Related Resources

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Thank you very much, Ambassador Walker, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

Fifteen years after winning the Cold War, America’s leadership role in the world today, in my view, is in serious jeopardy. If we look around the world, in different parts of that world, regions are beginning to think increasingly of their own collective self-interest while quietly detaching themselves from their close connection – in some cases, organic connection – with the United States. This is happening in the Far East, where the beginnings of an Asian community of interests is taking shape and doesn’t see itself as doing that on a trans-Pacific basis but on an Asian basis. In a more subtle way in Europe, the sense of European identity, over the years so closely tied to a shared sense of mission with the United States, is less and less being defined on a transatlantic basis and more in terms of a European role in the world. In the last few days the president of the United States was in Latin America. I don’t think I need to elaborate on the kind of issues that arose in the course of his visit.

The fact is that for anyone seriously concerned with the large global picture and America’s place in it, we are today facing a serious crisis of American credibility, of American legitimacy and – it pains me particularly to say – of American morality. I think that cumulatively has implications for our long-term security.

All of that is very much at work particularly in the Middle East. Our response in the Middle East after 9-11 in many respects has been the catalyst for these, in my view, serious trends.

After the terrorist attack – and I emphasize, a criminal terrorist attack – on the United States, instead of isolating our enemies our policies have tended to generate support for them, particularly because of the enlargement of the sphere of conflict by our own decisions. Instead of discrediting publicly the chief propagator of terrorism, our emphasis on his proclamation of the jihad has elevated his status in the eyes of many people to that of a prophet.

Instead of mobilizing Muslim moderates on our side, some of our officials in their public statements have come close to using Islamophobic terminology, particularly in their insistence always on identifying the terrorists as Islamic terrorists. We don’t do that when we talk of IRA terrorism in Northern Ireland. We don’t go around saying it’s Catholic terrorism. We don’t do it when we talk of the Basques in northern Spain. We don’t say this is Catholic terrorism. Unfortunately the use of these over-arching adjectives tends to create a subconscious identification of those people who see themselves as Muslims or Islamists with those who are being identified. That is the way the psychological mechanism works. This is why we don’t call the IRA terrorists Catholics.

Occasionally we will even go further than that. We have talked, at times at very high levels, of a crusade. We have talked about waging a war against an Islamic caliphate. We have even referred to Islamo-fascism.

This is not helpful. Worse than that, I think it is posing the danger of the United States gradually sliding into a lonely American war against the world of Islam. That is to be avoided. It’s not in our interest. It’s not in the interest of the world of Islam. It certainly is not inevitable. But it is happening and one has to think about the implications of that seriously.

In my view, it follows that a course correction is needed in our policy, in our posture. Not a change in our commitments, not a change in our traditional values, not a change in our sense of obligation to those who may be threatened or insecure, but a course correction in the way we conduct our affairs.

Let me suggest to you four changes – course corrections, if you will – which I think are desirable, starting first with the easiest and then going on from there.

The first can be put quite simply: watch your language. Avoid religious connotations. Don’t undertake rhetoric that has the effect of fusing political grievances with religious fanaticism. Both exist – political grievances exist and so does religious fanaticism. But it is not in our interest to facilitate the process of fusing the two.

Let us avoid semantic traps which limit our freedom of action and which create uncertainty as to what our true objectives are. No one in America opposes democracy anywhere, including in the Middle East. Everyone in America favors democracy, including in the Middle East. But it should not be a codeword for destabilizing regimes for this or that reason – unrelated, in fact, to the cause of democracy. It should not be a codeword for avoiding the real problems. The vice president speaking such a long time ago in Davos at the annual meeting made it very clear that, in his view, peace in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Arabs could only take place once there is democracy in the region. When reasonably can we expect that to be the case? If so, does it mean that peace is deferred until then? Or does it mean that the quest of democracy is so accelerated that in fact nilly-willy – but perhaps willy – it becomes in fact the codeword for destabilization?

What we say counts. It doesn’t help for the country that has been the principal symbol of freedom, legitimacy and morality in our very troubled age now to be saying to the world, as so often we have in the last several years, “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” That has been said so many times, scores of times. I’ve run it through the computer just to see how often a particular individual in the US government has used that phrase. I often wonder whether he himself knows who the original author of that phrase was. Those of you who are not historians of Marxism-Leninism may not be aware of the fact that that phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to justify the elimination by the Bolsheviks of their Social Democrat rivals. “Since they were not with us, they were against us, and therefore they should be eliminated.”

