Cambridge Forum; WGBH Forum Network; The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East

Thank you good evening and welcome to the Cambridge forum discussing sowing crisis the Cold War and the Middle East with Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University for over forty five years in the Cold War the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in a deadly global rivalry using political and military policy to win allies and exert power. How did these cold war strategy shape the political and ideological landscape in the Middle East. What was the impact of American foreign policy driven to win the cold war regardless of cost to the nation states and their economies in this region. Is there or can the United States war on terror waged by the Bush administration be seen as a continuation of the strategies developed in the Cold War. And has the Middle East suffered as a result of these Bush administration policies.

These are only some of the many questions that our speaker Rashid Khalidi discusses as we examine the Cold War Roots of the current political situation in the Middle East and I might add that a great deal of this research is based on original material that has only recently been available. Professor Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Saeed chair an Arab Studies and the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University considered the preeminent scholar among us historians of the modern Middle East. He is the author of five major books including resurrecting Empire and The Iron Cage and more than 75 articles on Middle Eastern history and politics. His latest book sowing crisis the Cold War and American dominance in the Middle East serves as the basis for our discussion tonight. Welcome to Cambridge forum. Rashid Khalidi thank. You.

Thanks. Thank you Steve. Thanks to the Cambridge forum and thanks to all of you for coming. I'm going to start by talking about the genesis of this book how it developed. I was asked in the 70s when I was a junior faculty member at the American University of Beirut whether I would consider doing some work on Soviet Middle East policy and I told the people who asked me to do this I don't know any Russian. You know I'm a Middle East Historian I know something about Middle East. They said Well have a look at the literature and see if you can do this. So I had a quick look at the work that had been done the scholarly literature on Soviet Middle East policy and I found that most of the people who worked on it. Knew Russian but knew no Middle Eastern languages knew nothing about the history culture or politics of the Middle East and were primarily interested in how the Cold War in the Middle East affected by the United States of the Soviet Union they were either American or in some cases Soviet specialists. And I said to myself Well you

know I'm no more ignorant than these people. Moreover I have the vast range of translated materials from the Russian which are government in those days was producing. And so I could read pretty much every open source translated into English every open Soviet source. And I in addition had access to stuff from the Middle East and this was both the genesis of my interest in the subject I later on went to teach courses on Soviet and American Middle East Policy at the American University in Beirut. But it was also the genesis of my perspective on this issue. Because what I found in almost all the treatments of the Cold War in the Middle East or Soviet or American policy in the Middle East was that they primarily were concerned with the Soviet Union or the United States or the rivalry between the two of them. They were very little concerned if they paid any attention to it at all with the impact of the Cold War On The Middle East itself. And this living in Beirut in the 70s in the 80s when I started doing research on these kinds of topics was something that I noticed was a like

yoona this was a gap and it was also something that I thought was important. It wasn't just missing from the scholarship but I felt the cold war had an enormous impact on the Middle East. I could see that it was having an impact. In the 70s and the 80s on the Middle East. So I think this is not only the way I came to the subject. I think it it helps to explain the approach that I take in this book. This is not a comprehensive history of the Cold War in the Middle East. It's not really a study a detailed study of either American or Soviet Middle East policy. I do use documents mainly stuff that I found through the Cold War history project a wonderful online resource at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. As made available and the National Security Archive which the George Washington University makes available and if any of you have any interest in these things you can read the most hair raising documents online at home. You know in your underwear if you choose you don't have to go to the National Archives you don't have to go to a library. You can

do it online that are being newly declassified and put on to either the National Security Archive or the Cold War international history project. So that's the genesis of the book and that's the approach that I take on it. The thing that I I I also realized as I was working on this book was that the Cold War is dead and gone. For my students it's something that's. Beyond their ken for people who are you know in their 20s early 20s or in their late teens and now college students this is something in the past it's like the Vietnam War of the Hundred Years War it's a you know something from the distant past as far as they're concerned. But I realized that in fact the patterns developed during the Cold War especially in this country but I think also in Russia and I believe also in some Middle Eastern countries are still with us both patterns of dependence between patrons and clients and patterns of competition. And I would argue in particular for the United

States a sense in the Middle East that we're engaged in a conflict today with Iran or today with terrorism which in a certain sense has taken the place of the conflict with communism. I argue in this in this book that we've gone from. Being engaged against what President Reagan called an evil empire to being engaged against what President Bush called an axis of evil and the kind of perhaps exaggerated fear of communism has been replaced by a perhaps exaggerated fear of terrorism as as a motive force as a dynamic element in our foreign policy certainly that's the case in the Middle East. And so this was another motivation for me in writing this book. I felt that if in fact there were patterns derived from the cold war and if in fact those patterns have had a negative effect on the Middle East it might be the case that it would be worthwhile laying them out and exploring the extent to which that is still the case and I try to do that in this book. What I discovered. As I did the research for this book.

And it was something that I sort of knew but only really realized as I as I as I got deeper and deeper into these these documents that I had a chance to look at. Was that there were some extraordinary perhaps coincidental parallel moves made by the United States and the Soviet Union at the very end of World War Two which were the sort of the opening salvos as it were of the Cold War in the Middle East. Now neither of these powers the Soviet Union and the United States had been the major actors in the Middle East in the interwar period before World War Two. Britain and France dominated the region. If you're going to look for other powers that played a major role you would say Germany under the Nazis or Italy under the fascists the Soviet Union had a presence but it was not a major presence the United States almost no presence. It was World War Two that brought the superpowers made them super powers and brought them into the Middle East and it brought them into the Middle East because it alerted them to their vulnerability in terms of two considerations which continued to be in my

view the dominating considerations for both superpowers throughout the Cold War. The first was energy and the second was strategy the strategic importance of the Middle East. Both were awakened to the vital importance of the Middle East in these two regards by the twin Nazi offensives of 1942 when Rommel was charging across North Africa towards the canal and had he taken the canal. Ultimately the oil fields of the Gulf and when Nazi Panzers were street streaking across southern Russia the southern USSR trying to reach the oilfields of Baku. The Soviet Union's entire oil producer production was concentrated in that region and the Soviets sense their vulnerability. The Western powers whose oil production in the region depended very much on oil being produced in Iran sensed their vulnerability and this was I think the thing that alerted both superpowers to the essential importance of the Middle East in terms of strategy and in terms of energy and their twin their twin concerns. And I argue in

