International efforts, such as the Paris Agreement, aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But experts say countries aren’t doing enough to limit dangerous global warming.
Contrary to many analysts of the Middle East, Aaron David Miller, who has served as a Middle East negotiator for presidents of both parties, sees reason for optimism in the current process.
To help readers better understand the nuances of foreign policy, CFR staff writers and Consulting Editor Bernard Gwertzman conduct in-depth interviews with a wide range of international experts, as well as newsmakers.
Aaron David Miller, author of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, served for much of the past two decades as a Middle East negotiator for various U.S. administrations. He says the regular talks between President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that began before the November 2007 Annapolis conference mark the first time there has been such a high-level Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. While he does not expect President Bush to achieve the “peace agreement” between Israel and Palestinians he set as a goal for his time left in office, Miller believes that in the next six months or so, the Olmert-Abbas discussion could lead to “a declaration of principles on these four issues—Jerusalem, borders, refugees, and security—that will go further than any Israeli and Palestinian elected politicians have ever gone before.” That could open the way for an energetic new president to seal a deal.
What do you think will happen with the Bush administration’s Annapolis initiative? President Bush said he expected a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians by the end of his term. Was that a pipe dream?
Annapolis was always about creating an event which would change the channels on the Middle East TV set from confrontation, violence, and bitterness to a situation where Arabs and Israelis were talking. Annapolis by itself could never have created the kind of process that would have led to real progress. Annapolis was very much an American story, but now what is afoot in the region are two pieces of potentially great significance, although neither one is being driven by the United States.
For the first time in the history of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, you have a real relationship between an elected Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and an elected Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Weak and constrained though they both may be, the two of them have been having, even before Annapolis, a set of very quiet but fairly regular discussions on the core issues: Jerusalem, borders, refugees, and security. I would call these discussions “informal negotiations.” But in my time on this problem we never really had the luxury of such a reality which you have now. Those discussions could in the course of the next six months or so lead to an agreement on a text, on a piece of paper—not a peace treaty as the president has said several months ago, not a detailed framework agreement—but perhaps a declaration of principles on these four issues—Jerusalem, borders, refugees, and security—that will go further than any Israeli- and Palestinian-elected politicians have ever gone before. That is the first reality.
And the second development?
The second is a set of very complicated, tricky negotiations—three-way negotiations that the Egyptians are brokering between Israel on one hand and Hamas on the other. These are not on the final-status issues of course, they are about the on-the-ground issues: security, prospective prisoner exchanges, movement of people, opening up Gaza, and regularizing some economic interaction. If these two things come to fruition you just might see by the end of the year the administration passing on to its Republican or Democratic successor something that looks pretty good, not a Palestinian state, not a peace treaty, but something that the next Republican or Democratic president won’t be able to walk away from.
That’s interesting. The possibility of the George W. Bush presidency producing something concrete after Bush seemed to be so disinterested in this subject.
Yes, and the reality is that these two events are not really an American story. I don’t see the United States involved either as a broker as [former Secretary of State Henry A.] Kissinger and [former Secretary of State James] Baker were in actually hammering out agreements. I don’t see that it involves the implementation of the Bush administration’s own “road map,” even though they have three- and four-star generals on the ground studying the security situation and doing training and facilitating some logistic support for the Palestinian Authority security forces.
Cuba has long been a major foreign policy challenge for the United States. President Biden is the latest U.S. leader to grapple with how to balance democracy promotion with the desire for a better bilateral relationship.
China is North Korea’s biggest trade partner and arguably has the most leverage over Kim Jong Un’s regime. Analysts say Beijing’s policies are focused on stability, though it signals ambivalence about its neighbor’s nuclear arms advances.
Backgrounder
by Clara Fong and Eleanor Albert March 7, 2024
French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government faces a resounding defeat in snap legislative elections, potentially creating a wave of turbulence in one of the European Union’s founding member states.