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Dr
Madawi Al Rasheed
I would like to start
with an oral narrative that I included in my book. Oral
narratives do not have the same status in historical
research as written archives. But anthropologists value oral
narratives and take them seriously because they reflections
from the present on the past.
This oral narrative
says that Sheikh Ibn Nimr the imam of the mosque in Riyadh
was delivering his usual hutba to a large audience. Ibn
Saud , the founder of the Saudi kingdom was listening. The
sheikh recited several Quranic verses including one from
surah al Hud. According to this oral narrative Ibn Saud was
furious. He asked Sheikh Ibn Nimr to step down and began
reciting surah Al Kafairun.
I think this oral
narrative sums up the relationship between Saudi Arabia and
the United States. I must add that this was an oral
narrative about what happened in 1933 just after the
negotiations for the oil concessions with Aramco. The
first surah in promotes an interpretation of the
confrontation with the others whereas the second one
establishes a kind of distance: you have your religion and I
have my religion. However the two parties in the
relationship came together in several forums.
First of all to
state that the relationship between the Saudi regime and the
USA is based on oil and strategic location is to state the
obvious. This has been said by international relations
experts and they continue to say that. Although the USA does
not actually depend on Saudi oil. Europe, Japan and the Far
East are more dependent on Saudi oil than the US. However
the same argument is stated again and again – that it is
all about strategic location in the sense that the US needs
a kind of base in that part of the world on its way to the
Far East and on its way back from the Far East.
Let me just sketch
this of relationship. There was the first phase between 1933
and 1945. The relationship was from the very beginning
subject to the designs of the oil companies. It was the oil
companies that went first and the Americans followed. So oil
before politics.
With WW2 Saudi oil
became even more important to the US especially in
operations in Asia and also in Africa. At the same time
Saudi Arabia became a strategic location for military
purposes. From the 1940s negotiations between the Saudi
regime and the US government to establish military bases
were actually taking place. The creation of the first air
base, Dahran, took place in the 1940s.
In order to seal
this relationship there is the famous meeting on the board
the ship where Roosevelt and Ibn Saud met for the first
time. Later there were meetings with Churchill. But this
meeting sealed British hegemony in that part of the world
and actually institutionalised the relationship with the USA
after the oil companies had actually paved the way for this
kind of relationship to develop.
From 1945 to 1967 it
was so obvious that the two regimes, the Saudi and the
American – and I call the Americans a regime – represented
two incompatible, ideological partners. It was so obvious
that the US had allied itself with a regime that stood
against everything the Americans preached in their political
rhetoric and in their belief systems.
In both countries,
in Saudi Arabia and in the United States the intimate
relationship between these two regimes had always been a
sort of discontentment, rejection and resentment. On both
sides of the relationship in the USA the American people
objected to this relationship and on the Saudi side it was
obvious right from the beginning that there was quite a lot
of discontent, and resentment.
Just to give you a
few examples of what was going on in Saudi Arabia that
period from 1945 to 1967. Out of the Arab countries, Saudi
Arabia was not immune from criticisms for the kind of
ideologies that flourished in the Arab world such as
socialism and revolutionary movements associated with
nationalism and Nasserite and Baathist origin.
So under the
influence of those kind of discourses and also revolutionary
movements it was so obvious that the special relationship
with the USA had become a problematic source for the Saudi
regime itself. The Saudi regime was seen by the people as
an ally of the West.
In the US it was
clear at the social level that the alliance with this regime
and the dependence on Saudi oil was a source of both
resentment and embarrassment for the American
administration. This relationship was kept away from the
public, it was conducted behind closed doors. The exposure
of this relationship in the American media was met with
resentment. We are not talking about 9/11 we are talking
about the 1960s when the King Saud visited the USA. In New
York the mayor refused to meet him. It caused such a big
scandal. The reason was that at the time the Jewish lobby
pushed for a boycott of the Saudi King.
So again this shows
this relationship has developed against all odds and has
been problematic for both parties. Saudi Arabia has
adopted the policy of negation (sisaya al naïf) about this
relationship. They have always maintained that they have
the upper hand and dictate the relationship but this is not
the case.
There were minor
problems and misunderstandings and also some pressure was
put on the Saudi regime because of this relationship. There
was the row about slavery in Saudi Arabia which was not
abolished until 1962. The pressure of the civil liberties
movement in the USA which pushed for pressure to be exerted
on the Saudi regime to abolish slavery.
