America, Deaf and Dumb

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at this writing, is on her way to the Middle East to try to deal with the situation in Lebanon. Israel and Hezbollah are fighting. Foreigners are evacuating the country. Almost 400 civilians have been killed. Israel is threatening to invade.

Secretary Rice will talk to the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Saudis. But she will not talk to the Syrians or the Iranians. We have diplomatic relations with neither country. We have forfeited our direct influence on both sides of the conflict. In so doing, we have, by choice, diminished our power.

It was not always thus. We have always been wary of Syria and aware of the nature of the regime. Yet Kissinger went to Damascus and to reach an agreement that helped Israel. In contrast, now, we rely on others. This is weakness, shown by shown by Bush's comment in St. Petersburg, caught when he thought the mike was turned off: “I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen." He cannot call Assad himself--by choice, neither nor any other senior administration official has a relationship with the Syrian leader. Indeed, as far as is known, we must rely on other countries or the media to relay the simplest message to either Syria or Iran. We cannot negotiate, we cannot warn, except through others.

This unwillingness to talk has been characteristic of the Bush administration. When the question of direct talks with Korea or Iran has come up, we have curtly refused, time and again. An administration that insists on its duty to take unilateral action insists on the need to hold only multilateral talks.

There seem to be two reasons for this. First, the administration believes that direct talks give legitimacy to its enemies. The President seems to equate talking to a foreign regime with supporting it, as if American relations with Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and Hitler's Germany meant that we somehow approved of those regimes. The administrations' characterization of these two countries as irresponsible supporters of extremists, of terrorists, is close to the mark, but surely we would gain, in our knowledge of these countries, if nothing else, by having channels of communication readily available.

Second, the administration doesn't want to engage in mere talk. This is akin to a long-standing distrust of diplomats and their role held by many. It is true that talk can be cheap. But is also a way of opening or keeping open a communications channel that can at the least prevent misunderstanding. It can also lead to the satisfaction of mutual interests, which even countries that regard each other as enemies can have.

A result of this is that in the conflicts in Lebanon and with Iran and Korea, we have been curiously passive. We look for others to make the phone calls, to carry our water. We seem to pray for a miracle of regime change so that we can avoid the hard choices that dealing with these problems will entail.