2009 Annual Conference Panel II: Toward an Enhanced Gulf Security Framework
Featuring Ellen Laipson, Sami Alfaraj, Kevin Cosgriff, Emile Hokayem, Robert Hunter
These remarks were delivered in the second panel of the 63rd Annual Conference, November 10, 2009. Kate Seelye:  We are going to begin our second panel of the day. The panel is called “Toward an Enhanced Gulf Security Framework.” Ellen Laipson will be running the show but before we begin I just want to introduce Ellen. Ellen is the president and CEO of the Henry L. Stimson Center, where she directs the Southwest Asia Project, which focuses on security issues in the Gulf region. Prior to joining Stimson her key positions included Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council from 1997-2002 and special assistant to the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1995-1997. Ms. Laipson also focused on Middle East and South Asian issues as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, as a National Intelligence Officer and then as the Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs for the National Security Council. Ellen, thank you so much for joining us today. Ellen Laipson:  Thanks very much, Kate. Good afternoon to all of you. Our aspirational title for this panel is “Toward an Enhanced Gulf Security Framework,” the understanding being that we are not there yet. The Middle East Institute has had sixty-three annual conferences and I’m just wondering if there was ever an MEI conference that did not have Gulf security on the program. This is something that is an enduring interest of the United States and yet it is an elusive goal. We still have not found the magic formula for Gulf security that includes the interests of all of the states in the region as well as the outside powers that care about the region. I think there’s no doubt that even in 2009 – we are into the 21st century, some of our security agenda has changed, and yet the Gulf region still remains a very vital geographic space for global interests and global stability. It is a region of competition of natural resources, a kind of 19th century notion that is still playing out in the 21st century. The rise of Asia only deepens and highlights this concept that the Gulf is the center of gravity for global energy security, and so there are the interests of many countries far away from the Gulf that care about the stability of the Gulf region. But for the societies and the states themselves there are other ideas about security. There is turmoil within, there is tension between the states of the region. These are things that are preoccupying not only for the United States but for a number of countries, as well as the societies themselves.   Then there is the role of the United States, which I know remains and continues to be controversial in the region. Are we the security guarantor of some of the countries in the region or is our presence a provocation? Is our presence in fact one of the factors that has perhaps inhibited or delayed the capacity of the regional states to figure out a regional system on their own? In recent years we have even been a combatant. We have had a presence in the region that has been, at least for some of the parties, very much a disturbing intervention that has created dislocations and new forms of insecurity. Was our intervention in Iraq something that brings back memories of a colonial era in the Gulf? How do we plan the transition away from that American presence in the region? I hope that our panel, which includes people of wonderfully diverse experiences and perspectives, will use as wide an angle lens as they want to think about the questions of security. We clearly still have a series of both traditional security, political-military, defense-related policy concerns but I hope we will also think about human security and security threats that come from nontraditional sources such as water scarcity, environmental degradation, etc. Let me turn to introduce our panel. Our first speaker will be Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, who has recently retired after a thirty-seven-year career in the Navy. He was the commander of the 5th Fleet as well as the commander of the Combined Maritime Forces. He had a direct supporting role in the war in Iraq and can tell us more about that, but had many other responsibilities that included engaging with virtually all of the countries of the Persian Gulf. He is currently the vice president of business development and strategy in the Washington operations of ATK Corporation, an aerospace and defense company. I thought Admiral Cosgriff could give us the perspective of what it’s like to be on the ground and in the water, I guess we should say, actually leading and participating in the security of the Gulf region. I thought that would be a good way to begin. Then we will go to two perspectives from the region. Emile Hokayem, who has been a colleague of mine at the Stimson Center but recently has become the political editor of The National, the English-language paper out of Abu Dhabi. Emile writes weekly columns that reflect the views of the Gulf on a wide range of security and geopolitical topics. Then we will go to Sami Alfaraj. We are really delighted to have Sami with us. He heads the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. He has been an advisor to the Office of the Prime Minister in Kuwait as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Bureau on Crisis Management Issues. Sami will bring us the perspective of a country that has been always at the eye of the storm of Gulf security. There is not an issue we will talk about today that does not affect Kuwait directly, so I am honored and pleased that he will give us his perspective. Last, we will turn to a very distinguished authority on American foreign policy both as a practitioner and as an analyst and a writer in his own right. Bob Hunter is currently a senior advisor to RAND and the chairman of the Council for Community of Democracies. I have known him over many years as a National Security Council expert on both the Middle East and Europe. He was our Ambassador to NATO at a very critical time in developing new concepts about NATO. I think he can bring to us from his long experience in the field as a diplomat and an expert perhaps a broader conceptual way of thinking about new prospects for Gulf security, and I look forward to hearing from him. He will also draw perhaps on a recently completed RAND study that looks at Gulf security. Each of our speakers will speak for fifteen minutes. Admiral Cosgriff? Admiral Kevin Cosgriff:  Thank you, Ellen. I’d like to thank the Middle East Institute for this opportunity to speak and especially to be able to speak after lunch as opposed to before lunch, which is where I usually end up. As Ellen said, I believe my role on the panel is rather that of the pragmatist. I am not a diplomat, I am not an academic. I was a Navy officer and I am going to share my views of the region as they may pertain to the way forward rather than merely yet another retired admiral’s trip down memory lane. I also have the responsibility since I’m first to try to keep this on schedule in the interest of being able to take your questions and answer them a the end of this. Obviously, as most people believe, a peaceful and accessible Gulf region is a global concern and rightly so, because neither it is necessarily peaceful nor is its access guaranteed. Today’s topic obviously is timely and relevant and as Ellen said, it seems to have always been thus. To frame the way I approach things and the way I think about what’s going on there and elsewhere I would like to start with some very elemental and maybe obvious definitions. Security, in my mind, in the international arena means being safe from attack or the threat of attack and the anxiety that would arise in any country or peoples in that country from attack. As Ellen pointed out there are other aspects of security and the Stimson Center and others are trying to expand our thinking, but for my role today I am going to confine it mostly to the military. Security is an essential precondition for stability, another word we hear a lot of in this sort of dialogue. To me, that is just a set of circumstances wherein governments, businesses and ordinary citizens can more or less have regular interactions in their respective countries and regions. Ideally over time you would hope stability would lead to some level of progress or prosperity. In the case of the Arab Gulf, that relative prosperity is fairly apparent. There is a modicum of stability in the Gulf today and it is largely so because of a general level of security, with some notable exceptions. That security is underwritten by the diplomatic, military and economic power of both regional states and extra-regional ones. In the latter category the US clearly stands out whereas in the former Saudi Arabia and the UAE come to mind. As this group knows only too well, it