An Interview with Douglas Feith (Continued from p.6) up happening is when you enter into a negotiation like that --with the dishonest policy of pretending to be for the goal but hoping to prevent it--you wind up actually achieving the goal. So you outsmart yourself. Outpost: Israeli governments, this one included, have always said they are willing to enter into negotiations without preconditions. Are there any dangers in this? Does that allow the other party to set an agenda? What is a precondition? If Syria says let's negotiate about the future of the Golan Heights, is that a precondition? Feith: I do not believe it is a realistic policy for the government of the United States, or the government of Israel, or any other democratic government, to refuse to talk to the governments of its neighbors or main rivals or antagonists. If the Syrian government is willing to sit down and talk with the Israelis about the range of issues affecting the two countries, I don't believe it is realistic to suppose the Israeli government is going to say we are unwilling to talk with you. Where you get into trouble is when you start to set terms of reference for the talks and create an agenda. You need to be extremely careful how you describe publicly what it is that the talks are aiming to achieve. If you say we are willing to talk about everything without preconditions it is not to my mind particularly bad, because you are not committing to anything particular. Let us say that you believe in advance that the only way Israel can be secure is maintaining military control of the Golan Heights. That's your real position. Then I would say it would be a bad mistake to enter into talks that are publicly described as an exploration of the bilateral security arrangements that would make an Israeli withdrawal possible. You are then admitting that something other than military control over the Golan would be adequate. You may enter into those talks saying to yourself, "We're going to announce that we are willing to explore things that could substitute for Israeli military control even though that we know in advance that there is nothing that could substitute for it." That would be dangerous. Because once you have endorsed the idea that there is a substitute (through participating in the negotiations), then your personal commitment to maintain a red line which will not allow any substitution for Israeli control of the Golan is going to be unsustainable. Outpost: But what if we say we are discussing the future of the Golan? We are discussing the Golan Heights? Feith: There are degrees of danger. That may be slightly less dangerous. Putting something officially on the table is always a risky proposition. There is a dynamic in negotiations that often leads even hard-headed governments, once negotiations are underway, to make concessions that the government would not have contemplated before the negotiations got under way. In other words, there is a dynamic at work that tends to erase red

lines and it is a big flaw, a big error, a big conceit to launch into negotiations on subjects where your only protection is certain red lines that you establish and then believe that you'll be able to protect. Even if your administration can protect the red lines, future administrations won't. For example, the Reagan administration prevented the chemical negotiations from leading to a bad treaty, but the Bush administration brought the treaty home, and it brought the treaty home in part because of the legitimacy that was given to the negotiations by the fact that the Reagan administration had agreed to do them. What I'm saying is that honesty is the best policy. I emphatically think that you have to negotiate. It is just that you have to be extremely careful about how you frame the terms of reference. Outpost: Netanyahu is now talking about a Madrid style conference. Why is he doing that? What does that mean? Feith: I think that he is trying to neutralize the argument that the only people who get good cooperation from the Arabs on negotiations are the Labor people. There is a domestic demand in Israel and an international, diplomatic demand for the Israeli government to demonstrate a willingness to talk to its neighbors. And Netanyahu wants to make it clear that he is open to talking to them. As I said, it's one thing to be open to talk to them. It's another thing cynically, or dishonestly or in bad faith to agree to an agenda that you really don't subscribe to and then flatter yourself by thinking that you can control the dynamic of the negotiations. Outpost: How does one secure compliance with existing agreements in an ongoing negotiation? The Labor government seems to have been totally uninterested in ensuring compliance. But the Likud government too buried under the rug the total failure of Egyptian compliance. Feith: When democratic governments negotiate treaties, especially with non-democratic adversaries, the democratic governments make political hay out of the accomplishment. They then have a large political stake and the politicians have a personal political stake in the appearance of success of that diplomacy. The undemocratic adversaries understand this, so they capitalize on it. They violate the agreements knowing that the guys on the other side, the democratic government officials, would have to admit in effect the failure of their own diplomacy and their own achievements if they make too much of a fuss over the violations. So what you find is that instead of the democratic country's officials condemning the other side's violations, they wind up minimizing them or in some cases ignoring them, or in some cases even apologizing for them and defending them. That's what you saw in the early seventies when Henry Kissinger was making enormous political hay for the Nixon administration out of his detente agreements. When the Soviets violated these agreements, Kissinger, instead of (Continued on p.10)

Outpost               - 8 -               July-August 1996