'Dennis B. Ross' is an
American author and
political figure who served as the director for policy planning in the
State Department under President
George H.W. Bush and special
Middle East coordinator under President
Bill Clinton. The
envoy and chief
negotiator under both
Republican and
Democratic presidents, Ross was integral in shaping U.S. involvement in the
Middle East peace process during his tenure.
For more than twelve years, Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the
Middle East peace process and in dealing directly with the negotiations. Ross was responsible in both the
G.H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations for exploring ways to settle the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As an architect of the peace process, he helped the Israelis and Palestinians in reaching 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's memoir, ''
The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace'' tells the story of efforts to negotiate peace over the 1990s and outlines the key lessons to be drawn from that experience. While having worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Ross himself is a Democrat.
[1] He remains a frequent commentator on Middle East issues and analyst on the outcome of current events. He is now counselor of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Personal life
Cover of Ross's book, ''The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace''
Ross was born on
November 26,
1948, in
San Francisco. He is married and has three children. According to his book, he was raised in
Marin County,
California, by his
Jewish mother and
Catholic stepfather, who maintained a non-religious household atmosphere. Ross did his undergraduate studies at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and received his Ph.D from the same institution in 1970 where his
dissertation topic was policy formation in the
Soviet Union.
Career
A scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in
Soviet and Middle
Eastern policy, Ross worked closely with Secretaries of State
James Baker,
Warren Christopher and
Madeleine Albright.
Prior to his service as Special Middle East Coordinator under President Clinton, Ross
served as Director of the
State Department's Policy Planning office during the G.H.W Bush administration. In that position, he played a prominent role in US policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into
NATO, arms control negotiations, and the development of the
Gulf War coalition. He served as director of Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff during the
Ronald Reagan administration, and as Deputy Director of the
Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment.
In 1981, following the election of President Ronald Reagan, the newly appointed
U.S. National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen was put in charge of assembling the Reagan administration's foreign policy advisory team. Allen offered
Paul Wolfowitz the position of Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department. In this position Wolfowitz and his newly selected staff, which included
Scooter Libby,
Francis Fukuyama, Ross,
Alan Keyes,
Zalmay Khalilzad,
Stephen Sestanovich and
James Roche, were responsible for defining the
Reagan administration's long-term foreign policy goals.
Ross wrote his doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making and served as executive director of the
Berkeley-
Stanford program on Soviet International Behavior from 1984-1986.
During his years of trying to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations he was criticized by people on both sides of the conflict.
Palestinians made repeated references to the fact that he is
Jewish, and some right-wing conservative Israelis branded him "self-hating" — each questioning his ability to be unbiased.
[2][2] Some of his articles have been published by both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sources.
[3][4] 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.
[Clyne, Meghan. Kalb Upbraids Harvard Dean Over Israel, ''New York Sun'', March 21, 2006. Accessed August 17, 2007.] Ross in turn criticized the academics behind the paper.
After politics
Currently, Ross is Director and Ziegler distinguished fellow of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the first chairman of a new Jerusalem based think tank, the Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency. In the fall of 2005, taught a class in Mid-East Peace at Brandeis University, and taught it again at Georgetown University in the fall of 2006. In Spring 2007 he taught Strategic Negotiation and Statecraft at Georgetown and will be teaching a similar course in Fall 2007.
Ross is a Foreign Affairs Analyst for the Fox News Channel in addition to
being a frequent commentator in ''The Washington Post'' and ''The New York Times''. Ross's first column at ''The New Republic'', "Statecraft", was published on April 9, 2007.[3]
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.
References
1. The Missing Peace, Dennis Ross Interviewed By Nonna Gorilovskaya, ''Mother Jones'' October 20, 2004
2. [1]
3. STATECRAFT, A NEW COLUMN, Ways and Means
External links
★ Dennis Ross discusses ''Statecraft'' at the Commonwealth Club of California
★ Dennis Ross discusses ''The Missing Peace'' at the Carnegie Council
★ Ross's biography at the Washington Institute
★ Exhausted Are the Peacemakers, ''New York Times Book Review''
★ Process but No Peace, ''Policy Review''
★ Speaker: Dennis Ross Criticizes Carter's Factual Errors
★ The Receding Horizon: The Endless Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, ''Foreign Affairs''
★ Council on Foreign Relations Panel Discussion: America and the World: Challenges Facing the Next Administration--Remarks by Ambassador Dennis Ross
Interviews
★ Living the Peace Process, Interviewed by the ''Middle East Quarterly'' June 1996
★ The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, Interviewed by Thomas Friedman, Council on Foreign Relations September 13, 2004 (Video)
★ The Missing Peace, Interviewed by Nonna Gorilovskaya, ''Mother Jones'' October 20, 2004
★ Questions for Dennis Ross: Handling Hamas, Interviewed by Deborah Solomon, ''The New York Times'' February 5, 2006
★ Problem Countries: Syria, Iran and Russia stir up trouble. Interviewed by Paul Gigot, ''The Wall Street Journal'' December 4, 2006
Bibliography
★ Dennis Ross. June 2007. ''Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World''. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN: 0-374-29928-5
★ Wrote the forword for ''Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad'' by Matthew Levitt. Yale University Press (May 1, 2006). ISBN 0300110537.
