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By Jeanette Friedman
 NEW YORK--Today, in Fall of 2009, career diplomat Dennis Ross is a member of the National Security Council and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the "Central Region" with overall responsibility for the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia.
The first time I met him was on “Bloody Thursday,” September 25, 1996, when a door to a tunnel near the Western Wall in Jerusalem was opened, and all hell broke loose. He was in New York City that night, 5,000 miles away, and when it happened, his life became infinitely more complicated than it already had been. He was special advisor to the Secretary of State and special U.S. envoy to the Middle East. He was also one of President Bill Clinton’s “unsung heroes,” and a key negotiator in the Middle East peace process.
I interviewed Ross again Washington in January 2008, as the battle for the presidential primary was heating up between the Clintons and the Obamas. At the time, he was the Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and had plenty of time to chat.
The night the Tunnel happened, Ross had to drop what he was doing—speaking at an event atop the World Trade Center—and get to the airport to catch the last plane to DC. He almost missed it.
What was his life like? On one typical day, at a vitally important Middle East summit at the White House, he shuttled from the Oval Office, where President Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were conferring, to the Roosevelt Room, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan were chatting. After the White House closed down at 4 p.m., for the next 12 hours, Ross shuttled between Blair House, where Netanyahu was staying, to Arafat’s hotel in Northern Virginia. Then he had to prepare for his morning meetings at the State Department. And that was nothing compared to shuttling around to three or four or five or six countries within a day or two. Ross was always sleep-deprived yet functioned at top form.
In 2008, his life was a great deal quieter than it is now, and Ross is still on top of his game. When we talked, he confided that not working for the government was liberating. But now he’s back on track. Even when he wasn’t working, he was working: He was always traveling to the region and was still able to affect things. “They still hear my voice, and what I write and say is in an effort to influence things, but it’s all indirect.” At the time he had no authority or responsibility. Then when leaders saw him, they chose to see him. Now, as point man in the region, they have to see him. Then, they chose to listen, now they have to listen, just as they did when he worked for the Clinton administration.
That he chose to go back to work as a diplomat was no surprise. As he said on that snowy January day, “I would go back in under the right circumstances. If they ask, yes. Do I plan to? No. But I feel the responsibility, and if I felt I could make a difference I would go back in.”
Obviously he hopes to meet his goals.
Ross, who retains his boyish good looks despite locks of gray, was, for a time, getting much more sleep than he used to. He spent some luxurious time writing, and recently published Statecraft, a book of historical and diplomatic analysis of major events that affect America’s standing in the world. It is at once philosophical and practical. And everyone who has anything to do with conducting foreign policy—from presidential candidates and members of Congress, to every employee at the State Department, up to the Secretary of State, should have read it and reread it. It is a primer for digging the United States out of the quagmire created by the war in Iraq, and how to cope with the unintended consequences of war. It is clear from the policy currently being pursued that the administration shares his ideas and points of view.
An eminently readable book, Statecraft is also a personal memoir of sorts, showing how Ross’ diplomatic experiences shaped his thinking. He wrote it, he says, as an important conversation starter in a presidential election year. He bases his observations on his work at the State Department under every administration since Ronald Reagan’s. Unlike some in the State Department, he was much more than a fly on the wall. He was a back channel to diplomats from every country, particularly when the Iron Curtain fell, when the United States needed to build a coalition in order to go to war in the Gulf in 1991 and in dealing with the Balkan wars.
Today we face new and more dangerous challenges. In our conversation Ross offers a formula for diplomatic success. “You have to think through your own positions, and that puts you in a better place. Given the trauma of 9/11, normal checks and balances didn’t operate. The administration didn’t think things through. An American administration needs to be clear and explain, so that it’s clarified in your own head. There has to be accountability. And if your objectives aren’t clear, then neither are your means.”
What accountability could there have been when the system of checks and balances, so essential to American governance, fell apart after 9/11? “Checks and balances didn’t work for a short period of time,” said Ross. “They require accountability and Bush never asked for accountability. We have to ask ourselves, ‘What are the means that others have or we have to achieve our global objectives?’ We need to be clear. And we have to remember that you can’t negotiate without trust, and you cannot produce agreements without a culture of accountability.”
