Chas Freeman, the retired diplomat who translated for Nixon in China and later became an ambassador in the Middle East, notes (in a speech given Wednesday) the way China is viewed in the region now:

In China, the Arabs see a partner who will buy their oil without demanding that they accept a foreign ideology, abandon their way of life, or make other choices they’d rather avoid.  They see a country that is far away and has no imperial agenda in their region but which is technologically competent and likely in time to be militarily powerful.  They see a place to buy things they can use and enjoy.  They see a country that unreservedly welcomes their investments and is grateful for the jobs these create.  They see a major civilization that seems determined to build a partnership with them, does not insult their religion or their way of life, values its reputation as a reliable supplier too much to engage in the promiscuous application of sanctions or other coercive measures, and has no habit of bombing or invading other countries to whose policies it objects.

In short, the Arabs see the Chinese as pretty much like Americans—that is, Americans as we used to be before we decided to experiment with diplomacy-free foreign policy, hit-and-run democratization, regime change, drone wars, and other “neocon” conceits of the age.

How did the United States manage to so thoroughly foul its own image in the region? Freeman’s explanation is hardly “diplomatic” but unerring on the facts:

For fifty years, we have treated the achievement of security for a Jewish homeland in Palestine as our top priority in the Middle East.  We have sought to achieve this by military aid to foster and guarantee Israeli military hegemony in the region and by diplomacy aimed at brokering acceptance of it by its Arab and Muslim neighbors.  The results are in.  At no small cost to the United States in terms of the radicalization of Arab and Muslim opinion, oil embargoes, subsidies, gifts of war materiel, wars, and now anti-American terrorism with global reach, Israel has become a regional military Goliath, enjoying a nuclear monopoly and overwhelming superiority in the region’s battle space.  But U.S. diplomacy has definitively failed.

In no small measure as a result of its own decisions, the Jewish state has no recognized or secure borders.  Although acknowledged as an unwelcome fact, Israel remains a pariah in its region.  In many ways, acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy is receding, not advancing, under the impact of the racial and religious bigotry its policies are seen to exemplify.  Israel appears to have decided to stake its existence on the dubious proposition that it can sustain military superiority over its neighbors in perpetuity.  It has no diplomatic strategy for achieving acceptance by them.  Nor does the United States.

A refusal to face facts like this, or at least to voice them in public, is probably a prerequisite for advancing to a top foreign-policy position in Washington, and a successful Israel lobby  campaign was mounted to prevent Freeman’s appointment to a top intelligence-analysis post in 2009.

But perhaps if you are more “diplomatic” some truthful observations are permitted. Samantha Power has been nominated by Obama as UN ambassador. It seems she’s done a  bit of truth-telling herself in the past, which she’s trying to minimize. Asked in an in-depth television interview to perform a “thought-experiment” about producing a two state solution in Israel-Palestine, Power said there would have to be American readiness to invest as much in building and protecting Palestine as we have in building up Israel’s military. This would need to be done in the face of opposition from a “domestic constituency of tremendous financial and political import.”

The White House is doing its best to reassure everyone that Power is as deferential to Israel as anyone is supposed to be, and a number of Israel-lobby-type people  vouch for her, including many neoconservatives. I don’t agree with the penchant for liberal humanitarian interventionism she is best known for. But I’ll posit a guess here: though Power’s remarks about Israel were “hypothetical,” she knows the score. She’s also something of a loose canon, a  woman who succeeded in academia by being both intelligent and outspoken, and who won’t take to being muzzled. I think she might be interesting at the UN, far more than Susan Rice has been. And bit by bit by bit, the lobby’s hold on America’s discourse is being loosened.