The Baker-Hamilton Commission and a Shift in US Foreign Policy

The Baker-Hamilton Commission met with President Bush today, coincidentally, the same day that President Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The recent establishment of the Baker-Hamilton Commission and the replacing of Rumsfeld with Gates are not events that can be viewed in isolation and may herald a shift in US Middle East policy, especially with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian front.

The most prominent and telling change of a shift in attitude inside the White House was the choice of Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld. Robert Gates was Deputy National Security Advisor under the first President Bush and is considered part of the "realist" school of foreign policy along with his close confidants such as Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Gates co-authored a report on Iran with Brzezinski in which they recommended "limited or selective engagement with the current Iranian government" stating:

"Just as the United States maintains a constructive relationship with China while strongly opposing certain aspects of its internal and international policies, Washington should approach Iran with a readiness to explore areas of common interests, while continuing to contest objectionable policies."

Brzezinski, who recently authored a piece in Foreign Policy criticizing the disproportionate amount of power that the Israel lobby supposedly wields among policy makers, has recently been quoted in the Washington Post as saying that he hopes that Gates will bring a fresh change in the administration's Middle East Policy.

The first President Bush was known for having neglected the evangelical wing of the Republican party, a move which his son and other political analysts have blamed for his failure to secure a second term. Part of George W Bush's support of Israel stemmed from a desire to appease evangelical Christians who consider themselves Zionists (albeit for a much different reason than many Jewish supporters of Israel) along with having a convenient ideological ally in the "War on Terror". The first Bush made no such considerations and his administration in general, and his secretary of State James Baker in particular, was known for chastising Israel when its interests clashed with those of the United States. It was during this time that Bush cut off loan guarantees to Israel in response to the expansion of West Bank settlements and also dragged Israeli Prime Minister Shamir to a 1991 peace conference in Madrid against his political wishes.

Now that President Bush does not have to worry about re-election but does have to worry about the deteriorating situation in Iraq, he may be counting on his father's realists to clean up the mess by cooking up a new Middle East policy approach that will not view Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in isolation but rather will attempt a comprehensive solution that may include negotiations with Syria, Iran, Israel, the Palestinians, and a "softening" of the insistence on an American style democracy in Iraq. This would echo Rice's close advisor, Philip Zelikow's remarks to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's annual Weinberg Conference that the coalition that would help solve the Iraq morass and the Iranian threat is bound by the "sense that the Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed, that they see a common determination to sustain active policy that tries to deal with the problems of Israel and the Palestinians." The Washington Post also reports that Tony Blair is expected to call for a strong US push to start a diplomatic peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians in his testimony to the Baker-Hamilton Commission. These are all signs that a more active engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian front will be underway, connected to the US desire for a "realist" solution to the seemingly intractable Iraq war.