this book that they continue throughout the Cold War. I found an extraordinary quote from the head of the United States Army Air Force General Carl Spaatz who said in June of 1944 the primary strategic objective of the United States Army Air Force is to deny oil to the enemy to the Nazi. To Nazis as early as as as the summer of 1944 in other words top strategists on the American side had understand understood the vital importance of oil to modern warfare and understood that this was their primary target. He didn't say a target. The primary target. This is what we're going to go after as a result those of you know anything about the ending of World War 2 will recall that the Verma had thousands of armored vehicles which simply could not move because of lack of fuel. At the end of the war and the Luftwaffe had hundreds and hundreds of airplanes including some of the most advanced airplanes in existence they had MIG 262 jet fighters the only jet fighters ever

produced at that point. Which simply couldn't fly. There was no fuel they used horses to pull them out on the on the runways and then put whatever fuel they had into them so spots was right was absolutely vital to modern warfare and from that point on the importance of the Middle East increases and another of these sets of coincidences. It has to do with the fact that with the fact that at the very end of the war President Roosevelt on his way back from Yalta to the United States takes the time. In February of 145 to stop in Egypt and to spend a whole day meeting with the ruler of a minor Middle Eastern principality in South. The father of the various kings who ruled that kingdom ever since are the Arabia why does President Roosevelt whose seven weeks away from death is mortally ill gravely gravely weak the description of him by Colonel William Eddy who was his translator says that at moments when when he his attention

lagged. You could see the president's ashen pallor he was exhausted. Why did he stop for a whole day to meet with this minor Middle Eastern ruler. Clearly because everybody in Washington understood at this point both the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia in terms of location and the fact that it was not under the control of a foreign power at that point. But also the fact that Saudi Arabia was the only major country in the Middle East that had an exclusive oil deal with the United States signed in 1933 and. Saudi Arabia was a country which the geologists had already discovered had a huge proportion of the world's proven what came to be a majority in fact of the world's proven reserves and they already knew the vast oil wealth of said Arabia. So President Roosevelt basically took one day out of the very few remaining days in his life to cement a personal relationship with this ruler in spite of in spite of all the other demands on his time at the end of World War 2 because of an understanding of the importance of both the strategic and the energy aspects insofar as Saudi Arabia was concerned

at pretty much the same time I discovered from the Cold War history project documents Stalin was ordering Soviet geologists in the Soviet occupied northern part of Iran to secretly begin. Prospecting for oil. Now the Soviet Union and United States were the world's two largest oil producers at this at this time. The United States was the largest. So you know as a second why was Stalin doing this. He was doing this against the will and without the knowledge of the Iranians the Iranians came to very much resent the Soviet presence in the northern part of Iran. Now he was doing it because as I just suggested the war revealed to the Soviets for the first time the extreme vulnerability of their energy resources and this and the other strategic factors I talk about in the book come to be continuing themes in in this book. Now I don't want to die. They've asked me only to talk for about 20 minutes I can come back to some of these issues if you're interested in the question and answer I want to talk about only three of the things in the time that remains to me. I want to talk about two

aspects of the impact of the Cold War On The Middle East. First in so far as regional conflict is concerned. And secondly in so far as democracy in the Middle East is concerned and the development of governance and government in the Middle East is concerned. And then finally I'll come back to what I described as the mini Cold War that the United States is engaged with gauged in with Iran to conclude let me talk first about this impact on regional conflict and impact on the development of constitutional and democratic development of Middle Eastern countries. There is a there is a view about the Middle East which goes something like this. This is a region of the world where people have been at one another's throats since time immemorial. These are deeply seated conflicts. These are people who hate each other. These are primordial disputes et cetera et cetera so you get the drift.

And the argument here essentially is that these are these are entirely generated in the Middle East these conflicts and they're very very old. Well the major conflicts that I looked at regional conflicts that I looked at that took place during the Cold War the Arab-Israeli conflict the Lebanese war that went on for one hundred seventy five or a little before that until 1990 and the Iran-Iraq war are not really very ancient conflicts they have. They have some roots that go back a bit but essentially there are modern conflicts. There are essentially results of decolonization the results of modern phenomena. And they're not age old. Moreover although they have indigenous roots they started in Lebanon or between the Arabs and Israelis or between Iran and Iraq for reasons that had to do with those countries and peoples issues with one another. They didn't take place in a vacuum. Each one of these major conflicts became subsumed one way or another in the Cold War. They became

battlegrounds of the Cold War. They became arenas of the Cold War and the Cold War didn't only track with them. That is to say the Soviets didn't end up supporting this party and the United States supporting that party the Soviet Union and the United States contributed measurably. I found to the exacerbation to the worsening of each of these conflicts they exploited them. They used them. They tried to take advantage of one another via these conflicts. And I discovered they made them in almost every case much much worse. Now in the case of the Arab Israeli conflict you almost can't hear someone in an official or semiofficial position in our government the same by the way was true for the Soviets to talk about this conflict without almost wearing their arm out patting themselves on the back about how many. After many efforts the United States has made in terms of peacemaking. The United States has made enormous efforts to bring peace between Arabs and Israelis and in fact there have been a couple of successful efforts in the decades that this conflict has been going on. But one of the things you

realize. If you look carefully at the impact of the Cold War on the Arab-Israeli conflict is that United States and the Soviet Union ratcheted this conflict up in terms of the level. Of the wars that were fought between these powers by a fact by many multiples. If you look at the 1948 war the 1956 war when the Soviet Union and the United States were not using the Arab-Israeli conflict as a sort of a proxy war in 1948 the Soviets and the Americans both supported the establishment of Israel and essentially opposed the Arab states. In 1906 they were on the same side but a different side. They both opposed Britain France and Israel and supported Egypt for different reasons. In both cases the point is they were not the primary arms suppliers to either side in either of these wars and they were not the principal backer one on one side and the other on the other side so this war or these wars this earlier phase as it were of the Arab-Israeli conflict was not at that stage polarized along Cold-War lines which is something that came to

happen in the 1960s before during and after the 1967 war which incidentally Israel fought entirely with French weapons are almost entirely with French and British weapons and had some American weapons but a limited number and they weren't the high tech weapons or the nuclear weapons that Israel had and didn't use it got from France the aircraft which it achieved air superiority were Mirage fighters. The tanks that it used were mainly Amex their teens and century and had a few and 48 tanks but American tanks but essentially its arsenal was French. It was only after that that the Arab-Israeli conflict came to track with the cold war with the Arab states or most of them identified with the Soviet Union and Israel and some other Arab states identified with the United States and that led to. And that was the basis for an enormous increase in the number and sophistication of the West weapon systems involved and in the destructiveness of these wars. The war of attrition along the Suez Canal which most people don't even know happened from 1968 to

