Angry Planet - Going where Obama feared to tread in Syria – the Albright-Hadley plan

Episode Date: November 29, 2016

Guest host and Reuters Diplomatic Correspondent Arshad Mohammed sits down with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, to discuss a report that amounts to a bipartisan rejection of President Barack Obama's decision to carefully limit U.S. military engagement in the nearly six-year civil war.Read the story: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-report-idUSKBN13O2MS Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' news. We will strengthen our presence in our hand on the ground, and we will send a message to the Russians and the Iranians that we are a player in this situation, and that neither of them are going to be able to impose their will on Syria.

Hi, this is Reuters podcast editor and war college producer Bethel-Habte, filling in for Jason Fields. This week we have a special episode for you from Washington, D.C. Reuter's diplomatic correspondent Ashad Mohammed nabbed an exclusive interview with former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, a Democrat, and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, a Republican who worked under President Trump. George W. Bush. They've collaborated on a 100-plus-page report to guide the next president on what to do in the Middle East. They make the case for raising the heat on Assad, but not with a mass appointment of U.S. ground troops. They call isolationism, quote, a dangerous illusion. And they haven't shown all this to President-elect Donald Trump yet. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion

of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. I'm Arshad Mohammed, Washington-based diplomatic correspondent for Reuters. I'm here with former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to discuss their Middle East Strategy Task Force report. Thank you both for being here with us. Your report, which is well over a year in the making, can be seen in some ways as an extended argument for the United States to remain engaged in the Middle East. Secretary Albright, in an era in which the United States is now largely energetic,

energy independent, why should it stay involved in the Middle East? Well, thank you very much for having us and thank you very much for asking that, because I believe that the Middle East, very large area, frankly, which also crosses over into North Africa, is an essential component geostrategically in the world and the things that happen in the Middle East affect the United States. We are a world power. We are concerned about stability in the Middle East, our relationship with the countries in the Middle East, and a lot about this report, we say in kind of shorthand, it's a crisis of the

Middle East and then out of the Middle East, from the Middle East, that affects all of us. And it does affect American national interests, which are that we want our people to be safe, but we also want to make sure that there's peace and stability in that essential region. If among the reasons for engagement, U.S. engagement in the Middle East is maintaining trade flows, maintaining access to energy for our allies, for example, South Korea and Japan, and of course trying to prevent the spread of violence, if some of the beneficiaries of U.S. involvement in the Middle East are other nations, why shouldn't other nations do more to pay for that security as President Electronics? Trump argued to some degree during the campaign? I think we should, and that has been a theme of Republican and Democratic administrations now for 20-plus years, whether it's with respect to NATO or our Asian allies or with respect to Middle East.

I think what's not appreciated is how much our friends and allies are already doing in the Middle East. The United States has been engaged in the Middle East now for almost two decades, and in every one of the operations there, we have had dozens of allies along with us. And secondly, I think in most importantly, one of the things we've identified in this study is the fact that the countries in the region are now prepared to do more for themselves. In a region where, as Madeline likes to say, everything was kind of a range from the outside from 100 years, the region has decided they want to change that. They want to take the lead. They're going to take the lead. They

want to do more, the people in the region and countries in the region are doing more, but they can't do it alone. And in the same breath that they tell us, we need to do more, we want to do more, we want to lead, but we need your help. So to the extent I think that the American people don't want free riders, want to see countries trying to help themselves, and if they do help themselves, they're willing to do more. I think that formula is increasingly the case in the Middle East, and that's one of the things we try to point out in the report. Countries such as China, such as Japan, such as South Korea, clearly benefit from flows of oil out of the Middle East. The United States obviously has an ability to project its power

through its aircraft carriers and other military material. Why shouldn't countries like China, like South Korea, like Japan, start building larger military forces, so that they could project their own power into the Middle East. Why would that be a difficult thing for the United States so that the United States could step back to some degree? Some of the countries are doing more. If you think about, for example, the cooperation that is now going on off the coast of Somalia dealing with the piracy problems, you know, all the major countries in the world are associated with that.

