After 23 months of fighting, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's grip on power is increasingly tenuous. Fearing its greatest ally could be ousted, Iran has reportedly begun forming large sectarian militias in Syria to bolster the regime in the short term, and also to preserve its influence should Assad be overthrown. With so much at stake, Iran will only continue to increase such efforts as the regime's position becomes more vulnerable. These militias pose a huge threat -- it is imperative that the United States and the international community try to prevent the formation of a Syrian style-Hezbollah by bringing Iran into peace mediations led by the U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

The United States has been understandably reluctant to agree to the idea of including Iran which was initially advocated by Brahimi's predecessor Kofi Annan. Washington believes Iran has played a destructive role in Syria and expects it to only pursue its own interests in negotiations, even if it comes at the expense of the Syrian people. However, continuing to exclude Iran is highly imprudent. The United States must consider whether it is better to try and incentivise Iran to use its influence productively in concert with international efforts to stabilize Syria, or exclude it from the peace process and risk a perpetuation of the current chaos.

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The Obama administration's opposition to yesterday's United Nations General Assembly vote on the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) bid for non-member observer state status once again places the United States outside the consensus of the vast majority of the international community. While the merits and usefulness of such a move by the PLO can be debated, the United States has once again made it clear that it lacks any new ideas as to how to move toward a just and lasting peace in the region and suggests that the administration is likely to continue to support blindly whatever the current Israeli government wants.

However, looking forward to his second term, President Barack Obama faces three basic options for dealing with the Palestine issue. Their outlines have not really changed since the most recent Israeli attacks on Gaza. The first is the tried and true method of simply ignoring Palestine and the Palestinians, while paying lip service to the "peace process" and attempting to extract unreciprocated Palestinian concessions to Israel. This approach was practiced during most of the administration of George W. Bush, and over the last two years by that of Obama. There are many pretexts for following this course of action today. These range from the persistent political divisions in Palestinian ranks and the feebleness of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, to the supposedly "terrorist" nature of the Hamas leadership in Gaza. They include as well the stubborn unwillingness of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to engage in serious negotiations to change the intolerable status quo of never-ending settlement growth and strict Israeli control over the millions of Palestinians who have lived under Israel military occupation for over 45 years. If, as clearly seems to be the case, the Israeli government is not fully willing to allow unfettered Palestinian self-determination, terminate its occupation, and remove its settlers, what is the point of "negotiations" for the Palestinians? Another reason for doing nothing is the unbroken record of failure of every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter in trying to stop the inexorable expansion of the Israeli settlement enterprise. This vast endeavor now comprises nearly 600,000 colonists -- or about one in every 10 Israeli Jews, who live on stolen Palestinian land in a far-flung archipelago explicitly intended to make the creation of a contiguous, viable Palestinian state physically impossible, with majestic success thus far.

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After the recent unrest at embassies in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia and the killing of U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, there may be mounting pressure in upcoming weeks or months to permanently shut down embassies or rupture diplomatic relations. Already, there have been significant diplomatic staff withdrawals from many of the embassies. While the security situation may undoubtedly warrant temporary reductions in diplomatic presences overseas, countries should be extremely wary of using long-standing diplomatic sanctions as a way to condemn a regime's behavior or as a foreign policy tool of coercion. Historically, security reductions and closures in the name of security can lead to more entrenched policies of diplomatic disengagement. In light of recent events, policymakers should be cognizant of some of the dangers of diplomatic disengagement as they face decisions about if and when to resume normal embassy operations or shut embassy doors for the long haul.   

Why is it crucial to remain diplomatically engaged particularly in the most dangerous parts of the world that may pose a security threat? Lost in the recent debate on embassy security is a clear articulation of the specific logic and empirical evidence to illustrate why a diplomatic presence is so important in the pursuit of foreign policy goals. Secretary of State Dean Acheson put it quite simply in September 1949:

"We maintain diplomatic relations with other countries primarily because we are all on the same planet and must do business with each other. We do not establish an embassy in a foreign country to show approval of its government. We do so to have a channel through which to conduct essential government relations and to protect legitimate United States' interests."

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During the last 18 months, Syria's leadership class has made almost every mistake in the book. The regime has no respect for or indeed understanding of basic governing concepts except those defined by the use of force. Its heavy hand transformed disparate, limited, local acts of disobedience energized by economic discontent into a national, sectarian revolt against the ruling Ba'ath Party and increasingly against the minority Alawite community at the Party's center. In this context, the regime's efforts at political reform, while unprecedented, have been overwhelmed by an exploding but still manageable challenge to the regime itself, which now must reap the fruits of its own grievous shortcomings.