During that period
between 1945 and 1967 we see that both regimes didn’t act
according to the will of their own people. They were acting
according to the interests of the small coteries of
individuals running the American administration or running
the Saudi regime.
In the 1960s the
Saudi venerability increasingly transpired against the tide
of what was regarded as a threat from the Arab world such as
for example the Baathist and Nasserist ideologies and also
the threat of the problems in Yemen made the Saudis realise
that they needed an external source of support and the USA
promised the provide that source of support.
The relationship
developed on the basis that the Americans always wanted the
Saudi regime to think that the threat was from outside and
in fact it was from neighbouring Arab countries: Egypt at
one time, Iraq at another, Syria and Egypt and sometimes
Yemen.
There was a serious
event that changed the position in which the Saudi regime
found itself. That was the defeat of Egypt in 1967. The
Saudi regime was previously on the margins of Arab politics.
It was not one of those regimes that was in the front line.
It was a regime that was marginalised and basically
insignificant. Even the potential of its oil wealth was not
very clear even to the people themselves and to the
outsiders. The defeat of Egypt in 1967 opened the way for
Saudi hegemony to crystallize and develop. In a way to came
to its final conclusion in the 1973 war and the oil embargo
that accompanied that war.
At that moment the
Saudi regime was really put under pressure from other Arab
governments in order to use oil as a weapon and put forward
the threat of the plan to use this embargo and actually
apply it.
The Saudi revenue
rose beyond recognition in response to the increase in oil
prices. One outcome that was actually more important than
the material gains that the Saudi regime had was the
emergence of the Saudi regime and its image of itself from
within the Arab and even the Islamic world.
Since 1973 the Saudi
regime began to actually voice itself as the alternative of
the defeated Arab countries. It represented itself to the
West as the regime that held the key to all solutions in
the Arab world and the Islamic world. So this oil embargo
which used oil as a weapon definitely resulted in this
change of the status of Saudi Arabia moving from the margin
of the Arab world to the centre of political action.
The West did not
actually respond in a very big way and did not notice the
change which was actually taking place because at that time
the West and the USA has all its eggs in the basket of the
shah of Iran. The Iranians were fulfilling that role and
the Saudis were not needed in the sense that there was
actually a policeman in the Gulf. There was no need to
develop any kind of special relationship accept the one to
develop the oil resources.
The next era, Fahd
era, was characterised by an intimate relationship with the
USA In the 60s the danger was presented as other
revolutionary Arab regimes attacking Saudi Arabia but from
1979 it was Islamic Republic of Iran that posed the danger
to the Saudi regime and eventually to Western interests in
that part of the world.
We come to the Gulf
war of 1990 and Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. The Gulf war
and the stationing of American troops presented a challenge
for the Saudi regime and this over the horizon presence of
the American army was no longer sufficient to liberate
Kuwait and push the Iraqi army over the horizon.
And here the
ambiguity, the resentment and the rejection of this
relationship with the United States began to unfold within
Saudi Arabia. This was characterised first by the emergence
of the trend in Saudi Arabia that openly (the relationship
has never been articulated in public) a group of scholars
objected to the invitation of American troops to Saudi
Arabia in order to liberate Kuwait. This crystallised into
the development of a strong Islamist opposition to the Saudi
regime.
The big question in
the 1990s was this question of istania, of asking an
‘infidel’ for help in the fight against fellow Muslims. So
we have the development of various trends in Saudi Arabia
around this question of the development of this relationship
with the United States. The traditional ulema (the religious
establishment) sided with the regime as expected giving the
regime the rationale and the right fatwa to justify the
invitation of American troops and the move away from this
over the horizon presence to the presence on the ground of
more than 500,000 American, European and some other forces.
The traditional
religious establishment endorsed the government’s position
and sanctioned a decision by issuing the right fatwa. On the
other hand a group of other ulema who referred to themselves
as the ulema of the awakening, objected to this
relationship and challenged this fatwa. They combined this
challenge to the American presence and the Gulf War to voice
other demands and put pressure on the government to respond
to a kind of reform.
This situation
continued and since the 1990s Saudi Arabia over the question
of the relationship with the Americans has witnessed the
worst violence in its history throughout the last 100 years.
From 1990 up to the present over this issue of the
relationship with Americans and the question of istahaha has
become the central issue. Up to the present day this central
issue has not been resolved.
