CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE IRAQ: WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

Transcription

1 CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE IRAQ: WHAT DO WE DO NOW? PANEL II: CONSEQUENCES FOR THE REGION AND THE WORLD 11:15 AM - 12:30 PM SPEAKERS: HUSAIN HAQQANI, VISITING SCHOLAR ROBERT KAGAN, SENIOR ASSOCIATE ANATOL LIEVEN, SENIOR ASSOCIATE GEORGE PERKOVICH, VICE PRESIDENT FOR STUDIES CHAIRED BY MOISES NAIM, EDITOR, FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2003 Transcript by: Federal New Service Washington, D.C.

2 MOISES NAIM: We are starting the second session. The second session, as you can see form the program, is called Consequences for the Region and the World. I, in fact, would like us to think about this session being about contagion and distraction. Essentially, our conversation is going to be what are the spillover effects and what are the consequences of the war in Iraq for the rest of the world, for the region, for the neighbors, for ideas? And then what are the distracting effects of this war? In which way has the concentration on Iraq distracted from other spots, other things, other regions that deserve attention, and what s going on elsewhere? To lead the conversation we have George Perkovich, Bob Kagan, Husain Haqqani, and Anatol Lieven. They are all senior associates at the Carnegie Endowment. George is the vice president for studies. But mostly they are well known internationally for their analysis and their thinking on these subjects. Let me start with Husain because one of the main let s start thinking about contagion. One of the main concerns, fears, apprehensions about the war was a contagion about raising anti-americanism the consequences of rage against the United States, and so has it happened? And if so, so what? You know, there are arguments that say, you know, anti-americanism has been with us forever, and so the United States has to get used has gotten used to deal with sentiments of anti-americanism. HUSAIN HAQQANI: Well, Moises, the fact is that the quality of the anti- Americanism especially in the Muslim world, and when I talk about the Muslim world I m talking about the region spreading from Morocco to Indonesia 57 countries that have a Muslim majority and large Muslim minorities in countries like India, Russia, and several Western European states as well more than a billion people. And it seems that if we go by the recent polling that has been done, and we all are familiar with the Pew Global Attitudes project, which is very significant. U.S. allies like Morocco in 1999 and 2000 they had 77 percent of their population having a positive view of the United States. Now it s down to 27 percent. Indonesia: 75 percent positive ratings two years ago; down to 15. Pakistan down to around 13 percent. So in none of the Muslim countries is a majority now have a positive view of the United States. There is greater Islamic solidarity even in countries like Uzbekistan that have come out of the Soviet yoke only a few years ago; they haven t really been able to show their Islamic sentiment or their Islamic identity. Many of the people have been brought up as atheists under communist rule. But when they are asked, Do you feel what is your primary view on international relations these days? Are you motivated by A, B, C? A majority in Uzbekistan, as high as 74 percent, says Islamic solidarity, so on the one hand we see Islamic solidarity rising; on the other hand we see a majority turning against the United States. What does it mean for the United States? Well, for one thing it s making the swamp larger. If the operation in Iraq was intended to drain the swamp, what

3 we are seeing is that in terms of its impact on the Muslim population a larger number of people are turning anti-american and therefore the possibility that the extremist groups will be able to recruit new people into their groups is rising. That has security implications for the United States. The second is: when the U.S. goes out to operate against terrorists, if the population is sympathetically predisposed to the ideology or the belief system of the terrorists, the likelihood that the population will help the U.S. in identifying and pointing towards these guys the guy who shoots at an American soldier in Baghdad and disappears into the market if the people in the market were sympathetic to the U.S., then they would point at him and they would help him help pick him up, so that also has implications for the U.S. And I personally do not think that the United States would be able to go forward with its plan for call it empire, call it predominance, with such large pockets of resistance and opposition in the Muslim world. MR. NAIM: Do you agree that things are going so badly? ROBERT KAGAN: On this issue or just in general? (Laughter.) MR. : The Red Sox. MR. KAGAN: I mean, my general view is it s a little early to know exactly how things are going to go or not going to go; and while we can all see the downsides, it may take longer for some of the beneficial effects to take place and it may you know, some of the things that we re seeing now may ease over time. It s very early days in Iraq. I don t have as much confidence in my predictive powers as Husain does, but I think that if Iraq looks better than it does right now and I think it will in six months or a year that possibly the anti-american sentiment in the Muslim world will decline and that there may be other factors that may begin working in that part of the world. As for the question of increasing terrorism, that s a speculation. It s not yet demonstrated and, you know, looking back over the past few years without the invasion of Iraq the United States suffered the most grievous attack in its history, so there was obviously radical activism occurring before this. Partly as a result of the worldwide legitimately accepted American action to expel Iraq from Kuwait, so, you know, whether this action leads to an increase in the security risk for the United States it seems to me is yet to be demonstrated. MR. NAIM: So it s a matter of time mostly? MR. KAGAN: Well, I mean, I don t know. Maybe things a year from now will look worse, but I m a little bit hesitant to speculate about where how bad the situation is less than two months since the end of this war. MR. NAIM: One place where there has been more time and can give us some hints is Afghanistan. Anatol, you are an expert on that region. Tell us, how are things going and what are the consequences of the war in Iraq on reconstruction in Afghanistan

