The Israeli Option in Strategy

[SteveMetz]

Steve, Tequila, and Stu--

This is an interesting discussion, however, the premises on which it is based are empirical questions. How do people see the US? The Pew Global Attitudes project (reported with data as of 2005) in America Against the World by Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes is a good place to start. But State Department commissions plenty of current surveys the results of which can be accessed. Another source is Zogby.

The Pew data are mixed. They give a nuanced picture of attitudes in a sample of countries toward US policy and the American people. the problem is that the survey data reported does not cover a lot of the places we are interested in. But there are regional survey research firms that do, such as Latinobarometro in Latin America.

Based on the data I've seen (which is only up to 2005), I would argue that a case can be made for either assumption but not one that would be fully convincing. Nor do I really think that the choice is a dichotomous one.

Cheers

JohnT

I think what I'm struggling with it deeper than that. Polling data is a snapshot at a moment in time. It can vascillate dramatically. The bigger issue is almost philosophical: Americans assume that conflict occurs because of the confluence of two things: 1) evil people; and 2) misperception (which evil people encourage and exploit). Thus the solution is to get rid of the evil people and ameliorate the misperceptions.

I'm not just sure this is accurate. If conflict is structural, then it is likely to be persistent. I think the Bush strategy kind of attempted to get at this, but it grossly overestimated the ability of the United States to adjust the basic structure of the world.

[Rank amateur]

I think what I'm struggling with it deeper than that.
I'm not just sure this is accurate. If conflict is structural, then it is likely to be persistent. I think the Bush strategy kind of attempted to get at this, but it grossly overestimated the ability of the United States to adjust the basic structure of the world.

How about this? Conflict in the Middle East is structural. Bush wasn't trying to change the world, just the Middle East. We see ourselves as "the good guys" and we are in most of the world, but in the Middle East we are not "fair brokers." We are completely and unabashedly on one side of the conflict. The opposite side of the people with all the oil. (Like Gian says, our actions prove this and we can't convince the people with the oil that we're not with IO.)

We need a different way of dealing with structural Middle Eastern conflict than let's say Somalia or Kosovo, which are discrete events.