The "Final Status" Idol

In my scholarly life, I have muddled my way through Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, though I did not find it a particularly edifying experience. Interesting that "edifying" and "edifice" are so similarly constructed, aedificare and all that...anyway, Kant did produce some genuinely insightful pieces, though these generally have a much more restricted focus than his larger works. One of these happy little reads (how strange that phrase sounds here!) is To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch from 1795. In it, Kant mulls intelligently the possibility that the world is moving toward a developmental stage where lasting international peace can be achieved, and sets about formulating some rules about that process. He's a big fan of republicanism in this regard.

One of his first points, indeed actually the first one, has stayed with me for many years now, coloring my view of pretty much any international diplomatic event:

"First Section, which contains the preliminary articles for perpetual peace among nations...No treaty of peace that tacitly reserves issues for a future war shall be held valid."

Kant's point is that a treaty which contains the seeds of future conflict, or which glosses over differences for the sake of finalizing a document, is in the end not really a "peace treaty" at all, but simply a truce. Some would, of course, argue that all treaties are simply truces, as a state which permanently forswears its ability to make war is not acting in its own self interest...but this is another argument.

I am no expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict; indeed, it would seem that such experts are few and far between. But I confess that I wince whenever I hear the term "Final Status" discussed in relation to these diplomatic efforts. We stand at a point now fully twelve years after the Oslo Accords and we are still far away from a consensus on what "final status" means for Jerusalem, the West Bank settlements, etc.

I admit that it is extremely unrealistic to have expected a settlement to every key question. But wasn't that the promise of Oslo? Wasn't that the act for which Rabin and Arafat were awarded the Nobel "Peace" Prize? How much international effort has been poorly focused because the Oslo Accords were not seen for what they were: merely an agreement between two warring parties to sit down and negotiate in good faith. A significant step, I grant, but not nearly enough, as the intifada and endless chattering have amply demonstrated.

There is an old diplomatic saying, which I fear I must paraphrase here: "Nothing persists like the provisional." If you put something in place, however hollow or shaky or "temporary," it hangs over everything that follows. I wonder whether this tells us something deeper about the state of modern diplomacy--the ability to come out of a negotiation with an agreement is paramount; indeed any negotiation without one is a "failure." There is some media influence here: after investing themselves in the process, leaders must show results, even "face-saving" ones.

But this is not the only possible diplomatic model. To the Soviet mind, for example, diplomacy was a means of sizing up the opposition, searching for strengths and weaknesses, an opportunity to see how far the West might go in the defense of Berlin, Korea, etc. If an agreement was inked, it meant that the Soviets came to an estimate of their opponents which made an agreement necessary.

In the Mideast, we are drowning in agreements and pledges and "road maps," and yet the end still lies beyond the horizon. Bold unilateral steps, such as Sharon's Gaza pullout, are the real traction generators. So do we stop the talking? Hardly--but neither should we imbue it with a power which it lacks. "Automatic" diplomacy is at best a political crutch, and at worst...?