This excellent Economist article recounts the problems Rice faces in trying to persuade friendly Arab governments to embrace America‘s agenda in the region and turn against Syria, Hamas, or Hizbullah to the degree required by Washington. Rice is now calling America‘s enemies the “resistance” block and not the “Shiite Crescent,” “Axis of Evil” or “Bloc of Bad” as Washingtonians used to – a reflection, perhaps, of Rice’s new realism? If so, she has a long realism row to hoe. Things will get a lot more real before she gets a deal.

Just last week Rice told the Wall Street Journal that the US would be punishing Syria for its stand with Iran.  In a series of interviews published by the Wall Street Journal just before she left for the Middle East, Secretary Rice explained how America would punish Syria for its bad actions in Lebanon with tougher sanctions. “We’re going to have to look at tougher measures if Syria continues to be on the path that it’s on,” Rice said. Syria had effectively entered into an alliance with Iran, which she also accused of destabilizing the region. “The Syrians look as if they’ve made their choice and their choice is to associate with extremist forces in Iran, not with their … traditional partners like the Arab states,” she added.  

Bret Stephens on September 30 writes: “I ask [Rice] about the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, which a year ago appeared to be on the point of collapse yet today has reasserted itself in a big way in Lebanon, particularly thanks to Hezbollah’s perceived victory in the summer’s war against Israel. “This is one of those twists and turns…  I started speaking to at the beginning. I don’t think you can kind of know today the effect of Syria‘s isolation from the Arab world.” (Pressed on the subject later on, she concedes that “we’re going to have to start looking at further sanctions on Syria.”) Further sanctions. Who is she kidding? As Walid Moallem, Syria‘s Foreign minister recently said: “Tragically enough, we all end up paying the price when the decision-makers in Washington believe that they know better, and are in a better position to understand and grasp the needs and circumstances of the Arabs. They diagnose the ambitions and aspirations of the Arab in a manner tailored to their own vision,” he said. No one is going to support sanctions against Syria. The Arab states – even those angry at Syria – don’t want more sanctions. Europe doesn’t. Russia and China don’t. Why even say such things? It makes America look foolish and out of touch.makes America look foolish and out of touch.

Friends see things differently – America and the Middle East
7 October 2006
The Economist Condoleezza Rice in the Middle East: Arab leaders, like Hosni Mubarak, agree on America’s aims but not how to get there IT ALL looked cordial enough as Condoleezza Rice toured the Middle East for the first time since this summer’s nasty little war in Lebanon. The secretary of state, adhering to the Bush administration’s habit of shunning leaders it doesn’t like, talked only to those anointed as “moderates”. Even so, behind padded doors, some hard words were exchanged. That is not surprising. The Middle East pot is more than ever brimful with sticky problems, ranging from Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to the ongoing agony of Iraq, to the humanitarian disaster of Darfur, to the shaky peace in Lebanon, to turbulence in internal Israeli politics and, never-endingly, to the misery of Palestine. So fraught is the region that Ms Rice, who on her last, wartime, visit homilised over the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”, this time talked only of a “future Middle East” where peace, prosperity and democracy would prevail.