Adopting The Nixon-Goes-To-China Model

July 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon 

Donald Macintyre, a writer for  Australia’s Independent, thinks Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should make a prudent gamble in the Middle East:

Yet, despite all this, diplomats are still convinced that the US President is determined to see progress. They are struck by the adminstration’s pointed emphasis that a peace deal is an American interest as well as an Israeli and Palestinian one. There is still hope of some form of a temporary but relatively far-reaching freeze at least on West Bank settlements. There is talk of Obama producing a "peace plan" in September. Hopes of making such a plan lift off then are based partly on the notion that it is easier, on the Nixon-recognises-Red China model, for the political right to make peace and partly on the gamble – and it certainly is a gamble – that Netanyhau will eventually be driven less by ideology than a desire to have a place in history and not to fall out irretrievably again with the Americans.

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