1970 was a ferocious absolutely ferocious phase of the Arab-Israeli wars fought with Dutch a Soviet weaponry but Soviet combat personnel in combat capacities. The United States was sending top of the line F-4 Phantom fighters to Israel even though this was at the height of the Vietnam War and the production lines and sent Louis for these planes was limited. They were needed in Southeast Asia. They were sent to Israel because Israel and put it differently the Arab-Israeli conflict was seen as an essential arena of the Cold War. What happened in this in the late 60s under President Johnson was essentially that. The US administration came to be convinced that it was losing a proxy war or at least was suffering in a proxy war in Southeast Asia with the Vietnamese North Vietnamese being seen as a proxy for China and the Soviet Union and they were looking for a place where they could punish Soviet proxies and Israel offered them that ally that could do this. They could win a decisive victory over countries that were

allied to the Soviet Union so both the United States and the Soviet Soviets were already arming the Arabs. But the United States and the Soviets poured enormous quantities of weapons into this conflict from 1967 onwards. And my argument in this book. Is that. Achieving advantage over one another was much more important to both sides than was any other objective. In so far as this conflict was concerned including peacemaking is not to say they didn't want to make peace but they wanted to do was to get advantage over one another. I came upon a document which showed that Secretary of State William Rogers in one thousand seventy one had obtained from and want to Sadat a. An offer to establish via American auspices. Bilateral separate Egyptian-Israeli peace leaving behind the other Arab countries which had been the Arab demand up to the point that all the Arab countries negotiate together and that there be a comprehensive settlement. So that said he was willing to abandon this Rogers goes back to Washington and is told by President Nixon supported in this by National Security Advisor

Kissinger. No no no we don't want this we want the Russians out of Egypt. Let him get the Russians out of Egypt first and then we'll talk to him about Middle East peace which is not say they didn't want Middle East peace. They wanted to win the Cold War more. They wanted to get the Soviets out of Egypt. That was their primary objective. A secondary objective might have been Middle East peace might or might not have been. And this is not I would argue an isolated episode. I won't go through the whole litany of cases I could talk about the Iran Iraq war there's some pretty hair raising stories there I could talk about the Lebanon war. Let me just leave it by saying that the what the Cold War did I would argue is to exacerbate these conflicts. These are indigenous conflicts that have had their own roots. But what the what the superpowers did was to get involved in them and use them to their own advantage and quite frequently this increased suffering increased the level of violence increased the destructiveness of these wars. Let me talk briefly about the issue of democracy. The Soviet Union of course was never a great paragon of democracy in the third world policy never claimed to be or

if they claim to be it wasn't terribly sincere. United States of course has always argued that it was a beacon of freedom in the world and in fact this is true what the United States is prim primarily meant by this is free enterprise freedom for individuals. They haven't really at least in the Middle East American policymakers taken terribly seriously support for democracies. And as I looked case by case from Iran and 153 to some of the smaller middle eastern countries like Lebanon and Jordan in the 50s to a few other cases what I saw was that both superpowers were willing to align themselves with any regime. The devil included Pretty much if that regime would be aligned with them in this rivalry with the Soviet Union what was important was the Cold War rivalry not the nature of the regime. Not whether it was repressive or Democratic or anything else. The Soviets claimed to be supportive of social justice. They align themselves with hideous reactionary backwards regimes in spite of their proclaimed ideals United States proclaimed that it was in favor of freedom. It basically took

anybody who would come into the American column if they would align themselves with the United States and the effect of this I would argue in places like Iran where a parliamentary democratic regime was overthrown by an American British organized coup in 1953 was to undermine efforts to establish democracy in the Middle East now. When I lecture to students about democracy in the Middle East they're a little skeptical they say democracy in the Middle East it's almost an oxymoron. This is a region that is almost a black hole today as far as democracy is concerned and that's true it's particularly true of most of the Arab countries. However it wasn't always the case. And it's an it is not a region that's an abscess that that's been devoid of attempts to bring about democracy in an earlier book resurrecting Empire I tried to talk about attempts by in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century in Iran in 1900 to establish constitutional regimes before many countries in Southern Europe or Eastern Europe had constitutions ottoman the Ottoman Empire and Iran had constitutions and there

were parliamentary regimes in many of these countries in the 50s in the 60s. They were weak. They had very serious problems. But the Sudan Egypt Lebanon Syria Jordan Iraq. And Iran all had parliamentary governments as well as Turkey at different times as well of course as Israel had parliamentary or otherwise democratic governments at different times in the 50s and 60s. Now the problems of democracy don't start and end with the Cold War. Problems of Democracy in the Middle East have their own history. Well I argue in this book is that the Cold War did not help at all and in many cases it hindered in the case of Iran it's very clear that this coup of 1953 took place essentially for cold war reasons. The United States was afraid of communism. It had an exaggerated fear of communism in all of the cases that I looked at. In fact communism was not powerful in Jordan or Lebanon either where American intervention was essentially directed at at in an undemocratic fashion out of an exaggerated fear of communism. And the last thing I would

say is about democracy. Is that any system the most well established democratic system. Ours the British the French. In time of war tends to be affected by the need to concentrate power in the hands of the executive. That's normal and natural in wartime. Think of President Wilson think of Clemenceau think of Lloyd George in World War One. These are cases where unheard of powers were concentrated in the hands of the executive. Think of President Roosevelt or Prime Minister Churchill in World War Two in the most in the in the in the in the most important democracies in modern Europe. This was the case. Imagine the impact of conflict and war which I've argued were exacerbated in the Middle East by the Cold War On weak systems like the middle eastern systems the Middle East is a region that has one of the world's oldest traditions of authoritarian autocratic government in fact before most people had government the Middle East had author a

