Last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had enough reasons to be gleeful as she said farewell to the highest diplomatic office of the United States. It is generally agreed that, despite a few setbacks, her tenure was a success.
There is no doubt that she portrayed the United States as a gentler superpower, and together with President Barack Obama, helped to reshape the gunboat diplomacy that characterized American foreign policy in the past.
The reason is, as Clinton rightly said, that America’s strength as a global leader and its potential to be a force for good is better than it ever was. Nonetheless, the recent attacks on its embassies in Turkey and Libya are a grim reminder that America’s foreign policy is being challenged constantly.
Clinton’s major disappointment was a failure to get some semblance of an agreement between Israel and Palestine to end unrest that has plagued the Middle East for over 30 years. Perhaps if the White House and State Department had been more strident, peace prospects could have changed for good.
Unfortunately, the United States couldn’t prevail over Israel in realizing the independence and statehood of the Palestinians – an aspect that lingers as an unaddressed question, as the region plunges towards extremism and warfare.
The waters have been somewhat muddied recently with the Israeli attack on a Syrian research centre. There is no doubt Israel is taking advantage of the civil war to advance its geopolitical interests at the expense of what it regards its most implacable foe.
The Syrian attack has added new dimensions to the conflict. Convinced that the beleaguered government is in no position to retaliate, Israel is flexing its military muscle and threatening further attacks if chemical weapons purportedly in Syria’s possession fall into Hezbollah’s hands in Lebanon.
With the neutrality of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, backed by NATO powers, already compromised and Hezbollah said to be deeply involved, Israel’s strike has been strongly denounced by Russia.
Iran, too, has issued a grim warning, declaring last week that an attack on Syria would be considered an attack on Iran but its bark is worse than its bite. For now, the air strike isn’t likely to trigger a larger war. Although Syria has publicly blamed Israel, it has incentives to keep its retaliation purely verbal.
This dangerous drift towards escalation needs to be arrested. The misfortune is that the intensity of the civil war in Syria shows no signs of abating, though there are clear signs that a stalemate has been reached, with neither side in a position to clinch victory.
With the Arab League and others having washed their hands of Syria, and the United Nations a mere spectator, there is little possibility of normality returning to the country.
While the security concerns of Israel are understandable, its military superiority and intransigence towards Palestine are driving the arms race in that region of the world.
