Robert Patman: US stance will cost dearly in long term

The conventional wisdom since 9/11 is that America's view of the world has fundamentally changed. After all, President Bush had declared an all-out war on global terrorism and emphasised his support for a Palestinian state and a "new Middle East".

Despite the rhetoric, it is the reinvigoration of what President Bush calls "distinctive American internationalism" - the belief that the United States is a exemplary nation that reserves the right to go it alone on key international issues - that continues to hobble the war on terror.

The loss of momentum in this war has been evident for some time. The persistence of the al Qaeda threat, the deepening insurgency in Iraq, the looming US-Iran confrontation, the rise of Islamic militias in Somalia and the declining international support for President Bush's leadership are symptomatic of this trend.

The Bush Administration has acknowledged the growth of "anti-Americanism" in the world, but it seems convinced that it is the presentation of its policies, rather than their content, that it is the main problem.

In many ways, its one-sided response to Israel's recent policy of retaliation in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon after the capture of three Israeli soldiers by the military wing of Hamas and Hizbollah highlights why the US is losing the battle to win hearts and minds.

Make no mistake, winning the support of the moderate majority in the Middle East and in the Islamic world is the key to undermining terrorist groups like al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizbollah, and ultimately prevailing in the war on terror.

In the era of globalisation, it is the support of other nations and multinational institutions that offers the best hope of ensuring the US and its friends live in a more secure world. The White House appears almost indifferent to this strategic reality.

At last the US has, with France, crafted a United Nations Security Council resolution to halt the violence. Meanwhile, more than 1000 Lebanese and more than 100 Israelis have been killed.

Even if Resolution 1701 quickly halts the fighting the US will not find it easy to undo the huge political damage that it has inflicted.

By refusing to rein in Israel as soon as it became apparent that Tel Aviv's military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon were not strictly targeted at the terrorist groups responsible for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, the US took a stance that was contrary to its long-term strategic interests.

The Bush Administration emphasised "Israel's right to self-defence against terrorism" and spent weeks deflecting calls from the international community for a ceasefire.

The root of the problem, declared the White House, was the terrorist actions of Hizbollah and its state sponsors, Iran and Syria, and it would support only a "sustainable peace" in which the military threat to Israel had been neutralised. So the US has spent much of the past six weeks tacitly supporting Israel's military attempts to destroy Hamas and Hizbollah.

The results have been catastrophic for civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, and Israel. But maybe this is the price that has to be paid to win the war on terrorism. After all, Mr Bush's neo-conservative supporters point out that Israel's military offensive against Hamas and Hizbollah is part and parcel of the wider war against global terrorist organisations like al Qaeda.

But the Bush Administration is wrong. Hizbollah, Iran, and Syria are not the principal sources of violence in the Middle East. As former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, has made plain, Hizbollah - a fundamentalist Shite organisation - is a derivative of the central cause, which is the longstanding conflict over the Palestinian territories. This view is shared by most of America's allies, including Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as most Islamic states.

So long as the US only pays lip service to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and continues to define its Middle East policy through the prism of Israeli security interests, which since 1967 have included the occupation and settlement of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, its counter-terrorism strategy in the Islamic world will fail to undercut terrorist groups like Hizbollah, Hamas, and al Qaeda that exploit the grievances of Palestinians for their own purposes.

It is high time the Bush Administration asked itself a simple question. Have the events in Gaza and Lebanon during the past six weeks weakened or strengthened the forces of international terrorism?

Whatever short-term national security gains may have been made by Israel, these are surely dwarfed by the costs of marginalising the moderates in Israel and the Palestinian territories, advocating a two-state solution to their conflict, and the dramatic inflation of extremist groups like Hizbollah and Hamas in the Arab world.

But the problem for the US is not just that its Middle Eastern policy has proven to be a strategic disaster, but that it seems incapable of monitoring this outcome and readjusting its policy.

President Bush's "distinctive American internationalism" in the Middle East sits well with the strong pro-Israel pressures of US domestic politics. But such partisanship is also a serious obstacle to comprehensively tackling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that fuels extremism and terrorism.

Without a new Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and full Arab recognition of Israel upon its withdrawal from the lands it occupied in 1967, it is difficult to see how the US will help to achieve a sustainable peace in the Middle East and ultimately prevail in the war on terror.

* Robert Patman is associate professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago.