Brookings: Experts - Vali Nasr

American Foreign Policy in Retreat? A Discussion with Vali Nasr

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

Event Information

May 14, 2013
9:30 AM - 11:00 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

For the past decade, a debate has raged about the future of American power and foreign policy engagement. In his new book, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2013), Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Vali Nasr questions America’s choice to lessen its foreign policy engagement around the world. Nasr argues that after taking office in 2009, the Obama administration let fears of terrorism and political backlash confine its policies to that of the previous administration, instead of seizing the opportunity to fundamentally reshape American foreign policy over the past four years. Meanwhile, China and Russia – rivals to American influence globally – were quietly expanding their influence in places where the U.S. has long held sway. Nasr argues that the Obama administration’s foreign policy decision making could have potentially dangerous outcomes, and, what’s more, sells short America’s power and role in the world.

On May 14, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted Vali Nasr for a discussion on the state of U.S. power globally and whether American foreign policy under the Obama administration is in retreat. Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Kagan joined the discussion, which was moderated by Vice President Martin Indyk, director of Foreign Policy.

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American Foreign Policy in Retreat? A Discussion with Vali Nasr

The Dangerous Price of Ignoring Syria

Vali Nasr — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in The International Herald Tribune.

President Obama has doggedly resisted American involvement in Syria. The killing of over 70,000 people and the plight of over a million refugees have elicited sympathy from the White House but not much more. That is because Syria challenges a central aim of Obama’s foreign policy: shrinking the U.S. footprint in the Middle East and downplaying the region’s importance to global politics. Doing more on Syria would reverse the U.S. retreat from the region.

Since the beginning of Obama’s first term, the administration’s stance as events unfolded in the Middle East has been wholly reactive. This “lean back and wait” approach has squandered precious opportunity to influence the course of events in the Middle East. There has been no strategy for capitalizing on the opportunity that the Arab Spring presented, or for containing its fallout — the Syrian crisis being the worst case to date. The president rewarded Burmese generals with a six-hour visit for their willingness to embrace reform, but he has not visited a single Arab country that went through the Arab Spring.

Obama sees Syria as a tragic humanitarian crisis without obvious strategic implications for the United States. “How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” he asked in a New Republic interview in January. When the president visited the region last month he chose to focus on the Arab-Israeli peace process rather than Syria. The peace process is now at the top of Secretary of State John Kerry’s agenda.

The plight of Palestinians is a perennial concern, but it is in Syria that the future of the region hangs in the balance. Choosing the peace process over Syria underscores not the administration’s interest in the Middle East but its determination to look past it.

Washington has wasted precious time in using diplomatic, economic and military levers to influence the course of events in Syria. That neglect has allowed the conflagration to rage at great human cost, radicalizing the opposition and putting at risk U.S. allies across the region.

America cannot and should not decide the fate of the Middle East, but it should be clear about its stakes there, and not shy away from efforts to at least nudge events in more favorable directions as this critical region faces momentous choices. A “lean back and wait” posture toward unfolding events is dangerous.

The paroxysm of violence in Syria is expected to kill tens of thousands more and produce as many as three million refugees by the year’s end. That is a humanitarian tragedy to be sure, but one with immediate strategic consequences. American insouciance in the face of that devastation is fomenting anti-Americanism. The waves of refugees will constitute an unstable population that will be a breeding ground for extremism and in turn destabilize the countries where they take refuge. Syria’s neighbors are not equipped to deal with a humanitarian disaster on this scale.

The longer the devastation goes on the more difficult it will be to put Syria back together, and failing to do so will leave a dangerous morass in the heart of the Middle East, a failed state at war with itself where extremism and instability will fester and all manner of terrorists and Al Qaeda affiliates will find ample space, resources and recruits to menace the region and world.

Worse yet, the conflict in Syria could spill over its borders. Syria has become ground zero in a broader conflict that pits Shiites against Sunnis and shapes the larger regional competition for power between Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Syria’s paroxysms if allowed to drag on could potentially spread far and wide and even change the map of the region. America may think it does not have any interests in Syria, but it has interests everywhere the Syrian conflict touched.

Lebanon and Iraq are each deeply divided along sectarian lines, and both countries teeter on a knife’s edge as tensions rise between their ascendant Shiite populations who fear a setback if Bashar al-Assad falls, and the minority Sunnis in their own countries who support Syria’s Sunni-led opposition. Sectarian tensions stretch from Lebanon and Iraq through the Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain and on to Pakistan where sectarian violence has exploded into the open.

It is time America takes the lead in organizing international assistance to refugees. America should not hide behind the Russian veto. It should pursue a concerted diplomatic strategy in support of arming the rebels and imposing a no-flight zone over Syria. That would not only hamper Assad’s ability to fight, it would allow refugees to remain within Syria’s borders, thus reducing pressure on neighboring countries.

It is time the U.S. took over from Qatar and Saudi Arabia in organizing the Syrian opposition into a credible political force — failure to do that accounts for the chaos that has paralyzed the group. There are powerful economic sanctions that the U.S. could use to cripple the Assad regime.

Finally, America should build ties with the Free Syrian Army with the goal of denying extremist groups the ability to dominate the armed resistance and gaining influence with groups that will dominate Syria’s future. It was failing to build those ties in Afghanistan that allowed the resistance groups who opposed the Soviet Union to disintegrate into the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The Syrian crisis has become a Gordian knot that cannot be easily disentangled. As daunting as the crisis looks, there is a cost to inaction — in human suffering, regional instability and damage to America’s global standing. And as the Syrian crisis escalates, America and the world will only rediscover their stakes in the Middle East. If Obama truly wants to pivot away from the Middle East then he has to help end the bloodletting in Syria.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: International Herald Tribune

The U.S. Should Focus on Asia: All of Asia

Vali Nasr — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in The Atlantic.

If we put a map of the world on the wall and put red pins on the conflict zones that most threaten American security and tax its resources, and green pins where economic growth is fastest and the promise of wealth greatest, we would see a lot of red pins clustered in the Middle East and a lot of green pins dotting Asia. So it should not come as a surprise that President Obama made "pivoting" away from the Middle East and toward Asia the cornerstone of his foreign policy. He saw the writing on the map, so to speak, and decided that the future of America should be entwined with the prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region and China and not with the troubles of the Middle East.

The pivot's aim, on the face of it, is economic: boosting the amount of business that America does with Asia's booming economies, both investment and trade. Those plans, however, collide head-on with China's regional ambitions. The pivot, to succeed, must block China's hegemonic impulse and contain its rise in its own backyard. Containing China, therefore, thinks Washington, is the real strategic challenge facing America in the coming decades.

But this sort of thinking poses a false choice between the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. America is right to think that its rivalry with China will play out in Asia -- but Beijing and Washington have very different conceptions of what Asia is. America thinks of Asia as the arc from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan: the area from Myanmar to the east, or, in other words, the region we call Southeast Asia (Myanmar,Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.) plus Northeast Asia (Japan, North Korea, South Korea). China, however, thinks of Asia as the entire vast landmass -- the world's largest both in area and population -- that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.

