Further thoughts on the speech by President Obama in Israel (scroll down to see the earlier post from my PunditWire piece below). This time prompted by analysis over at Foreign Policy.

First, Hussein Ibish who thought that he did a terrific job:

The psychological, communication and political skill that was marshaled to give the speech its maximum impact with public opinion was quite extraordinary, and stands in contrast to some miscalculations Obama made about Israeli and Palestinian perceptions during his first term.

By systematically downplaying expectations for his trip, Obama made the power of his speech and the boldness of some of the language and positions he staked out — particularly regarding the realities Palestinians face under Israeli occupation — surprising and therefore all the more striking…

… The effectiveness of Obama’s careful political and psychological preparation for these unprecedented statements with his Israeli audience was demonstrated by the sustained, and otherwise unimaginable, applause he received for almost all these remarks. He clearly went a long way in assuaging Israeli skepticism.

Palestinians will be harder to win over, as they require more than words given the onerous conditions of the occupation and their repeated disappointment with successive American governments, and in particular with Obama’s first term…

… Diplomacy without sufficient outreach may have proven to be a failure in Obama’s first term. But this kind of bravura performance of public diplomacy will have to be backed up with significant real diplomacy or it may be remembered as yet another inspiring Obama Middle East speech that ultimately produces more disappointment than tangible achievement.

Still, if Obama was primarily trying to change the tone and the atmosphere in the region, and the way he is perceived by ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard to imagine how he could have been more effective than he has been over the past couple of days.

Hmm. If I were a Palestinian I’d be unimpressed with the marginal walk-on role the Palestinian leadership was given and the obvious glowing warmth of Obama’s tone when with the Israeli side.

Then there’s Stephen M Walt, a lot more sceptical:

Because power is more important than mere rhetoric, it won’t take long before Obama’s visit is just another memory. The settlements will keep expanding, East Jerusalem will be cut off from the rest of the West Bank, the Palestinians will remain stateless, and Israel will continue on its self-chosen path to apartheid.

And in the end, Obama will have proven to be no better a friend to Israel or the Palestinians than any of his predecessors. All of them claimed to oppose the occupation, but none of them ever did a damn thing to end it. And one of Obama’s successors will eventually have to confront the cold fact that two states are no longer a realistic possibility.

What will he or she say then?

That seems about right.

However, my eye caught what Stephen Walt had to say about the role of language in international relations theory. As someone who flees screaming from all such ‘theory’ I nonetheless found it cleverly put. Thus (my emphasis):

There is a broad school of thought in international relations — often labeled “social constructivism” — which maintains that discourse can be of tremendous importance in shaping the conduct of states.

In this view, how leaders talk and how intellectuals write gradually shapes how we all think, and over time these discursive activities can exert a tremendous influence on norms, identities, and perceptions of what is right and what is possible…

But there is another broad family of IR theories — the realist family — and it maintains that what matters most in politics is power and how it is applied. In this view, national leaders often say lots of things they don’t really mean, or they say things they mean but then fail to follow through on because doing so would be politically costly.

From this perspective, words sometimes inspire and may change a few minds on occasion, but they are rarely enough to overcome deep and bitter conflicts. No matter how well-written or delivered, a speech cannot divert whole societies from a well-established course of action. Policies in motion tend to remain in motion; to change the trajectory of a deeply-entrenched set of initiatives requires the application of political forces of equal momentum.

Walt is a self-proclaimed realist and so saw the President’s words in Israel very much from that point of view. Hence his pessimism:

For realists like me, in short, halting a colonial enterprise that has been underway for over forty years will require a lot more than wise and well-intentioned words. Instead, it would require the exercise of power. Just as raw power eventually convinced most Palestinians that Israel’s creation was not going to be reversed, Israelis must come to realize that denying Palestinians a state of their own is going to have real consequences.

Although Obama warned that the occupation was preventing Israel from gaining full acceptance in the world, he also made it clear that Israelis could count on the United States to insulate them as much as possible from the negative effects of their own choices. Even at the purely rhetorical level, in short, Obama’s eloquent words sent a decidedly mixed message.

Read both pieces. Walt’s drills deeper and is more convincing, but both are eloquent and interesting.

In my view the distinction between the IR Social Constructivists and Realists is more about the need of US professors to write convoluted clever stuff than it is about anything that matters. Of course ‘power’ matters. But sometimes power comes not from weight of firepower but from creating a certain new tone and from being convincing: helping change attitudes today, and so creating a better chance of changing policies tomorrow

So? It just depends. There is a lot of reality out there, so a speech on its own – even from a US President in Israel – rarely makes any perceptible difference to anything. Obama’s much praised but intellectually nugatory Cairo speech is a good example of a much vaunted speech that if anything weakened the US position in the region, because it rambled around and appeared to promise more than Obama could or would ever deliver.

Here my sense (I speak as someone who knows nothing at all about the Israel/Palestine and wider ‘Arab World’ nexus of problems) is that President Obama leant very heavily towards the Israelis, partly in his words (what he said and what he did not say) and partly in the way the whole visit was organised and packaged.

Why did he do that? Stephen Walt:

By telling Israelis that he loved them and by telling both Israelis and Palestinians that the latter had just as much right to a state as the former, he was hoping to mold hearts and minds and convince them — through logic and reason — to end their century-old conflict. And make no mistake: He was saying that peace would require a powerful and increasingly wealthy Israel to make generous concessions, because the Palestinians have hardly anything more to give up. As Churchill put it, “in victory, magnanimity.”

Which brings me back to my earlier conclusion:

… Or was this visit ‘really’ about something else entirely, namely sweeping aside any misunderstandings with Israel (and helping Israel get back on track with Turkey) so as to be able to work with them in managing the more immediate horrendous and potentially inter-related problems of Syria and Iran? Not to forget the gruesome economic situation in Egypt.

Politics is/are all about priorities and timing. If you are a US President keen to work up a respectable second-term foreign policy legacy you might conclude that as things stand the Palestinian cause will just have to wait for a while, as other much bigger Arab/Muslim dramas unfold. And that in this failing Middle East region Israel, for all its faults, represents a stable partner you can more or less rely on.

Is such a conclusion an iteration of Realism, or Social Constructivism? I report. You decide.