Peter Baker
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To understand what is happening now in the Middle East, it may be helpful to remember the dead cat.
That was a favorite metaphor for Secretary of State James A. Baker III as he shuttled around the region in 1991 trying to negotiate a complicated deal. With each recalcitrant player, Mr. Baker would threaten to “leave the dead cat” at their door — in other words, to make sure they were the ones blamed if the whole thing fell apart.
The question three decades later is whether today’s players are at that stage of the U.S.-brokered effort to negotiate a...
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