On this larger playing field, China is expanding its reach, across the continent and toward Europe, pivoting west just as America is pivoting east. In China's view, the Middle East is integral to Asia's power politics, while America, with its shrunken conception of Asia, thinks of the Middle East as excess baggage in a Pacific-focused foreign policy.

America, which is reducing its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, believes it can afford to think this way. China, by contrast, must look to the rich oil and gas fields of Central Asia and the Middle East to keep its surging economy humming. As James Fallows puts it, "As fast as [China's] economy grows, its energy consumption grows faster still. Each percentage point increase in economic output leads to a more than proportional increase in demand for energy." China is the world's second-largest oil importer, behind only the United States. Its demand for oil will double again in the coming 15 years or so. Well before then, in 2020, China is projected to be importing 7.3 million barrels of crude a day -- half of Saudi Arabia's planned output. By that time, China will be the world's number one oil consumer, and its manic rate of urbanization is likely to keep it that way. In the next decade alone, the rise of new Chinese cities, according to a McKinsey report, "will account for around 20 percent of global energy consumption and up to one-quarter of growth in [global] oil demand." Two decades ago, China's large industrial and population centers lay almost exclusively along its east coast. That region remains a dynamo, but people and production -- and the hunger and thirst for energy -- are moving west. China now needs more and more energy for its middle and western regions.

China's fevered investing in west Asia is designed to create a sophisticated network of roads, railways and pipelines stretching home from the oil and gas fields of northern Iraq and Central Asia. Those land routes will complement the tanker fleets carrying oil and liquid natural gas across the Indian Ocean. There are plans for railway lines connecting Turkey to Pakistan and Iran, and pipelines running west over high mountain ranges into western China or to the port of Gwador, Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea coast.

To facilitate all this, China is forging close economic ties with Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Its trade with Persian Gulf monarchies, too, is on the rise. Persian Gulf sovereign funds are pouring investments into China while a growing number of Chinese businesses ply their trade in Cairo and Baghdad. So many Chinese businessmen now visit Irbil in Northern Iraq that local law firms are looking for Mandarin speakers. China is investing billions to buy access to markets and resources, but also to increase its political influence. China's scramble for Africa is being repeated in the Middle East.

China is naturally concerned about the security of its supply routes. Beijing sees American strategic relations with countries from the Pacific to the Persian Gulf as a noose that could choke China's access to energy. Indeed, in the run-up to World War Two, America, Britain, and the Netherlands did deny energy- and resource-poor Japan access to oil, rubber, and iron shipments from Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union cast hungry eyes on the Persian Gulf with the idea of doing something similar to the West. These lessons are not lost on China's strategic decision-makers. They believe access to energy will be at the heart of the next global rivalry -- the one between China and America --too.

Confrontation between the two powers, whether over energy or markets, is no longer a far-fetched idea but entirely within the realm of possibility -- that is what the American military build-up in Asia is signaling. In a military competition, America has the clear advantage. China knows the U.S. can use its superior sea power to squeeze China's oil supplies; the American armada dominates the Pacific and Indian Oceans and every body of water in between. Two strategic choke points in particular matter to China. The first is the Straits of Malacca -- the narrow, 500-mile long straits separating Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. The Straits of Malacca is a shallow, heavily traveled, easily blocked stretch of water -- in the Phillips Channel, just south of Singapore, it is less than two miles wide. It is the eastern doorway to the Indian Ocean and one of the world's critical maritime choke points. More than 85 percent of the oil and oil products bound for China pass through the Straits from west to east. For Chinese strategists, resolving what they call "the Malacca dilemma" is a major preoccupation. The second choke point is the Persian Gulf.

In order to escape the Malacca dilemma, China has turned to a series of overland pipelines linking the eastern industrial centers of Shanghai and Guangzhou with western China and Turkmenistan, respectively. China has also looked to Myanmar as an alternate route that avoids the Straits. There, Beijing has had to compete for influence with Delhi. India, too, is growing rapidly, and is looking to the same Middle Eastern and Central Asian sources to sustain its economy.

Even as it develops overland alternatives, China is building a blue-water navy and has invested in the so-called "string of pearls" strategy of building bases in the Indian Ocean (in places such as Sri Lanka) to protect its sea routes to Africa and the Middle East. There is already a brisk competition between China and India over which country will dominate the Indian Ocean. The two Asian powers eye one another with suspicion even as they cooperate to address the menace of piracy. But China is also worried about U.S. control of the high seas. The Scarborough Shoal row, in which China asserted primacy over the South China Sea and met resistance from several Southeast Asian nations backed by the U.S., brought the problem into sharp relief. At that point, America had already announced that it would deploy 2,500 U.S. Marines to Australia and help the Philippines to upgrade its navy.

But of equal importance is American naval domination of the Persian Gulf, the source of much of China's future energy supply. It is a critical strategic advantage in managing China's rise, a fact that Beijing is acutely aware of. The U.S., however, does not seem to be. America is focusing on the Straits of Malacca but proclaiming its goal of leaving the Persian Gulf. We will not need Persian Gulf oil and gas, American officials visiting the Gulf states tell their hosts, so we will be shrinking our footprint here. We may not need Persian Gulf oil, but China will, and so will the countries we depend on to balance China in its backyard: Japan and South Korea. The administration has made it clear that we are now in the business of containing China. So should we not be doubling down on the Persian Gulf, a region we have already secured for 60 years, rather than abandoning it at the precise moment that it has achieved new strategic value?

American retreat from the Middle East will be welcomed in China as a strategic boon: it will give China a free hand to shape its energy security in west Asia, which in turn will give Beijing greater leverage in resisting American pressure in the Asia-Pacific. This region is not only a source of valuable energy to China, but is also a cultural and ethnic bridge to the Turkic Muslim minority living in China's western-most provinces, which gives China a security interest there as well. Until the pivot, China may have worried that American presence could encourage Central Asian states closest to China's western borders to resist Beijing's influence, as is happening in Southeast Asia. Beijing has sought to bolster that influence, integrating parts of the Middle East and Central Asia closest to its borders into its economic orbit, and founding the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a rival to American power styled as a counterweight to NATO or the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). With Iran and Russia's backing, SCO is working to limit American diplomatic presence in the region.

America has got its Asia strategy wrong. It should start with a broader view of Asia, one that reflects the strategic interests that bind the eastern and western parts of that continent and drive China's role there. In that larger context American presence in the Middle East is an enormous asset that will become more valuable as America's rivalry with China intensifies in the years to come.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: The Atlantic

Killing From the Sky Is No Way to Defeat Terrorists

Vali Nasr — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

It’s clear the Obama administration needs to answer for failing to secure the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans died in a September terrorist attack. Yet the accountability debate is getting in the way of the more important discussion the Benghazi attack should provoke.

