commitment from Hezbollah and Iran not to undermine the deal, there will be other outsiders to this latest process whose status as potential spoilers by itself will magnify their power.

Success at Annapolis would yield huge dividends for the US, Israel, and the Arab states, which is doubtless why the administration seems resolved to move forward in November, whether or not it heeds the letter writers’ advice. But even under the best of circumstances, a final settlement is far from guaranteed to emerge from next month’s talks, and what happens afterward is largely out of American hands.

Sound foreign policy, like all good decision making, requires us to look not only at the benefits of success, but to consider the costs of failure and the likelihood of each outcome. A US-led Middle East summit in November 2007 is a gamble: the upside would be fantastic, but the odds are worse than even and a loss could cost us the farm.

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So one might infer that I would be pleased to hear that Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) has placed a hold on the bill that would give $236 million in aid to Lebanon (for the story from Beirut, see the Daily Star; for the counterpart story from Jerusalem, see the Jerusalem Post).  But there are big problems with what Lantos has done.  M. J. Rosenberg at the TPM Cafe says he’s “speechless” in response, but I have a few comments to offer.

First, at the same time Lantos blocked the aid to Lebanon, he also promised to introduce a bill to bump up U.S. aid to Israel.  His comments suggested that other countries were giving aid to Lebanon and that the U.S. should make sure that Israel gets reconstruction help, too.  While Israel indeed suffered during the war, and someone is going to have to pay for rebuilding there, too, Lantos’ statement comparing destruction was surely inflammatory.  It won’t take many people long to compare the scale of damage and the indigenous resources available to repair the damage from the war, and Israel comes off looking as if it doesn’t need aid nearly as badly as Lebanon.  And besides, the U.S. sends vast sums to Israel every year; we should not be in the business of comparing aid, dollar-for-dollar, to Israel and Lebanon.  All Lantos’ aid promise does is once again signal to the whole world how deeply Israel has the U.S. in its pocket (or would a better line be that Israel is reaching into our pocket to get our money?).

Israel is our ally, Hezbollah escalated their conflict with Israel first, and the U.S. rightly treats Hezbollah, a terrorist group, differently from how we treat recognized nation-states like Israel.  But now is not a good time to remind the world how far from “fair and balanced” American policy really is.

Second, the short-term effect of Lantos’ hold is to give another political victory to Hezbollah: Hezbollah immediately issued a statement — a quite believable one — that they wouldn’t have accepted American aid anyway.  We’re playing into their agenda again.  If we’re in the aid game, we should be making sure that the Lebanese government has some resources independent of the Hezbollah-Iran nexus.

Third, Lantos’ argument that his hold on the aid will give the U.S. leverage in Lebanon is wrong.  He claims that he will release the aid when the Lebanese agree to let international peacekeepers patrol the Lebanese-Syrian border, thereby denying Hezbollah a resupply route for their weaponry.  So Lantos thinks that he’s giving Lebanon an incentive to do what we want them to.  And his goal is even a good one: preventing Hezbollah from rearming is a legitimate goal of American policy towards Lebanon.  However, aid conditionality is a remarkably ineffective means to achieve such “high politics” ends — much as economic sanctions tend to be ineffective.

Especially when only $236 million is at stake.  Lebanon has billions of dollars in damage to repair, and they are receiving large sums of money from other sources.  Our $236 million is not “make-or-break” for their reconstruction plan.  Denying the money will certainly hurt the U.S. symbolically, but Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora is not going to take on a major domestic political battle for $236 million of money from a “tainted” source.

The most important point, though, is not about Lebanon at all.  It is about the American political process.  We need an open debate about the appropriate role for the United States in the Middle East broadly and specifically in the aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon.  Representative Lantos’ unilateral action violates all sorts of normal principles of American government: the executive branch has a certain leadership role in foreign policy, although of course the Congress (and especially the House) have an important role, too, when it comes to spending money.  But the House operates through debates and voting.

If Lantos wants to stop aid to Lebanon, he should convince a majority of the House by the weight of his arguments.  The American Congress has a strong enough pro-Israel leaning that his arguments might even carry the day.  But I would like my Congressional representative to have a say in the process — along with the executive branch’s public statements in support of their position.  I didn’t vote for Representative Lantos — I never even had the chance to, since I don’t live in his district — and I don’t trust him (or anyone else) to make unilateral decisions about American foreign policy.

