Strategic Assessment

At the core of the US decision-making process – on Middle Eastern issues as on others – it is often the president and the small group of influential people around him, the so-called “presidential elite,” who determine the broad outlines of policy. True, the basic currents of Congressional positions and public opinion have a role to play, and at times, create an important input. The professional class of Foreign Service officers and others in vast Washington bureaucracies who deal with the region (some of whom still tend to be “Arabists,” promoting a close linkage between the Palestinian issue and US standing in the Middle East) can likewise leave their mark on implementation. However, it has consistently been the White House that called the key shots, ever since Truman overrode the central figures of his own administration and recognized Israel within minutes of its inception; and it will certainly be so in the second term of the present administration, which enjoys a partisan hold on both houses of Congress.