4 and are there some lessons from what is going on there that can be used to improve things in Iraq? ANATOL LIEVEN: Well, I think in Afghanistan as in many other parts of the world a sensible distinction is not between the optimists and the pessimists, but between the pessimist and the catastrophist. I mean, twice now we have had operations part of the public language of which has been about well in the case of Afghanistan I don t know if you remember: there was talk of creating a beachhead of democracy and progress in the Muslim world. This was always, frankly, extremely foolish. Now, things in Afghanistan haven t turned out, you know, as badly as they could have done. After all, in Afghanistan we have had 25 years of really terrible, ruthless civil war with altogether over a million casualties. That has been prevented. At the same time, we are nowhere near as yet the creation of a serious working state in Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq we ve heard the previous panel talk about the need for a government of national unity. Now, you have something of that sort in Afghanistan, but what it really is is a national negotiating committee where the representatives of the local warlords, the different ethnic groups sit and they try to reconcile their differences. And this is not a government: it has no presence, it has no authority over most of the country. And it s only gaining it very, very slowly and very, very ambiguously. Now, maybe this is the most that we can in fact hope for given Afghan realities, but I think that what Afghanistan also demonstrates is a somewhat terrifying capacity frankly, on the part of the U.S. public and Western publics more generally to be fair, to take their eyes off the ball. I mean, Husain showed me this morning some alarming figures about the lack of reports on Afghanistan in the American media and I m sure that s true throughout the West. Now, this is the case although the man responsible chiefly responsible for 9/11, the head of Al-Queda, is as far as we know still alive and still present somewhere in Southern Afghanistan or possibly the border areas of Pakistan. The head of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, is still alive. He s still there somewhere in Southern Afghanistan. So, you know, we really have not achieved a lot of the goals MR. NAIM: Why is that important other than for symbolic reasons? MR. LIEVEN: Well, it depends on what happens in the Middle East. It depends on what happens elsewhere in the Muslim world, but I mean, the fact that we have not succeeded as yet in getting the top leadership of the organizations responsible for 9/11 should be, I would have thought, a matter of really serious concern to us because it does leave open the possibility that these organizations will be able to rebuild themselves and grow in that region. Not just in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan as well. MR. NAIM: You were going to MR. HAQQANI: I was just going to say that, you know, when you set a target, then you have to measure your success or failure according to what that target is, so for example in Afghanistan the target was the demolishing of the infrastructure of terror. So

5 if the infrastructure of terror comes back, then you ve really not won. And I agree with bob that Iraq it s it s premature to start making predictions about Iraq: things could turn out very well. But then when you sit down to analyze something you don t do it just on the basis of hope and on the best-case scenarios. When I say that there are certain trends that are worrying I get worried when more than half of Jordanians say that they trust bin-laden to do the right thing more than they trust President Bush to do the right thing. So obviously there is a sentiment. Even if only a small percentage of people with that sentiment act on that sentiment, I think we are looking towards a future threat that we should be aware of. If it doesn t materialize, we ll all accept very happily and forget about it, but if it does materialize I think that s what we ought to be preparing the American public for. MR. NAIM: I know that going on with the theme of contagion, another obvious area of contagion is Iran. And, George, you have followed the country for many, many years. The war on Iraq: who benefited the most? Supreme leader Khamenei and his forces, or the reformist opposition? GEORGE PERKOVICH: I think the reformists stand the most to gain and should gain significantly if the U.S. plays its cards right. In other words, for everybody the U.S. has removed a major threat that was in the form of the Saddam regime in Iraq, and that was Iran s major threat. But more importantly, from the standpoint of your question, one of the dynamics in Iran has been you ve had a series of elections: the good guys have won large majorities but then haven t been able to take effective power because the supreme leader and the ruler of the Velayat-e Faqih and that apparatus have denied the elected people the opportunity to really take power. That leaves them with a conundrum: what do we do? One of the things they ve wanted to do is avoid is violence. So you put people in the street; you have protests and demonstrations, but the protesters haven t tried to push it so hard that you get into a violent conflict with the state apparatus. What the U.S. presence does is reassure the protesters against that kind of violence and the possibility of another violent revolution, because the hard-liners worry now that we ve got 140,000 people right next door. If the protests get massive and the state tries to crush it with violence, at that point you get a Hungary of 1956 the reformers call for the U.S. to come in and save them against the state that s now using military force. And the hard-liners don t know whether the U.S. will do it or not, or whether specifically this administration, which has called the Iranian government an axis of evil, would then stand back when that government is slaughtering its own kids who are demanding reform, is too hard a gamble for the hard-liners to make. That then limits how far they can push to repress kind of this public demand for change. All of which it seems to me is to the advantage of the reformers, at least potentially. MR. NAIM: And what s the corollary of that analysis in terms of policy? What should the United States then do based on that? MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I mean, I think what the United it s not evident to me yet that the U.S. has done anything in the last two months that is conducive to the