Then we come to 2001
and the events of September 11. Since then we have seen the
retreat of US troops to the shores of the Arabian peninsula
in exactly the same way that Britain had maintained its
presence in that part of the world throughout the last 200
years. Britain has never maintained any military presence
in central Arabia and it left that part of Gulf while
maintaining intimate relationships with states on the
shores of the Arabian peninsula from Kuwait all the way down
to Oman which did not finish until the 1970s in some parts
of the world. In Oman it continued until the present day.
So this was the
British way of doing things. Central Arabia the land of
doggy people just leave it for the people themselves to sort
out as long as there is a presence on the shores of the
Arabian peninsula than one is actually safe. The Americans
violated this principle in 1991. They had already been there
as workers and expatriates and experts working in the oil
industry but there were no military troops in Saudi Arabia.
But the events of 9/11 did actually lead to going back to
the old British way of doing things.
Then we come to the
war on terror and here we have a novel situation where in
both countries, the USA and Saudi Arabia there was a green
light to go and attack the other. The America media
exhibited a kind of hostility that has grown out of
proportion and also they wanted to attack Saudi Arabia as
sections of the media held Saudi Arabia responsible as 15 of
the hijackers were Saudis.
What happened as a
result of the actions of the American media? I am talking
about the media and not the American regime. The American
regime has never been so vocal in its critique of the Saudi
regime. It was critical of other things in Saudi Arabia but
not the regime. In fact it covered up for some of the things
the Saudi regime has allegedly done.
This American media
hostility was used by the Saudi regime to generate a quasi
nationalism and support for the intellectual circles in
Saudi Arabia. So America was delivering the gift to the
Saudi regime by allowing the media to attack the Saudi
regime without any inspiration from anybody. The Saudi
regime used that to demonstrate that it is a crusade against
Islam and they projected themselves as if they were the
targets of this attack. In fact the ones who were meant to
be undermined and attacked were not the Saudi regime and
again the attack was also projected as an attack on the
religion and on the religious establishment.
We know that Bush
would have been really happy to have the support of a
religious establishment like the one that the Saudi regime
has. He would love to have someone like Bin Baz to support
every act that he undertakes. It was a joke in some circles
that Bush would love to have such a figure who sanctions
every foreign policy decision that he makes or even
internally on the level home policies.
The attack that
resulted from the war on terrorism and also followed the
real attacks of 9/11 was manifesting itself in various ways:
in the media, in publications, in CIA pamphlets that were
published an made public. Against all odds the Saudi regime
presented these attacks as an attack on itself and it gave
certain freedoms to its own local press to respond and
become very critical of American policy. It was actually a
very interesting moment because a lot of Saudi journalists
thought that this is freedom of the press, the freedom they
had always longed for because they could now write freely
and talk about how awful American policy is in the Middle
East. This was something new for them.
Then we come to the
Afghan war and the Iraq war later on. In a way with the
Afghan war the issue of who is going to be enlisted on this
war on terrorism became very important for the Saudis.
While Saudi Arabia tried to dissociate itself from any kind
of relationship with the taleban regime and project itself
as netural in this dispute it was obvious that there was a
dual kind of discourse: one directed towards its own people
and one directed towards the West. In a way while they
negated any participation in the war on Afghanistan after
the attacks on New York it was obvious that some of the
military bases in Saudi were used and also to monitor and
control the military operations in Afghanistan.
In the 21st
century we move away from the question of istana – asking
for American help to fight other Muslims, to iana. The
Saudi regime was actively participating in America’s war on
terrorism in Afghanistan and later on in Iraq. Again here
the issue of helping Americans in their various wars
becomes very problematic for the Saudi regime and again
other wave of arrests, violation of human rights, freedom of
expression at all levels and also a kind of blind campaign
to silence any criticism that may be voiced in the local
press or the international media.
The relationship with
the United States has its own ramifications on the ground.
Some of the old guard, especially the religious scholars who
objected to the American call to assist in the Gulf war
against Iraq, continue every now and then to issue
statements and petitions that they object to the American
role in Afghanistan or Iraq. More than a week ago, 32 of
those religious scholars issued a statement that the
struggle against the Americans inside Iraq was actually a
jihad.
Than the ambassador
in London said that those scholars do not represent the
Saudi people – they only represent themselves. The question
is who is a representative of the Saudi people – many Saudis
would say that the regime itself does not represent the
Saudi people.
