The Rush for a Legacy

The Rice offensive bears more than a passing resemblance to a record the Bush team once ridiculed -- the mad dash for Israeli-Palestinian peace and North Korean disarmament by the Clinton administration in its final months. In the summer of 2000 President Bill Clinton astonished many in and outside of the Middle East by abruptly convening a summit at Camp David in an attempt to leap to a two-state settlement. Not long afterward, his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, flew to Pyongyang for an unprecedented meeting with Kim -- drawn by the prospect that North Korea would give up its program of long-range missiles.

Then as now, there were warnings from regional experts that the Palestinians were nowhere near ready for a final settlement and that deteriorating conditions in the West Bank and Gaza made the attempt particularly risky. More than a few Republicans claimed that Albright was being taken in by Kim, who, they said, would pocket the propaganda value of her visit but never deliver his missiles.

The naysayers turned out to be right. Yasser Arafat wasn't ready to conclude a deal, even on the generous terms that Israel then offered (and Olmert now rejects). And Kim was fooling: His negotiators never offered the Clinton administration a serious proposal on missiles. When time ran out, the Bush administration inherited a war between Israelis and Palestinians and an impasse with North Korea.