6 outcome I m talking about. In other words we re there. We re and that got the hardliners attention. That alarmed them. Since then we ve confused the hell out of them and not been very encouraging. So one day we re calling the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, which is this group based in Iraq we re calling them a terrorist organization and the next day we re making a deal with them and saying, Go get the Iranians. There s a report yesterday that turns out a blogger on the internet had said on May 22 nd, two months ago, that we re recruiting the Iraqi intelligence apparatus individuals who worked on Iran these are Baath party bad guys we ve been recruiting them for the last two months to work now with us in a new intelligence apparatus in Iraq directed at Iran. That will not play well in Iran with anybody. We ve been government s been blaming Iran for interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq with very little sense of irony that it s American officials standing in Baghdad saying that Iran is interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq and the Iranians kind of look at it and say, Well, it s kind of our neighborhood and we ve got, you know, 60 percent of the people there are our brethren, and the question they want to know, which we are not answering, is what s our intention? What s the future of Iraq? What how do we envision the new Iraq relating to Iran? MR. NAIM: Anatol, the Israeli-Palestinian situation: didn t the war break the stalemate and got the thing all moving again? MR. LIEVEN: It s got the peace process moving again; whether it s broken the stalemate I think is really early to tell yet. After all, we do have the melancholy history of Oslo before us to look at where you have the appearance of a peace process which is I believe the American phrase is then nickled and dimed over time into non-existence. In my view, although clearly I mean, this has been a positive step it has probably been a more positive step in terms of helping Tony Blair in Britain and defusing some European criticism than it has been yet in the Muslim world. I think Husain would agree there is intense cynicism throughout the Muslim world by now about America s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And frankly, I mean, as long as the U.S. goes on supporting Israel to the extent that it is without actually insisting on certain aspects of the end-state to which it is aiming in terms of a settlement there will be very little hope of diminishing this attitude among Muslims. Now, how important is this? I think here one must say two things. I mean, clearly this is not the first issue for most Muslims throughout the world. Above all it s principally an Arab issue. It s of less importance among the great majority of Muslims actually who are not Arabs. Nonetheless, something that I ve seen over the past 15 years or so which I find alarming reflects something which Husain has said about more recent developments, which is a certain homogenization of opinion in the Muslim world. When I was in Pakistan in the 1980s, people cared about Israel and Palestine, but it wasn t seen really as a major national issue for Pakistan. Now, I think throughout the Muslim world if you look at the opinion polls over the years you see ways in which this has advanced to the head of the agenda, and it has become a kind of catalyst for a whole range of other discontents. This is the way, in my view, in which nationalism works. You know, nationalism sucks into itself lots and lots of other discontents angers, and it homogenizes them. And I think this is something one is now seeing with the Israeli-

7 Palestinian conflict throughout the Muslim world. And I think that it obviously feeds greatly into the attitudes which Husain has mentioned in terms of Anti-Americanism, and I do think that in principal this must be seen as potentially very dangerous in terms of the spread of terrorism. MR. KAGAN: Okay let me I just want to interject just for a second to say, let s just run the tape back a few months. Before the war the argument of many critics of the war was that the war was going to damage prospects for Israel-Palestinian progress; that Bush was not paying any attention to the Middle East peace process, which was more or less which was not an invalid criticism. Here we are today after the war. Whatever else one wants to say, we re not at point zero anymore. We have moved forward a little bit. The Bush administration is now, and the president is personally, intensely involved to the point where his own reputation is now on the line. Concessions have been imposed to some extent on Ariel Sharon. I don t think there s any question that Sharon has given away more even if it s baby-steps, and everything now is baby-steps, has given away more than he would have had not George bush come to him after winning the Iraq war and said, I want you to do this for me. Now, it s absolutely true to say the Middle Eastern peace process is an intractable problem, and there are the same difficulties today that there were in the Clinton administration and the same difficulties that there have been for 20 years. And I m not saying that because of the Iraq war we re now going to get a solution to a problem that has been intractable for quite some time, but I really think it s just compared to the Kingdom of Heaven we re not there. Compared to where we were six months ago, the situation has improved. MR. LIEVEN: Yeah, but in the view of the Muslim world America is part of the problem. MR. KAGAN: That is not news. That is not a new development in MR. LIEVEN: But it is very dangerous in terms of the Middle East peace process. MR. KAGAN: It s as dangerous as it s been for the last 40 years. MR. NAIM: And in terms of perceptions that public opinion is very volatile. It s very volatile in many, many ways. Could it be that something happens and turns around all of these anti-american sentiments go back to normal? MR. HAQQANI: I would just like to make one comment. I agree with Bob that in the Arab world it has been there for 40 years. That s absolutely true. But the Arabs constitute only 18 percent of the world s Muslim population. What we are seeing now, and that s what I m trying to point or draw attention to. I m not by the way I m not one of the cynics, and I really do think that there is some movement forward on the Arab- Palestinian question on the Palestinian-Israeli question, and that would not have been