That’s a debate over whether the U.S. has the right counterterrorism strategy to start with. The administration claims its elimination of al-Qaeda leaders using drones and special operations forces has crippled the organization. Has it, really?

The Benghazi attack occurred a day after al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri urged Libyans to avenge the death of his top lieutenant, Libyan Yahya al-Libi, in a drone strike in June in Pakistan. If Zawahiri’s call prompted the attack on the Benghazi mission, al-Qaeda, far from being a spent force, retains sufficient capability to threaten U.S. security.

Even if the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with al- Qaeda, there’s no doubt the organization, and like-minded groups, is enjoying a comeback in other places, notably Mali and Yemen. How did this happen?

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. saw the war on terrorism as a battle of ideas: Violent extremism had to be defeated by moderate Islam and the spread of liberal Western values. The Iraq War was largely an effort to install a democracy in the heart of the Arab world. Because war proved the wrong way to build democracy, however, American policy makers became convinced that the whole idea of addressing terrorism through reform was unfounded.

Hounding Al-Qaeda

Accordingly, the Obama administration took a far narrower approach. Its counterterrorism policy has been focused on relentlessly hounding al-Qaeda leaders, relying on drones in the skies and special forces on the ground to eradicate them. The campaign has had successes, driving al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, loosening the group’s hold over the insurgency in Iraq, and disrupting operations by removing effective leaders such as Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden.

It has been a seductive policy. Drones are a low-cost, low- risk way to wage war. They give the impression a country can defeat terrorism without engaging in costly military campaigns, economic development or nation-building. The administration insisted the policy was working, and the country bought it. This might have dulled the instinct to better protect facilities such as the U.S. mission in Benghazi. Taking seriously the threat of violent extremism in newly democratic Libya would have challenged the administration’s claim that it was defeating the jihadists.

Yet history tells us that assassination alone isn’t an effective strategy. During the Vietnam War, the CIA killed thousands of Vietcong leaders in Operation Phoenix. The campaign set the Vietcong back, but the organization survived it.

The effort to decapitate al-Qaeda looks to be similarly futile. Drones have killed al-Qaeda leaders with devastating precision but with the unintended consequence of pushing the organization out of its lair in northwest Pakistan and into every other broken part of the Muslim world. The options for asylum, meanwhile, have spread beyond Africa’s Sahel region because of the effects of the Arab Spring. Syria’s civil war has pulled in global jihadists. Extremists are exploiting a breakdown of order in parts of Egypt, Libya and Yemen caused by the dissolution of authoritarian regimes.

As Americans learned after Sept. 11, terrorists thrive in failed or failing states. They need space to recruit, train, organize and launch operations.

Terrorist Redoubts

Given the growing number of terrorist redoubts, the limited U.S. counterterrorism strategy is at the end of its effectiveness. Going forward, the U.S. can no longer rely principally on drone strikes. The policy in Obama’s second term should focus more on shoring up failing states and denying al- Qaeda new havens. Only then would counterterrorism efforts actually diminish the organization.

Hiding behind Russia’s opposition to a United Nations resolution on Syria, the U.S. has done almost nothing to stop the country’s disintegration. The Obama administration needs to assert leadership in organizing the opposition, forging a cease- fire and facilitating the exit of President Bashar al-Assad. This would not only stop the violence in Syria but also reduce the chances of the country becoming the next field of jihad.

The U.S. must also help Libya build effective state institutions and assist Egypt and Yemen in addressing the decline of social order and state authority. That requires greater diplomatic engagement, economic aid and support for civil society.

This is an ambitious agenda, but the U.S. can no longer afford a minimalist approach. In the campaign, President Obama identified terrorist networks as the most serious threat to U.S. national security. His response should be as serious as that threat.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: Bloomberg

Image Source: © Pascal Lauener / Reuters

No More Bullying Pakistan

Vali Nasr — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

It took eight months, but the U.S. has finally apologized for killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in a firefight on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

With that, the U.S. military is again able to use routes through Pakistan to supply its forces in Afghanistan without paying exorbitant fees. Plus the threat that Pakistan will bar U.S. drone strikes is for now moot.

However, the main implication of the apology, a triumph of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over both the White House and the Pentagon, is that it ends the experiment of the U.S. trying to bully Pakistan into submission.

The clash in November between U.S. and Pakistani forces was a mess, with miscommunication on both sides but fatalities on only one. Pakistan, still seething over the U.S. breach of its sovereignty in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, closed U.S. military supply routes to Afghanistan when the U.S. initially refused to apologize. The U.S., in turn, froze $700 million in military assistance and shut down all engagement on economic and development issues. In a further deterioration of ties, the Pakistani Parliament voted to ban all U.S. drone attacks from or on Pakistani territory.

No Sympathy

The Pakistanis held firm in their insistence on an apology. Officials at the Pentagon thought the case didn’t merit one. Many had no sympathy for the Pakistanis, whom they regarded as double-dealers for stoking the insurgency in Afghanistan and providing haven to the notorious extremists of the Haqqani Network. The White House feared that an apology would invite Republican criticism. Throughout the crisis, Clinton and her senior staff argued that the U.S. should apologize. She supported re-engaging with Pakistan to protect a critical relationship while also holding Pakistan accountable for fighting the Taliban and other extremists, a point she has raised in each of her conversations with Pakistani leaders.

Clinton’s recommendations were contrary to the policy the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency put in place in early 2011. Relations had soured when the Pakistanis held CIA operative Raymond Davis after he shot two Pakistanis. Frustrated with Pakistan’s foot-dragging on counterterrorism, the two agencies successfully lobbied for a strategy to reduce high-level contacts with Pakistan, shame Pakistan in the news media, and threaten more military and intelligence operations on Pakistani soil like the bin Laden assassination. It was a policy of direct confrontation on all fronts, aimed at bending Pakistan’s will.

It failed. Pakistan stood its ground. Far from changing course, Pakistan reduced cooperation with the U.S. and began to apply its own pressure by threatening to end the drone program, one of the Obama administration’s proudest achievements.

Months of behind-the-scenes wrangling failed to resolve the apology issue. A high-level U.S. visit to Islamabad on the eve of the May 20-21 NATO Summit in Chicago proved a fiasco. Pakistan informed the Americans that after an apology, it would charge a much higher fee to let NATO supplies into Afghanistan. (That has not come to pass.) President Barack Obama refused to meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at the summit unless the supply routes reopened, but that did not break the impasse.

Finally, Washington tallied the costs of confrontation with Pakistan. Supplying troops through other routes was costing an additional $100 million a month. Without Pakistani roads, the U.S. military wouldn’t be able to get its heavy equipment out of Afghanistan on time or on budget once it begins to withdraw from the country in earnest. If Pakistan remained off-limits, the U.S. would have to rethink its entire exit strategy from Afghanistan.

