Everybody has a plan to save the Middle East. That guy with the bumper sticker does. Most of your friends do. Neocons have a plan. Peaceniks have a plan. Likudniks have a plan. The Bush Administration certainly thinks it has one, and we’re told the Democrats are working on theirs. Tom Clancy imagined deploying the Vatican’s Swiss Guards to keep peace on the Temple Mount. Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis told the Contra Costa Times in July that he knew how to fix the situation—but he kept the details to himself. The policy debate resembles my family’s Thanksgiving dinner conversation after I knock a glass of red wine onto my mother’s white tablecloth: everybody has an idea about how to fix it, everybody is eager to share their thoughts, many ideas sound superficially plausible, and it’s difficult to distinguish among competing solutions.
What we lack in the Middle East are not policy alternatives. The region lacks a policy process—a security framework that helps regional powers eliminate bad policy alternatives and guides them toward shared goals.
Experts here, in Europe, and in the region generally agree on the rough outlines of a durable regional peace: American redeployment from Iraq sooner rather than later, a “two-state solution” between Israel and a democratic and developing Palestine, the persistent disruption of terrorist groups, a commitment to Iraq’s current borders with increased federalism and oil revenue sharing among its factions, the implementation of the agenda set forth in the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report, improved governance, allowing Iran nuclear energy but prohibiting nuclear weapons, negotiated settlement of the many border disputes, peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, and the eventual integration of Arab states into global economic structures.
But how do we get there from here? And how do we get there with extremists on all sides working to prevent such a pragmatic arrangement?
The 30-year political transformation in eastern Europe may offer some lessons. In the mid-1970s, mutually suspicious and hostile adversaries agreed on a security framework that set in motion events that helped end the Cold War. The so-called Helsinki Process began as a series of negotiations over several years that eased the tension between the Soviet bloc and the west, and enshrined certain fundamental principals: the inviolability of borders, the principle of non-violent resolution of disputes, non-interference in domestic affairs, and—most importantly—a commitment to human rights. At the time, neoconservatives blasted this framework as capitulation to Soviet interests and sanction of the authoritarian regimes of Eastern Europe. Yet by building this basic security framework into East-West dealings, the Helsinki Process achieved significant results:
First, negotiations over the Helsinki Accords got the Soviet Bloc on record supporting human rights. Their flagrant hypocrisy immediately mobilized dissident movements in Eastern Europe.
Second, engaging the Soviets and addressing our shared security concerns eased pressure on the arms race, added stability to the balance of power, and gave the American military needed time to recover from the Vietnam War and the end of the draft.
Third, restoring America’s image as a pragmatic defender of human rights in the 1970s gave the US and President Reagan far greater moral authority to challenge Soviet policy in the 1980s.
Finally, the Helsinki Process established a little-known organization that was ready and able to help former communist regimes consolidate their incipient democracies in the 1990s: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE has a long and important menu of responsibilities, or one whose competencies are so desperately needed in the Middle East: managing state disintegration, disarming and demobilizing militias, helping prevent nuclear proliferation, settling border disputes, cooling ethnic strife. The OSCE also provides election monitors and training for media, public administration, democratic policing, and the rule of law.
Despite some high profile setbacks, the Helsinki Process established a security framework—from Kosovo to Estonia, and Warsaw to Baku—that is trending toward peace, democracy, stability, and prosperity.
We need a similar policy framework in the Middle East today. Commencing a Middle Eastern equivalent of the Helsinki Process will not solve terrorism, democratize the region, end the Iraqi civil war, solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or prevent Iran from obtaining the bomb. Bargains would have to be struck with authoritarian regimes we find dangerous (Iran, for instance) in order to get them to the negotiating table, just as we did with the Soviets in the 1970s. Worse yet, this process may take 20 years to bear fruit.
But such a process will empower democrats working to reform their governments. It will undermine the jihadist, anti-Western rhetoric, and could siphon away potential recruits. It may ease the tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This process will certainly build some inertia toward our long-term objectives in the Middle East. We could do a lot worse.
