[Foreign Affairs] Who Will Win the Middle East?

How New Rivalries Are Transforming the Strategic Landscape

By Tarek Osman

MAY 20, 2014

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the Middle East has seen regional hegemons come and go. The 1950s and 1960s were Egypt’s era: Cairo was the Arab World’s capital and the home of its charismatic postcolonial leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. But Israel’s victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the 1967 war; Nasser’s death, in 1970; and the spike in oil prices after the 1973 war brought that era to an end. As millions of Egyptians and other Arabs left home for the oil-wealthy Gulf, the gravity of Arab politics went with them. As the Gulf’s fortunes rose, especially in Saudi Arabia, so too did Riyadh’s political clout. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, and the subsequent U.S.-led war, which was launched from Saudi soil, made clear that oil could buy Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, a lot of influence, but they still needed American protection.

After the Gulf War, in the first half of the 1990s, the Oslo Agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, shepherded by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, gave rise to Israel’s moment in the Middle East. Regional economic cooperation took center stage, casting the politics of the previous four decades aside with the optimism of peace and integration. Rabin’s assassination in 1995 abruptly dashed those hopes. The peace process floundered by the end of the decade, as a new rightwing in Israeli politics rose to power, hardly disposed to any closeness to its neighbors. 

Then there was a void; the 2000s was no one’s decade. No Arab country had the power, resources, or credibility to assert itself across the whole region. Sectarianism spread, fuelled by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and ensuing civil war. Arab republics, such as Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia, witnessed shocking levels of corruption that eroded the foundation upon which they were built in the 1950s: social equality and the consent of the lower middle classes to the reigning regimes. In the Gulf, the ruling dynasties sought to turn their desert towns into glittering cities, modeled on Hong Kong and Singapore, and detached themselves from the problems of their other Arab neighbors. Whereas in previous decades the region’s strategic landscape had depended on one country’s ascendancy, by 2011, with so much of the region muddling through and failing to put together serious national or regional political projects, the dominant players in the Middle East seemed to be economic actors, from multinational corporations to regional financial interests.

The Arab uprisings of the last three years shook up the balance of power once more, toppling three of the Arab republics, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia; threatening Arab monarchies in the Gulf; and sewing chaos around Israel. Whereas most observers evaluate the uprisings in terms of the political changes they did -- or did not -- usher in, there are other forces at play. A larger power struggle has emerged out of the ashes of revolution, repression, and war from Tunisia to Syria, which is reshaping the entire strategic landscape of the Middle East. Its outcome will transform the entire region more than any regional rivalry or the rise or fall of any single power in the preceding half century. 

The emerging confrontation is over the nature and future of the region’s societies, from North Africa to the Gulf.

FACE OFF

At the heart of this transformation are two groups of countries and political forces with opposing objectives. The first, led by Islamist forces in Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and the large Arab political Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, aims to channel the energy of the Arab uprisings toward a gradual Islamization of the region. The definition of that Islamization varies depending on the ideologies, backgrounds, and social and political circumstances of each country. The camp’s unifying conviction, however, is that political Islam is the sole framework for governing. Its members believe that, unlike the old rhetoric of secular Arab nationalism or republicanism, Islamism can actually win the support of the widest social segments in the region -- and keep it. To promote its goals, the camp uses a loosely organized network of media, religious authorities, and financial interests to rouse wide sections of the more than 180 million Arabs who are under 35 years old to demand bottom-up change.

The other camp, led by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and supported by Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, sees this transformation as a threat. They -- the traditionalists -- believe that Islamization will bring further fragmentation in some countries, such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria; highly disruptive political and social discord in others, such as Egypt; and the strengthening of jihadist groups across the region. Favoring a more gradual, managed, and cautious evolution of the existing order, the traditionalist camp relies on militaries, security apparatuses, media and financial interests, and other state or state-backed institutions to enforce a message of national preservation and shield their countries from the upheaval unfolding across the region. 

The battle between the two groups is a new kind of fight in the Middle East. Previous struggles between Arab secularists and Islamists (for example, between Nasser and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s, or between the Assad regime and the Brotherhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s) were country and regime specific. The Arab-Israeli conflict, meanwhile, has been primarily over territories. And the contest between secular Arab republics and Gulf monarchies throughout the 1960s (such as between Nasser’s Egypt and Saudi Arabia) revolved around the survival of specific regimes. This emerging two-camp confrontation, however, is over the nature and future of the region’s societies, from North Africa to the Gulf.

TROUBLE IN EVERY DIRECTION

The struggle between these two camps will be determined by four factors. The first is Egypt’s future. With nearly 90 million people, the country is the home of a third of all Arabs and, for decades, has been the region’s cultural trendsetter. Political Islam has already shaped Egypt’s politics since the fall of President Mubarak, throughout President Mohamed Morsi’s year in office, and, since Morsi’s ouster last summer, in the ongoing struggle between the resurgent nationalists -- and at their core, the military establishment -- and the Islamists. But it is really Egypt’s economy that will determine the country’s course. If Egypt’s government, likely led by Field Marshal Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who is widely expected to win a May 25–26 presidential election, can finally put forward badly needed economic reforms, including cutting back on unaffordable public subsidies, without losing popular support and risking another round of political protest, then Egypt could regain its status as a player in the region and significantly bolster the second camp. But that is a tall order. And if it fails, another round of unrest would doom the traditionalists’ camp.

