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Dennis Ross
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Dennis B. Ross (born November 26, 1948) is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and is currently a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (that includes Iran) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As Middle East envoy and chief negotiator under Clinton, Ross was integral in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process that led to the Camp David Accords.
was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin County.
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Dennis B. Ross (born November 26, 1948) is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and is currently a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (that includes Iran) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As Middle East envoy and chief negotiator under Clinton, Ross was integral in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process that led to the Camp David Accords.
Biography
Ross was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin County. His Jewish mother and Catholic step-father raised him in a non-religious atmosphere. Ross graduated from University of California, Los Angeles in 1970 and did graduate work there, writing his doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making. He later became religously Jewish after the Six Day War. In 2002 he co-founded the Kol Shalom synagogue in Rockville Md.
During President Jimmy Carter's administration, Ross worked under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon. There, he co-authored a study recommending greater US intervention in “the Persian Gulf Region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict.” During the Reagan administration, Ross served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs in the National Security Council and Deputy Director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (1982-84).
Ross returned briefly to academia in the 1980s, serving as executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford program on Soviet International Behavior from 1984-1986. In the mid-1980s Ross co-founded with Martin Indyk the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy ("WINEP"). His first WINEP paper called for appointment of a "non-Arabist Special Middle East envoy" who would "not feel guilty about our relationship with Israel."
In the President George H. W. Bush administration he was director of the United States State Department's Policy Planning Staff, working on U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control, and the 1991 Gulf War. He also worked with Secretary of State James Baker on convincing Arab and Israeli leaders to attend the 1991 a Middle East peace conference in Madrid, Spain.
Middle East Envoy
In the summer of 1993 President Bill Clinton named Ross Middle East envoy, becoming the first "non-Arabist" envoy. He helped the Israelis and Palestinians reach the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and brokered the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron in 1997. He facilitated the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace and also worked on talks between Israel and Syria.
Ross was criticized by people on both sides of the conflict. Palestinians made repeated references to the fact that he is Jewish, and some conservative Israelis branded him "self-hating" — each questioning his ability to be unbiased. According to Aaron David Miller, a member of the Ross-led US negotiating team in 1999-2000, under Ross they frequently acted as "Israel's lawyer", and their policy of "no surprises" (meaning all US proposals were first reviewed by Israel), led to a lack of negotiating flexibility and independence. Ross writes in The Missing Peace that "Aaron was always arguing for a just and fair proposal... that the Palestinians were entitled to 100 percent of the territory. Swaps should thus be equal... on the basis that every other Arab negotiating partner had gotten 100 percent. Why should the Palestinians be different? I disagreed."
In their 2006 paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer, political science professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, named Ross as a member of the "Israeli lobby" in the United States. Ross in turn criticized the academics behind the paper. Professor of political science Norman Finkelstein, in an article published in 2007 in Journal of Palestine Studies, held that all the concessions at Camp David came from the Palestinian side and none from the Israeli side. In 2008, Time reported that a former colleague of Ross, former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer published a think-tank monograph containing anonymous complaints from Arab and American negotiators saying Ross was seen as biased towards Israel and not "an honest broker".
Ross's memoir of his experiences, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace tells his side of the story and outlines the key lessons to be drawn. His 2007 book, Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World, criticizes the administration of President George W. Bush for its failure to use the tools of statecraft to advance U.S. national interests. He advocates instead for a neoliberal foreign policy which relies on a much broader and more effective use statecraft. While having worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Ross himself is a Democrat.
Post-Clinton-era activities
After leaving his position as envoy, Ross returned to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow. He became chair of the Jerusalem-based think tank, the , funded and founded by the Jewish Agency in 2002.
During these years he taught classes at Brandeis University, Georgetown University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University." He also wrote frequently for publications like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, The New Republic, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal and worked as a foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News channel.
Ross was a noted supporter of the Iraq war and he signed two Project for a New American Century (PNAC) letters in support of the war in March 2003. However, he opposed some of the Bush Administration's policies for post-war reconstruction. He also opposed Bush's policy of avoiding direct talks with Iran.
According to Wall Street Journal, Ross, along with James Steinberg and Daniel Kurtzer, were among the principal authors of presidential candidate Barack Obama’s address on the Middle East to AIPAC in June 2008. It was viewed as the Democratic nominee’s most expansive on international affairs.
Special Advisor to Secretary of State
Ross was appointed Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on February 23, 2009. According to Israel National News, Ross is seen as a strongly pro-Israel.
Controversies
For background, see Positions on Jerusalem
Ross states in his book The Missing Peace that he and other American negotiators pushed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack to accept a divided Jerusalem during the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David. The Jerusalem Post reported in November 2008 that Ross explained that while it was true during Barack Obama's 2008 AIPAC speech he did say that "Jerusalem is Israel's capital" and that it should not be divided again. According to Ross, these were "facts." However, he stated that the "third point," which is the position of the United States since the Camp David Accords, is that the final status of the city will be resolved by negotiations. However, journalist Philip Weiss has criticized Ross as actually holding the "Jerusalem Must Not Be Divided" stance, which is similar to Israel's right-wing political parties such as Likud.
Awards and honors
President Clinton awarded Ross the Presidential medal for "Distinguished Federal Civilian Service" and Secretaries Baker and Albright presented him with the State Department’s highest award. Ross has received the UCLA Medal, the university's highest honor. He has also received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Syracuse University and Amherst College.
Bibliography
See also
External links
Interviews
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