So my first admonition simply in changing course, in a course adjustment, is watch your language.

The second is a little more specific and concrete. It is that the United States should become more specific about the destination of the Roadmap for the Israeli-Palestinian peace. There is no benefit in a process that perpetuates the conflict, intensifies mutual suspicions, reinforces the presumption that the other side is always going to cheat and is determined to outmaneuver the other side while moving on the road to this unknown destination.

So, we should be more specific. I strongly believe that clarity by the United States on this subject would help the peace process, would help to mobilize the majorities among the Israelis and Palestinians in favor of peace by clarifying what peace would really involve. Not in any great detail, but at least by codifying the key responses to the most fundamental issues. In fact, a lot of them already exist. Some of them are part of the record. But they haven’t been jointly codified in a clear and politically compelling fashion.

The president, in his letter of a year or so ago to Prime Minister Sharon, in fact did address two key elements in saying that a final peace solution will involve no comprehensive right of return and no return automatically to the 1967 lines. Much as it may be difficult for the Palestinians to swallow that, that in fact is a realistic statement. It is difficult to imagine a viable solution which would not include these two principles.

But the president also earlier this year, speaking jointly in the Rose Garden in the presence of President Abbas, stated that any changes in the 1967 lines – to which there will be no automatic return – have to be by mutual consent. Mutual consent, which tends to rule out unilateral changes or their imposition. And that the Palestinian state needs to be a viable state with contiguity, which implies something significant on the Israeli settlements.

Hence, all that is missing from a truly open and forthright codification that becomes a compelling definition of the ultimate destination is the statement that territorial compensation will have to be part of the arrangement for territorial changes, since they are going to be by mutual consent anyway, and that a formula for the sharing of Jerusalem has to be part of the eventual outcome. Ultimately everybody knows that this is the necessary collection or the codified definition of the ultimate process. But the point is that, if it is on the table, it becomes more difficult either to seek an imposed solution or indeed to maintain a position of quietly abetting violence as a way of derailing the Roadmap. So peace would benefit from it and would certainly help to address one of the major issues in the region that has contributed to a high level of political emotions, to political grievances, to intense resentments.

The third step that is needed, which is even perhaps more difficult, is for the United States to clarify the options for Iran so that the Iranians themselves know – and even more importantly their publics know – that Iran faces a basic choice, either of persisting and damaging isolation – indeed, eventually self-isolation – or the benefits of beneficial inclusion in the international community.

Our policy toward Iran is a combination of abstinence from serious engagement in dealing with the problem and intensely hostile rhetoric, which has the effect of intensifying political insecurity on the part of the ruling elite – but worse than that, of creating the fusion between Islamic fundamentalism and Iranian nationalism. We talk about regime change. We talk about rogue state. We talk about criminal activities. All of that intensifies the insecurity of the rulers while arousing the patriotism of the masses, whereas in recent years there was an obvious tendency for an evolutionary change, which separated particularly the younger generation from the ruling mullahs.

Worse than that, we’re not seriously engaged in dealing with the nuclear problem. I invite you to think of another country, which in our elegant political rhetoric was also included in the designation “axis of evil.” Iran of course was one of them, but North Korea was the other. What have we been doing toward North Korea? We have been participating in multilateral discussions regarding the challenge that North Korea poses in the nuclear area. We have been actively participating with the South Koreans, the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese, and last but not least, the North Koreans themselves. We have been sitting around the table negotiating with them. We categorically refuse to do that with the Iranians. We want the French, the British and the Germans to do that.

But that’s not all. After refusing to do so for quite a long time, in addition to engaging in multilateral negotiations with the North Koreans we are simultaneously conducting bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans. Despite their apparent membership in the axis of evil, we’re negotiating with them directly. We wouldn’t dream of doing that with the Iranians, on the grounds that it might, according to one of our top officials, “legitimate the regime.” I do not know whether we have now decided to legitimate the North Korean regime or not, but somehow or other that does not prevent us from engaging in a bilateral dialogue in order to reinforce the seriousness of the multilateral dialogue.

