Bush and Iraq Study Group: Competing visions for Middle East

With President Bush turning a cold shoulder to key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, one explanation is the wide gulf between the group's prescription for addressing the Middle East and the president's vision for the region.

The study group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, places a high priority on restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and reenergizing America's role in it. Mr. Bush, who has never viewed that conflict as ripe for the kind of intense US diplomacy Mr. Baker had dedicated to it, continues to see success in Iraq as the demonstration project for peace and reform in the region.

"Bush had this idea that Baghdad was going to radically alter the Middle East," says Henri Barkey, a former State Department specialist on Iraq now at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. "For him, the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad. Baker is saying you get to Baghdad through Jerusalem," he adds, "but it's hard to see Bush embracing that thinking now."

As Bush considers an array of alternatives and prepares for a speech that the White House says he hopes to give before Christmas laying out his plan for a new direction in Iraq, the broader question of how best to reform the Middle East will be a determining factor.

Last month in Riga, Latvia, Bush extolled the transformational power of a democratic Iraq. He has not given up on the idea of a functioning democracy as the answer to Iraq's ills – indeed, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol has taken to calling him "the last neocon." In stark contrast, the study group's report emphasizes stability as the most pressing need, passing over goals of regional freedom and democracy.

One of the report's central proposals – seen by the panel as a necessity for progress in Iraq – is a broad and intense regional dialogue that includes both Iran and Syria. But the Bush approach, one fine-tuned and doggedly pursued by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has been to isolate those two countries as troublemaking cats that must first change their spots before being welcomed to the negotiating table.

Bush remains at heart a believer in regime change in the case of regimes deemed to be supporters of international terrorism, some analysts say. And some White House officials say the president sees much about the Baker-Hamilton report as better-suited to the Middle East of the former secretary of State's heyday in the late 1980s and early '90s, while not so much a response to the post-9/11 world.

For Bush, talks with the United States should be dangled as a reward: for Iran once it gives up its nuclear ambitions, and for Syria as a prize for disengaging from Lebanon and relinquishing support for Hizbullah. "The truth of the matter is these countries have now got the choice to make," Bush said last week in comments on the study group's recommendations.

The study group recommends decoupling Iran's nuclear programs from the Iraq issue and leaving it to the United Nations Security Council.

For Baker, diplomacy is not about talking to your friends, but is really about dealing with your enemies. As Mr. Hamilton says, "How do you solve problems without talking to people?"

Baker acknowledges that Iran might not even want to join talks on Iraq. But he adds that finding that out would be useful: If Iran rejects an outstretched hand, he says, it would be a clear demonstration to the world of Tehran's intransigence and rejectionist approach.

Page: 1 | 2