A “Post-American” Middle East? | GoodFellows: Conversations From The Hoover Institution

[Music] it's tuesday february the 16th and welcome back to goodfellows a hoover institution broadcast examining social economic political and geopolitical concerns in this time of pandemic i'm bill whalen i'm a research fellow here at the hoover institution as well as the virginia hobbs carpenter fellow in journalism i'll be your moderator today one of the joys of moderating as i get to introduce the stars of the show the good fellows they're all actually hoover senior fellows but we call them good fellows for the fun of it that begins with john cochran johnson economist and he is the rosemary and jack anderson senior fellow here at the hoover institution hello john great to be back hi everybody our second good fellow joining us is per usual from his wilderness outpost and mourning scotland's loss to wales and rugby the one and only neil ferguson neil is of course a eminent scholar he is a historian and author he is also the hoover institutions milbank family senior fellow hello neil thanks bill in scotland a defeat particularly one of uh such a slim margin is a moral victory always and our third fellow uh the optimist to the crowd uh three being the operative number because he wore three stars on his uniform lieutenant general h.r mcmaster he is the hoover institution's florida michelle ajami senior fellow and he is also the author of the best-selling book battlegrounds a fight to defend the free world hello hr hi bill john neal great to be with all of you so gentlemen we're going to leave america short this week and we're going to travel to the distant region of the middle east uh raises a lot of questions i'd like for the three of you to get into today i'm curious as to the future of the abraham accords uh the expected biden pivot on iran the expected biden pivot on israel the president united states has yet to speak to the prime minister of israel apparently the future of the gulf states what's next in this evolution of diplomacy and changing economies and human rights and if uh the time is willing and the spirit is willing perhaps we should also talk hr in particular about the future of war will there be a third u.s involvement and engagement there have been two in the past 30 years so a lot to cover in a short period of time so let's get to it in hr i'd like you to begin the conversation by parsing some words for me this is from the white house briefing last february the 12th the question reporter asked jen saki she is joel biden's press secretary the question quote can you please just give us a broad sense of what the white house is trying to achieve in the middle east to which miss saki answered hr quote well you know again i think we there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes one that we i think confirmed an interagency meeting just last week to discuss a range of issues in the middle east we're we've only been here three and a half weeks and i think i'm going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give kind of a complete lay down of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues hr you've stood at that same podium in the james brady press briefing room in the west wing of the white house would you care to translate what she just said well it means they don't want to talk about it right and it means i think that there is a debate going on within the administration about what our approach is going to be to the middle east i mean i you know there's a tendency i think across now multiple administrations to look at the middle east mainly as a mess to be avoided and i think if you look at the foreign policy record of the obama administration and many of those who have joined the administration came from the obama administration that is where their foreign policy record i think was most abysmal maybe a second to china but maybe tied and i think mainly because they did see our disengagement from the middle east as an unmitigated good based on the assumption that hey you know it just can't get worse well actually it just whatever you think it you know can't get worse in the middle east it actually can get worse in the middle east and and our and our much celebrated disengagement emboldened adversaries in the region empowered iran across the middle east i think helped to accelerate the the horrible cycle of violence and the serial episodes of mass homicide that is the syrian civil war uh that you know that generated a tremendous refugee crisis that affected not only the the region but but europe as well and then of course a big element of it was this this iran nuclear deal you know which which further empowered iran with the relief of sanctions uh and and and the flaws in the deal really didn't accomplish the objective of blocking a path to a nuclear weapon so i know we're going to talk about a lot of this uh i think that there's a great deal of trepidation in the region again a belief that the u.s is going to disengage again uh and so what you're seeing across the region what we'll probably talk about i think you know for much of this episode is a whole range of of hedging behavior uh among friends and partners the suspension of the arms sales uh to to to uh to saudi arabia and united arab emirates uh the withdrawal support for for saudi efforts in yemen for example these are all reinforcing i think fears of those in in the region that the united states will again adopt a policy that will uh that will make them more reliant on others on themselves to a certain extent uh but but also that will empower iran across the region hr is the issue disengagement or changing sides uh more support for iran less support for israel and the uh uae and the signatories of abraham of course yeah well you know it's it's funny now that you know now that i i did have that one assignment in washington in my career i have a little bit more adept at identifying a story that was leaked by somebody and one of the stories that was leaked in the last week was this idea that we need a better balance you know between our approach to saudi arabia and iran and iran so it put the two out there as equivalents that need to be balanced and of course the balance is shifting against saudi arabia and for iran the appointment as well as rob malley to have a role in this you know who was instrumental uh in in in alleviating pressure on iran under this assumption right that hey iran is going to become a responsible stakeholder in the in the region which is i think a complete pipe dream and you know you know i'm wondering how what your read is of these initial shifts but but john i would say that you know i i think that you're right this is this is this is this balance sort of sort of uh approach uh under really fundamentally flawed assumptions