For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton, this is Antiwar Radio.
Introducing Stephen Zunis, he's Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies.
Thank you very much for coming on the show today.
My pleasure.
Well, I wanted to, first of all, I guess especially thank you because in this time as we move into an era where I guess at least ostensible liberals are in power, I think emphasizing the libertarian left alliance against empire is as important as can be.
And people like you and a lot of the people writing over there at Alternet, Jeremy Scahill and other articles I'm seeing over there, really keeping principles straight and not letting Obama get away with acting like George Bush and keeping that attitude.
And I really appreciate that.
And I hope that we can all continue to be friends, even with Democrats in power.
OK, so anyway, the article is Obama gathering a flock of hawks to oversee U.S. foreign policy.
And there's been a lot of coverage of this here and there.
But you really go through and kind of give the worst case biographies of these people.
But I guess, first of all, you kind of make the point that, well, you kind of concede to Obama defenders that it could be argued that these people are just there because they're competent.
But ultimately, he's the boss and they have to carry out his policies.
And so maybe it's OK that he's appointed people who tend to be pretty hawkish.
How do you respond to that?
I don't quite go that far in the sense that I, for one thing, anybody who would think that invading Iraq was a good idea is not confident to hold any position whatsoever dealing with foreign policy or national security.
Yeah, I guess.
I'm sorry.
I didn't really mean concede.
I guess I really meant you acknowledge that that's the argument and then you confront it there.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Sorry about that.
I mean, it's a very competent argument.
I mean, clearly, it was such a boneheaded move.
And ironically, Obama recognized that.
And actually, speaking at an annual rally in October 2002, well, some of these very same people he's now appointed were granting Bush this unprecedented, illegal, unconstitutional authority to invade a country on the far side of the world that was a threat to us at the time and circumstances of his own choosing.
The fact that he was able to defeat Hillary Clinton in the primary, in large part, because he was right about Iraq, I mean, he said that, you know, basically, I don't have as much experience as her, but at least I was smart enough to know this is a bad idea, unlike her.
But then he turns around and points her to the most important foreign policy position you can have at that of Secretary of State.
And he promised that he would not just end the war in Iraq, but end the mentality that led to the war in Iraq.
And yet he appoints all these people who are so exemplary of that very attitude to these prominent foreign policy posts, even though it's important to remember that only a minority of Democrats on Capitol Hill voted for the war, an even smaller minority of Democrats nationally supported the war, and an even smaller percentage of people who voted for Obama in November supported the war.
And so it's ironic that the majority of his key foreign policy appointees are those who end up supporting, who supported the invasion of Iraq.
Well now, the reality is, too, though, that the only organized political opposition is the Republicans, and they are all pro-war mongers and are to be expected to attack him from the right for not killing enough Muslims from here on out.
Right.
I mean, it's conceivable he could be doing something like George W. Bush when he appointed Colin Powell to get a respected moderate to sell the war, and perhaps Obama's getting these hawks to try to sell a more innovative and progressive foreign policy which respects international law and human rights and the enlightened self-interest of the United States.
Hell, I'd be happy if they just followed the American law.
Yeah, right, exactly.
But this is a ... but these appointments, indeed, are quite troubling.
Again, Obama's ultimately going to be in charge, but with so many people of this kind of interventionist imperialistic event in so many key places, and the fact that he's given Clinton so much leverage in the State Department in terms of other appointees, it really is pretty troubling.
Well now, and let's go through ...
Hillary Clinton, Obama criticized her in the campaign for her foreign policy experience amounted to having tea as the first lady, that kind of thing, but she's been a senator for a while.
Other than voting for the Iraq war, what in Hillary Clinton's biography leads you to believe that she's a dangerous hawk?
Well, she's been well to the right on Israel and Palestine, I mean, if she was running for the Israeli Knesset, she'd be in the Likud, I mean, she's really, really hard line, puts all the blame on the Palestinians, defends all sorts of Israel's violations of international humanitarian law.
