Related Resources

Aside from brief trips to the area, the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf region was new to me when I arrived in Abu Dhabi in September 1986. I had benefited from the usual round of briefings for new ambassadors, including one on Gulf security from the Commander in Chief of the Central Command, General George Crist, at his headquarters in nearby Tampa. Crist was one of those warrior-scholars who worked hard to integrate area knowledge with military strategy. So I mean no slight on General Crist if I describe the briefing as based on a false premise. It was a threat-generated briefing, and the threat was Soviet designs on Iran and the Gulf. In fact, the general began the briefing with an area map showing the Soviet Union in red followed by a picture of Peter the Great. This gave historical depth to the false premise that we were facing a familiar Cold War scenario.

It soon became clear to me that the visual image, which was then far more relevant, would have been the late Ayatollah Khomeini. And if Crist’s successor, General Norman Schwartzkopf, were giving the briefing in 1990, it would be Saddam Hussein. And if General Tommy Franks were giving the briefing in 2001, it would be Osama bin Laden. In 2002 and 2003, Franks would have a new picture, and it would be, once again, Saddam Hussein.

Fortunately, I believe that current briefings start differently. But if Admiral William Fallon at Central Command were following the old model, he would use a picture of Iranian President Ahmedinejad. This is what we might call the “threat of the month” approach to Gulf security. It produces the risk that we are talking about the last threat instead of the next one. It can create the even greater danger that the means of our policy swallow up the ends, as we forget what the vital interests are that make the area important to us, and who are natural allies are likely to be.

That was how not to think about Gulf strategy. Now let’s talk about a better way.

Hopefully, the recent visit to the region by President Bush, nearly seven years after he took office, and his talks with leaders there indicate that we are starting differently. Today, I will talk about a strategy for the US and for its “longstanding friends” of the Arabian Peninsula to defend their shared interests. I will not be giving a US government perspective or even the perspective of the Middle East Institute, which by its charter does not take institutional positions. But I will do my best to explain my own view, based on experience both in and out of government on this problem. I will also try to describe how the US government appears to see those interests, bearing in mind that there is great churning taking place among policy circles in Washington.

The right way to think of Gulf security is to focus on shared interests. Obvious interests between the US and the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council states, as well as Jordan, Egypt, and other regional security partners include the following:

• The orderly production and flow of oil and gas from the Gulf producers to consumers at market prices. There is nothing wrong about this emphasis. It has not been a choice dictated by either Washington or capitals in the area. Rather, it is a reality of geology and a global economy for which oil and gas from the Gulf are essential. The industrial markets for the bulk of these energy resources are distant, and no one nation can provide adequate security for the production and transport of Arabian Gulf oil and gas.
• Commercial activity between US companies and their business partners in the governments and private sectors of the region. This is profitable for US firms, and it transfers needed technology and managerial expertise to the Gulf.
• Relations of friendship and trust with the leaders of government and civil society in countries that are at the heart of the Muslim world, countries threatened by radical, destabilizing movements, even more than we are.

There are also less obvious interests, but ones a strategist must bear in mind.

• Educational exchange, especially higher education in US. Historically, along with business, this has been the bedrock of US relations with the region. Today, it is under strain because of conflicts based on political disagreements and US visa restrictions.
• Economic and political reforms in the countries of the region. Some may question whether this is an appropriate matter for US government concern, but the Bush Administration has made it a high profile issue.

Parenthetically, let me say that in the long term, we should aim to be less dependent on the oil and gas reserves of this region. But it is a very long term. For the coming decade at least, I don’t see a realistic alternative to heavy reliance on the energy resources of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf. They are now in jeopardy.

If we accept my starting point of mutual interests, it should be an overriding US objective to prevent the hegemony over the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf by any power that would have the capability and, perhaps the motive, to disrupt those interests. That would include the ability to disrupt the production and transport of oil and gas from this region to foreign markets, the interference with commercial activity that increasingly is integrating the economies of the region into the global trading and investment system, interrupting the exchange of peoples for mutually beneficial education and obstructing the orderly process of political and economic reform.