is security principally against today’s existing capabilities and persistent threats from Iran. When one factors in the game-changing pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran and the means to employ them within and beyond the region, the stakes are clearly raised. It is this gathering storm sense – some might suggest it has already gathered, others might suggest it is already raining – that may have created the imperative for a US defense umbrella over the region introduced by Secretary Clinton last summer. There are certainly other concerns there, not the least of which is violent extremism, but there is no doubting that Mrs. Clinton had her sights on Iran when she spoke. Some have noted the term “defense umbrella” implies a near-treaty commitment of mutual military aid to any country attacked or under imminent threat of attack. The Secretary did not use the phrase “nuclear defense umbrella” but nonetheless she advanced both the level and seriousness of US commitment, for now stopping short of what has been promised to NATO, Japan, South Korea and Australia. It is worth noting that this initiative is the latest in a generally consistent expression of interest in the area going back through many administrations. The continuous presence in the Gulf for nearly sixty years of US Navy forces is illustrative of this, as was our vigorous response to the invasion of Kuwait. I am not diminishing the significance of the recent proposal but rather highlighting its place in a broad continuum. For instance, in the latter part of the previous administration the Gulf Security Dialogue was an important step. As Ellen pointed out, beyond politics one of the inescapable facts of the Gulf is its essentiality to the global economic engine, literally providing a huge percentage of the oil and gas that fire that engine. While there are compelling reasons beyond energy to be involved there, especially post-September 11, sitting atop 40 percent or more of the earth’s proven oil and gas reserves is a compelling one. Likewise having an equal percentage of the world’s maritime-transported oil having to pass through the Strait of Hormuz only emphasizes the point. With that background, how any sort of defense umbrella or defense architecture plays out on the ground will be important. If I may abuse the umbrella analogy, it achieves its objective best when the handle, the central shaft, the ribs and stretchers and canopy are all working in harmony. In our discussion today such architecture is easy to conceive but actually putting all the pieces together in play effectively in the real world is another matter. I will come back to this in a moment but let me offer three tests as to the feasibility, suitability and acceptability of any workable defense arrangement in the Gulf or, for that matter, just about anyplace. First, it cannot be a US effort alone or even an American, British and French plan (to pick three of the most prominent external military actors). Nor for that matter can it be a military-only approach. Second, it must recognize the full spectrum of challenges in the region as a whole and not just the immediate Gulf area. Lastly, we need to be realistic about where the Gulf countries are in their political evolution, the limits of mutual collective security agreements among these nations, and the current military capability and capacity of the key six to eight countries of interest. In sum, the US military and diplomatic engagement needs to be broad-gauged and long-term. Basically it is about partnership, persistence and patience. The US needs to step up to its indispensable leadership role, providing that core structural support, even as we rightfully expect partner countries to shoulder an increasing share of the burden over time. Let me shift to what I believe needs to be done by discussing how this was and largely still is being approached by US military forces in the region. I will focus on military in the main but relevant commanders actively and regularly reach out to our ambassadors, country teams, State Department, other partners, so that our diplomats know what the military is attempting to do, why they are doing it, and (when able) when. If you will allow I will use my own experience because it may be illustrative of both the opportunities and challenges of bringing any sort of collaborative structure together. In the naval forces we had three broad lines of operation that our analysis showed needed to be accomplished more or less simultaneously. First, the 5th Fleet was actively involved in the struggle against violent extremism through combat operations and other support operations throughout the region, principally Iraq and Afghanistan but throughout the region. This tended to be US-centric although at times our air combat operations supported NATO in Afghanistan and other friendly forces. Also in this line of operation would be the need to safeguard US and other designated forces and entities through force protection activities. We helped the local navies in building their own capacity since they faced the same enemy. Thus, force protection training was regularly provided to the conventional maritime forces of these nations and we are able to see some demonstrable improvement over time. There is obviously a deterrent or dissuasive benefit to having and being seen as having a credible military capability. This is relevant in any sort of structure we might seek to create. It has to be real, it has to be present, and it has to be credible. But force protection, while important, is not all that sophisticated and many respects reveal just how far our partners have yet to travel. Second, we worked very hard at underpinning maritime security throughout the region. This was done principally by the Combined Maritime Forces (or as I used to say, the other 2.5 million square miles of our area). That Combined Maritime Force, comprising over 22 nations, had as their mission to deny the use of the seas for terror or the facilitation of terror, as might be the case through narco-trade. Five local navies had formally joined the coalition and all the navies and many of the coast guards cooperated with it. The area of maritime security, including its sub-element of maritime infrastructure protection, was where most of our capacity building with local navies and coast guards took place. It was one of two specific areas that Secretary Gates asked us to focus on. While more complex than force protection, especially in command-and-control and intelligence integration, maritime security operations are not overly difficult, especially for mature navies. Interestingly, while the GCC navies conducted exercises and had the means to coordinate among themselves, my impression was that they were more engaged working bilaterally with the US 5th Fleet or within the coalition construct than they were with each other. I believe this is an important takeaway. The reasons are many and they frequently appeared political to me, but as we go forward we need to recognize a certain level of inertia exists and we are just going to have to be persistent and patient. Third, we recognized the need for an active deterrent posture with respect to Iran, both through fleet-only activities and by teaming with the US Air Force and Gulf nations in an air and missile defense effort. This was the other principle initiative from Secretary Gates. From a command-and-control point of view we made considerable progress demonstrating the ability to link sensors, weapons and other components together essentially Gulf wide – ashore, afloat and in the air. All the GCC countries have air forces of various size and development but like the maritime coalition this grouping could not have been built on its own without the irreplaceable US Air Force leadership. I should point out, as one of these technical things military people like to point out, interoperability was an issue even though most of these systems were US or European derivatives. The devil, as in many things, is in the details. I recognize, as I said, these are at best operational or tactical-level examples. But if you are going to move the notion of a defense architecture from the conceptual to the politically acceptable to the militarily executable, they demonstrate what the temporal and structural limits are in the near term. That said, they are doable. If we do achieve them collectively they could be part of some credible deterrence structure in the region. That is important because as I look ahead a few years I am concerned with the risks inherent in Iran’s approach in the region – its desire to be first before all others – and how that could lead to greater instability and possibly some form of military confrontation. Their miscalculation (or frankly, some other countries’) could unwind today’s delicate environment. The combination of charming in the street while coercing neighboring leaders will continue to tilt even more toward the latter the