Arab-U.S. strategic cooperation: a net assessment.

Cordesman, Anthony H.

Dr Cordesman is the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The following is the text of his address to the "Policymakers' Conference" convened in Washington on September 9, 2002, by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.

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U.S.-Arab military relations are ultimately founded on the perception of common strategic interests. The technical aspects of military cooperation--arms transfers, training, coalition warfare and interoperability--are only means to an end. They are tools that can only be successful to the extent that both the United States and Arab countries perceive they have common strategic goals and can achieve them through military cooperation. To paraphrase Clausewitz, military cooperation exists to serve common strategic interests by other means.

There are always limits to the extent to which such interests are truly common. There arguably are 22 countries in the Arab world, and the United States has never had common strategic interests with all of them. Moreover, the fact that the United States and a number of Arab states have some common strategic interests has never been an indication that the United States and any Arab state have identical strategic interests.

Alliances based on truly identical interests have never existed at any point in history. Nations always differ at least somewhat in their goals and needs. Military cooperation is a matter of temporary common necessity--a matter of having higher priorities for cooperation than for pursuing different interests that lasts as long as a given conflict or given threat. The rhetoric of alliance can disguise this, but sensible political leaders never act on rhetoric; they act on the basis of underlying strategic realities.

The fact the United States has shared common interests with individual Arab states also has never meant that these common interests have not differed sharply according to whether such states were in North Africa, the Levant, the Gulf, the Red Sea or bordering Central Asia. Military cooperation has also involved nation-by-nation differences within a given sub-region and according to factors like oil export capacity or military and political power.

These regional and nation-by-nation differences in the common strategic interests that underlie military cooperation have also grown with time. This is particularly true since the United States became an overt ally of Israel in the period before 1967, and since the former Soviet Union and communism ceased to present a common threat.

THE STRATEGIC BASIS FOR U.S.-ARAB MILITARY COOPERATION

Since this time, U.S.-Arab military cooperation has been based on four different sets of common strategic interests:

* The first such set of common interests has been the search for stability in North Africa. This set of common strategic interests is limited by the fact that North Africa's economy is linked largely to Europe; North Africa is a relatively limited source of energy exports; and the threat from Libya has declined. Nevertheless, the United States has sought to contain any aggressive action by Libya and to ensure the internal stability of North African states --largely against the threat of Islamic extremism. The United States has sought to protect two moderate Arab regimes: those of Morocco and Tunisia. The United States has reluctantly favored the military junta that is the real power in Algeria, but only because it is the lesser of the two great evils that threaten the Algerian people.

* The second set of common interests has been the stability of the Levant, defined broadly to include Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian proto-state and Syria. For nearly 30 years, the United States has sought to create military stability in the region, to use military cooperation to underpin the Arab-Israeli peace process, and to build a series of U.S. military alliances with Egypt, Israel and Jordan.

It is an enduring reality that the United States does have different standards in dealing with these allies. Since 1967, the U.S. alliance with Israel has been given priority over alliances with Arab states. This at best has created tension between the United States and its Arab allies and the Arab world. At worst, it has threatened both the U.S. ability to maintain alliances with Egypt and Jordan and U.S. alliances with the entire Arab world. The United States has also faced continuing tensions with Syria over its alliance with Israel and has distanced itself from Lebanon, largely because of Lebanon's internal fighting.

There is also a special irony to the level of U.S. involvement in the Levant because the United States has few classic strategic interests in this sub-region. The Levant has no meaningful energy export capabilities. It is a virtual cypher in the global economy, and it consumes far more in U.S. aid than it contributes to the U.S. economy in terms of trade and technology. In classic strategic terms, the Levant is at best a means of access to the Gulf and oil shipments.

The fact remains, however, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is so politically explosive throughout the Middle East and the world, that the United States has been forced to play a continuing role in military cooperation as a means to local stability and as a lever in the peace process.

* The third set of common interests has been the security of the Gulf. In practice, the United States has provided the military strength to secure the Southern Gulf states against the threats posed by radical and sometimes aggressive regimes in Iran and Iraq, and any other threats from the outside including the Red Sea region. It has formed a de facto coalition with each of the Southern Gulf states that compensates for their military weaknesses and potentially for the growing threat of proliferation in the Northern Gulf.

This coalition has always been somewhat unstable, both because of U.S. ties to Israel and because the United States is a secular Western power operating in a region with significantly different religious, cultural and political values.