8 possible without the Iraq war. Having said that, let me say that when it comes to the perception issue an overwhelming majority in the Muslim world and we are talking about beyond the Arab world, we are talking about Indonesia, which is several thousand miles away from both the United States and the Arab world. We are talking about southern Philippines. And I think that is something that I do not see sufficient attention being paid to it, which is why I keep bringing everybody to it. That there is a potential area of trouble that we may have unleashed in the process of trying to tie up something that we thought we had a solution for. MR. NAIM: Let me move on to other regions. One of the big surprises of 9/11 and the aftermath of that 9/11 is the consequences on transatlantic relations. Who would have said that when we saw the two towers crashing that one of the implications or the effects was going to be that transatlantic relations will become so damaged. That was a big, big surprise about which you have thought a lot and written a bestseller. The point is, is the recent transatlantic quarrel over Iraq really a proxy for a larger dispute: the question of legitimacy of American actions in the post-cold War? Is this about are these differences really about Iraq or is it about a larger issue? MR. KAGAN: Well, obviously there were differences over Iraq, but I think that the virulence of the transatlantic dispute -- and perhaps not only the transatlantic dispute, but the whole conflict the United States is having with much of the world, and has been since the Iraq war, has to do with deeper issues than the Iraq issue itself, and that these are large structural issues in fact that have existed probably since the end of the Cold War but have been brought into the sharpest possible relief both as a consequence of September 11 th and the Iraq war. And I think that we are facing the United States does have a problem of legitimacy today, partly of its own making. I don t want to suggest that the Bush administration s diplomacy, both after it took office as well as in the run-up to the Iraq war, was the most effective diplomacy. I think there was some damage done by poor diplomacy. But I think beyond that there are very deep structural changes that have occurred which we are now seeing. If you think about what constitutes legitimacy for a power like the United States, if you go back and look at the Cold War, I would say there were several elements of that legitimacy: ideological legitimacy, which was that it was the free world versus communism. There was a kind of threat-based legitimacy because the Europeans in particular agreed with the United States on where the threat was coming from, and there was what I would call a structural legitimacy in the sense that the United States was balanced in some respect by the existence of the Soviet Union. What changed at the end of the Cold War was that all three of those elements of, you know, legitimacy, that had nothing to do with American policy or lack of American policy, all three of those disappeared. The ideological legitimacy disappeared with the Soviet Union. The threat-based legitimacy disappeared with the Soviet Union. And the structural sense of balance and a check on the United States disappeared with the end of the Soviet Union. And so what you have and it was brought dramatically to the Europeans attention as well as others attention is all of a sudden here s this power that

9 for the first time in history really, unless you go back to Rome and I m not even sure then, you really do have the strongest power in the world unchecked by any other major power in the world, able to do what it wants to do when it wants to do it fundamentally. And I don t think it s surprising that this should be frightening even to our allies, especially when we no longer have a full agreement about threat and ideological conflict. MR. NAIM: I have a follow-up question to that answer that comes from the Web from Saddam Hussein. (Laughter.) No. No. MR. KAGAN: Can you trace that? MR. NAIM: It s a question from the Web for Bob Kagan. It says, You write that legitimacy depends on active and generous diplomacy carried out in the common interest. Right now it seems as though most of the world perceives U.S. diplomacy as hypocritical, arrogant, and selfish. Can you identify several specific actions that the U.S. is currently taking or can take to change this perception? MR. KAGAN: Well, I think that if you look for what the solution is to America s legitimacy problem, the best solution is not going to be found, in my view, at the United Nations Security Council, which is always going to be an ambiguous and ambivalent place. And the best place to look for it is in projecting a sense, and also having it be true, that the United States, when it acts, is not acting merely in its selfish interest. Now, my view is that the Iraq invasion was not actually a selfish act by the United States. Others were threatened, as we know. Others were threatened more directly by Saddam Hussein than the United States was, and I think that actually the invasion of Iraq was part of a more traditional American policy of projecting power in defense of allies. However, in the aftermath of September 11 th, the Bush administration and President Bush, I think quite understandably if mistakenly, explained everything in terms of the threat to the United States, and so everything that we did was perceived to be, I would say, understandably but nevertheless selfishly motivated. This follows on an administration that came to power as a result and in the 2000 campaign, saying it s no longer about humanitarian issues, it s all about the national interest. And Condy Rice has an article in Foreign Affairs saying we re going to reexamine everything in terms of our national interest. So you begin with an administration that says we re not going to be as concerned about the opinions of the rest of the world as we used to be, then you have September 11 th, which legitimately turns the United States into a more self-centered nation. I think it s understandable, but the consequence of that is that we now don t provide the same kind of sense of global leadership that we were accustomed to providing in the Cold War. MR. NAIM: George, do you want to MR. PERKOVICH: I just want to I think that s exactly right. And then there are examples of it, you know, that are almost cliché, but then there s a broader point to make and the examples just following you know, it can be the next paragraph after what Bob just said, was symbolically for a lot of the rest of the world; you know, treaties

