The below transcript is from the Middle East Institute's 66th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, November 14, 2012
Opening Remarks and Panel 1: U.S.-Mideast Diplomacy in Transition: New Era, New Principles
Daniel Brumberg, United States Institute for Peace
Reuel Marc Gerecht, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Lawrence Korb, Center for American Progress
Ellen Laipson, Stimson Center
Moderator: Amb. Deborah Jones, Middle East Institute
Wendy Chamberlin: Good morning and welcome. Welcome to our panelists, the members of the Middle East Institute, the press, the students, government officials, guests – we are delighted to have you here today. Welcome to the opening of the Middle East Institute’s 66th Annual Conference. I hope you will be able to stay the entire day. I think you’ll find all the panels that our wonderful vice-president, Kate Seelye, has organized to be engaging as they analyze the really momentous events that have occurred throughout this year. Some of these events have been troubling, some of them have been encouraging. But as we look forward to this coming year, it’s going to be very challenging for the United States and for the people of the Middle East.
Today, now that the presidential elections are very happily behind us, we have an opportunity to pause and evaluate, look back over the events of the Middle East this past year, with a renewed focus. President Obama will essentially have a new national security team and they will face a Middle East that is more complicated and more delicate for US policymakers than any time in the past, but also more complicated and delicate for the people of the Middle East themselves.
The panels today will look at these challenges to US policy – the first one most specifically – but then the following panels will look at Egypt, Iran and Syria. Clearly Washington needs to understand what is happening in the Middle East, the trends and the turmoil – and we don’t really. We need to spend more time really focusing on these issues. That’s what the Middle East Institute is all about – after all, that is our mission, to educate and to inform and to analyze the events in the Middle East for the American public and beyond.
It is in that spirit, our mission to inform and educate, that we make this conference entirely free for all of you wonderful participants who have come to join us today. We open it to the public. We open it free of charge, although it costs us, to you. So I hope you will enjoy and find value in the conference today, and will be moved to join us as a member. We are a membership organization and we do rely upon our membership dues to be able to sponsor events like this. There is a table outside in the foyer. A $100/year membership gives you a number of perks. The one I always like the best is four editions of the Middle East Journal, a peer-reviewed academic journal that is very interesting. So please, I encourage you to join us as a member.
Our moderator today, Ambassador Deborah Jones, who is currently on a year’s sabbatical from the State Department with the Middle East Journal, is stuck in traffic. So I’d like to invite our amazing Vice President for Programs, who has put together this whole day’s program, to join us on the podium and to pitch-hit as the moderator for the first panel.
Kate Seelye: Good morning and welcome. Today’s panel is entitled “US-Mideast Diplomacy in Transition: New Era, New Principles.” I have not written framing remarks but the thinking was simply that in this time of extreme change and transition – some would say revolution – in the Middle East, what should US foreign policymakers be thinking in terms of strategies, approaches and doctrines toward a region in shift, that can promote a stable, secure, prosperous region and ensure US interests?
To discuss this issue, we have assembled a wonderful panel of experts. I will introduce them briefly here – their full bios are in your program books. We’re going to begin with Mr. Lawrence Korb, who’s filling in for Mr. Colin Kahl, who had to cancel for personal reasons. Mr. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is a Senior Advisor to the Center for Defense Information and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Prior to joining the Center for American Progress, he was a Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He will be followed by Ellen Laipson. Ellen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Stimson Center. Prior, Ms. Laipson was Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council and Special Assistant to the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Laipson’s earlier government career focused on analysis and policymaking on Middle East and South Asian issues.
She will be followed by Mr. Daniel Brumberg, who is a Senior Advisor to the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace, where he focuses on issues of democratization and political reform in the Middle East and the Islamic world. He is also an Associate Professor at Georgetown University and a former Senior Associate in the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law Project.
We will be concluding with Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He focuses on Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of The Wave: Man, God and the Ballot Box in the Middle East and The Islamic Paradox: Shi’ite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists and the Coming of Arab Democracies.
I want to thank you all so much for joining us today, it is such an honor and a treat. I would like to invite Mr. Korb to the podium to begin the panel.
Lawrence Korb: Thank you very much, it’s a great pleasure to be here.
When you’re trying to think about what’s happening in the Near East, the Greater Middle East, or however you want to describe it, it’s almost impossible to predict what will happen. Obviously some good things could happen and some bad things. In preparing my remarks today, I’m reminded of a story I heard back in 2010 when I made a trip to Israel. It seems this elderly couple, before they passed on, decided they wanted to go to the Holy Land. So they went over there and unfortunately while they were there the man did pass away. So the rabbi came to the widow and said, “I’m really sorry for your loss. You have a decision to make. Would you like to have your husband buried here or do you want to take him back home?” She thought for a couple seconds and said, “How much would it cost to have him buried here?” The rabbi said, “I don’t know, $50 or $100.” She said, “What about if I take him home?” He said, “Oh, that would be several thousand.” She thought for a couple seconds and said, “I want to take him back home.” The rabbi said, “Why? $50 or $100, or several thousand…” She said, “I heard that years ago they buried a fellow here, and after three days he rose again. I don’t want to take a chance.” Of course, when you’re trying to say “I predict this” or “I predict that,” it’s very difficult.
As I take a look at the situation, a couple of things leap out at me. First of all, a lot of what happened in the Arab Spring had nothing to do with the United States. We in the United States, because of our role as a superpower in the Cold War, we think that everything that happens in the world is about us. It wasn’t about us. I think that’s important because when people say, “What are you going to do about it?” – well, it really didn’t have anything to do with us. It wasn’t like the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s, where a lot of it had to do with the fact that they were trying to get rid of a person we installed there, the shah. That did have something to do with us.
The next thing to keep in mind is that while the United States is powerful, we are not omnipotent. We can’t solve every problem by ourselves nor do we need to. Again, that is very hard for some people to adjust to, given the way the Cold War ended and we were for at least a decade the world’s only power with no rivals. Therefore, when you deal with situations there, you have to work with other countries.
The next thing is while we have a very powerful military, probably the most powerful military in the world, you’re not going to be able to solve every problem militarily.
Then finally, some problems you have to live with. In other words, you have to manage things you can’t solve. Again, for Americans we like – got a problem? Let’s solve it and move on. It doesn’t work like that, particularly when you’re dealing with this part of the world.
Having said that, let me get into some of the specifics. Egypt, probably the dominant power, had an election. Mr. Morsi won. That was their choice – they voted for him, they elected him. Our challenge now is to work with him in such a way that it furthers our interests and the interests of the other countries in the region, particularly Israel. Therefore when I see people say, “Oh my goodness, we don’t like everything he does, we want to cut off aid” and stuff like that, that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. We need to work with him. I must say, I’ve been pretty pleased with what he’s done, coming in and putting the military in its place, going to Tehran and denouncing what the Iranians were doing in Syria. So I think we need to work with him.
When it came to Libya and you had the horrible things happening there, the United States worked with other countries to deal with the situation. Unfortunately somebody in the Obama administration used the term “leading from behind” and that became a campaign issue and a way for people to say, “You weren’t doing your job.” No, that was the way to do it. Basically what happened, the Arab League, NATO and the UN authorized it. We got involved, we provided the unique capabilities that only our military has, and Qaddafi was gone at a cost of no American lives and about a billion dollars. Look at Iraq – over a trillion dollars and what have you got there? One of the things you’ve got there is a powerful Iran. So the idea that somehow or another this was a failure – and everybody says, well, look what’s happened now. Look what happens after every time you have a change of power.