Tarion autocratic government millennia ago. My daughter is an archaeologist. She's worked in Northern Mesopotamia as well as in Yemen and she's worked on. Places where six millennia ago they had large city states that were probably pretty autocratic So it's a region that has its own problems with the talk recy. But as I already suggested it's a region that has had a tradition in the modern era of attempting to establish democracy and my point here is the cold war and conflicts that were exacerbated by the cold war accelerated increased. This tradition of concentrating power in the hands of the state in the hands of the of the autocrat whether it's the Egyptian president or whether it's the king of Saudi Arabia or whoever it may be. And so my suggestion is that this conflict harmed the possibilities slim though they may have been in some cases of a movement towards democracy let me conclude by talking about what I've called the new cold war between the United States and Iran. Fortunately to some extent this was the war on the global war on terror

and the exaggerated focus on Iran as part of the axis of evil were features of the foreign policy of the previous administration. It gives me great pleasure to use those words the previous administration. However. They are deeply ingrained in the thinking of American elites the idea that terrorism is something that has to be dealt with via war. The idea rather than other means covert means intelligence whatever it may be. And secondly the idea that there are irreconcilable dangers sorry that there are irreconcilable differences between the United States and Iran. And finally that Iran poses an enormous threat. Iran is an enormously powerful country that poses an enormous threat. One of the striking things that comes out from examining the Cold War is the United States waged the Cold War against eight enormously powerful rival the Soviet Union which had major alliances with regional forces in the in the Middle East with very few bases

and a very small number of troops actually in the Middle East for most of the Cold War United States had very very very few very small military footprint. We now have the largest deployment of American forces outside our border in the Middle East North Africa Central Asia theater. To fight or to to to confront the Soviet Union. Almost no military presence to confront an amorphous threat. Involving primarily terrorists who are in underground networks. We have this vast military deployment and I argue here in this book that this global war on terror this idea that we're engaged in a mini cold war with Iran in fact justifies this but confuses people. This I think is a big mistake. I think we have to carefully examine how we got to this point why we are engaged in all of these adventures because we've been we've been gotten into some very serious ones and

the president has said he's going to get the United States out of Iraq I hope be successful. We still have a major war in Afghanistan not clear how we're going to end that. And we have a huge military presence. I haven't heard anybody talk about how that is going to be drawn down. Moreover we still have an enormously potentially dangerous confrontation with Iran which may or may not lead to war. Either between the United States and Iran or between Israel and Iran. I suggest in this book that we have to re-examine all of these issues. If we if we're to avoid the kinds of pitfalls that we got into during the Cold War and if we're avoid the pitfalls that I suggest this mini cold war with Iran may get us into. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks very much for the very concise and a very compelling presentation and I very much enjoyed reading the book which it fills out fleshes out with as I say some original material. These arguments very well. I'm not a political scientist so

forgive me if if you know I'm an anthropologist by training and so that if the questions seem a bit naive but you you present an argument about the Cold War which is a widely accepted story as an essentially a polar conflict between the US and its allies in the world and particularly Middle Eastern the Soviets and theirs. And your argument is that their rivalry from one thousand forty five to eight hundred to one thousand nine hundred nine had a significant and in the end also a dilatory US impact in the politics of the region. Arab go sowing crisis and conflict and I would not necessarily dispute that view except to wonder whether it is nuanced enough. And I'm thinking for one thing of China. Now China and India an architect of the so-called Nonaligned nations that was also an artifact of the Cold War. China do not

figure these two countries do not figure prominently in your book until the end of the story. With the rise of their economies with the fact that U.S. power in the region is actually diminished because of great antipathy towards the United States and India in particular a moves in into this power vacuum and China does as well. Now I spent part of the Cold War from one thousand seventy nine thousand nine hundred eighty one in Yemen. And as you discuss in the book it was one of these victims of the Cold War rivalry because there was North Yemen and South Yemen North Yemen was supported by bolstered by Saudi Arabia which is a client state of the United States and South Yemen was a client state of the Soviet Union. But China. Actually a pivotal role to play in the reconstruction of the country and to this day the only cold war memorial that I

know in Yemen is one honoring the Chinese workers who died building the highway that connects the capital Sanaa with the red city Red Sea city of her data. So this leads me to wonder whether Yemen was exceptional in so far as Chinese participation in the fairs of the country are concerned or whether a story of the stark polarities between the U.S. and the Soviet Union may not be enough to capture the nuances of the Cold War and their impact on the region. And this leads me to a related question because I'm going to try to anticipate what your answer is going to be. You seem to be concerned with politics in the sense of what is sometimes called in your discipline hard power. I'm not sure I like the storm but that's so for example arms that people can. Call to use in the exercise of force the monopolization of scarce resources the ability to

intervene in national politics including orchestrating coups which you talk about at length in your book and in that sense China arguably could not have played a major role in the Middle East so in a way this attention to hard power suggests that there were certain actors who could play this but other actors could not but if you look at the question in terms of soft power in that form for example of development aid in which both the United States and the Soviet Union played a hand and certainly in terms of the spread of popular culture by the United States in the region at this time as well the the the story it seems to me would become more complicated but I'm wondering whether in fact the argument would at all change. So those are my two questions. And then perhaps we could open it up to the floor. Those are those are good questions Thank you Steve.

I think that my my perspective on China. Might have been determined by. My point of view the place that I that I started thinking about this which was Beirut which unlike Yemen you're absolutely right about Yemen which on like Yemen was not a place where the Chinese had made an enormous It had made enormous inroads. You're absolutely right about Yemen where they had it would have had a role that was quite important that meant that major road building effort that they made and other things that they did in Beirut they had a huge embassy and they had a presence but neither in terms of hard power though they did ship weapons to various Middle Eastern countries nor in terms of soft power did they have the kind of impact that either the United States or the Soviet Union had. You know Mao Tse-Tung thought enjoyed a a brief period of popularity in the Arab world. His works were translated into Arabic all kinds of stuff was translated

from Chinese into Arabic as were things from Russian and obviously things from English. But I think that in that competition in most parts of the Middle East whether Turkey and Iran or Israel in the Arab countries around it and most of the countries in North Africa I don't think China had the same kind of weight in either soft or hard power. The did the Soviet Union I think it had more impact in the Horn of Africa Yemen other parts of sub-Saharan Africa where it was very much more successful I think in a variety of ways partly because many of them were really searching for a sort of a third way where they would have to go to the United States. And maybe that had to do with the fact that the places that I concentrated on Lebanon Arab-Israeli Iran Iraq war were zones of conflict where they were seeking both elements of hard power as you put it and diplomatic support and that the Soviet Union and its allies and or the United States even more so were able were able to give. Now you're absolutely right on your second point. I really don't give enough attention I think in this

book I probably don't give enough attention to what you've called the what you what you mentioned would you describe this soft power and what you mean there is the the competition on other levels between United States the Soviet Union and other other people other countries. And this is a this is a realm where if I had dealt with it it would have been another chapter. My editor would have torn her hair if I'd written another chapter but it might have been a good chapter to write. If I had written another chapter in which I examined this. I would have come up with something like the following. The Soviet Union was able to make a serious run in terms of arguing that it was able to offer development aid that it had a model to be followed that it had ideas and culture that were attractive only for the first part of the Cold War. As time went on it became pretty clear that Middle Eastern and elites understood that the United States had more to offer in terms of economic aid whose United States was infinitely richer but also that Western