closer Iran comes to joining the nuclear weapons club. That this may bring a response from Israel is widely speculated and possibly could be forestalled to some extent by such a defense umbrella. Thus, diplomatic and military steps taken by the Gulf states and the US are an important test. As I mentioned, I do not see a rapid coalescing of the GCC to the point that they can begin to tangibly move forward with a truly integrated defense structure on their own. Consequently, attaining the benefits of fused effort within the Gulf will fall to the United States. This is not a bad thing in my opinion, and one we are more than capable of doing. But a war-weary electorate here concerned about jobs, healthcare and the national debt may be less inclined to embrace a serious commitment to patient and persistent partnering with our Arab friends that such a defense umbrella will require. To my mind this is as much a strategic leadership challenge in the United States as it is in the Gulf. Thank you very much. Emile Hokayem:  Good afternoon. When I first moved to DC many years ago the first place where I interned was the Middle East Institute. Now I’m at the podium and the next step I think is to take over the place and be president. But I hear you have to be a senior US diplomat to get that job so I need a citizenship and a State Department job. There are many people in this room who have been thinking, talking, encouraging and despairing about the lack of Gulf coordination and integration when it comes to defense and security issues, from even before I was born. So I am going to be pretty sober and report that very little has changed since. But I am also going to argue that the real story is elsewhere – that the Gulf states are devising new, more sophisticated security strategies that make more sense than investing too much time, energy and rhetoric into major defense ventures like building a NATO-type regional security organization that is unlikely to take off anytime soon. Simply put, despite a very tumultuous and rapidly changing security environment, the Gulf states are still not talking and acting in terms of collective security. The GCC, which started as a political security organization a long time ago, has not made any real headway. It has become an engine of economic integration but has not been successful in coordinating and integrating security and defense policies. Its major security successes have been information-sharing and cooperation on domestic security issues, not on regional security issues. In the best of worlds Gulf security coordination would have by today led to integrated GCC-wide early warning air defense and missile defense systems and, if you want to push that even further, to a Gulf NATO. We are still very far from that. If you want to look at it a bit differently, just to relate to the current news, think about Yemen and what’s happening right now – the Saudi incursion into Yemen. This is a pretty major development, a GCC state intervening in a non-GCC country (though still on the Arabian Peninsula). It is interesting for me to know whether the other GCC states had been briefed about the incursions, what the objectives are, what is the strategy, whether there is a post-conflict reconstruction plan and so on. I have no idea. But this is a major development that relates to the security of the whole region and yet we still do not have any clarity or transparency about what the objectives are. But in a way I think the Gulf states have been pretty realistic and honest about the limits and merits of intra-GCC security and defense cooperation. At the end of the day let’s keep in mind that these are young states that are very protective of their sovereignty. They are still at an early stage of national development and for them to relinquish or share so much on the security front is deeply problematic. These are also states that have young and small militaries. These are still-burgeoning security institutions that do not really think in broad terms about what security means. Then there is another consideration: the regional imbalance in conventional power can be hardly corrected just by the GCC states building up their defensive capabilities. If Iran is perceived as the main threat today, Iran is a country of 70-75 million people – look at the size of the place. The Gulf states altogether would not reach 30 million. You have an issue of talent; the Gulf states do not have, as I said earlier, old armies. It is pretty difficult in those conditions to build the defense structure that you need to balance Iran. Then there is the fact that even a well-integrated GCC security policy would not remove the need for foreign security actors in the medium term. This is the role that the US is playing right now. Keep in mind that the force that we know as Peninsula Shield could not and did not deter or repel the Iraqi aggression; the US and the coalition did. Another point is that the Gulf states feel that they always have more leverage when it comes to security and defense issues in bilateral relations than in a multilateral framework. People will argue that if you are talking to a foreign security provider like the US, the US will have more leverage in a bilateral relationship than in a multilateral one. Both sides are winning here; it may not be good for the long term but at the moment this is a key fact of the relationship. Finally, defense and security policy in the region happens at the very senior personalized level. This is the president of the United States or France talking directly to the king of Saudi Arabia or the president of the UAE. All this conspires in a way that is not very conducive to the formation of a strong GCC security organization. That said, the Gulf states themselves have provided some ideas about regional security in recent times. The notion of a Gulf-wide nuclear weapon-free zone – instead of a Middle East-wide – is a first stage. I know a lot of people will push back on this idea but the Gulf states have a point here. Why not push for a subregional agreement? After all, Egypt and Jordan have signed peace with Israel without conditioning peace on nuclear disarmament. The Arab peace initiative, as far as I know, does not mention Israeli nuclear weapons at this point. Syria has not even conditioned its own peace with Israel on disarmament. So to force the Gulf states to abide by a taboo that other states are not respecting would be in a way unfair. If that is the level at which they can engage Iran, why not? Another idea that was floated exactly a year ago by the Bahraini foreign minister is the idea of a regional security organization that would include everyone – Iran and Israel. Of course that idea did not go very far but still, it was pretty interesting to see the Bahraini foreign minister make a pretty strong case for that. Of course the Gulf states are currently strengthening their conventional capabilities but I do not think this is the real story. The real story is the Gulf states are defining their security in broader, more holistic ways. They are discovering their economic clout can be leveraged to upgrade existing relationships to more strategic ones. This is a long way from just relying on the US umbrella and being very passive security actors. There is a logic to that. The US umbrella has become in recent years politically toxic to the Gulf states. There are questions about the strategic and operational wisdom and competence of the US. Everyone has seen the quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, people wonder whether the US system actually produces the right decisions. So the idea of reducing the US footprint and reducing that perception of dependence is very much on the minds of the Gulf leaderships. So the Gulf states are basically going around these days diversifying and deepening relations with countries that growingly count as global actors as global power gets more diffused. The reasoning is that the interactions with those new actors – China, France, you can go down the list – the denser they are, the more these actors will accept and share the Gulf states’ security objectives. This is a very simple logic of interdependence, nothing new, but they are taking it to the next step. They are basically conducting their economic and national development at the same time as they are building strategic relations with powers that sit on the UN Security Council, that project power, that have nuclear status and so on. Of course the strategy has a flip side – greater scrutiny of these countries. If you want to become a global player and be at the G20 and shoulder international responsibilities and so on, you are going to be under more scrutiny. But in a way this has a positive consequence: it forces the Gulf states to behave as responsible global actors. They have now to implement and they are willingly implementing UN Security Council resolutions on a number of issues. They have to live up to the ideals that they pretend