Didn't she once commit a terrible faux pas back in the 1990s by saying that there ought to be a Palestinian state?
And that was further than any politician had said at that point.
Yeah, and not any politician, but certainly first time a first lady or somebody that close to a president had said that.
The problem is that her vision of a Palestinian state is not much better than Afghanistan, where there's these little cantons surrounded by Israel, with Israel controlling the airspace and water resources and movement and everything else.
As a senator, she attacked the International Court of Justice for daring to say that Israel, like every country, had to abide by international humanitarian law, but she also attacked the International Criminal Court to the point of authorizing the United States to use military force against the Netherlands to bust American citizens or citizens of allied countries out of jail if they were being held by the International Criminal Court, and to punish countries which signed onto the ICC by withholding foreign aid.
She was also a big supporter of increased military spending and generally one who has been a big supporter of greater intervention in Latin America.
I mean, she's very much from the hawkish wing of the party.
Yeah, and it's funny because, in fact, I'm sure you wrote a couple of these, but I know there were quite a few articles over the years, especially on her speeches about Iran and criticizing George Bush for not taking seriously enough their intent or determination to develop nuclear weapons, she said.
Oh, yeah, she had attacked Bush from the right by going a diplomatic route and bringing in the Europeans and others to try to negotiate something, and just as she falsely claimed that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program long after their nuclear program had completely eliminated and had been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, she was going on and on about Iran's supposed nuclear weapons program, also after the IAEA had said it had been suspended, which was later confirmed by our own national intelligence estimate.
So she's big into exaggerating the military threat of certain Middle Eastern countries that happen to sit on top of a lot of oil.
And now a lot of people don't know much about Robert Gates.
He doesn't have as much personality and TV presence as Donald Rumsfeld.
So maybe give us some background on George Bush's Secretary of Defense for the last couple of years, now Obama's.
Oh, yeah, he was a supporter of the Iraq War, of course, not quite the neoconservative ideologue.
Somewhat of a more traditional conservative, but definitely a big hawk who posed the timeline for the draw of American forces.
But if you look at his history, he was really up to his neck in the whole Iran-Contra affair, narrowly escaped indictment when he claimed under oath that he couldn't remember certain information that several coordinates had testified under oath they had told him about.
He really wanted the United States to bomb Nicaragua and, you know, intervene directly to get rid of the leftist Samanista government there.
He, at the CIA, he grossly exaggerated the military power of the Soviet Union in order to justify increased military spending, claiming that they had even surpassed the United States in military force when, in fact, their military, like just about everything else in the late stages of Soviet rule, was actually falling apart.
Well, let me stop you right there, because that's a real fun one for me, because there's an old saying or something, it's a universal truth that the CIA just missed the fall of Soviet Union, some intelligence, but there was a reason why they missed it.
It was because this guy, Gates, was the one leading the CIA in a mission to create a pack of lies about the Soviet Union being 10 feet tall.
Exactly, exactly.
And we saw that around Nicaragua.
We saw that around Iraq.
We've seen that in a whole bunch of issues.
And to have him as Secretary of Defense under Obama is particularly disturbing.
Well, now, he did say something the other day about how you can't win militarily in Afghanistan.
And, in fact, I think he even brought up the price tag and seemed to be acknowledging that, hey, you know, he didn't cite Ron Paul by name or anything, but maybe he was sort of learning the lesson that, you know, empires fall, and particularly they seem to fall when they invade Afghanistan.
Maybe we should back off a little bit here.
He is less of an ideologue than Rumsfeld, to be sure.
And more and more people are recognizing it.
Unfortunately, the national security advisor, Jim Jones, is a big hawk on Afghanistan and is pushing things in the other direction.
He's the other Republican that's way up in the Obama national security team.
Well, you know, I had never even heard of Jim Jones before he got this nomination, so you've got to give me some background on him.
He's a Marine general, a pretty smart guy.
He's believed, like a lot of military brass, to have actually opposed the Iraq War.