10 that have been negotiated internationally and multilaterally represent this kind of commitment to a larger purpose of common good. You give a little to get a little. It s not a narrow, you know, determination of national interest and so when at the same time the U.S. kind of either pulled out or resisted, undermined, that sort of treaty regime, I think it got interpreted through that kind of broader narrative that Bob s talking about. But the other point that relates, and it ties on a little I think to what Husain and Anatol were saying too about frustrations, and that is after the three kind of pillars of legitimacy the structural pillars that Bob talked about disappeared, what was kind of left in the 90s was globalization, was this new project as it were that the U.S. was seen as the champion of. And it was presented as this was going to be good for everybody. And so to the extent that there was kind of a rallying around a new model and a new public good, it was globalization. And then one of the things that happened coincidental to September 11 th, 2001 is that it started in 98, but the global economy is coming down too, so the benefits that people in not just the Arab world, but Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, countries with non- Arabic Muslim majorities -- the benefits that they were supposed to get from this international system -- those started disappearing too. And the U.S. had been the champion of that system, so you start compounding all of this and you say, you know, this world these guys are creating kind of sucks. And it s their fault. MR. NAIM: Do we say that on television? MR. PERKOVICH: We re not on television. MR. NAIM: Oh, I m sorry. (Laughter.) MR. PERKOVICH: Anyway, that would be my addition to what Bob said. MR. KAGAN: Well, I didn t actually answer the question, so I ll now and I agree with what George says, but one answer is -- a way to restore some luster to American legitimacy is to get Iraq right and to take the trouble to get Iraq right and to put the resources into it. I also agree with the need to internationalize the Iraq project and to get Afghanistan right and to pour the resources into that. There is no greater at this moment there is no greater hope for restoring American legitimacy than not fumbling these enormous tasks that the United States has taken on. Beyond that, there are things that the United States can do and this gets to your question of distractions. If our whole foreign policy is about the security risk, then we re going to lose opportunities to win goodwill in other areas that are going to be important in the years to come and will still be important after the issue of terrorism passes, which I hope someday it will. And these, you know, this has to do the Bush administration is doing some of that in fact. I mean, some of the aid decisions MR. NAIM: Don t you think that -- because one very important global a very important irritant against the United States is the issue of global standards, especially in the Middle East; the tolerance the support for regimes that in many ways could be deserving of a vary harsh treatment on the part of the United States, and they are allies

11 and tolerated. And so that double standard is also often added to the long list that George just mentioned about things that fuel anti-american sentiment. MR. KAGAN: Well, but I mean, the double standards in the Arab world in particular is shared by every Western country, and, you know, you can get the United States coming and going. In Europe, where I have been for the last three years, sometimes they would bring up the double standards argument, so then one would say, okay, well, we really should work to reform these countries, and then they would say, but that s going to lead to chaos and can t possibly work and why would you want to do that? So I think the double-standards argument on that point I thought you were going to make a different double-standards argument, which is that the nature of the international system as the United States sees it requires the United States not to always be bound by the same rules that we want everybody else to be bound by. And that, I think, is a global perception which is not inaccurate. MR. HAQQANI: And everybody else wants the same as well. They don t want to be bound by rules as well. MR. KAGAN: Sure, and this is MR. HAQQANI: So therefore you have a chicken-and-egg problem there, and therefore you have unanticipated actions and unanticipated reaction. But getting Iraq right -- I mean, the whole problem is that a lot has been put into that, and you re right that getting Iraq right is important. What are the chances considering, in terms of having the energy, the stamina for this kind of thing? When the British became colonialists they had people who learnt languages, went and stayed abroad for many years. Here we have troops who are already complaining, hey, we don t like being in Iraq, you know; bring someone else to relieve us. Is there a possibility of getting something right? Afghanistan. The reason why we didn t get it right is because right now the attention in the United States somebody has done a survey that in January 2002 the nightly newscasts of the main networks in the U.S. broadcast 106 minutes of coverage in Afghanistan. Last month it was down to one minute. So basically, with that kind of attention span, when does the Lacey Peterson case or the Kobe Bryant case take over Iraq and we just forget about it? Do we have this kind of stamina in this country to be able to get something right that requires so many elements to be gotten right at the same time? MR. NAIM: Do we, Anatol? MR. LIEVEN: No. I don t think so. I do agree that the U.S. badly needs help in Iraq international help. I think it s also obvious from Afghanistan I mean, that is one positive lesson of Afghanistan. I mean, the presence of the ISAF international peacekeeping force in Kabul is absolutely critical to preserving minimal peace and preventing the warlords from going for each other s throats. And of course international aid the financial contributions of other countries to reconstruction are also critical and will be in Iraq as well. But if you want this kind of international help after the war I think this needs stressing very, very strongly one must not engage in the absolutely

