Only time will tell

I’ve been busy lately reading articles about how dumb various (but mostly American) negotiators are.  If only the diplomats would do some pretty simple things, serious conflicts would be readily resolved.

A former Iranian nuclear negotiator suggests the Americans and Iranians just have to put aside the threats and pressure, then talk nicer about issues of common interest and things will improve.   Ahmed Rashid wants us to listen more carefully to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who says he does not intend to monopolize power in Afghanistan.  And we could achieve peace in Israel and Palestine if the Palestinians would just recognize Israel, and Israel would provide a few factories to the Palestinians.

This last one is the easiest to debunk.  There hasn’t been a problem with Palestinian recognition of Israel since Arafat did it almost twenty years ago.   The problem is that Israel is now demanding recognition as a Jewish state, something that the UN General Assembly already did in its partition resolution.  And of course Israel has not recognized Palestine, or allowed it to establish clear borders.  The notion that economic development will satisfy the Palestinians in the absence of a political solution is nonsense.

Listening carefully to Mullah Omar is a good idea, but I confess his Eid message did not fill me with hope.  Here is what he actually says about negotiation:

The Islamic Emirate considers the presence of the foreign invading troops in the country; their blind-bombardment, night raids, their brutalities; tortures and tyranny as the main cause of the current imbroglio in the country. The issue would come to an end when the said brutalities are meted out. Similarly, IE [Islamic Emirate] considers [the] establishment of an independent Islamic regime as a conducive mechanism for sustainability of religious and worldly interests of the country and the countrymen. For this purpose, every legitimate option can be considered in order to reach this goal. The contacts which have been made with some parties for the release of prisoners can’t be called as a comprehensive negotiation for the solution of the current imbroglio of the country. However, the Islamic Emirate, as an efficient political and military entity, has a specific and independent agenda in this regard which has been elucidated time and again.

Yes, he leaves the door open to future talks, but he also goes on to make it clear that the Taliban will only stop fighting when the occupation has ended.  We can be certain Mullah Omar’s message was carefully parsed inside the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community, where its ambiguous character will not have excited too much enthusiasm.

As for Iran, it makes sense to reduce the trash talking and to focus on issues where there may be some common interest, but the hard kernel of disagreement is over nuclear weapons. Making nice and solving some other issues isn’t going to make that one go away, and the time delay could even make it more difficult to solve.

So yes, we do need to make sure we understand our adversaries, deal in a pragmatic way with them and leave no stone unturned in the search for peaceful resolutions of these issues. But it is a whole lot easier to kibbitz from the sidelines than to play the game for real. When the guys calling for more stridency are also the people deciding your budget, there is an inclination to go strident. When the Taliban are as ambiguous as Mullah Omar in his Eid message, listening really does get hard. And when your critics are misunderstanding the problem, it is easy to write them off.

There is one sign of hope in all these cases: the Americans are maintaining radio silence. Iran guru Dennis Ross, Afghanistan lead Marc Grossman and whoever is acting in George Mitchell’s place (Hoff?  Feltman?) on Israel/Palestine are suspiciously quiet. Maybe that’s because there is nothing to say. Or maybe it’s because negotiations are quietly producing fruit. Only time will tell.

PS:  I’m not the only one less impressed  with Mullah Omar’s message than Ahmed Rashid.