This kind of interest-based strategy would not be aimed at any one threat. Rather, it should strengthen the ability of the states of the Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council to deter interference in their affairs by any larger neighbor that might be potentially more powerful based on its population and military establishment. I leave it to your imagination, but I suggest that the possible threats are multiple even if no particular threat is so imminent that it should dominate strategic thinking.

Viewed from a worst-case scenario, many states and non-state movements might be seen as posing some kind of potential threat based on the combination of their great actual or potential power, and in some cases on a plausible motive: relative poverty and need for revenues or resources available to AGCC states that are relatively better off and relatively weak militarily.

Let me give an example. Professor Richard Bulliet of Columbia, a prominent American scholar of the Middle East, has written several novels in his spare time. One of them, published in 1984, is titled The Gulf Scenario. The story concerns a US consulting firm, which had very profitable contracts from the US Department of Defense over the years producing war games for US military and political strategists. The firm had done war games for a Soviet invasion of Iran, Iranian attacks across the Gulf and an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Looking around for a new source of profit, the firm went to work on a war game concerning a Pakistani government plot to take over the United Arab Emirates by subversion. Motivated by both UAE wealth and Pakistani poverty, and using the large Pakistani emigrant worker community, the government of Pakistan would eventually send in armed forces to protect Pakistani citizens. The novel moved to an exciting climax when Pakistani intelligence discovered that the war game might upset its actual plans for such an operation.

As US Ambassador, I loaned the book to a senior UAE official. After reading it he said he found it all too plausible. Strategists have to consider the combinations of motive and capability and plan accordingly. In dealing with potential hegemony, regional governments, together with the United States, need to pursue policies designed to alleviate those concerns.

Moreover, in some cases, there is a history of past threats, subversion, intimidation, even actual aggression in the case of Egypt in the 19th century and Iraq in 1990. Certainly, until the destruction of Iraqi military power and change of regime in 2003, there was a plausible threat from an Iraqi state presumed to harbor plans for revenge and capability to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, there is a history of Iranian subversion, intimidation, and territorial claims. Some might argue that Tehran has demonstrated better behavior in recent years. Others will find Iranian actions in Iraq, its plans to improve missile capability and obtain a nuclear potential to be very troubling.

I admit to my own deep skepticism about Iranian objectives, but there are indications that leaders in Tehran are following a sophisticated policy that includes diplomatic, political and cultural engagement, as well as less acceptable policies. Current behavior in Baghdad or Tehran has to be considered, but also the potential for a change to something worse, either if internal struggles bring a more hostile regime to power or if anarchy creates safe havens for terrorist activity in the region. We all hope for stable, popular governments committed to peaceful relations with their neighbors, but optimism is rarely a good basis for strategic planning.

In recent years, we have all learned that strategists need to consider the threat of hostile non-state actors as well as governments. Such groups are nihilistic, violence-prone, destabilizing and hard to deter. They represent a new element not envisaged very clearly by strategists in past decades. But it is not a new problem. For historical parallels, strategists could consider the assassin movement in the medieval Islamic world or piracy on the high seas in the 18th and early 19th centuries. At the current time, I would suggest that a strategy for Gulf security be robust and flexible enough to deal with not only Al-Qaeda but also with something non-existent now but possible in an uncertain future, such as a Baluchistan independence movement with the power to block the straits of Hormuz and seek political concessions from both the oil-producing states and their customers in the industrialized world. I am intentionally exaggerating here in order to dramatize the need for an interest based and highly flexible strategy that would serve the long-term needs of both the United States and friendly states in the region.

In too many cases in the past, Washington has relied excessively on the role of military power. Strategies that neglect other security tools often lead to unintended consequences and miscalculations. It is an error to exaggerate the utility of force while neglecting elements of soft power – diplomacy, educational exchange, economic leverage and inducements to potential adversaries for good behavior as well as disincentives for bad. Since the end of the Cold War, we have witnessed a huge increase in the US relative dominance in conventional military power. By contrast, the attraction of US values has suffered due to neglect of the instruments of soft power.

