Prez Debate: 5 Middle East Questions

Here are the questions I'd love PBS's Jim Lehrer to ask Barack Obama and John McCain during the University of Mississippi debate on Friday. This will be the first general election campaign debate, which is devoted to the topic of foreign policy, when Americans and the world will hear the candidates directly say what they would do about the Middle East. The region was George Bush's main foreign policy challenge, and it will likely be theirs, too.

1. On Iraq: What constitutes realistic "success" for you in Iraq, and what is your plan to risk more American lives and money, and your time span, for achieving it?

McCain says he would stay in Iraq for 100 years if necessary, while Obama wants a timetable for a quicker withdrawal. However, the key issues are how the candidates' define success, how much they're willing to invest to achieve it, and how realistic they are about facing harsh realities as they develop on the ground. If turning Iraq into Switzerland is your definition of success, you might be there for 100 years or more. But if you are willing to define success as a country with semi-functioning governing institutions, whose government leans more toward Tehran than Washington, you might be able to bring your boys home during your first year in office. What voters need is not more blather on timetables but a look at the next president's mindset about what the U.S. must achieve in Iraq, at what cost and with what degree of realism.

2. On Iran: How do you prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon? Will you seek a Grand Bargain including normal relations with the Tehran regime? If you believe the use of force is preferable or even inevitable, then tell American voters about your war plan.

In the 30 years since the Islamic Revolution and the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, American and Iranian leaders have come and gone, but relations have only gotten worse. As America's direct involvement in the Middle East has grown, so too has Iranian influence and demand for security. How to handle the Iran crisis may be the biggest foreign challenge facing the next U.S. president. If Iran succeeds in constructing a nuclear weapon, even assuming it does not launch an atomic attack, it will dangerously change the balance of power in the Middle East. A U.S.-led attack to destroy the Iranian nuclear program could set back U.S-Iranian relations much further, result in deadly Iranian reprisal attacks on the U.S., Israel and American Arab allies and spark a new wave of radical Islamic fervor against the West. The next president won't have the luxury of putting off the war-peace choice, so McCain and Obama have to explain their inclinations now.

3. On Israel-Palestine: If peacemaking is sincerely a high priority for you, then what mediation plan would your presidency adopt that is different and more likely to bring success, considering that four decades of direct mediation by U.S. administrations has already failed to achieve a final peace agreement?

The little secret about the Middle East conflict is that all the main parties are nearly there on a peace agreement. There are factions in Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East that oppose any compromises. But the mainstream parties, and their respective constituencies, have gone 80%, 90% or 95% of the way. This may not hold true forever, meaning that peacemaking is an urgent priority for the next president. Bush did immense damage to the peace process by withholding American diplomatic engagement for the first six years of his presidency. The next president could do immense good if he re-engages right away and shows the courage to bang heads together to push the parties the remaining 20% (or less) of the way home. Whether the candidates are able to initiate new approaches will be the key to success or more failure.

4. On Terrorism: What mix of military force, along with political, economic and social initiatives, if any, is required for the U.S. to defeat al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists?

Surely the defeat of al-Qaeda entails a large-scale military and intelligence campaign. The problem, as Bush's approach demonstrated, is that a badly conceived and/or managed campaign can lose friends and fail to influence people rather than the other way around. The U.S. had the support of the world to fight al-Qaeda after 9/11--that is, until the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and the establishment of Guantanamo Bay; until the invasion of Iraq without 9/11 linkage or U.N. mandate, the resulting looting and civil war and the images from Abu Ghraib; until the Islamic world watched as the U.S. did little to address Palestinian rights. The lesson of modern Middle East terrorism that the next president must absorb is that blunt force without credibility and adequate attention to addressing vital issues like freedom and justice is doomed to failure.

5. On Democracy: Will you continue supporting authoritarian regimes like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan that have been traditional U.S. allies in the Arab world, or will you make America's future friendship conditional on democracy and human rights in those countries?

Until Bush, all American administrations looked the other way if Arab leaders supported peace, exported oil, cooperated in Cold War or all of the above. Unfortunately, Bush's Middle East reform efforts were resented by nearly everybody in the Middle East including most Middle East reformers themselves. The regimes resented lecturing from a U.S. administration that nonetheless continued to request help in other areas like peace making and fighting terrorism. Most reformers who otherwise would welcome support for democracy did not want to be associated with a U.S. administration that maintained strong support for Israel's policies and launched a military invasion of an Arab country. The question is whether McCain and Obama have learned that, in the real Middle East, there is no stark choice between despots and democrats, no magic wand; stable democratization will come gradually and can be best assisted by truly standing for values like freedom and justice and the building of institutions that promote them.

-By Scott MacLeod/Cairo