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For decades, foreign policy experts—the blob—assumed much about the Middle East that has turned out to be completely wrong.
By John Daniel Davidson //
Writing earlier this year in the Texas National Security Review about the Good Friday Agreement that ended Northern Ireland’s civil war, James B. Steinburg, a former deputy national security advisor and State Department official in the Clinton administration, noted the importance of what he calls “ripeness” in international diplomacy and conflict resolution. In the case of Northern Ireland, the parties adopted in 1998 what they had rejected in 1973. Changed circumstances, says Steinburg, played a major role, but so did the recognition that circumstances had changed:
While policymakers are often limited in what they can do to create the conditions that make a conflict ripe for settlement, it is a vital tool of statecraft to be able to spot an opportunity when it is emerging. It is equally important to understand when a conflict is not ripe for negotiation: It can be argued that the premature effort leading to the Sunningdale agreement in 1973 actually contributed to prolonging the conflict.