THE MUCH TOO PROMISED LAND

A word to the next president regarding peace talks in the Middle East: “If you’re not prepared to reassure the locals while cracking heads as needed (and both will be needed), don’t bother.”

So ventures negotiator and Middle East specialist Miller, a veteran of many incidents requiring tough talk and tough action and a survivor of Yitzhak Rabin’s legendary wrath. (Rabin called Miller’s Clinton-era Declaration of Principles “the worst American text since Camp David.”) This book combines memoir with what might be called a primer on diplomacy, ending with some carefully reasoned suggestions for the next president to heed. He is a diplomat through and through, but it doesn’t take much between-the-lines reading to discern that he finds the present administration wanting in that regard. Its vaunted road map, he writes, had little chance “to get the car out of the parking lot, let alone onto the highway.” Yet, just as clearly, Miller takes seriously the need to fight a long war on terror and the fact that Israel is a chief battlefield in that war. He warns that the Middle East is a “bad, bad neighborhood,” fraught with perils of many kinds. He also opines that the golden age of Arab-Israeli diplomacy is past, with no current leaders of the likes of Rabin, Hussein, Begin and Sadat to take up the difficult job of peacemaking in an atmosphere where many of their compatriots do not seem to want it. Yet, Miller urges, majorities on both sides do want peace, and if they are to have it Washington must take the lead, even if “the primary responsibility for peacemaking rests with the Arabs and Israelis, not with the Americans.”

Despite a few bad baseball metaphors and some misplaced breeziness, Miller’s account is well considered. Recommended reading for the next administration, if not this one.