about the nature of the iranian regime in particular i think hr what we're seeing is the obama restoration uh with respect to the middle east and it's it's very striking in contrast to what's happening with respect to china where the new administration is essentially continuing the policy that you uh instituted uh of treating china as a strategic rival on the middle east they're they're reversing to the obama playbook and that's not too surprising because some of the people in the administration are the very same people who were handling policy back then and it's striking how wrong they've been for me the the fascinating thing is how reluctant anybody is in the uh biden team to acknowledge that the trump administration had successes in the middle east john kerry who was of course obama secretary of state and is now coming in as climate sar actually said there would could never be normalization agreements between israel and the gulf monarchies but that of course happened and i'm struck by how few if any of those people are ready to acknowledge not only what you said that the obama administration did very poorly in the region but it's even harder i think for them to admit that the trump administration had some significant successes i've just read a fantastic essay by shanny moore an israeli writer who goes through what he calls the mistakes made by the peace processes i love this term uh the peace processes the professional believers that a peace can be achieved by concessions to the palestinians a belief that you can trace all the way back to 1990 and even further and as he says the trouble about the biden administration is its return of the peace processes and they haven't updated their thinking at all despite the fact that a new approach under president trump yielded significant benefits in ways that they would never have foreseen is that a fair analysis do you think yeah i'll say no i think it is a fair analysis and i think it stems in large measure from our reluctance to think deeply about problems and challenges we're facing and especially to examine the assumptions upon which previous policies were rested uh and i mentioned one of them right that iran would would having been welcomed in the international community would be like the grinch at christmas time right there their hearts would grow two sizes bigger they would stop the four decade long proxy war they would give up the nuclear weapons program and of course that's that's not going to happen i think the other related uh assumptions are as you mentioned you know that the the peace process really rests on concessions to the palestinian the palestinian authority which really of course is excessively weak uh and and you know that ignores the record right the record of gaza for example where israel did turn over gaza only to see hamas voted in and and to have a major security threat on the southern border so i i think what i would recommend is is that we pay attention to sort of a john cochran-like assessment of incentives right what is what are the proper incentives in the region what are countries in the region driven by or what is what is the source of their behavior and and begin and begin with that i think what's what's odd about the and you know i think worth pointing out about the abraham accords is is the abraham accords themselves are in part a hedging strategy in recognition that if the united states disengages from the region the best guarantor of some of the gulf state security uh could be israel and and vice versa right they're dependent on each other for security uh in connection with the threat with which they're concerned which is which is iran and and john i wonder what your thoughts are about the abrahamic court and and and and you know how you see the region from an economic perspective yeah i'm i'm just i'm dying to jump in on the economist beyond this but first i want to i want to be every man here and uh and help our listeners uh i think um you might start by just laying out what when you said sort of the obama strategy i get the sense what you mean is um pressuring israel to make concessions to the palestinian authority and i like to distinguish palestinian authority rather than palestinians uh trying to appease iran and get them to play good and fairly cold relations with the gulf states and the saudis and occasional lines in the sand leading to disasters in syria uh and and you might say okay what's in the abraham accords uh especially yeah we kind of know what countries signed them and said they're going to get along uh but i think you should give our audience a um you know what's what's below the headline and then i'll be delighted to jump in on some economics and incentives well you know first of all it's it's it's in advance in terms of security right this is what we're talking about is united arab emirates uh bahrain uh sudan uh and and uh and morocco and and what what these you know what these accords do is is really important from a securities perspective for israel because really for no other country on earth do conversations begin with we recognize your right to exist right and then these countries before uh at least at least you know from a from a a uh you know jorah perspective did not recognize israel's right to to exist so it's important for for israel from a security perspective but it also unlocks really tremendous potential as i mentioned for intelligence and defense cooperation by the way much of which was already ongoing based on the iranian threat and then uh and then it also unlocks tremendous economic potential it's interesting that some of the the the the most uh you know the obvious and and uh energetic you know uh activity that occurred in the wake of the signing of these requ accords were uh were were business executives uh flying back and forth between these countries signing letters of agreement uh and and uh and and i i think there's there's there is going to be a boost uh to the economies of these countries in a way that hopefully diversifies our economies integrates them uh more effectively across the region as well as as well as with israel yeah i mean so from the abrahamic point of view we know that these oil dependent countries have been trying to diversify for a long time israel i think somebody said that either the greatest or the worst thing god ever did was to lead the israelis to the to lead the jews to the one place in the middle east that didn't have any oil which meant though that they had to they have developed a modern tech economy there they know how to do all sorts of stuff which is useful to these countries um there's two economic incentives that i said the first when i look at the whole palestinian question um why do they why does the palestinian authority remain so intransigent because they're paid to do