Our voyager to the east has returned safely to Washington following what turned out to be an unusual pilgrimage into a new kind of diplomacy.
I hesitantly (and modestly) predicted that President Bush’s trip to Europe, the Baltics, Georgia and especially Russia would likely reveal some fresh approaches to the world in his second term. Before his trip, there were a number of indicators that the old “Bring ’em on” Cowboy George might be morphing into more of a statesman.
And, indeed, it seems he may have. This trip (which has the revealing fingerprints of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security adviser Stephen Hadley all over it) was an exercise in sophistication compared to Bush’s earlier trips to Europe, when he went out of his way to insult his hosts, or even earlier to Russia, where he got too naively soul-to-soul with Vladimir Putin.
First, the two presidents got the philosophical and historical arguments out of the way before the trip started. Today, as at no time since the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991, one can see clearly the extent to which Putin’s hard-line security state resembles past, even Stalinist, days.
Thus, it was not surprising that the pre-trip “discussion”–perhaps “argument” is a more apt word–revolved around the morality of the Soviets and the Nazis in the late 1930s agreeing to exchange Finland for Poland, and also around the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Stalin nominally agreed to the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
Bush and his national security team–extraordinarily–admitted publicly that, although at Yalta the Soviets had “agreed” to hold elections in Eastern Europe, the United States acquiesced to such an obvious deception.
On the first day of the four-day trip, in Latvia, the American president, who has never acknowledged any mistakes in Iraq, conceded that the U.S. and Britain shared some responsibility for the Soviet annexation of the Baltic nations and the carving up of Europe.
Second, the meetings in Moscow–where Bush sat next to Putin in a friendly and dignified manner, observing the 60th anniversary Victory Day parade, and then met without incident with dissident groups–were at least in appearances cordial and respectful. The troublesome stuff had been gotten out of the way early.
Or as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said afterward, “They are actually discussing everything in an open, friendly and partnerlike manner.”
But what if this approach of acknowledging historical, political and even moral errors, employed so well on this trip, were to be used elsewhere? What if, for instance, in the Middle East, where we are so deeply and perhaps inextricably involved, Bush were also to acknowledge mistakes?
For those of us who have covered the Middle East for years or studied the region’s history, there is no question that substantial proportions of the resentment against the United States are based in genuine historical events.
We could point to the U.S.-backed overthrow of the leftist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in the ’50s, to support of the British Empire’s carving up of the region into grotesquely unreliable states (like Iraq), to the stationing of U.S. troops in the Muslims’ “sacred” Saudi kingdom, and to America’s total and unnuanced support for Israel against the Palestinians.
Here, in sharp contrast to his behavior last week regarding World War II, George W. has consistently refused to acknowledge the slightest culpability on the part of the United States for Muslim dislike, or hatred, of the U.S. in the Middle East. He has constantly repeated the theme, “They hate us for what we are, not for what we do.”
The problem is that this is simply not true. Just as we must accept some responsibility for Yalta, so ought we to accept at least some responsibility for our problems in the Middle East.
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Not accepting responsibility for one’s actions, whether in an individual or in a nation, is almost as bad as its opposite: putting all the blame on forces outside of yourself for your behavior. Both cut off contact with the “other” and lead only to further hatred.
In fact, this kind of airing of historical differences, within places as different as South Africa, Chile and El Salvador, has led to substantial levels of reconciliation in these torn countries.
In a way, even though Putin’s Russia is more hard-line regressive than ever, this week cleared the air with Russia for moving on. The two sides can finally speak more honestly to each other, rather than only past each other. If only that day could come in the Middle East.
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E-mail: gigi(underscore)[email protected]