Summary
In Thomas L. Friedman's article, "Biden and Mother Nature have Reshaped the Middle East," it is stated that there will be a new type of diplomacy in the Middle East. One which will probably involve the United States as well. He writes there may be a day very soon where the United States will need to return to active israeli-palestinian diplomacy, not based on land for peace, but sun and fresh water for peace. EcoPeace Middle East is an alliance of Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian environmentalists who recently put forward just such a strategy called the "Green Blue Deal." The way it would work is Jordan with its vast desert areas has the Comparative advantage in producing large amounts of cheap solar electricity to meet its own needs and also to sell to the Israeli and Palestinian grids to "generate the electricity for desalination plants that could provide all three parties abundant fresh water.
Israel signed an agreement to double the freshwater it provides to Jordan, one of the driest countries in the world. All three parties are ecologically interdependent, but they have unhealthy interdependencies rather than healthy ones. This is how the United States can get involved in ecosystem diplomacy to re-engage in Mother Nature's Middle East. It can become the mediator who forges healthy interdependencies.
This is another opportunity for the U.S. to be present in the collaboration and diplomacy between Middle Eastern countries.
Environment, one in which the U.S. is pushing for change as well. Even though these countries are not on good terms, they have something to depend on each other for and share with each other. Whether they like each other or not, they must work with each other about this to achieve what they all need to be able to have a sustainable country and lives.
One reply on “Week 9 Post”
Krste,
I like the way you have effectively summarized and gone beyond the Friedman argument. Of course, this terrible conflict that has erupted between Hamas and Israel forces everything back to the same old tit-for-tat struggle that has been going on for the past 70 years in the Middle East. For Hamas, it is futile and nihilistic–they cannot prevail (and they know it). For Israel, it diverts them from their larger goals of engaging with other countries in the region. But neither can Israel fail to respond to the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It is a classic “lose-lose” situation. –Professor Wallerstein