O.K. from a declining America?

By Gideon Samet

Behind Ehud Olmert's fuzzy talk about hewing to the American opposition to negotiations with Syria hides a sorry pretext used by an agenda-free prime minister, but also one of the most important issues for the future of Israel.

Not only "bloated putzes in the media," as Olmert so rudely put it recently, are criticizing the prime minister for refusing to talk with Damascus and for waiting for the O.K. from Washington. Amos Oz, for example, joined them yesterday. And it is not true that Olmert has no agenda. He has a full agenda, stuffed to bursting with "no"s. No, to Syria, following his no to talking with the Palestinian leadership, no to removing outposts that laugh at the law, no to any measures that would reduce the suffering of the entire population in the Gaza Strip, no and no again to changing the prime minister's arrogant style.

Together with all these negatives is one big yes: Olmert, nodding in agreement with George Bush's no-no's. With Syria, Olmert grasps the pretext, because he will not admit the real reason: He does not want to come down from the Golan Heights. In one of his recent awkward declarations, Olmert stated that "as long as I'm prime minister, the Golan Heights will remain in our hands for eternity." We will find out soon enough just how eternal is Olmert's rule. In the meantime, he will avoid getting caught up in a political move that poses such danger to him, such as agreeing to evacuate tens of thousands of in the north and withdrawing to Lake Kinneret.

Yet, unlike Olmert, however, the U.S. is not what it once was, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion immediately to leave Sinai in 1957; when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared, in 1975, a "reassessment" of U.S. policy on Israel because of its refusal to agree to an interim arrangement in Sinai; when President Bill Clinton dragged Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to Camp David. In the past decade, bookshelves and columns of top commentators have been filled with descriptions of the weakening of the American giant. It has become almost banal to talk about the decline of the Empire.

Discussing this historical process, illustrated pointedly by the abortive attempt to reeducate the Middle East, aimed at proving that the world's only superpower can no longer act unilaterally, because its power has waned too much. In his 2002 masterpiece, "The Paradox of American Power," Professor Joseph Nye, Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, foresaw serious consequences for the U.S. internationally and domestically if it insisted on an "unrealistic imposition" of schedules and of forceful intervention.

As in Israel, despite the differences, critics of declining American imperialism point to an overly narrow focus on the national interest. This is also the claim of the Baker-Hamilton Report. The U.S. is still motivated by some sense of being divinely chosen, which is rooted in the moralistic thinking of the country's early history. There is opposition even within the national consensus to this impulse toward hegemony and a unipolar world that is leading the U.S. to disasters. Among other things, this impulse deepens the hatred of American culture. Some here might compare this by-product with the rise in anti-Semitism in the West as a result of the Israeli occupation.

I once suggested, in these pages, that the power-drunk behavior of the Bush era be termed the "Israelization of America." Now Olmert believes he will be doing a favor to Israel by means of its Americanization. It won't work. The "illusion of control" and the "end of the American epoch" - key terms to the critical discussion of the past several years in the West - require sensitive Israeli attention. Equally to be noted is the almost obsessive talk in the U.S. of the imminent end (again, as happened six and a half years ago) of the bull market on Wall Street.

Such sensitivity invites, at the very least, a reshaping and updating of Israeli politics in accordance with what appears to be an obvious Israeli interest: a rational agenda instead of a slothful slouching after a wandering and habitually goring American bull.