Open Airspace

What’s more, if Pakistan truly shut down the drone program, it would cripple the administration’s most successful terrorism- fighting tool. Pakistan might also close its airspace to U.S. planes flying between the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. Americans were understandably angry that bin Laden was found hiding in a Pakistani city, but few knew that the plane that transported his body from an Afghan base to a U.S. Navy ship for a sea burial had to fly over Pakistani territory.

The conclusion: Open conflict with Pakistan was not an option. It was time to roll back the pressure.

The apology is just a first step in repairing ties deeply bruised by the past year’s confrontations. The U.S. should adopt a long-term strategy that would balance U.S. security requirements with Pakistan’s development needs. Managing relations with Pakistan requires a deft policy -- neither the blind coddling of the George W. Bush era nor the blunt pressure of the past year, but a careful balance between pressure and positive engagement. This was Clinton’s strategy from 2009 to 2011, when U.S. security demands were paired with a strategic dialogue that Pakistan coveted. That is still the best strategy for dealing with this prickly ally.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: Bloomberg View

Image Source: © Shahid Shinwari / Reuters

What Pakistan Can Teach the U.S. About Egypt

Vali Nasr — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Egypt finally has a freely elected president. That hardly brightens the prospect for a transition to true democracy, however, given that the country’s generals have made clear it is they who are actually in charge.

It’s a familiar tale, with recent parallels in Pakistan and Turkey, where overbearing militaries have also manipulated the democratic process. In Pakistan, the result is a failing state. In Turkey, civilians have prevailed, producing an economically strong, regionally influential country. Their stories offer lessons to the West about how to help steer Egypt in the direction of success.

Egypt’s generals have traveled a long distance from the days, 18 months ago, when they distanced themselves from President Hosni Mubarak and let the revolution against him take its course. Today, their diffidence has been replaced by an increasing bullishness. In recent weeks, they have dismissed the elected parliament, arrogated new powers, and put Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood on notice that he can assume the presidency only if he accepts the military’s oversight.

There were signs of the coming recrudescence. When Egypt’s interim government rejected a badly needed assistance package from the International Monetary Fund, it was at the urging of the military. The IMF demanded reforms that would have impinged on the prerogatives of the military, whose enterprises account for a third of the economy.

Brazen Taunts

The military was also behind raids on nongovernmental organizations working to promote democracy in Egypt, including three U.S. groups. Those moves were matched by brazen taunting of political parties -- especially Islamist groups -- with warnings that they had better not take their newfound liberties too seriously.

The military saw little reason to restrain itself. The sagging economy and fatigue with revolution produced a nostalgia for authoritarianism among many Egyptians. The international community seemed largely indifferent. That the U.S. authorized military aid to Egypt even after the NGO affair convinced the generals there would be no retribution for a power grab.

In many of their moves, Egypt’s generals seemed to be following the 1988 script of their Pakistani counterparts. After the demise of military dictator Zia Ul-Haq in a plane crash, the Pakistani army withdrew to its barracks and let free elections bring a civilian government to power. However, the generals informed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto that her authority was limited to simple administrative issues and she could not interfere with the military’s role in the economy. When she defied them, the military used a constitutional amendment from Zia’s days to dismiss her. It did the same with her successor and with Bhutto again until a 1999 military coup interrupted democracy.

Pakistan resumed elections in 2008, but democratic institutions remain feeble. This month, the judiciary fired the prime minister for failing to investigate the president for corruption. Two decades of this charade have made for a weak country, infested with corruption and extremism, on the edge of instability.

Turkey’s military also tightly controlled the democratic process from 1993 to 2002, mostly using the judiciary to discipline and control politicians. The courts dismissed an Islamist-led government in 1997 and twice banned Islamist parties.

But in Turkey, the military’s gambit has failed. Beginning in 2002, with the landslide parliamentary victory of the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party, the military’s hold on power began to slip. Over the past two years, civilians have gained the upper hand.

Weak Institutions

Which way might Egypt go? Egypt’s civilian institutions are weaker than those of either Pakistan or Turkey, whose democratic traditions date back to the 1950s. Turkey’s economy in the early 2000s was stronger than Egypt’s is now and was less controlled by its generals. It helped that Turkey’s Islamist parties moderated their positions, something Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has not done with much credibility.

What may matter most, however, is the role of the international community. The U.S. supported democracy in Pakistan in principle, but its sympathies were with the military. American aid didn’t prevent the military from strong- arming the civilian government, nor did it stand in the way of the 1999 coup that upended democracy altogether.

The European Union, by contrast, made clear that Turkey would have no future with Europe if its military ran the government. Turkey agreed to those terms as part of the criteria for EU candidacy. The closer Turkey got to Europe politically and economically, the weaker the military’s hand became, and the stronger civil society and the private sector grew.

The future of democracy in Egypt will largely depend on whether Western powers respond as the U.S. did to Pakistan or as Europe did to Turkey. Accordingly, the U.S., in particular, should work to protect Egypt’s young democracy. It can do so by using its considerable leverage with the Egyptian military, achieved through decades of close connections and $1.3 billion in annual aid.

This would not mean engaging in the day-to-day grind of Egyptian politics, a futile undertaking. Rather, the U.S. should push the generals for meaningful economic reform, such as privatization, lifting trade restrictions, and encouraging direct foreign investment. These measures would clip the military’s wings while empowering civil society and the private sector. That is what set Turkey on its path to prosperity and democracy. It can work for Egypt, too.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: Bloomberg

Image Source: Suhaib Salem / Reuters

Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities: Building on the Legacy of Richard Holbrooke

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2012
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

A strong international commitment to the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities was a central theme of the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s life and work. Last month, the Obama administration created an Atrocities Prevention Board, citing the prevention of mass atrocities and genocide as both a core national security interest and moral responsibility of the United States. On May 22, the Brookings Institution, in collaboration with the Central European University School of Public Policy and International Affairs, hosted a discussion on U.S. and international efforts to prevent genocide and mass atrocities, building on Ambassador Holbrooke’s legacy.

The first panel, moderated by Brookings President Strobe Talbott, focused on what can be learned from Ambassador Holbrooke’s work, especially in terms of atrocity prevention. Panelists included Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for policy coordination and strategic planning; Kati Marton, author and journalist; and Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. The second panel, moderated by Senior Fellow Bruce Jones, director of the Managing Global Order project at Brookings, addressed future challenges and policy choices in genocide and mass atrocity prevention. Panelists included John Shattuck, president and rector, Central European University; and Renata Uitz, professor of law, Central European University.

After each session, the panel took audience questions.

Video

Participants

Panelists

Strobe Talbott

Kati Marton

Author and Journalist

Vali Nasr

Dean, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; Senior Fellow,

Robert Orr

Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning, Executive Office of the Secretary-General

Assistant Secretary

President and Rector

Professor of Law

Pakistan Spring Emerging From Winter of Discontent

Vali Nasr — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:05:00 -0400

The snarling between the U.S. and Pakistan won’t let up. The battle began, of course, when U.S. forces sneaked into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden last May.

