When Hezbollah and Israel fought ten years ago, President Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the Mideast for six days of shuttle diplomacy. Secretary Christopher secured a cease-fire, but nothing was solved fundamentally, and the fighting was merely stopped or, more accurately, put on hold to start again another day.
It appears President Bush is trying a different approach. Instead of just putting things off and solving nothing, he seems to be aiming for long-term, or at least medium-term, change. Obviously, this may not work, but it is not clear yet another temporary cease-fire will accomplish anything, either.
In any case, what is interesting is to try to see where Bush’s approach, as opposed to Clinton’s, is coming from. In that regard, good guidance can be found in a book that Condoleeza Rice wrote with Philip Zelikow in 1995. The book, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft, discusses, as the title indicates, the ending of the Cold War in Europe and the unification of Germany; actually, the peaceful ending of the Cold War in Europe and the unification of Germany within NATO
"We have also been asked repeatedly what lessons can be drawn from such a complex story. Our opinions differ. To Zelikow, the story shows what kinds of government actions and consequences are possible. He is skeptical, though, about efforts to turn the kind of comprehension that comes from explanatory knowledge into mind-closing axioms. To Rice, there are lessons here in statecraft that can guide policymakers of the future. This episode reminds policymakers to expect the unexpected (the East German exodus in the summer of 1989); to choose goals that are optimal, even if they seem at the time politically infeasible (Germany fully integrated into NATO despite Soviet objections); and that the government that knows what it wants has a reasonable chance of getting it (as Washington and Bonn did and the Moscow did not). (1997 Preface, p. ix)"
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