We’re going to have hearings on Benghazi this week and people are going to talk about who knew what and when, all this kind of stuff. People say this shows that Al Qaeda is back. Let me tell you something: that group that was involved in there has as much connection to Al Qaeda Central as your local BP gas station does to BP headquarters. You want to call yourself Al Qaeda, you can. They’re a group, they’re not happy – is Al Qaeda happy with the fact that we’ve been decimating their leadership, dealing with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? So people use the term Al Qaeda to say bin Laden and company are back. No. Is it unstable? Should the international community get involved? Sure.
Then of course you get to Syria. I was talking to a former head of Central Command, whose name I can’t use, and he said: if you liked Iraq, you’ll love Syria. Sending American men and women there to deal with it – obviously there are things you can do but you have to balance hard power and soft power here. I would not suggest us going in unless there’s an international movement like you had in Libya, and that doesn’t look like it’s there. But we’re doing things obviously. We probably have agents on the ground. I think Secretary Clinton was right to tell the opposition and the folks living out of the country to get together and form a coherent government. So the idea that somehow or another if Syria doesn’t turn out absolutely the way that we would like, that this would be the end of the world – this is not the Cold War, where it’s a zero-sum game.
When it comes to Iran, and everybody wants to talk about Iran, let me tell you about one issue that I was involved in with Iran. Back in 2001, I was working in New York. I’ll give you this title because it’s relevant to what I’m talking about – I was Vice President and Director of Studies and holder of the Maurice Greenberg Chair. So about a week after the attacks my phone rings and it’s the Iranian Embassy in New York. Remember, we don’t have relations with them but they are at the UN. The Iranian ambassador said: I’d like you and your scholars who deal with our part of the world to come over for dinner. I’ll never forget, because it was a Yankee playoff game that I had tickets to that I had to – my son said, “What?!” Anyway we went over there for dinner. Remember that the Iranians condemned the attacks of 9/11. They were the only Muslim country that did. They had candlelight vigils. The ambassador told us: Please tell your government we don’t like the Taliban, we are willing to help however we can in Afghanistan to get them out of there. Well, you had the Bonn Conference, and I talked to Ambassador Dobbins after it. He said: Without the Iranian help, the Northern Alliance wouldn’t have supported Karzai. Okay, so it turned out well. In January, President Bush puts them on the “axis of evil.” This time I get another call – no dinner this time – like, what in the heck is going on? I think that’s important to keep in mind in our relations with Iran.
Does anybody want Iran to get – no, nobody wants Iran to get a nuclear weapon, nobody in the international community. I know President Obama was criticized for reaching out to them. I think by reaching out to them when he came into office, he was able to get the international community to put these sanctions on.
Let me conclude with this. If Iran gets a bomb, it will not be the end of the world. Do I want them to get it? No. Do I think we ought to keep the sanctions on? It will not be the end of the world. I remember when I worked in the Reagan administration, we had the Weinberger Doctrine, which became known as the Powell Doctrine: if you want to use military force, make sure that you’re willing to do everything you need because you just can’t do a little bit of it and back off.
But let me give you this analogy from history. If you listen to the Johnson tapes in the 1960s, you’ll find out that when the Chinese were developing nuclear weapons, Mao Tse-tung was making statements that would make Ahmadinejad, as crazy as he is, sound rational. What Mao was saying was: Hey, we’ll get a bomb – we’ll lose a couple hundred million people, we’ll still have a billion, how about you guys? The Soviets actually came to us to try and take them out. Johnson asked then General LeMay about it, asked, “How are you going to do it?” He said, “We’ll bomb them.” “Will you get it all?” “No.” “What will you do?” He said, “We’ll keep bombing.” Johnson said, “No, I think we’d better not.”
So as bad as it can be, I think the world can live with it. I do think you don’t want to let them know in advance you can, but the fact of the matter is I think we can. Then of course I think the exercises we’re running with the Israelis, the Iron Dome and all that kind of stuff, is going to send a message that even if they get them and think they can do something, it’s not going to be easy. I think we need to keep negotiating with them. After the election here, I think the Iranians – who in my view, in all the dealings I had with them, are very rational – are going to recognize they can’t just keep on their current course. Thank you.
Ellen Laipson: Good morning, everyone. My topic is US civilian engagement in the Middle East, what we might call “soft power” – the set of activities that the US government supports (sometimes in whole, sometimes in part) that permit a web of networks and relationships and interactions between the societies of the Middle East and ourselves. It’s really fitting that this be at the Middle East Institute’s Annual Conference since MEI represents very much part of that deep and enduring relationship between the peoples of the region and Americans. But I do think, as Wendy framed earlier, we are at a difficult moment of some reconceptualization of how the United States should think about its activities in the Middle East. There is a little bit of a paradox or an irony that at a moment when societies are opening up and are more empowered in at least some of the Arab countries, and where there is a movement in the direction that as a declared US policy had always been the direction we had aspired to for the region – more in a direction of greater citizen participation, openness and along the path to democratization – that in fact this is a moment where we have to pause a little bit and rethink how we engage both on the political side and in the very vast array of cultural and educational programs there.
I think first of all it’s important that this is a moment in the Arab world’s history where they are setting the agenda and the role of any outside actor has to be considered very carefully. It’s also a period of time where we are recalibrating what is the American role in the world; how much does the United States set the agenda or try to shape and influence events around the world, or to what extent can we step back and let some regional powers and other actors assume more responsibility? And it’s clearly a moment – the 21st century in general – where as a global phenomenon, the relationship between states and their societies are changing. Governments are no longer seen as all-powerful or all-capable of performing services and civil society around the world, including in the Middle East, will increasingly be playing a role of partnering with government in trying to provide basic services and achieve domestic peace and stability (one hopes).
Sometimes I think our civic engagement with the Middle East gets short shrift because we see the Middle East as an area of such profound peace and security content. It’s an area of the world that we’re always worried about instability, where the role of the US military is very dominant. So I think it’s useful sometimes to step back and look at some of the other things we do that are in fact less costly but one hopes are equally strategic investments in both relationships and in values and capabilities being transferred from one society to another. I’m interested in the kinds of things we’ve been doing, some of which have very deep historic resonance – US commitments to higher education across the region – and some of more recent vintage, such as the sudden surge in entrepreneurship training that I think you heard about last night and that is very much part of the Obama administration’s agenda for civic engagement.
I do think we want to think of these set of activities as having enduring, sustainable value because they do reflect American values as much as the pursuit of our interests. But one more aspect that I think is a little tricky right now is whether we can consider – when we see the sensitivities in the region – some of these activities to be truly independent of governments. Are these spontaneous actions from civil society to civil society? When we’re completely honest, we would understand that many of these activities are in fact funded directly or indirectly by the US taxpayer and they have to pass some test of being legitimate and transparent and hopefully fit in the long term into the goals of American policy. I personally can tolerate some disconnect between the objectives of some of our activities society-to-society with the strategic framing. For example, if we think about pursuing educational exchanges when we also have sanctions against a country, or attempts to isolate the political leadership but still engage with society. I personally think that is the right thing to do and I do think of these kinds of engagements as having long-term strategic consequence and value to us.
