'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Zelikow resigning, Charlottesville-bound

In a surprise move, our old neighbor Philip Zelikow announced yesterday that he'll be resigning from his job as "counsellor" to Condi Rice, and returning to teach at the University of Virginia.

With all due respect to Phil, a historian and a very smart and ambitious person of the "realist" school of political thought, the reason he gave for this sudden resignation-- that he needed to think about making enough to pay college tuition for his children-- is inherently non-credible. (Actually, I think his kids are still far below college age.)

So what's the story?

The NYT account linked to above indicates there is likely a connection between the resignation and a speech Phil made to a strongly pro-Israeli group in Washington two months ago, in which he,

said progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute was a 'sine qua non' in order to get moderate Arabs "to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about.”

That speech, as the NYT's Helene Cooper noted, "ruffled the feathers of American Jewish groups and Israeli officials." But then again, as she also notes, "the administration may soon be doing what Mr. Zelikow advised, starting a renewed push for a Middle East peace initiative, in part to shore up support in the Arab world for providing help in Iraq..."

Cooper fleshes out the latter topic in this larger piece in the paper. And there, she makes clear that though the Bushites are indeed making an intensive push to win the support of their "traditional" Arab friends-- primarily Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia-- for their policy in Iraq, they still seem adamantly opposed to trying to involve either Syria or Iran in this campaign. (More on this in another post.)

So, I surmise that the president's decision at this time not to do the "realist" thing of trying to work with Syria and Iran may have been one of the precipitating causes for Zelikow's departure.

I note, too, that there were some rumors swirling around recently to the effect that, in his push for a better, more realistic Middle East policy, the President might be asking Zelikow to replace that ideological old ultra-Zionist and troublemaker Elliot Abrams as the principal Middle East staff person on the National Security Council staff. That evidently has not happened.

Maybe Phil had really wanted that job-- or at least, had really wanted to get Abrams out of it-- and had failed in that attempt, and that led him to resign? That is another possibility.

How much of a "realist" is Phil Zelikow? Well, if you read Bob Woodward's latest tome, you'll see references to Phil having been sent by Condi to Iraq on a number of different fact-finding missions since he went to DC to work for her in I think February 2005. And each time he would nose around and find out a lot of the murky underside, chaos, and outright failures that were occurring in Iraq, and would report them back to her. (I can't lay my hand on our copy right now. I imagine the spouse has it somewhere... Anyway, you get my general gist.) He certainly never drank the ideological Kool-Aid.

Helene Cooper reports on this short exchange she had with him Monday:

Mr. Zelikow disputed suggestions that he was more of a political realist than an ideologue, calling it a “false dichotomy.”

“I think the issue of ideals is important, but ideals that are not practically attainable” end up hurting more than helping, he said. “You don’t end up strengthening your ideals when you fail to attain them.”

That's an excellent point.

It is bad news, in my book, if this very sensible person sees something in the present direction of US policy that has forced him to resign. (Though nice, of course, that he's coming back to C-ville. Welcome back, the Zelikows.)