that they abide by. So in a way this is all about building layers of protection while relying on the US as the last resort. There is a very sober realization that the US will remain a key element in their defense posture but they are seeking partners that can complement rather than displace the US. This is a key point. I think basically today the very fact that the French have opened a base in Abu Dhabi – I know some people have dismissed that 500 Frenchmen in Abu Dhabi, how much good can it do? Well, it does a lot of good. It basically transforms Gulf security into a global public good. It allows the Gulf states to say we are not just dependent on the US, we are not followers of US policy, there is a global consensus that we are part of and we are inviting many actors to help us in shaping the security of our region. The problem is that as the Gulf states try to internationalize Gulf security, the Iranians respond with a diametrically opposed one: they want to indigenize Gulf security. They are calling for the removal of all foreign troops from the region. In a way that makes sense because this is how Iran can maximize its power and influence in the region. Foreign military forces limit Iran’s reach in the region. The problem with the Iranian argument is that the Gulf states are still sovereign nations that are free to enter agreements with outside powers as they deem and so far the US talks with Iran, to my knowledge, have not breached the topic of regional security and what to do. The real question when this topic is breached, the issue of regional security, will be about the modalities of the presence of foreign troops in the region – not about whether they should be based there. By modalities I mean non-aggression treaties, presence or not of nuclear weapons, transparency about levels of force and so on. There is another actor that needs to be mentioned here: Iraq. In our discussions about regional security we forget a lot about Iraq these days, because we have a hard time envisioning what Iraq will look like in five or ten years. It is arguably now no longer a state threat; no one worries about a large Iraqi army invading a neighbor. But there is certainly Iraq instability that could threaten the region. There is also very different perceptions of where Iraq is today and where it is going. Is Iraq merely an Iranian pawn that will be fundamentally inimical to Gulf interests or can Iraq turn out to be a more neutral and positive player in the region? The problem right now is there is very little discussion about this issue, whether in the region or here in Washington. Let me conclude by making a few points about the US and what it should do. I have argued that the one set of policies that needs to be preserved from the Bush era is the approach to Gulf security that started in 2005-2006. I think the Gulf Security Dialogue, pol-mil cooperation and so on is much more than just about arms sales. It is also about confidence building. Confidence between the Gulf and the US had suffered since 2001, especially since 2003, and we see certainly a better relationship right now, as the admiral mentioned earlier. The US however should be careful not to formalize too much its commitment to the region’s security. I personally am not a big fan of the notion of a formal defense umbrella or nuclear umbrella. I think it is a strategically hazardous concept. I do not think there is demand on the Gulf side either for such a formal public commitment. I would also urge the US to evaluate cautiously the merits of pushing for greater multilateral defense cooperation and so on. The US is not going to make great progress at this point but this should not be the test. The test is elsewhere – it is about whether the Gulf states themselves can start thinking more independently about their own security needs. It is not about forcing on them an integrated early warning system at a time when they are all but ready to do so. Finally, welcome the new entrants into Gulf security. They complement the US role in the region, this is not competition. Right now I think the US is approaching this very positively. I will end here, thank you. Sami Alfaraj:  As-salamu alaykum wa-rahmatullah. I am supposed to be presenting the GCC point of view, which I am sure is going to be quite depressing for you – but bearing in mind that you have already had lunch so it is not going to spoil your appetite for other things. Just to tone down expectations with regard to security arrangements in the Gulf, we are going to witness next month in the Kuwait summit of the GCC leaders a significant step in this defense-security organization. The GCC is a security organization no matter what people say because we have a case to prove it – the invasion of Kuwait. We have also the troubles we have been through. Bear in mind the following: since 1981 we had something called the GCC. It is only next month that we will agree on a defense strategy. So we have been through everything without a defense strategy. A defense strategy is very important for everybody to say who is an enemy and who is not – like, you are an ally, Iran is a probable adversary and so on. What is common to us, like terrorism or illicit crime and so on, or natural disasters. So the framework for us to agree as allies and people who have common interests as GCC members – 28 years. So imagine what it is going to take us to agree with Iran or whoever else – the Taliban or whoever will emerge in the next 28 years. This gives you the framework. The second thing is that when you look at the rosy part of the picture, can we agree on a security arrangement in the Gulf? If you look at the coastal areas of the Gulf, you see the Gulf states have their strategic interests on the coasts because they grew out of harbors to trade with everybody. So I always laugh at the notion that we are, in the press, conservative and not seeing somebody with blue eyes, not accepting to deal with this and that. Bear in mind we are harbors, we are maritime nations. We deal with everybody, including Taliban, including bin Laden, including whatever, Colombian drug traffickers. We have always had this. It is not new to accept the United States as the big power here. We have had Alexander the Great, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great – whoever the great. Bush the Great, Obama the Great. But if you look at us as harbors, it is very easy to look at us and the Iranians on the opposite coast – we have already been dealing with them. We have our troubles but we could always do business with them. Not like you. We can do business with them. So there is an element that should be utilized in such a negotiation process, and that is the GCC, Iraq and Yemen. The other side of us is that when you look at the coastal states you see a sense of cooperation, but when you look at the hinterland of Iran, Iraq or the GCC you will see the real power, the mindset, the strategic culture – the strategic culture of Persia, Mesopotamia and Arabia. If you look at history we have always been competing with each other but we have always believed in balance of power and we have always had borders. The problem with Iran today is the crux of the matter: hegemony. When somebody treads on you. It is not the modalities, the nuclear – the nuclear has to be examined in the prism of the crux of the matter itself. Would Iran use nuclear weapons to extend its hegemony? If Iran can extend its hegemony to really block such important things like the Arab-Israeli conflict, settlement of the cabinet in Lebanon, the future of Iraq and the international military tribunal for Syria, then what could Iran do with nuclear arms? The question for us is different. So the question you have to really ask with regard to the GCC or others like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Turkey (just to name a few) – in my presentation I consider Yemen as part of the GCC – and of course Iraq, what is the threshold for us for our acceptance of the extension of Iran as a hegemon? What can we accept? The second question: have we reached that threshold? You look at things as modalities. You look at arms deals and the nuclear projects in the GCC now coming up. I am aware of these things and I am educated by the strategic culture of Arabia, myself descended from a long line of tribes who fought for the erection of six GCC. So my interest as a person is the consolidation of those of Arabia and of those GCC nations representing all of Arabia. What could we do actually to consolidate the independence of Arabia and work as equal to the other blocs (Mesopotamia or Iraq, as well as Persia), in total respect of each other and consideration of interests. There is a very important thing to say when you talk about today – Iran is speaking about an authority over the Shi’a of Iraq. Where does Iran get that authority? From what? There is today greater say for Sistani in Iraq upon the future of the internal situation of Iran itself. It