An Interview with Irene Gendzier

Irene Gendzier’s critically acclaimed, wide-reaching analysis of post-World War II U.S. policy in Lebanon posits that the politics of oil and pipelines figured far more significantly in U.S. relations with Lebanon than previously believed. In Notes from the Minefield, Irene Gendzier aptly demonstrates how oil, power, and politics drove U.S. policy and influenced the development of the state and the region.nnQ: The current administration in Washington defines its policy in Lebanon in terms of support for democracy. Does this represent a new direction in U.S. policy toward Beirut?nnIrene Gendzier: The administration’s claim to support democracy in Lebanon is neither new nor a valid description of U.S. policy. While the G. W. Bush administration claims to pioneer democracy in the Middle East, its policies can more accurately be described as attempting to reorder the Middle East to assure U.S. hegemony. This explains Washington’s readiness to undermine democratically elected representatives, as in the case of Hamas or Hizbollah, who are accurately perceived as resisting U.S. and Israeli policies. The overriding concern, routinely described in terms of supporting stability, lies in assuring the emergence and protection of political elites prepared to accept U.S. hegemony in the region, Lebanon included.nnQ: Isn’t the administration’s claim to support “strengthening moderate Lebanese forces” a prerequisite to democracy in Lebanon?nnIG: It is difficult to accept such a claim in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Lebanon in July 2006 in which Washington not only cooperated in prewar planning but blocked demands for a ceasefire after the massive destruction inflicted by Israeli forces on the country. Such collaboration has little to do with democracy or bringing stability to the central government that is allegedly Washington’s ally, when it is gravely weakened as a result of the scale of destruction of the country.nnBut support for “moderate Lebanese forces,” which is not new to U.S. policy in Lebanon or the Middle East, has meant support for the crackdown on reformist and radical movements viewed as constituting a risk to the pursuit of U.S. interests in the region. This was a factor in U.S. intervention in Lebanon first civil war in 1958, as Notes From the Minefield, makes clear. At that time, the head of the reformist party in Lebanon was Kamal Joumblatt, a charismatic figure regarded by U.S. officials in Washington as a grave risk to the protection of U.S. interests in Lebanon. The fact that Joumblatt was an admirer of the United States was of little interest. What led Washington to oppose him was his commitment to social and political reform in Lebanon. The pattern remained the same in U.S. intervention in Lebanon’s second civil war, which extended from 1975 through 1990, and it has not fundamentally changed since.nnQ: The G. W. Bush administration has been criticized by some who claim that democracy is foreign to a region as volatile as the Middle East, including Lebanon.nnIG: Such a position ignores the political reality of the region, including that of Lebanon, in which movements for reform as well as the abolition of confessionalism and the struggle for democracy have a long history, as I just indicated. What is perhaps not apparent to many in the United States is the extent to which U.S.-backed policies, including the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, contributed to the emergence of the very party and movement that Washington and Tel Aviv now condemn, namely, Hizbollah. That movement became a political party with a strong social base and is currently the target of both Israeli and U.S. policies. In its place, Washington now favors those who support its neoliberal policies in Beirut. But what U.S. officials are not prepared to admit is that some of the very same individuals and groups are unprepared to legitimize U.S. policies in the region.nnQ: When did U.S. involvement in Lebanon begin?nnIG: From the end of the Second World War to the present, successive U.S. administrations recognized the importance of having a compatible political elite in power in Lebanon as critical to the pursuit of U.S. interests in the Middle East.nnThroughout the post-World War II period, U.S. officials viewed Lebanon as a base for U.S. commercial and strategic interests, including those extending to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Often forgotten is the role that TAPLINE, the pipeline that carried ARAMCO oil from Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese port of Tripoli, played in U.S. policy. And as the evidence in Notes From the Minefield indicates, Washington regarded Lebanon as a Middle Eastern “asset,” along with Israel. Then as later, U.S. officials also realized that Lebanon’s political fate was intimately tied to the local and regional dimensions of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.nnLebanon and the states of the region changed in the intervening years, as did the international context. The end of the Cold War, however, in no way blunted U.S. interests in a state that has long been regarded as one of the centers of U.S. policy in the region.nnQ: How well informed is the U.S. public about such developments?nnIG: Many critics of U.S. policy have pointed to the failure or reluctance of the U.S. public to confront the consequences of American foreign policy. In some quarters, the Middle East has been a virtually taboo subject as far as critical examination of U.S. policy is concerned. The responsibility of the U.S. media has often been singled out in this context, and so has the role of Washington in masking policies to deceive the public. The pattern is not new, although the extent of disinformation that Congress passes on to its constituents is at a high point.nnIn 1983, after the Israeli invasion and the disaster of the truck bombing of U.S. Marines in Beirut who were part of the multinational peace keeping force in Lebanon, there was an effort in Washington to mobilize public opinion in support of U.S. policy. At the time, U.S. officials conceded that it was not enough to emphasize Lebanon’s importance to U.S. national interests by underlining Israel’s importance or U.S. support for democracy in Lebanon. It was essential to link support for Lebanon with what was happening in the region, including in Syria and the Gulf. And then, as later, radical Shi’ites were accused of being Iranian agents.nnThat was 1983. The arguments did not differ in 2006. Going back to an earlier time is even more revealing. In 1958 the United States intervened in Lebanon’s first civil war, an intervention that coincided with the Iraqi revolution. In Washington, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took up the Middle East situation, it confronted the officials of the Eisenhower administration with the demand to know the legal basis for U.S. intervention in Lebanon. The subsequent exchange revealed the contempt of the administration for the public’s right to know. It also revealed the effectiveness of critical and informed senators in exposing U.S. interests in the Middle East.nnThen as now, those interests were not entirely hidden. They were on record and at least some part of that record is accessible to the public, as the evidence offered in Notes From the Minefield demonstrates. What the examination of that record reveals is the connection between past and present U.S. policies in Lebanon and the Middle East. To ignore it is to compound our failure to understand the consequences of U.S. policy for the peoples of the region and the U.S.