Should America follow the linkage theory?

[Behind the Aegis]

Periphery

For a long time it was believed that solving the Arab-Israeli conflict would help bring stability to the Middle East - but is it really so?

No, says Amir Taheri, formerly the executive editor of Kayhan, Iran's largest daily newspaper and a well known columnist, in his recent Commentary article: "Far from being the root cause of instability and war in the wider Middle East, one could argue that the Arab-Israeli conflict is rather peripheral, and that the region's deeper and much more intractable problems lie elsewhere. And one would be right. In the last years we have all become acquainted with televised images of the brutal carnage that Shiites and Sunni are capable of inflicting on each other in Iraq, the ghastly work of Baathist death squads, the steady rhythm of political assassinations, and the laying waste of civilian life. And that is just within one country. For our purposes here, however, it may be more instructive to look at the Middle East at the regional level, and to examine in particular the huge number of inter-state conflicts that have bedeviled this area in the modern era - conflicts that have nothing whatsoever to do with the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians."

Centrality

The question of linkage between Middle East stability and solving this conflict returned to the headlines following two events.

The first: remarks made by then-counselor to the Secretary of State Philip Zelikow a couple of months ago. "For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about. We can rail against that belief; we can find it completely justifiable, but it's fact. That means an active policy on the Arab-Israeli dispute is an essential ingredient to forging a coalition that deals with the most dangerous problems."

The second: The Baker-Hamilton report, asserting that "the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."

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[CJCRANE]

1. I agree.

I don't think it's that central anymore, especially after "shock and awe" and virtual civil war in Iraq are on a much larger scale than anything that's happening in I/P.

And I don't think the resolution of I/P issues will have any effect on what's going on in Iraq, they're not connected. (So I don't understand why certain politicians, like Tony Blair, seek to connect them in their rhetoric).