In a way we have to
understand this kind of statement about what is actually
happening on the ground in Saudi Arabia. These ulema waited
18 months to declare that resistance in Iraq is a form of
jihad and the Muslims should not help America in its
aggression on other Muslims. They represent a group. I would
say they are capable of being awakened outside but they are
not capable of being awakened inside their own country. They
cannot simply say that the military bases inside Saudi
Arabia have been used constantly since 1990 to launch
attacks on the Iraqi people under the sanctions regime or to
monitor the no-fly zone or to attack Iraqi targets in 1998
for example. These people have turned themselves into a kind
of royal opposition. So jihad abroad is halal its fine but
inside it is forbidden.
Why did I call this
relationship a temporary marriage against all odds? Those of
you who know anything about this kind of relationship know
that in certain circles it is a legitimate kind of
relationship. Legally for those people it is a legitimate
relationship but socially it tends to be ambiguous. To
understand the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US
we have to move beyond the arguments about oil and strategic
location.
There are common
grounds between the American and Saudi regimes in all their
shades. I call them the American empire, the large empire
and the small Saudi empire. What are the common grounds
which make this relationship continue and become even more
intimate.
(1)
First of all both are
isolationist regimes initially who established their
hegemony on the rule and defeat of others. The US
established its empire on the ruins of Europe. Saudi Arabia
established its hegemony in the region on the ruins of other
countries for example mainly Egypt after 1967.
(2)
The second common ground both
use the rhetoric of being the benevolent force to spread
their hegemony. We are the goodies. America uses democratic
values and democratic reforms as a pretext to go and invade
other countries. Saudi Arabia uses the rhetoric of Islam,
that is it is doing good for other Muslims against the
background that it allows its military bases to be used
against other Muslims.
(3)
Both use external immigrant
labour to build capitalist economies that actually do not
produce much. According to a recent report America is a
consumer society – it is not a society that produces lots of
things. The same thing can be said about Saudi Arabia.
(4)
Both are racist regimes.
Compare for example the experience of Blacks and Hispanics
in the US and immigrant labour in Saudi Arabia. Both
countries import highly skilled labour. If you look at how
American hegemony developed in the 20th century,
America received a lot of highly skilled labour – immigrants
who migrated from Europe into the USA and also from
South-East Asia (Chinese and Japanese) to work in highly
specialised industries. But at the same time it used
unskilled immigrant labour to do the menial jobs. If you go
to Los Angeles or San Francisco you know exactly who is
sweeping the floor in hotels, who is cooking in the kitchens
of hotels. And the same situation tends to be applicable in
Saudi Arabia. The highly specialised oil industry, the
banking system have a lot of highly specialised American or
European labour but at the bottom level the menial jobs are
manned either by Asian labour or Arab labour.
(5)
Both regimes endorse the
rhetoric of exceptionalism. This idea is well ingrained in
the American psyche about America being an exceptional
country. The same thing in Saudi Arabia. The regime does not
tire of repeating al hussisia Saudia – we are such a special
people. We are beyond historical trajectories, we are
actually outside history because we are special people. This
is a sort of embedded rhetoric that perhaps we are also
chosen people. The Americans believe that they are chosen
people among other chosen people. And the Saudi regime
definitely thinks it is unique and special.
(6)
Both use religious discourse
when they are actually talking about politics. Religious
discourse describes political decisions and they invoke
religious discourse of morality and religion in order to
justify relationships with other countries. We have seen
this increasingly with the Bush administration – the axis
of evil, right and wrong. And the same thing also tends to
happen with the Saudi regime.
(7)
They both have a media empire
or at least they aspire to control the media and control
minds with the media in order to propagate their own point
of view. The American media empire is one of the biggest in
the world in terms of Hollywood films and in terms of news.
The same thing happened with Saudi Arabia. Since the demise
of the Arab press with the Lebanese civil war in the late
1970s and throughout 1980s the Saudis seized the opportunity
to control that media. Initially they used Lebanese,
Palestinians and later on Iraqis to man the media empire
that they built over the years. London served as one of the
magnet areas for the Saudi media empire. Both the Saudis and
the Americans use minorities from those countries in order
to provide the personnel for this media empire. The Saudis
are very good at using minorities in the Arab world, for
example Lebanese Christians, Palestinians and even Iraqi
Assyrians and other minorities to run their media empire.
The same thing happens with the America media, especially
that which targets the Arab world. If you look At Al Hura
for example, the American channel, we find that America
relies on these minorities in order to run their media
empires that target specific populations in the Arab world.
Recently Kuwait is playing the role that Lebanese used to
play for the Saudis and today the Kuwaitis are playing the
same role for the American media empire.