The roots of his philosophy as expressed in Statecraft were already visible in an interview he granted me on “Bloody Thursday.” When that day was over, 77 were dead and hundreds were injured in the worst confrontation since the Six Day War. There were tanks in the territories for the first time since 1967. And Dennis Ross was in it up to his eyeballs. We talked in a cab on the way to the airport.
Ironically,some 13 years later not much has changed. In 1996, with withdrawal from Hebron six months behind schedule, Arafat was in trouble with his own people because they didn’t like his corruption and the way the Palestinian Authority (PA) treated them. Today they don’t like Hamas in Gaza or Mahmoud Abbas and his crew on the West Bank.
Economically, the Palestinians were desperate because of border closings and curfews. They still are. Internally, the democratic process was hardly visible. It is still hard to find. Hence frustration on two fronts—pressure from within and without. Arafat and Muslim religious leaders used the opportunity to exhort frustrated Palestinians to hold protest marches and strikes against the tunnel opening, The Israelis were frustrated after bus bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Today, Sharon and Arafat are gone. The Palestinians are still tearing each other apart and using terror in their own neighborhoods and against the Israelis. The Israelis are frustrated by rocket barrages and have been through two more wars. And the attempt to bring democracy to the West Bank failed when President George W. Bush pushed for elections. As Ross notes, the push for those elections made for some very strange bedfellows. Sharon and Abbas were against the elections, knowing full well that chaos would result. George Bush? He sided with Hamas, and the Middle East cauldron was set to boil over.
When we spoke, Bush, Jr. was suddenly trying to make a push for peace. Ehud Olmert, then the Prime Minister was serious about doing the deal. He said that when Hamas took over Gaza, it was a kind of epiphany, it meant that Islamists control Gaza, and will likely be the alternative to Abbas and Salam Fayyad if they fail.
“Israel has a stake in Palestinians who believe in coexistence, and so do we. The bad news is the delivery capacity. The public (Arabs and Israelis) are disbelieving, the street is skeptical and Bush had no strategy. Salaam Fayyad, [the Palestinian Prime Minister] was trying to create a culture of accountability, and that’s why we all have a stake in his success. That will make peace more possible than it has been.”
In analyzing what happened during the Bush years, Ross noted, “What they did was more stagecraft than statecraft. They didn’t develop the means to carry out a policy that met the objective of peace and would lead to the two-state solution. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, was convinced that Iran created a common denominator; Arab leaders and Israelis both see the threat from Iran. And because of that, Rice saw a strategic opening: if the US could do something about the Palestinians, it could create a coalition against Iran. That is why she launched an effort.”
What Ross said about the dangers in Iran is truer now than it was in 2008.
“The Iranian threat is real because Ahmadinejad is tied to the Revolutionary Guards, and they control the nuclear power plants and research into weapons. They support terrorism throughout the region—Hamas, Hezbollah—and foment violence and terror in Iraq. Every time we would make headway in the Middle East, Iran would push Hamas and Islamic Jihad to terrorist acts, setting us back. Iranian leaders like Khatami (who are relatively pragmatic), from their standpoint, and the mullahs who seek to preserve their power and privilege see the public as alienated and understand that they need to buy them off…so sanctions are a real problem for them.”
Things have only gotten worse since the contested elections in Iran and the discovery of the second weapons-grade nuclear enrichment plant in Qum.
**Despite the failures in the Peace Process, in 1996, Ross was already applying the diplomatic dynamics that were defined in Statecraft.
“We knew,” he told me then, “that [Netanyahu and Arafat] have to have some period where they would be able to have some release, to describe areas where they had their own grievances. And then only in the aftermath of having been able to have that kind of opportunity, do you then begin to look for ways to solve problems. I think they convinced each other that there was a genuine desire to try and work together.
“[Warring parties] have to find a way not to direct a climate of violence against each other. They have to find ways to move forward and create trust. The American job is to be the facilitator, to get [peace processes] launched and shape an agenda that gets relatively quick results—to help them clarify the issues and, where possible, find ways to produce real results on the ground.”
In that old interview Ross told me, “There is a legacy with this conflict. a legacy of hate, of suspicion, of doubt, of grievance, of fear, and of pain and when you put all those elements of that legacy together, it should not surprise us that we are going to have ups and downs. Those kinds of emotions don’t disappear overnight.”
Clarifying issues, setting clear objectives, knowing the facts on the ground and dealing with realpolitik, instead of wishful thinking are what he writes about in Statecraft.