It's a two-edged sword, of course. you know, if China builds a larger navy, helping out guard the lines of communication to Middle East is not the only thing they will do with that Navy. And some of their neighbors are concerned about what they might do with that Navy in terms of exerting greater control over the South China Sea or the East China Sea. So, you know, when you have countries building up their military power, they can sometimes do some very constructive things with it and sometimes do some things that we're not going to like very much. So it's a two-edged sword. One of the arguments in the report is that the United States should be prepared to use more military force in Syria.

You specifically talk about standoff weaponry, I assume you mean cruise missiles, greater use of air power, greater use of special operations forces. The purpose of that in part is to prevent the Syrian government forces from taking Aleppo and the other population. population centers in the western part of the country. Unfortunately, as we speak, it appears that the Assad forces have gained ground in eastern Aleppo. If Aleppo or eastern Aleppo falls to the Syrian government forces, what should the next president do? Well, I am concerned about what Assad has been doing, and I think we have to keep in mind that he is killing his own people. The humanitarian disaster that's been created in Syria, I think, is what we most have to be concerned about. We have, in fact, called for additional forces.

That's different than having ground forces there, but in fact, some greater use of the special forces and some standoff. I do think also recently there have been stories about what the Russians are doing there in terms of having an aircraft carrier there and then using that. and it goes back to your previous question you weren't asking about Russia, but what other military forces can do that are contrary to what we would like to see happen for the humanitarian reasons. I think we have to keep in mind constantly what the genesis of this whole thing has been about,

and a lot of it has been Assad's behavior towards his own people, and then obviously what Daesh or ISIS is doing. But I do think we should be prepared to have a greater usage of military forces without saying, without injecting ground forces in there. What do you do if by January 20th, Eastern Aleppo has fallen, the Assad government has consolidated its control over larger portions of the country? Would you argue for the use of U.S. military forces absent a full-scale land invasion to try to dislodge them? Well, I think what we do need to work on is realizing that there is not

ultimately a military solution to this, that it will take some kind of a political agreement to work on a transition government in Syria. That is one of the questions that's out there, and what role the Russians can play in that, and what role President-elect Trump or by your date President Trump would take in terms of getting the Russians to be more helpful on dealing with the Assad regime and recognizing that in Assad we are dealing with a war criminal who is killing his own people. So I think that while I favor some additional military force, ultimately this has to have a political settlement and that political settlement has to come about with support from the Russians instead of the Russians having a different agenda.

external powers that are acting in Syria, particularly the Russians, but also to some degree the Iranians, have at least so far been willing to exert more force than the United States has been. If the United States gets more militarily involved, what is to prevent the Russians and the Iranians from doubling down, increasing their military efforts to support Assad? And you then end up with a more bloody conflict, but perhaps still a stalemate. What makes you think that greater U.S. use of force will not simply escalate the conflict? Well, they already have escalated, and they are already using more force, and have continued to do so over the last four or five years. So that's already happening. What we call for, and what we think is consistent with what statements that

President Trump has said, and statements, quite frankly, that Iran and Russia and Russia all the rest have said, which is we ought to be focused on ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They are a source of instability in the country. They are killing many Syrians, and of course they represent a terrorist threat in the region and beyond. And what we have said is we need to accelerate and expand what we're doing against ISIS and al-Qaeda, to take away the recruiting tool that is the caliphate, to take that land back, from them and to deal them a major blow. And by doing that, we will strengthen our presence in our hand on the ground.

And we will send a message to the Russians and the Iranians that we are a player in this situation and that neither of them are going to be able to impose their will on Syria. And we think if we do that, we will give U.S. negotiators some leverage, one, to be able to address the humanitarian crisis. and two, move towards the kind of political settlement that Secretary Albright talked about. And that part of that is going to have to be something we kind of call a new model of national governance.

