The beginning of the end?

In 1979 the Islamic revolution overthrew the quisling regime of the Shah in Iran. Shortly after, US president Ronald Reagan fatefully decided to throw billions of dollars in arms and support at the Afghani mujahaddin fighting the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. Hello and welcome, Osama.

Ironically Brzezinski, when asked in 1988 whether he regretted having supported the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and given arms and advice to future terrorists, replied: “What is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims of the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

As the mujahaddin won in Afghanistan and the Taliban came to power with the backing of Pakistani intelligence (which was the main conduit for American money into Afghanistan), the United States supported the export of Islamist militias from Afghanistan to Bosnia and Chechnya. All the ingredients for a foreign policy disaster.

And to complete the recipe, add in the continuing failure to resolve the Palestinian issue, the completely bungled response to 9-11 and the deepening mire in Afghanistan, the descent into hell in Iraq since 2003, and now Lebanon today. Could the United States have done a better job of preparing the day, in Brzezinski's words, when it will be expelled from the region, signalling the beginning of the end for Israel as well?

There is, of course, another way. The complex issues that drive the region back to war must be resolved as a whole. The Palestinian issue has a particularly iconic status in the Arab and Muslim worlds: it is the hub from which the many spokes of discontent run. Peace solutions that do not address the underlying Palestinian issue will necessarily fail and drive a renewed cycle of violence; the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel will ameliorate the growing sense of grievance that growing numbers of Arabs and Muslims are expressing.

Says Brzezinski: “The new element today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. There may be people who deceive themselves into believing that. The solution can only come in the Israel-Palestinian issue if there is serious international involvement that supports the moderates from both sides.”

We can ponder the alternative with growing fear.