Let me just give you a little more data on what we’re talking about here. First, I thought it might be useful to just reference the latest poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, that every two years takes the pulse of American society on what does the American public think we should be doing around the world. They polled in late May and early June and published their results. Very quickly, the points that are relevant to the Middle East is that overall the American public wants to see more selective American engagement; believes that neither the war in Iraq nor the war in Afghanistan were worth it; believes that the Middle East is still a source of threat to the United States. But the US public does not want to disengage from the Middle East: it wants to pursue counterterrorism, to protect oil, and to respond to humanitarian crises. There is less support in the US public than two years ago for US bases in the Middle East and for foreign aid to Middle Eastern countries. The last point is the American public is not sure whether the Arab Spring is good or bad for America. I think those points in some ways reflect the common sense of the common man.
Equally in the Arab world there is some ambivalence, and in some cases even a deeper malaise, about what should the United States be participating, engaging – what they might see as interfering – with this very sensitive moment of transition in the politics and in the political cultures of these countries. The Egypt case is the most extreme case, where the new government is very conflicted and really does want to revisit and consider very carefully what kinds of American or international organizations are allowed to set up shop and engage directly with Egyptian citizens. But in other places – Tunisia and Libya, for example – there is a great hunger for more American engagement and a great eagerness to have a transfer of ideas, technology, training and capabilities, which can be done at an NGO-to-NGO level.
The Islamists have faced a genuine dilemma: they want to demonstrate that they are setting the agenda for their countries and yet once in power I think they realize how much structural collaboration there is and how dependent some of their national-level systems are on foreign assistance, technical assistance, foreign advice, etc. I agree with Larry that the Egyptians are, at least at the highest level, trying to very carefully figure out how to sustain some level of American cooperation and yet make it feel like it’s very much a new era for them. The latest Gallup poll, for what it’s worth, says that 82 percent of Egyptians actually oppose US aid.
So my point is that it’s not an easy environment right now. It’s somewhat paradoxical: at a moment of greater opening in the Middle East, when in some ways Middle Eastern societies are signaling that they do want to be more like the rest of the world in terms of openness of political institutions, this is nonetheless a moment of looking inward and great sensitivity about setting their own agenda. The Arab leaders themselves want to be the agents of change. When we think about civil society we might ask the question: where are the Rockefellers and the Carnegies of the Arab world? I think last night at the banquet you heard from some of them and I have no doubt that there are figures emerging that want to be transformative agents of change in their own societies. They may be looking to examples in Europe and the United States but they will very much want to see the US as a supporting partner, not as an imposing or setting-the-agenda partner.
Very quickly, what are we doing right now? We are doing lots of good things. The Obama administration has generated perhaps more ideas than they can possibly implement. But we’re not doing one big thing on the civil society side. Overall aid to the Middle East is up: from 2011 to 2012 to 2013 it’s been adding a billion dollars a year. The request for FY13 is $9 billion, up from $7 billion just two years ago. But if we look at it, we have to realize how complicated this has been bureaucratically for the Obama administration. The largest increase in funding is still in the peace and security arena, not in education, health, empowerment of individuals, etc. To fund the new Incentive Fund, the $700 million fund that Congress has still not approved, that would go largely to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, they had to reallocate from other accounts. So I was startled to see that we are actually dropping funding in education in order to channel more funding toward activities that would stabilize the economies and do job creation in the region.
Sometimes the efforts of the US government get very diffused where funding is insufficient to achieve critical mass but we still feel we have to reach out and touch as many different constituencies as we can. We are operating sometimes in a murky legal environment where countries are rethinking their NGO laws of what is permitted, how does foreign money get received and used, etc. Let me just focus on education for a minute. There is some attention to underrepresented groups for scholarships. There is an effort to try to plus-up money for scholarships – I see Bill Rue [phonetic] and others who have worked very diligently over the years to expand educational exchanges between the United States and the Middle East. For my money, there is nothing that is more valuable than that. But as I said, the funding for education has dropped. There is some anecdotal reporting that the numbers of Arab students wanting and able to come to the United States are back up to earlier numbers of a decade ago. The demand for US-style education in the region is high. We see countries investing in American-style universities in their own countries and new programs funded by the Arabs themselves – whether it’s the Saudi government or the Qatari government or the Egyptian government – looking to fund very quickly training opportunities to advance people educationally. The Iraqis have done the same thing, dedicating money to get their best students out of Iraq to Western countries to develop some of the high-tech skills they know they need. So the picture is mixed in some ways.
Let me give you very quickly, to give you the flavor of how diverse the activities are at present: in Tunisia, for example, where the administration was uniquely successful in freeing up some funds before Congress had second thoughts about new money for the Middle East countries in transition, we have allocated roughly $100 million over two years for everything from direct budget support, training their ICT sector, returning the Peace Corps, training entrepreneurs, setting up a US-Tunisian enterprise fund, allowing the Tunisians to be qualified as an MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) country, and advising their constitutional program. And even – and this one was rather touching, it was covered in the news yesterday – micro-entrepreneur funds to fruit vendors and to people like the late Mr. Bouazizi: trying to capture how much the informal sector is really where a lot of employment is, and instead of expecting people to be able to move to the more formal economic sector, to try to facilitate and support the micro-entrepreneurs. That’s just one example.
In Egypt we are trying very hard to help them with debt relief but there is resistance on the US side. Also focused on educational reform, giving voice to women, refugee rights, training journalists. But again in Egypt overwhelmingly the peace and security pillar dominates our funding and only $200 million in the last year or two has been for civilian economic and political reform activities.
Let me just finish by saying I think there is a lot of hard work ahead to reconceptualize our engagement. I know that some of the major American actors – from the NED, to Freedom House and others – really are in a period of transition in terms of what is the right size of their presence, how do they engage with the local actors, how do we ensure that this be as locally owned and led as possible. We do need to be careful and try to strike a new balance between what their market demands, what our public and Congress think is right, and what resources are available.
These are hybrid relationships. They are not exclusively in the private or the public domain. I think it’s good for our government and their governments to enable and support these civil society relationships. It’s not a substitute for wise policies at the strategic level but it is an integral part of how these societies perceive the US and the American agenda. So in the long term I think this is a proud and grounded component of US influence and engagement in the region. Thanks.
Kate Seelye: I’d like to thank Ellen and welcome our moderator, Deborah Jones, to the stage, and welcome Daniel Brumberg to the front.
Daniel Brumberg: A very good morning to everyone. Thanks so much for inviting me to speak with you this morning. It’s a special treat to see Larry on this panel. I called him up in 1982 when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago and got some insights from him, so that’ll put us in the timeframe of work here.
I’m going to speak mostly about dynamics of transitions in the region and their implications for US-Arab relations. I’d be happy to speak a little later or address issues on Iran – I’ve worked a great deal on issues having to do with Iran. Ellen and I have worked together on these matters quite closely over the years. Of course at USIP I’m very much engaged on the soft power arena. We are heavily involved now in Tunisia and particularly in academic programs. So I’d be happy to address those issues.
I suppose my overall thesis, which will hardly surprise you, is that I think the region is engulfed in a transition in which identity issues are coming to the fore, particularly but not exclusively conflict and competition between Islamists and secularists and between Islamists and Islamists. That presents the US with a very difficult set of challenges in how to handle these escalating conflicts. Even in Tunisia, where we thought Tunisia was going to be the easy case, the escalation particularly of conflict within the Islamist camp and then between Islamists and secularists has gotten really much more serious and posing all kinds of dilemmas for leaders there as well as for the United States and its diplomacy.