Back in the day, Ross often tried to convince Arafat to come to Washington, and sometimes it wasn’t about politics, it was about his health. Now that Arafat is gone, I can ask Ross questions no one dared to ask out loud: Could Arafat ever have transitioned into the role of a statesman, prime minister or mayor—to build his state instead of focusing on the destruction of Israel?
In 2008 Ross leaned in and recounted two telling anecdotes: “The conflict defined Arafat. If it ended, he would have been finished. I was with him continuously. One day, I was sitting with him, just the two of us, and I told him I was going home for a vacation. He said it must be nice to take a vacation; he hadn’t had one since 1963. When I asked him why he didn’t take one, it became a defining moment. He said, ‘How could I take a vacation from my people?’ And I realized that he believed his own myth and that a peace treaty with him would not be possible.”
When asked about Arafat’s last conversation with President Clinton, on his last day in office, Ross described how Arafat was praising Clinton, who told him, “You made me a failure.”
And then there’s the truly burning question: “Did AIDS kill him?”
“His health was an issue, too. He never wanted to come to the States, to Bethesda, for a medical exam. We would have arranged it so that no one would know, but he didn’t want to do it. We were very concerned. He was sometimes vacant, and had tremors.
“One time I went to see him in Nablus at 8:30 am. Normally we met late in the day or very early in the morning, so this was very unusual. We were eating breakfast and he starts popping pills—by the handful. So I asked him how many pills he takes and he said 45, every morning. And then he even offered me some! I politely declined.
“There were herbals, vitamins, yeast, everything—45 pills. So I asked our doctors if it was possible that his condition was linked to all these medications. Could it be you can have all sorts of reactions to these pills? So who knows what did him in?” (Not everyone who has asked Ross that question knew that the hospital in France, where Arafat died, was the same hospital well-known for being an AIDS treatment center in the 1980s—the same place that famously treated movie star Rock Hudson until his death.)
**
Presidents come and go. Secretaries of State come and go. But Dennis Ross prevailed. A baby boomer from San Francisco who did his undergraduate and graduate work at UCLA, his encounters with the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam shaped his perspective. He is committed to peace in the Middle East because it is in his bones. He cannot be other than he is. And he is a realistic optimist.
Ross was born in 1948 to parents of Russian extraction, sandwiched between an older sister and younger brother. “My mother was born in Chicago and grew up in L.A. My father, who died in 1979, was born in Sacramento and grew up in Seattle.
“I had a Jewish identity, but it was in no way religious. But I was certainly aware of anti-Semitism. I grew up in Marin County and there were almost no Jews—my high school had maybe four or five of us in a class of 500. I didn’t experience it directly, but I would hear people say things.
“There’s nothing like having that feeling of being made different by others to create a sense of who you are. I developed a strong Jewish identity, even though I grew up in a household where there wasn’t a lot whole lot of religious identification. I became religious later on. My wife grew up in a religious household and I began to develop more of a religious sense after we met.” (They met during a political campaign in 1970.)
“I describe my characteristics as patience, persistence and having a sense of humor. My wife clearly has patience and she clearly has a sense of humor—but part of it also is that she believes that what I am doing is important. It’s important to her as well.”
Why is he always so passionate about peace in the Middle East?
“I think my passion comes from a sense that this conflict has become highly personalized for me. I know so many people on each side of it, and I see them as individuals. I met their families, I know what they experience. I feel the conflict, in a sense, has been humanized for me.
“And it’s not an abstraction. I have a background of working on the Soviet Union and Russia, and I was always highly analytical about that. I’m analytical about this as well, but the difference is that in Russia I didn’t have the same sense of human association.
“Someone I went to school with, who is still one of my best friends, is an Israeli. I met him and his wife right after the ‘73 war at UCLA. That was when I began getting a sense of the people and their yearnings and aspirations.
“I think that when a conflict becomes humanized for you, you are more aware of the price individuals pay, and you can relate to it. Then you can develop the responsibility to deal with it and you can see it in the larger foreign policy context as well. That’s what creates the marriage between the analytical view and what I would call the passionate view. And the more I spend time on actually trying to help resolve it, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that you develop trust with the people with whom you work—on all sides.”
