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Coping
with Kaleidoscopic Change in the Middle East
Remarks to the 22nd Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Washington, DC October 22, 2013
I come before you this morning at this important conference with many
questions and no answers.
Much of the Middle East is now in turmoil. It has always been a mosaic of tribes, sects,
and peoples, but its previously largely static tableau has become a
kaleidoscope. The pieces are being moved
by conflicts between states, religions, sects, ideologies, and ethnic
groups. The situation reminds one of
other circumstances in which chaotic change has overwhelmed existing
order. I recall the Chinese classic, the
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which describes such a time. Its first English translation was published
about the time that Mr. Sykes and M. Picot gave the Levant its current
borders. Its opening words are: “Empires
wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce.” The rest of the book vividly depicts the
unpredictable course by which this can happen.
Our past actions in the Middle East account for more than a little of
the current unpredictability of events there.
Iraq continues the civil wars the U.S. occupation catalyzed. One thousand civilians are now dying there by
political violence each month. The
withdrawal of NATO and most, if not all U.S. forces from Afghanistan will leave
behind a weak, incompetent, and corrupt regime, an unresolved insurgency, and a
much bigger opium economy than before we decided to pacify the place. But why dwell on our strategic achievements
when we have the future to talk about?
Too many forces are acting upon the Middle East kaleidoscope for anyone
to know what pattern it will yield when it finally comes to rest, as -- in
time, perhaps after a considerable time -- it will. The bitterly stalemated Israel-Palestine
dispute was long the principal source of political radicalization and violence
within the region. It has lost none of
its power to inspire hatred but it has been joined in that role by other
contests of equal or greater intensity.
These include confrontations between Saudi Arabia, its allies, and Iran;
between Iran and Israel; between Salafi Muslims, Copts, other Christians,
Shiites, Alawites, and Druze; between Sunni Jihadis and Shiite apostles of both
clerical rule and secularism; between traditions of shura led by an emir and
winner-take-all electoral politics; between righteous secularism and Islamist
populism; between generals and demagogues; between the street and security
forces; between Arabs, Kurds, Persians, and Turks.
All of these contests find expression in multiple struggles. All have become tragic zero-sum games in
which the interests of each side advance only at the expense of the well-being
and domestic tranquility of another. The
United States is implicated in many of them, but in none of them does or can it
play a decisive role. How will these contests end? Will the geography of the region retain its
Sykes-Picot contours? What new balances
of power and relationships will emerge in the region? What the new mosaic will look like is, of
course, of paramount importance to the shifting coalitions of states, sects,
and tribes from which it is compounded, but it matters greatly to the United
States and other great powers too.
That is because the Middle East occupies a pivotal geostrategic
space. It lies athwart the routes
between Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is
where the world’s energy resources are concentrated. It has become a hub for global finance and
business. It is where three of the
world’s great religions originated and where they now collide. It is the epicenter of terrorism with global
reach. What happens in the Middle East
affects the world’s economic, political, and strategic equilibrium. The Middle East is too important to be left
solely to Middle Easterners.
Yet, the Arab uprisings, revolutions, and
coups of the past two-and-a-half years have repeatedly demonstrated that, for
all our unmatched military power, Americans no longer command the ability to
shape trends in the Middle East. Almost
no one now expects us to do so. Delusions
of imperial omnipotence die hard, but the question of the day is no longer how we
or other outside powers will act to affect the Arab future. Both colonialism and neocolonialism are no
more. For better or ill, the states of
the region have seized control of their own destiny. ما شاء الله (masha'Allah)
– and good luck to them!
As the pieces shift in the Middle East, will
the relationships between its states and outside powers shift as well? It is impossible to imagine that they will
not. Recent events have marginalized
Turkey. What role will it now play? We
have already seen a measure of estrangement between the United States and our
traditional Arab security partners. Saudi
Arabia's refusal to take its seat in the U.N. Security Council reflects
this. Riyadh has not just protested but opted
to avoid daily interactions with the United States that would exacerbate
bilateral tensions over regional issues.
The course of events in Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria has exposed long-concealed
differences in perspective between us and both Arabs and Israelis. Iran is now reaching out to us over the heads
of both.