But he, when in his early commands back in Vietnam, he was a super hawk, wanted to invade Cambodia and Laos and North Vietnam, as well as South Vietnam, and, you know, consider any opponents of the war traitors and all that kind of thing.
On the one hand, he's a little more educated.
He speaks a couple languages and got along pretty well with the folks at NATO.
So, you know, he was a big hawk on the whole Yugoslavia War in 1999.
He also tends to, again, you know, see things from a military perspective, which, of course, makes sense if you're a military officer.
But one thing about national security is we're realizing it's more and more than just traditional military threats now.
I mean, there are economic issues, there's cyber war issues, you know, there's, you know, international criminal syndicates like Al-Qaeda that are pretty scary.
And there's environmental and broader economic threats to our national security.
So at a very time when we should be defining national security more broadly, it's ironic that we bring in a marine general to be the national security advisor.
Indeed.
Well, you know, I guess I suffer from the same problem as everybody else.
I keep wanting to just compare it to the Bush administration.
Well, at least it's not Stephen Hadley or Condoleezza Rice.
I'd rather take the devil.
I have no idea who this guy is than those people.
Yeah, and there are some things to his credit.
I mean, I think he's less supportive of giving Israel a blank check, say, than Clinton and some other people in the administration.
And so there are a few areas where Jones might actually play a moderating role.
Well, and perhaps he'll at least be competent in doing the job of the national security advisor and coordinating the different departments to all be on the same script.
You know, something like that.
And being a military officer, that could be advantageous because they know about giving orders and keeping people in line.
Yeah, well, it all depends on what the policy is at that point now.
And that brings me to, I guess, what's the most controversial thing about him so far that we know is his stated proposal, I guess, in some policy paper that he wrote or took part in that suggested that NATO ought to be the peace force in Gaza and the West Bank.
And what do you think about that?
Because I guess that was interpreted to be like, this shows that he's not in the pocket of the Likud-Nicks like a lot of other people, that he has this stance that is an anti-Israeli stance.
And yet, to me, it also sounds like a pretty dangerous stance.
I certainly don't like the idea of NATO coming in.
But I mean, if NATO means Turkey or something, I don't care, I guess.
But not if it's U.S. troops.
Not really, yeah.
But he did serve in the Bush administration to deploy him to oversee a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine.
And so obviously, he was concerned about tracking down, crippling Hamas and some of the extremist groups.
At the same time, anybody who really gets there on the ground, as he did, saw all the ways that Israel was provoking things and making things worse as well.
So the reports are he didn't come home feeling that great about the Israelis either.
Now, Richard Holbrook, I know if you asked him, well, I don't know, but I guess if you asked him, he would say he's the smartest guy in the whole world.
Do you agree with that?
This is about the scariest appointment of all.
I mean, Afghanistan and Pakistan are like the most, arguably, the most dangerous, crucial areas for U.S. national security and foreign policy.
And yet, here's a guy with just a notoriously bad record.
I mean, here's a guy who got his start in the State Department and the pacification program, the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam.
This joint military-civilian effort, which not only engaged in war crimes of giant proportions, but was totally ineffective in curbing the communist-led insurgency against the U.S.
-backed military regime in Saigon.
Oh, you mean they lost that war anyway?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
No, he's the guy in charge of Afghanistan now.
All you've got to do is slit some more throats, man.
It'll work out.
Right.
And some of the most notorious activity was actually in the Carter administration, where he was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Pacific Affairs.
And it was under him that Carter, despite his human rights rhetoric, was talked into continuing to support Ferdinand Marcos and his dictatorial regime, also to throw support to the South Korean dictatorship of General Chung Doo-hwan.
In fact, when there was a pro-democracy uprising where pro-democracy activists ended up seizing control of Gwangju, which was a city in the south of the country, it was Holbrook that convinced Carter to release South Korean troops under U.S. command so Chung could bring them into Gwangju and suppress the uprising, which they did with incredible ferocity.
I mean, this is like Tiananmen Square, only worse.
