'Its (US) Intentions Are Suspected'

Address--Centrality is the curse of West Asia--byShri M. Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India, at the International Conferenceon "Emerging Security Concerns in West Asia" organised by the ObserverResearch Foundation on 21 November 2007

• Ambassador Rasgotra
• Prof. Michael Brie
• Gen. V.P. Malik
• Members of the ORF fraternity
• Distinguished guests
• Ladies and gentlemen

It is a pleasure to be back on a familiar platform. Familiarity in this case,however, is a disadvantage since I may be in danger of repeating what I mighthave articulated on previous occasions!

Many years back the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle had drawn attention tothe dangers of expressions that are ’couched in syntactical form improper tothe facts recorded’. This observation is relevant to our subject today sincethe theme of the conference begs definition and delineation. Unanimity ofperception, of course, would have been ideal; since that is lacking, the twooperative terms - ’emerging’ and ’security concerns’ - need to be speltout.

Centrality has been the curse of West Asia. It is hardly necessary to remindthis audience that external security concerns pertaining to the region have beenaround for over a century. Writing in 1917, Marriott, a British Scholar, definedthe Eastern Question as ’the problem of filling up the vacuum created by thegradual disappearance of the Turkish Empire from Europe’. In May 1917, Britainand France used the Sykes-Picot Agreement to acquire ’the right of priority inenterprises and local loans’ in designated Arab areas of the Ottoman Empireand to deny any facilities to a third Power in the Arabian Peninsula and the RedSea. In a parallel move, the secret Balfour Declaration of November 1917 carriedthe commitment for the ’establishment in Palestine of a national home for theJewish people’. A decade earlier on August 31, 1907, the Anglo-Russian Ententewas signed, dividing Iran into three zones only one of which was under Iraniancontrol. ’The Iranians’, in Professor Nikkie Keddie’s words, ’wereneither consulted on the agreement nor informed of the terms’. That exercise,of division and occupation, was repeated during World War II.

These experiences with external powers left indelible marks on nationalperceptions.

The short point that I wish to emphasise is that ’emerging securityconcerns’ cannot be viewed in a vacuum and in a single dimension; they need tobe seen both from the internal and the external perspectives and in terms of thehistorical experience of individual societies. Furthermore, security perceptionsvary greatly within nations and between them. Security is no longer viewed inmilitary and nation-state terms. National security and regime security are notnecessarily synonymous. Today we live in the age of human security. Progress incomprehension would therefore be possible only through de-segregation;generalisations would be possible only if we succeed in identifying commonthreat perceptions.

II

Any discussion of contemporary West Asia must beginwith three questions:

1. What is happening in the region?
2. Why is it happening?
3. What is the way out?

The answer to the first question is obvious. It focuses on a set ofwell-known situations:

• A Middle East Peace Process that is lingering on promissory notes whose encashment has been deferred repeatedly;
• A quagmire in Iraq that has dented the prestige and power of the United States;
• A failure to abandon the doctrines of ’Pre-emptive Strikes’ and of ’Regime Change’ despite the experience of recent years and sharply declining public support for it in the United States;
• Isreal’s failure to destroy the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza;
• America’s stand off with Iran, and the threat to regional and world peace emanating from it;
• Enhanced external pressure on Iran to terminate its nuclear programme;
• Demographic pressures and a developing gap between commitment and expectation in West Asian societies;
• Failure of the ’Middle East Initiative’ and the ’Greater Middle East Initiative’ and of the attempt to democratise West Asian societies. Also, the impact of this on indigenous reform movements; and
• The little mentioned problem of water.

There is no simple answer to the second question. West Asia has been andcontinues to be a pivotal factor in global geopolitics. These have beenaggravated in recent years by a set of new considerations:

• Crisis of the Old Order and end of bipolarity;
• The attempt to impose a New Order;
• Failure to develop a security paradigm in the region and particularly in the Persian Gulf; and
• Ideological dimensions and their implications - defeat of Arabism and Arab nationalism, failure of the Left and the re-emergence of religious radicalism. 

