In a slim, face-paced, and elegant account, Haass (at the time of writing a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School, Harvard University; presently the National Security Council's senior specialist on the Middle East and South Asia) offers the U.S. government an approach to regional conflicts that is as compelling as it is un-American. Americans believe in solutions, and get impatient with "conflicts unending." Haass dismisses this as unhelpful innocence and counsels Washington to "lower its sights and work to build confidence between the parties" in a conflict.
This means testing to see if a conflict is ripe for resolution. Indeed, ripeness is the book's central notion. "Whether negotiation will succeed or fail will hinge on [four elements:] the shared perception by the disputants that an accord is desirable, the existence of leadership on all sides that is either sufficiently strong to sustain a compromise or so weak that a compromise cannot be avoided, a formula involving some benefits for all participants, and a commonly accepted diplomatic process." Lacking ripeness, Haass suggests that efforts should be limited to encouraging ripeness through education, pressures on recalcitrant leaders, confidence-building measures, and the like.
In a tour de force, Haass then applies "ripeness" to five conflicts-the Arab-Israeli; Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus; India and Pakistan; South Africa; and Northern Ireland-persuasively showing why they are at times susceptible to diplomacy and at times not.