That is to say, if Syria is to stay together as a single country, then the various communities, the Kurdish communities, the Alawite communities, the Sunni communities are going to have to have a lot more autonomy to manage their own affairs. And this kind of political arrangement is what ultimately is going to have to be worked out. And only if you can work out that kind of arrangement

and eliminate Daesh and al-Qaeda, are you going to be able to begin to wind down the civil wars? What makes you think, though, that greater U.S. force will, I understand why it would strengthen the leverage of the United States in efforts to achieve a political solution, but it also seems to me to be perfectly possible that you could just get into an escalatory proxy war. And with partners that, as you say,

not partners, but with other people at the table that have demonstrated a willingness to escalate over the last five years. I mean, why do you think that a political settlement is necessarily going to be the outcome or likely to be the outcome? Why isn't just an escalatory proxy war likely to be the outcome? That's what you have there now. That's what policy over the last five years has produced. And at this point, there's no end in sight, and the killing goes on, and then the humanitarian disaster goes on. And what Secretary Kerry, who has made a Herculean effort to try to come up with some kind of political settlement, has said in some very candid remarks, we do not have enough

leverage on the ground. We cannot send a message to the Iranians and the Russians that this is going to end in stalemate and make them reconsider their calculations. So far, they've been able to get a lot done on the ground with very modest investments. And I think there's a limit to what they will be able to do. But, you know, this is the only way we have been able to come up with to give us an opportunity to address this humanitarian disaster and to begin to wind down the civil war.

And we think that it is justified because al-Qaeda and ISIS, or Daeshu, which is the focus of our efforts, is a threat, not just the United States, It's a threat that Russians are worried about, the Iranians are worried about. So it is, in some sense, a common ground, a justification for the United States to become more present on the ground, defending its interests to protect its people against terrorism. And we think one of the advantages of that is it'll begin to change the calculus of the parties and offer the prospect for a political solution. It may not work, but one of the things we know is that what's now going on isn't working.

And the question is, can we change that and bend the trajectory in a more positive direction? Secretary Elbury, did you change the thrust of the report or the recommendations following Trump's victory? No, we did not. And let me just say, what I think is the strength of this report is that we have made a point of saying that it's bipartisan. I am very honored to be working with Mr. Hadley on this. And we have had advisors from both parties in the United States. States, as well as a lot of foreign advisors and the ambassadors from the representative countries and all that. So it's very large. But no, this report was written on the basis of historical

facts and what is going on with the idea that it would be useful to whomever one. And I'm very proud of the fact that we have stuck with our goal of creating a bipartisan foreign policy recommendation. We have informally talked to members of both parties on the Hill, and we are going to be spending more time explaining it to the people in Congress, because ultimately what has to happen, whatever we are suggesting, has to have the support of the American people. And so this is a very complicated issue. I mean, it took us a long time to put this together. It is going to take a long time to carry out. It has to have the support of the political powers that be in Washington, but also it has to have the support of the American people. So Secretary Albright,

what makes you think that the American public, in which there are clear strains of isolationism now, in which there are clear signs that people feel that we need to take care of things at home rather than abroad? What makes you think that the American public is actually willing, now to spend the lives of its soldiers and troops, let alone the dollars that would be needed to provide the assistance of the kind that you're describing to incentivize reform elsewhere. It's not clear to me that there is much of that sentiment, particularly after a decade and a half of war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There's no question that the American people are tired. this actually the Karzai effect after the former president of Afghanistan who not only did

not say thank you to the NATO forces including ours that died in Afghanistan but said that we had screwed it all up so I do think there is that issue and President Obama had been elected because the people were tired from Iraq and Afghanistan so I'd not underestimating you know in any way the difficulty of it. And so I think the issue here is we're not calling a Marshall Plan, you know, where the United States would be spending money alone. Steve talked about the support from the other countries there, whether there's the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, that really do want to make sure also that they have a relatively stable society. I do not want to employ the fear factor in terms of if we don't do something, terrible things will happen here. What I do think

is that we need to understand that the United States is better off if, in fact, we are able to see a geostrategically important part of the world stable. And then the other part is, I hate to say this, but to some extent, the refugee situation has been politicized and militarized. And And when we see what's been happening in Europe as a result of the influx of refugees and to some extent here, what we want, I'm a refugee, by the way, and I am a grateful American, but most people would prefer to live in the country where they were born. And so I think that we need to make that clear to the American people. But the reason that we're talking about a regional fund and a way that the countries in the region can help is because,

because we're not advocating a Marshall Plan, and we are not advocating ground forces, and we are advocating coalitions and doing this with the partners in the region. One other question, if I may, about President-elect Trump. Many people who followed his statements during the campaign carefully find it difficult to deduce what might be the kinds of policies he would pursue, and he deserves time, obviously, to put together his team, and and to give consideration to what kinds of policies he will pursue. One thing, though, that I think is clear from his public statements is that he values unpredictability,

that there is, I think he feels a utility in telling NATO allies, such as the Baltic states, that whether the United States would come to their defense will depend perhaps on how much they contribute. he also seems to see a utility in keeping adversaries unsteady, uncertain of his intentions, to not telegraph intentions. From your point of view, Secretary Albright, what is the implication of using uncertainty as a tool in that way? Historically, I think there are leaders who have used uncertainty, but not consistently, I might put it that way.