As America recedes in prestige in the region,
Russia seems to be returning to a position of diplomatic influence. Will Europe, China, and others with a stake
in the restabilization of the Middle East also now assert themselves as
independent actors there? Regional
actors are redoubling their efforts to recruit outside powers to support
them. This could produce some startling
geopolitical realignments.
Before we get to some of these possibilities,
let me briefly review current trends and events, beginning with the
interactions between Israelis and Palestinians.
Attention is now focused elsewhere, but the
Israel-Palestine issue remains at the core of Arab indignation and disbelief in
America. Secretary of State Kerry’s
frenetic effort to drag Israel and the usual Palestinians into talks has not
cured this. Very few, if any, in the
region assign any potential value to this latest iteration of the now
notoriously unproductive series of American-organized counterfeit “peace
processes.” The only effects to date of
this latest round have been to delay Palestinian efforts to take Israel to the
International Court of Justice and to accelerate the Jewish state’s drive to
judaize the West Bank and set the stage for more ethnic cleansing when and if regional
chaos produces the political cover to carry it out.
So far, the intermittent meetings between
Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erakat look like yet another political distraction rather
than a path to peace. It would be nice
to be proved wrong, but it’s hard to see anyone other than Israeli construction
companies engaged in settlement-building gaining anything from what is mostly not going on.
The very structure of the talks emphasizes
their futility. Most Palestinians are
unrepresented in them. The Palestinian
Authority is on the Israeli and American payrolls. It has been appointed to represent the Palestinians
by Israel and the United States but its authority to speak even for the inhabitants
of the West Bank is in doubt. It
certainly has no mandate to negotiate on behalf of those in Gaza, in the
refugee camps, in diaspora, or living as second-class citizens in Israel. In the unlikely event that the PA were to
come to some sort of agreement with its Israeli masters, few Palestinians
anywhere would consider themselves bound by this. How Jerusalem is dealt with will decisively affect
the stand of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims on any agreement. A peace viewed by most as contracted by an illegitimate
party and by many as unjust would evoke violent backlash rather than
acquiescence. By bringing the
decades-long effort to produce a negotiated solution to a discreditable
conclusion, it could ignite renewed terrorism against both Israelis and their
American allies.
If, as most expect, the talks sputter to a
fruitless end next July, the U.N.-recognized but largely fictive State of
Palestine can be expected to take its case against Israel’s violations of
international and humanitarian law to the courts of international public
opinion and the Hague. The movement to
boycott, disinvest, and sanction Israel has already begun to take hold in
Europe. It will gather global momentum. "Palestine" itself is nearly
powerless, but neither Israel nor the United States have credible counters to
Israel’s progressive self-delegitimization through behavior that all but
diehard Zionist bigots find abhorrent.
The antipathies stoked by Israel’s treatment
of its captive Arab populations and its belligerence toward its neighbors are a
longstanding factor in international resentment of the United States and in
anti-American terrorism. Nothing is in
train to change this. The
Israel-Palestine issue is overshadowed at present by the dramatic events in
Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere. But it
remains a Pandora’s box whose lid could blow off at any time.
The ongoing bloodbath in Syria is even more
troubling and potentially at least as consequential.
The use of nerve gas in a suburb of Damascus resurrected
horrified memories of mass death among both Israelis and Iranians. But sarin is irrelevant to the outcome in
Syria, unless it falls into fanatic hands and is used to perpetrate the
genocide that some justly fear.
Apprehension about what Syria's rebels and their Jihadi allies might do
with chemical weapons is one reason – the ill-considered U.S. "red
line" is another – that the Assad government agreed to turn them over to
international control for destruction.
The removal of chemical weapons from Syria will not prevent genocide. It will just keep massacres up close and
personal.
Since March 2011, perhaps 130,000 Syrians
have died at the hands of other Syrians and their foreign allies. The dead include about 17,000 rebels, 36,000
government troops, and 20,000 militia members, informers, and other regime
supporters. Over 50,000 civilians have
died – almost one-fourth of them children or women.
The carnage in Syria is beside the point for
those determined to wrest it from Iranian influence, sever Hezbollah’s supply
lines, and flank the pro-Iranian regime in Iraq. Inconclusive conflict serves the interests of
both Jihadis and those who fear a victory by them in Syria. Fear of genocide or intolerable oppression by
religious totalitarians guarantees that the religious minorities associated
with the Assad regime will fight to the death.