It is worth pointing out that the Gulf is the only area in the Middle East and the Arab world where the United States has classic strategic interests, and these interests are tied to energy exports. The reality is that 60 percent of the world's oil reserves and well over 35 percent of its gas reserves are in this small region. The Middle East may have steadily shrunk in terms of its share of the world's economy and world trade for more than half a century, but the United States is critically dependent on a global economy that is critically dependent on Gulf oil exports. In fact, global economic development is dependent on the ability of the Gulf to more than double those oil exports over the next 20 years.

* The fourth common interest lies in checking the threat of terrorism and asymmetric warfare. This is the only interest that has changed significantly in recent years, but this change scarcely began with September 11. It had its origins as far back as the 1970s and in the attacks on U.S. forces in the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon. Its recent roots lie in attacks on the National Guard headquarters and Al Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and on the USS Cole.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon brought home a longstanding threat to U.S. forces and interests, a threat that had long targeted all of the moderate regimes in the Arab world. This is a threat that extends throughout the Middle East and far beyond its boundaries. It is also an asymmetric threat that goes far beyond any given organization like Al Qaeda. It may well involve state actors using terrorists as proxies in the future, and coven or overt attacks with weapons of mass destruction. It is a threat for which past forms of U.S. and Arab strategic cooperation have uncertain effectiveness, and where the means of attack involve endless possibilities but as yet have no clear pattern and no clear probabilities.

At best, future strategic and military cooperation must deal with a low to moderate threat to the United States and to every moderate Arab regime that will probably continue for several decades. At worst, however, this threat involves asymmetric values that threaten to divide the United States from its Arab allies. It could provoke something very close to a "clash of civilizations" that could do as much--or more--to limit U.S. and Arab military cooperation as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the second intifada.

THE FRAGILE STRATEGIC STRUCTURE OF U.S.-ARAB MILITARY COOPERATION

Having said this, the problem we now face, both in the United States and in friendly Arab states, is the risk of losing the common interests that should underpin our strategic relations. Unless we are very careful on both sides, we will continue to make mistakes that will steadily push us apart. Military cooperation will increasingly become a matter of sheer U.S. military and political power, a matter of Arab nations going along--when they do--only because they must. Major Arab states will resist, Arab populations will become increasingly hostile and angry, and cooperation will be fragile and based more on U.S. bullying than on any trust in the United States.

Military Cooperation in North Africa

Such a breakdown in the structure of military cooperation is least likely to be true in North Africa, simply because military cooperation is something of a strategic sideshow, because Qaddafi is so weak, and because popular hostility to the United States is somewhat submerged by other tensions with Europe over issues like trade rights and immigration. In the other three areas of strategic cooperation, however, we face a real risk that our relations and alliances could be undermined and even shatter.

The Second Intifada and the Arab-Israeli Peace Issue

The most dangerous immediate threat to U.S. and Arab military cooperation is the second intifada and the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Let me be blunt. The United States has made many mistakes that have led to this crisis, as have all of the recent governments of Israel, but the most serious and enduring mistakes have been Arab.

Hafiz al-Asad was a disaster in every sense for the Syrian people. He spent decades weakening the Syrian economy, failing to come to grips with Syria's population and water problems, wasting vast amounts on arms and engaging in futile military adventures. He then refused a deal with Barak's Israel that would have given him virtually all of the Golan and have inevitably led to a far more stable future for Lebanon. It is easy to forget Asad's prelude to the second intifada, but he must share much of the blame.

Let me be equally blunt about Arafat. He has failed to be an effective leader in both forging a viable Palestinian state and in moving towards a real peace. While I still have seen little detailed evidence that he sought the second intifada in anything like its present form, he failed to give the Palestinian movement honest government and leadership; he at least used the tolerance of terrorism as a political weapon; and he horribly mishandled Barak, Camp David and the reality that he needed the United States and a friendly Israeli government to achieve a Palestinian nation.

The Arab world can congratulate itself on producing the one great hero of the modern Middle East: Anwar Sadat. Every outside observer must also credit King Hussein and President Mubarak with doing much to move their nations forward. But the failure of these two men--Asad and Arafat--is a key reason the Arab-Israeli conflict is now such a serious threat to U.S.-Arab military relations.