I mean, thousands of people got gunned down.
I mean, it was a massacre.
And ironically, Republican Eisenhower refused a similar request from a previous South Korean dictator, Syngman Rhee, to do a similar thing back in the 50s.
But Holbrook was able to get Carter to allow this to happen.
And if you were looking at body counts, probably the worst was when he was able to successfully push a reluctant Carter to back Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia, during the worst days of repression in East Timor.
This was just after Indonesia had invaded the island with the green light from Ford and Kissinger.
And it was the worst of the counter-insurgency campaign.
This is when most of the 200,000 people died.
And much of it was because of the scorched earth policy of Indonesian troops destroying much of the country's better agricultural lands.
And yet Holbrook comes and testifies for Congress.
He says, oh, this is not the Indonesians who are causing this.
This is just the legacy of neglect by the Portuguese colonialists.
I mean, come on, give me a break.
And at this point, he's what?
The assistant secretary of killing people at the State Department?
Yeah, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia.
Wow.
So that's funny.
I'm actually amazed that this guy can even go outside and show his face in public.
And yet, no, I've never heard of any of this stuff until I read your article.
And I'm hearing you say it out loud right now.
I mean, people say that, you know, he's the great peacemaker of Bosnia or something like that, whatever his record and whatever it is you have to say about his record in the Balkans.
I'd like to hear it.
But the official story is that he was a great guy for what he accomplished in the Balkans.
But I don't know of any way to spin any of the things that you just listed from his career in the 1970s as being positive things at all.
Oh, no.
And the guys, it's one disaster, you know.
They just go unmentioned, you know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
One disaster after another.
I mean, even the Balkans was not what it was cracked up to be.
I mean, the settlement in Bosnia froze in place this ethno-nationalist hardliners, while the rest of the former Yugoslavia is gradually liberalizing and getting more pluralistic.
You know, he put into this kind of thing, which, you know, in many ways rewarded some of the hardline Serbs, given the disproportionate amount of the territory, and even supported Milosevic during their first pro-democracy uprising in 1996.
But then he flipped to the other extreme after appeasing Milosevic and became one of the big, big hawks for the NATO bombing campaign.
And I worked pretty closely, actually, with some of the folks in Otpor.
That was the pro-democracy movement that finally overthrew Milosevic.
And they get livid if you even hear the word Holbrook, because they flip from appeasing Milosevic to bombing the country, both of which hurt the authentic indigenous grassroots movements for democracy.
And these folks, of course, opposed the bombing of their country, but they also, of course, opposed Milosevic.
And here is a guy who was, in both extremes, making their struggle all the more difficult.
Well, you know, I really don't know enough about the earlier part of the Bosnian Wars, but I remember Noboj Samalek, who writes what used to be called the Balkan Express now.
I forgot what it's called now, but it used to be called the Balkan Express for Antiwar.com.
He explained that Holbrook, and I forgot which deal this was, and maybe you know more about it and can explain, that basically you had, as Yugoslavia was breaking apart, you have all these ethnic divisions.
And there was a situation where it was sort of more or less between the river and the mountains or you and between the forest and the fields or these people and whatever.
But what Holbrook did was came in and drew lines with a magic marker and divided it all up, which left, you know, thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people on the, quote, wrong side of the lines.
And so you had Bosnian Muslims stuck in the new Croatia and whatever.
But all this was imposed from above by this guy.
Exactly, exactly.
Exactly.
Can you tell us more about, you know, at what point that happened or the name of the accord or whatever the hell?
The Dayton Accord.
The Dayton.
That was the start of it.
And what year was that?
That was in the fall of 1995.
And it was, again, very, very arbitrary.
And at that point, you know, the worst of the ethnic cleansing and war crimes had stopped.
And but and it was hope that they could get a better, better situation out of it.
But the main problem with it and why, even if you are assuming that this was a fair and equitable agreement, was that it was it was possible only because of a large scale, indeed, a semi permanent NATO force.