The second variable is the future of Algeria, North Africa’s largest and richest country, thanks in large part to its oil and gas wealth. (Algeria is Europe’s third-largest energy supplier.) The military regime has been buying time until it can find a replacement for the ailing, aged President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. His replacement must be acceptable to the generals who have controlled the country for over four decades and be conciliatory to the political Islamists that fought the regime throughout the 1990s in a war that cost 100,000 lives. The regime still survives by buying off such dissenters and playing off the public’s fear of returning to the violence of the 1990s, which compels many Algerians to accept the lack of plurality in return for peace and stability. But although the Algerian regime survived the wave of protests in 2011 intact, it is hardly bulletproof. Algerian political Islam has evolved beyond its 1990s antagonistic worldview. New Algerian Islamist parties could reemerge as a serious rival to the military regime. And with Algeria’s immense financial resources, this would give the first camp a major strategic advantage.

The third factor is Saudi Arabia, where the royal family is digging in its heels. A rising middle class that has a huge stake in the economy -- and has been increasingly exposed to political and social currents outside the conservative kingdom -- has finally started to demand political representation. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s economic prospects are slowly deteriorating. (The country is expected to become a net energy importer by 2030.) A sagging economy will only hinder the royal family’s ability to keep buying middle-class support through social welfare and public allowances. The threats of a low-level Shiite insurgency in the kingdom’s eastern province, a renewed Shiite Houthi militancy on the borders with Yemen, or a protest movement among young, disaffected Saudis could erode the government’s authority. A weakening of the Saudi regime would undermine the traditionalists’ camp by diverting the resources and dampening the will of its most powerful and assertive member.

But there is another scenario. King Abdullah, who is 89 years old, has shuffled responsibilities and positions within the ruling family, and the rising (relatively young) princes are aware of the challenges their political system faces. If, motivated by these existential threats, the Saudi regime can evolve and turn the kingdom into a functioning constitutional monarchy in which the political, social, and economic rights of large groups of young Saudis are respected, it could lead to a long but relatively stable transition. A new, assertive Saudi leadership, buoyed by political legitimacy, would imbue the traditionalists’ camp with strong momentum.

The fourth factor is just how much more chaos the Middle East sees over the coming decade. The civil war in Syria is likely to end with a semblance of a centralized authority in Damascus, surrounded by quasi-independent political entities. Several Salafist jihadist groups in the country could manage to entrench themselves in the increasingly lawless desert plains extending from eastern Syria to western Iraq, where they could try to establish Islamic statelets, isolated from the surrounding world (as similar groups have tried in Afghanistan and the Caucasus). Their presence will be a source of violence and political fragility, primarily for Syria and Iraq, but also for Lebanon and Jordan, opening more fronts in the battle between the two camps.

The camp that can turn the political contests in the region to their advantage, by deflecting potential chaos and inflicting its consequences on the other camp, will be better positioned to win this strategic struggle.

THERE’S A STORM COMING 

As unpredictable as the Middle East will be over the next few years, there are a few certainties. First, following a pattern of the last five decades and increasingly spurred by demographics and the already palpable cultural trends within the region’s colossal youth segment, the wave of urbanization, Westernization, and increased liberalism will prove unstoppable. That will weaken the Islamists, because their attempts to evolve their rhetoric and political messages to match these trends will diminish their support among their core constituencies and gradually detach them from the Islamic frame of reference upon which their entire movement has been built. Second, because of competitive deficiencies in educational quality, technological advancement, and energy costs -- in addition to looming water crises in the Nile and Jordan River basins -- almost all large countries in the region will confront socioeconomic turbulence in the next decade. That will weaken the traditionalist camp, which relies on structured authority.

In a sense, then, both camps could lose. The socioeconomic challenges that all of these countries will confront could trigger a new youth rebellion, which, unlike the 2011 uprisings, would not be directed at the current rulers but at the entire political and economic establishments that control these countries. Such a movement could rapidly dilute the powers of entrenched institutions in old Arab republics as well as in Gulf monarchies. It could also undermine the prospects of political Islam. No matter what, then, adaptability will be key for Islamists and traditionalists alike. The camp that adjusts to these social, political, and economic waves will have better chances of withstanding the approaching storm.

[Foreign Affairs] Arms and Influence in the Gulf

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi Get to Work

Bilal Y. Saab
May 5, 2014

Since the formation of the modern Arab state system in the mid-twentieth century, no Arab country has succeeded in building and sustaining an indigenous national defense industry. Egypt tried hard, but ultimately failed because it lacked the requisite financial and human capital. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq came closest, thanks to its skilled population and oil wealth, but it was stymied by corruption, mismanagement, and war. The Gulf countries, meanwhile, have spent lavish sums on the most modern U.S. and European arms, which they often lack expertise in handling and servicing. “Arabs don’t do maintenance,” the adage went.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) may finally end this streak of Arab failures. Over the past decade, the two countries have quietly developed their military-industrial capacities. Today, they are capable of manufacturing and modernizing military vehicles, communication systems, aerial drones, and more. Further, they have significantly improved their ability to maintain, repair, and retrofit aircraft. And with U.S. assistance, they have trained their militaries to operate some of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world, including Hawk surface-to-air missiles.