Last week, the U.S. upped the ante, announcing a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of notorious terrorist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who is thought to be close to Pakistani intelligence. Things are so bad, Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid pronounced in his recently published book, “The United States and Pakistan are just short of going to war.”

America’s greater fear is that Pakistan will get in the way of war. Pakistan’s Parliament last week unanimously voted to forbid the U.S. from conducting drone strikes inside Pakistani territory. If the measure is implemented, it will deny the U.S. its most effective weapon against al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

Yet, as worrisome as the trend in bilateral relations is, other developments within Pakistan signal that the country may be changing for the better, in terms of the military’s role, democratic tendencies and relations with India. By focusing on the security dimension of its relationship with Pakistan, the U.S. risks missing these currents and thus the opportunity to engage with the country in fruitful new ways.

Unexpected Turn

One new twist that should be particularly gratifying to the U.S. is the Pakistani public’s unexpected turn against the military. Popular anger at the U.S. for swooping into the country to kill bin Laden was matched by outrage that the military was caught snoozing by U.S. commandos. Pakistanis asked: Why do we need such an expensive military if it can’t even protect the country’s borders and doesn’t know that the world’s most wanted man is hiding in a garrison town?

If that weren’t enough, three weeks later, extremists attacked the naval base in Karachi, which houses nuclear warheads. They destroyed a helicopter and two advanced P-3C Orion patrol aircraft. Pakistani special forces lost 10 men and had to fight for 16 hours to end the siege.

More embarrassments followed. Impassioned appeals to the Supreme Court to find President Asif Ali Zardari a traitor backfired on the army and intelligence chiefs when the credibility of their witness, who had claimed that Zardari was colluding with the U.S. against the military, dissolved amid the man’s ever-changing story and his cameo in a mud-wrestling video. Next, the Supreme Court opened hearings in a case alleging that the military bought votes in the 1990 election. The televised spectacle of generals hauled to court to answer judges has mesmerized Pakistanis.

The humbling of the military is good news for democracy in Pakistan. National elections may take place as early as October and must occur by February. With the military restrained, there is hope that voting will be free and fair, and that the outcome may further strengthen civilian rule.

There are signs that democracy already is budding in what may prove to be a Pakistani Spring. Amid widespread disenchantment with corruption and government mismanagement, the young and the middle class are restless. Many have flocked to anti-establishment politician Imran Khan, a former cricket hero, and his Movement for Justice. Khan isn’t friendly to the U.S.; he promises to stand up to America. But in other ways his campaign has enhanced the political debate. He regularly addresses the need to earnestly battle corruption and to reform the woefully inadequate tax system.

Questioning the Rolls

Also, at Imran’s request, the Supreme Court in February reviewed the electoral rolls and questioned the validity of 35 million names, about 44 percent of the 80 million registered. Given that 32 million new young voters will be added to the rolls, Pakistan may have its cleanest -- and most unpredictable -- election since the 1970s.

At the same time, Pakistan’s relations with India have mellowed. With Pakistan’s economy in poor shape -- growth was 2.4 percent in 2011 and there is little foreign investment or aid -- its business community has convinced the military that expansion can come only through increased trade with India. Pakistan’s government has agreed to remove restrictions on the import of most goods from India by year’s end. Liberated from military pressure and eager to add momentum to the cross-border commerce, Zardari went to New Delhi on April 8, the first Pakistani head of state to visit in seven years. There is now talk of even more trade and greater cooperation on other fronts.

A humbled military, a resurgent democracy and better ties with India are all things the U.S. wants to see in Pakistan. Together they present hope, however slight, for a more stable, constructive Pakistan. In responding to the Pakistani Parliament’s new security demands, the Obama administration should consider these developments rather than answering on purely military grounds. The U.S. should be careful not to derail these positive trends, for instance by provoking popular resentments about sovereignty breaches, and risk restoring credibility to the military. In the long run, these developments may matter more than drone attacks anyway.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: Bloomberg

Obama Needs to Go the Whole Mile on Iran Diplomacy

Vali Nasr — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Last week, President Barack Obama skillfully shifted the debate on Iran, pushing back against “idle talk of war” and making the case for diplomacy.

To make it work, the U.S. now needs a clear road map to show allies and the American people how serious and sustained talks with Iran can bear fruit.

Since November, the administration’s policy of applying pressure to compel Iran to negotiate has rushed instead toward conflict. A worrying International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear activity in that month prompted a new round of crippling sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil industry. Iran responded by threatening to close the Strait of Hormoz and cut off oil sales to parts of Europe. Israel and the U.S. administration’s Republican critics concluded that the one- two punch of sanctions and talks wasn’t working, and it was time to go to war.

The president stood his ground to get the pressure-and-talk strategy back on track, and there are some hopeful signs that he did the right thing. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed Obama’s defense of diplomacy, describing the U.S. president’s talk of a window of opportunity as “good words.” He also repeated his 1995 fatwa that building nuclear weapons is a “great sin.”

Clear Signal
This was meant as a clear signal to the international community that Iran would not cross Obama’s red line. Equally important, Khamenei’s intervention put an end to talk inside Iran that the country should now build nuclear weapons to protect itself against further Western pressure and any potential military attack. The fatwa and a straightforward letter from Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, declaring Iran’s readiness to resume talks has given the U.S. administration hope that this time, diplomacy may succeed. After all, the environment for the talks today is better than at any other time since Obama took office in 2009. Economic pressure on Iran is cutting to the bone, and a grave crisis looms if things don’t change.

At the same time, Iran’s parliamentary elections on March 2 to some extent repaired the political damage that Khamenei suffered in the 2009 election fiasco, when Iranian authorities jailed opposition leaders and violently suppressed large-scale protests against ballot-box fraud. The appearance of normality on voting day this month and the mandate Khamenei received when his supporters trounced those of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have left the supreme leader stronger. Ahmadinejad’s drubbing means there is now only one decision maker in Tehran --- and to everyone’s relief, it is not Ahmadinejad.

But the window for negotiations is narrow. Whatever Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have agreed to in his recent meeting with the U.S. president, in public he offered no endorsement of diplomacy. Obama’s critics on the right will look for the slightest opening to dismiss diplomacy as having failed and again push for war. Doing so would have the added benefit for them of potentially driving up oil prices at the cost of the fragile U.S. economic recovery, on which the outcome of the election hinges. Obama can protect diplomacy from politics, but only if he sees tangible gains early on.

Iranian leaders look eager to give Obama enough to keep the hawks at bay. They also fear, however, that if they concede too much too early, officials in Washington may conclude that what works isn’t diplomacy but pressure, and so they would be inclined to pile more of it on.