There was a time not too long ago when the Arab world was seen as resistant to a third wave of democracy, one that was supposedly sweeping the globe. However by the end of the 1990s the persistence of autocracy in the Arab world appeared to be anything but unique. Indeed, the emerging consensus in the academic community was that semi-autocracy, or what Tom Carothers called the “gray zone” between liberal democracy and full authoritarianism, had become the rule rather than the exception. This proliferation of semi-autocracy was fostered by the collapse of the Cold War order. Indeed, if the post-Cold War map was still dominated by the military superiority of the US, it was also marked by the growing influence of what Charlie Kupchan calls “the rest,” and by a new pattern of strategic and political-economic cooperation that pivoted around a loose alliance of authoritarian regimes (led by Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela). The resulting dynamic of global and regional competition abetted the efforts of semi-authoritarian regimes to play as many global economic, political and strategic cards as possible, in ways designed to enhance their room for maneuver.
The 2011 Arab uprisings have tossed a monkey wrench into this messy system but have also done so in ways that resist both the heady democratic universalism that some analysts articulated during the early months of the Arab uprisings and the growing pessimism we now hear, particularly from those who view democratization as little more than the inevitable prelude to anti-Western and anti-Israeli governments. Neither of these two contending or opposed theories or positions grasp the ambiguities, complexities and contradictions that will mark Arab domestic politics and foreign policy for some time to come. To understand why, we have to review the mechanisms that sustain Arab autocracies as well as the new forces that have undermined them.
Prior to the 2011 uprisings, Arab autocracies survived not only by using robust repressive machines but also by manipulating the arenas of economic and identity conflict. In the economic realm, neo-market reforms enlarged a class of crony businessmen with deep ties to the bureaucracy. In the identity arena, the manipulation of identity conflicts created a protection-racket politics designed to enhance the autonomy of regimes. In fully authoritarian regimes, Arab rulers gained the support of vulnerable minorities – such as secularists – by shielding them from the threat of democratic competition. But this kind of full or nearly full political exclusion – in this case, of Islamists – as exemplified in Tunisia was the exception. In an age of semi-authoritarianism, the preferable strategy was to allow for a measure of state-controlled, de facto political inclusion sufficiently wide such that regimes could manipulate one group against the other. To varying degrees, this was the game in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait.
The Arab uprisings signaled the erosion – fast, slow or intermediate – of these protection-racket politics. This trend was partly a consequence of the efforts of old and new-generation activists to forge a more unified front in opposition to autocracy. Indeed, during the late 1990s and beyond, the proliferation of Islamist-secular dialogues and informal pact-making in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and to some extent Yemen signaled that groups that had previously sought the shield of Arab autocracies now were seeking to create a common umbrella of democratic protection by cooperating with one another.
Whether such cross-cutting alliances, or the efforts to create such alliances, between Islamists and secularists will survive the test of actual democratic politics remains to be seen. But what is clear is that the 2011 uprisings have precluded a full return to or the reinvention of the old protection-racket politics game. What does this new inchoate political map mean for the US in terms of our diplomacy and our wider foreign policy?
First and foremost, political change has brought to the fore new leaders who are now accountable to an emerging electorate. This means that foreign policy is being democratized, or at the very least linked to public opinion in a structured and direct way. The notion that democratization will pull Arab societies inward, thus depreciating or obscuring foreign policy issues, may be a comforting thought for some but it is not the case.
Second, democratization of foreign policy will complicate the domestic politics and diplomacy of new democratic Arab leaders in ways that will generate challenges for the US as well. On this score, Egypt is the paramount example. Egypt’s new leaders must walk a fine line. On the one hand they are under pressure to demonstrate a more independent or nationalist regional and global policy. This means reaching out to regional and global actors such as Turkey, Iran and of course China in ways that will enhance their diplomatic room for maneuver. On the other hand, these same new leaders cannot literally afford to antagonize Egypt’s key strategic ally, the US, or to jettison a peace treaty with Israel, which at the very least has allowed Egypt to avoid being dragged into the front lines of a new Arab-Israeli military conflict. Morsi’s much-discussed trip to Iran illustrates how tricky it is to walk this fine line. Note that before he went to Tehran he visited China, where he obtained investment support. Then Morsi went to Tehran. But if he used the voyage to signal Egypt’s new independence from the West, he also used it to indirectly chide the Iranian government for its support of Assad and his henchmen. After all, Morsi is – or professes to be – a democrat who subscribes to global norms of democratic governance and to the institutions and mechanisms meant to defend these norms.
I should add that if we think this kind of balancing act is unique to Egypt, we are wrong. Even in Tunisia, where the leaders of the Nahda Party have sought to remain aloof from regional conflicts, the pull of such conflicts and their effect on domestic politics is growing. This dynamic is partly a consequence, as it is in Egypt, of the rising influence of radical Salafists. Their political and sometimes physical attacks on mainstream Islamists are not only meant to intimidate Nahda, or Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, into embracing a more shari’a-based system, they are also designed to discredit them by suggesting that Islamist leaders are little more than a fifth column of Western cultural or ideological influence.
By increasing tensions between secular and Islamist forces, the Islamists are trying to compel Tunisians and Egyptians to choose between the West and the Muslim world. Indeed, the attacks on the US embassy in Tunis and the US consulate in Benghazi, not to mention the escalating violence in the Sinai, is surely meant to accelerate this corrosive process and in doing so put democratically elected Arab leaders in a very difficult position.
Under these trying circumstances, the challenge for the US is to avoid walking into an array of traps that have been set before us or which are likely to emerge in the coming months. To do this, the US must pursue a nimble diplomacy that strikes a reasonable balance between the need to communicate firmness when Arab leaders adopt positions or take actions that we believe might exacerbate local or regional conflicts on the one hand, and on the other hand to engage these leaders in ways that demonstrate a real appreciation of the legitimate need to secure domestic support and credibility.
Moreover, we need to recognize that left to its own devices the architecture of regional stability upon which Washington and its regional allies had previously depended is becoming increasingly wobbly. Indeed, in the long run, democratic change in the Arab world will not succeed without a sustained effort by our leaders and policymakers to reengage on critical regional fronts, not least of which is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Iranian-US conflict as well. Thank you very much.
Deborah Jones: As Ryan said last night, it’s what we don’t know that really gets us – and after seven years, what I didn’t know was traffic patterns in Washington. I apologize for that. Marc’s going to go and then we will wrap up. Then we’re going to ask them all to focus briefly on what they think three priorities should be then for American diplomacy in the Middle East now, given our economic circumstances, the very diverse circumstances you are all describing. So go ahead with theory first and then we’re going to get down to hard realism, the nuts and bolts and dollars and cents.
Reuel Marc Gerecht: It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to see also Deborah – the last time I saw her, I was having a scotch in her house in Istanbul. I think I will have to start here with just a little opening. I’ve just recently seen “Argo,” a movie I quite liked. However, Larry’s comments did spark a slight historical problem with that film. There’s a little introduction, for those of you who haven’t seen it, and it makes you think that the CIA was responsible for the coup against Mossadeq and the shah coming into power. I just have to state for the record that Kermit Roosevelt really doesn’t deserve that credit. The credit really goes to Ayatollahs Kashani and Behbehani, which is one reason why the clerics usually don’t have fond reminiscences of Mossadeq. But that was just one little fact-free moment in Larry’s speech, but I’ll keep going.
I think my role here is to serve as the critic. I’m not going to give a lot of theory at this moment, I will just suggest to you that the next four years are more or less going to be what we’ve seen in the first four years. I don’t think there’s going to be all that much difference. If you liked the first four years then I suspect you may like the next four years. If you, like me, weren’t a terribly big fan of the first four years, you’re not going to be a terribly big fan of the next four years.