cultural. Values were either more attractive or were already imprinted and implanted in many parts of Middle Eastern elites. And I think this is one of the reasons that the Soviet one of many reasons that the Soviet Union does somewhat worse towards the end of the Cold War. It's elements of soft power. It's not just you know American vetoes at the Security Council it's not just that the American warplanes are superior to Soviet warplanes it's also that United States has more money and the United States is seen in many in various ways as more attractive culturally. I think that's still true incidentally. The president the former president I think very much and his and his. And his colleagues and allies I think completely misunderstood the idea that they HATE WHEN of how people regard the United States in the Middle East. When he said they hate our freedom actually they like our freedom. American ideals American culture American the American free enterprise are generally very much admired in most parts of the Middle East are and have been America as a country that was not an imperialist power

unlike European countries unlike Czarist Russia or Soviet Russia. Unlike imperialist Britain or imperialist France was enormously to our advantage at the beginning of the American engagement in the Middle East. So I wish I had actually maybe written a chapter which engaged with these issues of soft power because I think it would have fleshed out the picture that I that I give here. Thanks. You're listening to a sheet of how to do discussing selling prices the Cold War in the Middle East. So it's now time to take some questions from the audience please come forward and line up at the microphone and please limit yourself to one. Tersely phrased questions. And please do come to a question that the speaker can answer and ask you to keep it brief so that everyone in the room who would like to ask a question has the opportunity to do so. Thank you.

Oh yes. You spoke of the Cold War as radicalization of the indigenous conflicts but didn't it also work in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the other way around. Case in point is the sale of phantoms that you mentioned those took place in the last year of the Johnson administration in January premier Eshkol of Israel paid a visit to the United States January 68. At that point Johnson undertook. He ordered the production of components with long lead times which was a precursor to actually placing New Yorkers in October. The decision was made for the sale and because of his. His placing of the his authorization of the production in January the planes could then be delivered by the end of 969. Right. This was entirely an expression of domestic political forces both the Pentagon and the State Department oppose the sale. It went through the meant for domestic political reasons I believe. The fans were duly delivered in late 1969 and Israel immediately used them in the war of attrition right

which led of course to the extraordinary invasion. The aid by the Soviets that you mentioned right they assumed the air defense of Egypt. Well. That's the picture I mean. The 73 wars another case so what so what's the question. The question is as I as I said at the outset. Didn't Israel in particular the Arab-Israeli conflict in general in itself radicalize the Cold War. I mean it led to the 1973 war which which I see as a nuclear confrontation. I see what you're saying. Well. Some historians have actually said. That this what I've described is an escalation and exacerbation of the Arab-Israeli conflict due to the to its engagement with the Cold War. Some historians have actually said that this led to what I think it's like. Or it could be Walter Isaacson described as the worst crisis of the Nixon presidency which is that the the nuclear standoff at the end of the 73 war. I think

I think that it may be that the Arab-Israeli conflict ended up making the the Cold War worse. But I don't think that contradicts my argument that the Cold War made the Arab-Israeli conflict worse. I mean the involvement of the Soviets leads the United States to do things that I don't think it would otherwise have done. The fact that the Soviets are sending. Air Defense crews and pilots to fly in combat in Egypt in 170 increases enormously the concern of the United States and leaves the United States to act in ways that I don't think it otherwise would have. That in turn leads the Soviets to do things and at the end by the end of the 73 war you have Kissinger and Brezhnev playing nuclear brinkmanship with the secretary of state according to this remarkable memo that is now declassified telling the Soviets one thing. Yes we'll restrain the Israelis at the end of the 73 war and then going to Israel and telling the Israeli leadership Well you know if something happens while on the plane on the plane I'm on the plane I'm not. Nobody's going to say anything. In other words go ahead and break the cease fire.

And that in turn leads the Soviets to put nuclear weapons under way for Egypt which in turn leads the United States to go to DEFCON 3. So yeah I think you're actually right. I think that the Arab-Israeli conflict ended up making the Cold War in some ways more and more dangerous. We could not have it probably right. In terms of client states and proxy wars and the idea that as our former president stated that you're either with us or against us right. I was a bit startled not to find any details mention I mean you do a wonderful job of explaining the derailment of democracy in Iran and planned coup. But Pakistan which is where I'm originally from I think is a country that got hopelessly caught in a non ideological opposing and fighting with Russia for the occupation. And to this day I think that was perhaps the biggest mistake of our foreign policy because we have ideologically nothing against communism as such. China is one of our best friends.

But the idea that this war was fought using Pakistan as proxy leading to over a million refugees from Afghanistan coming to Pakistan the slow Talibanization of mainstream Islam in the country and recently lost have been sealed put as well as you know the complete military insurgency in the country. Do you think that it may not feature as a Middle Eastern country but Iraq A-stan has indeed paid a very high price for association with this war. The short answer your question is yes. The reason that I don't really bring Pakistan in is as you suggest it's not generally thought of as a Middle Eastern country but to be fair I do talk about Afghanistan a little bit and it's also not thought of as a Middle Eastern country. And I think that Afghanistan and Pakistan. Are both cases of what I call the toxic debris of the Cold War still being with us Al Qaeda and Taliban are left overs of the Cold War. WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE. We sort of lobotomized ourselves and we forget the history behind where these people come from and a car that is not a term that

somebody made up. A cloud comes from cloud the mind of meti which means database in Arabic and it's the database that Bin Ladden put all of the folks that our intelligence service the Saudi intelligence service the Pakistani ISI the Israeli Algerian and Egyptian intelligence service kindly shipped to Afghanistan to fight the Cold War for us and support the Mujahideen against the Red Army which was then an occupation of Afghanistan. You're absolutely right the same thing happens with with Pakistan. American policy towards Pakistan is entirely instrumental and is entirely a focus of this blind obsession with fighting the Cold War. There's a wonderful quote that I have from Brzezinski in the book which I think we gave to a French newspaper where our magazine of an observer where he says something like he's asked Well don't you realize that fighting this Afghan war has created. This is before 9/11 of course has created these Islamic fanatics who are terribly dangerous. And he says something like. But I mean we defeated communism. What does it matter if we created a few troublemakers someplace. To be fair this

is before 9/11 that he said that he said this but we are still dealing with you know the bastard children of the Cold War if you want in the people who attacked the United States in 2001 or blew up Mumbai. Madrid London and so forth are in a distant in a distant fashion traceable back to this Cold War obsession with any weapon to fight the Soviet menace and in particular ask anybody who talks about us nomic radicalism or heaven forbid Islamofascism to do a little study of how the United States used during the Cold War how the United States uses nomic movements during the Cold War how it's United States use some of the same people who are today our sworn enemies during the Cold War. The same organizations it's not just been it's not just implied it's much broader than that. And I suggest that the patterns some of the patterns that developed during the Cold War unfortunately are still with us I am afraid they're also still with the Russians and they're also probably still with some Middle