To be sure, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are nowhere near self-sufficiency. (Even the most advanced U.S. allies remain heavily dependent on the United States for its military technology and know-how.) Indeed, their defense-industrial efforts are hardly complete, and retain some glaring weaknesses. But both countries have taken advantage of strategic partnerships with the top transatlantic defense companies in order to learn from the best. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have primarily done so through so-called offset agreements, which compel foreign suppliers to invest in local industrial projects so that the recipient country can offset the typically huge cost of defense procurement. Such programs have allowed the two countries to connect their domestic defense sectors with global defense producers and acquire advanced defense industrial knowledge and technology. Meanwhile, the information technology revolution has made the international defense market even more accessible to smaller players, allowing Saudi Arabia and the UAE to manage, and in some instances, overcome key technological hurdles.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s drive for military industrialization reflects their desire to reduce their political dependence on the United States. That is perfectly understandable. No nation wants to be totally reliant on another to protect itself and its interests. But unilateralism on the part of U.S. partners and allies can sometimes undermine U.S. security interests; take, for example, Israel’s unilateral military actions in Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories. Washington has often favored and called for regional solutions to many of the region’s security problems, and it would be relieved if Saudi Arabia and the UAE could use their own new resources to help defuse crises in the future. But if the Saudis or the Emiratis decided to act independently in the event of a new regional crisis, in the mold of the 1990­­–91 Gulf War, the United States could see its regional influence diminish.

Given Saudi Arabia’s size and its own leading role in the Gulf, its current disappointment with U.S. policy in the Middle East deserves closer scrutiny. Should relations between Riyadh and Washington fail to improve, bold unilateral moves by the kingdom, bolstered by more developed national defense and security capabilities, could challenge the U.S. regional force structure and threaten Washington’s other relationships in the Gulf. The UAE is a different story: Abu Dhabi’s armed forces are more technically proficient and combat-ready than the Saudi military, but its leaders are less interested in acting outside of U.S.-led coalitions.

But Saudi Arabia and the UAE have also invested in military industrialization to modernize their societies and diversify their economies. And ultimately, the pace, scope, and effectiveness of Saudi and Emirati military efforts will continue to depend on broader societal changes. Both countries still have considerable deficits of human resources and expertise -- key barriers in the way of building a sustainable defense industry.

Moving forward, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi need to further institutionalize their defense industrial processes, formulate clearer production policies, put in place more competent government managers, and make larger investments in education, research, and technological development. It could take anywhere between five and 15 years before either country can sustainably export military products and rely on its own manpower and arms production capabilities to address national security needs. But the Saudis and Emiratis are wise not to rush. It is only a matter of time before they have more advanced defense industries -- and the independence that comes with it.
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BILAL Y. SAAB is senior fellow for Middle East security at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council.

[Foreign Affairs] Far Eastern Promises

Why Washington Should Focus on Asia

By Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner

The United States is in the early stages of a substantial national project: reorienting its foreign policy to commit greater attention and resources to the Asia-Pacific region. This reformulation of U.S. priorities has emerged during a period of much-needed strategic reassessment, after more than a decade of intense engagement with South Asia and the Middle East. It is premised on the idea that the history of the twenty-first century will be written largely in the Asia-Pacific, a region that welcomes U.S. leadership and rewards U.S. engagement with a positive return on political, economic, and military investments.

As a result, the Obama administration is orchestrating a comprehensive set of diplomatic, economic, and security initiatives now known as the “pivot,” or “rebalancing,” to Asia. The policy builds on more than a century of U.S. involvement in the region, including important steps taken by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations; as President Barack Obama has rightly noted, the United States is in reality and rhetoric already a “Pacific power.” But the rebalancing does represent a significant elevation of Asia’s place in U.S. foreign policy.

Questions about the purpose and scope of the new approach emerged as soon as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered what remains the clearest articulation of the strategy, and first used the term “pivot” to describe it, in a 2011 article in Foreign Policy. Almost three years later, the Obama administration still confronts the persistent challenge of explaining the concept and delivering on its promise. But despite the intense scrutiny and short-term setbacks faced by the policy, there is little doubt that a major shift is well under way. And whether Washington wants it to or not, Asia will command more attention and resources from the United States, thanks to the region’s growing prosperity and influence -- and the enormous challenges the region poses. The question, then, is not whether the United States will focus more on Asia but whether it can do so with the necessary resolve, resources, and wisdom.

EASTBOUND AND DOWN

Paying more attention to Asia is not an admission of defeat in the Middle East.

The Asia-Pacific region exerts an inescapable gravitational pull. It is home to more than half of the world’s population and contains the largest democracy in the world (India), the second- and third-largest economies (China and Japan), the most populous Muslim-majority nation (Indonesia), and seven of the ten largest armies. The Asian Development Bank has predicted that before the middle of this century, the region will account for half of the world’s economic output and include four of the world’s ten largest economies (China, India, Indonesia, and Japan).

But it is the trajectory of Asia’s evolution, not just its dizzying scale, that makes the region so consequential. According to Freedom House, during the last five years, the Asia-Pacific has been the only region in the world to record steady improvements in political rights and civil liberties. And despite questions about the ability of emerging markets to sustain rapid economic growth, Asian nations still represent some of the most promising opportunities in an otherwise sluggish and uncertain global economy. At the same time, Asia struggles with sources of chronic instability, owing to the highly provocative actions of North Korea, the growth of defense budgets throughout the region, vexing maritime disputes that roil relations in the East China and South China seas, and nontraditional security threats such as natural disasters, human trafficking, and the drug trade.