The US, moderate Arab states, Turkey and Israel have shared strategic interests in the stability of the Gulf region. That does not mean that those interests are identical. The US is a global power and has interests involving Korea, for example, which are not high on the agenda of states in this region, although one could argue that the government in Pyongyang threatens to destabilize the industrial economies of East Asia and thereby put in peril the prosperity of the Gulf energy producers. As a former US diplomat, I can remember trying to engage the support of counterparts in the Gulf States to check the danger of weapons proliferation by North Korea. Most of our strategic dialogue, however, will involve issues within the Middle East and South Asia regions. The tools for promoting these shared interests are various, but include the following:

• Frequent political and strategic dialogue between the US and governments in the region. This is in my view the most important tool. It is also the one most often neglected by the US and desired by the states of the region.
• Joint security training and military equipment transfers of various kinds.
• Bilateral military cooperation agreed upon by both parties. This gets lots of attention but should take place in a broader strategic framework than sometimes happens.
• Open trade and investment policies, rather than the protectionism we sometimes practice in dealing with our Arab business partners.
• Educational exchange, building links of person-to-person understanding with people of a different culture.

The U.S. needs the help of its friends in the Arab world. Washington has often sought and usually received concrete political, military and economic cooperation from governments that have seen a common security interest. All too seldom, however, does Washington enter into a meaningful security dialogue in which it listens to the views of its partners.

Just as we Americans sometimes try to engage the attention of our Arabian Gulf interlocutors on issues such as Iran, they keep reminding us that their own strategic concerns are equally or more likely to be dominated by an issue we would often prefer to ignore, forget or defer – the Arab-Israeli peace process. Unfortunately, we are not always listening.

The Middle East is the homeland from which my own cultural heritage, what we inadequately call Western civilization, originates. Whether it is agriculture, writing systems, algebra, or the major religions of the children of Abraham – Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- the Middle East is where it all began. There is no higher moral imperative for US policy than to work for peace in this region, in particular peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and most urgently between Israel and the Palestinian people. Various US leaders have neglected this challenge, to the detriment of US policy throughout the region.

We ignore at our peril the degree to which it is vital that the US be making an energetic and persistent effort to end the suffering of Palestinians and to provide them with a state that is viable in all meanings of the word, including its territorial unity and sovereignty on nearly all of that part of Palestine that was under Arab control on June 4, 1967. Without that, peace among Palestinians is highly unlikely. Without that, Israel will not have a peace partner and be able to enjoy the security that it deserves.

It is also the case that US neglect of the peace process or undue bias toward Israel undermines the relationships with other countries in the region that are necessary for the US to achieve its strategic objectives in both the war on terrorism and the security of the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf regions. The effort to separate these issues has failed time and again, and the notion that a military victory over the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein would pave the way for peace between Israel and its neighbors was fallacious. I hardly need comment on the equally bizarre notion that the peace process could be placed on the back burner while the US mobilizes a coalition of Arab states and Israel to confront Iran.

In dealing with Iran, the US should consult more fully with potential partners in the region about what is at stake for them. I applaud the overdue visit of President Bush. It has culminated the greater diplomatic interaction that has taken place between the US and Arab governments during the past two years. It is unfortunate, however, that US public statements have focused so heavily on the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions and the political structure of the Iranian state. We did not need to convince the Arab leaders that Iran was a potential threat. The hard task is to convince them that the US has a realistic strategy to reduce that threat and that we are prepared to join them in a long-term partnership that would increase their security during the 21st century rather than exposing them to Iranian revenge when the US loses interest after a decade of confrontational rhetoric and military adventures.

Some of us are old enough to remember periods when Iran under the Shah and allied with the United States was asserting hegemonic aims in the Gulf. We also know that Iran can use many means other than nuclear weapons to press its ambitions for regional influence and that some of these means are just as unacceptable as nuclear intimidation. Washington should not imagine that a change in the Iranian regime or a change in Iran’s nuclear ambitions would be the answer to the problems of Gulf security. Eventually, Iran’s legitimate security interests must be satisfied in a manner, which excludes Iranian behavior aimed at dominating its neighbors.

Anti-Iranian political rhetoric from both US political parties aside, there are positive changes coming out of the administration. In November of 2006, we had the first public indication that the Bush Administration was reviewing ideas for the security architecture of the Gulf region. John Hillen, at the time Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, addressed the annual conference of the Middle East Institute. His remarks, available on our website, discuss the thinking of the administration based on consultations over the past year with governments in this region. It was a detailed presentation of a strategy based on enduring US interests and the interests of our partners, bilateral capacity building in various military areas and a call for multilateral consultations and cooperation.