12 hysterical language about countries, you know, which disagreed with the war, which we saw from many U.S. commentators and publications. MR. KAGAN: You re not pointing at me when you say that I trust. MR. LIEVEN: No. Not at you. MR. NAIM: Who are you who do you have in mind? MR. HAQQANI: Yours wasn t hysterical, Bob. (Laughter.) MR. PERKOVICH: Actually, I was in France on March 9 th and saw you were too and saw Bob on national TV in France being, you know, kind of the epitome of diplomacy in terms of reaching out to the French people. States. MR. LIEVEN: Oh, absolutely, but that was not universally true in the United MR. PERKOVICH: No. MR. LIEVEN: And clearly, you know, if one sees this kind of, you know, very harsh language towards other countries, it s going to make it very MR. NAIM: But with freedom of the press these are columnists that can say anything they want. MR. LIEVEN: Yes, but it was perceived, rightly or wrongly MR. NAIM: Right, but you cannot control what columnists say. MR. PERKOVICH: Members of Congress who can do even more that they want than columnists can were saying some of the worst MR. NAIM: Right. MR. KAGAN: Well, look, without the issue of who s calling obviously the administration has handled both the prewar diplomacy and the postwar diplomacy in a way that is not likely to win back old friends, and I don t think there s any argument about that, without getting into particular finger-pointing. MR. LIEVEN: There is a second point, though, about language on the question of double standards because, look, one must admit, what you said about Europe and the Middle East is entirely true. It s also true that any great power in the world is going to engage in double standards. Look at the French for example. However, I think there is a particular problem in the case of America when it comes to the tension between, on the one hand the American creed the expansion of democracy, American idealism, one could even say national messianism and on the other the kind of things that Condoleezza Rice was writing about in that Foreign Affairs piece the national interest,

13 because frankly both languages in America very often tend to be exaggerated. The language about some of the language we saw about democratizing the Arab world, about saving Afghanistan, about beachheads of democracy, about tidal waves of progress and so forth; the extremism of that language then contrasted with some of this really tough, frankly really crude, language of harsh national interest, national power, inevitably increases the perception in the world at large of not just double standards but also of a power with which it s very difficult to talk because it continually slithers between radically different discourses. MR. NAIM: Let me talk a little bit, or ask you to talk a little bit about other distractions and surprises. One of the another surprise as we were all riveted watching what was going on at the Security Council and Iraq and everything else is that North Korea was accepted that they had restarted a nuclear program and so, George, tell us about distractions and about North Korea. MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I don t I mean, I don t know there was a distraction. MR. NAIM: Let me put the question in a more -- is North Korea one of the main beneficiaries of the attack on Iraq? MR. PERKOVICH: I don t know if I would put it that way. I mean, it seems to me there s several problems with MR. NAIM: The question is, now will (Cross talk.) MR. NAIM: Yes. (Laughter.) MR. PERKOVICH: How much time do we have? MR. NAIM: Didn t they gain immunity, because some sort of there is a view that says that after what s going on and after what went on in Iraq, the United States will have to there s a lot to digest and therefore it is not credible that the United States will initiate any very hostile, aggressive, military initiative in the world for a long time, not to mention nation-building. MR. PERKOVICH: I think MR. LIEVEN: Again. MR. NAIM: So, you know, the North Koreans have just gained immunity. MR. PERKOVICH: I don t know that they gained immunity, but your calculation is probably right, and I think it s a reason a number of us argued before, and now it s too late in a sense, that we got the priority wrong, that two years ago after September 11 th the priorities would have been Afghanistan dealing with al-qaeda, other havens for terrorism, and then other threats of WMD, and on none of that would Iraq have been on

14 the top of the list. So you can get Afghanistan right, you can deal with Pakistan have a strategy for Pakistan, you can deal with the Philippines, other havens, but WMD, North Korea was on the top of the list, clear and simple. Now that we made another choice, it is true that options got limited over those two years not that the options were ever really good, but I think some of this is explained by something that s not really strategic, which is a fight within the administration that paralyzed the administration from attending to North Korea in a way that would have been more productive, and by the way is causing a similar problem in Iran today, which is probably the case it is not as acute as North Korea, but it s the one where you could actually get a more positive outcome than we re likely to get in North Korea, but we re frittering that away too. So in both instances, from a WMD standpoint, we took the, at the most, third-most important country, put it forward, neglected the other two that were more important, which is North Korea and Iran. And yes, we ve lost time that needs to be regained and there s no evidence that the U.S. government in its entirety has come together in a cohesive way to say, now this is how we re going to deal with North Korea and Iran. MR. KAGAN: But look, the first mistake made by the administration, if it was a mistake, occurred before September 11 th when they turned away from the framework agreement, and the response of North Korea was predictable -- MR. PERKOVICH: Right. Now, that s true, we MR. KAGAN: -- whether 9/11 or no 9/11. And the mistake the administration made was not seeing what was going to happen nine months later if they took these decisions. That s the first thing. The second thing is, you know, I d just like to say it isn t all about WMD and, A, you might say that the North Korean cat was out of the bag anyway. And it s not clear that there was a military option before the Iraq war, not only after the Iraq war. I didn t find anybody with obviously wonderful military options on how to do a North Korea, and when the Clinton administration walked up to the edge of a military operation it ultimately backed away, so that was also true. But in terms of the threat, it s interesting I know you wanted to move on to another question, but this whole it isn t all about WMD. I m willing to argue that Iraq, if you look at the totality of the situation, was a bigger problem than North Korea is and was, because of the nature of that regime and its proven behavior, because of the nature of the region in which it was operating. I m not sure that you could necessarily make the case that North Korea is a bigger problem than that. MR. PERKOVICH: But, Bob, I said terrorism and WMD and talked about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Philippines, so I agree. As important as WMD is, I would say terrorism and WMD MR. KAGAN: I m just saying in comparing North Korea to Iraq I m not so sure it s obvious which was the bigger threat.

