A Turn for the Worse

The predictable critics are condemning President Bill Clinton for convening and presiding over last week’s emergency summit meeting in Washington, necessitated by the eruption of new violence between Israelis and Palestinians. GOP candidate Bob Dole says the president was out to win votes in the approaching election--and is expected to bring it up in tonight’s debate. On the West Bank, crowds of Palestinians denounced the United States and burned the American flag, while some Israelis resented any suggestion from Clinton that their government must show greater commitment to the peace process.

It is obviously too soon to know whether the Washington meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (with King Hussein of Jordan watching and worrying compassionately on the side) was a success or a failure. But as Clinton keeps the United States deeply involved and tries to maneuver both Israelis and Palestinians into a stable settlement, he takes his place in a long history of controversy over the pros and cons of direct presidential diplomacy and personal intervention in the quarrels of other countries.

Until the 20th century, U.S. presidents did not play a direct role in diplomatic negotiations with foreign governments. Never leaving the United States, they set broad policy and provided instructions to the secretary of state and diplomats abroad. Neither presidents nor U.S. diplomats acted as mediators or would-be peacemakers in disputes in which the United States had no direct interest. The difficulties of communication and travel in that earlier age and the tradition of non-entanglement supported a practice of presidential aloofness. When U.S. interests were involved, negotiations were conducted by officials reporting to the president--insulating him personally from the fray.

President Theodore Roosevelt was the first to break this tradition and experience the kind of criticism now being heaped on Clinton. The occasion was the war of 1904-5 between Russia and Japan. Though the circumstances of that conflict were very different from that between Israel and the Palestinians, the difficulties Roosevelt experienced provide some interesting parallels with the present.

In the first three years of his presidency, Roosevelt had worried that the expansion of Russian economic and political influence in Manchuria might endanger U.S. economic interests. He applauded when Japan attacked Russia without warning. Roosevelt’s initial hope was that the two would exhaust each other and agree to a peace based on a stable balance of power.

The war was a military and naval disaster for Russia. It intensified revolutionary unrest internally, with ominous implications for the survival of the czarist regime. But the war effort also imposed intolerable strain on the Japanese economy. The possibility of famine and industrial collapse loomed.

Roosevelt believed that if both sides could see their situation rationally, they would welcome his mediation as a peacemaker. That was a big “if.” Pro-war enthusiasts in Japan wanted to press on, annexing much of Russian Siberia and extracting a large indemnity--as Germany had done to France after the war of 1870. But Czar Nicholas I said Russia would never pay an indemnity.

The war went on. In May 1905, the Russian European fleet was annihilated in the battle of Tsushima Straits. At this point, Japan, urged on by Roosevelt, asked him to arrange a peace conference. He put heavy pressure on Russia, and the czar agreed. The next question was where: Paris, somewhere in China, The Hague, Geneva, Washington? Roosevelt suggested Portsmouth, N.H., in the United States but without the symbolism of U.S. supervision in the capital. Both sides agreed, and the conference took place in August 1905.

Roosevelt did not go to Portsmouth and, technically, he did no more than provide a venue. But when there were no signs of progress, he became frustrated and impatient. “I wish to Heaven I could make these peace conferences meet under my supervision, or else turn the matter over to me,” he wrote his sister. Acting on that wish, he invited the delegates to come separately to his summer home at Oyster Bay, on Long Island, and kept up a constant communication with the Russian and Japanese governments. The U.S. and world press predicted failure and the traditional diplomatic community in Europe scoffed at the efforts of a brash, naive president.

Roosevelt wondered if he could succeed. It is difficult, he wrote privately, “to be polite and sympathetic and patient in explaining for the hundredth time something perfectly obvious, when what I really want to do is to give utterance to whoops of rage and jump up and knock their heads together.” But he did succeed--largely because moderates prevailed in Japan and agreed to drop the demand for an indemnity, and the Russian foreign minister, Count Witte, persuaded the czar to cede half of Sakhalin Island. “If it is our desire that in the future America . . . side with us, we must take Roosevelt’s opinion into consideration,” he said.

Though Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace prize in 1906 for his efforts, there was considerable negative reaction to his achievement both in Japan and the United States. The Japanese government, faced with public anger over the lack of indemnity, let Roosevelt take the blame and concealed its belief that continued fighting would have brought disaster. There were anti-U.S. riots and demonstrations throughout Japan. Some Americans denounced Roosevelt for pulling Japan’s chestnuts out of the fire. It would have been better to let Japan exhaust itself rather than acquire the status of a great power and become a menace.

In the very long run, all the bad things Roosevelt and his critics feared came to pass. Revolution in Russia brought Bolsheviks to power. Japan did become a menace to others and exhausted herself in war with the United States.

But Roosevelt’s intervention did buy time. The failure of others to use that time constructively was not his fault. He used his power and prestige, firmly and subtly, and began a new U.S. approach to international relations. He judged correctly that there are times when effective diplomatic intervention requires direct presidential intervention. Traditional reliance on subordinate officials will not get the necessary attention from other governments. If that means a president may suffer politically if the enterprise fails, so be it. The risk must be taken.

Return now to 1996, and Clinton. All the most dire predictions about resurgent violence in the Middle East with appalling repercussions could come to pass. But if Clinton had not brought Netanyahu and Arafat to Washington, persuading them to talk face to face, immediate disaster was likely. In 1905, Roosevelt saw the nation’s interest was not clear to all Americans. In 1996, who can deny the vital U.S. necessity to do everything possible to prevent another catastrophe in the Middle East? The Palestinians and the Israelis, like the Russians and Japanese in 1905, have difficulty negotiating without external assistance and pressure.

In 1905, other great powers were too closely tied to Russia or Japan to act as mediators. In 1996, there are no other governments capable of taking the role the United States has assumed. Roosevelt was crossing a diplomatic frontier. Clinton has less choice, because since the birth of Israel, in 1948, the United States has been the major external player in the politics of the Middle East.

Last week, Clinton acted in the tradition begun by Roosevelt and doubtless experienced some of the same frustrations in dealing with two sides who seemed blind to what was perfectly obvious. The emergency summit brought time--how much, no one knows. Clinton accepted some risk and was undeterred by the critics. Not to have acted, however, would have been abdication of responsibility of a most grievous sort.