so i mean that's their way to stay in power they're basically i mean they haven't had elections in a long time uh and the authority itself does does very well by the current system and would be in in any sort of peaceful democratic system they would be gone um and the u.s and the u.n and many other people have been responsible for paying to keep them in transition for years and years the thing i noticed sort of in between the lines of the abraham accords and this will be a question because you know it better than i do but i followed with interest some of the jared kushner proposals and which are part of the accords to um say look we've been at this two-state business and and peace first and everything else second for 40 years it's not going anywhere why don't we let the palestinians get rich first why don't we allow in my words allow development on it was the proposals were a little bit too top-down state-centric but certainly as a strategic proposal let's forget about negotiating every square inch of jerusalem what's yours what's mine let us get business and wealth going either connections between the palestinian airways and the and the rest of the arab world or connections with them with israel but if economic development came first people would find an interest in being more peaceful and would also find that their interests don't lie with the palestinian authority that was very much in between the lines but that part of the abraham records the idea that the solution to this whole problem in the palestinian areas is not a grand negotiated settlement with the palestinian authority but rather economic development which israel needs needs a little bit of push to let them develop economically and the arab states need a little bit of push but that strategic vision struck me as a very interesting one now to form this is a question uh is this still alive where is this in the abraham accords um what do you have to say about it well i think i think some people may have forgotten that there was a trump administration peace proposal between israel and the palestinians the palestinians did not participate in the development of that proposal and it was it was much pilloried by those who were part of kind of the professional israeli-palestinian negotiating class that that hasn't been able to get very far you know in in recent years uh beyond uh beyond oslo and the the two states the idea you know the of a two-state solution but the value of it is it's something that can be put on the shelf and can show okay this is a a proposal uh with which israel could live right from a security perspective as a basis for negotiation with a palestinian authority that emerges that is now very weak and and fragmented is also is also part of the you know part of the part of the problem so you know neil i'd love to hear what you what you think about this about you know the what the possibilities are for the future i think they're you know very slim if not zero you know for any kind of enduring peace settlement between israel and the palestinians so it does make sense right to do the best you can to to try to at least end the the palestinians uh people's status as refugees try to help their economy uh gain a degree of vibrancy to to move closer to to uh to alleviate the unemployment problem and so forth as you work your so-called outside in with gulf states to incentivize those states uh and others playing a more positive role in getting to an enduring settlement and neil i'm giving you a lot to comment on but the dilemma that that israel's facing is well known it's it's that is it how do you solve the dilemma between israel wanting to remain a jewish democratic state how do you reconcile that with what appear to be diminishing opportunities for a two-state solution if you abandon the two-state solution uh you also place israel as a jewish dispute israel's future as a as a as a jewish democratic state in jeopardy and i think that's what israeli leaders are going to have to cope with after this national election which is going to just happen in a few weeks too quick i i just want to push in that is do you do john politics first and then economics or is the route to the political solution i'll let them get rich because people who are busy getting rich in starting stores don't have much interest in fighting about things okay so that was the i that was the idea it was certainly very much in jared kushner's mind but i think there's a different way of of looking at it i mean it's difficult to make money in the kind of context that the palestinian authority creates and so you have a chicken and egg problem there but i think what was right about the trump administration's approach was simply to make it clear that this wasn't the top priority what the peace processes have insisted for decades is that you can't have peace in the middle east unless you solve this problem but in truth the problem's insoluble so better to stop prioritizing it and i think part of what we need to to recognize uh as fellows of an american institution uh in the united states is that the united states is not really master of the future of the middle east it is not master of the destinies of any of the key nations and the real significance of the abraham accords is as hr rightly said it's a hedge against the post-american middle east i think the post-american middle east is is coming it's been on the way for some time in fact i think it was declared by barack obama when he was president when he didn't enforce the pink dotted line which we thought was a red line with respect to syria and he went on television to say we're not the global policemen which essentially meant we're not going to call the shots in the middle east anymore and vladimir putin said well in that case i shall but i think it's no longer really up to the united states what happens and this is this is really where it gets complicated because it's a multiplayer game in which neither the united states nor for that matter russia really has the power to dictate and the key shift was israel's prioritization of the iran threat that was benjamin netanyahu's contribution strategically and the recognition of the arabs particularly the gulf arabs that they really needed to align themselves with israel in a post-american middle east where where clearly iran was a major regional threat that seems to me that the geopolitical shift and all that happened was the trump administration kind of went along with that the peace processes sat on the sidelines and sniped and they made a succession of wrong predictions example peter beinart if you move the embassy to jerusalem there will be an intifada completely wrong uh another prediction if you have a strict fence between israel and the west bank you will not stop the suicide bombers actually it stopped the