So the fighting goes on as outside suppliers ensure that Syrians are
ever-better equipped and trained to kill each other.
One- third of Syrians have been displaced by
the fighting. They are seeking safety in
the company of their own kind. There are
now at least three distinct zones in Syria, each ruled by a different mix of
ethnic or religious communities, flying its own flag or flags, and fielding its
own armed forces. Could the ongoing
fragmentation of Syria lead to partition along confessional and ethnic lines
and the dismemberment of neighboring states like Lebanon? It is looking more and more as though it
could.
If the Syrian slaughter does end in
partition, what might that mean for the five countries that border Syria and
for their allies in the region and beyond it?
Partition would suit the interests of some inside and outside Syria,
while others would oppose it. It's not too soon to think about its
implications. When the blood dries and
the dead are buried, will there still be a Syria, a Lebanon, an Iraq, or a
Jordan as we have known them? Ninety-seven
years after its birth, the Middle East Mr. Sykes and M. Picot conceived seems
to be disintegrating. Outside powers
created that Middle East. Indigenous
forces are now tearing it apart.
Many aspects of the fighting in Syria are a
reminder that the Middle East is where disregard of the United Nations Charter
and Security Council resolutions and aggressive contempt by the strong for the
sovereignty of weaker nations first became routine. It is where "might" again came to
impersonate "right." It is the
region in which the justifications for pernicious doctrines like preemptive
attack and assaults on civilian populations in the name of counterterrorism were
first elaborated. Intervention in a
sovereign foreign state to overthrow its government is as much an act of war as
an attempt to conquer it. It used to be
that, in deference to international law, those who engaged in such intervention
did so on a basis that was plausibly deniable.
In the Middle East no one now bothers to conceal attacks on states and
societies through air and commando raids, official kidnappings and
assassinations, arms deliveries, intelligence support, training, cyber
operations, or support for terrorist groups.
The Middle East has thus become a region
where international law is routinely rebuffed, subverted, or ignored. Many norms of civilized behavior have been
done to death there. So it is a particularly
pleasant surprise that the most recent use of chemical weapons in the Middle
East has finally led to their effective outlawing by the international
community.
The Russian-brokered agreement to gather up
and destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal is a major step toward establishing an
international norm banning the possession as well as the use of chemical
weapons. Perhaps not incidentally,
Russia has also given the world a stake in the integrity of the Assad regime’s
command and control of its forces. This is
essential to prevent chemical weapons from being dispersed. But, beyond the danger of their use against
Syria's beleaguered minorities, the disposition of chemical weapons has no
bearing on the issues of concern to most Syrians or to others in the region. It does not shift the balance of power on the
battlefield in Syria. It does not offer
any hope of halting the continuing slaughter of civilians there.
If Russia has demonstrated the ability of sophisticated
diplomats to seize opportunities to solve problems – even if they are
peripheral problems that few in the region care about, it has also shown that
the resolution of one problem almost always brings us to another. Syria built its chemical weapons to deter Israel’s
use of nuclear weapons. The orderly destruction
of Syria’s chemical stockpiles shifts the spotlight to Israel, which is now one
of only two states in the world to threaten its neighbors with all three kinds
of weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, and nuclear. (The other is the far less formidable but
more vociferously aggressive Democratic People's Republic of Korea.) The issues presented by Israeli WMD can no
longer be excluded from discussions of regional security.
This brings me to Iran. Iran is a resentful country that scares all
but one of its Arab neighbors as well as Israel. Ironically, however, despite the Israeli and
Gulf Arab-led campaign against Iran’s effort to build the capacity to field a
nuclear deterrent, Iran currently possesses no weapons of mass destruction: neither nuclear, nor chemical, nor biological.
Iran's development of a deliverable nuclear weapon would cost Israel its
nuclear monopoly in the region. It would
very likely provoke other countries, like Saudi Arabia, to acquire their own
deterrent capabilities through arrangements with one or more of the world’s
nine de facto nuclear weapons states.
In practice, the choices for such extended
deterrence arrangements come down to America, India, Israel, Pakistan, or
Russia, with Pakistan the least problematic.