I think that it is useful at times, but the unpredictability makes things very complicated, especially if you need partners in following out a policy. Unless the United States is going to do everything unilaterally, the unpredictability also leaves your friends and allies kind of destabilized, and we can't afford that. And so I happen to believe that multilateralism is a good approach. Americans don't like the word multilateralism. It has too many syllables and it ends in an ism. But mostly it is partnership. And I think that unpredictability, vis-a-vis your partners, is dangerous. And also it can be misinterpreted.

But there are various leaders that have used unpredictability sometimes, but it can't be something that is the only tool in the toolbox. The report makes the case that the United States should raise, the costs to Iran for its actions in the region that you regard as destabilizing. What it doesn't say, however, is how you raise those costs. Mr. Hadley, can you give me a specific sense of what you think any U.S. government should do to raise the costs on Iran? I think what we said was we need to work with friends and allies in the region to make clear

that we are prepared to deter and contain Iran in its disruptive and malign activities in the region. While at the same time we hold open the door to cooperation on areas of common interest. The kinds of things I think we need to do are, for example, in Iraq, one of the things you are seeing already going on on the ground is trying to marginalize the role that Iranian-backed militia have in liberation of territory from Daesh and al-Qaeda,

to emphasize the role that the Iraqi security forces and tribal forces indigenous to the area being liberated have to play. We think that is a better way to ensure that post-liberation there is stability and not reprisals. And we also think it has the effect of marginalizing Iran's influence in Iraq, which we think actually most Iraqis want. For example, with respect to Mosul, they're being put out near Talafer in order to interdict the flow of ISIS troops moving towards back into Syria, but it also has the virtue of keeping them out of the fight in terms of liberating territory where there are hundreds of thousands of people living. And similarly, I think if we are to do more, as Secretary Albright described, to go after al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria,

that will begin to constrain the role that Iran can play on the ground. So I think those are the kinds of things. And we also make some recommendations about how to try to bring the conflict in Yemen to a close, which, of course, will eliminate the threat that Iranian-backed Houthis are opposing to that conflict. and to the territory of Saudi Arabia in terms of their cross-border activity. So a number of things in the report that suggests how we would implement this deter and contain while still being willing to engage. One of the things that I was struck by in the report was your effort to emphasize

some of the positive things that are going on in the Middle East. And you're talking about trying to get societies that have not actually seen a lot of reform over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years in terms of tax systems, in terms of income distribution, in terms of educational systems, and so on, to reform more. What I don't understand, though, is how you expect to incentivize or disincentivize, what kinds of carrots or sticks you have at your disposal, things beyond just persuasion, to get, say, a country like Egypt to reform its educational system, to get any country in the Middle East to pair away regulations.

I mean, these are things, these things are very hard to do in the United States and in many, many countries that have much longer systems of democracy and compromise. How do you expect to get people to spend more money on education and less, in the case of Egypt, say on M1A1 Abrams tanks? Well, I think that we've been to the region and we've talked to the leaders and civil society and a variety of people in their parliaments. And the truth is that they know that their systems are not working because the governments, and this is a generalization,

but the governments were basically the employers of first resort. And they know that they cannot, because of oil prices or a difference in the situations, keep employing people. And so they know that they have a problem in terms of unemployment, which then creates disruptions, which then creates crowds in Tahrir Square, which then makes them nervous. And so I think to some extent, whether it's in Egypt or in other countries, they know they have to do something. And what I find interesting is surprisingly how they're willing to listen to what some of the options are.

They know they have a young population. I think they want to make sure that they are not disruptors, but they are really enhancers of the reputation of their country. So the things that we have heard on education have come from the region, talking to people in governments, talking to some of the young people, some of them that are entrepreneurs already, who are looking for ideas.

