It’s 2010, and politicians are still trying to solve the “Middle East Crisis”, and they’re doing so by doing exactly what everyone has done before and hoping for different results. As we all know by now, by the overused analogy by Einstein, doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results is the definition of insanity.

We really need to face it: We’re not going to solve the crisis in the Middle East by doing what everyone has tried to do in the past. Getting people to talk is not a solution. It’s not even a stop-gap until we come up with a solution. One side hates the other so much it wants to kill everyone on the other side. The other side is so angry at the other side for hating it throughout history that they’ve pretty much resorted to the same tactics of killing those guys as well. Everyone involved remembers EVERYTHING bad that ever happened, and wants justice and retribution for every bad thing that happened. Neither side remembers a single bad thing they have done, so they don’t seem to see any problems but the ones being caused by the other side.

A major part of the problem is that everyone who tries to negotiate peace does so as if everyone involved has the goal of actually achieving peace. That’s not what they want. Maybe 60 years ago that might have been the case, but some decades ago, it became much more about achieving small, specific goals. All peace negotiations were centered around not achieving those goals in hopes of achieving peace. Bad idea. Not sustainable. Obviously, because now they’re back to killing each other again.

So, how do you solve the problem? Well, here’s what you don’t do: Don’t act as if getting them back to the negotiating table is actual progress. Both sides are usually willing to talk. Neither side is actually willing to do anything to create an atmosphere of peace. They both want their own gains and the demise of the other side. You really don’t have much room to negotiate when it comes down to that.

So, again, what is the solution?

Work it out over time by investing in the future of both entities. This means just giving up on the current actors involved because face it: They’re not going to do anything to further peace. But that doesn’t mean their offspring can’t be influenced. But you have to do it by setting a new paradigm and a new way of looking at things. You also have to go out of your way to not engage the parents in any way, to show future generations that we don’t reward bad people for doing bad things. Until we start to engage this way, we’re always going to be stuck with the current generation that is only going to continue to think in the ways of the erroneous past.

So, how do you do this? I mean, the parents are still around. You can’t just ignore them, right? Actually, I think you can. That’s not to say we can’t still engage them in the hopes of getting them to see the light, but we should go into every negotiation with the belief that the parents are really the problem, so we’re probably not going to achieve any success from them any way. However, we should constantly let it be known that we’re investing in their future, not in them because we’ve already seen that no matter what we do, they’re just going to screw up the future regardless.

This doesn’t mean we just disengage. What it means is that we take a different approach in all things foreign affairs. Our goal should be to start influencing neighbors everywhere by a process of dealing with foreign countries on an honest, straight-forward approach. I know this is a lot different than the old CIA-overthrowing dictators technique we used before, but it may take a generation or two to convince people of our resolve, but once on that path, we’d have a chance of influencing the rest of the world in a new way of handling international affairs. This might also bring to the table the future generations of these countries in the Middle East whose parents we gave up on after realizing that they are never going to understand anything but hate.

I know I’ve made a lot of jokes on how to handle international affairs (Puppy Diplomacy and the Elmo Theory of Containment), but I’m pretty serious about this. I originally called this approach the Friendship Over Time (FOT) Theory, and it’s a mathematics-based foreign affairs approach that involves iterative contacts with countries rather than incremental approaches and our current method of unilateral tit for tat (but never following it up) diplomacy.

As the title of this post indicates, our current process is a lot like dating a supermodel who is only capable of seeing you as a friend. It sounds like a great idea, and it might make you look good when you’re out on a date, but in the end, you’re going to go home every night hating yourself, wondering why she can never see you as anything better. For women, it’s a lot like dating me. Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but I assure you there’s a really funny joke in there somewhere.

Right now, Secretary of State H. Clinton is trying to make a name for herself by deluding herself into believing that bringing the Middle East heads of state to the table is actually accomplishing something. Instead, what it is going to do is set up a new process of disappointment that will most definitely lead to hostilities, broken promises and further deterioration of potential peace in the Middle East. I really wish people could see that instead of leading us down a false path of hope, thinking that somehow people who hate each other are somehow going to change their natural way of being.