Obama Administration

Sorry pundits, there's little the United States can do about the protests in Iran. Better to plan for when the dust settles.

By Suzanne Maloney

If anyone needs another reminder of how minimal Americans' understanding of and access to Iran has become, the discourse in Washington over the past week certainly provides one. As scenes of Iranian bravery and bloodshed have unfolded, American pundits and politicians have fixated on President Obama's syntax and inflection. Although a passing familiarity with Iranian history, as well as Iranians' appeals for Washington not to meddle in their nascent movement, buttress the case for caution, the tempest over presidential semantics is at best a pointless exercise and at worst a distraction from the serious question ahead: How will Iran's internal crisis will impact U.S. policy?

The fact is, no matter how much Americans like to think they are the ones shaping events in Iran, it's just not true. The dramatic events in Iran have been wholly internally driven. They are the product of three decades of semi-competitive Iranian elections, a sophisticated population that warily guards its limited rights and freedoms, the tensions of a longstanding elite power struggle, and the ever-important force of unintended consequences -- among other factors. Better for the United States, then, to focus on those areas where it actually has some capacity for influence: namely, its own Iran policy, and more specifically, how Washington can move forward with engaging Tehran in light of the dramatic changes of the past 10 days.

As profound as recent events have been, engagement remains the only path forward for Washington. Whenever the dust settles in the tumultuous battle on the streets and behind the scenes, direct U.S. diplomacy continues to represent the most viable mechanism for addressing Iran's nuclear ambitions. After all, Obama's interest in engagement was never about the Iranian leadership, and until very recently, most experts expected a second Ahmadinejad term. Instead, the case for engagement was - and still is - rooted in the urgency of the world's concerns about Iran's ambitions and the even-less promising U.S. policy alternatives, such as military action or externally sponsored regime change.

Even if the upheaval in Iran does not inherently alter the rationale for engagement, however, it will likely exacerbate the potential pitfalls of implementing it. One line the administration is floating on engagement now -- that the consolidation of power under Iranian hard-liners will create incentives for a quick resolution of the nuclear standoff -- is certainly conceivable. But given Tehran's uncompromising rhetoric and recent resort to violence, this argument sounds suspiciously like wishful thinking. More likely, the United States is going to have to deal with an increasingly paranoid and dogmatic Iranian regime, which is preoccupied by a low-level popular insurgency and a schism among its longstanding power brokers.

This begs a lot of questions, foremost of which is: How can Washington get an even more thuggish theocracy to make meaningful concessions and credible, durable commitments to its historical adversary when Iran's own power structure is still shifting considerably? Fortunately, this is not an insurmountable hurdle, and a little history can help us clear it.

From 1980-81, the United States conducted hard-headed diplomacy with a revolutionary government in Iran, when the country was still in a state of unrest, to secure the release of American hostages seized from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. This challenge was at least as daunting as that of today. The Carter administration's negotiators faced an array of implacably anti-American interlocutors whose authority, credibility, and interest in resolving the crisis remained an open question throughout the dialogue. Moreover, Tehran's ultimate goals seemed unclear, possibly even unknown to its leaders, who often employed the negotiating process as a means of prolonging the crisis rather than resolving it.

An agreement to end the hostage crisis was ultimately reached. But it took months of intense work and many false starts, as well as a variety of tools, including secret negotiations and a third-party mediator and guarantor for the eventual agreement. Whether or not this kind of hard-won success can be replicated now is unclear. If anything, the stakes today are higher and the Iranian political dynamics are less promising, at least in the very short term. Still, charting a path forward for diplomacy is certainly the most constructive use of U.S. political capital and energy at this juncture.