Eastern countries. You opened by stating that the United States and the Soviet Union had parallel policies regarding the Middle East and were both responsible for both sowing conflict and ratcheting up conflict. So I wonder. Does Russia currently enjoy some of the some of the Islamic backlash that we seem to get that the United States seems to get for from the region you know. And if not is it simply because the United States was the victor and so therefore seen as the larger enemy. But having equal policies at the outset they're both responsible. Right. So is there no reason to hold them responsible for it afterwards. The interesting thing is that during most of the Cold War most Islamic radical movements and most many Islamists were virulently anti-communist but not very anti-American. So the Muslim Brotherhood. Or they will have the regime in

Saudi Arabia by and large were if not friendly United States in some cases working with the United States at least not hostile to it. And they were very unlikely as I say anti-communist. The Iranian Revolution which goes out of us a different tradition than Sunni Islam. Islam marks a change. The Iranian Revolution as were both anti-communist and anti-Western anti-Soviet and anti-American. And that marks a new trend or the beginning of a new trend and we see this again with bin Laden in Afghanistan and with many of the people who helped to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and who having beaten as they see it not just the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but destroyed the Soviet Union then said Well now we can turn to the other great giant. So you have this peculiar process. The last thing I would say is that if you look carefully at the war in Chechnya I think you'll see the Soviets of the sorry the Russians for an end slip you'll see that the Russians have their own problems with radicalism. It's not

just not just the west. Why this long story about Cold War and the new Cold War. I like this storm which from time to time the way our armed conflicts the rulers and democratic systems of the countries in the Middle East. The only new history and that you use this term Islamic fascist. Then when the fight was with the German fascists and the fight was Japan there Americans signed a capitulation papers with this countries. These countries ended. To them American troops and this is a result is be seen now both Germany and Japan leave then Americans do

so. Would you see that in future or it's a last but you need to see that countries in the Middle East Grand American troops and leave a united like Germany and Japan and leave this pic to kill itself. It's Germany and Japan are two of the most advanced industrial countries in the world were and are their two countries which in spite of authoritarian periods in their modern history have also got a democratic tradition. They had a democratic tradition before World War Two and they were two enormously rich countries before the war. Their human capital was not affected by the destruction of their physical capital so the accountants were there the factory workers were there the managers were there the people who understood how to do finance were there. It simply required rebuilding the Marshall Plan and the Korean War and the Cold War for you know the spring. So I

that's the first thing the second thing is. Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. And Germany declared war on the United States after having launched World War 2 by attacking various countries Poland Russia and so on so forth. There's no there's no parallel in the Middle East didn't attack the United States. Why should the Middle East surrender to their instincts. Iraq didn't attack the United States. You could argue that a client that attacked the United States from bases in Afghanistan but that's not Florida it wasn't the Taliban who attacked us they gave they gave support and bases and succor to people who attacked us for which one presumes there should be a penalty. But the Taliban didn't come and fly into our our buildings. It was Al Qaida who did so. Whereas the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Germany launched World War 2. So I just don't see the parallels at all frankly. I'm sorry. In your view. Obviously you know the Cold War patterns you know prevent

and that are still that are so persuasive to prevent effective U.S. engagement with the region but would you said that's the dominant reason that the US is unable to effectively engage with the Middle East. Or are there other forces and if so what what what would they be. There are many reasons why the and I say this is not I think able to effectively engage with the Middle East. The first I would argue is this reductionist stereotyping which goes back to the Cold War seeing for example a whole range of movements as in this exactly the same category as the Bush administration did was rather like during the Cold War seeing any country or force or power or party that was aligned with the Soviet Union as in absolutely the same category. This is reductionist it's over simplified. It involves a great deal of simplification. It means you don't really understand what's going on and it means that there's no nuance there's no there's no sense in fact often to your policymaking if you go step by step looking at

American policy making in the 40s 50s 60s 70s and so forth in the Middle East. This oversimplification and this reductionism I don't think served the United States terribly well certainly didn't serve the people of the region very well. And I would argue it continues. I mean we lump al-Qaida and Iran together. We lump. How Mass and Hezbollah together are one so only one Shia one created for specific reasons in Lebanon by a certain kind of Israeli occupation the other created in response to other conditions in another country. Simply the term terrorism of course always is invoked here. I think it it flattens distinctions. This kind of oversimplification and it leads to terrible policymaking as a result and leads to in many cases to people really getting very angry because they understand and you don't understand. Now you say are there other problems with American policy making this of course there are many other problems Americans as a rule don't know that much about the world now obviously this audience is different you're here to listen to it talk about the Cold War so I'm not

telling anybody here or the people who may be listening or watching. But by and large we're a country which because of our history because of our fortunate history has never had to fear attack from abroad since since the Revolutionary War at least or very soon afterwards. And except for the cold war never had any existential dangers. You know the Cold War and the fact that the Soviet Union could annihilate the United States or had the potential to do so was the first time the United States was existentially threatened. Most other countries in the world have to fear their neighbors at some time in their history including their recent history and have deep profound existential fears. France Germany Russia think of any country that suffered bombardment invasion occupation attack fear of attack not the United States. So because we are a continent because we have smaller weaker much smaller much weaker countries as our only neighbors within thousands of miles because we've never had this kind of danger because of other things in the way that his American history is developed. Americans don't know languages

don't travel don't know much about the world and don't care very much. This is a problem in making foreign policy. It means that the foreign policy elite coming out of places like Harvard and Columbia and Princeton and so on and so forth is free to mess things up and nobody is able to restrain them. It means that an insular culture can develop. Thank you. It means an insole insular culture can develop and around the Beltway where people who failed in the previous administration just have to wait until their party gets back into power and they have a chance to fail again. And we're seeing this with some of the Democratic foreign policy elite being brought in after. In my view not doing terribly well during the Clinton administration and I'm sure we're going to see it in the next Republican administration when the various paragons who made a mess of the world in the Bush administration will come there turn on the merry go round will come again uninformed angry citizenry the kind of thing that we're currently hearing about AIG bonuses would benefit us enormously. Where foreign policy is concerned. If somebody would hold into account hold to account for example the people who brought

us since 1901 18 years and counting of peace process without peace. Think about that for a minute. If somebody would hold them to account and say you messed up you did a terrible job. That's not entirely United States's fault. But you know let me let somebody else let a different approach get in there. I think perhaps we would benefit. And that's just one example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. My name is Michael Brower and I want to ask you a question about Afghanistan. Speaking of foreign policy weeks messing things up. I hesitated to do so all because it is not of course part of the Middle East. Normally And yet you yourself have mentioned it several times as have other questioners and it is one of the two hot issues going on today. So what I'm terribly concerned about President Obama sending troops to Afghanistan and I challenge the Afghan ambassador who was here at the Harvard