It is also a reality, however, that the United States does have a dual standard in dealing with the nations in the Levant. In fact, it has had one for nearly 40 years. The United States does treat Israel as a key ally. It does provide it with massive military and economic assistance and tacit security guarantees. It is also a reality that in periods of crisis, the United States does tilt towards the position of the Israeli government of the day, often regardless of whether it is right or wrong.

If the Arab world often denies the failures of Arab leaders like Asad and Arafat, the United States is often equally unrealistic in assuming that Israel always has leaders like Rabin, Peres and Barak, and in recognizing Israel's failures. One recent example is calling Sharon a "man of peace." So far, there are two failed leaderships involved in the second intifada, not just one. Palestinian faults are matched by Israeli ones. Both sides are deeply to blame.

The United States has also failed to recognize that the second intifada is an asymmetric war based on asymmetric means, values and goals, and not a matter of one side's "terrorism."

* Are the Palestinians sometimes guilty of pointless terrorism? Yes.

* Have all Israeli government since the signing of the Oslo Accords been guilty of going on with the expansion of settlements. Yes.

* Is there a horrible equation that trades settlements for suicide bombings. Yes.

* Are both Israel and the Palestinians locked into an asymmetric war where both sides are equally guilty and constantly escalating to nowhere without any meaningful form of conflict resolution? Yes.

* Is the Bush administration guilty of tilting too much towards this Israeli government at the expense of any real hope of a long-term future for either Israel or the Palestinians? Yes to that, too.

This failure by the Bush administration seems more one of division and default than deliberate strategy, and President Bush is perfectly correct in seeking both statehood for the Palestinians and security for Israel. But we need to be honest. The perception throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, and throughout most of Europe, is that the United States has lost sight of its strategic objectives and is providing day-to-day support of Israel without having clear goals for the peace process, for dealing with the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians, or for working towards the kind of viable Palestinian state that President Bush has advocated.

U.S.-Arab strategic and military relations--like all aspects of U.S.-Arab relations--can only survive the U.S. alliance with Israel to the extent that the United States also exercises the unique role it can play in making the peace process work. U.S.-Arab military relations do not depend on the United States turning its back on Israel or abandoning its firm commitment to Israel's security. They do depend on the success of a real U.S. commitment to halting the settlements and to rolling back the Israeli occupation to the limits of the greater Jerusalem area and the necessary security adjustments to the 1967 lines. They depend on consistent U.S. efforts to create a viable Palestinian state. So far, the Bush administration has failed to achieve these goals, and every day increases Arab frustration and resentment and systematically undermines decades of effort in military cooperation

More important, the failure of the United States to act more decisively hurts both sides. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have any meaningful way out of their present tragedy. Jordan and Egypt face a growing threat to their stability and the peace process, and another generation of young men and women will be damaged or wasted.

Here it is important that both the United States and the Arab world put 1967 in perspective. The United States needs to give far higher priority to dealing with the human needs of today's Palestinians. The Arab world needs to face the fact that no peace will ever go back to the 1967 boundaries, and no one can ever go back to his father's life, village or orange groves.

The issue is not U.N. resolutions or lines on a map. It is the future. In 1967, Gaza had a population of some 330,000. In 2000, it had a population of 1.13 million. In 2020, it will have a population of 2.3 million. There are nearly twice as many young Palestinians under the age of 14 today in Gaza as there were Palestinians of all ages in 1967. The situation is only slightly better in the West Bank. In 1967, the West Bank had a population of some 640,000. In 2000, it had a population of 2.02 million. In 2020, it will have a population of 3.5 million.

Indeed, this is a warning: Even the most successful military cooperation between the United States and Arab countries will not address the region's most serious problems. Similar population growth and economic pressures in all of the Middle East mean that either the demographic and economic problems of the region must be given priority, or no moderate government will ever be safe--no matter how strong its military forces may be and how well U.S. military forces can reinforce them. Terrorism, asymmetric warfare and ideological extremism are the symptoms of far more serious population and economic problems, not the disease.

To put this in perspective, the World Bank estimates that the population of the Middle East and North Africa rose from 174 million in 1980 to 295 million in 2000 and will increase to 389 million by 2015. Per capita income grew at one-third the rate of the population, and, even under favorable assumptions, will grow at about half the rate through 2010. There simply is no time for military posturing and old and now pointless legalistic squabbles.