Follow the Map
Dennis Ross, who oversaw Obama’s Iran policy until late last year acknowledges a U.S. endgame in which “Iran can have civilian nuclear power, but it must not have nuclear weapons.” If the supreme leader’s fatwa is any guide, Iran would be fine with such an outcome, but only if the U.S. and its allies are willing to accept Iran’s right to enrich nuclear fuel. To get from where we are to that point, talks would have to follow a road map that makes clear the sequence of issues to be discussed and agreements to be reached in building toward a mutually acceptable result. Without such a road map, the U.S. will end up relying on pressure, triggering Iranian obduracy -- and we will be back where we started.

Iran has already agreed to the Russian proposal, according to which Iran would address concerns of the international community one by one, each time in exchange for the lifting of a sanction. Iran’s leadership is interested in the idea, because it protects them from a scenario in which Iran is expected to make all the concessions upfront and is promised the benefits at the end. Iran would see this as a trap.
The U.S. has rejected the “step-by-step” approach because small concessions are reversible. As sanctions are lifted, Iran might feel less compelled to provide further concessions. In effect, such a piecemeal process would go only so far and then collapse under the weight of its own success.
Even so, there has to be credible reciprocity to build trust and create momentum in the talks. Trading a temporary freeze on uranium enrichment for a temporary freeze on oil sanctions serves as a useful first step. But with the full weight of sanctions yet to bear on Iran, the U.S. has the greatest leverage right now. It should use it to get Iran to talk about big concessions in exchange for meaningful reductions in sanctions.

Officials in Washington would like Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium to the 20 percent level and to hand over its stockpiles of 20 percent enriched uranium. Instead, Iran would buy the fuel rods it needs for medical isotopes from abroad. In exchange, Iran’s right to enrich uranium up to 3 percent to 5 percent should be formally recognized -- that would be sufficient for a civilian nuclear-power program, but not for bomb making. Iran should also agree to intrusive international inspections and implement the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, giving the U.S. and its allies a measure of confidence that Iran isn’t working its centrifuges overtime to create weapons-grade fuel.

Lift Sanctions
The U.S. and its European allies, for their part, would need to be ready to lift significant sanctions. The U.S., separately, must be open to starting bilateral talks with Iran about regional security and the future of U.S.-Iran relations. Iran’s perception of opportunity and threat in its neighborhood is the principal reason it has invested its national security in the pursuit of nuclear capability.
How Iran has acted in the region is also a big reason why U.S. sees Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to peace and security in the Middle East. But Iran will not drop its nuclear ambitions unless it feels secure in the region. That is something the U.S. can address, and it is why talking to Iran about its nuclear program cannot be divorced from a broader conversation about regional security.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: Bloomberg

A Dangerous Mix: Iranian Oil and U.S. Sanctions

Vali Nasr — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:52:00 -0500

Iran has threatened that it will retaliate against the Obama administration's proposed new economic sanctions on Iran's oil exports by blocking the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. "If sanctions are adopted against Iranian oil," said Iran's Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, "not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz," the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes through daily.

To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada. And the U.S. Navy has responded, in the words of a spokeswoman: "Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated."

This is a significant escalation of tension between the United States and Iran, and the start of a more dangerous phase in the West's attempt to curtail Iran's nuclear program.

The new sanctions are a response to last month's alarming report on Iran's nuclear intentions by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Association. The Obama administration has ruled out military strikes to stop Iran's nuclear program in favor of tougher sanctions, which, once signed by the president, and if fully implemented, would sharply reduce Iran's oil revenue. The administration sees this added pressure on Iran's fragile economy as an effective alternative to military strikes.

If Iran's reaction is any indication, the administration is correct in its estimation. Sanctioning Iran's oil industry will cripple Iran's economy, and that in turn will threaten the stability of the clerical regime. It is for this reason that Iran is treating the proposed new sanctions as an act of war, and is issuing threats of its own to dissuade the United States from going through with the new sanctions.

The administration's strategy is based on the assumption that cutting Iran out of the oil market will not substantially impact world oil supply and prices. Saudi Arabia can step up production to cover the loss of Iran's export of 2 million barrels a day.

But it is not clear whether Saudi Arabia actually would increase production to compensate for the loss of Iranian oil. Iran has clearly started a charm offensive with Riyadh to influence the Saudi decision. Iran's intelligence minister recently visited Riyadh to reduce tensions between the two countries in the wake of the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, and the Iranian Navy has claimed that it rescued a Saudi ship from pirates.

In facing off against the U.S. and its European allies, Iran thinks it holds economic cards of its own and is announcing loud and clear that if push comes to shove, it intends to use them.

Iran notes that Western economies are under stress and predicts they could not afford higher oil prices. Even the threat of disruption in oil supply would send energy prices spiraling sky high, and that would plunge the already struggling economies of the United States and Europe into deeper recession. Iran is hoping to change the conversation in Western capitals from how tightly to squeeze Iran to what could be the cost of doing so.

Nor would economic woes caused by conflict in the Persian Gulf remain limited to the West. Persian Gulf exports already account for 60% of Asia's energy consumption. Economies from India to China would be impacted by a Persian Gulf oil cutoff and higher energy prices. Iran is in effect threatening global economic crisis.

Those advocating new sanctions on Iran's oil industry have said little about the potential cost to the global economy. The cutoff would also hurt Gulf Cooperation Council countries and could drag them into a conflict with Iran they have thus far avoided. Iran hopes its saber-rattling will persuade Asia's economic powerhouses and Persian Gulf emirates to pressure Washington to back away from the new sanctions.

War between the U.S. and Iran may very well start, not if and when Washington decides to strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, but because sanctions designed as the alternative to military action end up hastening its advent. That might prove to be the least desired outcome, for no better reason than the possibility that the first casualty of another war in the Middle East might very well be economic recovery in U.S. and Europe.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: CNN.com

Making Real the Obama Iran Victories That Never Were

Vali Nasr — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

It wasn’t so long ago that the Obama administration was proudly proclaiming success in dealing with Iran, succeeding where the Bush administration had failed. For a time, a presumably weakened and isolated Iran was less of a worry.

Today, America’s Iran policy looks to be in disarray. The administration’s claims of victory ring hollow. Far from subdued, Iran is more defiant and belligerent. And the broad international coalition that the U.S. built against the country has splintered.

With the generally cautious International Atomic Energy Agency having finally accused Iran of secretly working to build nuclear weapons, the stakes are undeniably high. The clues to how to reset U.S. policy can be found in examining how things went wrong.

Whereas the Bush administration threatened military action in an effort to stymie Iran’s nuclear program, Obama officials leaked that they had accomplished that goal through sabotage -- deploying the Stuxnet computer worm in a joint operation with the Israelis to set back the Iranians’ progress by several years. The Obama team also succeeded in enlisting the habitually recalcitrant Russia and China to support harsher sanctions against Iran at the United Nations.