Let’s just take a few of the countries. If we look at Syria, for example, the death toll that you see most often in the press is at 35,000. I think the administration is hoping, waiting, praying that the armed opposition can dispatch the Assad clan in the not-too-distant future so we don’t have to see the death toll go to 70,000. I guarantee you the death toll can go to 70,000 and the administration will do nothing. I think it’s quite clear they have no intention of intervening, unlike the French, who may in fact end up supplying some arms. I don’t think this time around – you’re not going to have someone like Sarkozy. Hollande will not be as lucky as Sarkozy, he will not be able to drag the president into any type of armed intervention. Particularly you know it’s not going to happen when the Obama administration actually sends senior officials to Ankara to discourage the Turks from taking a more aggressive view. You know you’re not going to have a Libya repeat because we’re going to try to ensure we preempt it. In that sense I think the Obama administration believes in preemption.
I think Syria probably, unless we get lucky, is going to get a lot worse. I think the ramifications of that are going to be pretty severe. Most importantly, I think it’s going to super-heat the Shi’ite-Sunni divide throughout the Middle East. I’ll make a little bet now that the Syria war is actually going to be the catalytic agent for the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. If the Iranians do get the nuke, and certainly on the path that we are presently on I think it’s highly likely they will get the nuke – the Obama administration will not probably stop them – then I guarantee you the Saudis are calling to call in their chips with the Pakistanis and we’re going to start seeing the distribution of nukes on the Sunni side. This will be a regrettable outcome of this war, which could have been prevented if the United States had taken a much more aggressive role much earlier.
Let’s also look at Egypt. The administration came late and awkwardly to Egypt. It came late and awkwardly in general to the whole great Arab revolt – I prefer to call it that than the Arab Spring. It did finally arrive and I think the president kept the ship from sinking. However, if you believe, as I do – and I think many others – that you do not want to see the Egyptian experiment tank, then the president and the secretary of state need to make very strong arguments why US aid is justified. I think it is, but you can’t hear them making that argument. Egypt is going to be very difficult. There is beyond the shadow of a doubt that the arguments that are taking place, the very importantly central arguments that are taking place in Egypt among the faithful, among the Islamists most importantly, are going to be very repellent and repugnant to lots of folks in the West and the United States. You are going to have folks, as already you have in Congress on both sides of the aisle, that look at these arguments, look at the statements that come out of Egypt, and say: why do we want to give money to these folks? Well, if you believe it’s a good idea, then you need to make that argument.
I do not hear the administration making that argument. I think it’s much more likely, in this financial environment where if it’s not an entitlement you’re not going to get the cash – I think it behooves the president to actually take the bully pulpit and start making the argument. It’s extremely difficult for him to do that because, to be frank, the president of the United States is actually fairly uncomfortable getting into any profound discussion of Islam. Usually when he or Mr. Brennan talk about Islam it’s the type of discussion that could be replayed on “Sesame Street.” It’s not serious. He’s going to have to become a lot more serious, get a lot more down into the weeds about why you need to give money to people who basically hate us. I think we should but you’re going to have to make that argument. Egypt could tank, and we don’t want Egypt to tank. It’s entirely possible the situation is going to get very unpleasant there and the people who are giving money are the people who would want to see the type of Egypt develop that we would not – most importantly the Saudis, secondarily the Qataris. So we should go there.
I will also say that I think in general the president has been a tad bit quick in declaring jihadism and Al Qaeda dead. We don’t know that. On the subcontinent we certainly know it’s not dead and I guarantee you that when the American troops withdraw in 2014, assuming that schedule holds, you’re going to see a resurgent Taliban with its jihadist allies reassert themselves in southern Afghanistan. You’re going to see the war commenced for Kabul. I think it’s highly unlikely you’re going to see drones flying anywhere from Afghanistan or Pakistan attacking anyone in the future. So the problems in the subcontinent are real, jihadism is still alive there.
We don’t know what the situation is in the Arab world. I am inclined to believe that if the great Arab revolt continues, it is successful and you do have the implantation of crude democratic systems throughout the Arab world, that it will deal with eventually the jihadist impulse, which is a powerful current in the mainstream of fundamentalism. But we don’t know that for sure. It is entirely possible that we could see jihadist elements plant themselves throughout the Middle East and be a profound threat. I doubt seriously whether the president is going to be able to deal with them using drones.
So that whole discussion about where Islamic radicalism is, it’s a very difficult discussion for senior officials to have. They don’t like having it publicly. I think this administration in particular, it’s stultifying – you can’t really have the discussion, which is one of the reasons the president and Ambassador Rice got themselves involved in a very embarrassing narrative after the Benghazi affair. That’s the narrative they’re comfortable with but that’s not the narrative that’s going to help make the argument to the American people and, more importantly, to individuals in Congress who control the purse strings, for why you’re going to give money to causes, movements and countries that really on many grounds are fairly repugnant.
I’ll also talk about Iran, even though it’s a bit outside the Arab world. It really is the wild card here. The Israelis are either going to strike by mid-June – that’s the timeline that Prime Minister Netanyahu has given – or they won’t. If they don’t, I don’t think they’re ever going to do it. One has to tactically give applause to the administration – I think they very successfully gutted Netanyahu and Barak a few months back by deploying the American intelligence community in intimate conversations with the Israeli intelligence community and thereby took the legs out from underneath Netanyahu and Barak, who was actually much more aggressive than the prime minister in his desire to strike. We will see if the Israelis do it. I have my doubts now whether they are going to do it but I think if Netanyahu doesn’t do it he’s going to have to commit seppuku in front of the pictures of his father and his brother.
If they do do it, it’s a whole new world. I don’t think the president is quite prepared for that yet. He needs to get prepared for that. I think his preparation has been primarily trying to stop the Israelis, not to deal with the possibility that they in fact will strike. I would also say that if the president is really intent on stopping them, and certainly he has said he is – the president said very clearly in the speech at AIPAC that the United States would prevent Iran from going nuclear, that it was prepared to use the military to do that, but that he would prefer to use sanctions. Well if he’s really serious about using sanctions then for god’s sake get serious, because the real truth is the vast majority of all the crippling sanctions were generated by Congress, usually with an enormous amount of resistance from the White House. There are still lots of other sanctions, particularly central bank sanctions and insurance sanctions, that could be implemented unilaterally by the United States, that would be very painful.
I’m personally extremely skeptical that sanctions are going to have an effect. I think Khamenei is quite prepared to see Iran take a great deal of punishment but continue with the nuclear program. I think he’s got a game plan here and if more or less the president plays along with that game plan, they’re just going to continue to increase the number of centrifuges operating, enriching to 20 percent. So you’re going to drop the breakout deadline. David Albright, who’s a very thoughtful man, believes the Iranian nuclear breakout capacity is now between two and four months. What the Iranians are going to do is drop that down to thirty days, keep dropping it down. The Americans have already shown that they are unprepared to strike at a 20 percent enrichment rate, which is about 70 percent of the way to getting a bomb. They’re not going to go there. There is no red line on enrichment.
So if the Israelis don’t strike, the Iranians are going to play that out. All we have is sanctions so if you really do believe sanctions are the way then for god’s sake you better get very serious about that, very quickly.