But that is not going to work in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
You can have no settlement that is based upon a strong NATO military presence.
No, certainly not.
Well, and again, these people have got to be realizing that.
Well, I don't know.
I guess Holbrook is not the type to realize it.
But it seems like everybody else is coming to that conclusion that, you know, Afghanistan, if only because the terrain is mountains as opposed to flat Iraq, that you can at least drive a tank across, you know.
It's more like, you know, if we try to imagine, you know, whatever invading army trying to take the Rocky Mountains from the American people, it could just never happen in a million years.
Right.
All right.
So now what about this lady, Susan Rice?
I don't know much about her except that maybe she's one of these kind of, you know, one world, you know, Star Trek Federation, World Order types.
Well, she's a protege of Madeleine Albright.
That's good to start, huh?
Really?
Yeah, that's one strike against her.
But she's a somewhat younger, someone more progressive than a lot of people, a lot of people who came out of the Clinton administration.
She was the assistant secretary of state for Africa under Clinton.
And she's gotten some pretty high marks for some people around issues like AIDS and around supporting human rights.
She was a big promoter of free trade agreements and the like in Africa, which was more controversial.
But she, you know, took a very, very active role.
She wasn't just, you know, warming her seat there.
She's more concerned about, her concern about human rights actually seems to be more about having the United States do more to prevent human rights abuses by governments we don't like than changing U.S. policy, which directly contributes to human rights violations.
So in many ways, it's the kind of thing that would, you know, make us prickly, those of a libertarian persuasion scream, because she's, you know, the things that we can do about human rights, which is stop supporting dictatorships and stop supporting occupation armies and that kind of thing.
She doesn't do a whole lot about, but she's really gung ho about intervention in Darfur and, you know, places like that where we can't do that much good.
Right.
Yeah, this is my frustration.
It's, you know, free Tibet.
And it's like, hey, look, China, okay, they, you know, are basically imperialists in Tibet or whatever.
Fine.
But isn't our responsibility getting our government out of other people's countries?
And then we'll at least, you know, have the pretended moral standing to say China out of Tibet or what?
Yeah, exactly.
And that's one of her problems.
She was also.
And really, it's like that with all foreign aid, right?
Because the foreign aid is all government to government transfers.
So yeah, pretty much.
So it's always the politicians who receive the money, and they're not necessarily the ones that the people in whatever country want.
They might have, hey, the solution to our problem is to elect this party instead, they think.
And yet their government just got a bunch of foreign aid from the U.S., which means that the ruling party stays.
Yeah, exactly.
And then the kind of foreign aid that does work are the real kind of grassroots micro lending kind of bottom up, you know, small local entrepreneurship kind of things, not just, you know, giving a chunk of money to corrupt authoritarian governments.
Right.
Yeah.
Private to private transfers.
That's how wealth is spread.
The other thing about Susan Rice is she, I think, though, in a final analysis, she did not support the invasion of Iraq.
She did end up buying into a whole bunch of the BS around weapons of mass destruction and talking about how convincing Colin Powell's presentation at the UN was when, you know, I watched it.
I was watching it live as actors on Channel 8 in Oakland as the as the commentator, as it was going on.
And it was so transparently a bunch of lies.
Yeah, I heard it on the radio.
I was painting a house for a living at the time, the outside of it.
And I had the window down in the truck and NPR on full blast.
Listen to the thing.
And I was debunking every lie in it to my buddy I was paying the house with during the thing.
I was less than nobody at the time doing that.
And somebody like you could figure that out.
Why the hell should somebody like Susan Rice, the Ph.
D. and, you know, all this.
We should just praise her to no end for getting it right like we did.
I mean, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, she's, you know, and of course, we're trying to regain our credibility in the United Nations.
You know, someone who would have so little credibility as to insist that Iraq was a great threat to the world, all that kind of stuff.
I mean, that's not going to go very far.
Yeah.
Well, and so basically sounds like what we're talking about with with this lineup is really what Obama promised on a campaign trail.
Right.