15 MR. NAIM: Let me invite some questions from the audience and I was asked to ask you to please stand up when you ask your question. Yes, the gentleman at the end. Q: My name is Mohammed. I m a Fulbright scholar from Syria from the Middle East. In the beginning I want to thank you very much for sharing with us your views. Actually my question for Mr. Lieven. Could you please say more about the Iraqi threat even though the United States had sanctions and smart sanctions including the nofly zones and thousands of troops in the Gulf, and -- I don t know, you just mentioned that, you know, Iraq represented, like, more threat than North Korea. I don t know. Could you please say more about this? MR. KAGAN: Well, the question was, where were things going? I mean, I think the sanctions regime was collapsing. It was collapsing at the end of the Clinton administration and was continuing to collapse. The consensus in the U.N. Security Council for maintaining sanctions was demonstrably weakening, and I m so you can t just you know, this is the wonderful thing about history: we know what happened; we don t know what would have happened. So I think that the situation that you described was not a stable and enduring situation how long we could have maintained that. If you look at historical examples, you know Germany between the wars -- and other examples. It s not so easy to maintain that kind of policy, and I think it was failing. Secondly, I think that there s no question, and I still believe there s no question that Saddam was engaged in doing what he could when he could to reconstitute or advance his weapons of mass destruction programs on a variety of levels and that, you know, eventually he was going to obtain it. Now, I m not I never argued that the reason personally never argued that the reason for invading Iraq was because of the imminent threat of an Iraqi attack on the United States or the imminent quality of it. I don t think and I don t even accept the notion that this was a preventive particularly a preventive war or a preemptive war. I think that if you look at it in historical terms we can see many instances where prudent military action taken at a certain stage would have been far preferable to the military action that was ultimately taken. And again, I think of 1936 and Germany s reoccupation of the Rhineland which, you know, as I think most people now agree, had Britain and France taken preemptive military action or taken military action then we might not have had all the troubles that followed. Hitler might have actually fallen. But if they had done that, critics would have said, What are you doing? This was an unnecessary war and nothing is happening. Germany was merely reoccupying its own territory. But I think that Saddam was a megalomaniac with ambitions to become the leading force in his part of the world. He d invaded two countries. He was building weapons of mass destruction. He d used weapons of mass destruction. And that if you asked me what the prudent thing to do was under those circumstances, it was not to simply say, Well, let s hope that nothing happens. I think the prudent decision was the one that was taken.

16 MR. NAIM: Any other question? Yes? KERRY BOYD-ANDERSON: I m Kerry Boyd-Anderson with Arms Control Today. I agree fully with the view that the increasing anti-americanism in the Muslim world is a serious concern for U.S. leaders. And I find it interesting, when I talk with my friends in the Middle East and they talk about their complaints about America, the number one complaint is usually U.S. support for Israel. Number two is usually the Iraq war, but not far behind is a complaint that Moises mentioned: the double standard that the United States supports a number of pretty oppressive Arab regimes or other oppressive regimes in the Muslim world. So I d just like to know if you have any perspectives on what the United States should be doing about that now, and if we can use what s happened in Iraq to any advantage in that way? MR. HAQQANI: Well, I think going into Iraq we have actually set a very high standard for ourselves because we ve gone into a country where we said there was a bad government. If the weapons of mass destruction show up, fine. If they don t, then that will be the main reason, you know, that we got rid of Saddam Hussein, who is evil. I mean, I do not agree with the suggestion that Kim Jong Il is somehow, you know, less evil than Saddam Hussein, but having said that, let me say that in the Middle East in particular now the U.S. will be judged by a higher standard, and all the noises about democracy, et cetera, may come back to haunt the U.S. because the Saudis are going to say, Okay, regime change in Saudi Arabia: what are you doing about that? Regime change in Egypt? and the United States simply cannot do that. The United States cannot simply give up balances of power and simply cannot give up on supporting regimes that it dislikes. So the best bet for the U.S. is to somehow nudge these regimes into reforming. And is that doable? There are differences of opinion on that and we could sort of sit here all day discussing how far we can go with one regime or another, but I think it s critical that after Iraq it should not just be about part of the success in rebuilding Iraq will depend upon how much credibility we can gain in the entire Middle East, and particular in the Muslim world, in nudging other regimes towards reform. And if we do not, then it will become a one-off thing where attaining success will become very complicated. MR. NAIM: Yes? MARY JANE DEE: Mary Jane Dee, Library of Congress. On the issue of contagion, there is contagion the other way around too. In other words, Iraq is now has now adopted a little bit, at least in the south, the Iranian model, and we really haven t addressed this, and perhaps it s on both panels, but the Iranians are already in Iraq so to speak. I mean, you can see the if we were to have elections, who would be elected? It would be the men of religion. In other words, the model that seems to be growing more and more acceptable, if you want, in Iraq may be the Iranian model rather than the other way around. And so I wanted to address this issue in the broader framework of what Dr. Haqqani had been talking about, which is the other side to the Iraqi invasion may very well be the strengthening of an Islamist model of an Islamic republic, of a choice of leaders which is not to our liking but which may very well be to the liking of the people