suicide bombers if you hang on to the golan heights there'll never be peace martin indeck made that argument former u.s ambassador to israel actually proved to be extremely important for israel to have retained uh the golan given what was happening uh right next door in in in the uh in the syrian civil war uh the belief that somehow turkey could be a a a helpful actor which was a an obama uh uh an obama objective an obama idea trump administration in some ways carried on with it erdian was never going to be a useful honest broker uh or indeed a reliable ally to the united states in the region and i could go i could go on so the peace processes have had an analytical framework that has been wrong again and again and again oh if you take out key players in the iranian regime there will be a terrible backlash and the region will erupt i'm still waiting uh for the eruption post suleimani's assassination conclusion the framework of the foreign policy establishment on the middle east has been wrong so often that any rational person would discard it and what is happening right now is that the key players are making their own decisions with minimal influence from the biden administration which as hr said doesn't even know what its policy is except that it's probably the old policy of the obama administration i think that's where we are let me let me state that even more forcefully um and in some sense we made a mistake here by starting with the palestinian-israeli-palestinian question because i think what all the parties have recognized as the truth is that that that's not the key there's this this old fable that that's the key and then once you solve that everything else is kumbaya which was of course a complete fantasy but kept on only so long as the united states was active in some sense the u.s disengaging from the middle east i'm going to challenge you hr on this maybe might have been the greatest thing that ever happened because the israelis and the and the arab gulf states and even the saudis are now oh my god we're on our own here and there's this iran thing and uh we we better do something about it uh as a and and we can no longer keep up this fiction that yes washington pressure the israelis palestinians and you guys want to live in that dream world if you want whereas the fact of the middle east is that that is that's a boiling sore which has been there for 40 years and will continue likely likely for another long time but um compared to iran syria lebanon falling apart yemen in civil war um unpossible unrest in saudi arabia you know everything else in the middle east is so much worse and so much active and so much more salient that they what they did was the u.s disengaged and then they just said well that's on that we don't have to pretend anymore that that's the crucial problem uh now we got a whole bunch of other problems and we better take care of them on our own because the us is is not only as neil said when they do pay attention completely in a dream world but now the u.s isn't paying attention anymore so if someone's going to stop the iranians it's going to be us h.r i've got a question one of the things to which i cannot find an answer is why does the iranian regime even hang together the iranian economy is a disaster it was a disaster before covert 19 they then had an exceptionally bad experience in the pandemics so far as we can work out though who knows whether to believe the statistics from iran this is a regime which ought to be one of the weakest uh in the region and yet we act like it is a formidable power right so how do you think about this i know it's something you've written about in battlegrounds but i kind of appreciate an update uh on how you think about the iranian regime domestically clearly there's a significant proportion of the iranian population that is not on board with the theocracy i've often heard it said and maybe you agree that if it went to popular sentiment rather than leadership elites iran is actually a more pro-american state than almost any arab state in terms of popular sentiment so i'm kind of puzzled by where iran's future lies sometimes we act as if it's its regime will just be there for ever and its nuclear program will always be there and we just have to kind of work out how to contain it but maybe we're missing the real story here which is this is a dying regime that is losing legitimacy almost as fast uh as it's losing wealth it's certainly if it's not a dying regime neil it is it is a regime that has been weakened tremendously and i would say it has been weakened tremendously mainly because of the kleptocratic theological uh dictatorship the the theocracy that uh that the iranian people are forced to live under so i don't think we should take credit with our sanctions for you know for the uh for the stagnation of the iranian economy or the plight of the the iranian people who live in a country with tremendous resources but resources that are squandered by by the regime uh but the sanctions did have have a significant effect and i think i think the trump administration approach generally which was to force iran to make a choice right you can either be a responsible nation and be treated as such and be integrated into the international economy or you can continue to be the the world's greatest state sponsor of terrorists and and continue to foment and and fuel these proxy wars that have created so much uh human suffering and and and and insecurity across the region and and suffer the consequences but how do they stay in power and ronnie and friend told me one time he said you know stability in iran is a myth and and essentially neil he was making your point that hey this is this is not a monolithic country this is not a country in which in which people appreciate the state policing their thoughts this is a country that has a rich cultural heritage uh that that uh that values uh the sovereignty of individuals that has a vibrant um cultural and and uh and and literary uh history and so you know i i i think that that we have to ask them okay well how does this regime survive you know how do they do it well they do it by maintaining the mechanisms of power obviously they have uh they have created ideological sources of strength with this this this alpha key this rule of the george prudence and some people buy into that especially in more conservative rural areas but the main mechanisms of control are force right a very brutal intelligence arm backed up by the basis which is an element of the islamic revolutionary guards corps that will beat anyone into submission as we've seen with the arrests and the and the shootings and the bludgeonings that have occurred in in even just the most recent protests in iran and then there are economic mechanisms of power uh through uh through these