The United States has an irrefutable interest in the course Asia will take in the coming years. The region is the leading destination for U.S. exports, outpacing Europe by more than 50 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Both U.S. direct investment in Asia and Asian direct investment in the United States have roughly doubled in the past decade, with China, India, Singapore, and South Korea accounting for four of the ten fastest-growing sources of foreign direct investment in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The United States also has five defense treaty allies in the region (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand), as well as strategically important partnerships with Brunei, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan and evolving ties with Myanmar (also known as Burma). Major U.S. military bases in Japan and South Korea are central to Washington’s ability to project power in Asia and beyond.

U.S. military alliances have undergirded the region’s security for decades, and one of the main purposes of the pivot is to deepen such ties. In recent years, Washington has encouraged its partners in Asia to prevent conflicts between major powers, keep sea-lanes open, combat extremism, and address nontraditional security threats. Japan and South Korea are poised to take increasingly prominent roles in joint operations with the United States, and U.S. forces are working with Australia to develop its amphibious capabilities and with the Philippines to boost its capacity to police its own shores. The net result has been more powerful alliances and a more secure region.

None of this suggests an effort to encircle or weaken China. To the contrary, developing a more robust and productive relationship with Beijing represents a principal goal of the rebalancing strategy. Far from seeking to contain China, the United States has in the last several years sought to build a more mature bilateral relationship through unprecedented, frequent top-level meetings across issues and throughout the countries’ respective bureaucracies. Even military-to-military relations are back on track, at times actually taxing the Pentagon’s ability to keep up with Beijing’s proposed levels of activity.

A PIVOT TO -- AND WITHIN -- ASIA

The rebalancing strategy also calls for a substantial increase in U.S. engagement with the multilateral institutions of the Asia-Pacific region. Under the Obama administration, the United States has gained membership in the East Asia Summit, the region’s premier annual gathering of heads of state; signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, which signals enhanced U.S. commitment to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); and placed a permanent ambassador to ASEAN in Jakarta. Although these overlapping institutions can be frustrating, given their slow pace and requirements for consensus, they promote regional cooperation and help build a system of rules and mechanisms to address complex transnational challenges. In June 2013, for example, ASEAN hosted its first-ever humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise, which included more than 3,000 personnel from 18 nations.

Meanwhile, the United States is responding to the new reality that the Asia-Pacific region increasingly drives global economic growth. The Obama administration has advanced U.S. economic interests by bringing the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement into force in 2012 and pushing hard to complete negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free-trade agreement among a dozen countries. A number of the countries participating in the TPP talks are vibrant markets in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Singapore, which reflects the growing geopolitical importance of that subregion. Indeed, the U.S. pivot to Asia has been accompanied by a pivot within Asia. Washington is balancing its historical emphasis on the countries of Northeast Asia with new attention to countries in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, seeking to augment two-way trade and investment with some of the world’s most vibrant economies. In 2010, Washington and Jakarta established a “comprehensive partnership” to deepen cooperation across a wide range of issues, including health care, science, technology, and entrepreneurship.

A similar desire to realign U.S. priorities in the region helps explain the changes the Pentagon has made to its military posture there. Although U.S. military bases in Northeast Asia remain central to Washington’s ability to project power and fight wars, they are increasingly vulnerable to disabling missile attacks, and they lie relatively far from potential disasters and crises in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, with countries in Southeast Asia expressing growing interest in receiving American military training and assistance with disaster response, the United States has diversified its military footprint in the region, stationing hundreds of U.S. marines in Darwin, Australia, and deploying a pair of Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore.

Those changes to the U.S. military’s posture have been criticized as either provocative or meaningless. Both charges are off the mark. These efforts hardly signal aggression; they contribute primarily to peacetime activities, such as responding to natural disasters, and not to U.S. war-fighting capabilities. And the seemingly modest number of marines and ships involved masks the significant benefits they offer to the militaries of U.S. partners, who gain unparalleled opportunities for joint exercises and training with U.S. forces.

The United States must make clear to China that revisionist behavior is incompatible with stable U.S.-Chinese relations.

In pivoting to Asia, the Obama administration seeks not only to advance U.S. economic and security interests but also to deepen cultural and people-to-people ties. The administration further hopes that the pivot will help the United States support human rights and democracy in the region. The new approach has already contributed to advances in Myanmar, where the government has taken remarkable steps, including the release of political prisoners, the implementation of long-overdue economic reforms, and the promotion of organizing rights and greater press freedom. Although more progress is necessary, particularly on the protection of the country’s ethnic minorities, Myanmar serves as a powerful example of a once closed and brutal country taking transformational steps, and the United States has been an essential partner in this reform effort from the start.

FOREIGN POLICY IS NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME

Opponents of the pivot have raised three main objections. First, some worry that the pivot will unnecessarily antagonize China. This misperception ignores the fact that deepening engagement with Beijing has been a central and irrefutable feature of the rebalancing policy. Examples of the new approach include the establishment of the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, a comprehensive set of meetings chaired by the U.S. secretaries of state and the treasury and their Chinese counterparts, and the Strategic Security Dialogue, through which the two countries have held unprecedented high-level discussions on such sensitive matters as maritime security and cybersecurity. Tensions might rise due to the increased U.S. military presence in Asia and Washington’s more robust outreach to China’s neighbors. But bilateral ties are developing in such a way that any disagreements produced by the pivot will be addressed in the broader context of a more stable and cooperative U.S.-Chinese relationship.