But what about Iran's burgeoning democracy movement? And what useful role can and should the United States can play in advancing it? Given recent events, it was inevitable that some American pundits and policymakers would renew their calls for additional U.S. democracy assistance programs for Iranian reformers. This would be precisely the wrong move - not because it would compromise the climate for nuclear negotiations, but because Iran's own activists have consistently rejected such funding. They don't want it, and elections-related news such as the massive reformist vote monitoring effort suggests they don't need it. Better for Washington to focus efforts on where it can be both useful and welcome, such as last week's timely intervention to encourage Twitter to defer network maintenance during a crucial moment of the protests.

The first chapter of Iran's next great social movement has begun. Now it is time for Americans to put aside futile squabbling over the righteousness of their indignation and move on to more practical deliberations of where Iran and the United States go from here. In short, stop talking about talking and start talking with Iran.

Suzanne Maloney is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

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Fresh sanctions on a cash-poor North Korean regime could help cause exactly the situation we hope to prevent -- nuclear proliferation.

By Charles D. Ferguson

It's hard not to be a bit anxious about the news, reported Thursday, that North Korea might launch a ballistic missile toward Hawaii next month. But the United States and its partners should resist the urge to panic. North Korea's nuclear and long-range missile capabilities are rudimentary and will likely remain so for years to come. (Pyongyang's long-range missiles won't likely reach all the way to Hawaii, given their record of failure. Kim Jong Il instead might be trying to send a message to President Obama, who was born and grew up in Hawaii.) In fact, the only thing to fear is literally fear itself: If severe economic sanctions are imposed on North Korea, they could result in the plausible worst case scenario of North Korea selling nuclear weapons or weapons-usable nuclear materials abroad.

As it stands today, North Korea cannot credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear attack from a ballistic missile or aircraft. The long-range Taepo Dong missile may someday have the reliable capability to hit the continental United States. But the two failed tests in recent years show that at least a few more trial runs would be needed to work out the technical kinks. Besides, the Taepo Dong is not likely to be able to carry its 500 kilogram payload, a first-generation nuclear warhead, over an intercontinental distance. Nor does North Korea have a long-range aircraft that could drop a nuclear bomb on the United States.

Moreover, North Korea has yet to develop a reliable, high-yield nuclear weapon. The country's first test, in October 2006, produced an explosion that fell far short of the four-kilotons that North Korea told China it expected. (And even four kilotons would pale in comparison to the 20-kiloton plutonium-based bomb that fell on Nagasaki in 1945.) Many analysts believe North Korea's second nuclear test last month was more successful, at an estimated yield of two to four kilotons. This might tell us that North Korea is seeking to build low-yield nuclear weapons, stretching out its limited plutonium stockpile. The country might have enough fissile material for three to eight nuclear bombs of the Nagasaki design or somewhat more than double that number at lower yields.

North Korea is stuck with its current stockpile of plutonium for at least another several months, because it will take that long to repair the disabled reactor at Yongbyon. Even then, Yongbyon can only make about one bomb's worth of plutonium each year. And though North Korea recently shocked the world by admitting to having a uranium enrichment program, it will likely take years to produce large quantities of weapons-usable material.

Of course, the relatively rudimentary nature of North Korea's nuclear arsenal does not call for complacency. In the region in particular, North Korea does pose a serious threat to both South Korea and Japan. Seoul is in striking range of thousands of North Korean artillery tubes, and Pyongyang has repeatedly warned of its ability to turn the South into a "sea of fire." Yet such a scenario is unlikely so long as the United States remains committed to defending South Korea and Japan, as the Obama administration has reaffirmed that it is.

The greatest concern is that North Korea could sell nuclear and missile capabilities to other states or perhaps non-state actors. Already, North Korea has sold several hundred million dollars worth of missiles to Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Vietnam, and Yemen, in recent years, and it helped Syria build a nuclear reactor that was intended for plutonium production. (In September 2007, Israel bombed this construction site.) Facing dire economic conditions, North Korea certainly has a strong motivation to profit from its only expertise.