Ross visited Israel for the first time in 1970, as a student tourist. “The Six Day War was one factor that clearly created an interest, but going to Israel cemented that interest. My first trip was for two weeks. I can’t put my finger on one thing—the most impressive thing was the spirit of the country. When I first started studying Israel I’d say that for every three Israelis there are four political parties. Now I say for every three Israelis there are four cell phones. It’s a measure of how things have changed. But in 1970, going for the first time, the spirit of the country, the sense of community, grabbed me and had a striking impact on me.”
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Ross worked for both the Departments of Defense and State at the same time. In 1982, he was the Deputy Director of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, working on Soviet, Middle Eastern and “broad military balance issues,” and a member of the Policy Planning Staff on Middle Eastern issues at State. From 1984-1986, he served as Executive Director of the Berkeley-Stanford Program on Soviet International Behavior, an academic think tank.
From 1986-88, he was the National Security Council’s Director of Near East and South Asian Affairs. From 1989-1992, he was the Directory of the Policy Planning Staff for the Department of State (rank: Ambassador). Ross spent two months at the Bush White House as the President’s Assistant for Policy Planning. Then he went back to his directorship of the Policy Planning Staff, where he “played a leading role” in formulating and implementing U.S. policy in the Former Soviet Union and the Middle East. He worked with both Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker on START talks, the Middle East peace process and anything else that needed doing. Baker always had Ross at his side.
Ross became interested in politics when he was still in high school. His mother introduced him to the books of Richard Wright, one of America’s greatest Black writers. By the time he was 15, Ross was involved in his first campaign, a civil rights initiative on the California ballot.
He was a freshman in college when the Six-Day War broke out. It was at the same time Vietnam was on the front burner in the U.S., and that war shaped his foreign policy philosophy. He felt the Vietnam War prevented the Americans from giving the Middle East the attention it needed.
“I looked at Vietnam as a conflict that did not make sense. You couldn’t identify what our interests were, at least in my mind, in a way that was clear. It certainly didn’t justify the cost, and without an unmistakable political objective, you’re not going to have political support within the country.
“I was very much affected by the fact that it didn’t seem to make sense. The nature of our objectives constantly shifted. The enemy was constantly changing—the Chinese, the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong.
“And then, interestingly enough, when I saw the Six-Day War, I thought our interests were directly affected, it was something of vital American concern and we were tied down in Vietnam. From the standpoint of the logic of our own interests, this didn’t make sense to me, and I wasn’t a pacifist. I wasn’t opposed to the war because I had a sense that war is wrong. I didn’t feel that at all. I felt that if you’re going to commit American power and you’re going to commit American lives, it has to be in the service of something that really matters—and I didn’t see it in Vietnam.
“I also felt that you have to be able to sustain political support, public support, for what you are doing. It shaped my attitudes from that standpoint. Vietnam was something that was sort of sprung on the American people indirectly, without a context—whereas in the Middle East there is a context.
“The one thing that stayed with me is that if you’re going to commit American power—and I believe that you use American power—the reasons have to be clear. In a world where American power isn’t used, you’re in a world that’s much more dangerous, much less predictable—and eventually you’ll be confronted with a need to use that power in circumstances that are much more costly.”
The words he uttered back in 1996 were prophetic. Here was his view of the Middle East then, and it hasn’t changed much, especially not since our conversation, even with the new President in charge. It’s still Netanyahu, Abbas and Hamas!
“The Middle East has been something that has been presented by American presidents going back to Truman as being something in America’s vital interest. So it’s been identified for a long time. One set of key interests relates to the commitments we made to Israel. They are solemn and have been repeated so often that they go to the heart of American credibility.
“One set of interests relates to having access to resources, natural resources like oil, at a price that doesn’t create major stress in our economy. One set of interests has to do with the fact that this is a region that is a strategic crossroads. If there is great instability there, it could spread elsewhere.
“The situation between the Shia and the Sunni hasn’t helped. The Saudis see the competition with Iran through a Sunni-Shia prism. You have a kind of competition in the region, and our focus shouldn’t be how to support the authoritarian regimes. We should help build credible alternatives that are not corrupt and that embody social justice, because many of the present regimes benefit the few at the expense of the many, and people are angry.
“We are living in a world that is different than it used to be. The nature of the threats is different than they used to be before. One of the things you develop is a set of rationales and explanations that take account of the different circumstances.”
Today that interest in “natural resources like oil” is affecting the global economy, creating new superpowers and the price of a barrel of oil can fluctuate like a yo-yo. That interest in oil is also produced the genocide in Darfur, a consequence of China’s driving need for energy resources. One has to ask if Saudi Arabia, funders of global Islamic religious extremism, is driving global policy.