Kennedy School a few days ago saying Oh he says oh more troops are wonderful I said would it be better if we sent physicians and nurses and and veterinarians and experts in creating some export rather than opium. He said All in all we need the troops. I would like your comment on Obama's foreign policy towards Afghanistan which I think is a disaster you know. My hope during the campaign when Senator Obama candidate Obama talked about withdrawing from Iraq and sending more troops to Afghanistan. Was that he said that for reasons of politics which is to say that he thought he couldn't say I'm going to leave you know here and there and cut and run. And that would make him a target of the typical Republican tactics insofar as security issues are concerned. It turns out that that was not an accurate assessment. And it turns out that as far as Iraq was concerned he was committed within limits to a policy of withdrawal but there were again a stance concerned in so far as he has his administration has yet

developed a policy it seems to be a policy of continued continuity with the policy of the Bush administration. I find that troubling for several reasons. This is not a country which in its modern history or in its in its history has had a centralized. Effective. Government. This is a country that has barely had government for most of its modern history. It's not a country that is easy to govern. It's not a country that has ever responded well to external powers. Alexander the Great. The British Empire was ours. The Soviets I think found that out sooner or later. Alexander successor he didn't live long enough to see it but his successors did. And as. Ambassador Charles Freeman who recently was forced to withdraw his nomination as director of the National Intelligence Council

said. The United States went to Afghanistan originally to punish the perpetrators of the attacks on the United States to deal with them and to deal with their local enablers. Taliban was clad and Taliban and somehow that mission morphed into nation building in a country that as I just said never had a cent modern central government. How did that happen. And what do we think we're doing and I would just echo what Ambassador Freeman said. I do think that those groups and they now have metastasized into groups that both attack the United States and attacked other countries from bases in the Pakistan Afghanistan border region are a serious danger in the United States has every right business trying to deal with that danger. I seriously question whether the approach taken which involves rebuilding Afghanistan turning it into some kind of state modern state aid can work and be has anything to do with that original mission. I don't think that it does frankly and I'm not sure that it's a wise thing to be undertaking.

And I have no idea about troop levels I'm not a military man I don't know anything about these issues but I basically don't think the United States would be well advised to continue to try and create an Afghanistan structure that have never existed that the Soviets tried to do the same thing. The Soviet invasion was not just the Red Army behaving nastily and yet another place it was that. But it was also the Soviets trying to bring womens education and little adult literacy and running water and so on and so forth to places that didn't have those things now I'm all in favor of running water and women's literacy and and and adult education I really am. And I wish the Afghans had those things. But if the Afghans have those things they're going to have them because the Afghans are decided to have those things are not going to have them because the Red Army shoves them down their throats and unfortunately they're not going to have them because NATO and United States shuts them down their throats and in fact the backlash against those things is part of the problem. Taliban is in certain sense not just created by CIA ISI the intelligence in a certain

sense it's created as a backlash to forced modernization by the Red Army. And we're engaged in something of the same thing I'm not saying that people who engage in that backlash are good people they're bad people. But I think we have to look at that thing holistically and see how we get a hideous phenomenon like Taliban blowing up people and and attacking women and so on and so forth. And I don't know that more and more and more troops is the answer I would like to hear military people speak uninhibited about how many troops they think it would take to pacify Afghanistan. If General Shinseki said several hundred thousand troops to pacify Iraq a much smaller country and a flat country and a country that air power works very nicely and to the terrible effect on civilians of course but works very nicely compared to Afghanistan it's a piece of cake and we've lost four thousand two hundred sixty odd American service people in Iraq. I'm I'm very skeptical about that approach to Afghanistan. For about a million troops over 40 years.

DANIELLE PARRY I have a question just if you could comment on maybe the tipping point for the backlash from al-Qaeda to the U.S.. I'm not sure I understand what you mean. OK excuse me. When the U.S. engaged bin Laden and the components of al Qaeda during the Cold War there were there was a point when they changed forces and kind of just as you indicated change focus on who they want to turn against innocents instead of the Soviets. Right. What could we have done to prevent that. And can you explain what we did that caused it. OK I mean to some extent I have to recapitulate the argument of a large part of the book but I'll try and do it briefly right here. During the Cold War one of the weapons that the United States chose to use to oppose not just the Soviet Union and not just communist parties in the Middle East and in the

region but also radical movements socialist movements leftwing movements was radical Islam or Islamic movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere like we had the slap and the high point of this came during the Reagan administration when the United States decided to not just send the most extreme radical Islamists from within Afghanistan support the most extreme radical Islamist factions within the resistance to the Soviets within the Mujahideen movement but also to bring in the most extreme and radical types from elsewhere. I think you have to look at that as the beginning of the problem. And so when I say patterns left over from the Cold War this kind of cynical exploitation of any tool to achieve a short term end I think is part of the problem. I think it should have been clear that there were ways in which such people had values that we should have been associated with and that defeating the Red Army in Afghanistan may or may not have been an absolutely valid objective but the means used should have been examined much more placed closely and that was the

beginning of of of this problem. If that is that is that clear. So you're saying we didn't necessarily create them we sought them out precisely. OK. It makes sense. Thank you. High one brief comment and one question. The brief comment is the Iranian I think you mentioned that the Iranian revolution and the Revolution were both against the US a saw and the United States. I would like to point out that there were actually different phases of the revolution during the earlier phase the revolution was primarily anti-U.S.. Imperialism and during the second say where the. Where the secularist nationalist and socialists of the variety of lost power to the Islamist.

Then then we had the rhetoric of neither neither Russia nor the US. I would I would I would I would point have to different phases of the revolution. This second question. The. Gods are and here is the it the here is the question that I have and and and of course you are the expert on the subject. I wonder whether you make any distinction between private and public foreign policy between nations in particular Iran and the United States. Publicly we have been expecting irreconcilable differences leading to the game of chicken and egg and eventually war and we.