The United States has an open policy process, because that process most of the time leads to the best decisions.  That process can get nasty and partisan, but even when it does, at least we’re using the process.  I hope that Representative Lantos will let the Lebanon aid bill come up for discussion and a vote.

In the end, I probably hope that both the aid for Lebanon and the aid for Israel will be defeated.  But I’m not holding my breath for that outcome.

One last thing — an additional reference on my post last week about how hard post-conflict reconstruction can be.  The New Yorker has run a great series of articles about post-Katrina rebuilding over the past year.  Tomorrow is the anniversary of the hurricane, and many people are lamenting the lack of progress fixing New Orleans.  Dan Baum’s article in the current New Yorker, though, is exceptionally good, and it makes clear a lot of the problems with buck-passing, distrust, and finger-pointing that make infrastructure projects next-to-impossible.

I don’t really have a sense for how the damage in Lebanon compares to the damage in New Orleans.  Katrina affected a wider area, and it was less selective than the Israeli bombs in what it hit.  But Lebanon, like New Orleans, is an ethnically (religiously) mixed area with long-seething resentments about bad public investment decisions, a long history of ineffectual government, and an atmosphere ripe for political grandstanding rather than real public policy decision-making.  Reconstruction advocates should learn from the difficulties that we face in the U.S., and American policy-makers should, with humility about their likely effectiveness, focus their attention on fixing the big problems that we face here at home.

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On the other hand, the Post also quoted a fighter from a rival (weaker) militia, Amal. The gist of what he said was that others (besides Hezbollah) helped the people displaced by Hezbollah’s fight while the war was going on, but now it’s time for Hezbollah to pay up. That is, at least some people in other groups expect Hezbollah to take care of fixing all the war damage, because Hezbollah owes the rest of Lebanon. That sounds to me like a recipe for dissatisfaction: when the government taxes other parts of Lebanon to pay for reconstruction, or concentrates its spending of new aid money in some parts of Lebanon (say, the war-damaged south) without giving a share to other groups, some people might start to complain about how Hezbollah gets “preferential treatment.” And if Hezbollah is not quick to compensate its political rivals, they may get upset. Even hoping for compensation seems forlorn: Hezbollah is probably less likely to happily “pay” Amal or to spend its Iranian money in Amal-controlled territory than the old American political machines were to spend civic funds on patronage for their partisan rivals. There’s still plenty of potential for division in Lebanon.

And in fact that’s the main problem with all post-conflict reconstruction: local politics. Local politics are likely to undermine the Lebanese effort, just as they have undone the American funding of Iraqi reconstruction.

Even countries with robust political institutions — the United States itself — have great difficulty with major infrastructure projects. We complain about wasted money and inept construction on the Big Dig in Boston (The Boston Globe did a great package of stories on the Big Dig). And we complain about the slow response after Hurricane Katrina that has left needy people pointing fingers at local, state, and federal officials. But the good news is that Americans accept our political process, so no one is going to start shooting about construction problems here in the U.S.

In fact, we have a political process that aggregates various interests so that we can set priorities in construction efforts. Neighborhood associations and environmentalists get their say in the Big Dig along with the pro-development business groups, the unions, and the construction firms. One reason that the Big Dig was so expensive, with its cost soaring from a couple billion dollars in its initial plans to over $15 billion (even before the current crisis that will require expensive repairs because tunnel ceilings are falling down), is that the project changed: on-ramps were moved to satisfy locals, Boston harbor cleanup was added to the project bill, etc. That process of log-rolling — and the money to foot the resulting bill — is precisely what is lacking in most developing countries. And it’s especially lacking in post-conflict reconstruction.

The New York Times article quotes a Lebanese professor, calling Hezbollah “a state within a non-state” rather than a state within a state. But while Hezbollah manages to represent the interests of a substantial fraction of the Lebanese people, and while it has a good deal of “street cred” with other Lebanese, we should not really confuse Hezbollah with a modern state — just as Hamas was not really a “state within a non-state” in the Palestinian territories until it got itself voted into control of the actual state-like Palestinian Authority.