I would also add that if you think that sanctions are the way to go, it also would behoove the administration to actually use some type of red line. When the Iranians look at us, they don’t see that we are in fact – the Iranian commentary goes the other way. It’s amusing, the Iranians used to ignore the Israelis a great deal in their commentary. That’s actually reversing a bit. The Iranians are beginning to take the Israelis more seriously. They’re not taking the Americans more seriously, at least on the issue of the military option. I think on the notion of sanctions we have caught their attention but their regime still is quite determined to move forward. We’ll see if they want to have any discussions with the United States on this issue, any serious discussions. I’m willing to bet fairly large quantities of money that Larry is wrong.
I would end this by simply stating that I don’t think the administration has handled the Middle East terribly well. I think the president in particular came into office extremely naïve about the Middle East, which is why he engaged in his engagement strategy with Bashar al-Assad, he engaged in his letters and correspondence with Khamenei. I’m not opposed to those, by the way – I’m sure John Limpert wrote some beautiful letters in Persian to Khamenei and I’d love to see them become public. But his notion of what the Islamic world was, the problems of the Islamic world and America’s problems – that they primarily dealt with George Bush, with American aggressiveness and American hegemony – I think are fundamentally wrong. I think they have been proven wrong. But I don’t know whether the president has learned over the last four years that the United States actually should not lead from behind. There are times in the Middle East, and this is one of those times, where the United States needs to be there – doesn’t necessarily need to be there militarily, though it must be prepared to be there, but it needs to serve a fundamental role: a fundamental role that’s been very healthy in Iran, and that is to be a bully pulpit. To be a critic. I don’t think the administration has actually taken on that role, I think it’s uncomfortable with doing that. It’s uncomfortable with having the United States seem an imperialist country, so it won’t use its voice effectively to critique what is going on and to encourage the more healthy forces in the region. With that, I’ll stop.
Q&A
Deborah Jones: I think you can see now we deliberately chose a panel designed to present all sides and to get you awake at this hour. I will only say, since it’s not my role here today, I’ll save my own personal rebuttals for the next time we sit with a glass of scotch somewhere. I did want to say one thing very briefly, because it’s too good an anecdote to pass up, with regard to Egypt and the events of February 2011 and all of the talk about who knew and how did they know and when did they know. I just want to mention, and I’ll probably go to some kind of Wikileaks jail for this – but I’ll be in good company – that in 2005, President George W. Bush sat with Hosni Mubarak at Crawford Ranch and said: Hosni, you’re a great friend of the United States, you’re a real pillar of stability for us in the Middle East, but I got to talk to you about something. And this is something that W. felt very strongly about. He said: You’re doing a great job, you’re doing good work on the economy, but you’ve got some other work to do with your people. They’re restless, you need to lift the emergency law, you need to think about some constitutional reforms and you’ve got to seriously consider announcing your successor. People are restless and this is going to cause you trouble down the road. And I have this from two different sources who were there, from both sides: President Mubarak put his hand on George Bush’s arm and said, “Thank you, George, but you don’t know the Egyptian people.” Well, somebody didn’t know the Egyptian people.
If I could ask our panelists to very briefly, before we open it up for a few questions: given the constraints at home domestically – our economic constraints, the history, the breadth of problems and challenges we face in the Middle East, what’s just happened in Benghazi, the fact that we are operating in places that are less safe than ever for our folks but also with our military component (the drones that you’ve alluded to), all the ways that we’re conducting our foreign policy – if I could ask each one of you just to give me what you think the priority must be for the administration coming into these next four years. What should that priority be, from your perspective, in the Middle East?
Lawrence Korb: I think what you need to do is work with the international community to help the people in that region fulfill their destiny. One of the reasons we’re safer is that the Al Qaeda narrative was that we were supporting people like Mubarak. The fact that he’s gone makes us safer. What we need to do is continue to help those people make the choices that will help them and do a cost-benefit analysis – which we never did before going into Iraq – about the costs and benefits of using military force.
Let me conclude with this, after listening to Reuel talk here. In 2009, General Odierno asked a group of us to go to Iraq to help with the transition from the military to the State Department. My daughter said, “Can you buy something for your grandson?” I said, “I don’t know, the last thing I want to do is go shopping over there.” Anyway, I was over there and I bought a polo shirt that said “Baghdad 2009.” I got home and I opened it up and it said it was made in Vietnam.
You could have given that speech here when we left Vietnam. Oh my goodness, you know, and – listen to the French! They tried to get us to go into Dien Bien Phu and Eisenhower wouldn’t do it, then we got carried away in the 1960s. So this idea that somehow or another you can – and listening to Reuel here, I thought about that woman I mentioned in the beginning, who heard about the burial there. Yes, anything could happen. But as far as I see, we’re moving in the right direction. The president has a balanced policy between hard and soft power and working with the international community. And that’s the way to go, because it’s not just us that’s affected, it’s the international community.
Ellen Laipson: I have two thoughts. One, I really do think we have some work to do at home to build a stronger consensus with the Congress that continued US engagement is in our vital interest. I worry a lot that the Benghazi incident is going to lead to a chilling and a rolling back of the kind of presence we can have in the region. I don’t want to see the diplomats and aid workers and others to be handicapped by excessive new security rules and requirements that only create more barriers between us and the Arab world. So first it’s build consensus at home for some engagement in the region.
Second, we’ve been doing some work at Stimson on the lessons of the Marshall Plan and what are the big ideas of the Marshall Plan that might be relevant to today’s Middle East. One wish I have is for a more innovative – not to mimic the Marshall Plan but to be more innovative. Can we not marry up the resources that are available in the Gulf but still accept and embrace the idea that the United States is uniquely capable when it comes to leadership, organization, some of the talents in the United States – it’s not just about money. If there were some partnership with the people in the Gulf region that are interested in making strategic investments in stability in the Arab world. So I would love to see a new concept of partnership to marry up resources with American leadership and ideas.
Daniel Brumberg: These are my personal views, I wish to emphasize that point. Three quick ideas.
First of all, I think obviously the Arab world is at a crucial point, particularly those countries that have pushed ahead on the democracy front. The question of constitutional reform and getting the constitutions set and in place is absolutely vital, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt. I do not think we would argue that either Ghannouchi or Morsi are anti-American but they face real pressure from radical Islamists and they are trying to play this game whereby they maintain their credibility with various camps. I think we have to encourage both leaders to continue to try to maintain an inclusive approach and to settle this issue of constitutionalism and move it forward as quickly as possible. I think that will create a much more important political framework for securing the democratic process.
Number two, I think we have to address regional threats that if they get out of hand are really going to undermine the push for democracy in the Arab world. I think on Iran we have to eventually move from tactics to strategy. My own sense is that the United States has used and depended on sanctions as an alternative to a strategy – sanctions are largely tactical. We have to decide whether we want to fight or we want to negotiate, and if we want to negotiate we have to be prepared to put real incentives on the table and accept a deal that perhaps some actors in the region will not be happy with. But we haven’t really made that choice. I don’t think increasing the severity of sanctions will help us make that choice, because it will simply be relying on tactics. We have to decide what the strategy is. My own sense is, having worked on this issue for some time, that this has been a challenge for this administration and, I might say, the previous administration.
Finally, on the Arab-Israeli issue, Tom Friedman the other day had a piece that said Obama should simply say we’re busy, “can’t answer the phone.” I think that’s maybe an understandable sentiment for now and it may last a little while and tactically perhaps that’s a wise way to go. But eventually this thing is going to come back and bite us. I’m very concerned about what’s going on in the Sinai and how that will affect Egypt’s relations with Israel. Things have cooled down now but it’s going to come back – we have to address that issue and find some way to reengage the Arab-Israeli conflict, in ways that will make sure this thing doesn’t blow up in ways that undermine democratic peacemaking.