Which is a better management for the empire that this guy, George Bush, is like a drunken frat boy wrecking the car.
And that now we're going to just like actually this is the line that they used when Bush took power right now.
The adults are in charge and they're going to do a responsible job and give us good government instead of bad.
And again, this is, you know, he's trying to make a more more benign and better, better functioning imperial order for all intents and purposes.
The one thing that gives me hope, you know, is that there's a financial crisis.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I mean, you have a lot of these a lot of these Clinton types that are back in, which is which is pretty upsetting.
But there's one real big difference between now and when Clinton was in charge, and that was the base of the people who elected him as opposed and elected Clinton versus those who elected Obama.
That there is a fired up constituency of grassroots people who don't like empire, period, whether it's well run or not.
That that he Obama owes his election on a on a very on a progressive and engaged movement, particularly young people who are not wild about intervention in the Middle East or backing the Israeli occupation or continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or making war with Iran or anything else.
I mean, these are people who are really expect expect better.
And, you know, there's Amy Goodman was telling me about how Obama speaking a year ago at a small fundraiser in Montclair, New Jersey, was approached by someone saying, are you going to become president?
Are you going to finally, you know, push Israel to make the necessary compromises for peace?
And and basically Obama replied by telling him the story of a Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who, you know, these are African-Americans who are on the passenger trains and were really exploited and any federal legislation through the Interstate Commerce Act or whatever to give them the basic rights to to organize and and fight for their rights.
And and and FDR, after hearing of this plea said, OK, you convinced me now organize constituency and make me do it.
And sure enough, within months, they passed the National Railroad Labor Relations Act and and it was a result of this kind of of of organizing effort.
And the fact that Obama told that story, I think it was indicative that, you know, if if we expect him to do the right thing, don't just sit back and think he'll do it on his own.
Right.
Because, see, this is how they get us when they want to do bad is pressure from above and below.
They always cite some constituency that demands that they do some terrible thing and pretend us is just democracy.
We're just doing what the people want.
So we got to use that against them.
And the big difference for me between Democrats and Republicans is that when the Democrats are in office, they can generally be they're more easily persuadable or forced to do the right thing.
Because if you look at Vietnam, Central America, nuclear arms race, apartheid, South Africa, East Timor, Iraq, whatever issues, you know, the Democratic leadership, you know, is just as as bad as the as the Republicans in terms of this kind of an amoral interventionist imperial kind of policy.
But when people but the Democrats are more likely to be changed because they are not because they want to with a few conscious exceptions, it's rarely from above, but it's because the grassroots drags them kicking and screaming and doing doing the right thing, whether they want to or not.
Whereas the right wing base says, kill them all.
Yeah, exactly.
And so so that's a good point.
That's a good point.
Their only hope is is the party on the left then is really what you're saying.
Yeah.
And so in other words, what I'm saying is that I think it's less important who Obama appoints as the choices we give them.
That that is really what it what it comes down to, because, you know, I don't think we should be overly naive or overly cynical about Obama.
I think we need to just realize that we we have I think his appointments have shown he's not going to do it on his own.
But the very fact that he was able to to win as convincingly as as as he did and and, you know, that there's a there's a there's a whole movement out there, I think indicates that there's there there is an opportunity to really press for change.
And because he keeps all the speeches, though, it's not about me, it's about you.
OK, then if that's the case, then it's up to us.
Let's do it.
And let's let's not just just sit back and say, oh, Democrats are in charge now so we can just kick back and assume everything's going to be OK.
Right.
Got to forgot who taught me this one.
They usually cannot be made to see the light, but they can be made to feel the heat, that kind of thing.
And so, yeah, you're absolutely right.
And that is the biggest danger is that, you know, half the population goes from the opposition to the defense of the state instead of the defense of their principles against the state.
Exactly.
So, yeah.
Well, good for you, man, keeping your priorities straight.
And it's good leadership.
I hope most people who pay attention get the point.
And I'm certainly glad to have the opportunity to talk with you about this today.