“I don’t think Saudis are driving Middle East policy but they do have an influence. Before 9/11 King Abdullah wrote to Bush expressing great displeasure for walking away from the peace process. So Bush responded by saying that he favored a two-state solution. But after 9/11 the focus changed, and his administration did not get seriously engaged until his term was almost over.
“What matters more is the need for energy resources, and oil is currently pushing the markets. With climate change as the most serious issue on the global agenda, we need to concentrate on what our objectives are so we can figure out a way to deal with it responsibly.
“Oil is driven by Chinese and Indian demand. But the Saudis do not have the infrastructure to meet that demand… The Saudis aren’t expanding the way they used to, because if people are looking at alternative energy sources, the Saudis don’t feel they need to invest. The inability to produce as much oil as is demanded is what is driving up prices, and if the Saudis think people are going to go green they are not going to make that effort. OPEC will expand production only when they see a downturn in demand..”
These are very complicated issues. Do the vast majority of Americans, who seemed obsessed by weapons of mass distraction like Britanny Spears, come close to understanding it? Is there any hope of changing things?
Ross, of course, is optimistic. “Look at the polls—75% of the American people feel we are headed in the wrong direction and that the Bush administration produced a policy that has wrecked our credibility and standing in the world. The recession we are facing is caused by the combination of the subprime mortgage situation and the gas shortage, and it is a recession that is rocking global markets. Decisions will have to be made.
“The public will have to make decisions that will radically affect the future. They need to understand that climate change is the number one priority, not just for the planet, but for the security of the country. Climate change will create more failing states that will, in turn, become training grounds for terror, so it’s a national security priority.
“China, which has surpassed the U.S. in the production of greenhouse gases, will not pay attention to us on climate change if we aren’t leading by example. It is hard to change them when we don’t change ourselves. We have to become leaders in order to create moral suasion.
“The other major issue confronting the American people is Iraq. The challenge is how to withdraw. The irony is that we needed a political surge along with the military surge.
“I argue that we have to do it with leverage, carrot and stick. One of the things we should do, at the local level, is to look at who we empower, and say those who cooperate with each other will find that we withdraw where they want us to, when they want us to, and how they want us to; those who don’t cooperate will find we won’t withdraw how they want us to do so and they will lose on military and economic means If we don’t do that, we won’t get the outcome we seek. We will end up with a temporal response. The Iraqis have to hammer things out and we should be there and use our leverage.
“The potential to change exists, but transitions will take a long time, and we face a set of challenges. We will have to make decisions on how we are going to get things done. The key is to have clear priorities and be clear on the objective. In this administration, these objectives were never explained and always assumed. There was more use of the stick than the carrot.”
Today, he has to cope with the war in Afghanistan and the situation in Pakistan. His colleague from the old days, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, is standing fast to the task.
Ross anticipated all of this back in 1996 when I asked him if Uncle Sam was the global policeman. He knows how realpolitik works and that ideology can take you only so far. Wishing things were different didn’t change them. His words were prophetic.
He said, “You have to be willing to use American power, but you have to use it selectively. You can’t use it in any and all circumstances. And you also have to be prepared to explain. I feel, basically, that if you make an effort to discuss it with the public, they typically will get it. And if you can’t explain it to the public, you have a problem.
“There is an essential need for the U.S. to play a role [in this instance we were discussing Israel and the Palestinians] because we are trusted by both sides. When the parties reach an agreement, they are the ones who have to own the agreement, they are the ones who have to invest in the agreement; they are the ones that have to depend on the agreement. The only way that happens is if the negotiations are direct, not with us as a substitute.
“Having said that, there is no question that we play an indispensable role; it can be by creating an environment to make it easy to proceed, or providing support or being a go between—where we reinforce, where we clarify what otherwise might be a misunderstanding, where we can focus on issues that need to be addressed. Maybe we can help shape the priorities. All these things come together in terms of having us help sustain this process, and having the parties achieve what they want. As I said, if they didn’t want it, you couldn’t sustain negotiations through the pressures and shocks. Our role in the end is to help them sustain hope.
“There is no question that somehow, through all sorts of shocks, through all sorts of traumas, the process endures. There is a narrow body of leaders who somehow are committed to it and they ignore the political realities in which they operate. It has endured because the majority of Israelis and the majority in the Arab world do not see war as an acceptable alternative to peace, and they are prepared to pursue it.
