Tony Blair: The Next Middle East Envoy?

Cross-posted at Foreign Policy Watch. (Stop by and leave a comment!)

There is some discussion that Tony Blair might be tapped to become the Middle East envoy representing the international community in its efforts to wage peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Supposedly, it’s the White House that has been pushing this idea.

Am I the only one that this strikes as somewhat odd? Indeed, since when has the Bush administration started caring about the Palestinian-Israel conflict? In the past few years, American officials have taken a completely hands-off approach, leveling sanctions against Hamas, but doing little else to bring about any sort of long-term peace deal. In fact, a senior administration official said recently that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not even on the administration’s radar anymore.

So why all the talk about Blair? Does this signify a renewed interest, on the part of the administration, in bringing about an end to the conflict? I doubt it. Blair has very little credibility in the region (he’s viewed as an American poodle) and, as a number of analysts have pointed out, he doesn’t have either the credibility nor the experience to be successful.

As with global warming, the Bush administration is probably just trying to salvage some of its legacy by making a final show of effort. Rather than taking any serious steps to end the deadly conflict, administration officials seem more interested in how they’ll appear in the history books. What a waste.