17 of the region because there is no, at the moment, credible model for Iraq. So contagion may be the other way around as well. MR. PERKOVICH: Can I try to respond to that? MR. NAIM: Yes. George and then MR. PERKOVICH: And I m loathe to, with Shaul Bakhash here who knows so much more about this than I would in 70 years ever be able to learn, so you should jump in too. But I think the I don t agree with the premise of the question, and that is to say within Iran today there are enormous and important divisions even within the clerical establishment about the proper rule of that establishment and, for example, the rule of the jurisprudent and the relationship between democracy and being a good Islamic society. So it s not even clear to me what model, you know, Iran wants talking about, given the dispute right now, the heated dispute in Iran over that very model. So then when you go to Iraq and you say it is no doubt clear that religious leaders have organized the local society and are starting to provide benefits that are associated with statehood in terms of services and everything else, but we don t know from that at this point at least I don t what their vision of ultimately the relationship between political authority, a state, and the religious community is going to be. So I think it s still very fluid and that s part of why I made the plea that I don t think the U.S. is constructively enough trying to deal with Iranians both in the south but also in the state of Iran over just this key question of the model. But I said more than I know and Shaul is back there who knows actually something, so MR. NAIM: I want to move a little bit away from Iraq and center on the rest of the world and other countries and there is a general perception there are very many acute observers that have called Pakistan the most dangerous place in the world; the country that has the highest potential to destabilize its region and the world. Both Anatol and Husain have spent significant MR. HAQQANI: Born and raised there. (Laughter.) MR. LIEVEN: Husain to a rather greater degree than me. MR. NAIM: Well, we ll let you then tell us a little bit about what you think. MR. HAQQANI: Well, I think I think that Pakistan has always been a difficult place, but I think that I don t think it is about to explode and I don t think it is about to get into a nuclear war either. However, there are many other side issues that have to be borne in mind. What happens if, for example, there s an Islamic republic that emerges in Iraq despite the United States best efforts? And then the Islamic groups in Pakistan start pressuring and they gain control of the government to a large extent, both from their supporters within the army or through just an electoral exercise. In that case Pakistan will become a nuclear power with an Islamic or Islamist government. Can the United States live with that? What would that mean for India-Pakistan relations? Pakistan continues to support Islamic militants operating in India. What implications does that

18 have? Will India continue to tolerate this bleeding wound or will India someday decide to sort it out with Pakistan, and what are the implications for global security? So the implication of all of this in relation to Iraq of course is that the more the United States is engaged in one part of the world, as I may have said earlier, I think I mean, this is a one-crisis town, you know, Washington, D.C., so can you handle multiple crises? What if the Pakistani-Indian scene starts heating up in the near future when you are focused completely on Iraq? Will you be able to get both things right? And I think I do not know the answer to that. MR. NAIM: Anatol. MR. LIEVEN: Yes, I think this can be a multi-crisis town it was during the Cold War if you have an overarching intellectual framework which allows you to draw up a general strategy. And I think that s what one needs for the war against terrorism and relations with the Muslim world. One has to have a conception of one s overall goals, you know, which allows one to handle different crises in different areas at the same time. MR. HAQQANI: The goals have to be conceived rather broadly instead of very narrowly. MR. LIEVEN: They have to be conceived broadly and they also, as in the case of the Cold War, they have to be conceived in the long-term. You know, we essentially sat out the Soviet communist threat over 40 years and we defeated it. But we, thank god I mean, despite some wild voices in the 1950s we didn t try to go for a quick solution to Soviet rule over Eastern Europe, for example. Now, that meant digesting along the way certain things that were perceived as very serious defeats after all. You know, the Soviet crushing of Hungary, of Czechoslovakia there were other occasions where we, you know, got involved in conflicts which we didn t need to really in the case of Vietnam. So I would appeal for a long-term attitude, and I think this is very much the case with Pakistan. I totally agree with Husain, you know, one mustn t exaggerate the short-term threat of state failure, of Islamic revolution, whatever. But I think if you look at the longer-term economic, demographic, environmental trends, these are very, very alarming when it comes to state failure over a generation or so. And if this occurs, then yes, Pakistan will be certainly by far the most dangerous part of the world in terms of the threat from Muslim terrorism. So we need a strategy which embodies a strategy for the development of Pakistan, but this in turn is very difficult to put in place unless you have a diplomatic strategy which approaches the India-Pakistan tension. Now, I m not saying this is easy; I do think it ought to be a priority. MR. NAIM: George, you have also spent some MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I was just thinking about what Anatol we ve got a new definition of an optimist, which is we can handle multiple crises at the same time, which I that s kind of something to look forward to.