Reuel Marc Gerecht: Since I’m a firm believer that the United States government can only do one thing at a time, I would just say Iran, Iran, Iran. Stop the nuke. As much as I would like the United States more involved on other issues, I just don’t think it can do these things simultaneously. So I would put all the emphasis on stopping the nuke. I agree with the president that a nuclear weapon in Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards’ hands is simply unacceptable; that it is a surreal world that after 9/11 we would allow the leading state sponsor of terrorism to have a nuke. I would do what is necessary to stop it.
If one wants to go back to the notion of grand bargain, I have no problem with that. Go ahead, try it. I’m quite confident that Khamenei will say no but if it makes people more comfortable with then going to a military option that’s fine. I just suggest that most of the people who go in that direction, who want to have this sort of negotiated grand settlement, are quite willing to give up the shop before they even start because they’re prepared to accept Khamenei having a nuke in the first place. So the negotiations are not perhaps all that telling but I’m not opposed to going to them and saying: All right, these are all the goodies you’re going to get, but you’re going to have to verifiably give up the nuclear program.
Question: Mr. Gerecht, this is for you. It is possible that we can forestall Iranian nuclear breakout and that helps Iran to perpetuate its tale that it has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. It’s been saying that for a long time. It can say it over and over again. There’s one thing that would allow Iran to break out of its own promise to not create nuclear weapons, something that Khomeini himself believed in, and that’s to attack. If we attack, that gives them the excuse to wipe out twenty years of promises that they’re not going to develop nuclear weapons because now we’ve provided an excuse. I think the only way out of this is to declare right now and clearly that the application of any nuclear weapon by Iran or by one of its associates will result in the destruction of the holy city of Qom, followed by the destruction of Tehran. Make it clear that that is the price if ever an Iranian nuclear weapon is used. Give them twenty-four hours to evacuate their civilians and then those cities are going up in smoke.
Reuel Marc Gerecht: I don’t believe in MAD. I don’t think it was terribly credible by the end of the Cold War and it’s particularly not credible with the Middle East. The United States is not going to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. It’s just not going to happen. So I don’t think that threatening the use of nuclear weapons against cities is a terribly good idea or an effective one.
Lawrence Korb: Let me just make a point. It’s not that we’re not doing anything. What do you think of all these cyber-attacks and all this stuff going on? A lot of it is classified but it’s not like we’re just sitting there doing nothing. In fact we are making them pay a price. The idea that sanctions aren’t working – look at the value of their currency. Look at all the problems they’re having, it’s ridiculous. Are they perfect? No. But they are stronger than we’ve ever had against any other country.
Question: I’m Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad from the Minaret of Freedom Institute. My question is directed to Mr. Gerecht but I would welcome comments from anybody else on the panel. Regarding the possibility of negotiating, you said that you didn’t think Khamenei would ever give up the nuclear program. But Khamenei is on the record as saying that his intention is that the nuclear program not go to a nuclear weapon. He defends the right of Iran to have nuclear medical material as they are entitled to under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So my question is, what do you think about simply publicly offering them an exchange where the United States defends their right to have nuclear material in exchange for them giving complete access to the IAEA to do the inspections that maintain they will follow through on Khamenei’s promise not to develop a nuclear weapon?
Reuel Marc Gerecht: I have no problem with Iranians living by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which they signed and they maintain they want to abide by. They have not been in conformance with that treaty. The IAEA is the best judge of that.
On Khamenei, I hate to break this to you, but Khamenei fibs. There are many things he has fibbed about. This is simply one other thing that he has not told the truth over. The one reason they haven’t let us into Parchin is because, I’m willing to bet large quantities of money, is they have actually been working on triggering devices and other such things. Tony Cordesman did a wonderful 19-page assessment of where the Iranian nuclear program really is, how central it is to the overall defense strategy of the Islamic Republic. I think it’s quite clear that they have been gunning for a weapon. The only thing I would suggest to you is that certainly having come from Langley, for god’s sake do not depend upon CIA intelligence to tell you when they are making a nuclear trigger. They will fail. The agency failed with Russia, it failed with China, it failed with India, it failed with Pakistan and it failed with North Korea. That should be an impressive track record.
Question: This question is for any or all members of the panel, and thank you for your presentations. To what extent is our current policy vis-à-vis the Middle East driven by an “Israel first” approach and to what extent should it be?
Ellen Laipson: I don’t think it is driven by Israel only. I think we obviously have very diverse interests in the region. The discussion that both Larry and Reuel have gotten into on the triangle between the US, Iran and Israel suggests that in fact this administration has demonstrated over the last six months that while the security of Israel is in fact a very high-ranking American priority, we should not assume that US and Israeli interests are identical with respect to Iran – and perhaps even with respect to democratization in the Arab world. So I don’t think it is and I don’t think it should be.
Question: Boaz Monroe from the Elliott School, interning now at the State Department. At the risk of leaving out the other panelists, I have a question for Mr. Gerecht again. I was wondering where exactly our red lines with regard to Iranian nuclear enrichment should be and what the response should be if and when that red line is crossed?
Reuel Marc Gerecht: I would have said the red line should be at 20 percent enrichment but since they have already crossed that it’s a bit difficult. I would use as a red line simply the amount of 20 percent that would be necessary to make one bomb. That red line is approaching very rapidly. If they were to cross that I would attack them.
Daniel Brumberg: Let me just add that I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two years working on this issue, most recently at a senior working group we have at USIP. I have heard a lot of presentations on the military option. All of them, with few exceptions, suggest how difficult it would be to prevail militarily. The best experts suggest a war that would last weeks, if not longer. There is one argument for a short strike overnight, clandestine – whatever that means in the region – that would get the Iranians’ attention, but that doesn’t get much support. We have the kind of Woody Allen challenge when it comes to Iran, between the horrible and the terrible. We have very bad options. But I have not seen a persuasive argument from people who know a lot more about this – speaking, by the way, of people from both the Republican and the Democratic Parties who argue that the military option is an obvious and safe bet or that increasing sanctions will compel the Iranians to cry uncle and do what we want. While I recognize that diplomacy has a lot of shortcomings, I am far from convinced that the obvious solution to prevent Iran from moving ahead in its nuclear program is to engage in a war with Iran.
Lawrence Korb: Bill Lewers and [indiscernible] were up on the Hill and they said, “You can’t use the word diplomatic solution because that sounds weak, so call it a political solution.” It’s interesting, I remember the Bush administration said, “We will not let North Korea get a nuclear weapon.” Okay, they got it. Has the world ended? Did we do anything? You’ve got be very careful about drawing these red lines because American credibility is on the line. If you make a statement and then you don’t back it up because you decide that the costs are not worth it, you’re going to pay a price there as well.
Deborah Jones: I think you also have to assume the Iranians are pretty aware of what our capabilities are now too. It’s not like you draw a red line and you’re hiding a card that we haven’t played already at some level. Okay, next?
Question: Rebecca Hopkins, with Courage Services. This question is for Ms. Laipson. I’m interested in hearing more about your discussion on the possibility of marrying US institutional capacity with Gulf funding. Areas where it might be best targeted, that type of thing.
Ellen Laipson: There’s a few ideas out there of Arab entrepreneurs from the Gulf who would like to see some collective effort to either tap into the sovereign wealth funds of the GCC countries or possibly funds that are available to one or more of the GCC countries, in a fund that could be almost a – there’s lots of possible directions this could go in. But could we have a joint US-Arab OPIC equivalent, or something that would be seed money for new enterprises, that would allow small and medium enterprises to expand? There’s some ideas out there that could be channeled in very creative ways.
