In 2013, Barack Obama appointed Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel in the Clinton Administration, and a well-known foreign-policy voice in Washington, to be the U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Indyk’s efforts to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, a process that included secret negotiations between Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinian Authority, ended in disappointment. In his new book, “Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy,” Indyk examines the history of U.S. engagement in the region—specifically through an in-depth analysis of the former Secretary of State’s attempts to forge peace between Israel and its neighbors after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Indyk portrays Kissinger as extremely clever and intelligent, a deft strategist whose maneuverings ultimately establish the United States as the preëminent peacemaker in the region.
Indyk, a friend of Kissinger’s, offers some criticism of what he terms his subject’s “manipulations,” as he alternated between threats and flattery in trying to cajole the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Syrians into negotiating. But, in general, Indyk avoids the more controversial parts of Kissinger’s legacy, which include his support for prolonging the Vietnam War and the bombing of Cambodia during the war, his help in orchestrating a coup in Chile, his support for Pakistan’s genocide in what is now Bangladesh, and his encouragement of repressive regimes in Africa and Latin America.
I recently spoke by phone with Indyk, who is now a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what lessons Kissinger might offer today’s peacemakers, whether the U.S. has benefitted from its role as the major power in the region, and Indyk’s friendship with such a controversial figure.
Has Kissinger read the book?
Oh, yes. In great detail, as he would.
What did he say about it?
He didn’t dispute the things that I thought he would, where I questioned his judgment or actions that he took or didn’t take. He’s rather concerned at the way in which he was portrayed as manipulative. I think the reason that I titled the book “Master of the Game” was precisely that he was so good at those kinds of things, which are necessary for great diplomats. The art of diplomacy is to move leaders to places where they’d rather not go, and he was masterful at that. But I think he didn’t quite like the way he appeared.
I saw he’s been doing some book events with you, so he couldn’t have been too upset.
Exactly. I think he was grateful that somebody had devoted so much time and effort to detailing his negotiations, which hadn’t been done.
Why did you want to focus on Kissinger in the Middle East?
I had engaged myself in the effort to make peace in the Middle East, both in the Clinton Administration and in the Obama Administration. In both go-rounds, I had essentially been part of efforts that had failed. We haven’t had anything for seven years now, since that last effort broke down in 2014. I decided that, rather than write another book about a failed effort, I would go back and look at how it all began. And that was Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy coming off the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He then went for essentially three years trying to negotiate deals, and successfully negotiated two deals between Israel and Egypt, and one between Israel and Syria, which I said essentially laid the foundations for the American-led peace process. His was a successful effort, and that’s what I was interested in studying: to try to learn from that how to, and how not to, make peace going forward.
So Nixon has won reëlection, in 1972, and Kissinger becomes Secretary of State. Then there is this war following the 1967 war, from which Israel emerged victorious. Can you explain a little more about the circumstances?
The United States had just withdrawn from Vietnam. And Kissinger was basically confronted with a war that he had not expected—the 1973 Yom Kippur War—and saw that as an opportunity to remake the Middle East in a way that would make it a preserve of the United States and sideline the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War. That was the context in which his basic objective was to win one over the Soviet Union, which he did very successfully. But before the war broke out—and, in fact, before he became Secretary of State—he had gained control of the Middle East, even though Nixon had tried to keep him out of it because Nixon thought he was too pro-Israel. But, in the lead-up to the war, Kissinger had basically established what he thought was a stable order based on Israel’s deterrent power in the Middle East, and the Shah of Iran’s power in the Gulf. The problem with that was that six years earlier Israel had occupied the Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank, and the Arabs wanted their land back.
Kissinger didn’t pay attention to that. So Sadat [of Egypt] and Assad of Syria went to war, and Kissinger realized that the only way in which he could stabilize the order in the Middle East was by being serious about addressing Arab grievances through a peace process. But what I discovered in this study, which I thought was about Kissinger’s peacemaking, was that Kissinger was very suspicious about peace.
Yes, you write, “For him, peacemaking was a process designed to ameliorate conflicts between competing powers, not to end them. As we shall see, he would prove mightily resistant to more ambitious efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict because he feared that pursuing peace as an idealistic end state would jeopardize the stability that his order was designed to generate. Peace for Kissinger was a problem, not a solution. The desire for it needed to be manipulated to produce something more reliable, a stable order in a highly volatile part of the world. That Kissingerian Middle Eastern order would last for almost thirty years.”
Right. In fact, Kissinger’s basic purpose was to establish a stable order in the Middle East. That’s what mattered to him. Indeed, that’s what has mattered to him in his own life and in everything he’s done in terms of his government service—it was all about establishing order. But, in the Middle East, the war demonstrated to him that he could only achieve a stable order there if he had a peace process that would legitimize the order—by which he meant giving the Arabs a stake in maintaining the order rather than overthrowing it by going to war. And the only way that could be done was through getting Israel to give up territory. Territory for peace was not something he believed in, but territory for legitimizing the order was his real purpose. Therefore, he introduced a so-called step-by-step approach, which was designed to buy Israel time—time to strengthen itself with American support, and time for the Arabs to exhaust themselves until they would come to accept Israel. And Israel would be strong enough to make the ultimate territorial concessions that could eventually lead to peace.
I think one might look at the Lebanese Civil War, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the intifada, and decide that, in fact, the Middle East got worse after what you call this Kissingerian order was established. Why do you disagree?
Well, I think it could have been a lot worse if not for Kissinger. That is to say that Kissinger’s success was in taking Egypt out of the conflict with Israel. When he did that through the two agreements he negotiated between Israel and Egypt, he made it impossible for the other Arab states to consider going to war with Israel. From that point on, all of the things that you cite were not state-to-state wars. In Lebanon, it was Israel versus the P.L.O. or Israel versus Hezbollah, but you didn’t have another Arab-Israeli state-to-state conflict. And that reduced the level of conflict considerably. Kissinger didn’t believe that you could eliminate conflict. He thought that you could ameliorate it.