But we aren't saying this is easy. We are saying that these are some ideas that would work to put them so that they're not dealing with, quote, the Arab Spring, which for some of them is just disruption, but really looking for stability also. So they are willing to listen to experts to those that have ideas, and they know that development and governance actually go together. And so one of the other things we talk about is empowering some of the local regions. so that people are able to make decisions that are helpful to the overall status of the national government in whatever country. I mean, as Madeline said, there are countries that get it and are already moving in this direction, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan to a lesser extent. So one thing you can do is encourage those. Secondly, we talk about a compact for the region whereby outside powers will assist the region,

in dealing with the civil wars in these short to medium term geostrategic challenges, but the countries in the region need to begin investing now in the kinds of policies with respect to opening their economies, improving their educational systems, improving governance that are the basis for addressing the underlying pathologies in the region and offer the best hope for medium and long-term stability. And to extent governments do that, they would be provided by outside powers, financial support, technical support, and assistance. To the extent that they don't, they're not going to be attractive investments, and we probably would not. We also talk about a regional development fund for reconstruction and reform that would provide a vehicle for providing technical assistance and financial support, again, to governments and peoples within those.

societies that are making the right decisions for a more prosperous and peaceful future. Was there a particular conversation or incident in your travels that was especially telling for you in suggesting that maybe there is an impulse toward reform in these societies, many of which have been quite frozen for decades? One of the things we struggled with was how do you talk to and make the case to authoritative leaders who are worried about radical extremists and worried about their own stability of their societies, how do you make the case to them that they should empower their people and treat their people as partners in reforming and building a better future? And it's a difficult question. And the

question was always, well, even those states, Saudi Arabia and UAE that are moving in this direction, are they willing to surrender power to their people? And a minister from one of those two countries said, look, we don't have a choice. We've looked at our demographics. We've looked at the youth of our countries. We know what they are demanding. And we know we are putting in place a set of policies will inevitably lead to sharing power more with our people. I think these leaders are beginning to realize that they either share power with their people,

or they will drive their people either into the streets or into the arms of ISIS and al-Qaeda. I think there is the presumption that the United States is saying, trying to impose democracy on these countries. Imposing democracies an oxymoron. These people are calling for some inclusion in their governments and I, or in decision-making. And I don't know. I've never liked it when people say,

say, well, X people don't understand those human values. We're all the same. And people want to be able to make decisions about their own lives. And those governments are now responding to what the people want. And one of the things that I'm excited about in this report is the amount of time that we spent on issues of governance, how to have local empowerment so that the people feel that they do have a voice, and then the governments will have to react to them. This is not a concept that we are imposing our ideas on them.

And the strength of this report is that it is from within, and then it can be supported from the outside, rather than imposition from the outside on an unwilling population. So this may seem a rather heretical question, but I wonder why the United States, not the people of the region, but the United States wasn't better off when Saddam Hussein was,

in power, when Gaddafi was in power and had given up his weapons of mass destruction, when Mubarak was in power and had governed with relative stability for three decades. Why didn't that, perhaps ugly reality, for the people on the ground, not serve U.S. interests better than the current more chaotic environment? environment? It was not stable. We made a short-term bargain in the Middle East, largely coming out of the Cold War, to support authoritarian leaders because we thought that they would provide stability. And in the short run they did, and in the long run, they did not. Saddam Hussein's stability brought an invasion of Iran and a 10-year war, an invasion of Kuwait, threats to Israel,

and threats to the United States. Mubarak basically lost the support of his own people and ran a government that was increasingly unresponsive and increasingly viewed as corrupt, and in the end of the day, the people rose up and threw it out. The stability we thought we purchased turned out to be a mirage. And at the price of authoritarian regimes that basically destroyed the potential for a democratic future, destroyed moderates, destroyed democratic politics, and kept alive the vision of radical extremists to justify their own regimes. And as a consequence, they bequeathed to their peoples the kind of chaos we've seen today in the Middle East. Thank you both very much for taking the time to speak to me.

I appreciate it. Thank you for asking the questions. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for listening to this week's show. It was produced and recorded by me, Bethelhabte, and hosted this week by diplomatic correspondent Arshed Muhammad. Thank you so much for collaborating with us. Please subscribe to work college if you haven't already,

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