bunyads which are essentially collective ownership organ uh organizations uh of of most of the companies i mean the biggest companies in in in iran the beneficial owners of the biggest construction companies the the biggest you name it companies are these bunyads who are mainly the offspring of the of the clerical order or members of the islamic revolutionary guards corps and again you know it's one of these assumptions right that hey if we open up to iran more businesses will profit and then an alternative power base will emerge that can challenge the conservatives in in the government well no actually the alleviation of sanctions strengthened that order because it gave them more cash to maintain what are essentially criminalized patronage networks so you know i i think that that the economic dimension of this policy is important to keep in place i was i was encouraged a little bit you know by by uh by uh by the testimony of the of the of the the uh the the secretary of state uh tony blinken uh because when he was asked about iran he didn't say we should alleviate sanctions right away he did say that the the regime would have to go back into compliance with the deal before there was any talk of alleviation of sanctions and i think most importantly he talked about the nuclear deal's flaws about including the missile program and the sunset clause but he also talked about the need to connect iran stopping or reducing dramatically its support for terrorists and militias with with any kind of a new deal so we'll see what happens i think there is a debate going on within this in this in this administration uh and and i hope that it will come down in favor of a tougher approach toward iran can i follow that up with a question about about the other big player and and you already alluded to the fact that the biden administration sounds like it wants to sort of be equidistant with respect to iran and saudi arabia or at least take a tougher line towards saudi some of you may already have seen a documentary that the dissident uh that uh uh is a pretty hard hitting account of the uh khashoggi uh murder it's part of i think a really quite profound backlash uh that that is happening in the west toward saudi arabia and particularly towards crown prince mohammed bin salman and it's a paradox that i think you can help us resolve in some ways mbs muhammad bin salman appeared to be and still appears to be someone who wants to modernize the kingdom so you gave a great account of how you think about iran's inner life can you do the same for saudi arabia's inner life because it's almost an equally puzzling phenomenon and and i still struggle with it myself i i never quite know how to think about uh about saudi and and whether i should kind of take the line that the the documentary the dissident takes or or recognize that maybe there is some modernization going on here under mbs right well obviously it's mixed and it's really difficult to to overstate the horror of of jamal khashoggi's murder and dismemberment it's worth pointing out that not only was a member of the press he was a u.s resident right so i'll tell you nobody disappoints like the saudis right i mean you get you get rising expectations and then just prepare for for disappointment but i think that if we don't remain engaged with saudi arabia and cultivate that relationship we me we lose a degree of influence in in in encouraging the kind of reforms that that mohammed bin salman has undertaken right now now these reforms to many of our listeners will not sound kind of ridiculous right but how about allowing you know women to go to movies or to drive cars uh or for a non-married couple to be seen together on the streets or you know so so there have been significant social reforms and he has a vision which asks john to comment on on its viability uh for for for diversifying the kingdom uh economically and to do so with you know with a range of green technologies and uh and a new urban center this city of neom you know which uh which is a a futuristic you know narrow and long uh city built in in the desert right so so he has these grand ambitions which which i i think you know a lot of people say this is because he's you know he's so young uh he is in power he's full of himself and he makes he makes bad or horrible decisions in connection with the khashoggi murder but you know neil i wish i could tell you you know what what are the you know what are the dynamics within the saudi world family i i think in many ways we understand iran a little bit better than we understand the power plays that go on within within the saudi royal family uh but but again this relationship has an economic history it has a security uh history that that that is is is uh colored mainly by access to energy uh but john i'd love to hear your comments on on saudi arabia and then maybe also just you know the conventional wisdom is hey because the united states is now a net energy exporter that why do we care what goes on in the middle east right we're not we're not economically dependent on the region for anything anymore so i i want to talk about the economics but first i want to ask both of you guys a larger question uh based on your what you just interchanged here especially neil the historian who can who can bring the big perspective here because what we're talking about so clearly the the only way to make sense of our strategy with regard to israel iran is we're waiting for regime change we're trying to keep them from blowing things up really big until the whole thing falls apart by r by and then something more sensible takes over but that is uh that's fraught uh um north korea has stayed in place for a long long time cuba has stayed in place for a long long time despite sanctions so uh dictatorial regimes seem to be able to stay in place as long as they are willing to um to undertake the kind of violence that it takes to stay in place maduro i'd add to that right yeah right many more uh it's when when they lose you know the russians lost the um moral will to keep shooting their own people and then it fell apart um that's where you know saudi arabia wants to reform but if we look yeah you know it's it's when you start reforming the czar started reforming things that didn't work out so well for the tsar uh so that's actually you know how does when we look at history is the end of iran uh a nice new regime towards the end of iran it's regime the way the end of the syrian regime worked out or the way the end of the libyan regime worked out um or the way the end of the french regime worked out in uh 17 17 90. so uh the way the end of the russian regime worked out um closer to home to shaw in 1979 well i was going to bring that up you said mbs wants to liberalize we have an example of a westernized leader who wanted to to