is not the other way around. The second question for us is the timing. For us, when we look at you, we say we are allies. We look at the United States as the best ally. We would definitely prefer you to Nazi Germany or hysterical Japan or communist Russia, that’s for sure. We have always had better relations with the so-called Anglo-Saxon bloc in international affairs. Today, just like the admiral mentioned, we see the interventionist military powers in the area always come from the United States, Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, before everybody else. Therefore we have this sense of alliance and sense of common interest – not definitely common interest, we have today developed affinity of interest with other nations that follow the same rationale. So today how do we look at security arrangements in the Gulf, the timing? In the late 1990s we thought it was timely to do something like that. Today we think it is not. I tell you honestly – by the way, I saw before my eyes how the GCC summit in Riyadh agreed the nuclear program – we did not propose a nuclear program. That is to say that in the homework we were talking about a common nuclear program with Iran and it developed into competitive nuclear program against Iran. So what do we deduce from that? This is my personal view – if Iran goes nuclear, everybody else will go nuclear. For sure there will be not just an arms race, there would be other things. Take into consideration the Saudi missile deal with China and how secret it was and how it was concluded. Today we have serious distrust of the way negotiations are dealt with. It is funny when we look at you. We really like you and we really trust you but we are not really sure about the ways you follow sometimes. In this thinking we are much closer to the Israeli thinking than to the American thinking – I am saying my personal view. You talk about engagement, but we cannot think about something called engagement without contracting and consummation. What have you gotten out of this engagement? If we take into consideration those two sessions you have had with Iran, we said before – and you could look at any exchange of the GCC, would see it through intelligence – that we have already said before that Iran would be stubborn, Iran would not deliver. Iran would look at the aura and status that you five plus one sat with great Iran but without giving any price for that. Then they would renege, they would play “accept and renege.” Accept, go on the media – they are treated as an equal power, as Ahmadinejad says – but at the end they pay nothing. Then they have this measure called the faqih [phonetic] who would say the national interest of the Muslim community says no. That is exactly what they did. This is all in our reports. I don’t think your American diplomats are stupid not to know that but you wanted to try, here you are. So it looks to us like – you know the Julia Roberts movie, “Runaway Bride”? Iran looks like no matter how serious about engagement you are as the second party, I think you would need to take this bride to a Taliban shari’a court someday. In a Taliban shari’a court it’s flogging. Have we not learned from the experience of Saddam Hussein, of Slobodan Milosevic? Is Ahmadinejad saner than them, do you think? I don’t know. We had only one hour, four Kuwaiti leaders, on Valentine’s Day, coming to congratulate a Kuwaiti emir on his accession to rulership in Kuwait. Four well-seasoned people, leaders who have met and dealt with Iran throughout all their lives. People in their sixties and seventies and eighties. They sat with him and for one hour they assessed that he was seriously mad. He was mad but he was serious about his madness. The next thing is the Kuwaiti emir met with Hosni Mubarak and told him that four hours later. Then Hosni Mubarak flew to King Abdullah and told him. So you should have called us that day, we would have told you. But again, you wanted to wait and see the bride – here is the bride. Can we deal with Iran? Iran for us, in a matrix of threats – we have threats in the GCC and those threats are tangible ones. You have military, you have asymmetric, terrorism and subversion. You have crime, drugs, illicit industries. Then you have intangible ones. There is the passage of time, chances, strategic opportunities. We have influence and national character. Then we all share, as GCC and Iran and Iraq and Yemen, probable national disaster. All these are threats to us. Then you have water. A lot of things. You have the sense of development, the eagerness to develop. In all these on this list, besides earthquakes, Iran registers as number one. Iran is even the cause of disasters with regard to earthquakes because they cannot manage them, and then tomorrow when we have Bushehr, imagine the pollution we will have in the area. So Iran registers in all of these and we have really to address each one of them. The question for us: are the Iranians serious about getting a security arrangement? With regard to asymmetric, on a daily basis we discover Revolutionary Guard cells. We don’t declare them because we don’t want a quick fight with Iran over that. We just handle them through diplomatic channels. We daily find cells and we have the capabilities – when you talk about engagement, you engaging with us, we basically have as GCC nations (besides Saudi Arabia and Oman) almost the full commitments of NATO. On a bilateral basis – why do we have bilateral relationships better with the United States, Britain, France and others? Because there is a commitment and these commitments are proven. So we really trust such commitments and we can build upon them. What we really need is to use some type of stick, some type of Taliban shari’a law court with Iran someday. They call it surgical, they call it whatever, but someday I think we are going to reach that stage. In a sense today all the publicity in the area about a covert cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel or Kuwait and Israel or whatever, there is a lot of truth to that sense of urgency that we do not see in those guys sitting in the rooms of Geneva to reach an agreement with Ahmadinejad and Mr. Khamenei. So unless we really look at the urgency of the matter from our perspective, how close it is to our hearts – our hearts is my home personally, it is within the shortest surface-to-surface missiles carried on a Revolutionary Guard boat. This is how close it is to us. It is close to us in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, Ras Tanura – it is also close to them, if we were to use, but we don’t have surface-to-surface missiles. We don’t have military conscription, we don’t have inflated defense budgets in proportion to our development budgets. Our development budget is much larger. In Iran it is the opposite.   So we really have to go into the depths of this matter of getting a security arrangement with Iran but at the same time we do not have other solutions except to go to war against Iran, all of us. So we really have to think seriously, how urgent it is, how close it is to our security. If you talk about an affinity of interests, what is it? You have the center of Arabia was hit by 39 missiles during that war but Riyadh did not respond. We have that strategic restraint. But can we be as restrained as in 1991? I doubt it. Thank you very much. Robert Hunter:  Good afternoon. It is an honor to be here. Thank you very much, Ellen, for your splendid introductions and your leadership. Wendy, if she’s out here somewhere, thank you for what you do. If I can find a grey-haired gentleman here with a full mane of hair, my good friend Wyche Fowler, your chairman – Wyche and I have been friends for forty-five years now and have been working together since then. That was back when we were in kindergarten, just so you know. I am going to try to take a somewhat longer view and sketch out something of what I would call a bit of an ideal, to try to see about building security in the Persian Gulf in the broadest sense and to devise a few propositions that I think might be supportive of it. I am honored to follow these three outstanding speakers and I am tempted to say I agree with everything Emile Hokayem said, in one of the finest presentations I have heard, but then I’d just have to sit down and wouldn’t have anything more to say. Let me start off with six propositions. Number one, the United States is in the Middle East to stay. This is something that for many Americans may be an uncomfortable proposition but it is something that is now determined, unlike our engagements in some other parts of the world. In Europe now we are finding it may be possible to have a lessened engagement but in the Middle East that is simply not possible. That is beyond the narrow calculation of certain interests, including oil, which may or may not be threatened. I think that tends to be exaggerated. Second, the old system of security in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf has been shattered, such as it was, by the Iraq war. It swept away the detritus of arrangements that there had been and among other things reinforced our engagement and meant that the day following May 1, 2003, we no longer had a choice, nor did our European friends and allies have a choice, but to be deeply engaged and to try and create a new kind – a lasting kind if possible – of security arrangements. That is proposition number three and it goes with something else as well. Talk about any country, including Iran, becoming a regional hegemon is utter nonsense as long as the United States remains engaged. If we were not engaged I might take that quite seriously, but if we are engaged the idea of somebody else competing for hegemony – they can compete for it but it is not going to happen. I think we need to start off by understanding that. We have – proposition four – three basic dilemmas of this engagement. Number one is the tolerance over time – and I think the admiral put it very nicely and neatly – one would have to do for a long-term strategy. That includes persistence. But what is the tolerance of the American people to continue to spend blood and treasure in this particular region and its extended dimensions? I would argue that that tolerance is likely to be a lot less than many of the experts – many of whom are in this room – would argue is going to be important for the United States. That argues for trying to create some kind of regional security structure that has a chance of being effective and reducing the cost to the United States in blood and treasure. There is also the issue, another dilemma within this, of the opportunity costs. The amount of effort we are now having to put into the Middle East takes away from other things that we need to do in addition to what we have to do in the Middle East: China, Russia, the economy, climate change. The trillion dollars that we have put into the Middle East had other uses for our own security and prosperity. The prospect of spending yet more hundreds of billions of dollars and the time and attention of our leadership, and of the Congress and the people, is a huge opportunity cost. The third dilemma is that in terms of direct American engagement, particularly troops on the ground, there are risks and push-back. The unacceptability in a number of areas of Western troops on the ground, as we saw after the Persian Gulf War in Saudi Arabia in 1991 – what I thought and said so at the time was one of the stupider things we had done was keep troops in Saudi Arabia. They are now primarily in places like Qatar and Bahrain and I hope that will succeed. But we have to realize that for the United States to try to do a lot of things in security directly is not necessarily going to be something that is a net benefit. We are now facing that to an extent in Afghanistan as we look to the future. Those are three dilemmas. Fifth proposition, and this has already been touched upon, but we have to understand that the Middle East and South Asia – from the Levant all the way to the Hindu Kush – is in effect one region, not several regions. There are various parts to it but they are interconnected and American strategy for the region – a grand strategy – has to look at all of these in relationship to one another. I regret to say that the United States government is not yet doing that. It is not easy but it has to be done. The final proposition, picking up on what the admiral said: security is a composite, not just military but also non-military efforts (political, economic and the like), as we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq. The requirement is to integrate these different instruments – as we are not doing very ably. First, with regard to going beyond that, there will be a system of security – there is always a system of security, it’s what happens. It is a totality of events. The question is whether there can be a new structure of security, which is something you consciously design, put together, add to it practices and institutions, and see if it can be effective. It has to deal with six primary goals. First, it has to meet – if it is possible – the security interests of all the local countries, at least as many as possible. That means if it is going to succeed over time it needs to be open to all – if they will play by the rules that emerge in this; there must be incentives for all to see their security better off by taking part in this, rather than working against it. It must have a capacity to limit the spoilers with or without external support. We have already heard about Iran and the key issue is whether Iran is going to find it in its longer-range interest, if and when we are able to create a structure of overall regional security, to be part of it or to stay outside and be the spoiler. Mr. Hokayem already mentioned what the Bahrainis said last year: why not have a security system that in time will also include Iran and Israel? Something we need to think about. Number two as a goal, this security system needs to lessen the US role (if possible) in blood and treasure and in on-the-ground military presence, and for us (if possible) to go back or to go forward to being the guarantor of security of last resort. Number three, to engage other outsiders, to the degree that any outsiders are going to be involved, in helping to frame, focus and bring about security – lessening the primary US role. Let’s face it, there is more of a lightning rod for Americans than there is for a number of other countries (possibly excepting the British and the French). Number four, any new security structure is going to be built primarily by the insiders: what they are prepared to do, what leadership and thought they are prepared to do. Number five, what you are trying to do is create a certain degree of predictability about security so that there will be rules of the road and ways of measuring whether something is working or something is not, so people can look forward. The Cold War confrontation in Europe between the United States and the Soviet Union did have a high degree of predictability as to what would happen and with certain things that were permitted and certain things that were not, because of the common interest of not having humankind’s last war. This security structure can also provide a fire break to prevent stresses and tensions from lapping over into open conflict. Finally as a goal, it has to find a way to deal ultimately with the realities of regional societies, governments, histories and relations among these countries. That is undoubtedly the toughest of all. What are the major requirements of such a structure? Number one, we have to get the Iraq endgame right and figure out what afterwards (as has already been mentioned) what role that Iraq will play in a broader security structure. A lot of countries are still wondering about Iraq in the future. Number two is Iran. We have to understand what our interests are in Iran and they are not just about the nuclear file and they are not even just about Iran’s role with Hezbollah and Hamas, but they include what Iran might be prepared to do (as it was in 2001) with what we need to be done in our interest in Afghanistan. The same can be said about Iraq. We need to think in a broader framework with regard to Iran and we also have to consider what its minimal and acceptable interests might be to be part of being willing to play in a security structure rather than to be a spoiler. I would argue at least up until this administration’s beginning we have played it dead wrong. We have been totally unwilling to consider any action by Iran which could lead us to give it security guarantees. If they do every single thing we want of it, we are still not prepared to cross that bridge – as we did with North Korea. I would argue if you’re not prepared to do that, you’re not serious. We also of course have to be prepared to confront Iran, to offer security guarantees to others or whatever is necessary – and yes, I think to do an awful lot to stop them from getting the bomb. I think we could probably have deterrence but that’s a world in which I don’t want to live. Third requirement, dealing with asymmetrical threats, particularly terrorism. Number four, providing regional reassurance. Number five, yes, we also have to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict, particularly the relations between Israel and the Palestinians, if only to gain support from Arab states in what we need to get done and from European states. Yes, we need to deal with regional tensions and conflicts and to account for external actors. Potential models and partners – I’m going to give it in shorthand. These all have to be assessed. Potential NATO involvement – Istanbul Cooperation Initiative; or NATO model – Partnership for Peace. European Union involvement or a European Union model. A Conference of Security and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf – a CSF for the Middle East is