The shortcomings of the regime have been more than matched by those defining the opposition. Syria's political class has failed to cast off the burdens of its own history. The serial coups of the 40s and 50s and 60s highlighted the inability of Syria's political leadership to rule effectively. Today's "opposition" -- a description that suggests a clarity and unity of purpose that is all but entirely absent -- remains a factionalized, personality-driven, almost apolitical assembly of  aspiring Peróns operating outside the growing circle of conflict in the country itself. They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing of their sorry history.

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Motivated by President Bashar al-Assad's terrible murder of civilians and (or) the strategic opportunity to undermine Iran's staunchest Arab ally, both conservative and liberal voices in the United States now favor military intervention in Syria. There is indeed a striking synergy between the United States' strategic and humanitarian goals in Syria, either of which could potentially motivate military action. But good intentions do not make good policy.

Deposing Assad, weakening Iran, and stopping government-sanctioned murder are all laudable objectives worthy of U.S. investment, but the proposition of using military force to achieve those goals must be weighed against the risks and costs of doing so. And perhaps the singular lesson of the last decade of foreign policy is that the unintended consequences of well-intentioned military action can be massive and outweigh the achievements of noble policy choices. The wisdom and justice of U.S. foreign policy decisions is a function of the consequences they produce, not the hopeful intentions with which they are initiated.

There are three basic problems with the proposals for military intervention in Syria.

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Despite the tentative and fragile ceasefire that appears to have now taken hold in Syria, skepticism and outright vitriol regarding the mission of United Nations and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan remains. This frustration is understandable as the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has until now shown no signs of credible compromise and the human costs of conflict have continued to escalate. The odds against success remain high. Even as the Syrian regime has observed a cessation in hostilities, it has ignored agreements to redeploy troops and heavy weapons from population centers. However, even if the current iteration of the Annan mission fails, a sequential diplomatic approach remains the only avenue by which an international consensus might be reached; without such consensus there is simply no hope for a near-term resolution of the conflict through managed transition.

The ceasefire that is at the crux of current attention is not an end in and of itself. The six-point plan endorsed by the Arab League and the United Nations also seeks to establish a Syrian-led political process that addresses the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people. While the terms of a transition are left unspecified, it should be clear to Russia and others that any credible managed transition will require the removal of Assad from power. There can be no stability in Syria if the regime remains fully intact. In light of the indispensability of Russia and China and their reservations about the consequences of a political transition, focus should now shift to fashioning a serious transition process that retains specific figures and institutions from the Assad regime while allowing for genuine political change to take root. If international consensus cannot be marshaled around such basic realities then Syria is destined to suffer from escalating and protracted conflict that is the sole alternative to a diplomatic resolution.

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As the brutal crackdown in Syria turns one year old with little sign of a solution on the horizon, skeptics and defenders of invoking the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine can agree: Syria has put the doctrine, which obligates states to be concerned about the welfare of those outside its borders, in crisis. Critics charge that it requires intervention on the Libyan precedent, exposing R2P as a crusading utopianism mandating perpetual war for peace. Supporters worry the doctrine will be made into a discredited farce if Bashar al-Assad is allowed to massacre innocents with impunity. In one colorful phrasing, "R2P, R.I.P."

Both are wrong. Military intervention in Syria would not only be a misapplication of R2P, but would radically weaken the doctrine's role in building both a better Middle East and a better world. Our responsibility to protect both Syrians and the R2P doctrine itself demands that we stay out of it.

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In light of the resignation of the National Security Council's Dennis Ross, and as the international community waits for the United Nations to consider Palestine's road to formal statehood, we call upon the Obama administration and so-called Middle East experts advising the various presidential hopefuls to take some introspective "down time." The purpose is to reassess heretofore time-honored policies, practices, political campaign pronouncements, and come up with a realistic and viable way forward. 

It is clear that Obama's efforts toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire have been nothing short of a failure. When tallying on to previous failed administration attempts, the cumulative effect has been a clear loss of strategic leverage. This loss is detrimental to the U.S. interest of securing two states living side by side in peace in the region, as well as influencing the likes of Syria and Iran at a critical time. This trend must be reversed and replaced by revitalized action on a critical U.S. national security issue. 

