Palestine is a lock without a key: so it must now be forced open

President Bush believes that the key to open a door to peace is to be found well to the east of Palestine – in Iraq

No wonder President George Bush's speech on the Middle East has attracted so many complaints in Europe. In it, he violated a basic rule of diplomatic discourse. He told the Palestinians the truth and treated them as if they were grown-ups. Though he held out the hope of a Palestinian state, he made it clear that the Palestinians would have to earn it. He warned them that no serious negotiations would be held until they had produced a serious leadership. In sum, he confronted them with the facts of life and death in the Middle East.

Such intellectual brutality has caused outrage among the sensitive. The Americans have been reminded that Israel only came into existence because of the failure of European civilisation. The charge sheet of those who deserved punishment for Hitler's crimes did not include the Palestinians. Moreover, and despite the pathos of their state's origins, the Israelis have long been in breach of UN resolutions, while occupying territory seized in war: something no longer done in polite society. Equally, when it comes to defective political leadership, Yasser Arafat is one of the few people who can make Ariel Sharon look good. If the Palestinians ought to do better than Mr Arafat, the Israelis certainly ought to do better than Mr Sharon.

All of those points are true. None of them is relevant. The Bush speech was not about morality. It was about power, and none the worse for that. Those Europeans who insist that far more moral equivalence exists between Israel and Palestine than the Americans will admit are right on one point; the Americans will not admit it.

That is how superpowers tend to behave during disputes between one of their clients and its enemies – especially when there is only one superpower. This is all to the good. A settlement in the Middle East cannot redistribute the facts; it must recognise contemporary reality.

That brings us to the only apparently valid objection to the Bush speech: that far from undermining Yasser Arafat, it will strengthen his position, thus leading to deadlock. Mr Arafat has announced elections for January 2003. As he will in effect be able to run against George Bush – not a great vote-getter in Ramallah – he will win, and win big. Mr Bush's hopes for a modern Palestinian leadership will seem wholly fanciful.

In the short run this is all true, which does not mean that the Bush administration is guilty of naivety. On the contrary: theirs is an unillusioned, long-term perspective. It is not Mr Bush's people who are naive. That description should be reserved for those who, despite all evidence, persist in believing an early settlement is a prospect on an unchanged Middle Eastern chessboard. Mr Bush and his advisers are determined to produce a new board. Their Israel-Palestine strategy is only one aspect of a radical reappraisal of US foreign policy under way since 11 September.

This is ironic. Though Mr Bush came to office with the strongest foreign and defence team in American history, he was also reluctant to engage in big-scale foreign policy. This was partly due to his revulsion against Clintonesque fraud and grand-standing. As Mr Bush saw it, his predecessor had used foreign affairs to distract attention from his White House affairs. This was particularly true in the Middle East, where he had tried to force the pace of events to suit his personal timetable. George Bush was determined to re-base US foreign policy on a narrow assessment of US interests.

The events of 11 September taught him – and the American people – that this approach was inadequate, for a simple reason. American interests can never be narrowly defined. A global power must have a global foreign policy, and given the region's strategic importance, it must have a Middle Eastern policy.

For some months, what that policy should be was debated, and the argument became polarised early on. On one side were Colin Powell, most of the State Department and the "oil right", those Republicans who believe in the primacy of oil supplies, and who will always be ready to regard Israel as a disruption. They insisted that Palestine was the key to stability. Against them were Donald Rumsfeld and his allies, who invariably stand up for Israel, right or wrong, while refusing to accept that it can ever be wrong.

For the time being at any rate, that debate has moved to a new synthesis. The President has concluded that, far from being the key to peace, Palestine is a lock without a key. It must be forced open by other changes. Mr Bush believes that the key to opening a door to peace is to be found well to the east of Palestine.

Americans do not do pessimism. In Schopenhauer's words, they are unscrupulous optimists, and this explains George Bush's approach to the Middle East. He was offered the consensus of experts: that Arab polity was hopeless. Though some regimes were friendly, most of these were corrupt and oppressive, and the last thing they needed was democracy. Their streets were full of excitable militants who would vote for Yasser Arafat, or worse.

There were also corrupt, oppressive and unfriendly regimes, who were usually sponsoring terrorism while trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The region was a mess, and the best policy was crisis management, so as to keep the oil flowing until the long-hoped-for day when we could discard petroleum in favour of a new energy source.

That picture was given to President Bush. He rejected it, in favour of better advice. Iraq may be a gangster state, but it has a large middle class, ancient civilised traditions and considerable oil wealth. There is no reason to suppose that its populace is made up of excitable militants; every reason to hope that they would vote for moderation.

Saddam has already violated the terms of the 1991 peace agreement, thus providing a casus belli. His lust for terrible weapons presents a hideous threat to the rest of mankind, justifying action under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which guarantees the right to self-defence: arguably, even, pre-emptive defence. So the Americans are gearing up to overthrow Saddam and this time, there will be no half-measures: no second instalment of Kuwaitus interruptus, as in 1991.

Plenty of Arabs are still willing to give Americans private assurances of goodwill, which they will not dare to express in public. The Americans believe the regime-change in Iraq might instil such characters with a degree of self-confidence, thus liberating the forces of moderate change. Then, and only then, would an Israeli-Palestinian peace be possible, based on current realities rather than historic grievances.

Those who insist on wallowing in history will be condemned to re-live it. The Bush strategy is not without risk and success is not guaranteed – but better the US's unscrupulous optimism than the Europeans' sentimental pessimism.