The Stuxnet Bug

Iran appeared to be hurting, for a while. Wherever the Stuxnet bug came from, the Iranians acknowledged that it harmed the nuclear program they claim is entirely peaceful. The Iranian economy was faltering and its political house was divided. For an added bonus, the whirlwind set loose by the Arab Spring deprived Iran’s authoritarian regime of popular sympathies in the rest of the Middle East.

Two developments -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conciliatory decision to release two American hikers imprisoned on spying charges and a new Iranian proposal for resumption of nuclear talks -- were interpreted as proof that Iran was buckling under the pressure. The Obama administration’s approach was working, the argument went; the world stood with America, and a chastened Iran was looking for a way out of its isolation.

However, that is not the Iran that comes across today. Last month, U.S. officials unveiled allegations of an audacious Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in a restaurant in the heart of the U.S. capital, a plan that would have risked killing bystanders. That news was followed by the IAEA report.

Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination were quick to seize on those revelations to turn the tables on the administration. Far from having a handle on Iran, they argued, the U.S. had been too soft. They demanded decisive action -- sanctions on Iran’s central bank and oil industry. Some broached military action, Bush-style.

China and Russia had the opposite reaction. Unimpressed with the IAEA report, Russia ruled out new sanctions. China followed suit and warned against military action. Under this pressure, the IAEA Board of Governors settled for severely criticizing Iran and postponed talk of additional sanctions to future meetings.

How did the shine come off the administration’s Iran policy? And how did the U.S. lose Russia and China along the way?

Delaying Not Crippling

Part of the answer is that Obama’s Iran policies were never all that effective. While there’s little reason to doubt the value of the Stuxnet worm, it was capable only of delaying, not crippling, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

As for sanctions, the international restrictions approved at the UN haven’t been fully imposed, and the unilateral measures taken so far by the U.S. and European countries haven’t been as successful as the administration has made them out to be. The restrictions have constrained Iran’s economy, but that has not translated into a perceptible change in Iran’s stance on the nuclear issue. Sanctions have caused shortages and fueled inflation, but oil revenue continues to fill the government’s coffers and keep the economy afloat. There is still plenty of liquidity in Iran’s economy; consumption remains robust; salaries are paid; and there is no sign of bread riots.

In truth, it would have been too much to expect the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions so soon. In that sense, Republican claims that the Obama team has failed are excessive. Still, the alleged assassination plot in Washington suggests Iran has not been as cowed as the administration has been suggesting. So the team has a credibility problem domestically when it claims its policies have tempered Iran.

At the same time, the administration is not entirely convincing internationally when it maintains that Iran is misbehaving despite containment efforts. The U.S. allegations of official Iranian involvement in the Washington assassination plot met with considerable skepticism abroad. U.S. public diplomacy has done very little to remove those doubts.

Similarly, the IAEA report, hyped by Washington, was perceived outside of America as less than a slam-dunk. The findings of the nuclear watchdog agency, which reports to the UN General Assembly, are more suggestive than convincing. The report is short on concrete evidence, fuzzy on key details and long on caveats. That is why it met with swift resistance from Russia and China.

The basic lesson for the administration is fairly simple: A little modesty and moderation would have helped. Dealing with Iran is never easy and nobody has a perfect formula. Other lessons include: Touting your success can set you up for a fall. It’s wise to make a strong case if you’re going to accuse another government of terrorism. And before flacking another party’s evidence against your enemy, make sure the proof is airtight.

New Sanctions Round

In an effort to get new traction in its Iran policy, the Obama administration this week announced a fresh round of sanctions and signaled its readiness to extend them to Iran’s central bank. Without the backing of Russia and China, however, unilateral sanctions by the U.S., Canada and European countries will continue to have an insufficient effect on the Iranian regime.

To get Russia and China to sign on to meaningful penalties, the U.S. must be more persuasive about Iran’s iniquities. The Obama administration must put an end to doubts about the veracity of the Washington plot. And it must shore up the IAEA report with convincing intelligence of its own proving the Iranians are working on nuclear weapons.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: Bloomberg

If True, the Iran Assassination Plot Was a Giant, Dangerous Error

Vali Nasr — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:49:00 -0400

The U.S. government's newly revealed charges that Iran planned to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States is nothing short of mind-boggling.

It is difficult to see what Iran would have gained by simultaneously escalating tensions with its main regional rival and also ratcheting up tensions with the United States. If true, this plot shows a monumental lapse in judgment on Tehran's part, an audacious and reckless adventurism that will go down as the clerical regime's colossal mistake that will weaken its hand internationally and even unravel its grip on power—or there is something the Iranian regime knows and has put its bets on that no one else is aware of.

We will not know the answer any time soon. What is certain at this juncture is that U.S.-Iran relations have entered a new and more dangerous phase, and how Iran will play its part in the confrontations that are bound to follow not only will be decisive for Middle East security but also for the future of the Islamic republic.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have not enjoyed good relations for three decades. Riyadh sees the Islamic republic as a threat to its stability and that of the Persian Gulf, and as a rival for leadership of the Islamic world. A majority of Iranians are Shiites, the smaller of Islam's two main sects. Saudi Arabia sees itself as a Sunni power, and as such, the leader of Muslim world. The two have repeatedly clashed over who speaks for Islam and how to define the Muslim world's attitude toward politics and relations with the West.

There was a brief thaw in their relations in the 1990s when revolutionary fervor in Iran subsided and the Iranian government took measured steps toward reform. But reform proved to be ephemeral, and with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency, Iran presented a new hard-line face to the world. And with that relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia grew frosty.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has proved to be as much about Iran and Saudi Arabia on a collision course as it was about introducing democracy to the Middle East. Iraq started a Cold War between the two that defines the region's dynamic. The Iraq war transferred power in that country from its ruling Sunni minority to its disenfranchised Shiite majority. With Shiites in power, Iraq moved closer to Iran. The sectarian conflict that unfolded in Iran in 2006-'07 brought to light a new fault line in regional politics, one that reflected the ongoing Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Saudis supported the Sunnis of Iraq and Iran its Shiites.

What started in Iraq then continued elsewhere in the region. There are Sunni-Shiite competitions for power in Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Pakistan. In the past five years, each of these competitions for power has also involved Iran and Saudi Arabia, and each instance has further aggravated relations between the two.

Most notably, as the Arab Spring spread to the Persian Gulf, Bahrain's majority Shiite population demanded greater say in government. That threatened Bahrain's Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia saw this as a repetition of Iraq: pro-Iran Shiites vanquishing a Sunni regime friendly to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh reacted viscerally to this threat by encouraging Bahrain's monarchy to crack down on protesters.

Bahrain, however, was a dress rehearsal for Syria, where a minority sect of Islam that is closely affiliated with Shiism rules over a majority Sunni population, and where the ruling regime is Iran's closest ally in the Arab world. In Syria, Iran supports the Bashar al-Assad regime while Saudi sympathies lies with the opposition. The Shiite-Sunni, and by turn Iranian-Saudi, rivalry that erupted during the Iraq war has reached fever pitch with the Arab Spring.