In January of 2007, Secretary Rice joined in a remarkable public statement in Kuwait by the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt and Jordan. One sentence registered very strongly with me as being both quite obvious to observers in this region and almost always ignored in Washington. Let me read it from a US State Department document of January 16, 2007 and see if you agree. “The participants agreed that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains a central and core problem and that without resolving this conflict the region will not enjoy sustained peace and stability.”

Let me mention another public statement which I hope indicates Gulf leaders are not shy about making their views known to US diplomats and that the latter are listening to their Gulf counterparts. On January 23, 2007, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns addressed an audience assembled by the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. The text of his remarks was finally released by the State Department on January 30. Both the venue and the text underlined the necessity for cooperation by the countries of the region themselves to resist any danger that threatens our security. That advice was refreshingly different from the overly unilateral approach, often focusing on a single threat to the exclusion of others, which too often has characterized US strategic thinking.

There are indications that President Bush heard some plain talk from Arab leaders on his recent visit. Like us, they see Iran as a threat. But they want our support for a strategy to contain a neighbor that is a permanent feature of their region. They want strong and permanent US support for an alliance to contain Iran, not sporadic indications that the US courts a military confrontation, which would be extremely costly for them. They like the model of US and NATO containment of the Soviet Union, implying deterrence of Iran's hegemonic intentions combined with diplomatic and other wary forms of engagement with Iran as a big, worrisome neighbor that is not going to move away while the US might well do so some day. They have diplomatic relations with Iran and would prefer that we did as well.

On another occasion here in Sarasota, I am addressing the example of Iraq. Here I will only note that the violence, ethnic cleansing and turmoil of Iraq have already affected the security of our economic and strategic partners on the Arabian Peninsula. We must try to avoid a scenario whereby Iraq’s implosion sets off a regional power struggle in which the dominant victor is a hostile Iran and losers become our dependent clients. We need their support in dealing with the problem of Iraq but will only get it if we accommodate their views. If we continue striving for regional primacy, we may forfeit the chance for equal treatment and future respect.

In my diplomatic career, I have been in situations where US foreign policy was overly dominated by use of military measures without the guidance of an adequate diplomatic framework. You might call this “witless use of force.” I have also been in the position of trying to use diplomacy when an adversary saw that it was not backed up by the potential use of force. You might call that “toothless diplomacy.” When I was a State Department official dealing with Iraqi diplomats in the summer of 1990, I would have liked to have had a carrier battle group in the Gulf to go along with the joint air exercise to which a far sighted Shaikh Zayed of the UAE agreed in July 1990. Other Arab Gulf states did not trust our strategic judgment at the time and doubted the depth of our commitment to regional security.

Today, the carrier battle groups and other military assets of the US and its GCC allies should be more than adequate to deter Iranian adventurism, provided Iran does not believe we are an existential threat aiming to overthrow its political system by force. The Arab states know well that Iran can retaliate against them by devastating asymmetrical means such as subversion and sabotage. And we should remember that our great military power will only be effective in the context of diplomacy that is both robust and flexible.

At the present juncture, I am glad that we have military forces available and only wish that they had not been squandered in Iraq at a time when we did not deploy them with adequate planning and consultation with our strategic partners regarding the non-military factors that were so critical to the outcome. There is no contradiction between the use of diplomacy and military force. The two work best in tandem.

A final word: Think about redlines for the behavior of a potential adversary to our national interests in this region, but also consider overlapping interests. Diplomacy and economic engagement can eventually be routes to reminding the Iranians of the potential for cooperation. The military tool is often the least effective and almost always the most risky. To quote the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tsu, “Military force is most impressive when you do not have to use it.” Even in wartime, there are overlapping interests between enemies, such as preventing the use of poison gas or avoiding mutual destruction. During the decades-long cold war between the West and the Communist bloc, Washington and Moscow found grounds for cooperation. We even had summit meetings. History records that both sides avoided the worst outcome by not resorting to war.