A second critique stems from the argument that it would be unwise or unrealistic to shift Washington’s focus from the Middle East to Asia given the conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria, the instability in Egypt and Iraq, and the long-running confrontation between Iran and the Western powers. But this criticism relies on a caricature of the rebalancing strategy. According to this view, the Middle East and South Asia have sapped U.S. power and prestige and the pivot is really an attempt to cut and run by turning to the more peaceful and profitable shores of the Asia-Pacific. It is certainly true that the Obama administration has tried to reduce the U.S. footprint in the Middle East. But even though resources are finite, foreign policy is not a zero-sum game, and the criticism that paying more attention to Asia is somehow an admission of strategic defeat in the Middle East misses a crucial reality: during the past decade, the very Asian countries to which Washington wants to pay more attention have quietly built a substantial stake in the furtherance of peace and stability across the Middle East and South Asia and very much want the United States to preserve its influence in those regions.

Not long ago, most Asian nations were predominantly concerned with developments in their backyards and tended to see problems elsewhere as someone else’s responsibility. One of the most important successes of President George W. Bush’s Asia policy was to encourage the region’s rising powers to contribute more in other parts of the world. Partly in response, during the Bush years, for the first time, many East Asian governments developed an “out of area” perspective and engaged more in diplomacy, development, and security in the Middle East and South Asia. Japan has become a leading supporter of civil society development in Afghanistan, funding schools and civil service organizations and training Afghans in criminal justice, education, health care, and agriculture. In the wake of the Arab Spring, South Korea began supporting development across the Middle East. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have provided material assistance to training programs for doctors, police officers, and teachers in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Australia and New Zealand have sent special forces to fight in Afghanistan. Even China has been more active in the behind-the-scenes diplomacy aimed at constraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions, addressing piracy on the high seas, and shaping Afghanistan’s future.

Of course, encouragement from Washington is only one factor behind Asian countries’ growing involvement in the Middle East; another undeniable element is their increasing thirst for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. Asia consumes some 30 million barrels of oil every day, more than twice the amount that the EU does. Asian governments know that a hasty U.S. retreat from the Middle East would carry with it unacceptable risks to their countries’ energy security and economic growth. As a result, they have invested substantial political and financial capital in, and in some cases sent military forces to, the Middle East over the course of more than a decade to supplement, not supplant, the stabilizing role of the United States. Put simply, Washington’s Asian partners support the pivot but would hardly cheer the prospect of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East -- and crucially, they do not seem to see any contradiction between these two positions.

A third argument against the pivot concerns the sustainability of the approach during a time of budget cuts: as defense spending falls, skeptics wonder how the United States will be able to invest the resources necessary to reassure its Asian allies and dissuade would-be provocateurs, especially as China’s power and influence continue to grow. The answer is that rebalancing toward Asia will not require dramatic new funding; rather, the Pentagon will need to be more flexible and find better ways to spend. For example, as the United States reduces the overall size of its army, it should sustain its military presence in Asia and invest in naval and air capabilities better suited to the region’s security environment. And given that U.S. defense spending is unlikely to increase significantly anytime soon, Washington should do more to improve the capacity of Asian militaries by conducting more educational and professional exchanges, enhancing multilateral military exercises, passing along equipment that U.S. forces no longer need, and engaging in more joint planning.

BALANCING ACT

Although the most common arguments against the rebalancing do not withstand scrutiny, the policy nevertheless faces major challenges. Perhaps chief among these is a lack of human capital. After more than a decade of war and counterinsurgency, the United States has developed and promoted an entire generation of soldiers, diplomats, and intelligence specialists well versed in ethnic rivalry in Iraq, the tribal differences in Afghanistan, postconflict reconstruction strategies, and U.S. Special Forces and drone tactics. But Washington has not made any comparable effort to develop a sustained cadre of Asia experts across the U.S. government, and a surprising number of senior government officials make their first visits to the region only once they have reached high-level positions near the end of their careers. This is a genuine weakness in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, since even the most accomplished public servant will find it difficult to navigate Asia’s complexities without prior experience in the region. The pivot to Asia will therefore affect the budgets of civilian government agencies, not just that of the Pentagon, as the United States invests more in ensuring that U.S. diplomats, aid workers, trade negotiators, and intelligence professionals have the language skills and exposure to Asia they need to do their jobs well.

The pivot will also be buffeted by the steady stream of crises that other regions -- especially the Middle East -- will surely continue to supply. At the same time, pressure to “come home” seems certain to grow. In the wake of every modern American conflict, from World War I to the 1990–91 Gulf War, the public has put pressure on politicians and officials to refocus on domestic issues. The past 13 years of war have again triggered this instinctive insularity, which has also been fostered by a frustratingly slow economic recovery after the financial crisis. Although internationalist and strong-defense strains still exist in U.S. politics, there are subtle (and not so subtle) signs in Congress that the United States may be entering a new era in which U.S. engagement abroad -- even in areas critical to the country’s economic well-being, such as Asia -- will be a tougher sell. Those political constraints will only make a hard job even harder: when it comes to Asia, the to-do list is long, both for the remaining years of the Obama administration and beyond.