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Tehran initially viewed the rise of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey with much enthusiasm. It has turned into a nightmare. Turkey's shift against the Assad regime in Syria, and its manifest ideological appeal in a changing Middle East, now has Iranian leaders viewing Ankara as a key part of a U.S. scheme with the Arab States in the Persian Gulf aimed directly at them.

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"People underestimate the fact that this relationship [with Israel] is anchored in mutual interest,'' an Egyptian diplomat told me last week when I asked about the deal that finally released Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity. "Nobody has an interest in seeing it break down."

Those mutual interests have not been in great evidence since the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February. Months of crisis, from a cross-border Israeli raid which killed six Egyptian soldiers to the ransacking of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, have dominated the bilateral agenda. But Egypt's role in brokering the exchange of Shalit for over a thousand Palestinian prisoners demonstrated that fears of a major break between Egypt and Israel have been wildly overstated.

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Observers of Yemen are often asked why the revolution there has taken so long and why it has been so inconclusive. The more basic question -- never asked, though inextricably tied to this -- is why an uprising started in the first place.

When the Arab Spring started in Tunisia and began to spread in the region, I did not think the conditions in Yemen were ripe for it. Indeed corruption, inequality, and the callous disregard for law were much worse in Yemen than any other country in the region. However, the conditions usually viewed as prerequisites for revolution -- a large and mobile middle class, a strong civil society, high literacy rate, and internet penetration -- are all non-existent. Yet the state does benefit from an historical accident, the adoption of a multi-party system in 1990 as part of the unity agreement between South and North Yemen. Twenty years of multi-party experience and the attendant mobilization skills of politicking made it possible for Yemeni activists to launch the revolution. Unfortunately, the absence of a broad middle class and a dynamic civil society has stunted the movement's momentum. The revolution has gradually transformed into what is largely an elitist struggle for power.

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After serving nearly six years as the special advisor to the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, I came home convinced of one thing, cognizant of another. The first was that a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not only in the vital security interests of Israel and the future state of Palestine, but also the United States. The second, initially noted two years ago by a former IDF Chief of Staff, was that, "The USSC, the IDF and the Palestinian Security Services were buying time, time for the politicians.... [A]nd they're wasting it." As we approach the United Nations General Assembly session in September, the first conviction remains immutable, while sadly, the reality of the general's observation appears not to have changed in the slightest.

T. E. Lawrence wrote in the aftermath of the First World War, "...[W]hen we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew... We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly, and made their peace."

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Historical dates often emerge by sheer coincidence. In 2009, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad formulated an operational goal for his tenure: by 2011 he wanted to build institutions that would justify the proclamation of a Palestinian state. This would not just have symbolic value, as PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat's statement in 1988, but would carry practical implications. Fayyad's efforts have commanded international admiration. The West Bank is indeed run in a way that meets many criteria for successful statehood. As opposed to the past, funds are used responsibly and accounting standards are transparent. The security forces -- originally trained by U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton -- are remarkably effective. Both the Palestinian population and the Israel Defense Forces rely on them more than ever. Hence, September 2011 began to crystallize as a realistic date for the founding of a Palestinian state.

Fayyad's 2011 deadline for the declaration of Palestinian statehood had acquired enormous importance, even though Fayyad never connected it to the bid for U.N. recognition. It has provided Palestinians with a political horizon and a strong motivation to try the route of peaceful resistance and reliance on the international community's support for the new state. The idea of turning to the U.N. for recognition of Palestine seems not to have been a long-term strategy; it emerged as an option faute de mieux, in the absence of negotiations, and without reasonable hope that Netanyahu has the will or the mandate for a meaningful Israeli compromise.

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Europe and America have shared a settled conviction over the last decades: It is that Israel, out of its own necessity, must seek to conserve a Jewish majority within Israel. And that with time, and a growing Palestinian population, Israel will at some point have to acquiesce to a Palestinian state in order to maintain that Jewish majority: that is, only by giving Palestinians their own state and thereby shedding a part of the Palestinians it controls, can Israel's Jewish majority be preserved.

This simple proposition has given us the security-first doctrine: Meeting Israel's self-definition of its own security needs -- it is presumed -- stands as the unique and sufficient principle, allowing Israel to transition with confidence to the two-state solution.

But Israel has not done this -- despite many opportunities over the last 19 years -- and does not seem any more disposed to "give" a Palestinian state now. Seldom is it asked why, if the logic is indeed so compelling, have two states not emerged?  

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