WHERE'S THE RISK IN IMPOSING A DEMOCRATIC STATE WITH ISRAELI-DEFINED BORDERS?:

For Rice, a Risky Dive Into the Mideast Storm (STEVEN R. WEISMAN, 11/16/05, NY Times)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent all day and night successfully brokering an accord on Tuesday on security controls at a Gaza border crossing, suddenly elevating the Bush administration's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a new level.

Until now President Bush and Secretary Rice have avoided taking risks in the conflict, confining their diplomacy to consultations, exhortations, drive-by visits to the region and documents like the "road map" to a Palestinian state, which calls for several steps by Palestinians and Israelis, few of which have occurred.

Even within the narrow context that Mr. Weisman means, striped-pants-set risk, Mr. Bush, of course, let Colin Powell go on a public peace mission, though, in fairness, he did so in order to freeze Mr. Powell out of the subsequent unilateralist policy when the mission inevitably failed (as he similarly boxed in Powell and Blair by letting them go to the UN with their WMD argument). But the President and Ms Rice, his main foreign policy advisor, have pursued a daring strategic vision in the broad Middle East and a revolutionary one vis-a-vis Palestine. Realists just don't consider it risky because it worked.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2005 7:46 AM