These factors do not function autonomously; instead, they interact on acontinuous basis. Comprehensive analysis of these is not possible in the shorttime available to me this morning. One aspect, however, is worth highlighting; Irefer to the interaction between the periphery and the core. In specific terms,this would refer to the role of Israel and Iran, and occasionally of Turkey, andthe impact of their relationship on the core problems of contemporary West Asia.

An answer to the third question is contingent on variables of considerablesize and diversity. One could begin by stating the factual situation as knownpublicly.

While the greater part of the region and its population are Arab, theprincipal factors in the strategic calculus are non-Arabs. Two are on theperiphery - Israel and Iran, and one beyond it - the United States. Theinteraction of these with the region, and with each other, is having a decisiveimpact.

A beginning may be made with self-perceptions. The region, President Bushsaid in his State of the Union message earlier this year, is the venue of ’thedecisive ideological struggle of our times’. As Undersecretary of StateNicholas Burns put it, it is the epicentre of American foreign policy.

On the other side is the view of Dr. Martin Kramer, an Israeli-Americanscholar of considerable repute who also serves as senior Middle East advisor toRepublican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. He said in a lecture the otherday that ’we must get ourselves back over the horizon and as much out of theArab line of sight as possible’ and, as was done by the British, French,Ottoman throughout history. ’Rule lightly, unless provoked. Delegate power anddon’t tamper with local customs. Using these rules, great empires dominatedthe Middle East for centuries. Our problem, though, is that we don’t seeourselves as a great empire, and we don’t want to rule anyone directly. Wejust want to transform them thoroughly’.

The operative expression in both sets of perceptions is a desire to dominate.The discussion is only about modalities.

Israel, a mid-twentieth century factor in the region, has not been able totranslate its military superiority into a total, definitive, victory. Itsinvincibility was dented in the war with Hezbollah. This is not reflected inpolitical perceptions where right wing political parties and a small buteffective settler lobby has defied moves towards a meaningful peace process. Thelack of a serious U.S. interest in the peace process has helped sustain it. TheAmerican West Asian policy is hampered by the "Israel test" to whichit is subjected in terms of domestic politics. Israel’s policy objective isto: (a) exhaust the Palestinians, riddle the West Bank with settlements, makeimpossible the emergence of a viable Palestinian state and (b) dominate theregion militarily, technologically and economically.

Iran, driven by memories of the Revolution and the long war with Iraq, seeksto project a threefold desire: (a) acknowledgement of its regional weight,particularly in West Asia and the Persian Gulf (b) development of atechnological capability to assist it (c)bring to an end, on equitable terms, tothe regime of sanctions to facilitate access to badly needed technology andforeign investment for economic development. The stand off on Iran’s allegednuclear weapons programme is thus a political instrumentality resorted tomaximise advantage in a complex negotiating process.

III

The state-centric security concerns in West Asia thusrelate principally to the moves on the chess board of the United States, Israeland Iran in relation both to each other and to other actors in the region.

The United States today is not the Sole Super Power of the spring of 2003.The policies of unilateralism, ’creative destruction’ and pre-emption havefaltered. The U.S. has been mauled by non-state actors in Iraq; its policieshave given an impetus to terrorism; it has lost domestic support for its Iraqpolicy; its unpopularity levels are alarmingly high in Arab and Muslim countriesand its intentions are suspected. The financial burden of the war and the drainon the dollar has added to public concerns. The dissent in the national securityestablishment of the United States has become public. Francis Fukuyama wrotelast month that when he penned the End of History ’the one thing I didnot anticipate was the degree to which American behaviour and misjudgementswould make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault lines of global politics’.

The imperatives in the Iran policy of the United States have to be viewed inthis context. Suggestions about military action have emanated from time to time;doubts about its efficacy and wider implications have also been raised. Theabsence of decisive evidence of Iranian culpability has been a restrainingfactor. Non-proliferation experts like Dr. David Albright have recentlyexpressed the view that (a) Iran has not yet demonstrated competency atenriching uranium, (b) the programme ’still has a way to go’, and (c)creative thinking should focus at direct negotiations without pre-conditions,but with some confidence building measures by Iran, between Iran, the EU and theUnited States. Dr. Henry Kissinger, who was in Delhi recently, was cautiouslyoptimistic about such talks taking place in 2008.