The Gulf

The future of U.S.-Arab military cooperation in the Gulf is nearly as uncertain, and once again both sides are to blame. The Arab states in the southern Gulf--and particularly Saudi Arabia--have contributed to the growing problems in four ways:

* First, they have never explained to their own people the tree nature of their military plans and capabilities; they have never sought a real consensus behind their arms purchases and force expansion; and they have tried to deal with their need for a U.S. military presence more by silence than by open explanation.

* Second, they have ignored the problems of Islamic extremism when such problems did not threaten their regimes and have tolerated the export of such extremism; they have failed to implement policies that give their young men and women real jobs and real opportunities; and they have carelessly allowed money to flow to violent and futile causes.

* Third, they have refused to take proliferation truly seriously; they have failed to look honestly at the long-term implications of what Iran and, particularly, Iraq may do.

In fact, much of the Arab world seems to be in a state of denial when it comes to Iraq. It ignores the UNSCOM reports. It ignores Hussein Kamel's defection and the revelation of a massive Iraqi biological-weapons effort in 1995--after five years of Iraqi lies. It ignores the fact that Iraq was found to be lying about the weaponization of VX gas in 1996 and 1997. It ignores the pattern of Iraqi illegal imports, including Jordan's discovery that Iraq was importing the guidance platforms for Soviet nuclear-armed, sea-launched missiles.

* Fourth, until Crown Prince Abdullah's courageous peace initiative, the Arab Gulf states stood largely aside from the need to make the peace process work. They paid lip service to the Palestinian cause but rarely made good on their pledges. They stood largely aside from Camp David. They waited in the wings during the period up to Oslo. They were far too passive in dealing with Rabin, Peres and Barak.

Indeed, these failures in the Gulf are part of far broader failures in the Arab world. If the United States has sometimes faltered in moving the peace process forward, far too many of the Arab states have failed to face the need for action and the strategic realities of the Middle East for more than 30 years. Moreover, if Israel is guilty of occupation and settlements, several Arab states are guilty of keeping Palestinian refugees in camps for decades waiting for a future that may never occur, rather than giving them full citizenship and hope.

The United States, however, has failed equally to deal with several key issues in the Gulf. First, it has failed to understand the depth of the reality that U.S. and Arab military relations do not depend on U.S. abandonment of Israel but they do depend on an aggressive U.S. effort to check the settlements and advance the peace process.

Second, the United States has created a successful military-engagement strategy between the American and Gulf militaries, but its public diplomacy has been shamefully incompetent in explaining why U.S. forces are present in the Gulf, the nature of U.S. arms sales, and the role the United States plays as a military adviser. We have dealt with Gulf security issues largely through public silence. We have ignored the need to shape popular opinion, to deal with Arab intellectuals and religious figures, and to respond to their challenges and complaints.

We have been at our considerable worst in our public diplomacy dealing with Iraq: the U.S. State Department's rare, faltering and incredibly shallow efforts to explain the realities of U.N. sanctions, U.S. containment, the oil-for-food program, and the reasons for the suffering of the Iraqi people.

During the Clinton administration, the United States largely ceded the propaganda battle to Iraq. Somewhat incredibly, the Bush administration has compounded this situation by moving towards a preemptive war with Iraq while failing to make a detailed, systematic and persistent public and private case that Saddam Hussein's proliferation is truly dangerous. It has done so while trying to ignore the growing linkage between this issue and the backlash from the second intifada.

Furthermore, the Bush administration has dragged Iran, with its very different problems and challenges, into an "axis of evil" with Iraq. It has tried to ignore the reality of an elected Khatami faction in Iran, and continued with a policy of economic sanctions that cuts U.S. business off from Iran's middle class and secular elements without affecting Iran's real-world ability to buy arms.

Somewhere along the line, the United States has ceased to treat friendly Arab states in the Gulf with the respect and dignity they deserve. The United States has also talked in vacuous terms about democracy in Iraq while failing to try to win the minds and support of Arab intellectuals and publics for its military actions and presence. If anything, we have managed to praise the Iranian search for reform in ways that encourage violence and imprisonment without providing useful support to Iran's very real forces for reform.

As a result, it is far from clear that the Bush administration can now convince the Gulf and the Arab world that--if it does decide to strike at Iraq--it is realistic enough to act quickly and decisively and will do so with minimum cost to the Iraqi people and risk to the region.

It is still totally unclear how the United States will deal with Iraq's recovery and nation building, and whether the United States can convince Iraq's people that it will not try to foist a hapless outside opposition upon them. The United States has not made it clear that it will never seek to profit from such an intervention. It has not made any public attempt to free any new regime of reparations and debt, and has expressed no vision of the Iraq to come.

