Hard lines and soft
promises By Federico Bordonaro
ROME - As many had been expecting, the
Rome crisis talks on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict
produced only limited results. Delegations vowed
to work "immediately to reach with the utmost
urgency a ceasefire that puts an end to the
current violence and hostilities" and decided to
send humanitarian aid to Lebanon's ravaged
population.
However, the initiative's most
ambitious goal, which had been to reach agreement
on imposing an immediate ceasefire between
the
Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah, proved
impossible to achieve.
"The more we delay
a ceasefire, the more we are going to witness more
destruction and more aggression against civilians
in Lebanon," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora
told the press after the conference. "We wanted a
ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire." But he didn't
get one.
However, Siniora's grandest goals
were obviously unlikely to be achieved. US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had clearly
stated before and during the conference that any
ceasefire must be "sustainable" and that "no
return to the status quo ante" was
acceptable.
In other terms, as Rice put
it, not "quick fixes" but lasting regional
solutions are needed for the entire region,
according to Washington, which sees an immediate
ceasefire as an impediment to Israel's strategic
purpose: the annihilation of Hezbollah's offensive
capabilities.
Furthermore, as neither
belligerent parties nor key regional players took
part in the talks, calls for a ceasefire were
destined to remain, well, calls.
The harsh
reality is that behind diplomacy's words and vows
of enhanced international cooperation, regional
and external powers are steadily pursuing their
interests in the crisis. Unveiling their strategic
and political priorities is thus crucial not only
to understanding the context, but also for a
correct analysis of the logic of the Rome talks'
results and their possible consequences.
Who wants what? Israel's
strategic security goals and perceptions are the
necessary starting point for an analysis of the
political and strategic aspects of the ongoing
conflict.
From a military point of view,
the annihilation of Hezbollah's offensive
potential, followed by the creation of a security
buffer "where there will be no Hezbollah" is Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert's repeatedly declared
objective.
From a political and strategic
perspective, however, Israel made a policy shift
on Saturday, as officials declared they would
accept a multinational peacekeeping force. This
would preferably be under the aegis of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to implement
United Nations Resolution 1559 (passed in 2004; in
particular, that means disarming Hezbollah).
Jerusalem is apparently trying to involve the West
directly in its confrontation with Hezbollah.
Israel might agree to negotiate with
Syria, but only after the Party of God has been
rendered innocuous. Olmert's view - widely shared
by his fellow citizens - is also that regional
strategic cooperation between Iran and Syria, two
backers of Hezbollah, must be undermined as it is
directed against Jerusalem, and that no durable
peace can be reached unless Western democracies
help change Damascus' and Tehran's stance toward
Israel.
Such aims largely match
Washington's strategic priorities. Sources say
that as Wednesday's talks began, Italian Foreign
Minister Massimo D'Alema and other officials had
tried to make immediate ceasefire the meeting's
top priority, but they were deflected by US and
British opposition.
Rice's refusal to call
for an "immediate" ceasefire can be explained by
the United States' determination to support
Israel's goal of completing the annihilation of
Hezbollah's attack wherewithal. Eliminating
Hezbollah's military potential would mean
weakening Iran's and Syria's means of blackmail
and deterrence against Washington's strategic ally
Israel, and smooth the progress of US plans for a
"new Middle East".
The US will
increasingly try to challenge and destabilize
Syrian-Iranian ties. One possible tactic it can
follow is to engage Damascus, but from a
strengthened position - meaning after Hezbollah
has taken some harsh punishment from Israel. This
can explain why Rice, before and during the talks,
said that dialogue with Syria might be possible,
provided that Damascus realized "what its
obligations are" under the Taif Accords and UN
Resolution 1559.
So, after all, although
the talks did pave the way for vital humanitarian
aid to be given to Lebanon, further ground
fighting and warfare between Israel and Hezbollah
is to be expected in the next weeks, as Israeli
officials themselves announced on Wednesday.
Syria's absence from the Rome talks was
certainly the most substantial gap in its lineup.
Damascus knows the old refrain that goes "no war
without Syria, no peace without Syria" in the
Middle East. Having given ground in Lebanon after
Rafik Hariri's assassination in February 2005,
Damascus likely wants a reward, and calculates
that the best possible outcome for it could be a
detente with Israel and the US in exchange for
Jerusalem's willingness to negotiate over the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In other words,
Syria is waiting to be badly needed as the player
that could break the impasse.
However, the
US stance toward Damascus is fairly complex.
Hardliner neo-conservatives in Washington are
becoming increasingly vociferous about President
George W Bush's alleged weakness toward Syria and
Iran, and are calling for decisive (read:
military) action against President Bashar
al-Assad.
Interestingly, last Friday, a
release by the Office of the Press Secretary
published on the White House's website explicitly
mentioned a bellicose op-ed written by Max Boot
for the Los Angeles Times that openly called for
Washington to let "Israel hit the Assad regime".
Rice's more moderate stance may encounter
difficulties at home, if a window of opportunity
to engage Syria comes into play. But Sunni Arab
states may perform a positive role in trying to
favor a rapprochement, as Saudi Arabia and Jordan
fear the rise of Iran and the Shi'ites throughout
the region.
With Iran playing the part of
Hezbollah's hardline supporter - although in doing
so, Tehran remains careful not to play all its
cards at once - the European Union had a good
chance to enhance its influence in the Middle East
and, perhaps to an even greater extent, in the
somewhat strained trans-Atlantic relationship. But
the European players were divided.
London
sided with Washington, not exactly unexpectedly,
on the ceasefire issue. And France took the
opposite path - almost as the cliches dictate.
Philippe Douste-Blazy, Paris' foreign minister,
expressed his "disappointment" with the
conference's inability to push decisively for a
truce.
While Berlin chose to engage in
low-profile diplomacy, and worked to emerge as the
true "bridge" between the Anglo-American combine
and "Old Europe", Italy used the talks to relaunch
its international role as mediator, a task that
many Italian analysts consider a natural and
necessary one for Rome, particularly in the
Mediterranean political theater.
However,
European divisions - and, consequently,
trans-Atlantic ones too - certainly did not help
the summit to achieve its more ambitious goals,
although a new European-American rift comparable
to that of 2003 seems unlikely to develop.
But what divergent views both among
Europeans and between the two sides of the
Atlantic can trigger is a difficult debate over
the proposed multinational peacekeeping force that
is expected to help the Lebanese government regain
full control of its sovereignty after Hezbollah's
(planned-for) defeat and implement UN Resolution
1559.
Certainly, the final draft released
by the conference in Rome claims that "an
international force in Lebanon should urgently be
authorized under a UN mandate". But since Rice
explicitly stated that such a force should have
the real capability to act in such a difficult
context, it is difficult not to think that the
NATO option remains open.
France and
Germany do not want that force to be a NATO one.
Paris classically seeks to keep NATO, perceived as
a Washington-led organization, out of a region
(Lebanon) that France considers part of its zone
of influence. Moreover, Paris believes that NATO
should not be upgraded to a global security tool,
but restricted to its original tasks, while the EU
should progressively enhance its security and
defense capabilities.
That is a hard task,
especially for the weakened Gaullist leadership of
Jacques Chirac and Dominic de Villepin. But
Germany casts doubts about NATO's intervention,
too. The organization's secretary general, Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer, declared in Rome that NATO's
intervention was not on the agenda - at least for
now.
But there can be no doubt that in the
coming weeks, this issue will be one of the
thorniest for European diplomacies to contend
with.
Federico Bordonaro is
senior analyst with the Power and Interest News
Report.
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