I guess actually before I let you go, if it's all right, I'd like to give you a chance to comment about George Mitchell.
I guess the real fear was that Dennis Ross would be the boss of Middle East policy there under Hillary Clinton.
Instead, it's maybe a point to be the appointment on Iran, which is almost as scary.
Oh, yeah.
Well, certainly as if you ask me.
But, yeah, Mitchell Mitchell might have been the best choice about what was realistically possible.
But, you know, given given the nature of U.S. policy in Israel and Palestine, that's that's not saying much.
He and Mitchell's foray in the Middle East, chairing that commission appointed by Clinton on the after the outbreak of the second intifada was didn't didn't come out that well, but in part because Clinton severely limited the limited the mandate and in part because Bush failed to follow through or where he did follow through.
He followed through all the recommendations about what the Palestinians had to do, but none of the recommendations about the Israelis, what the Israelis had to do.
And, you know, Mitchell did do a good job on Northern Ireland and being a Senate, being the former Senate leader, he may be able to keep Congress from passing these obnoxious AIPAC sponsored resolutions every time the Middle East peace process actually seems like it might be going forward.
So it's again, it's not one of the less bad appointments, I would say.
But I as long and the best one could say about him is that he's relatively balanced.
But is a balanced policy enough when you consider how unbalanced the situation is on the ground?
Because, you know, normally it's the occupying power that needs to make the first moves, not those under occupation.
And when you consider the great gross asymmetry in power between the Israelis and Palestinians, balance is just is not going to be enough because it just enables the more powerful, the two parties to keep doing what they're doing.
And then it avoids the fundamental contradiction in US policy that we are both the chief mediator of the conflict and the chief military, economic and diplomatic backer of the more powerful, the two parties.
Right.
And well, and especially when the party, when the policy on the ground of the stronger party, Israel, seems to be that they will never accept going back to the 67 borders no matter what.
Exactly.
And, you know, Hamas, if what I read is right, their political leaders have said, we said we'll recognize Israel within 67 borders.
Why do you keep saying we won't?
Yeah, they're much, you know, there's some ambivalence about what they're referring to in terms of recognition, but certainly a, you know, a long, long term, a multi-generational ceasefire or whatever.
And by that time, you know, the nation state system itself may no longer be that relevant.
Yeah.
Well, what do you mean by that exactly?
No, no, just that I'm saying is that the, you know, the fact that the, you know, assuming there can be some kind of two state solution over time, as with Europe and other places, that the nation state system is going to be challenged both by supernational institutions, you know, like the EU or whatever, but also by greater decentralization, you know, from below.
And so the, over time I could see, you know, Israel and Palestine evolving from two states to a confederation, to a binational state, to a democratic secular state.
And so this, you know, this is something I know a lot of people are saying we should jump to just a one state, but as idealistic as that sounds, I don't think it's realistic.
It's going to have to be something that's going to take over, take over time over a few generations.
But the, that, in other words, what I'm saying is, even if Hamas doesn't say, recognize Israel in the exact same language that Israel and the United States are insisting they do, it doesn't mean they can't be a partner for peace in a long-term settlement.
Right.
And that's not like their giant military machine is about to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea or anything.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
There was one thing I wanted to bring up there.
Oh, it was that I read an article earlier this morning that included as a footnote, George Bush's statement at the press conference after Hamas won the election, which was, all right, democracy.
See, the old guard in Palestine are learning that the people are fed up and they have to change their ways if they want the power back.
If they want the power back, that's why elections are great.
Everybody, you know, like he's teaching elementary class about democracy and basically was hailing the election of Hamas.
Yeah, there's a quote you don't see very often.
I also have an article in Alternet that talks about the many ways over the years the U.S. helped pave the way to Hamas' rise to power.
Oh, really?
Which one is that?
It came out in the first week of January in Alternet.
And like all my articles, you can also find them on my website, www.stephenzunes.org.
Great.
And I really appreciate your time on the show today with us.
My pleasure.
All right.
