MICHAEL KRAIG is the director of policy analysis and dialogue at the Stanley Foundation, a Muscatine-based foreign-policy think tank.

The United States is pursuing a national-security strategy that assumes U.S. opponents in the Middle East can be decisively broken and defeated through financial, military and political isolation, eventually leading to regime change and wholesale transformations of the offending societies.

This divide-and-weaken strategy has been the approach since 1992, across quite different administrations.

While such long-term policy consistency is laudable, it is built upon a dangerous myth: the assumption that economic, diplomatic and military coercion alone will strengthen moderates and disempower Arab and Persian radicals in the Middle East. Look at how this divide-and-weaken policy has played out in Lebanon. The main actors are the coalition government, Syria, and Hezbollah, which has its own independent media and administrative and military capabilities. Hezbollah is a friend of both Syria and Iran, the main representative of the underprivileged Shiite Muslim population in southern Lebanon and an avowed enemy of neighboring Israel.

For better or worse, Syria played a role in ending Lebanon's 15-year civil war by occupying large parts of the country in 1990. It then badly overstayed its welcome. The end to Syria's occupation came in 2005, when it was implicated in the assassination of Lebanese patriot Rafik Hariri, a leading politician and businessman who had broad support of Arab leaders across the Middle East. The Lebanese people protested, Arab leaders from countries such as Saudi Arabia applied pressure, the United States and international community backed them, and Syria was forced to withdraw.

How did U.S. policymakers then look at this situation? Following the divide-and-weaken approach, they tried to further isolate and weaken Syria and look for an opportunity to destroy Hezbollah. They did little to promote reconciliation between the sectarian factions in Lebanon after Syria's awkward but necessary withdrawal.

U.S., Israel are weakened

Thus, the United States lent symbolic and material support to Hariri's aggrieved son and his new government coalition in Beirut, and encouraged this coalition to put pressure on sources of Hezbollah's power in the media and economic and military spheres, while spurning the idea of a Lebanese dialogue that would attempt to mend fences between all ethno-religious factions. Then, the United States supported the intensive Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah in the summer-fall of 2006. The U.S. goal was clear: Condoleezza Rice openly stated that this was a chance to defeat Iran's proxy, thereby weakening Iran itself.

But this strategy has ultimately weakened both the United States and Israel. Israel's flawed military incursion into Lebanon raised self-doubts and left it even more isolated. Syria and Iran, which backed Hezbollah, drew closer together. The faulty but hard-won stable peace in Beirut negotiated in the 1990s with broad Arab help is at this point almost entirely broken. Lebanon appears again on the brink of tearing itself apart.

In response to three years of attempts by the United States and Israel to isolate and militarily defeat Hezbollah, the group has successfully escalated its tug of war over Lebanon with a full resort to arms. Recently, Hezbollah virtually took over traditional Sunni, Christian and Druze areas before a high-level mediation effort by Qatar brought the sides to an uneasy truce.

Overall, U.S. posture in the region is diminished, while Hezbollah's status is enhanced. The extent of this new reality has been seen in the highly public successes of a small Arab state (Qatar) in bringing some measure of stability to Lebanon. The United States used to be the broker of deals in the Middle East, but no longer.

Pursue integrative approach

If the United States shelved the current approach and adopted a new one, what would it look like? Adopt an integrative approach toward the region that attempts to meet and respect the minimum interests, values and goals of every side over the long term.

A new policy would recognize that most of the parties (except al-Qaida) have some legitimate interests tied to their own historical mix of territorial, ethnic and religious identities. The United States should emphasize those geopolitical interests and domestic values that represent legitimate, long-standing concerns. Such a policy would actually weaken the hand of those in the region who argue that violence is the only route to progress for people who feel dispossessed.

The main point of a long-term, integrative strategy would be to recognize that change-minded people exist who could be empowered over time by a United States bent on using diplomacy, economic openings and judicious military deterrence efforts to break down regional divides fueled by mutual mistrust, religious differences and economic inequalities.

An integrative approach in Lebanon would recognize Hezbollah's valuable social and political role in southern Lebanon while still opposing its destabilizing, dangerous and unsustainable anti-Israeli actions. It would encourage truly equitable talks among all Lebanese factions on the future institutional makeup of the national government, including Hezbollah as an equal and legitimate actor at the table. It would also cautiously encourage the new Israeli-Syrian talks aimed at achieving a final territorial and political deal.

Deprive Iran of 'Great Satan'

This approach may also bring Iran out of its self-imposed religious shell by strongly and explicitly encouraging Persian-Arab and Sunni-Shia engagement at both official and civil society levels throughout the Middle East.

This would deprive the most extreme Iranian factions of a "Great Satan" enemy. It would chip away at the Iranian image of the United States as a hostile hegemon whose seeming goal is to keep a centuries-long Persian civilization from realizing its legitimate political weight in the region.

This means engaging troublesome actors as they are, rather than hoping that through increased pressure and isolation, they will magically become who we want them to be before we seriously consider engaging their societies, leaders and economies.

The vague hope for regime change under pressure, now nurtured for years, is pure delusion - and delusion does not make good foreign policy.