(8)
Both of those regimes do not
confront their enemies directly but prefer to use a third
party. During the cold war America avoided any confrontation
with the Soviet Union because of the consequences and the
problems that might bring about. America and the Soviet
Union had a war using third parties. The same thing happens
with the Saudi regime. Given the constitution of its
military force the Saudi regime is incapable of confronting
any outside threat. This has been proved throughout the
years. The Saudis could not fight the Yemen war without the
help of the Americans or defend their territory. This does
not mean that it is a peaceful country or that the regime
believes in peace. We find that both countries try to use
third parties in order to fight their wars. This happened
when the Saudis financed Saddam Hussein in order to fight
Iran for almost a decade. There is no direct confrontation
with the opponent but this is resolved by using a third
party in order to make sure that victory is achieved.
So with these common
characteristics are we surprised that a temporary marriage
has developed into a permanent relationship against all
odds?
* Dr Madawi Al
Rasheed has been a lecturer at Kings College since 1994,
with main research in the history and anthropology of the
Middle east with special focus on the Gulf states. She has
written several books including Politics in an Arabian
Oasis 1991, Iraqi Assyrian Christians in London,
1998 and A history of Saudi Arabia 2002. Two more
books will be published soon.
George Joffe
I think I should explain the title of
the lecture. It is based on famous American slang which
means that things can go very badly wrong and we have ended
up in an awful mess. This reflects my feelings about the
outcome of the elections. We know that this time round the
election was possibly better run than it was the previous
time. There is no argument about who won it. Mr Kerry
conceded this and no attempt was made to argue about the
distribution of votes. But I think we need to consider what
the implications of that election are.
In effect the Bush administration in its
totality, not just the personnel but the ideas behind it,
has been adopted, by the American electorate to serve for
another four years. The fact that probably, as most American
commentators suggest, the reason for that has little to do
with its foreign policy. I am quite prepared to accept that
they did so because they believe that in some way the Bush
administration represented a higher set of moral values for
the internal organisation of the United States than did
those proposed by Mr Kerry.
But internals are the implications of the
wider world. In a world where the United States has the
single hegemony it seems to me that we need to consider
rather more carefully the implications of this.
Shortly before the elections I had lunch
with a senior member of the Bush administration in the
Pentagon, somebody who was a dyed in the wool Republican.
That is to say part of the old nationalist, conservative
tradition in the United States. He explained to me how
inside the Pentagon in particular, but elsewhere to there
was a final battle looming particularly after the elections
and particularly if President Bush won. He argued that the
damage done during the past four years was now so great that
the true Republicans, like the Democrats, were determined to
ensure it did not occur again. Quite a few people were
saying that there had to be a change in policy due to the
damage done to America’s position.
It was felt that Colin Powell would stay
in the State Department, within days of the election Donald
Rumsfeld would resign as the Secretary of Defense because he
was elderly and wanted to resign and that Mr Wolfowitz who
has taken on the role of the prince of darkness would
disappear. In other words there would be a clean sweep of
the neo Conservatives and true Republican conservative
values would be re-asserted. That would mean
multi-literalism, the rebuilding of old relationships and a
common goal between Europe and United States.
But those who predicted this could not be
more wrong. The fact is that the Bush administration has
demonstrated within days of the election that not only does
it intend to keep the present dispensation of power – it
actually intends to enforce it. In other words the
fundamental principles of American foreign policy are to be
reinforced. We know that Condelezza Rice, one of Mr Bush
closest associates, the person who actually instructed him
in terms of foreign policy is now Secretary of State. Colin
Powell has left. Mr Rumsfeld intends to stay for at least
two more years to see through the operations in Iraq and
that means that probably Mr Wolfowitz will be there
alongside him. And alongside Mr Wolfowitz would be Mr Feith
who successfully misled the White House and Downing Street.
It is true that Mr Ashcroft, one of the most objectionable
members of the previous administration is gone but he has
been replaced by Alfredo Gonzales. Mr Gonzales is a lawyer
who instructed Mr Bush that the proposals for Guantanamo
were acceptable under the American constitution and that the
American legal system would permit the use of torture in
certain cases. Hardly someone who would guarantee to me my
rights if I were an American.