PIVOT PARTNERS

In Asia, economics and security are inextricably linked, and the United States will not be able to sustain its leadership there through military might alone. That is why the successful conclusion of the TPP -- which will require intense negotiations overseas and on Capitol Hill -- is a cardinal priority. The agreement would immediately benefit the U.S. economy and would create a long-term trade system in Asia that could not be dragged down by protectionism. To give the United States added leverage in the negotiations, Congress should quickly reinstate fast-track trade promotion authority. Under that system, after negotiating the TPP and other free-trade agreements, the White House could present them for up-or-down votes in Congress, which would not be able to amend or filibuster the deals. The Obama administration should also leverage the U.S. energy boom and accelerate the export of liquefied natural gas to Asia to enhance the energy security of its allies and partners there and to send a strong signal of U.S. commitment to the region’s development.

Washington’s ever-deepening engagement with Beijing is already yielding dividends as the countries increasingly coordinate their approaches to Iran and North Korea while managing potential crises in the South China Sea. But the United States will only find it more difficult to navigate relations with a rising China that is now both a “strategic partner,” as President Bill Clinton described it in 1998, and a “strategic competitor,” as Bush later dubbed it.

China’s attempts to change the territorial status quo in the East China and South China seas -- for example, by establishing an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea over islands administered by Japan -- present an immediate challenge. The United States will have to make clear to China that revisionist behavior is incompatible with stable U.S.-Chinese relations, much less with the “new type of major-country relationship” that President Xi Jinping has proposed to Obama. Washington recently took a step in the right direction when senior administration officials publicly questioned the legality of China’s expansive territorial claims and warned against the establishment of a second air defense identification zone, this one in the South China Sea.

Across the East China Sea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is seeking to steer Japan out of decades of economic malaise and inject the country with a newfound sense of pride and influence. Washington will have to continue to urge Tokyo to act with restraint and sensitivity, especially when it comes to the controversies over Japan’s imperial past. Abe recently visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, including some convicted of war crimes committed during War World II. The visit might have helped him with some political constituencies at home, but the international costs were high: it raised questions in Washington, further soured Japan’s relations with South Korea, and made China more resolute in its unwillingness to deal directly with Japan as long as Abe is in power.

Amid this tense diplomatic backdrop, the United States will be working with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces so that Japan can take a more active security role in the region and the world. This will involve countering Chinese propaganda that characterizes Japan’s constitutional reinterpretation and military modernization as reactionary or militaristic, when in fact they are perfectly reasonable steps -- and long overdue. The United States will also have to keep devoting considerable political capital to improving ties between Japan and South Korea; a stronger relationship between those two countries would help in dealing with the enormous and growing threat posed by North Korea.

The challenges in Southeast Asia are quite different from those in the Northeast, but no less important to U.S. national interests. A number of countries in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand, are going through varying degrees of political turmoil that could alter their foreign policies. As the chips fall, Washington must adhere to basic principles of democracy and human rights without doing so dogmatically or in ways that would reduce U.S. leverage and influence. Rather than betting on winners, the best approach would be to focus on issues that matter most to people in the region no matter who is in power, such as education, poverty alleviation, and natural-disaster response.

In addition to increasing U.S. participation in Asia’s multilateral forums, Washington should support the development of a rule-based regional order by throwing its full weight behind efforts to use international law and arbitration to address sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea. The Philippines has taken its competing claims with China to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Without making judgments (for now) about the merits of specific claims, Washington should help build an international consensus by calling on all states in Asia to publicly support this mechanism, since the tribunal represents a test of whether the region is prepared to manage its disputes through legal and peaceful means.

The United States cannot rebalance to Asia by itself. It will be essential to bring along European countries, which can make substantial contributions in areas such as international law and institution building. If the tenor of its bilateral relations permits, Washington should also explore opportunities for greater collaboration in East Asia with India and Russia. And of course, it will also be necessary for countries in the region, particularly in Southeast Asia, to demonstrate leadership and initiative to complement U.S. efforts. The point of the pivot to Asia is to foster an open, peaceful, and prosperous region in which governments rely on rules, norms, and institutions to settle differences, rather than coercion and force. The pivot is a U.S. initiative, but its ultimate success will not depend on Washington alone. 

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/4/19]

[共同社] 約瑟夫•奈：中國應採取克制態度 安倍勿煽動民族情緒

【共同社4月19日電】美國前助理國防部長、提出「軟實力」概念的哈佛大學教授約瑟夫•奈日前接受共同社專訪，就尖閣諸島（中國稱釣魚島）、日本的集體自衛權爭論、美中「新型大國關係」等國際政治的熱點問題發表了見解。

　　奈表示，有人在看到克里米亞脫離烏克蘭加入俄羅斯後擔心中國會強行奪取尖閣諸島，但這樣的事不會發生。他認為克里米亞與尖閣諸島的情況完全不同，俄羅斯憑藉具有壓倒性優勢的軍事力量左右了烏克蘭局勢，中國對日本則不具有軍事優勢。他補充道：「日美之間有安全保障條約，尖閣諸島是該條約第5條的適用對象。烏克蘭與美國之間則沒有這樣的條約。」他還表示：「美國國防部長和國務卿曾明確說過尖閣諸島適用安保條約第5條。我預計奧巴馬總統本月下旬訪日時會向安倍晉三首相清楚地確認這一點。」

