'Neo-realism' offers possibilities to Middle East

World View: 'Let us never negotiate from fear, but let us never fear to negotiate." Hillary Clinton invoked JFK this week in support of her case that "direct negotiations are not a sign of weakness, they're a sign of leadership".

She called for a sea change in US foreign policy to include direct talks with Syria, Iran and North Korea and a greater US involvement in promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It should be done on a bipartisan basis, combining "idealism and realism in the defence of American interests" and giving a much higher role to diplomacy than President George W Bush has over the past six years.

Her speech, to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, is notable ahead of next week's midterm elections. If the Democrats win a majority in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, there is the possibility that such a shift will be made as part of a bipartisan effort to disengage from Iraq. Even if this does not happen, Clinton has taken the opportunity to signal a shift in her own support for the war. A New York Times/CBS News poll shows an overwhelming belief that Democrats are more likely to bring US troops home than Republicans and that it is the most salient issue for most voters.

The belief that US foreign policy will change after these elections is driven more by political factors than by any automatic effect of a changed congressional majority, since the executive controls foreign policy. What can certainly be expected, though, is much greater scrutiny of the Bush administration's war record. Approval for his handling of it matches his overall popularity rating of 29 per cent - one of the lowest on record. It may suit him to go for a bipartisan approach to head that off.

A ready-made way of doing so would be to adopt the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group, a high level cross-party body led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, whose report is expected in January. For months they have been investigating policy options, with full access to political, military and intelligence sources. Leaks suggest there are four options facing US policy makers: staying put, withdrawing, reinforcing, or redeploying to contain the fallout of violence in Iraq.

Clinton's preference is for the fourth of these. She proposes a phased redeployment of US troops that will "get the attention of the Iraqi leadership" and remove them from being caught in a civil war. This would be accompanied by the establishment of an oil trust to give each individual Iraqi a stake in a negotiated solution. And an international conference of Iraq's neighbours - including Syria and Iran - would be called to ensure the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity and prevent civil war. Alongside this, she wants to see a renewed US initiative, "in close coordination with our Israeli ally", to revive the Middle East peace process.

These ideas are shrewdly pitched to take advantage of the split between neoconservatives and realists in the Bush administration. Clinton describes herself as a "neo-realist", arguing that states interact in an anarchic international environment, but that this can be structured to achieve desirable outcomes in terms of US interests.

She argues that the Bush administration has posed false choices between internationalism and unilateralism, realism and idealism, good and evil. She wants to combine idealism and realism with an affirmation that talking to your enemies is not a sign of weakness. This is in keeping with a long tradition in US foreign policy, "until a small group of ideologues" came to power in this administration. Baker is a leading realist, who was denounced by neoconservatives during the summer for talking directly to the Syrians as he prepared his report.

Another is Bush's former national security and Northern Ireland advisor Richard Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations - Clinton's host this week. Writing in the current issue of its journal Foreign Affairs, he says the age of US dominance in the Middle East ushered in by the Suez Crisis of 1956 and reinforced by the end of the Cold War in 1989 is drawing to an end. The Iraq war is the most important factor here. It destroyed the balance between Sunni-dominated Iraq and Shia Iran, gave a base to terrorism, reinforced anti-Americanism and reduced US leverage worldwide by tying down a huge proportion of its military.

Bush's disinclination to undertake active diplomacy between Arabs and Israelis has accelerated the end of this era. Haass uses the example of Northern Ireland to argue that sitting down with Sinn Féin or Hamas "should be viewed not as rewarding terrorist tactics but as instruments with the potential to bring behaviour into line with US policy". In the same way, Iran should be drawn into comprehensive talks about its nuclear programme and support of foreign militias and offered an array of economic, political and security incentives.

Such ideas cut right across the neoconservative agenda which demonises Iran and Syria and supports Israel's unilateralism. As if to illustrate these arguments, the White House this week accused Syria of orchestrating a coup in Lebanon - just as Tony Blair sent an envoy to Damascus to sound out its willingness to become involved in a regional peace initiative. Washington insiders say neoconservative hawks such as Elliot Abrams in the National Security Council and in Dick Cheney's office are behind the Syrian allegations. These are also the hardliners on Iran, who want to see military action taken against it before Bush leaves office. Senior Europeans believe this could indeed happen - and that it would pitch the world into a deeper depression than the 1930s as world oil supplies were affected.

So a great deal is at stake here. John Bruton, the EU's representative in Washington, argued in Dublin this week that an "arc of opportunity" exists for peace in the Middle East if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved. It would need to link these various issues and be backed by concerted EU action alongside the US if it was to succeed. The glimmer of such constructive possibilities is beginning to emerge from these midterm elections.