No Way Out
by Joshua Adams

Amidst all the carnage, the suicide bombings, the civilians killed, the absurd recriminations on cable talk shows, one sharp sliver of irony survives the rapidly yawning abyss in the West Bank. George W. Bush, whose war on terrorism has catapulted him into approval ratings not seen since his father's Gulf War days, has discovered that his formidable moral and military momentum has come to a grinding halt, stopped in its tracks not by the wily machinations of Osama Bin Laden but by another application of the Bush Doctrine: an Israeli invasion of the West Bank. Now Bush, who scored points on the campaign trail by deriding Bill Clinton's Middle East micromanaging, finds himself dispatching Colin Powell on an uncertain mission whose odds of success would daunt Talleyrand himself.

Why send Powell at all? The optimist suggests that desperate times call for our most experienced (and popular) diplomat. But Powell's absence from the region has been conspicuous in the past months, while George Tenet, Dick Cheney and Anthony Zinni have all proven unable to bring parties away form the battlements and to the negotiating table. And dispatching the secretary of state into such a difficult landscape risks undermining one of the only voices under whose lectures American allies do not visibly chafe.

It seems more likely that Powell's trip represents a realization on the part of the Bush administration: Without an Israeli withdrawal, the American war on terrorism cannot continue. Without an American war on terrorism, the engine of the Bush Presidency stalls. And the moment the engine of the Bush presidency stalls is the same moment that Democratic challengers begin writing their platforms for 2004 — documents that will be tailored to attack the perceived weaknesses of an administration that, until this moment, has seemed invulnerable. Suddenly, the next few weeks may make or break Bush's presidency.

If oil prices continue to rise, the results will be unfavorable for a president and a party that have made energy a cornerstone issue. In the middle of an fuel crisis, it would be difficult to explain why the Administration lobbied so hard for the paltry benefits of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but made raising fuel efficiency standards on automobiles voluntary. The Bush energy plan relies on pushing domestic oil prospecting to meet demand (filling the pockets of Bush contributors as well). But only the most delusional oilman would propose that exclusive reliance on domestic oil is possible without a rise in the efficiency of consumption. It is the administration's flirtation with this delusion that clears a rather wide path for criticism. He needs the oil, ergo he needs to keep his allies in the Middle East.

The president is also looking for a posture toward the crisis that satisfies a number of constituencies, many in conflict with his oil-driven interests. If Bush appears to condemn Israel too harshly he risks electoral retribution from the well-organized pro-Israel lobby and criticism from conservative hawks who believe that military might is the right way to solve the problem in the West Bank. Sharon's political opponent on the right, former Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu, has been stumping Congress in support of more aggressive West Bank action, and many in Congress are listening.

But by waiting so long to dispatch Powell and trying to match the hands-off strategies of a corporate executive to a head of state, Bush may actually have contributed to the humanitarian crisis that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His tendency to skip a beat on foreign policy matters is a hangover from his pre-WTC days, when he drummed up constituents by leaning towards a new form of isolationism. But Sept. 11th put an end to these limited-involvement fantasies. The Afghanistan campaign and the emergent Bush Doctrine — seek out terrorists wherever they lurk — were forms of international engagement that redefined "vital national interests" to include something more than an ample oil supply. But now the president is faced with another conflict that is a "vital national interest," though deploying B-2 bombers and platoons of Marines will hardly solve the problem. The more the violence lingers in the public eye despite the president's admonishments, the more impotent the administration appears to the voters.

Indeed, the West Bank, while not the first test of the Bush Administration, presents its first real test in the court of post-Sept. 11 public opinion. The current situation makes the last eight months look easy, and up until now Bush has had the weight or moral certainty to back him up.

The nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demonstrate how a complicated world confounds a simplistic foreign policy. And time is running out; as Bush sits in Washington hoping that Powell will return with a cease fire, he also knows that domestic support for future military action is in limited supply. Nor can he rely on a deep-seated reserve of popular support — Lest we forget, he lost the popular vote. With the economy in limbo and the war on terrorism on hold, the President's future hangs in the balance. Would-be challengers are watching closely.

E-mail Joshua Adams at joshua at uchicago dot edu.