　　美國政府表示在尖閣諸島的主權問題上不持立場。奈就此做出了如下解讀：美國政府的意思是「對19世紀末發生了什麼不持特定立場」，那是「很久以前的事」，當事方可以到國際法庭上爭論。他同時強調，1972年沖繩回歸日本時美國把對尖閣諸島的施政權還給了日本，正因如此，尖閣諸島適用《日美安保條約》，「『中國不要對此產生誤判』，這一點美國說得很清楚」。

　　日本政府修改了「武器出口三原則」，並計畫解禁集體自衛權。奈表示，根據《聯合國憲章》日本擁有集體自衛權，但一直單方面地禁止行使這一權利。他認為日本政府可通過修改憲法解釋解禁集體自衛權，沒有必要修改憲法，理由是日本參加了聯合國維和行動及索馬里海域的反海盜護航，在東非國家吉布地擁有自衛隊的活動基地，“實際上已經在行使集體自衛權”。

　　奈認為日本政府修改武器出口政策也是正確的，並稱自己一直對安倍首相的多項新防衛政策給予非常高的評價。另一方面，奈認為「用民族主義包裝這些政策是錯誤的，損害了安倍自身的立場」。他表示：「參拜靖國神社、做出修改‘河野談話’的姿態等等，如果提出歷史問題，會使中國和韓國想起戰前的日本，感到不安。應該停止煽動民族主義情緒，一心務實。」

　　奈就日韓關係的惡化指出：「原因有兩個，一個是韓國自身的民族主義，另一個是日本的可謂愚蠢的錯誤應對。」他認為日方對韓國「生厭」、做出要修改「河野談話」的姿態，反而損害了日本自身的利益。

　　關於中國提倡建立的美中「新型大國關係」，奈表示「誰都不知道中國的真正用意是什麼，這是一種口號」。在他看來，中國國家主席習近平所說的「新型大國關係」的意思似乎是大國之間不要陷入零和博弈。奈表示：「如果是這個意思，那是好事。美中需要在穩定國際金融、應對全球變暖和防治傳染病等方面合作並借助日本等國的力量。」他還指出，如果「新型大國關係」意味著美中兩國的霸權（G2），那是不能接受的，「美國不打算建立G2，明確否認了美中分治太平洋」。奈認為美中關係今後如何發展還需要觀察。他說：「美國不會容忍中國的霸權主義。希望不要忘記東亞穩定的基礎是《日美安保條約》、日美同盟關係將維持下去。」

　　奈認為2008年金融危機後中國覺得自身經濟日漸強盛，美國則走向衰落，因而放棄了從鄧小平時代起執行的低調外交政策，其結果是惡化了與日本、菲律賓、越南和印度等幾乎所有鄰國的關係。他表示「自信越強，所處的境遇就越差。這是中國面臨的一大困局」、「希望中國能重新採取鄧小平時代的克制態度」。

　　奈就目前整個國際局勢表示：「相對而言東亞還是穩定的。《日美安保條約》打下了穩定的基礎，經濟相互依賴程度也很高。令人擔憂的是歐洲。俄羅斯是衰落中的大國，普京總統開始了相當大的賭博。有必要明確地告訴俄羅斯，如果再賭下去會付出高昂代價。」（完）

[共同社 2014-4-19]

[Foreign Affairs] Putin's Brain

Alexander Dugin and the Philosophy Behind Putin's Invasion of Crimea

By Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has searched fruitlessly for a new grand strategy -- something to define who Russians are and where they are going. “In Russian history during the 20th century, there have been various periods -- monarchism, totalitarianism, perestroika, and finally, a democratic path of development,” Russian President Boris Yeltsin said a couple of years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, “Each stage has its own ideology,” he continued, but now “we have none.”

To fill that hole, in 1996 Yeltsin designated a team of scholars to work together to find what Russians call the Russkaya ideya (“Russian idea”), but they came up empty-handed. Around the same time, various other groups also took up the task, including a collection of conservative Russian politicians and thinkers who called themselves Soglasiye vo imya Rossiya (“Accord in the Name of Russia”). Along with many other Russian intellectuals of the day, they were deeply disturbed by the weakness of the Russian state, something that they believed needed to be fixed for Russia to return to its rightful glory. And for them, that entailed return to the Russian tradition of a powerful central government. How that could be accomplished was a question for another day.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, to whom many of the Soglasiye still have ties, happened to agree with their ideals and overall goals. He came to power in 1999 with a nationwide mandate to stabilize the Russian economy and political system. Thanks to rising world energy prices, he quickly achieved that goal. By the late 2000s, he had breathing room to return to the question of the Russian idea. Russia, he began to argue, was a unique civilization of its own. It could not be made to fit comfortably into European or Asian boxes and had to live by its own uniquely Russian rules and morals. And so, with the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin began a battle against the liberal (Western) traits that some segments of Russian society had started to adopt. Moves of his that earned condemnation in the West -- such as the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and the sentencing of members of Pussy Riot, a feminist punk-rock collective, to two years in prison for hooliganism -- were popular in Russia.