More broadly, the United States has acted as if it has no faith in any of the governments of its Arab allies, and as if some miracle would suddenly transform Iraq into a modern democratic state, which would then catalyze equal change throughout the Arab world--regardless of all the real-world political, cultural, economic and demographic realities involved. This view of U.S. intervention in Iraq is a fantasy of some Israelis that can be excused by their search to find some way out of the second intifada. As American policy, it crosses the line between neo-conservative and neo-crazy.

At best, we may only have months to change this situation, while we have wasted years. In this sense, we as Americans have been our own worst enemies; our incompetence has been prodigious. In fact, we can only salvage this situation now--if we go to war--by a victory so quick and decisive that it is nearly bloodless and then by showing we have made a commitment to nation building in Iraq that is truly unselfish, fully successful, and which actually gives the Iraqi people the future they deserve. Without such an effort, I believe the future of U.S.-Arab military cooperation will be dismal indeed.

Dealing with Terrorism and Asymmetric Warfare

Finally, I fear that the United States has wasted the sympathy and support it got following September 11 in much of the Arab world. This is partly a result of a failure to sustain a clear commitment to the Arab-Israeli peace process. It is partly a result of a failure to explain and justify U.S. actions towards Iraq and our military presence in the Gulf. But it is also partly a result of what has often been a mean-spirited and even xenophobic treatment of nations like Saudi Arabia and of a tendency to bully rather than persuade.

Once again, I believe many Arab regimes were all too complacent in exporting the threat of their Islamic extremists and in ignoring the peace process and tacitly allowing extremist movements to operate as long as the target was Israel or secular regimes in Central Asia. The combination of the Taliban and Al Qaeda was intolerable in Afghanistan long before September 11, and it perverted, rather than served, the cause of Islam.

But this is no excuse for U.S. critics who have since condemned every moderate Arab regime, and particularly Saudi Arabia, as if they had never been friends. It is no reason for ignoring the progress in most Southern Gulf states and other moderate states in the Arab world. It is no reason to see the Arab world as if its culture and political society encouraged terrorism--particularly given the fact that virtually every moderate Arab government began the fight against such marginal extremists long before we did.

Here the problem does not lie largely in the U.S. government, although it has officials who have made many misstatements and mistakes. Outside advisers, "experts" with negligible real-world experience in visiting the Arab states they condemn, and equally inexperienced writers in the American media must assume the bulk of the blame. In spite of the leadership of President Bush, far too much U.S. criticism has projected the view that the Arab world and Islam have never sought progress and reform, and therefore should be treated with contempt.

The underlying message from far too much of the United States since September 11 has not been that we share a common threat in dealing with Islamic extremism and terrorism and have common goals. It has rather been the message that we hold entire Arab nations accountable for the actions of their worst citizens. It is also a message that the flaws of Arab states are somehow unforgivable, while ours can be ignored.

GIVING BIN LADEN A VICTORY

The tragedy that I see here is that all of these problems on both sides will combine to overwhelm U.S.-Arab military relations with a mutually self-inflicted "clash of civilizations." We in the United States will turn friends and neutrals into critics and enemies. We will make evolutionary reform in the Arab world even more difficult. We will further impede an Arab-Israeli peace and play into the hands of figures like Saddam Hussein. The Arab states will freeze around a defensive status quo that does not offer political, economic or military security.

Worst of all, the net result of both Arab and U.S. failures will be to give Bin Laden a peculiar kind of victory. It will be a victory that does nothing to advance his own pathetic fantasies or his vision of a future that would imprison the Arab world in the past. It will be a victory that will divide the United States and its Arab allies and could well cripple efforts to create regional security and development for years, if not for decades.

If we are to avoid this, we must begin to take action now. That action must be based on reality, not polite mutual denial of the problems we face. It must be based on the fact that all of us--American, Arab and Israeli--are to blame. It must also be based on the effort to forge a viable future, and not just to remember the past. The dead can neither be grateful nor benefit from revenge. There is no hope in indifference or in blaming everyone but ourselves.

Our obligation in shaping our strategic relations, as in every other aspect of our policy, must be to the generations of young men and women who will shape our future. In a Middle East whose Arab population will increase nearly a third by 2015, and where the real challenge is already an actual and disguised unemployment of 2030 percent, there is little time or tolerance for continued mistakes.