Intellectuals are an interesting group of people. When crossed with Academia, they are heirs to a very long tradition in science and philosophy that arose among the ancients, came to its fullest fruition in science beginning in the Enlightenment, and has served humanity extremely well. That is, a belief that if one rigorously reduces a problem to its most basic constituents, the problem will become more easily solvable. Until quite recently, science depended on the ability of researchers to engage in reductionism. By isolating a limited number of variables, and manipulating those variables, science could arrive at a decent approximation of reality.
[The nascent ability to manipulate large volumes of data which are conspicuously not reducible in complexity, is a recent phenomenon and has not yet been adequately incorporated in our scientific methodology; it is an evolving field of interest.]
When an intellectual has been reared in the post-enlightenment academy, he has been inculcated with the belief that if problems can only be reduced to their simplest components, then results follow. There are problems with this conception when it involves human beings.
An example of an intellectual for whom over-simplification is the norm, while apparently lacking an awareness of the limits of knowledge, was provided last week:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to be seen by a succession of American Presidents as central to American diplomacy and American Presidents and Diplomats are continually surprised by how difficult it is for the antagonists to find a rational solution, which always appears relatively simple and obvious to the Diplomats. In his Press conference last week, President Obama laid out his vision of the conflict:
QUESTION: Mr. President, you came to office pledging to work for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
QUESTION: How realistic do you think those are hopes are now, given the likelihood of a prime minister who’s not fully signed up to a two- state solution and a foreign minister who’s been accused of insulting Arabs?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: "lt’s not easier than it was, but I think it’s just as necessary. We don’t yet know what the Israeli government is going to look like. And we don’t yet know what the future shape of Palestinian leadership is going to be comprised of.
What we do know is this; that the status quo is unsustainable. That it is critical for us to advance a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in their own states with peace and security. And by assigning George Mitchell the task of working as special envoy, what we’ve signaled is that we’re going to be serious from day one in trying to move the parties in a direction that acknowledges that reality. How effective these negotiations may be, I think we’re going to have to wait and see.
Barry Rubin parses the answer for the assumptions that are included and points out a basic fallacy in President Obama's conception of the Middle East and its problems. (His post is now on line at the Gloria Center today.)
The first half-dozen words, could be taken as hostile to Israel’s leaders. He shouldn’t have said it but not that big a deal. He even balanced by saying the Palestinian leadership’s future is also unclear.
The problem is not in the first but the third sentence: “What we do know is this: that the status quo is unsustainable….” Whenever someone says that, short of outright anarchy, they’re naïve. All status quos are unsustainable in a sense since time brings change. On the other hand, this status quo can continue for years. In fact, a serious study of underlying forces and factors indicates this is likely, probably inevitable.
Obama’s statement, like thousands in recent decades, basically says: things are so horrible change is vital no matter what the risk or cost. Things can’t possibly get worse. He adds, “We're going to be serious from day one in trying to move the parties in a direction that acknowledges that reality.”
To some extent, this is just rhetoric, a promise to work real hard. In practice, the policy is closer to saying: sure we’ll pretend to be serious but this looks tough and we have more urgent priorities on domestic and even foreign policy.
Yet to a considerable extent Obama—though not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--thinks he understands true reality and the parties don’t. In fact they know far better than him.
Back in the 1990s U.S. and European leaders would say: The status quo is unsustainable and Palestinians are desperate for a state so we have to move real fast? Today some of the same people—including Bill Clinton--say their big mistake was trying to force a resolution to the conflict when Yasir Arafat really didn’t want one.
Today, the PA believes the status quo is sustainable (at least if they can make a deal to reunite with Hamas) because they’re unwilling to make the compromises and concessions required for peace (full recognition of Israel, end of conflict, resettling Palestinian refugees in Palestine, security guarantees, stopping incitement, and so on).
Israel—no matter who leads it—believes the status quo is sustainable (at least if it can stop rocket firing from the Gaza Strip) because it won’t make any more concessions to a side that can’t and won’t deliver anything serious toward full and lasting peace.
So, no, Obama will not persuade anybody that very bad change is better than a bad status quo. And because he doesn’t comprehend that all his efforts are doomed to failure.
There’s one other feature to his answer that went unnoticed. He mentioned a recent St. Patrick’s Day meeting with “previously sworn enemies celebrating here in this very room,” people who, “even a decade ago, people would have said could never achieve peace.”
Well, he did have the St. Patrick’s day event but, leaving aside the huge differences between the two conflict, his answer shows how detached he is from the continuity of U.S. policy and Middle East history, things he had no role in and knows nothing about.
One might expect an American president to recall his predecessors’ brokering of Egypt-Israel, Israel-PLO, and Israel-Jordan agreements. They didn’t solve everything but made progress for which America can claim credit. By citing them Obama might have also shown some understanding of the reasons they fell short.
But that, too, is part of the problem. He’s coming into office thinking that a solution is easy and nothing can go wrong. In dealing with the Middle East, that’s the direct path to, at best, miserable failure and, at worst, outright catastrophe.
The President assumes a pernicious, recurrent idea that has plagued American foreign relations and distorted International Affairs for more than a half a century. That is, that the Israeli-Arab conflict is the central problem facing the Middle East, and by extension, the world. This position is ubiquitous and misguided. Even for those who believe the Middle East's position, controlling the world's oil supply, is crucial, the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the heir to, and current iteration of, the Arab-Israeli conflict) is central, is delusional. Neither Israel nor Palestine have any oil and it would be difficult to argue, in a rational world, that their conflict is more significant than the risk of Pakistan devolving into chaos (complete with loose Islamic nuclear bombs floating around) or the Persian Shia-Arab Sunni conflict, which involves two populations which have been born and raised to celebrate fanatical martyrdom, and may soon possess nuclear weapons of their own.
Whether discussing the intractable problems of the Middle East, where one antagonist denies the humanity of the other and has as its stated goals the destruction of its neighbor and the murder of its citizens, or the economy, where one of our most complex human achievements is considered amenable to the ministrations of a small group of dedicated and smart bureaucrats who have thus far done a spectacularly poor job, President Obama believes he understands extremely complex situations in the simplest terms. This is the affectation of the Intellectual, who believes his reductionist theories are an exact representation of reality. That may be why Intellectuals so rarely succeed outside of Academia and it bodes poorly for a country led by Intellectuals with tunnel vision, supreme (over) confidence, and a dearth of real world experience.
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