As far as we know, North Korea has refrained from selling its nuclear weapons and materials to other states or non-state actors. But should harsh financial sanctions be imposed, the country might feel compelled to do exactly that. That prospect has thus far been held off by China, which, fearing North Korea's collapse, has prevented the U.N. Security Council from imposing truly tough sanctions or authorizing the use of force. That might be a blessing in disguise -- and save the world from its own worst nuclear fears.

Charles D. Ferguson is Philip D. Reed senior fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and project director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force Report on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, chaired by William J. Perry and Brent Scowcroft.

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The Obama administration is sending mixed messages about bad banks.

By James Kwak 

One of my backgrounds is in marketing. A key goal in marketing is to identify your one main message and communicate it as clearly and consistently as possible. The Obama team did this masterfully during the presidential campaign. Unfortunately, it is having less success doing this when it comes to the crisis in the financial sector.

The core problem is that people lack confidence in the long-term strength of some of the largest U.S. banks. The stress tests whose results will be announced on Thursday, May 7, (and are leaking out daily) make sense as a regulatory measure: By forecasting how banks will be affected by a severe recession, the tests should indicate which banks are healthy, which need more capital, and which (if any) are hopelessly insolvent and should be closed. If people think that the tests are sufficiently rigorous, then they should have confidence in the banks that survive.

However, administration officials are torn between two alternative messages. On one hand, they fear that revealing negative information about major banks could cause a panic, so the first message is that the financial system is doing just fine, thank you. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on April 21, "the vast majority of banks have more capital than they need to be considered well capitalized by their regulators." A New York Times article in April was even blunter: "Regulators say all 19 banks undergoing the exams will pass them."

On the other hand, no one will believe the results of a test that all banks are able to pass. So the second message is that the administration is taking the problems in the financial sector seriously and not coddling the banks.

The result is a message that goes something like this: "Some banks have health issues, but those issues can be resolved through proper diet and exercise" (additional capital). This is the message that is leaking out with the test results (Bank of America needs $34 billion, Wells Fargo $15 billion, Citigroup $10 billion). Ideally, the numbers should be big enough to be credible, but small enough to avoid panic.

The positive reaction of bank stock prices to these leaks implies that the administration has achieved its first objective of not causing a panic. However, achieving the second objective of showing seriousness will be more difficult because ultimately it requires actually fixing the banks' balance sheet problems. On this front, the outcome is less clear.

First, the results of the stress tests are being negotiated between the banks and the government. One theme of the financial crisis is that as the banks have become more dependent on the government, the government has also become more dependent on the banks -- to not blow up and damage the economy. If the final capital requirements are the product of negotiation, rather than rigorous, objective analysis, they are less likely to be believed.

Second, the banks will have the option of meeting their capital shortfalls simply by converting the government's existing preferred stock investments into common stock -- an accounting trick that provides no new cash to the bank.

Ultimately, the success of the tests will depend on how much information the administration provides. If the results enable investors to make independent judgments about banks' health and the banks are able to raise the required capital from the private sector, then that will go a long way toward restoring confidence in the system. If the stress tests remain a black box and we simply have to trust that they accurately reflect the banks' condition, then we will go right back to where we started. Undoubtedly, some of the brightest minds in Washington are struggling with that marketing question right now.

James Kwak is a student at Yale Law School and coauthor of the economics blog The Baseline Scenario.

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Yale legal scholar Harold Koh understands foreign legal systems -- that doesn't mean he's going to implement them here.

By Ronald Slye

U.S. President Barack Obama's nomination of Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of Yale Law School, for the position of legal advisor to the State Department spurred uproarious criticism. A number of media commentators argued that his espousal of a transnationalist legal perspective makes him a dangerous choice. The New York Post branded him a member of the "axis of disobedience." The National Review reprinted a letter castigating Koh for saying he could imagine precepts of sharia law at work in the United States.

These critics argue that a transnationalist approach subordinates U.S. national interests to global or foreign ones (an especially timely issue given the global legal wrangling over the United States' "enhanced interrogations" policy). But this view is incorrect and based upon a lack of understanding of this dynamic legal approach.