modernize his country and that one didn't work out so well for the shah or for iran so um clearly our strategy is wait for regime change but uh you know when you ask the question how long can can this last it can last as long as they are willing to to do the horrible things it takes to stay in power and and it stops when they don't and then um chaos seems to result so this is i brought up many countries and i'm sure neil has the wider sense of end of regime that can help us try to find not just when it falls apart when they give up their their willingness to to to shoot their own people if necessary to stay in power uh when the forces of a little bit of reform take over to big reform and does it turn into another complete disaster or how does this turn into a you know the whole arab spring turned out not so well despite great hopes for for that process that of course was another thing that the foreign policy establishment in washington and new york got fabulously wrong because they thought that it was glad confident morning that some kind of 1776 was unfolding in tariq square in egypt and it's important that we talk about egypt the most populous of the arab countries because i think in some ways the al-sisi regime is the sort of shape of things to come what we can see in a bunch of countries not only in the middle east it's also true in eastern europe is that if you have uh some kind of authoritarian regime with a nationalist element a religious element some degree of participatory democracy you have a viable system and it's certainly better than a civil war the great mistake that was made at the time of the misnamed arab springs was to think that support for revolution would lead to good outcomes what actually happened in egypt was a counter-revolution the muslim brotherhood regime was overthrown and and the lcc regime took over and it's a very very interesting story by the way did you know egypt was one of the few economies last year that achieved economic growth it's weathered the storm of the pandemic well like other youthful countries see india and what i'm very struck by with al-sisi is the way he has combined uh support from the military with support from a middle class that did not want the economy taken over by the brotherhood he's also reigned in the religious extremists by going to al-azhar the great islamic university and saying we need a muslim reformation an extraordinary important and brave thing for him to say so i can see the future of of politics in some countries in the region taking on that form the alternative is of course state disintegration we haven't talked about iraq it's cheated on that we're going to go there falling apart ever since the obama administration pulled the plug and simply uh walked away i'd love to get hr's latest thoughts on on that but i my sense is that that's the choice in the region that you either have a strong man with some elements of representative government and the fanatics reigned in uh or you risk a syrian uh disintegration uh or indeed a libyan disintegration let me quickly try it and because i want to be bipartisan and we're only going back to obama the bush administration had a major failure in iraq which i think was equally naive the idea that um democracy consists only of we walk in we run an election and everything's fine uh whereas what i think you're pointing to is what matters is institutions rule of law civil society all of those things that are 99 of what makes america run that isn't elections and if those things are in place then you have a hope of a transfer of regime if those things are not in place or wiped out then you're going to have chaos afterwards i guess that brings us squarely to iraq for what it's worth i think iraq was salvageable after the surge and uh it was a tremendous mistake to give up but uh we are where we are and at this point as i think you'd agree hr the iraqi state hangs together by a series of pretty slender threads uh so what what's your your current take on on the future of iraq and and compare and contrast with afghanistan which may be in worst place well you know i'll tell you i i just want to highlight one thing that we've already just talked about we've skimmed over quickly is the importance of egypt right because if we're talking about each of you talking about a problem of very large scale right and egypt does have a lot of problems and it also reflects this tension in the in the region between you know between the fear of the res of an islamist resurgence uh and and and the the need uh to allow for for more uh liberal forms of representative government and participation in government so i i do think that we ought to support uh egyptian reform over time um and uh and then also i think be more sympathetic to those who are skeptical about muslim brotherhood related parties in in the region because you know they're not they're not democrats right and we know that from the morsi experience in egypt as well we know it from you know really some of the groups that gutter and turkey are are supporting in the region iraq is you know iraq is all of the problems in the region you know in in microcosm right it is a it is a country that is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and and religious sex uh it's it is a country uh in in which there this cycle of violence between uh jihadist terrorist organizations who portray themselves as patrons and protectors of sunni communities who fear evisceration at the hands of shia militias that the cycle of violence continues between sunni and shia groups uh within within iraq that's reflected that competitions reflected in its politics it's also reflected uh within the institutions of government that that are themselves battlegrounds between these various groups that are vying for power and resources and survival in the country sadly uh these groups that are effect trying to affect state capture to be in a position of relative advantage they they are stakeholders in the weakness of the state because it's the weakness of the institutions that they occupy that give them impunity and give them the ability to run a broad range of illicit operations and efforts and uh endeavors that that enrich them and increase their power base and increase their patronage base and so what's needed in iraq is is governmental reform and reform of security forces such that the majority of the population believes that they have a future within some kind of political process what's what's impeding that from happening uh is this i this idea that this is really a zero-sum game and a number of competitions aren't going i mentioned sunni shia but there's also a curd arab turkmen competition and there's a competition within each of those populations as well right so so you know when iraq you know got enmeshed in a civil war the