already contained in the Israel-Jordan peace treaty but nothing has been done. Using ASEAN as a model. Using elements of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Finally, we need a whole series of steps with regard to arms, arms control and confidence-building measures. Multilateral political and military commissions involving everyone, including regional conflict and crisis prevention and management mechanisms. An incidents at sea agreement; a freedom of shipping agreement; counter-piracy cooperation. A counter-terrorism compact building on what the OIC has already done but dropping its provision that if you are involved in freedom fighting that doesn’t count. We need weapons inventories and weapons arms control. We needs arms balance management, as Mr. Hokayem has already mentioned. We need a relationship between outsiders and local countries in terms of training, getting the militaries able to do the right things. We are going to need some kind of outside pledges and guarantees of last resort and an awful lot of non-military cooperation. I’ve just outlined a few elements but they are things that I think in the US self-interest can, if we begin down this road, in time lead to circumstances in which we will be able to meet our requirements at lowered risks in terms of blood, treasure and opportunity cost. Thank you. Ellen Laipson:  I’d like to thank all of our speakers. I think Bob Hunter has virtually guaranteed that this topic will be on the program next year as well. He has given us a lot to think about. I’ve got questions that cover a wonderful range of topics. I am going to start with a public events or a current affairs question. I think Emile, you are the one who mentioned it, so I wonder if there is more you could say about the bombings and air strikes between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. How will it disturb the region? How much attention should we as the United States or as outsiders be giving to this conflict? Emile Hokayem:  Sure. First, the Saudi incursion into Yemen is a response to what’s happening there and the failure of preventative diplomacy and other efforts to convince the Yemeni government to actually get its act together and do a better job at it. It is really dominating the airwaves from what I see in the Middle East. People are sometimes not very convinced by Saudi claims of Iranian interference; I tend to think that there may well be Iranian involvement there. Maybe not as big as it is – sorry, I’m Lebanese, and I tend to think that the Iranians have a hand in many of the – Ambassador Hunter:  I don’t disagree. Emile Hokayem:  The question is whether there is a political plan that accompanies the Saudi incursion. For the moment we have not seen that coming from Saudi Arabia. What are the objectives? How much are they coordinating with the Yemeni government? These are the questions we have. Crushing the insurgency altogether seems to me pretty unfeasible. We have seen insurgencies elsewhere prosper and the US knows that. Will it have an immediate disastrous effect on regional security? I don’t think so. It is still contained. Yemen is still pretty isolated geographically that you don’t have to worry about anything at a regional level soon. But the assistant interior minister in Saudi Arabia was targeted by someone who was living in Yemen so you have to think about the other consequences. Ellen Laipson:  I think the underlying dynamics of the Houthi in Yemen brings us to the question of Sunni-Shi’a interactions and changing power concepts in the region. I’ve got several questions about how has the switch to majority-Shi’a rule in Iraq affected the dynamics of the region; do we see any further aspirations of Shi’a in Bahrain or others; should we see other Shi’a-driven political developments; will significant Shi’a populations in Bahrain, Kuwait and the Gulf become a deterrent to Iran; how do we see cooperation between and among the Shi’a on ideological lines. Sami, I should have given you a warning, are you willing to take that question? Sami Alfaraj:  As if I had a choice. I believe that the battle today – it is not quite declared but it was quite declared actually by the Saudi foreign minister a few months back when he said, after the three or four summits in the Arab world or the Gulf in one single stretch, that we are in an open confrontation with Iran. What is important for us and the GCC, as in Iraq and Yemen, is to not allow some foreign entity to really speak for members of our citizenry. Therefore the battle today, everybody at the time looked at the Lebanese election but I think the place where people should have looked was at the Kuwaiti elections. At the Kuwaiti elections, if you look at it, the Shi’a never won as many seats as they have today in Kuwait. They won ten, they used to have five. Once in their life they reached eight but now with organization and utilizing the open outlets through the constitution they managed to get ten. Out of that ten, eight are people who believe in the unity of Kuwait and two are troublemakers. This tells you about the Iranian agenda. The second thing is that we had four female members of parliament but two of them were very notable Shi’ite citizens, very well known. I think the problem between us and our ally, the United States, is that in certain conditions we ought to be left to our own devices. When we were left to our own devices we managed to battle the Iranians in the Lebanese political settings. The outcome with the Lebanese elections was different than what people expected. If Iran has money and intrigue and whatever, we also have money and we have intelligence services and we can beat them. This is a war, an open war. But we’d rather fight it on this level than fight it on the military level. I am telling you, it is not a secret: the GCC and others are going to intervene in the next Iraqi elections because today we are left to our own devices. If we leave it to one man, one vote, you will get Maliki and people leaning toward Iran and this is going to really betray the whole cause of you sending your kids to fight for Iraq. So we are completing the job at a different level. This is not something that is new we are proposing to the United States. We have already proposed to the United States since. I am telling you about my personal experience with tribal leaders of Iraq, the Sunni tribes and the Shi’a tribes as well. They all are for an independent Iraq leaning towards the Arab world, not towards Iran. For us a balance of power is an independent Iraq, not Iraq leaning toward the GCC or Egypt or Turkey or Israel or Iran. Otherwise you will have conflict in the region and nations seeking hegemonic reaches in the area. When you talk about Sunni and Shi’a, I think the dividing line today or the battle is Arab and non-Arab. It remains always a nationalistic thing. We cannot really call – for instance in Kuwait, our best relations are with the Shi’ite Iraqis. It has never been with the Sunnis, we always fought against Sunni Iraqis. The Ba’ath consisted of Sunni leaders. Today we are in support of Sunni leaders, tribal leaders of Iraq who perhaps tomorrow are going to jump on us again, but for the time being we trust them as worthy counterparts. You will see that in the next election, you will see the involvement of outside parties in order to influence the choices of the Iraqi people toward an Arab leaning, not toward an Iranian leaning. But not towards us, towards an Arab leaning as a whole. Ellen Laipson:  There is a cluster of questions about US presence in the region, both from a military and a kind of political-military perspective. I wondered if Admiral Cosgriff and Ambassador Hunter will listen to the following set of questions and respond to whichever ones you are most interested in. A new joint forces command to be stationed in Manama – will that assume primacy over US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and how might it affect US relations with the other GCC states? The concept of the US defense umbrella – would you consider it a positive step if it were designed to cover all the countries in the Middle East, including Syria, Iran and even the Palestinian territories? Is there ever a solution for Gulf security that does not include the US? How might it be implemented? How does the US presence in the Gulf affect – this is a reworking of the same question – Afghanistan and Pakistan? Would a new security system in the Gulf shed any light on what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan right now? Admiral Cosgriff:  I am not aware of something like the joint forces command, from the US point of view, having a lot of traction in Manama. I have heard different versions of that being a GCC idea or the like. As I said in my remarks, I don’t see a lot of cohesion breaking out quickly nor do I think that would be the right approach by the US, but I don’t rule it out. The US defense umbrella – I think we start with our closer friends