All transnationalism does, in a nutshell, is work to describe and understand how law develops in a globalizing world. It is not prescriptive, purporting to say how international law and domestic law, or public and private law, should interact; nor does it attempt to answer whether the United States should adopt or reject a particular rule of international law. Instead, it challenges the descriptive power of international law's traditional dichotomies, between public and private, and domestic and foreign law. It recognizes that states are not the only actors in international law -- that organizations such as the United Nations, for instance, play a vital role. It also examines how international actors interpret, internalize, and enforce laws.

This is hardly a radical approach -- in fact it is solidly within the mainstream of academic legal scholarship, legal practice, and U.S. constitutional law. Everyone from corporate lawyers to International Criminal Court prosecutors recognize the dynamic relationships between domestic and international law. And the vast majority of international law scholarship, whether "liberal" or "conservative," concerns the proper relationship between international and domestic law. No one questions that international law exists or matters.

Additionally, the power to create and enforce laws now lies outside capital courtrooms -- and thus requires a transnationalist approach. The World Trade Organization ensures a level playing field for international trade; the World Intellectual Property Organization protects patents globally; and U.N. Security Council resolutions impose financial sanctions on states. The State Department needs a counselor who understands all such global actors.

Finally, since the founding of the republic, international law has influenced U.S. law and vice versa. All three branches of the U.S. government have incorporated, interpreted, resisted, and responded to international law. And, especially since World War II, the United States has played a proud and instrumental role in developing it and ensuring its enforcement. Those interactions are the focus of a transnationalist legal approach to law, and why Koh must understand transnationalism to act as the State Department's legal advisor.

Ultimately, legal transnationalism, particularly as articulated by Koh, falls squarely within the mainstream. Koh himself is a moderate, having worked for both the Republican Reagan and Democratic Clinton administrations. Everyone from Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School to Dean Kenneth Starr at Pepperdine University School of Law, as well as half the country's law school deans, supports him. This is not surprising. We are, of course, talking about the legal office that most directly engages with issues of international law. Why would we not want one of the foremost international law experts in the country in that position?

Ronald Slye is an associate professor of law at Seattle University and the director of its international and comparative law program.

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By Tony Badran

Why engaging Syria on Bashar al-Assad's terms is a fool's errand.

For years, the regime in Damascus has been an international pariah, given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's support for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, his family's heavy-handed attempts to dominate Lebanon, his broken promises on domestic reform, and his proxy war against U.S. troops in Iraq.

But now, with a new administration in Washington that has vowed to talk with its adversaries, Damascus has openly stated that it expects the administration to come rushing back in repentance. So far, however, the Obama team has been cautious.

On her Middle East trip, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made several important statements on Syria. Just before heading to the region, Clinton told reporters that it was "too soon" to speak of any U.S.-Syria thaw. Then, in her stop in Jerusalem, she told reporters that Washington would "not engage in discussions for the sake of having conversation. There has to be a purpose to them; there has to be a perceived benefit for the U.S."

Critics of the policy of isolating Syria have often made "engagement" seem like an end in itself, but through her careful remarks, Clinton clarified that engagement should be based on a clear understanding that talks are but a tool to an end. This is a welcome development. The Assad regime is notorious for dragging out processes and offering no meaningful concessions while extracting unilateral ones.

For instance, despite promising French President Nicolas Sarkozy that he would send an ambassador to Lebanon before the end of 2008, Assad has yet to even name one, let alone dispatch him or her to Beirut. All the while, he has pocketed French concessions. Similarly, the French lobbied to renew discussion over the EU association agreement with Syria, which contains clauses regarding human rights and weapons of mass destruction. Yet, Assad is in the middle of a nuclear coverup scandal with the International Atomic Energy Agency and has publicly told the French that it is "forbidden" for any Westerner to raise human rights and democracy issues with his regime.

