Foreword

FOREWORD ?, IE APRIL 1986 BOMBING OF LIBYA signaled an escalation in the level of the U.S. response to the growing problem of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere. Eight months after the bombing the effects of the United States' new activism remain unclear. In this issue, the SAIS REVIEW examines the problem of international terrorism from a number of different perspectives. Our discussion begins with a look at the policymaking process preceding the April 1986 U.S. bombing of Tripoli, provided by a figure intimately involved in this decision, Vice President George Bush. Next is a broad and insightful examination of terrorism by Gary Sick, a former member of the National Security Council. Sick warns that, despite the sudden attention to the problem, terrorism is hardly a new phenomenon and, as such, is unlikely to disappear because of one bombing raid or a hundred. Arnold DiLaura suggests ways of altering current U.S. antiterrorist policy from a defensive posture to a preventive strategy through taking the initiative away from the terrorist. The REVIEW also examines an issue intimately connected with terrorism in one part of the world, the continued stalemate in the ArabIsraeli conflict. Almost eight years after the Camp David Accords, a durable peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors remains elusive. The consensus among the first three authors—Samuel Lewis, Aaron David Miller, and Arthur Day— is that the major obstacle to peace is the domestic political weakness ofmore conciliatory factions within each of the major actors, be they Israel's Labor party, the more moderate elements within the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or King Hussein ofJordan. In the last article of the cluster Martin Indyk gives an overview of U.S. policy in this complex region since 1981. Indyk agrees that regional domestic politics has limited movement in the peace process during the Reagan years, and argues that the failure to take these limits into account was vi SAIS REVIEW the major weakness of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East early in the Reagan period. The realization that U.S. activism could not take the place of enthusiasm among forces indigenous to the region, Indyk argues, marked a major turning point in recent U.S. Middle East policy. Another view of Reagan diplomacy, this time on a global scale, is presented in a lucid, thought-provoking piece by SAIS professor Roger Hansen. Hansen traces Reagan foreign policy on two levels, the administration 's ideological underpinnings and rhetorical pronouncements, and its actions. He argues that the gap between the two during Reagan's first term led to a sweeping reassessment of U.S. foreign policy articulated in the 1985 Reagan Doctrine. In a view certain to provoke controversy, Hansen declares the doctrine to be "a rhetorical shell game" designed to imbue "realist" foreign-policy goals with ideological and moral force by recasting a weak attempt at containment as a clash between democracy and the "evil empire." Hansen maintains, however, that most Americans have rejected both the premises of the Reagan Doctrine and the domestic sacrifices needed to maintain global containment. Rounding out this issue of the REVIEW are several pieces on a variety of topics ofinterest to the international affairs community. Allan Hanson offers a novel view of New Zealand's antinuclear policy, placing the decision to ban visits by nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered vessels in the context of changes in that country's worldview. Mohammed Ahrari offers an analysis of Iranian foreign policy under Khomeini, both in the Persian Gulf and with respect to both superpowers, and discusses the future implications this may have for an area of critical importance to the West. Martin Andersen examines the current situation in Chile, a nation in which U.S. policy could play a crucial role in easing a transition to democracy after more than thirteen years of military rule. Steve Charnovitz discusses an important issue in U.S. trade policy, the promotion of worker rights abroad. Finally, Jean-Emmanuel Pondi finds evidence of a new pragmatism in the Organization for African Unity and its vision of, and planning for, African development. GlLAD Y. OHANA EDITOR ...