Thirdly, with the North Koreans, both in the multilateral setting and the bilateral setting, we are implicitly committed to being direct participants in any quid pro quo that emerges from the negotiating process – if it does. That is to say, if there is an arrangement that is mutually beneficial, there will be North Korean concessions of the kind that we desire regarding their nuclear arsenal and there will be benefits flowing to North Korea – not just from the Chinese or the South Koreans or the Russians or the Japanese, but also from us. That is simply out of the question in our position toward Iran.

Hence, I am sorry to say that our policy toward Iran is part of the problem that we confront today in the Middle East. It really is not a policy. It’s a posture. A posture by itself does not often lead to desirable consequences. We need to do more than that and we can. I would think that our approach towards North Korea is the way we ought to be dealing with Iran, and in the long run that in my view has the highest probability of eventually creating a separation between the aspirations of the younger generation of Iranians and the fundamentalism of the present regime. Don’t forget, Iran is a country with an ancient history, a serious culture, a sense of historical self-worth, highly educated, with more women in universities than men and with women playing important roles in the professions, and one of them recently winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. It is not a country that you can simply define away with some sort of label.

The fourth task that confronts us and which in my judgment calls for a course correction is the most difficult at all. I believe we need in our interest – in our urgent self-interest – a serious scaling-down of the definition of expected success in Iraq. We need then to act accordingly on it, and preferably sooner rather than later.

We need to redefine what success in Iraq means. That definition until now has been a viable, democratic state, secular, embracing our values, sharing our unique love of freedom, which others apparently find difficult to partake. The Iraqis are expected to make that leap soon and we are going to see an Iraqi state that’s a genuine democracy, a viable united state in which the different key components cooperate in it on the basis of a truly successful self-determination.

That strikes me as not a very realistic objective. If convinced that the situation on the ground is actually improving – which I’m not – it follows from it that we better face that reality sooner rather than later. That we better undertake an analysis of the relationship between costs and benefits and the costs are certainly rising – in blood, in money and in our international standing.

Do we really have a solid basis for concluding that the situation will improve? Certainly the evidence until now does not support that. There were incidentally far-sighted people even before the war who warned about it. Let me read you a couple of passages from what I thought was a very perceptive and prescient analysis of the crisis in Iraq prepared by the U.S. Army War College just before the war started.

“Long-term gratitude is unlikely and suspicion of US motives will increase as the occupation continues. A force initially viewed as liberators can rapidly be relegated to the status of invaders should an unwelcome occupation continue for prolonged time. Occupation problems may be especially acute if the United States must implement the bulk of the occupation itself rather than turn those duties over to a postwar international force.”

The case goes on to argue, “After the first year, the possibility of a serious uprising may increase should severe disillusionment set in and Iraqis begin to draw parallels between US actions and historical examples of western imperialism.”

In my view, if we leave sooner rather than later, perhaps after the full adoption of the constitution and the referendum and elections, we still have a high chance of having a relatively viable Iraqi state, dominated by a Shi’ite-Kurd coalition to which the Sunnis will have to adjust given the enormous imbalance of power between the two sides. But the longer we stay, the less likely that conflict within Iraq is likely to be resolved because we’re not staying there in sufficient force to crush it entirely, but we are staying there in sufficient force to let it percolate and percolate and percolate. As a result, we see the intensification of two conflicts: a sectarian conflict between the Shi’ites and the Sunnis and a nationalist reaction against the external, alien occupying force.

The art of statesmanship is at some moment to cut the Gordian knot. To me, the war in Iraq has the closest analogy to what France faced in the war in Algeria. General de Gaulle had the stature to face that. I think it’s in our interest that we do so.

But I want to end by saying that none of those four corrective steps stands on its own feet. All four of them have to be pursued at the same time. A single one will not resolve our dilemmas. A single one will not diminish the threat. A single one will not end the kind of volatile dynamic that is at work in this very large and historically important and economically important and geopolitically important region. That is the challenge that we face. The recognition of the interconnection between the need for course corrections in several domains is only likely to happen if the decision-making process is open and not closed, if it doesn’t operate in a narrow group-thinking in which conviction becomes dogmatism, in which simple slogans substitute for reason.

So this is the reason why I share these concerns with you. This is why I offer these remedies, because I think we are at a stage in which the challenge of statesmanship but also of civic responsibility is to raise these issues with a sense of genuine gravity and with a sense of urgency about the need for a serious course correction.

Thank you.