Posted by
Andrews on Friday, May 08, 2009 5:14:03 PM
I wrote over a year ago that the one thing for which Carter gets credit, the Camp David accords, were largely not to his credit. He basically forced his way into an agreement that had been long in the works. Though I argued for a few different pressures leading to Camp David, it is interesting to see the same argument being voiced by
Best of the Web:
Peace Despite Jimmy Carter
Yesterday we noted reports that Arab regimes, alarmed by the woo
President Obama is pitching at Iran's hateful regime, have been
contemplating a more reasonable attitude toward Israel, their sworn
enemy but, like the Arabs, a prospective target of Iranian aggression.
We argued that, as feckless as the Obama Iran policy may seem to be, if
it results in a softening of Arab attitudes, this would be good for
regional peace and Arab, Israeli and U.S. interests.
Several readers wrote to point out that there is a precedent: President Carter's feckless Middle East policy.
As detailed in op-eds by Yossi Alpher in the Forward and Arthur Herman in The Wall Street Journal,
Carter's Mideast policy was originally driven by his naiveté toward the
enemy of that time, the Soviet Union. Carter proposed a "regional peace
conference" in which the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would work out a
comprehensive agreement between Israel, the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
As Alpher writes, "It would have been an invitation Israel could not
refuse, much as it would like to. The hostile Soviet presence in the
region, the reality of negotiating opposite not one but a host of Arab
countries, and the Carter administration's ideological orientation all
seemed to ensure that Israel would be subject to awesome pressures to
make concessions that it deemed dangerous."
But Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, had different ideas. When he
took power in 1970, Egypt was a Soviet client state, but Sadat had
shifted Cairo's allegiance to the U.S. and had no wish to re-enter the
Soviet camp. He undertook private talks with the Israelis, followed by
his own visit to Jerusalem in November 1977.
"Even
after Sadat's trip to Jerusalem," Herman notes, "Mr. Carter announced
that 'a separate peace agreement between Egypt and Israel is not
desirable.' " But a year later, with his foreign policy in shambles,
"Carter finally decided to elbow his way into the game by setting up a
meeting between Sadat and Begin at Camp David." That meeting resulted
in the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state.
One hesitates to put Jimmy Carter forward as a model for anything.
To the extent that the success at Camp David mitigated the disaster
that was his presidency, it was only because he proved so ineffective
at carrying out his initial reckless policy.
Still, if one assumes Obama's policies are as reckless as Carter's,
one can certainly hope that the current president will be as
ineffective as his predecessor in carrying them out.
You can see my earlier argument in my post "Forget Hope, Try Realism", and later in "Memories of Jimmy". I still think the problems with Islamic militants at home, as well as the model of Jordan and its quiet detente with Israel pushed Egypt into face-saving peace agreements, but the Soviet angle just adds another reason they would have wanted peace without Carter's intervention.
POSTSCRIPT
For those unfamiliar with my running joke, this is not to be taken seriously, I dont think anyone is plagiarizing my material, it just amuses me to pretend I do.