“It doesn’t always mean that they are prepared to pursue it no matter what. It doesn’t mean that their concept of how you get to peace are the same, but that’s what you negotiate. What’s important is that they don’t see an acceptable alternative. As long as they maintain a sense of possibility, as long as they have a sense of hope, they will continue to negotiate. This is not a process that can stand still. Because if that happens, you lose the sense of possibility and hope which are really the routes to peace.”
How does one get disparate leaders to negotiate successfully?
“There is one principal that guides successful negotiation,” says the expert. “If you don’t develop a relationship with those you are trying to resolve problems with, you’ll never be able to resolve the problems. The problems are not abstract problems that you can deal with in a laboratory. They’re problems that reflect political needs, psychological needs, and you must develop, first and foremost, a sense of trust. Without it, you can’t endure through crises.
“One of the most important things that I witnessed as an observer and a participant was the development of the relationship between the Israelis and Palestinians who negotiated in the Oslo process. They didn’t have an instant relationship, but they developed a relationship through the crucibles of crisis.
“You don’t create these things overnight. And the same was true for me. I didn’t create these relationships overnight, but they developed. Now the more they develop, the more you also feel an obligation to people. You don’t just walk away. For them, this is their whole existence. This is not my whole existence, but by the same token, I understand what they go through and they develop a relationship with me where they count on me for certain things. I can’t say, under those circumstances, ‘Well, you know, it’s your problem and I’m not going to deal with it.’ “
How much of the input is personal and how much is “professional” in such negotiations?
“It’s not an easy thing to separate, because if you want negotiations to work, you’ve got to carve out informal periods. You have to have a formal period, where people act on their instructions and present their positions. They cannot be preempted. But you also have to carve out time away from that because if each side is stuck and all they can do is present a formal position, you’re not going to go anyplace. You have to be able to find where the possible openings are, and you can only explore that informally. You can’t hold anyone accountable in an informal session. You think aloud. You brainstorm. Without it, you cannot produce.”
Is the human factor crucial?
“Maybe it’s just me,” said Ross, “maybe some would say I’m mistaken, but I think most of the failings in the literature on bargaining and negotiations are too tied to highly structured negotiations that don’t take account the element of personal trust in those that are negotiating. You’ve got to reach a point in every negotiation where one person can say to the other ‘look, this is what I really can do and this is what I really can’t do.’ And if they don’t have any trust, they’ll never come to the conclusion that that’s for real. That’s part of the bargaining process. You never get anything done until you have the ability to have key people responsible for negotiations able to look into each other’s eyes and know, ‘all right, I’ve taken this as far as I’m going to take it.’
“There is what I often call a ‘hope-fear continuum.’ As long as that continuum tilts towards hope, we will succeed. Because under those circumstances, political leaders can make hard choices and in other circumstances it’s possible to come to an agreement. Our task right now is to work with the parties, find ways to keep hope alive, and to continue to press ahead because there isn’t an acceptable alternative.
“At the end of the day, when I’m asked, ‘what is it that keeps you doing this, what personal characteristics do you have that make it possible?’ I say, I have a lot of patience, (although my kids say I don’t, I do) and I have a sense of humor. I realize those two characteristics, while important, are not nearly as important as the last one. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you might as well go home.
“Sure, I’ve certainly had periods of great frustration. One thing is to let each side know when you are really frustrated. When you’re in tense moments, one of the ways to get through them is by being able to joke. That again, is the humanization of the negotiating process. You go through a day at the negotiating table, and you can’t spend all your time being serious or arguing. It’s not human. You need to break the ice, to ease the tension. It’s in everyone’s best interests to kid around and joke once in a while. It’s part of the demystifying process.
“You can’t measure it on the basis of one set of conversations. You can’t measure it on what they say or what the words are. We’ll have to see the results. We’ll have to see the deed-words are not a substitute for deeds.”
Ross told me, “Good statecraft requires reality-based, not faith-based assessment. It cannot be based on ideology or what you think you want. You have to deal with facts on the ground. The Bush administration used a world view informed by ideology detached from reality. If we want to dig ourselves out of the quagmire, the new administration will have to go back to reality-based assessments. You don’t have to lose your ambition. You can change the reality—but only if you understand it.”
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