Britain and France have neither the will nor the way to extend a nuclear
umbrella. China is not interested in such
foreign entanglements. Until it makes
peace with the Palestinians, Israel will remain unacceptable as a an overt
partner and security guarantor for any Arab or Muslim country. Most Arabs see India as anti-Muslim but in
many ways closer to Iran than to them.
In Syria, Moscow has gone out of its way to show that its friends can
depend on it, but it has yet to gain the trust of other Arabs. Recent events, including but not limited to the
several changes of regime in Egypt, have convinced many that the United States is
an unreliable protector. Pakistan has
the weapons, the will, and the financial desperation to fill the need.
If it is not hard to see how Iranian nuclear
weapons could be balanced and deterred by Israel and Pakistan, it is far more
difficult to see how a stabilizing conventional balance of power in the Gulf
region might be restored. Iraq is now
aligned with Iran and no longer available to balance it. Arabs nervously recall that Iran, not Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, was once the principal American security partner in the
region. An end to hostile relations
between Washington and Tehran remains unlikely but is no longer
unthinkable. Suspicious minds in the
Gulf imagine that a reduction in tensions between the United States and Iran
might lead in time to renewed security cooperation between the two countries. This possibility, however remote, poses a
major strategic dilemma for our Arab partners in the Gulf. As Egypt and the Gulf Arabs ratchet back
their expectations and their reliance on America, to whom will they look for
support?
The simple world of colonial and superpower
rivalries is long vanished. The notion
that one is either "with us or against us" has lost all resonance in
the modern Middle East. No government in
the region is prepared now to entrust its future to foreigners, still less to a
single foreign power. So the role of
great external powers in the region is becoming variable, complex, dynamic, and
asymmetric rather than comprehensive, exclusive, static, or uniform. There is room for new as well as old players
but all will dance to tunes composed in the region, not in their own capitals
or those of other outside powers.
It is in this context that we must anticipate
some expansion of Russian influence in the Middle East. Russia is on the other side of the Caspian
Sea from Iran. If it can be persuaded to
do so, Russia can balance and constrain Iran from the north without a footprint
in the Gulf. It has a history of close
relations with the armed forces in Egypt, Syria, and some other Arab
countries. If the United States or other
Western powers deny arms sales or suspend deliveries, Russia has the capacity
to provide Arab armed forces with the kind of weapons and training they have
been denied. When the interests of the
oil-rich GCC countries are at odds with those of Western powers, as they now
appear to be in Egypt, Russia is a potential alternative partner. Gulf Arab credits or grants to Russian arms
suppliers can offset Western weapons delivery or aid suspensions.
In this limited respect, China is also becoming
a potential alternative to the West, as Turkey's recent purchase of a Chinese
air defense system underscores. Old
monopolies of influence and market dominance are giving way to a more
competitive environment in the Middle East.
In U.S. - Arab relations, much less can be taken for granted than
before.
There is also a contest of ideas underway in
the Middle East. Tolerance is almost
everywhere in retreat. Passionate
divisions favor extremism and the continuation of conflict. Drone warfare has helped anti-American
terrorism to metastasize throughout the realm of Islam. Al-Qaeda and others of like mind are gaining
ground. They spread by exploiting
turmoil and popular resentment of worsening political, economic, and social
problems. The use of force can’t resolve
these problems but there are no obvious political solutions to them either, and
expectations of progress are low. In the
Middle East, diplomacy has come to serve mainly as camouflage for aggression,
not as the antidote to it.
Given continuing regional and domestic disorder, could the totalitarian
Islamist vision of al-Qaeda expand beyond the tiny minority of Muslims who now
embrace it? Islamism and democracy have
become increasingly identified. How can
moderate forms of Islamist populism be prevented from degenerating into
extremism and entrenching xenophobic dogmatism in places like Egypt and
Palestine?
This is a problem for the West, which favors democracy but is disturbed
by Islamism. Is the interest in stability of the United States and its allies
consistent with the revolutionary idea of democracy? To put it that way is to shift the question
from the realm of ideology to that of statecraft. So, which is it? The domestic tranquility and regional
stability imposed by autocracy or the unrest and volatility that accompany
democracy? These are issues that pose an
even bigger challenge to countries in the region -- and not just those with
mass-based Islamist movements. Political
Islam is a special threat to regimes that derive their legitimacy from piety
but reject electoral politics in favor of shura and other traditional governmental
practices.