the country shattered not like a you know pain of glass shattered like a light bulb and and what's necessary is our security conditions and sustained mediation by effective leaders to bring them together you know hyderabadi who was a friend of mine and i knew him back to 2003 the former prime minister knew him well before he became prime minister he said you know sectarianism and corruption go hand in hand and and and these corrupt networks are perpetuating these divides at the top level of the of the iraqi government you know you have mustafa academy who i've known for years as well he's the the maybe one of the best people to do this right because he he actually is an iraqi nationalist he actually is someone who doesn't evaluate people by the religious sect or their ethnicity he wants a better future for his country uh the the the governor of nineveh province which was this area where our regiment operated where there was a crazy civil war going on in microcosm there that that governor is najib abdullah al jabori who was the mayor of tulafer when we when we we fought against al-qaeda in iraq uh there and um he's the perfect person to stabilize it so there are rays of hope but there are daunting obstacles and john i don't know how much you're following iraq's economy uh but you know with the collapse of oil prices with you know with with the the violence and now kovid um iraq's debt is is growing uh maybe beyond what they can service um and so there's there's an economic dimension a government's dimension okay so i guess i could sum it up and say it's an ugly picture but it but it is i think in our interest to ensure the enduring defeat of isis because remember we had to go back when we left last time at a much higher cost and we can do that with a very small military commitment and it's in our interest to ensure that iraq is not completely aligned with iran and you know what that's doable iraq is not naturally aligned with with with iran uh so i think i think the answer on iran is for the united states modest objectives recognize the limits of of our influence and also what what the american people the cost they're willing to bear after so many years there but i think a sustain this is where a sustained commitment can help get iraq on a path towards stability over time i'm sorry to go on man but when you ask a question like iraq disgust man i can't it's tough for me to sum up on a point of information it's interesting that oil is rallying at this point from the lows of last year we're now above 50 and uh you know you had goldman put out a note the other day saying could get to 100. i think the pain of of energy transition is coming inexorably to the uh to the oil producing nations but in the short run they're going to get some real breathing space in 2021 as the world economy bounces back from the pandemic and i think that's important because ultimately a lot has been going on here in opec opec plus trying to deal with this problem through supply restrictions a deal with iran were to materialize under biden would would bring a whole lot more oil into the market that might depress prices but right now the demand side is definitely dominant and that's going to take the pressure off they're all producers at least for the next few quarters we're starting to wind down in time here gentlemen i'd like to throw one more question at you before we leave today and while we talk about a post-american middle east there's still a u.s presence in the middle east yesterday an american contractor was killed by a pro-iranian missile in the kurdistan region we have troops uh throughout the region uh hr question to you you have twice served in that region you twice led troops into combat uh the gulf war and then iraq after that do you think in our lifetime we're going to have a third u.s involvement in the middle east and if so hr would be the trigger yeah you know i i i hope not i you know i i don't think so and but my answer to like how we could prevent it from happening is to remain engaged you know i'll take bill he keeps saying hey we're leaving right we're leaving but we don't really leave but every time we say it we give up so much of our influence so i think the real you know what what we need is we need a realistic reasoned approach to the region we have to recognize that we do have influence there and we can play a positive role in at least ensuring the situation doesn't get worse for the people of the region or for our interests you know but we don't have we don't have complete agency over the middle east you know and and even if we committed you know vast resources we wouldn't so i think recognizing both the possibilities associated with it with a a sustained and reasoned and sustainable approach to to the middle east but also recognizing our limitations is what's key you know we swung to extremes in the region right from you know regime change against iraq in 2003 and i mean i often say okay hey we always want to debate should we invade iraq in 2003 let's debate like who the heck thought it would be easy why do they think it would be easy and then we swung toward the disengagement from iraq in december 2011 that set conditions really for the rise of isis and and then a return of our forces to the region so you know we have very small forces for example in iraq and syria those small forces are important because they give us a degree of political influence it's not just the military effort it's the military and diplomatic and economic and law enforcement and and intelligence efforts that are important to to protecting us from the problems that originate in the region right i mean you know the middle east doesn't adhere to las vegas rules right i mean what you know what you know what happens there does that doesn't stay there and so so that's the argument i would make for you know a reasoned approach to the to the to the region and then and then you know and i do think we still have economic interest we need to hear from john completely on that maybe he could wrap it up wrap that into your final question as well bill john go ahead economy well the the influence question i do think we need to realize that as we backed up and forced them to stop squabbling and solve their own problems good things happened and it's not clear that our influence is used in a consistent and wise manner following a decades-long clear star of where policy ought to go so to some extent a long-run goal of this region is stable enough that you don't need our influence uh might be a good long-running goal but i i am watching the disaster in afghanistan i'm i'm not in favor of uh immediately uh pulling out uh the economic question i would add uh sort of to what neil said you know there's a pretty flat supply curve of oil at around 50 bucks a barrel and all sorts of