We thought this is what was going to happen during the. Bush administration and in fact. A prominent Iranian scholar such as Iran told us that that the war against Iran was eminent. However if we look at very closely between backdoor agreements or private agreements if you will with be with Iran we'll see there has been a number of agreements between the two countries for example regarding regarding Afghanistan Iraq regarding Iraq. Iran was tremendously happy to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I may be wrong but mine is so let me speak to my assumption is that the US will not

have to attack Iraq without consensus. So I wonder I wonder whether you can make this distinction between private and public presentation I'm not sure I would make it in that way but I take your point I take your point that at the same time that you had this ferocious rhetoric against the Iranian regime in the last administration you did have various areas of practical cooperation but again think of the phases in Iraq this came several years into the occupation when the United States was in deep trouble and it finally realized that it might behoove the United States to take advantage of of neutralizing Iranian supported factions among the Shia in the South in particular and that by so doing it could defuse the problems it was facing and so that then you had the Bush administration allowing baster Crocker to talk to Iran but that was late while into the global war on terror well into this. This cold mini cold war with with Iran I think. I mean there's also

something to what you suggest in that in that the administration has talked a really ferocious game against Iran and yet we haven't waged war against a real war. But we are waging a covert war against them. We are waging a proxy war against them. We see factions and groups aligned with Iran as if they are Iran I mean the way American policymakers talk about Hezbollah it's as if there are Iranian soldiers in Lebanon or how many US as if the Iranians themselves are in our in Gaza. We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars according to newspaper reports on covert operations either directed against Iranian nuclear installations or in support of separatist groups in Baluchistan an Iranian Kurdistan. I don't know. We don't know. The newspapers don't tell us the details but the Congress has appropriated the money and that somebody is doing something. We do know. So there is a war for influence there is a proxy war. There's a covert war and I would argue there's an idea there was at least under the previous administration and ideological war going. I mean you could go as I did in November and December from Beirut

to Cairo and read almost exactly the same editorials in the newspapers about the danger of the creation of an Islamic emirate in Gaza and how this linked to Iran means and I know that it could be that the Lebanese and Egyptian elites that are channeling you know Washington's ideas have these ideas as well. But I have a feeling this is part of an ideological cold war that has been that was going on at that stage as part of the lead up to the Gaza war. This is before the war in Gaza actually erupted. So I don't think you should underestimate even though there are these areas of more MPs more some degree of understanding Afghanistan is another case you're right. I think it should underestimate the degree to which there is a Cold War also going on remember that States and Soviet Union had a hotline and had all kinds of side agreements during detente. At the same time as some very very ferocious phases of the rivalry were still ongoing. Yeah right. Two last questions that are left to conclude aren't you yourself in committing an act of deception here because you are

speaking to people who you know in this area of the country a very liberal left. Oriented people in general. I don't think that you are you know when you use the term a mini Cold War in relation to Iran that's a that's a tremendous distortion of the danger that they constitute to the whole world. And I mean I have the impression that you are that you are trying to deceive people you claim that Americans are so ignorant and all that but a lot of us aren't. Well I don't and I think I think you in fact are trying to cultivate a certain kind of ignorance among American liberals and leftists about the actual reality and danger of Islam in the world. OK can I speak. I I think you're wrong obviously. I argue very forcefully in this book that there has been a demonization and inflation of

Iran the Iranian threat to the world and to the United States just as I argue that there was an inflation of the Soviets That's not to say that there wasn't a Soviet threat and that's not to say that there aren't differences of interests between United States and Iran or that everything is hunky dory. I simply say I am simply arguing that you have got a body of conventional opinion whatever liberals or leftists or whoever you whoever you think compose of this audience may think there's a body of conventional opinion in this country which believes a great deal I think about the power and danger of Iran which I think is exaggerated or false. For one thing about the Iranian nuclear potential I am very much against the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons I would like to see the entire Middle East be a nuclear free zone. I would like to see serious nuclear non proliferation in the Middle East. By all Middle Eastern powers stretching over to Pakistan but also including Israel. I would like to see the major nuclear powers build down their nuclear arsenal as a means of showing their their good faith

and encouraging this kind of thing to happen. But having said that I think that the way in which Iran is hyped and super hyped and super super hide in some quarters in this and in some quarters in this country is irresponsible and is deceptive. And as far as the danger of Islam is concerned I don't think Islam poses a danger. I think there are Islamic terrorists who have been dangerous and are dangerous. But this is a specific and specific problem. It does not involve the billion and oddest Muslims. It does not involve the dozens of countries that are Muslim majority countries. It is something that we have to deal with. I think that the way in which it was dealt with in the previous administration accentuated. I don't want to say accentuate it multiplied the danger of that problem. I don't think that you demonize people and you hyperinflated threat. I suggest you read the book and then you'll see you know whether whether I'm whether I'm deceiving people or not it's a question of question. Thank you I enjoy to talk to great quick questions the first one regards. Where do you see

the relationship between Iraq and Iran especially in light of their religious differences and also with regards to their energy interest and energy. My second very quick question. You clearly stated the end of your presentation that you favored a scaling down of U.S. military presence in the Middle East right. What would you replace it with. How reliable would that suggestion be. And also where do you see the American business community especially the energy sector. That's a very good question sorry. So one last chance I'll ask our answer to I think the American military presence you know it's in the Middle East. Going to his people and exacerbates our problems I don't think there are security interests the United States that are very well served by a huge massive military footprint in the region. There may be specific problems that have to be dealt with by military means. But I think United States managed to wage and I would add when the Cold War with an over the horizon military presence I don't see an enemy in the Middle East State or nonstate that requires this kind of presence. There are

no enemies of American national interests there that require this in my view. That's the that's answer to your second question. As far as your first question is concerned well Iran and Iraq don't have such enormous religious differences given that the largest single group in Iraq probably a majority are Shia. And given that the very large majority of Iranians are Shia so there are religious differences there are more Shia in proportionately in Iran than there are in Iraq. But that's not that's not the problem. The problem is the different forms of government. Iran has this specific form of theocracy which I think most Iranian Iraqis do not want. I think that the provincial elections showed that and moreover most Iraqis are nationalists. There are Iraqi nationalists they don't want to be dominated by Tehran anymore than they want to be dominated by Washington anymore than they wanted to be dominated by London. I mean anybody who knew any Iraqi history would have told the people in Washington in 2003 that this is a country that has spent a very long time getting foreign bases out of its country and a very long time trying to get control of its oil

resources and it was not going to welcome new bases or new attempts to establish a privileged position in Iraqi oil that's Iraqi nationalism and that is I think the best guarantor of Iraq independence Visa V Tehran. I think we're going to see more of a further development of that kind of sense of independence Visa V Visa V Iran on the part of most I think Iraqi political formations among Sunnis Shia and the growing number of secular parties in Iraq. I. Was.