Martin Indyk

Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy

Master of the Game

Making peace in the long-troubled Middle East is likely to be one of the top priorities of the next American president. He will need to take account of the important lessons from past attempts, which are described and analyzed here in a gripping book by a renowned expert who served twice as U.S. ambassador to Israel and as Middle East adviser to President Clinton. Martin Indyk draws on his many years of intense involvement in the region to provide the inside story of the last time the United States employed sustained diplomacy to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and change the behavior of rogue regimes in Iraq and Iran. Innocent Abroad is an insightful history and a poignant memoir. Indyk provides a fascinating examination of the ironic consequences when American naïveté meets Middle Eastern cynicism in the region's political bazaars. He dissects the very different strategies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to explain why they both faced such difficulties remaking the Middle East in their images of a more peaceful or democratic place. He provides new details of the breakdown of the Arab-Israeli peace talks at Camp David, of the CIA's failure to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and of Clinton's attempts to negotiate with Iran's president. Indyk takes us inside the Oval Office, the Situation Room, the palaces of Arab potentates, and the offices of Israeli prime ministers. He draws intimate portraits of the American, Israeli, and Arab leaders he worked with, including Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon; the PLO's Yasser Arafat; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak; and Syria's Hafez al-Asad. He describes in vivid detail high-level meetings, demonstrating how difficult it is for American presidents to understand the motives and intentions of Middle Eastern leaders and how easy it is for them to miss those rare moments when these leaders are willing to act in ways that can produce breakthroughs to peace. Innocent Abroad is an extraordinarily candid and enthralling account, crucially important in grasping the obstacles that have confounded the efforts of recent presidents. As a new administration takes power, this experienced diplomat distills the lessons of past failures to chart a new way forward that will be required reading.

An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East

Innocent Abroad

A perceptive and provocative history of Henry Kissinger's diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East that illuminates the unique challenges and barriers Kissinger and his successors have faced in their attempts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. “A wealth of lessons for today, not only about the challenges in that region but also about the art of diplomacy . . . the drama, dazzling maneuvers, and grand strategic vision.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk—a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013—has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand. Now, in an attempt to understand the arc of American diplomatic influence in the Middle East, he returns to the origins of American-led peace efforts and to the man who created the Middle East peace process—Henry Kissinger. Based on newly available documents from American and Israeli archives, extensive interviews with Kissinger, and Indyk's own interactions with some of the main players, the author takes readers inside the negotiations. Here is a roster of larger-than-life characters—Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Hafez al-Assad, and Kissinger himself. Indyk's account is both that of a historian poring over the records of these events, as well as an inside player seeking to glean lessons for Middle East peacemaking. He makes clear that understanding Kissinger's design for Middle East peacemaking is key to comprehending how to—and how not to—make peace.

Flynt Lawrence Leverett

The "war on terror" and the battle in Iraq provided the framework for George W. Bush's first term in office. As he embarked on a second term, the president reaffirmed his administration's commitment to a transformative Middle East agenda that now includes the challenges of promoting democracy, non-proliferation, and Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Saban Center at the Brookings Institution commissioned a group of its experts to critique the Bush administration's first-term performance and present alternative approaches for its second term. T he Road Ahead covers the full set of challenges confronting President Bush in his second term: from fighting Binladenism to promoting Arab reform; from achieving Middle East peace to saving Iraq; and from tackling Iran to engaging Syria and Saudi Arabia. The contributors argue that the Bush administration will need to develop an integrated Middle East strategy that improves the prospects for achieving a priority identified during the 2004 presidential campaign: strengthening alliances and utilizing them to ease the burden on American leadership. Th e Road Ahead provides the necessary elements for a genuinely integrated strategic framework that will help decisionmakers manage both the changes and the continuities in America's post-9/11 Middle East policy. Contributors: Martin Indyk, Flynt Leverett, Kenneth Pollack, James Steinberg, Shibley Telhami, and Tamara Cofman Wittes, all connected with the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. A Saban Center Report

Middle East Policy in the Bush Administration's Second Term : Planning Papers

The Road Ahead

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Kenneth Lieberthal

A trio of prominent foreign policy experts present the first serious book-length appraisal of Barack Obama's foreign policy, arguing that Obama thus far has, above all, been a foreign policy pragmatist, tackling one issue at a time in a thoughtful way.

Martin Indyk

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