Given the history of U.S.-Syrian ties, it is important that Washington signal clearly from the very outset that it is prepared to walk away from the process if it is leading nowhere. With its economy wrecked by decades of mismanagement and shackled by sanctions, Syria needs the United States, not the other way around, regardless of absurd claims by certain analysts and apologists that engagement with Syria will magically cure the region's travails.

Meaningful engagement requires a proper understanding of the limited nature of Syria's relevance, assets, and what it really has to offer. By any measure, Syria is at best a secondary regional actor. Syria has no real economy to speak of. Its minuscule oil reserves, which are the regime's main lifeline, are dwindling, and the country has already become a net importer of oil. Its conventional military power is modest. Its only ability to project any influence has been through its sponsorship of militancy and violence and its ties to Iran, without which it would be relegated to the status of a marginal backwater. The regime's legitimacy hinges on radical narratives of "resistance and rejectionism" toward the United States and Israel. But the gap between the Syrians' actual importance and their self-image and sense of entitlement is vast.

What Washington wants from Syria is not help, but an end to misbehavior. The State Department has rightly defined U.S. policy objectives by making public a list of issues on which the United States seeks tangible Syrian behavioral change: support for terrorism, clandestine nuclear programs, subversion in Lebanon, and human rights at home.

The Syrians reacted with typical hostility. One regime mouthpiece even declared that Syria had "broken" the United States, and so it had no business making demands. Another told prospective U.S. delegations to Syria not "to waste their time and ours" if they intend to raise such issues as Syria's support for terrorist groups, as U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin did during his recent trip to Damascus. In Syria's view, it's U.S. policies that need changing.

In fact, since President Barack Obama's election, Syria has announced its own conditions for any "dialogue." Those include lifting of sanctions and removing Syria from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. In return, Syria has offered comically little: Reopening the American school in Damascus, for instance, is hardly a pressing concern for Washington.

A workable engagement policy requires bench marks and clear, irreversible, substantive deliverables from Syria. It needs all the leverage the U.S. government can bring, such as sanctions, which are proving exceedingly useful especially now that the economic crisis is hitting Syria hard. There should be no talk of lifting sanctions, or removing Syria from the terrorism list, before Assad moves first and in credible fashion. That isn't likely to happen for structural reasons.

For the engagement crowd, the coming diplomatic dance will be instructive. Clinton is sending two envoys to Damascus: acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and a senior National Security Council official, Daniel Shapiro. Feltman in particular is a solid choice. He understands Syrian thuggery and slipperiness firsthand, having been physically threatened by Syrian proxies during his stint as U.S. ambassador in Lebanon.

If history offers lessons, it's that engaging this Syrian regime is unlikely to be fruitful. Clinton's statement about engagement as only a means to an end will soon be tested. Damascus is clearly betting that the Obama team will confuse diplomacy with glibness. But if the secretary refuses to substitute process for purpose, the Syrians will likely be in for a rude awakening.

Tony Badran is a research fellow with the Center for Terrorism Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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Why Obama should appoint a special ambassador for the world's children.

By Jennifer Delaney and Diana Millner

Concerned with global problems from HIV/AIDS to lack of education to unaffordable vaccines, the world can easily sympathize with a child in need, as the Oscar buzz around Slumdog Millionaire has shown. Less attention, however, has been paid to the broken system in Washington that, at least in theory, coordinates the labyrinth of U.S. agencies supporting orphans and other vulnerable children globally.

Today, the flow chart on foreign-aid distribution would puzzle even a string theorist. Programs that support orphans and other vulnerable children abroad are spread across a dizzying number of agencies and offices within those agencies. Yet there is no common system across agencies to track the impact of U.S. programs on children's lives. In a 2007 study, the Government Accountability Office found that due to poor accounting standards at the U.S. Agency for International Development, "it is not possible to determine how much was actually spent on [child survival and maternal health] activities."

Worse, all of these agencies and offices have different goals, different directives, and different evaluation processes, none of which can be compared or compiled. In Uganda, two U.S. aid agencies, with overlapping agendas, were housed in the same building, but neither knew what the other was doing -- a foreign-policy version of a bad Marx Brothers routine.