What we are seeing is the construction of
a very confident administration which sees no need to
reconsider any of its fundamental assumptions and that is
going to in fact push forward the policy enunciated four
years ago. Some recent developments suggest that is the
case. In the wake of Yasser Arafat’s death, apart from some
of the rather unpleasant repetitions and misrepresentations
of his responsibility for violence in the Occupied
Territories, Mr Bush in response to Mr Blair’s request for
attention to be paid to the Middle East provided a pious
response. I am going to spend America’s capital in the next
four years in obtaining a Palestinian state. He made no
proposal, there is no special envoy to the region, there is
not going to be a Middle East peace conference, there is no
suggestion of any pressures on Israel to change its policies
over the occupied territories. In essence Mr Bush enunciated
a pious commitment and there is no content behind. I don’t
think you should hold your breaths waiting for something
meaningful to happen.
In essence it seems that the fundamental
arguments guiding American foreign policy, especially in the
Middle East, remain unchanged. In other words, the path to
Jerusalem is through Baghdad. That is to say that it is the
destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime and its replacement
by a democratic regime that will allow us to resolve the
crisis in the peace process. The real purpose of these
operations is to democratise the region and that by
democratising the region we should so in a way that
reflects in full detail the American vision of what
democracy should be.
The dominant theme of the present
administration is going to be the war on terror. That
presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems of
the Middle Eastern region. What it actually does is to
justify the arguments of Samuel Huntington the clash of
civilisations and ironically plays straight into the
arguments of extremists like Bin Laden. It is a culturalist
view of the relationship between the West and the Middle
East. It does not relate in any way to real political facts
or real political circumstances and I cannot see how you can
alter events if you do not take them into account.
I do not know how you enforce democracy
or how you make people democratic. It is actually an innate
process – something that comes from within. Alexis de
Tocquivelle, one of the greatest conservative commentators
on the American system was impressed by the way democracy in
the American system was reflected by what he called habits
of mind. People thought in a democratic fashion and it was
the way in which they would normally behave. That is not
going to occur in a country where a democratic system is
imposed at the point of a bayonet or a rifle but that is
what is happening in Iraq today.
In essence we could find the precursor
for this although it is not a full precursor and it is
indeed the idea of liberation that characterised Britain
during the height of the colonial period in the later part
of the 19th century. There is a hymn by Kippling
which contains the line lesser breeds without the law. In
other words in those parts of the world where there is no
system which America finds acceptable, that system is to be
brought there and imposed to bring people to heel, to
persuade them that they should be behave in ways the rest of
the world and the USA finds acceptable.
This has been happening during the past
four years and it will continue to happen over the next four
years. I am convinced there is not going to be a meaningful
settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute or the Palestinian
problem. The United States will maintain precisely the same
policies as in the past and that is to say that it will
support the Israeli government to the hilt. Whatever the
Israeli government decides their programmes will be the ones
that dictate the path of the Middle East peace process. The
Palestinians will simply be rejected as anarchic,
irresponsible and rejected because they are oppressed.
The United States and Israel and I regret
to say with European support because the European states are
known for their cowardice will simply be condemned to the
outside of any discussion about what the political future
for the Palestinians should be because they will be
constrained to national requirements. And what one of the
national requirements for Israel before any participation in
negotiations is that violence should now stop.
The United States has already accepted
Sharon’s plans which include a unilateral evacuation of the
Gaza Strip. This is a gesture of magnanimity towards the
Palestinians. An opportunity for them to demonstrate that
they can look after their own affairs.
I don’t know if any of you have ever been
to the Gaza Strip. I have had that misfortune. I can tell
you that the squalor the destruction would require people of
super human qualities to create out of that a viable system.
But people forget that the original grant
of Gaza, which Mr Rabin was more anxious to do in the
original peace process in 1993 is countered by the
unilateral annexation of large portions of the West Bank so
that Israel could construct a solid bloc of settlements
running down to the Jordan River from Jerusalem. In other
words one bank is to be truncated and of what remains Mr
Sharon will be prepared to negotiate on a 50 percent of
less of the territories of the West Bank. That plan has
already been endorsed by the United States and by
implication by Mr Blair, a figure that we think is a moral
mentor of the President. He is not at all. In endorsing that
the previous plans will be thorn up.
We hear today pious suggestions that in
some mysterious way the American President will overcome his
own innate prejudices and will eventually persuade Mr Sharon
to negotiate about the West Bank. This is a laughable
suggestion. Mr Sharon is not known as the old bull for
nothing in Israel. He is an incredibly skilled political
operator with a great determination to ensure the West Bank
is part of Israel.
