Might Japan Be the Broker to Negotiate Peace Between Israel and Palestine?

After the American Century

The Middle East has been the burying ground for American diplomatic missions for decades. Each new president and each new Secretary of State thinks peace is finally going to be attainable. Each is disappointed in different ways. Sometimes peace seems to have been achieved, with treaties signed and handshakes all around. That was Jimmy Carter's experience. Relations were better for a while, particularly between Egypt and Israel, but real peace did not emerge. It is too tedious to go through all the other administrations before or since then, but no one who has followed it all can help but be a bit depressed.

Not only is Israel seemingly no closer to peace with its neighbors than in the 1960s, but the entire neighborhood is in a worse uproar that usual. Syria is in a civil war, with millions of refugees, and none of the three (or is it four or five?) sides is a particularly attractive option.  Iraq is falling apart, along religious and ethnic lines, even in the face of the rise of ISIS, a new factor in teh region, which seeks to create an Islamic state. The Egyptians have gone back to military rule, after a brief experiment with democracy brought the conservative Muslim Brotherhood to power. Lebanon is struggling to remain out of the violence in Syria. The Palestinians are split into two factions. The one in Gaza continues to launch largely ineffective rockets at Israel, to show that they can do it. In return they are pulverized, and gain some sympathy outside the region. But the Hamas is bankrupt, economically speaking, part of the fallout from the Syrian civil war.  For decades Hamas has built complex systems of tunnels underground, which have now been destroyed. The other Palestinians are a bit less militant, but also unable to come to an agreement with Israel.

But perhaps because things are so bad, a negotiated settlement might be attainable. However, this requires a neutral broker to do the job. Who could that be?  When American diplomats attempt to negotiate peace, they are usually perceived to be Israel's allies, and it is hard to convince Arabs that Washington can be an honest broker. Yet Americans are even-handed, the Israeli government typically becomes upset and stirs up problems in the US, through its conservative allies. In short, the Americans are in many respects not well-positioned to broker a deal. Perhaps it is time for the US to step back from its direct diplomatic efforts and instead to encourage another nation to take the lead.

But if not the Americans, who? The EU would seem the obvious choice, but the EU does not have a shared foreign policy. Each member state has a somewhat different policy, and it cannot function effectively in such a negotiating situation. (Indeed, the EU is not good at handling international crises.)  Russia has strongly sided with Syria, where it has a major base, which makes it unacceptable to Israelis. What has long been needed is an honest broker whom both sides have no reason to distrust. The lone superpower manifestly cannot impose a settlement, or it would done so by now. Instead, a country like Japan, Brazil or South Africa might be able to do broker successful negotiations, though none of these three seems to have any inclination to do so. 

My own preference would be Japan, precisely because they are so far from the Middle East and have no obvious axe to grind. The Japanese are also patient negotiators, who take for granted that before a meaningful agreement is possible it is necessary to spend some time face to face. Wouldn't it be worth a try? Imagine Palestinian and Israeli representatives in a pleasant, remote Japanese hotel, with a view of the sea. Taken away from their familiar surroundings, immersed in the fascincating cultural world of Japan, they might gradually find some common ground.

What might be in it for the Japanese? Three things. (1) International praise for succeeding where all others have failed, with a very real chance to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. (2) National pride as Japan shows its importance on the world stage, pushing its economic stagnation and nuclear woes into the background. (3) Recognition as a force for peaceful coexistence, in contrast to Chinese muscle flexing in their own region.

As the US heads into another presidential election, it seems particularly unlikely that it can negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine. It is time to admit the obvious facts. The US is too entangled with its ally Israel to do the job, and it has so many complex and often conflicting interests in the Middle East that it will have trouble focusing on this single problem.  But will any other nation take up the challenge?

Japan's Nuclear Nightmare Is a Warning

After the American Century

As I write this three nuclear reactors in Japan are in various stages of meltdown. The Japanese electrical industry adopted nuclear power plants for much the same reasons that western European nations did: the desire for a secure domestic energy supply, escaping dependence on fossil fuels. In recent decades the nuclear industry has touted the reactor as a clean and safe alternative to CO2 spouting coal-fired plants. While living in the UK I read innumerable newspaper articles extolling the advantages of atomic power, as the only responsible way to meet the nation's energy needs and curb greenhouse gases at the same time. 

All arguments for nuclear power, however, assume placid normality for very long periods. Even though nuclear plants impose the problem of storing waste for many generations, the assumption always seems to be that there will be no earthquakes, no floods, and no tsunamis. They also assume no successful terrorists, no wars, and no serious incompetence inside the plant. Furthermore, several thousand years of nuclear waste storage are not usually in the economic equation. The nuclear industry wants to profit right now and promise us that nothing untoward is going to happen for several millennia. 

The nuclear industry will now take pains to convince us that the meltdowns in Japan are extraordinary, and that the chance of anything similarly going wrong elsewhere in the future are infinitely small. Meanwhile, their public relations people will continue to attack solar and wind power, saying things that are not true, such as it is impossible to store such power. Nonsense. The Dutch, the Germans, and Texans have all shown precisely how it can be done, for example, through pumped storage and compressed air stored in caverns, to name just two methods.

What is tragically happening in Japan is a suggestive scenario for any place that handles nuclear materials, either in making nuclear fuel rods, transporting them to nuclear plants, using them, and then dealing with the tons of nuclear waste produced. This waste will include the entire nuclear plant itself, which cannot operate forever, but eventually must be decommissioned. At that point, it will be highly radioactive inside, and it will have to be guarded 24/7 for generations. Is that an expense we can send to future geneations?

The terrible events in Japan reveal the dangers posed by nuclear power everywhere, and should serve as a warning. This is not a safe or even an economically wise energy path. Far better to reduce energy consumption by increasing our efficiency, building more energy efficient buildings that reduce by 90% the power needed to heat and cool them (no pipe dream this, for it is already demonstrated in practice for houses and office buildings), and moving toward solar and wind power as much as possible.