WASHINGTON — In the first chapter of his recent book “The Much Too Promised Land,” University alum Aaron David Miller sets the scene for the announcement in Jerusalem of one of the most historic Middle East peace conferences.

For nine months leading up to the 1991 Madrid Conference, Miller dealt with “headaches of varying sizes” that accompanied the formation of the first ever meeting between representatives from Syria, Israel, Lebanon and a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation.

“There was no such precedent for anything like that,” Miller said of the conference in an interview this summer.

As an adviser on the Arab-Israeli conflict to then-Secretary of State James Baker, Miller played a role in setting up the framework for the historic meeting. But sitting cross-legged and relaxed in jeans and a blue blazer, Miller joked that he had the most influence on American foreign policy earlier in his career — while on the tennis court.

“During a doubles match in Cairo, (former Secretary of State George) Shultz was my partner, and I hit him in the back with one of my serves,” he said. “It was the greatest impact I had on the Secretary of State.”

Since Shultz, Miller has worked for five other secretaries of state, advising them on one of America’s toughest foreign policy issues: the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Sitting in his downtown Washington office ornamented with framed photos of Bill Clinton and Colin Powell, Miller described his time working for secretaries of state from 1989 until 2003 as “one constant trip or negotiation after another.”

“Those 15 years were really quite historic, and in the end disappointing and very frustrating,” he said. “Most of what we tried to do ended up collapsing. But nonetheless, they were extraordinary years.”

Following the Madrid Conference, Miller was part of the U.S. team that helped facilitate the Oslo Accords. The 1993 conference held in Oslo, Norway established a framework for future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and was considered a major breakthrough in the peace process.

In 1996, Miller helped to broker two agreements to keep the Oslo process on track, but looking back, he said he now realizes the process was essentially futile. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fundamentalist completely changed the climate.

Rabin, a war hero turned peacenik and a major player in the Oslo Accords, inspired a sense of hope in the Israeli and Palestinian public, which died along with him.

“It was dead, we didn’t really understand it,” Miller said. “Rabin’s death, the nature of roles Israelis and Palestinians played as occupier and occupied — and they’re each responsible in their own way for the collapse of Oslo — really made it very long odds.”

Miller said that despite the collapse of Oslo, he was part of a team that advised then-President Bill Clinton to “go for broke” with the Camp David Summit in 2000. The conference aimed to establish a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and brought Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then-leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat together.

“I was one of the 12 Americans there,” Miller said. “Sadly, and despite all these commitments and good intentions, it was not well managed. There was never a chance. We had to watch in the fall of 2000 after first Intifada broke out, the collapse of everything Israelis and Palestinians tried to achieve — we tried to help them — essentially be destroyed.”

Robert Malley, the Middle East and North African program director for the International Crisis Group, worked with Miller as a White House adviser on the Arab-Israeli conflict during Miller’s time at the State Department.