There are obviously many barriers and obstacles. I think some of the Arab innovators and entrepreneurs who want to be agents of change in the Arab world are themselves uncomfortable dealing with the new governments, in North Africa in particular. They don’t know who to trust. The regulatory environment isn’t clear enough yet, etc. So whereas we would be very much obliged to be working in institutionally legal ways, some of the investments that are done by Arab investors tend to be directly to the private sector and not necessarily through public policy.
But I do think there’s a yearning to do useful and constructive and very strategic things. We have these conversations with influential people in the Gulf and I would love to see – there’s the Forum for the Future, there’s many existing platforms and organizations and institutions that could also be mobilized or could be used. But I do think there’s no substitute for American leadership and organizational skill. What just seems to me to be desirable here is to play to all of the players’ strengths in some coordinated and combined effort, to make some of the infrastructure investments, building institutions and strengthening the countries in transition.
Question: David Galbraith from the Department of State and currently a fellow at Georgetown University. This question is primarily for Ms. Laipson and Mr. Brumberg. I’m wondering if you could address a little bit more broadly the tension between the importance of the democratization process in the countries in transition, including constitutional reform, for the United States but also the kind of delicacy and difficulty of our engagement at the moment. I think both of you touched on different aspects of this in your remarks. Specifically on the question of constitutional change and reform, what sort of tools should the US government be using now to try to shape or influence that process, if any?
Daniel Brumberg: It’s a very fine question. The answer is not obvious at all. I’d like to reemphasize the point I made before – you arrive at a moment in a transition where you establish certain kinds of precepts and principles and you institutionalize them. That has a long-term effect. So what’s going on now will make a lot of difference in the long run if it’s done right and could be very harmful if it’s done wrong.
Having said that, I think we’re doing what we need to do. We do not need to go too publicly talking about the nature of these compromises. We have to quietly encourage and we have all kinds of experts in the field – some of them are sitting right here in this room right now – who have been working with our colleagues in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya. We are doing the same at USIP, particularly in Tunisia, to help them on a quiet level address these issues and provide ideas. So I think we have to be able to continue to engage but at the same time we’re not there to use strong-arm tactics or go public in a way that will make life difficult for moderate Islamists, who as I said before are trying to be inclusive at the same time as being pressed by radicals to pursue a shari’a-based project. I am very impressed by how Morsi and Ghannouchi so far have maintained this balance, for the most part. I think that quiet diplomacy and assistance are the best way to go.
Ellen Laipson: I think some of America’s soft power in serving both as a model and introducing some of the skills, whether it’s information technology or non-violent resistance or some of the institution-building ideas of democratic change, really were done before the Arab Spring began. It’s a long history and we did influence and shape the values and the ideas of the people who themselves took the power to implement the Arab Spring. So I think paradoxically maybe this is a moment where we should do less, because some of this talent and these skills and goals are already now locally owned. They are indigenous to the Arab world.
The other thing I think we need to do is remind ourselves that we are not the perfect model in terms of democratic behavior. We have to demonstrate more capacity to improve our own democratic culture at home, which I think would also be a powerful message to the people who are going through these transitions.
Lawrence Korb: Let me emphasize one word that Ellen said: long. It’s not going to be solved overnight. We’ve got to be patient. The other thing, I have to laugh – I traveled around the world last year trying to explain how you could win the popular vote and still not be elected president of the United States. People have a very difficult time in the world understanding that.
Deborah Jones: Not to mention, did it take thirteen years to get our Constitution [indiscernible] straightened out? Then we had a civil war? Anyway, go ahead.
Question: [Indiscernible] Fulbright Scholar from Afghanistan, graduate student at the Patterson School of Diplomacy. It’s an open question to the panel. What about the Israeli-Palestinian issue? What different approach should the US administration adopt?
Lawrence Korb: Israel is going to have an election in January, we’ve just had one. After that I think we all need to sit down and focus on it. By and large we all know how it’s going to end: the 1967 borders adjusted, land swaps and all that sort of thing. I think the United States should get involved and take a leadership role. Will it work? I don’t know. But even if you try and you do it, then I think your perception in the Arab and Muslim world goes up. A lot of times when you’re ignoring it people think you’re de facto supporting Israel, when in fact you may not be doing that.
Daniel Brumberg: Somebody asked earlier, are we Israel-centric? My own personal view is that if we were really Israel-centric, we would be doing everything we could at the right time – this may not be the right time but eventually – to encourage the Palestinians and Israelis to move toward a two-state solution. That would be a solution that would be in Israel’s interest as well as the Palestinians. When we should do this, how we should reengage, is a matter of some discussion. Who should be leading this effort? But my colleague to my left here – who perhaps should be to my right – a small joke, we’re good buddies in any case. We can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, that’s true. It’s very hard for a president or an administration to focus on any one major issue. But eventually this thing is going to come back and it’s going to affect the structure of regional stability. My concern, apart from the future of Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking, is how that’s going to affect the whole democracy equation.
Question: Stephanie Osborne from Occidental Petroleum. My question is for Mr. Korb, although I’d be interested in everyone else’s perspectives. It’s about your comment that if Iran gets the bomb it’s not the end of the world, which I think is a valid perspective, but what do you think that would mean for Iraq and for the United States’ continued efforts in Iraq and the region?
Lawrence Korb: I remember when I went to Iraq a second time – the National Academy of Public Administration sent us to help Iraq build its government institutions. They told me when I get to Iraq there will be some security people there but basically they won’t have your name up because they’re worried about – anyway to make a long story short they did have my name on it and I was driven in from the airport by this private security firm. The guy in there was telling me something, he said it was amazing – he was from South Africa and he said, “When your officials come here, they come in the middle of the night, they don’t tell anyone they fly in. Ahmadinejad comes in, gives six days notice, comes in and drives in.” I think we should have recognized before we went into Iraq that in fact we would empower Iran. I remember even back when Hezbollah was waging war on Israel, Maliki – this was in 2006 – was supporting Hezbollah. What did you expect?
I do think Iran and Iraq are going to have a strong relationship. The key thing is, if it wasn’t for Iran, Maliki wouldn’t still be in power. They persuaded Moqtada al-Sadr to support him. Remember, he didn’t win the election. So them getting the nuclear weapon, this will be seen as the Shi’a bomb, if they in fact get it. I don’t think anybody wants Iran to get it, given the unpredictable consequences. But if they were to get it, I don’t think Iraq would break off relations with them or anything like that.
Daniel Brumberg: We have this discussion of Iran getting “the bomb,” as if it’s going to get the bomb and then – when Ellen and I were running this group, I remember an interesting moment when one of our colleagues, I can’t mention his name, said, “You know, you can’t do much with a bomb. You need a family of bombs.” It was a kind of Strangelove moment because a family of bombs seems kind of a strange metaphor. I remember that moment, it was instructive. If you just open up and say “I have a bomb,” that’s not a wise policy. The Iranians want to maintain a high degree of ambiguity about this.
One crucial issue, and we can debate it, is how much ambiguity we can live with and under what conditions. But the notion that the Iranians are just going to get “the bomb” and then going to announce it and invite Israeli retaliation, which would come rather quickly, I think is naïve.
Deborah Jones: I think we need to wrap this up now, but let me ask you to join me in thanking our panelists for a very stimulating conversation.
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