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Introduction: The Persian Gulf: A Prescription for Peace
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18541 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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4 / 1991 |
744 Words |
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As the Persian Gulf War draws to its inevitable close, the United States and its coalition partners now must begin to lay the groundwork for a sound and lasting peace in the Middle East. It will not be an easy task. Building the right structure to ensure the peace will demand even more diplomatic skill, political bargaining, and economic commitment than did building the U.S.-led coalition that waged the war.
Keeping the peace will require more than a new balance of power in the region, taking into account the winners and losers of the Persian Gulf conflict, although such a balance is undeniably important. And peace will not be guaranteed by an arms control arrangement or an international mechanism for crisis intervention, although both are certainly needed.
Peace, lasting peace, will only come to the Middle East when a comprehensive military-economic-sociocultural strategy is accepted by all the nations and people of the region. Some experts will immediately assert that such an agreement is impossible, unrealistic, and the world had better settle for the absence of war rather than any true state of peace.
But the Middle East has been transformed irrevocably, radically, by the Persian Gulf War. When an Arab nation strikes at Israel does not strike back, and when long-time adversary Syria suggests that it is prepared to recognize the existence of Israel, can anyone deny that the Middle East will never be the same?
It is precisely because so much has changed in the Middle East that the United States and the world must seize the opportunity to begin turning this war-torn area into a region where even Palestinians and Israelis can live in peace.
In this month's Special Report, Michael Sterner, a former U.S. ambassador and State Department official in the Near East, argues that converting the Persian Gulf area from a state of belligerency into a state of peace will first require an international peacekeeping force under UN direction, defense coordination among the Gulf states, and careful U.S. management of relations with Iraq and Iran. Sterner stresses that the United States should take the lead in promoting regional economic development to break down the rich/poor divide that Saddam tried to exploit in his propaganda.
Above all, says the former diplomat, the United States must pursue a just Arab-Israeli settlement, for otherwise every other objective in the
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