But I’ve just stumbled upon something long overlooked that raises an even stronger case for the need to assess Ross’ closeness to the neoconservative movement — a group that has led U.S. foreign policy into so many disastrous undertakings, and that stands as the ideological driving force behind the dishonest campaign for war with Iraq and Iran. Now we have to ask: Just how close is Dennis Ross to the neoconservative movement?

According to the journal’s website, Ross, as he sits today in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, is a member of the board of editors of the neoconservative Middle East Quarterly. The Journal, whose editors have included AEI‘s Michael Rubin, Martin Kramer, and Efraim Karsh, is published by arch-hardliner Daniel Pipes; the journal is run out of his Middle East Forum think tank.

According to The Internet Archive’s “Way Back Machine,” which takes snapshots of webpages over time, Ross’ listing on the board of editors started sometime between July 2 and July 12, 2006. By the latter date, Ross’ affiliation is recorded as the Washington Institute for Near East Studies (WINEP), the AIPAC-formed think tank that he played a part in setting up, where he was a scholar. As of April 2008, Ross was still listed at MEQ with the WINEP affiliation.

Along with his membership on the board of the Jewish People’s Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem think tank, Ross gave up the WINEP gig when he moved to the administration.

But, as of today, he is still listed among the board of editors of MEQ. Interestingly, his affiliation has changed. Ross is now simply listed as:

Dennis Ross
Washington, D.C.

That change suggests that the site has been updated since Ross left WINEP — a departure that coincided with the formal announcement of Ross’ appointment to the Obama administration. This raises the question of why Ross is continuing his institutional affiliation with a bastion of aggressive neoconservatism such as MEQ while serving as a top administration adviser on the Middle East.

On a Middle East Forum blog, Ross’ battles within the administration have been covered by former AIPAC’s administration relations director Steve Rosen, who has never acknowledged the ties between the Forum and the Quarterly or Ross’ role in the latter.

As far as I can tell, flipping through the journal and Middle East Forum’s archives, Ross doesn’t seem to ever have contributed to either, though he was interviewed for MEQ by Pipes and Ross’s former WINEP and (apparently) current MEQ colleague Patrick Clawson.

On the board of editors of MEQ, Ross is joined by Karsh, the editor; Pipes, the publisher; Rubin and Clawson, both senior editors; James Phillips, a fellow at the neoconservative Heritage Foundation; journalist and Hudson Institute fellow Lee Smith; and WINEP executive director Robert Satloff.

As of late Friday afternoon, the NSC and MEQ, both asked for comment, haven’t yet responded. I’ve asked if Ross is paid, and what his responsibilities are or have been. When they respond, I’ll update.

Ross was out of the country today, in Israel, trying to restart peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Iran — also in Ross’s portfolio — met with the P5+1, including the U.S., in Turkey.

He writes:

But the real test of whether the president can make progress toward clinching a deal is whether he uses the next year to bring clarity to the regional challenge that poses the most serious consequences for Middle East security and the overall U.S. position in the region: Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

and

To his credit, the president seems to have abandoned the loopy thesis that Arab-Israeli peace is a prerequisite for resolving the Iranian nuclear problem.

While one might disagree with Satloff’s conclusions, he’s consistent in his thinking.

On October 3, 2001 Satloff employed a similar argument in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.

When Saddam Hussein gobbled up a neighboring state and posed a threat to international security unseen since World War II, Bush the elder received numerous messages from Arab and Muslim leaders demanding U.S. intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian arena as the price for support in the campaign against Iraq. He refused to be drawn in prematurely, confident that victory in Desert Storm would deflate the region’s radicals, embolden the moderates and create the conditions to invigorate the search for Arab-Israeli peace.

In November, 2001, in a response to Colin Powell’s November 19, 2001 Louisville speech on the peace process, Satloff said:

A new era in Arab-Israeli peacemaking has almost surely not been opened by this speech—that will likely have to await a change in the objective circumstances of the regional situation (i.e., a change in leadership, a stunning defeat for regional radicals like Iraq, etc.). While U.S. diplomacy can play some part in creating a more positive environment for the eventual return to active peacemaking, U.S. victory in the war on terror is a more critical element in achieving that goal.

And on April 27, 2003, Satloff, in a Baltimore Sun op-ed on the Mideast Roadmap, wrote:

Victory in Iraq provides a rare opportunity to have Arabs make important movement on both fronts. That, in turn, would limit the near-term damage of the roadmap, encourage Israelis and Palestinians to meet their own responsibilities for peacemaking and raise the chance for success of U.S. engagement in Arab-Israeli diplomacy down the road.

Satloff, much like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol (see their April 15, 2002 Weekly Standard article, “Remember the Bush Doctrine“), have been harping at the reverse linkage argument since before the invasion of Iraq. In many ways their advice was followed and their theory tested.

While pundits like Satloff promised big changes if Saddam Hussein was removed from power, the 2006 Lebanon War, the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza and the winter 2008-2009 Gaza War all occurred after the U.S. had been victorious in Iraq. Their claim that toppling Saddam Hussein would bring Israel and its neighbors closer to peaceful coexistence appears to have been, at best, a tenuous link.

But that doesn’t deter the proponents of reverse linkage from trying their luck a second time. This time the target is Iran, and Satloff promises that although Obama is entering Arab-Israeli diplomacy with a “weak hand,” if he “…rebuilds a sense of U.S. strength by dealing resolutely with the approaching crisis point over Iran’s nuclear program, he can reverse this dynamic.”

It sounds all too familiar.