Why should we assume that reconstruction efforts in Lebanon are going to go well — that the people are going to be happy about what Hezbollah (or the official Lebanese government) does or does not do for them? Right now, the Times notes that Hezbollah has a reputation as a “grass-roots social services network,” while the government is viewed as a bunch of “sleek men in suits doing well [for themselves].” But so far, Hezbollah has had few hard social services and reconstruction tasks, and Iranian money (even in the unlikely case that it proves endless) is not enough to solve all infrastructure problems in Lebanon.

The Wall Street Journal article has a sensible passage in which it talks about the government reconstruction program’s efforts to arrange for various types of investment: the government will appeal to all donors, and then it will ask the ones that it perceives as “soft touches” (France, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait) to fund the unpopular parts of reconstruction. I don’t know what those particular jobs will turn out to be, but Hezbollah may have trouble funding a “comprehensive” effort, too — whatever that means. At some point, reconstruction just becomes the day-to-day business of government investment, and infrastructure repair is never as popular as starting new projects, all government investment faces inefficiency and the NIMBY syndrome, and other problems abound. Handing out relief to displaced people in shelters is relatively easy; the reconstruction to come is much harder: deciding whose home to rebuild first or how nice to make the new houses or whether to upgrade the water treatment and electricity or change the road network, etc.

The bottom line is that there is no magic recipe for post-conflict reconstruction. No one should be surprised that the American effort in Iraq has failed, and no one should be surprised when the wheels likewise come off the effort in Lebanon. A whole set of critics of the American occupation of Iraq argue that the administration failed to plan for post-war reconstruction or that the American military’s doctrine emphasized firepower rather than winning hearts and minds through fixing the infrastructure or that the civilian parts of America’s Iraq effort were undertrained or underfunded. All of these critics seem to think that there is a magic recipe — that something could have been done better. Sadly, they are wrong.

No one can fix a wrecked country without political institutions that give people a stake in projects’ success and that allow people to be satisfied with projects even when they don’t turn out the way they wanted them to. And no one knows how to create those political institutions except through the sort of long, slow, domestic process of nation-building that worked over hundreds of years in Western Europe, North America, and a few other places. Frankly, we don’t even know how it worked where it did!

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It is obvious that the events of September 11, 2001 forced the Administration to be immediately reactive to the situation, and no one can fault us for that.  However, since that day we have continued as principally a reactionary force in the Middle East, particularly in our reconstructive efforts in Iraq.  Today, as we approach the 5th anniversary of 9/11 and find ourselves on a threatening front, it seems vital to US interests and the interests of that region to be increasingly proactive.  Victory and success, as I would define them in this context, are all but impossible from a reactive position.

Successive administrations have found political will thwarted again and again with Iran, and now we find ourselves facing that issue once more.  However, on this occasion the Administration has been more forward-thinking in its approach as it has sought to allow other countries to take the diplomatic lead and to maintain as much as possible within the context of the United Nations.  This has led to headway in what would otherwise be a stalemate between East and West.  In some ways, the recent activity of Iran and its engagement with Hezbollah may even reflect the ultimate frustration of the Iranian government as it seeks to derail not only a US initiative, but also a multi-national one. 

For the moment there is quite a debate as to what the true relationship is between Iran and Hezbollah, but there is no debate that it is significant.  Nor is there any question in my mind that US interests and the interests of many of our allies, including our moderate Islamic allies, are not best served by a strong military attack against Hezbollah.  That is why we cannot afford to back off of the diplomatic course with either Hezbollah or Iran.  And, not surprisingly, success with the former will largely contribute to success with the latter.  As we are seen by the rest of the Middle East as objective and fair in negotiating with Hezbollah, Lebanon and Israel, we will find ourselves with more bargaining chips for Iran.  In short, we will not be, in the Iranians’ eyes, a lone western power trying to stay afloat in a tide of angst, but an objective state that represents the interests of the regional and international communities.