So for the next four years there will be
a legitimization of what Mr Sharon proposes to do and I
regret to say that the European states will probably
associate themselves with that project. In the end the
Palestinians will be blamed for getting much less than they
should have done or could have done say at Camp David. The
Camp David issue is an issue which needs to be discussed.
The current orthodoxy about it does not reflect what really
occurred.
What is to happen with the one million or
so Palestinian refugees in camps. They will have to be
moved lock, stock and barrel into countries that do not
particularly want them but that will be bribed to accept
them – particularly Jordan. And that will be that – end of
problem. But it will not be the end of the problem because
just as you can’t force democracy on people so you can’t
force convenient arrangements on them either if they don’t
innately believe in them. So I fear that the Middle East
peace process will simply be the stepping stone to another
Middle East disaster.
What about Iraq? Without saying anything
about the justification for going into Iraq, or indeed the
plans for Iraq, I note only that the aftermath of the
invasion has been a demonstration in superb incompetence. I
find it difficult to believe that a project designed to
bring democracy to a people could end up in what is
virtually a civil war in which between 30,000 and 100,000
people have died. There is something very strange and wrong
about that process.
The fact is that the United States has no
other plan. Its plan at the moment is to force through the
elections in January for the sake of a constitutional
council and force through elections in December 2005 for
the sake of a constitutional government. And it has not
thought beyond that. It wants to get out.
I do not have to tell many of you from
the region what the implies for the future of Iraq, the most
advanced, educated and developed state in the Middle East.
It does not bear thinking about. You have all seen pictures
of what is happening in Falluja. Well it is a way of
bringing civilisation to people but it is not one that I
would actually recommend.
In the face of that the Sunni rebellion
may well continue. It may not bring in the Shia or the
Kurds. They have there agreements. So we end up with a state
which is truncated and fragmented. It is the kind of state
that is only held together by the kind of power that Saddam
Hussein represented and for which he was displaced. The
United States and Britain are going to face a major
political crisis in terms of the project they have
undertaken and there is no evidence of new thinking that may
help us to find a way out of the mess that has been created.
And on top of that there will still be
the argument that the path of Jerusalem runs through
Baghdad, that democracy is the only solution for the region.
Then there will be new threats because the doctrine of
preventive intervention still applies.
We known what this means: Syria and
Iran. Syria is being pressured not to be in Lebanon
although Syria in Lebanon has been one of the ways in which
the country has been able to overcome the aftermath of the
civil war in 1975.
We know that Iran there is going to be a
major argument about nuclear weapons. And make no mistake
about it Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons for very
simple reason, because it believes correctly that Israel has
them and it feels threatened. India and Pakistan have them
so why shouldn’t it. Given American hostility towards it
what else could it do.
Don’t forget during the past four years
Iran position has dramatically changed and this a real
success for American foreign policy. From being in a
situation until October 2001 of being the future key to
events in the Gulf with access to central Asia and South
Asia it suddenly found itself surrounded and isolated by
the United States in the north, in the east and in the west.
No wonder Iranian leaders feel some
paranoia and they are so anxious to obtain some kind of
objective defense. Of course they are going to do it. At the
moment the Europeans are keeping the Americans at bay but
there is no guarantee this will carry on. After six months
no one knows what will happen. The United States may feel it
is not powerful enough to invade Iran. I really hope they
don’t. Iran is a much greater challenge than Iraqi will ever
be. But they may allow others to do it for them. The
Israelis have already said they will take out the nuclear
sites if there is any danger of weapons being created.
If this were to happen the Iranian
leadership would be delighted because there would be no
better way of guaranteeing the support it would need. I
find myself very unhappy about the implications of all of
this.
You could say to me the situation in the
region is very bad. That is what the United States intends
to do, it is all terrible but there are others who can help.
There is of course Europe. Yes, there is indeed. The problem
with Europe is that it does not yet have a way of
articulating a common foreign policy and at the moment there
is no real evidence that it is going to acquire that. If it
does not have the military force to back it up it cannot be
a significant player.
It does have other alternatives and they
have been brought into play. The fundamental principle of
European foreign policy making is what is known as
constructive engagement: the idea that you try to persuade
over the long term, states to alter their behaviour. It has
proved to be, on occasions, to be very successful. One
example is inside the southern Mediterranean in what is
known as the Barcelona process. That provides a mechanism
for Middle Eastern states to find a partner to engage in for
all sorts of purposes, not just economic but political and
social as well. Given time, this will no doubt transform
the situation in the Middle East and beyond. But the problem
is there isn’t going to be time.
