Last week I had the pleasure of appearing on a Brookings Institution panel devoted to the implications of President Obama’s inaugural address for U.S. foreign policy. Many of the questions my co-panelists Michael Gerson, Michael Fullilove, Carlos Pascual and I received had to do with signals being sent (or not) to specific countries and governments around the world, and how deliberately a president and his speechwriting team craft the wording of those messages.
This article in today’s Washington Post captures one of the communication challenges any president faces: His words are scrutinized and analyzed not only for what they say, but also for what they omit. Reflecting on the way President Obama’s recent remarks on the Middle East were interpreted by key stakeholders, Glenn Kessler reports that Israeli officials and Jewish groups were delighted that President Obama did not mention the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, former Palestinian Authority adviser Diana Bhutto was disappointed to hear President Obama call for “a future of hope” for the Palestinians; she argued that American officials promise other oppressed peoples “freedom.”
Words matter. A lot. But to spur peace in the Middle East, it will be action and engagement that matter most. And the appointment of Senator George Mitchell as special envoy is an excellent first step. Senator Mitchell is committed to what he calls “persevering and patient” diplomacy. He is seen as evenhanded — as evidenced by his role in brokering peace in Northern Ireland.
And he carries no illusions about the difficulty or complexity of the task as hand. As he told State Department employees, he’d recently been talking to an elderly Israeli man about the Northern Ireland conflict, and mentioned that the roots of The Troubles reached back 800 years. In Mitchell’s words,the man asked, “Did you say 800 years?” I said, “Yes, 800.” He repeated the number again. I repeated it again. He said, “Ah, such a recent argument. No wonder you settled it.”