The bottom line is that as we survey the Middle East and look at our substantial engagements in such a multi-faceted way, we need desperately to find diplomatic tools that seek to diffuse the current bloodshed, give confidence to the sensible political actors in a balanced way, and propel neutral mediation.  I echo the call from Senator Hagel (R-NE) for the Administration to not sacrifice our ties with the rest of the region for the sake of Israel.  The Senator points out that, “it is in Israel’s interest, as much as ours, that the United States be seen by all states in the Middle East as fair. This is the currency of trust.”  He goes on to recommend that President Bush send a special envoy to Lebanon to negotiate a resolution before the damage, political and collateral, is irreparable.

As diplomatic efforts help resolve the situation in Lebanon, I believe that we will find success with Iran as well.  But we must not change our course of diplomacy.  As Senator Hagel proclaims, this process can only begin with open and unconditional dialogue, first with Iran and then with Syria.  This is the kind of proactive step that the US must take, followed by a consistent resort to diplomacy, if there is to be any chance of bringing order and peace to the Middle East.

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So let me just say this to the Democratic leadership. When Sen. Harry Reid, the minority leader says, “I will lose a lot of confidence in Maliki if he doesn’t denounce what Hezbollah has done,” he is being stupid, as in S T U P I D.

In case the senator had not noticed, Al-Maliki is facing the challenge of a lifetime trying to prevent Iraq from a full throated, utterly barbaric civil war, as opposed to the horrific, low level one it is now experiencing. Expecting him to act like a talking parrot, repeating the establishment line that everything Israel does is just dandy, is counterproductive, to say the least. The senator should remember that to date thousands of Americans have died, at least according to the last known Bush administration justification, to allow Iraq to become a democracy. That means the people there get to enjoy free speech.

Maliki labeled Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon aggression. Months of years from now when the dust settles, people can try and decide whether it was justifiable.  Maybe it is. But there is no question that it IS aggression. Definitionally, all wars are acts of aggression.

But what I really want to dwell on, continuing from my previous post, are the negative consequences of this war. The longer it goes on the more of them there are. Here are just a few.

Consider how Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, a very Sunni organization, is reacting to the news of Hezbollah, a very Shia organization, confronting Israel. Even though al-Qaeda normally hates Shiites they have been astute enough to release propaganda siding with the Lebanese people, if not Hezbollahitself. This will undoubtedly aid its recruiting efforts.

Israel’s shelling and killing of four United Nations peacekeepers at the Khiyam base of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was long-established and clearly marked, will make it far more difficult for the U.N. to engineer a ceasefire. Many, especially the conspiracy theorists, will say that was exactly the point. Already people are comparing this to Israel’s June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty.

Also the Saudis have changed their tune on the crisis.  Their earlier position, implicitly criticizing Hezbollah, is now history. Now the Saudis sing another tune.  The Saudi Press Agency put out a statement which implicitly threatened a Saudi reassessment of the Abdallah peace plan adopted at the Beirut Arab summit a few years ago.  It indicates, as did the Egyptian refusal to host the Rome meeting that the earlier Arab government “cover” for a strong Israeli/American reaction to the Hezbollahkidnapping of Israeli soldiers is gone.  And the time when a combination of more limited Israeli force targeted narrowly on Hezbollahmilitary targets and aggressive American diplomacy might have mobilized European, Arab and UN support for pressure on Hezbollahto at least partially accede to UNSC 1559 and on Syria to step up on this issue is also history.

And, since some claim that Iran is using the war to divert attention away from the issue of its nuclear program, it is worth pointing out that Israel also had incentives to use Hezbollah’s cross border attack in order to unite a country that was on the bring of civil war over the plan to evacuate the settlements and to delegitimize the rationale behind, and any further plans that involved the evacuation of settlements as being inimical to Israel’s national security; and to prove that Israel’s first non-military prime minister and defense minister in decades were not wimps. 

Finally, in response to the contention put forward by neocons like William Kristol who wrote that the U.S. must support Israel because it is the United States’ war also I think it worth quoting remarks made July 20 by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He said:

neither Israel nor the United States in the final analysis have the capacity to impose a unilateral solution. There may be people who deceive themselves of that. We call them neo-cons in this country and there are other equivalents in Israel as well. They may think that either the United States or Israel can impose a solution  … I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect–maybe not in intent–the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages. Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you’re killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You’ll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.