but that doesn’t mean that has to be the only people that you would want inside such a structure. I do agree with Ambassador Hunter’s very inclusive view of that, with the proviso that there have to be means of dealing with spoilers and until they stop being spoilers they are not inside the tent. To be consistent, I don’t think there is any near-term opportunity for a serious defense-centric security arrangement in the Gulf without the US – principally the US but also UK and France. I just don’t see it, for many of the reasons you have already heard, gaining any sort of traction. I guess one of my tests is that it has to be real – it has to have capability in order to be credible. Lastly, I do think that anything we do in the region – if we actually step back and look broader-gauged – would be helpful with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and vice versa. These areas are so tightly interconnected. If we step even further back and look at the whole Indian Ocean region, I would think you could make a case that there are lots of other interested players that we have not really discussed – India, China and others – that need to be factored in. So yes, I do think such an effort inside the Gulf could have a good effect for Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially if we are able to find some way of dealing with Iran inside that structure. Ambassador Hunter:  I agree with every word of that but I’ll just say a couple extra words. That was extremely well put, Admiral. The defense umbrella, one of the problems that comes up is: what will the American people and American Congress be willing to do? Taking on a commitment which is hard to define in its particulars is a very tough proposition, as we have seen now with regard to Afghanistan. Part of our problem right now that the president is going through is how do you define what we’re trying to do and what is success. Trying to write that down with something open-ended, I think you would find a lot of resistance here. I should mention in passing, since part of the question was what about the Palestinian territories – it is my personal judgment that if there can be an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, a US-involved NATO-led force on the ground in Palestine is going to be essential. I think that we would back. I think a lot of people would back it if it could bring that conflict to a halt. A final thing in regard to the connection I thought the admiral put extremely well, between what we now call Af-Pak and the Persian Gulf. One of the things facing us now with a whole set of decisions is America’s reputation. People are looking to us for leadership, they are looking to us for steadfastness, they are looking to us for understanding what the regional dynamics are and our own interests. The invasion of Iraq had a major shock to all of that and we are still recovering in a lot of ways. If we were not to prevail – and I don’t even know what prevail necessarily means – in regard to Afghanistan, there will be a lot of very serious questioning. Already we are in a situation that if it does not go well – and again, don’t ask me what well means – the NATO alliance can be in some jeopardy. The NATO allies, incidentally, are almost all of them in Afghanistan not because they believe that otherwise something terrible like terrorism is going to be visited on their own countries – there are exceptions but in the main that’s true – they are there because of the United States. They are there because they want us to succeed, because they want us to be able to do other things. If we don’t show that we are able in the long term to meet both our interests and their interests, then I think we are going to find a diminution of American influence (though not raw power) far greater than if we hadn’t embarked at all. So anything we do successfully with a new structure and engagements that work with regard to the Persian Gulf is going to help us elsewhere. Sami Alfaraj:  I just wanted to add to what my colleagues said. I am giving you a different ethnic stand or take on this, on how regional powers understand the situation when you fail to delineate your interests in the area. It is very important. Look at what Saddam Hussein gathered from the meeting with April Glaspie. He understood differently and he acted differently and I don’t think you want to risk that situation again. The other thing is the erosion of influence of the United States in the area. We in the Gulf do not understand how you are taken as some power in the world that is antagonistic to Muslim interests. The fact is that the United States has intervened since the mid-1950s to protect Muslim communities all over the world. Look at the tankers crisis onward, the invasion of Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo – and again, you cannot explain your case. Imagine if you did that mistake and did not delineate your interests. So Congress or the American people or the United States as a whole, Western alliance, whatever you call it, has got to be really resolute on that and really decide. Otherwise people will be left to their own devices, whether it is Israel or the GCC, Egyptians, Jordanians, whoever. Ellen Laipson:  I’m told we have time for one more question so Emile, I’m going to give you a sort of composite question here, a little bit about what are the GCC states doing themselves for internal security. What attention do you see being given to political and economic development, the demographic challenge, the youth bulge, employment for youth? How significant do you think that assassination attempt against Mohammed Bin Nayef was for measuring the effectiveness of counterterrorism within GCC states? I’ll stop there and let you ponder that cluster of issues. Emile Hokayem:  This is a very interesting moment. I am based in the Gulf so for the past almost two years it has been very interesting to look at how this region is adapting to this cluster of challenges. First, we have to understand that these are states that are growing more confident by the day. It is partly because of their newfound economic clout but also because they understand that they do not have to be only at the receiving end of things – they can actually be positive actors. When they engage China, for instance, they are not just selling energy to China. Right now they want to sell them high-quality metallic products that they produce in the GCC or petrochemical products. You feel a sense of greater confidence. At the same time the structural challenges are still there. Creating enough jobs; convincing nationals to accept jobs in the private sector rather than in the public sector; dealing with the imbalance between expatriates and nationals; actually involving people in the greater task of national development. I think the people in the region are a bit afraid of modernity. This is why I think they trust their governments more than we assume. We tend to see them as very shaky governments and what is their legitimacy? I think people look up to their governments and say: listen, this modernity business is pretty disorienting for us, we’ll trust you to get it right. Bring the investment, train us over time and so on. The problem is that there is not enough time. It is difficult to be a rentier state because it creates sometimes the wrong incentive structures to deal with all these challenges. On the issue of radicalization, I think that despite the assassination attempt against Prince Mohammed, the Gulf states are doing a better job. We have not seen these massive terrorist attacks in the smaller Gulf states. There have been some incidents in Kuwait and elsewhere but nothing – after 9/11 we imagined the region completely covered with blood but it didn’t happen. The Saudis are taking this very seriously because it came so close to home. Overall I think they are trying hard. The regional environment, however, does not help them. They are very concerned about what will happen with Iran eventually and that might step back whatever progress has been done right now. Ellen Laipson:  Thank you, Emile. Please join me in thanking this wonderful panel for a very interesting discussion.
About this Transcript: Assertions and opinions in this Transcript are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.  Speaker Details Ellen Laipson is President and CEO of The Henry L. Stimson Center. Kevin Cosgriff is former Commander of US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) and currently Vice President of Business Development and Strategy in the Washington Operations office of ATK Corporation. Emile Hokayyem is Political Editor of The National and a non-resident Research Fellow with the Southwest Asia/Gulf Program at the Stimson Center. Sami Alfaraj is head of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies and an advisor to the GCC. Robert Hunter is a Senior Advisor at the RAND Corporation and Chairman of the Council for a Community of Democracies.