U.S. Must Work to Solve its Middle Eastern Crisis of Legitimacy

Note:  This is something I wrote a few weeks ago but decided not to do anything with.  It was an attempt at an Op-Ed, so the content is anything but exhaustive, as anyone who has ever attempted to write an Op-Ed should know.  If you have any questions, please post them and I'd be happy to discuss.

President Obama has received a lot criticism for his recent statement that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both sides.”  Both Israeli leadership and U.S. Congressmen alike have decried the statement, saying that it is “inconceivable” that Israel could possibly return to such “indefensible” borders.  Despite this criticism, Obama’s call for constructive dialogue may be Israel’s — and the United States’ — last chance to choose between taking the initiative or becoming a pariah on the issue of Middle East peace.

Earlier this year, the Palestinian Authority announced that it would seek United Nations membership if a peace treaty with Israel couldn’t be reached by September.  This may not seem particularly dire due to the fact that the United States holds permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council, a body which holds veto power over membership requests.  But the fact is that the legal basis for denying Palestinian statehood is actually quite weak.  According to the Montevideo Convention, the article of international law which defines statehood, the state of Palestine meets the requirements already.  Palestine has a permanent population, territory (currently defined as “occupied Palestinian territory”), a government, and recognition by other states.  Palestine is currently recognized by over 130 nations, a solid two-thirds majority of the 192 nations represented in the U.N.

Despite this, it’s highly likely that the United States will nonetheless veto the request should it come to a vote.  If it does so, the decision will solidify the United States’ Middle East policy as merely Israeli-centric.  This serves well for our relationship with Israel, true, but it simultaneously crumbles the much more broad American interests in the Middle East and beyond, exacerbating an already severe U.S. crisis of legitimacy among those nations.  Many Muslim nations will seek to diminish their ties with the United States or even perhaps find a counterbalance to American power.  Without a true regional power to fill the void, most nations will turn instead to a rising power in world politics — the People’s Republic of China.

Examples of this shift to an Eastern orientation can already be seen.  Iran, already an international pariah and the target of multilateral sanctions, has been able to circumvent punishment to a high degree by shifting its trade contracts to China.  In recent years, trade between the two nations has been as high as $30 billion annually.  There has even been evidence that China supplied crowd control weapons and vehicles to Iran during its 2009 protests — a precursor to the Arab Spring — and that China is possibly supporting Iran’s nuclear program behind the scenes.  More recently, China was represented by 144 companies at Iran’s annual Oil Show this April, despite the “crippling” sanctions the United States and its allies hoped to employ.

China has also been at work elsewhere in the Muslim world.  Earlier this week, an article in the Financial Times reported that Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar has asked the Chinese to build a naval base at the port city of Gwadar.  If built, the naval base would allow China to have a permanent military presence near the Strait of Hormuz, achieving overnight what Russia was denied throughout the Cold War.  Though China doesn’t appear to be directly challenging the United States in either of these instances, these actions nonetheless illustrate an attempt to counterbalance U.S. interests.  Any loss of U.S. legitimacy among Middle Eastern nations will drastically increase the likelihood of conflict in the region, costing an unknown amount of American lives and treasure.

The United States must move beyond an Israeli-centric Middle East policy and instead embrace its broader interests in the region.  This does not mean abandoning Israel.  It means getting Israel back to the negotiating table and convincing the Palestinians that pursuing statehood without Israeli consent is against their interests and will undermine prospects for a lasting peace.  The stakes are high, and the status quo is unsustainable.  A change is necessary, and the future of Israeli security and American leadership depends on it.

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