The violent suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical
offshoots risks creating conditions conducive to the long-term spread of
instability, revolutionary Islamism, and terrorism. If Islamists who win elections cannot form
governments or retain power till the next election, what is their alternative
to violent politics? No one can hope to
govern a country like Egypt for very long without a workable plan to reverse
the deterioration of its economy and its investment climate. But neither those now in power nor their
Islamist opponents have coherent economic philosophies or cures for the
socio-economic miseries of the Arab world beyond the oil-rich Gulf.
Economic desperation creates environments in which people can conclude
that they have nothing to lose from self-destructive violence. Subventions from Gulf Arab countries are
neither a short- nor long-term solution to Arab poverty. Intelligent policies
foster development; subsidies offset the absence of such policies. They underwrite underdevelopment, induce
complacency, and facilitate dependency and sloth. But the era when the countries of the Middle
East could expect to depend on handouts from foreign aid agencies is coming to
an end. The region has seized control of
its own politics. It must now take
responsibility for its economics.
What, then, is to be done by those of us outside the Middle East?
I think we must begin by acknowledging that we have lost intellectual
command and practical control of the many situations unfolding there. The relationships we now have with regional
actors are no longer the reliable ties of “wasta” (واسْطة), in which friendship
and mutual regard compel mutual assistance.
Our relationships, sadly in my view, are now mainly transactional, with
each side weighing requests from the other in terms of what's in it for itself,
not how it might best honor the norms of interdependence. If we are not responsive to the interests of
our partners in the region, they will neither respect our interests nor avoid
contradicting them. We need to listen
more and prescribe less.
We must acknowledge the reality that we no longer have or can expect to
have the clout we once did in the region.
The practical implication of this is that we must cooperate with others
-- strategic competitors as well as countries with whom we are allied in other contexts
-- in order to serve our regional partners' interests as well as our own. The United States remains the most powerful
external actor in the Middle East, but American primacy has been slain by the
new assertiveness of the region's inhabitants. If we give others space to displace us, they
will.
We need to rediscover diplomacy.
By this I mean something radically contrary to our recent militarism and
the related concept of "coercive diplomacy" through sanctions. Both assume that human beings are motivated
only by threats and that their response to a credible threat will be a rational
weighing of costs and benefits followed by capitulation. There is no evidence for either proposition
and a great deal of experience that suggests that both are pernicious
superstitions. Americans do not employ this approach to managing our own personal
relationships and we should not assume it will work with foreign countries.
Diplomacy, like the successful management of interpersonal ties, lies
in the replacement of zero-sum problem definition with frameworks that promote
the recognition of common interests. It
presupposes empathetic, if reserved, understanding of adverse points of view. It incentivizes good behavior. It avoids vocal denial of the legitimacy of
the other side's interests. It relies on
convincing the other side that its objectives can best be achieved by doing things
our way, and that it's in its own interest to change its policies and practices
to do so. We seem have forgotten how to
do diplomacy in this sense. At least,
it's been a long time since we tried it in the Middle East.
We need to listen to our partners in the region and pay due regard to
their interests. We cannot, for example,
deal with Iran as though Israel is the only regional party at interest and the
only one whose opinions we heed. What we
do with Iran will have a profound effect on countries like Saudi Arabia, the
UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain. It will affect
our relations with Kuwait, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey as well as Syria. If we do not weigh the interests of our
friends appropriately as we form our policies, they will respond with equal
indifference to ours.
Most of all, we cannot afford to assume that the future will resemble
the past in the Middle East. Whatever it
looks like, it will certainly differ from what we have seen over the past
century. We no longer have automatic
partners in the region. Neither Israel
nor our Arab friends trust us or are willing to defer to us. We will have to try harder to tend our
relationships with them if we are to convince them to work with us toward
common ends and not to suffer further estrangement from them.
This conference is a unique opportunity to hear views from the region
as well as to listen to those who listen to them. I may have things wrong. Please keep an open mind as you participate
in the discussions that are now about to begin.
There are many in this room with the capacity to help forge productive
approaches to meeting the challenges of the Middle East as change in the region
accelerates and its impact accumulates. We
owe it not just to our friends in the region but to ourselves to make the
effort to acknowledge the multiple transitions now in progress and to work
together to cope with them wisely.
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