★ Dennis Ross. August 2004. ''The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace''. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-19973-6.
★ Dennis Ross. August 2002. ''Reforming the Palestinian Authority: Requirements for Change''. Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Policy Focus #43.
★ Dennis Ross. 1985. ''Acting with Caution: Middle East Policy Planning for the Second Reagan Administration'' Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Policy Papers #1.
From ''The Boston Globe''
★ "The road map after Gaza", August 22, 2005
From ''Foreign Affairs''
★ "The Middle East Predicament", January/February 2005
From ''Foreign Policy''
★ "Think Again: Yasir Arafat", July/August 2002
From ''The Jerusalem Post''
★ "A cease-fire reality: Dealing with Damascus", August 22, 2006
★ "The First Word: What Olmert can expect from Bush", April 6, 2006
★ "Too confused to surrender", July 2, 2006
From ''The New Republic''
★ "How to Handle Iran", TNR TV: How to make Tehran obey, April 25, 2007 (with Franklin Foer)
★ "Internal Affairs", Don't count on Iran and Syria to solve our problems in Iraq. December 7, 2006
★ "Roll Back", Israel's war with Lebanon looks like bad news for the United States. But, actually, it's an opportunity. July 22, 2006
★ "Squeeze Play", Approach Tehran with sticks, not carrots. April 25, 2007
★ Statecraft (Ross's column--Selected articles below)
★
★ "Balance of Power", The British sailors told us who's ''really'' running Iran, April 23, 2007
★
★ "Talk to Syria", Why Israel--and the United States--should talk to Syria. May 7, 2007
★
★ "Ways and Means", Introducing a new column on the art of statecraft, April 9, 2007
From ''The New York Times''
★ "Can Arafat Stop the Violence?", Now, at last, Yasir Arafat must decide that the Palestinian Authority will not be a safe haven for terrorists. December 4, 2001
★ "Don't Play With Maps" What's the greatest barrier to Mideast peace? Mythology. ''The New York Times'', January 9, 2007
★ "Mideast Peace, One Day at a Time" For now, let's stop the killing. The road map can wait. May 8, 2003
★ "Peace, One Very Small Step at a Time", February 9, 2001
From ''USA Today''
★ "Arafat's death can breathe life into peace process", Yasser Arafat has dominated the Palestinian national movement for the past 40 years. He has been a fixture on the landscape of the Middle East. He came to embody the Palestinian cause and was determined that no other Palestinian figure could emerge as a possible alternative to him. November 10, 2004
★ "The danger of a Sharon exit", Life after Sharon will not be so simple, particularly as Palestinians prepare to hold elections Wednesday and Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization, is poised to do well. January 23, 2006
★ "A moment of truth for Syria", During the nearly 30-year rule of Hafez Assad, Syria came to control Lebanon and used terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to exert pressure (and at times reduce it) on others in the region. His son, Bashar, who has been the Syrian president for the past five years, seems to lack his father's guile and understanding of limits that need to be respected. November 8, 2005
★ "An opening in the Mideast", President Bush declared in Europe that the world cannot rest until there is peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Certainly he knew that Europeans would welcome such words. But I suspect this was less a tactical gesture to the Europeans and more a statement of intent, reflecting his commitment to act on what he sees as an opportunity for promoting peace. March 2, 2005
★ "U.S. should help construct an 'Arab umbrella'", In order to prevent the current crisis in the Middel East from growing, the United States must work with the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and others who seem to recognize that Iran is manipulating Hezbollah and Hamas for its purposes. Such an "Arab umbrella" could justify in deploying the Lebanese army to Israel's border. July 18, 2006
From ''The Wall Street Journal''
★ "The Arab Coalition", From Iraq's neighbors, reason to hope for peace and reform. March 20, 2003
★ "The Hidden Threat in the Mideast" Iran and Syria try to open a second front. July 24, 2002
★ "No Sir, Yasser" Prepare to break relations with Arafat. February 2, 2002
From ''The Washington Post''
★ "After Arafat, What?", November 5, 2004
★ "The Art of Possible Peace", Rice's First Task: A Viable Israeli-Palestinian Cease-Fire, February 15, 2007
★ "A Cease-Fire Reality: Dealing With Syria", August 17, 2006
★ "Deadline for Hussein", Obfuscation after Dec. 8 should trigger war. November 12, 2002
★ "Egypt's New Role", July 2, 2004
★ "Give Hamas Nothing for Free", February 5, 2006
★ "A New Strategy on Iran", May 1, 2006
★ "Palestinian Stirrings", January 2, 2005
★ "A Plan for Iraq", October 15, 2004
★ "A Race Against Time in The Mideast", May 25, 2005
★ "The Specter of 'Hamastan'", More Must Be Done to Counter Islamist Gains in Gaza, June 4, 2007
References
1. The Missing Peace, Dennis Ross Interviewed By Nonna Gorilovskaya, ''Mother Jones'' October 20, 2004
2. [1]
3. STATECRAFT, A NEW COLUMN, Ways and Means
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