unless they ban it in the u.s which they might uh all sorts of supply can come on fairly quickly uh and i think the long run uh the long run plans the one thing i know for sure is that top-down investments from big government plans have never led to a sustained prosperity so you look at the places that got rich in the world that made the transition by the way to to democracy and got rich in the world they're like hong kong singapore south korea taiwan places with no natural resources but very smart people who had to build businesses on their own as opposed to a lot of oil money that got through into a big project um and then wanted to support a people who didn't you know didn't weren't in the position to start their own businesses and and develop their own human capital and so forth so uh that and this is also true i i think the uh parts of the abraham the kushner plan that was we're going to shower we're going to make palestine rich by showering international investment on them is is you just got to get out of the way and and get entrepreneurial spirit going that's the only thing that creates uh creates wealth so i'm i i don't think that that plan is is likely to bear fruit either go ahead neil well the post-american middle east if that's what we're heading for is also the post-british or post-anglo-french middle east which is also the post-ottoman middle east and and so what we are dealing here with the is is with a region that has had multiple imperial uh histories one of the best historical analogies uh that i came across recently uh which was one of the papers presented at the 2018 applied history conference at hoover was with the the piece of west failure the argument is that the middle east is kind of where europe was in the early 17th century uh deeply divided with lots of fragmentary states and ongoing religious conflicts and how did that end well it didn't end with any one power becoming dominant it ended with all the powers agreeing on a new set of rules uh which we tend to associate uh with the the piece of west failure now could there be a westphalian outcome uh in the middle east that that i think is a really interesting question it's one that henry kissinger has occasionally talked about that would be an outcome in which all the great powers uh all the big players in the region including the united states but also including russia including turkey including the european uh powers with interest in the region would sit down with the locals and come up with some new rules of the road that for example uh set some limits on where religious conflicts could go and created some understanding understandings about sovereignty so that a state like lebanon wasn't constantly being interfered with by its neighbors i don't know if we'll ever get to that piece of west failure but it seems to me a more plausible destination than the destination the peace processors still imagine which is a destination where you get peace in the region because you finally satisfy the palestinians if that's still the model uh in the minds of people in the biden administration they're going to waste the next four years because that one is under the umbrella of the imperial power us and that uh getting two two small nations who are under an imperial umbrella to agree on anything i i i'm gonna venture historically that never worked all right uh let's uh close with a very um quick lightning round here simple question the three of you neil you like these questions john you're not going to like this but i'm sorry i'm going to put you on the spot and that's the time to think as we look at the middle east gentlemen just i'd like you to offer me just a very large thought or a very bold prediction neil you go first my bold prediction is uh indeed that the united states will continue its uh retreat from the region uh and that uh there will not be a revolutionary change uh of regime in any of the key players and that ultimately uh violence will will diminish in proportion as strong leaders uh like the egyptian president al-sisi are able to impose their authority on the different nation-states okay john uh a bold prediction or a grumpy economist blog like big thought well i'll offer the neil ferguson bold prediction that something unexpected and terrible is likely to happen um because um you know for example the iranians are not going to go quietly and something is going to go boom and once again piety's repeated over 50 years will have will shown have shown to be completely false okay hr i'm going to give you the last word big thought bold prediction well it can get worse in the middle east right you have lebanese state in free fall you have about 150 000 rockets pointed at israel from southern lebanon more from gaza you have the syrian civil war which is at a stalemate now in italy but could get much much worse and it's a multi-party conflict you have yemen which we haven't talked about where where iran is endeavoring to gain you know a strategic location along across the the red sea and at the baba mondeb uh that's this dangerous as well i guess the overall thought i would say is that it is in our interest to help break the cycle of sectarian violence in the region and to help the countries in the region get on a slow path for greater security uh and stability and what i would tell our arab friends in the in the region oftentimes is that really the united it's in the united states interest to have strong uh arab states uh that that are sovereign and respect the sovereignty of their citizens iran wants the opposite so i i would just say that i hope that the by administration carries that message and and strengthens rather than diminishes the the relationships that we have with the arab states because that's the best way i think to have a positive influence in the region over time okay let's leave it at that but let's agree to return to this at some future date because it's not like the middle east is going to get solved overnight now is it so that's it for this episode of good fellows we'll be back next week with a new episode a new topic until then on behalf of hoover's good fellows neil ferguson hr mcmaster john cochran all of us here at the hoover institution by all means stay safe stay healthy we'll do our best here at the hoover institution to help you stay informed we'll see you in a week [Music] you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 21,840

Rating: 4.7831774 out of 5

Keywords: Hoover Institute, Hoover Institution, John Cochrane, Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster, Bill Whalen, public policy, GoodFellows, Goodfellows, Stanford University, Middle East, Abraham Accords, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt

Id: TW0Rb05zMSY

Length: 57min 24sec (3444 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021