It is easy to conclude that Iran saw the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to Washington as a shot across Saudi Arabia's bow. But the choice of location has made this all about U.S.-Iran relations.

Washington and Tehran are locked in an impasse over Iran's nuclear program. Washington wants Iran to scrap the program, and Iran refuses to compromise on what it sees at its right to develop nuclear technology under international agreements. The backdrop to all this is ongoing low-level clashes between American forces and Iranian proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran's Quds Force—also believed to be behind the Washington plot—has been America's nemesis across the Middle East, arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq, and meddling in Afghanistan. U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf sit in bases barely 100 kilometers from the Iranian shore. Iran is the only country in the region that the United States is in conflict with in multiple military arenas.

Last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, then-chairman of Joints Chief of Staff, suggested that U.S. and Iranian navies establish a hotline to reduce the possibility of inadvertent escalation of tensions into conflict. Iran seems to have been seeking exactly such an escalation.

It is possible that Iran thought its fingerprints would not be found in the murder of the ambassador. Alternately, it may be that Iran welcomes a direct confrontation with the United States, possibly to divert attention from political and economic woes at home, and to rally the Middle East against the United States.

That would be worrisome. Conflict with the United States is usually deterrence to aggression. To manage the actions of a country that actually seeks conflict, the United States has to adopt a very different tack.

Washington is bound to react to this incident with more economic sanctions and perhaps new punitive measures against the Iranian government. But the Iranian challenge has now evolved into something altogether different, and to address this challenge, the United States has to rally the international community.

An important first step is to make public all the details of this plot. In the Middle East in particular, it is only with clarity of facts that the United States can make a convincing case for why the Iran's anti-American posture and violent tactics is not heroic bravado deserving of accolade, but a cynical gamble that endangers the whole region.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: CNN.com

Why the United States Needs to Make Nice with Pakistan

Vali Nasr — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Washington has long dealt with Pakistani malfeasance out of the public eye, on the assumption that private pressure is more productive than public shaming and that stability in U.S.-Pakistani relations is necessary if the United States is to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda. But the revelations last week of Pakistani involvement in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have led Washington to abandon all talk of alliance and partnership.

Breaking with Pakistan at this juncture is risky. Chances are slim that doing so will change Pakistani behavior. The far more likely outcome is that the stakes will be raised in Afghanistan.

Security gains in southern Afghanistan over the past year were made possible by generous American aid and intense engagement that improved U.S. and Pakistani relations, and the U.S. military was able to leverage that momentum to its advantage. When the Obama administration decided this year on an exit strategy from Afghanistan, officials were assuming that those conditions would hold.

The U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in May changed all that. Convinced of Pakistani duplicity, Washington kept the mission a secret, and that humiliated and angered the Pakistani military. Relations then spiraled downward as Washington demanded more cooperation on fighting terrorism and Pakistan provided less. The embassy attack finally pushed the relationship over the edge.

Yet Pakistan’s cooperation is still critical to U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, and a breach in U.S.-Pakistan relations could put peace and security in Afghanistan beyond reach.

That cooperation looks less likely. Anti-Americanism is on the rise in Pakistan. Even the mood in the military is dark. That leaves the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, very little room to maneuver. Now that Washington has made its private complaints public and is threatening direct military action, the generals in Pakistan will have little choice but to dig in their heels. For now, Pakistani leaders see the political cost of buckling to open American pressure as higher than the price their country will ultimately pay for intransigence.

Pakistan’s military leaders think they can do without American aid in the short run and absorb U.S. diplomatic pressure long enough to realize their own interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan sees Afghanistan through the prism of its regional rivalry with India; it fears that a strong and independent Afghanistan will take India’s side and would then lay claim to Pakistan’s Pashtun areas. For the past two decades, Islamabad has used the Taliban to avoid that outcome. Pakistan’s strategic calculus is too deeply entrenched and the stakes in Afghanistan are too high for Islamabad to change course over the threat of curtailed U.S. aid.

Confrontation with Pakistan presents Washington with a dilemma that will make leaving Afghanistan harder. If the United States truly wishes to change Pakistani behavior for the greater good of the region, then Washington has to be prepared to do what it takes to get that job done. That includes potentially keeping large numbers of U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely to protect that country against the fallout from our policy and to convince Islamabad that it is futile for Pakistan to pursue its own goals in Afghanistan.

But if our goal is to leave Afghanistan in short order, then the prudent course of action is a return to stability in U.S.-Pakistan relations. That would have to start with ending the recent public acrimony but also confronting head-on what Pakistan is after in Afghanistan.

The administration is hoping that by 2014 the combination of a strong Afghan military and a peace deal between the Karzai government and the Taliban will create the conditions for U.S. troops to finally leave Afghanistan. Pakistan, worrying about the sort of government that would next rule Afghanistan, is eager to be part of the planning for what is to follow the U.S. exit. In particular, Islamabad wants control over when and how the Taliban will engage Kabul and Washington. Afghans oppose this, and given Pakistan’s track record, Washington has not included Islamabad in decisions on the future of Afghanistan. But this is ultimately the price for Pakistan’s cooperation.

Still, even if the United States allows Pakistan to play a role in shaping a future Afghanistan, Washington should make any Pakistani role conditional on Islamabad taking concrete measures against groups such as the Haqqani network and the Taliban.

American policy will be most effective if it flows from a clear understanding of our objectives and the resources we are willing to commit to their pursuit. The recent change of policy toward Pakistan does not reflect this.

Authors

Vali Nasr

Publication: The Washington Post

Vali Nasr, Former State Department Advisor on South Asia, Joins Brookings

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Vali Nasr, a leading expert on the Middle East and South Asia, has joined The Brookings Institution as a senior fellow, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today.

Nasr, who most recently served as senior advisor to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke—joins the Foreign Policy program. He will participate in events and research projects focusing on South Asia, as well as contribute to the work of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World.

“Vali’s depth of knowledge and experience on the Middle East and South Asia are outstanding,” said Talbott. “I look forward to his contributions to Brookings’s research and policy initiatives, and know he will increase public and policymaker understanding of these two dynamic regions of the world.”

Nasr serves as a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has also served as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Nasr is the author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton, 2006), which skillfully explains the divisions within the Muslim religion to the Western audience. He is also the author of Forces of Fortune: The Rise of a New Middle Class and How it Will Change Our World (Free Press, 2009) and Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2006).

“Dr. Nasr will be an important asset to the Brookings Foreign Policy program,” said Martin Indyk, vice president and director for Foreign Policy. “We look forward to his contributions on South Asia policy and also within our Saban Center for Middle East Policy."

Nasr received a B.A. in international relations from Tufts University and earned his master’s in international economics and Middle East studies from the university’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In 1991, he earned a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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