Israeli perceptions of Iran are nuanced. Since 1979 the relationship has beenconditioned by ideology on the one side and geo-political interests on theother. The channels of communications have never completely closed. Iran’ssupport to the Palestinians and the Hezbollah has been a strategic irritant toIsrael. An Iranian success in developing a nuclear weapon capability would denyIsrael the regional monopoly it has in the matter. Israel has been extremelyactive in mobilising American opinion against Iran. On the other hand, Haaretzmagazine cited on October 25, 2007 a remark by foreign minister Tzipi Livni that’Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel’.

Similarly nuanced are the Iranian positions on the U.S. and Israel. TheIranian proposal of May 2003 for negotiations on a package deal was rejected bythe Bush Administration; it does, nevertheless, contain elements for seriousconsideration. Iran in 2002 had also signalled its willingness to accept a’Malaysian profile’ in return for an easing of Israeli and American effortsto isolate Iran.

IV

So much for the periphery and the extra-regionalactors. But what about the core? Why is it that all discussion on regionalsecurity in West Asia is not primarily centred on the Arab core? Even as we livein an age of multiple identities, the peoples of the region have not yetresolved their overlapping identities and the implications of suchnon-resolution are visible at key historical and evolutionary junctions.

The end of European colonialism in West Asia had unleashed three sets offorces whose complex interplay sets the background for all subsequentdevelopments in the polity and society of Arab states:

1. The first is Arab nationalism; the concept that all Arabs are one nation was very strong in the immediate aftermath of the end of European colonialism. Later, conflict on who should steer the destiny of the Arab nation has led to a conscious downplaying of Arab nationalism. Today, the concept remains a significant cultural matrix but its impact on the Arab polity has diminished.
2. The second is the creation of nation-states in the areas vacated by the erstwhile colonial powers. The systems of governance in these nation-states have varied between kingdoms, emirates, sultanates and republics. The ruling regimes of some states had access to unforeseen riches from hydrocarbon resources. The colonial masters left behind border problems and other disputes. Ruling regimes found it convenient to obtain allegiance by emphasising the interests of their nation-state over that of the Arab nation.
3. The third is Islam. In the initial stages, religious revival was sought to be fused with anti-imperialism and modern grass-roots political activism. The energies of this activism were later directed against the ruling regimes. In some cases, Islamist movements came to power, in others they were thwarted from taking power. What is undeniable is that Islamism retains significant political space in West Asia - co-opted in some regimes and hounded in others.

Political evolution, propelled by these three factors, was aided by vastchanges taking place in Arab societies. Rapid urbanisation set the scene formass indoctrination; Arab nationalism filled the lacunae until its demise in thewake of the 1967 War. Islamism readily provided a substitute. Its inherentanti-communism was looked upon with favour by the concerned Western powers. Thepoint was proved at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The sloganof Jihad in terms of armed resistance was promoted by the states of the region(with some exceptions) and actively endorsed by the western powers.

To these various factors must be added the security threats, includingterrorism, emanating from non-state actors in West Asia - a direct product ofthe political impasse mentioned above. A simplistic analysis of these is rarelyrewarding. Domestic, regional, external and ideological factors combine toproduce chemical reactions of varying intensity. In traditional societiessustained by a mix of religious and tribal norms, neo-patriarchy andnon-participatory governance cause resentments that are subdued partially andfor varying periods of time by largesse. Rapid inflow of wealth, on the otherhand, brings in its wake social disruptions and awakened expectations.

Social systems also produce their anti-bodies. The youth who spent time inAfghanistan returned home Islamised and radicalised. They sought correctivesfrom local rulers and their external friends. They found solace in traditional,religious, idiom. The rest of the story, in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, andeventually in Jordan and Saudi Arabia is too well known to bear repetition. Iraqadded its share in ample measure.

Islamism is an ideology of protest, and of change. Apart from slogans, it haslittle by way of a programme of social reconstruction. Suppression without othercorrectives, however, gives it a lease of life.

V

It is time to wind up. Diagnosis and commentary on the first and the secondquestions inevitably propel us towards the third. The correctives are suggestedby the diagnosis itself.

The question is of the will to undertake it. Simple logic, however, is notsynonymous with state logic!

Thank you.