It happens all the time that when the young learn a thing or two
about a new subject, they come to think it's all there is to know about it. And
so, they believe they are the great experts on the subject.
When these youngsters see an older person hedge a decision about
implementing a plan that deals with the subject, they fail to understand that
there is more to know about it than they can imagine and so, they feel uneasy.
Unable to grasp that the older person sees what dangers lurk around the corner,
they dismiss the idea that the person is trying to avoid pitfalls that could
turn the implementation of the plan into a disaster. And so, the young begin to
rebel.
This reality creates a generational kind of tension in all walks
of life, especially in the political arena where the young players are given
more power than they can handle or that they can prevent it from corrupting
their sense of discipline. When the politics is local, the tension between the
young and the old usually produces new ideas that move society forward and
modernize it. The same cannot be said about the foreign policy arena, however,
where foreign powers often exploit the tension they see in the camp of a rival.
A recent article shows how this works. It came under the tile:
“There's a Deal to Be Had Between the US and Iran,” written by Dennis Ross and
published on July 10, 2019.
There was a time when Dennis Ross was young and certain that the
State Department harbored Arabists who prevented the United States from doing
what must be done to resolve the problems of the Middle East, which it could do
with a stroke of the pen. And so, he set out to purge the State Department of
its Arabists before taking on the task of implementing the magic stroke of the
pen he thought will fix all those problems.
But Dennis Ross discovered that there were no Arabists in the
State Department; just people doing what they were trained to do, which was to
take orders from higher up and implement them the best way they could. And so,
Dennis Ross lobbied hard to get himself appointed special envoy with the
mandate to represent America and mediate between the Palestinians and the
Israelis.
He began this job believing that he possessed the magic stroke of
the pen that will make it possible for him to immediately score the success
that had eluded those who came before him and tried their hands at doing the
same thing but failed. Poor young Dennis Ross; the first thing he learned was
that he had conned himself into believing he knew all there was to know about
the people of the region, when in reality he didn't.
And so, Dennis Ross spent several decades learning the right
lesson the hard way. It was that the Palestinians are an ancient people, and
like all ancient peoples, they have a set of core principles they will not
betray no matter how much you blackmail them or how much you try to bribe them.
Even after Ross was relieved of having to do this job, he still
believed that operating as an outsider, he could help resolve the problems he
did not as an insider. When nobody paid attention to what he was doing, and he
felt he was getting on with age, it sunk into him that he had been missing
something during all these years. It was that you can push the ancient people
only so much before you discover that you're pushing against an object as big
as a mountain, as hard as steel. Try all that you can, these people will not
budge when it comes to respecting the integrity of their core principles.
Now that Dennis Ross has been armed with this lesson, he looked at
the problem that's rising between the United States of America and the ancient
people of Iran. He offered his newly acquired wisdom on this sort of subject.
Convinced that the Iranians will not compromise on their core principles, he
wrote an article that could have been written by the Arabists (or Iranists) he
once thought populated the State Department.
What follows is a condensed version of the way that Dennis Ross
sees the Iran-US differences. The remarkable thing about the passage is that
the author has presented the point of view of each antagonist without injecting
his own point of view –– something he would have done when he was younger and
certain that his views were as good as the gospel truth:
“The State Department was informing countries that the waivers
would continue. Rescinding them persuaded the Iranians that they must show
Trump and the Europeans that they could impose a price on America. Each side
seems to be operating on the assumption that mounting pressure will force the
other side to blink. The danger is a miscalculation that produces a conflict
even if neither side wants it. Assuming conflict can be avoided, the Iranians
say they will reverse their breaches of the nuclear deal if the US comes back
to it or the Europeans deliver economic benefits”.