In the past, the first lady would often moonlight as the country's de facto children's ambassador. But with 132 million orphans worldwide and 75 million elementary-school-age children out of school, more than half of them girls, a symbolic role for First Lady Michelle Obama is not enough.

The Obama administration should appoint someone with the focus and clout to untangle this mess: a children's ambassador.

Modeled after the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, which has done wonders to lower the number of HIV-positive orphans abroad, the ambassador would coordinate U.S. efforts, keep tabs on policy, and formulate responses to issues that affect children worldwide. As the president's envoy, the ambassador could engage heads of state and international organizations to build support for child-friendly policies, from reducing HIV transmission rates to ridding the world's armies of child soldiers.

With strong coordination, the possibilities are vast. Under the global AIDS coordinator, the United States has made significant progress in supporting children orphaned by HIV -- even if children living with AIDS are still about one third as likely to receive antiretroviral therapy as adults. Yet HIV/AIDS is not the biggest killer of children worldwide. Preventable illnesses such as malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea are to blame for the most deaths.

The survival of these children living in poverty matters for many reasons: Children raised in physically and emotionally nurturing environments are more likely to develop intellectually and socially, allowing them to better contribute to society in the future.

To his credit, President Barack Obama has made children a priority of his administration. In his inaugural address, he called on Americans to end their "indifference" toward the world's poorest. Obama should follow up that pledge by appointing a children's ambassador. Unlike in the movies, orphans need more than luck or a lottery ticket to be rescued from the world's slums.

Jennifer Delaney is executive director of Global Action for Children. Diana Millner is executive director of Save Africa's Children.

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Why it's far too early to label the U.S. secretary of state a failure.

By Kenneth Weisbrode

Hillary Clinton's trip to Asia marks her first venture into the "vast external realm" as secretary of state. She is spending this week in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and China in order to give and gain what most likely will be salient first impressions.

The trip already has been met with mixed commentary. The New York Times pointed out that she's the first secretary since Dean Rusk (a notable Euroskeptic of his time) to visit Asia first. Does this mean other parts of the word -- particularly Europe and the Western Hemisphere, not to mention Africa and the Middle East -- are lower on her priority list? Has Clinton returned to the Republican roots of her youth and become an Asia-firster?

Her husband's one-time political confidant, Dick Morris, suggested that the trip, coming on the heels of the appointment of high-level diplomatic envoys for Afghanistan and the Middle East and a resurgent National Security Council, means nothing less than an "incredibly shrinking role" for Clinton in the Obama administration. In this interpretation, East Asia was a consolation prize.

Time will only tell if any of the predictions are correct. For now, they are absurdly premature. And they overlook two critical points.

The first is that where a secretary, or a president, for that matter, goes first doesn't necessarily mean much in the long run. All manner of pressures and events will intercede from now on. Nobody's priority list is fixed on day one. President Nixon's first trip abroad was, in fact, to Europe. It was followed by one of the darkest periods in trans-Atlantic relations.

In any case, it's only comparably recently that secretaries of state or presidents traveled very much at all. Franklin Roosevelt's secretary, Cordell Hull, whose tenure in the job was the longest, spent a great deal of time in the hospital, as did John Foster Dulles toward the end of his term. They traveled abroad for the occasional diplomatic conference but left most of the "fact finding" to their men and women on the ground, that is, America's ambassadors.

Dulles's predecessor, Dean Acheson, however, noted the strange trend in government whereby routine diplomatic activity appeared to move up the totem pole of power in the 20th century. First there were ministers, then ambassadors, then secretaries of state, and soon presidents themselves were drafting talking points and engaging in what Henry Kissinger made famous as "shuttle diplomacy."