But the United States, unlike Europe,
does not accept the idea of ideal regimes in international
affairs, it does not believe in multi national institutions.
It believes in the projection of national power for the sake
of national security and in those circumstances it has very
little patience with European projects. Indeed in so far as
it does, it has produced its own variants : the US Middle
East partnership initiative which is designed to directly
counter European initiatives in this field.
This indicates that there is a
fundamental problem which Europeans, in the next four
years, are going to have to confront although they are not
willing to do so yet. That is that the assumptions that
the trans-Atlantic Alliance has a common purpose is simply
wrong. Europe has its own agendas and America has its
agendas and the two do not necessarily go together.
The European states are going to hate it
but they are going to have to recognise it and then perhaps
there lies a little hope because then Europe could bring
pressure to bear, not just on the USA but also in countries
the Middle East. Europe could threaten Israel simply by
threatening trade sanctions. Over 60 percent of Israel’s
trade is with Europe and not the USA, so they have power.
Where it could ever bring itself to use it is another
matter.
But I have to caution you. There is
another issue. Even if for geo-political reasons the
European Union and the American agendas vary I suspect that
the Europeans accept many of the pre-suppositions of the USA
and the neo-conservatives. In many respects the Europeans
are beginning to find the idea of the clash of
civilisations. This means that the presentation of the
Middle East as ‘the other’ becomes an ever more present
danger.
That would be very counter productive.
The actual project of the Middle East is so irrational in
the end in secular, rational Europe it would be very
difficult for people to accept it. We can refer to recent
events in Holland. In no way can I endorse killing of
Andreas van Gough I can say that this incident reveals a
profound difference in perception about the relationship of
immigrant communities in Europe and their host communities.
It is in that I feel some of the greatest anxieties and I
see some similarities with the United States.
I think we need to consider what the
American neo conservative project really is. It has certain
basic assumptions behind it. It believes in the absolute
primacy of American democratic values. But those values are
American values, not just democratic values. It believes in
the associated economic project. And that is what it is
trying to articulate in imposing the spirit of democracy and
liberty everywhere. But it goes beyond that and believes
that those values can only be projected if there is a
globalised agenda. The Americans require a unifying myth
that will persuade them that this agenda should be supported
in an active sense.
That lies behind the way in which the
cold war was manipulated and the strange conviction that
exists in the United States that the foreign policy
projected for reasons of national interest also has a moral
component that makes it irresistible.
The neo conservatives believe that myth
has to be created. That is why they have an alliance with
the radical right in America and they have used it extremely
effectively to build the kind of support that they actually
want. It explains why the absolute support for Israel is so
apparent in the United States for reasons that have nothing
to do with Israel but have everything to do with the
mobilisation of Americans as a force behind the foreign
policy of their government.
It means furthermore that pre-emptive
intervention for the sake of achieving American security
through the spread of that democratic ideal by means of the
globalising myth is a desirable, indeed a necessary
component of foreign policy.
The war on terror has provided the
dynamism and the activism for that particular project but I
think we need to ask some questions about the nature of the
war terrorism. How successful has it really been? Has it
achieved the objectives it set itself? Did it create its own
mythology to create its own actions? I suspect in many
respects it did. I see very little evidence of the great,
global conspiracy that is supposed to threaten us all so
greatly. I point out that fewer people in the world died of
terrorism last year than in any year except 2001. How can
you create the viability of the idea that the war on terror
is the greatest danger?
In case you think this is something new
let me assure you it has been done before. In 1920 you found
exactly the same hysteria created around the idea of the
communist threat. In the 1930s there was the mythology of
the America first. In the 1940s there was the war and in
the 1950s there was the cold war which was able to sustain
the need for a moral crusade.
This seems to bode for a very unhappy
future for the world based essentially on irrational myths.
There is a consequence to all this
because states which are seized by such myths construct
their domestic arenas to mirror the strength of the myths
themselves. Thus we can see the beginning of the
reconstruction of legal systems, not just in Britain but in
the USA and Europe designed to securitise the law, in which
all of us face the danger of loosing our individual rights
for the sake of the greater good of national security. This
seems to me to be a profoundly regressive step.
All in all I can’t think of anything good
to say about what is to come.
*George Joffe is an independent
consultant and formerly the Deputy Director of the Royal
Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London
who is also attached to London and Cambridge universities.
He is now engaged in academic activities, independent
consultancy and journalism. His journalistic activities have
included both print journalism and radio and television work
on Middle Eastern and North African topics for the past
twenty years. | 
