Anwar Sadat

The central tenet of this substack is that relationship based ethics are based on an evaluation of how something effects your power relative to others. Your actions naturally follow from that conclusion. And that may very well be the main obstacle to achieving peace in the mideast. The principle of peace is easy to understand and support. But what happens when that principle threatens your power?

I don’t know how many people remember the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. But as I was listening to Jeffrey Sachs on Tucker Carlson talk about how Israel has “owned” US foreign policy in the mideast over the last 30 years I thought of him. Sachs described the malign influence of Israel on US mideast policy but didn’t go back far enough. He should have gone back to 1981, not 1995. (Maybe he did - honestly, I grew tired of the same old tropes after 15 minutes or so - and Sachs is a pretty smart guy so I don’t understand it.) Anyway…

Anwar Sadat signed an historic peace deal with Menachim Begin brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978. It was an amazing accomplishment that, on principle, the whole world cheered. Three years later, Sadat was assassinated.

Islamist fundamentalists killed Sadat because the agreement threatened their power. And it sent a very clear message to all other mideast leaders: threaten our power and we will kill you. Those other leaders have listened, and will continue to do so. (This is my interpretation of history.)

Since then, Israel - recognizing that mideast peace is an impossibility as long as there are strong Islamist groups holding power - has been in a near constant state of war with various mideast countries/entities. Sadly, and tragically, Israel cannot rely on diplomacy to bring peace and cannot rely on the UN to help keep them safe. It is, for them, an unfortunate fact of life that if they want to survive they must keep the enemies that surround them as weak as possible.

How do you make relationship based individuals accept the principle of peace? You’re going to have be on hell of a diplomat to figure that out.