Acheson had a point. Once upon a time diplomats proposed and politicians disposed. Now, politicians appear to have a monopoly on both. But there's nothing natural or preordained about it, or about the symbolism of destinations. Colin Powell came into office determined to cut back on the amount of time he spent in airplanes. Nobody recalls now where he went first as secretary or whether the volume of his travel was a critical factor. Condoleezza Rice reversed the practice and traveled a great deal, but it is hard to say now whether that made much of a difference in her effectiveness; her relationships back home with the president and other members of the administration were probably more important.

The second critical thing to remember is that the success or failure of a secretary of state -- indeed of an administration's diplomacy -- is not wrapped up entirely in its handling of the crises of the moment. In this respect, Clinton may be thankful that the biggest possible pitfalls now have other people's names written on them.

Rather, the stewardship, or cultivation -- which George Marshall and George Shultz described as akin to gardening -- of America's relationships with the other major powers and regions of the world is vital. It grabs fewer headlines and tends to be neglected, as it was badly in the past two administrations. But it matters tremendously. Whoever is giving Clinton advice has probably made this point. And it is a good one. Bon voyage.

Kenneth Weisbrode is the Vincent Wright fellow in history at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy.

If George Mitchell’s peace mission is to have any meaning, the United States will need to begin acting like it has serious interests of its own in a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By Hillary Mann Leverett

One of the most frequently heard and utterly misplaced observations about America's mediating role in Arab-Israeli diplomacy is that "The United States can't want peace more than the parties." In reality, the United States can want peace more than the parties -- and it almost certainly does.

A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never drawn the support of more than a narrow majority of either Israelis or Palestinians -- and, much of the time, not even that. Such a solution meets only the minimum needs of each side. Palestinians are supposed to trade their grievances over the refugee issue for an end to the occupation of most of the territory seized by Israel in 1967 -- but not other territories Palestinians consider their historic patrimony. Israelis are supposed to relinquish territory and foreswear any claim to those parts of biblical Israel beyond the country's 1967 borders in return for formal Arab recognition of Israeli statehood. For these reasons, a two-state outcome will never win truly broad and deep political support among Israelis or Palestinians. Given this reality, it is essential that President Obama and his Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell, do not repeat the fundamental mistake of both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations -- letting domestic political dynamics among (primarily) Israelis and (occasionally) Palestinians define the parameters for U.S. diplomacy.

Indeed, if President Obama wants to move this issue, he has to take ownership of it. This means, first of all, getting everyone to the table who needs to be there -- including Hamas, an organic movement with deep roots and broad reach that speaks for many Palestinians. It also means keeping them at the table, even when, especially in the short-term, Palestinians continue to try to attack Israelis. Inclusion in negotiations cannot work if it is treated as a "reward" that the United States and Israel bestow for "good" behavior -- such an approach incorrectly assumes that the parties want peace at least as much as the United States and, thus, leaves the United States unable to pursue its interests in a vital region through active diplomacy. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama appeared to grasp this fundamental point, but now seems unwilling to follow through where Hamas is concerned, preferring to stand by the Bush administration's thoroughly dysfunctional "conditions" for dealing with Hamas.

Obama will also need to manage Israel's threat perceptions so that Israeli actions do not eviscerate possibilities for diplomatic progress. Israel frequently overstates the strategic significance of threats to its security -- as with home-made rockets landing in Sderot. At the same time, Israel commonly understates or ignores the destructive impact of its own actions, whether in the form of ongoing settlement activity or grossly disproportionate exercises of military force.

In his first comments on the Middle East following his inauguration, Obama said: "Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats" (emphasis added). We can only hope that the inclusion of the adjective "legitimate" means that the president will be willing to take a significant, even critical, step beyond President Bush and President Clinton's reflexive and uncritical endorsement of anything Israel did in its self-defined pursuit of "security." If President Obama is not willing to do this, then the man who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland will soon be relegated to the long list of failed U.S. envoys who preceded him in the Middle East.

Hillary Mann Leverett, who served as director for Iran and Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, is chairman of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy.

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