True to Putin’s insistence that Russia cannot be judged in Western terms, Putin’s new conservatism does not fit U.S. and European definitions. In fact, the main trait they share is opposition to liberalism. Whereas conservatives in those parts of the world are fearful of big government and put the individual first, Russian conservatives advocate for state power and see individuals as serving that state. They draw on a long tradition of Russian imperial conservatism and, in particular, Eurasianism. That strain is authoritarian in essence, traditional, anti-American, and anti-European; it values religion and public submission. And more significant to today’s headlines, it is expansionist.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ultranationalist ideologies were decidedly out of vogue.

RUSSIAN ROOTS

The roots of Eurasianism lie in Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, although many of the ideas that it contains have much longer histories in Russia. After the 1917 October Revolution and the civil war that followed, two million anti-Bolshevik Russians fled the country. From Sofia to Berlin and then Paris, some of these exiled Russian intellectuals worked to create an alternative to the Bolshevik project. One of those alternatives eventually became the Eurasianist ideology. Proponents of this idea posited that Russia’s Westernizers and Bolsheviks were both wrong: Westernizers for believing that Russia was a (lagging) part of European civilization and calling for democratic development; Bolsheviks for presuming that the whole country needed restructuring through class confrontation and a global revolution of the working class. Rather, Eurasianists stressed, Russia was a unique civilization with its own path and historical mission: To create a different center of power and culture that would be neither European nor Asian but have traits of both. Eurasianists believed in the eventual downfall of the West and that it was Russia’s time to be the world’s prime exemplar.

In 1921, the exiled thinkers Georges Florovsky, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Petr Savitskii, and Petr Suvchinsky published a collection of articles titled Exodus to the East, which marked the official birth of the Eurasianist ideology. The book was centered on the idea that Russia’s geography is its fate and that there is nothing any ruler can do to unbind himself from the necessities of securing his lands. Given Russia’s vastness, they believed, its leaders must think imperially, consuming and assimilating dangerous populations on every border. Meanwhile, they regarded any form of democracy, open economy, local governance, or secular freedom as highly dangerous and unacceptable.

In that sense, Eurasianists considered Peter the Great -- who tried to Europeanize Russia in the eighteenth century -- an enemy and a traitor. Instead, they looked with favor on Tatar-Mongol rule, between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Genghis Khan’s empire had taught Russians crucial lessons about building a strong, centralized state and pyramid-like system of submission and control.

Eurasianist beliefs gained a strong following within the politically active part of the emigrant community, or White Russians, who were eager to promote any alternative to Bolshevism. However, the philosophy was utterly ignored, and even suppressed in the Soviet Union, and it practically died with its creators. That is, until the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia’s ideological slate was wiped clean.

Alexander Dugin. (Dugin.ru)

THE EVOLUTION OF A REVOLUTIONARY

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ultranationalist ideologies were decidedly out of vogue. Rather, most Russians looked forward to Russia’s democratization and reintegration with the world. Still, a few hard-core patriotic elements remained that opposed de-Sovietization and believed -- as Putin does today -- that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. Among them was the ideologist Alexander Dugin, who was a regular contributor to the ultranationalist analytic center and newspaper Den’ (later known as Zavtra). His earliest claim to fame was a 1991 pamphlet, “The War of the Continents,” in which he described an ongoing geopolitical struggle between the two types of global powers: land powers, or “Eternal Rome,” which are based on the principles of statehood, communality, idealism, and the superiority of the common good, and civilizations of the sea, or “Eternal Carthage,” which are based on individualism, trade, and materialism. In Dugin’s understanding, “Eternal Carthage,” was historically embodied by Athenian democracy and the Dutch and British Empires. Now, it is represented by the United States. “Eternal Rome” is embodied by Russia. For Dugin, the conflict between the two will last until one is destroyed completely -- no type of political regime and no amount of trade can stop that. In order for the “good” (Russia) to eventually defeat the “bad” (United States), he wrote, a conservative revolution must take place.

His ideas of conservative revolution are adapted from German interwar thinkers who promoted the destruction of the individualistic liberal order and the commercial culture of industrial and urban civilization in favor of a new order based on conservative values such as the submission of individual needs and desires to the needs of the many, a state-organized economy, and traditional values for society based on a quasi-religious view of the world. For Dugin, the prime example of a conservative revolution was the radical, Nazi-sponsored north Italian Social Republic of Salò (1943–45). Indeed, Dugin continuously returned to what he saw as the virtues of Nazi practices and voiced appreciation for the SS and Herman Wirth’s occult Ahnenerbe group. In particular, Dugin praised the orthodox conservative-revolutionary projects that the SS and Ahnenerbe developed for postwar Europe, in which they envisioned a new, unified Europe regulated by a feudal system of ethnically separated regions that would serve as vassals to the German suzerain. It is worth noting that, among other projects, the Ahnenerbe was responsible for all the experiments on humans in the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.

Between 1993 and 1998, Dugin joined the Russian nationalist legend Eduard Limonov in creating the now banned National-Bolshevik Movement (later the National-Bolshevik Party, or NBP), where he became the chief ideologist of a strange synthesis of socialism and ultra-right ideology. By the late 1990s, he was recognized as the intellectual leader of Russia’s entire ultra-right movement. He had his own publishing house, Arktogeya (“Northern Country”), several slick Web sites, a series of newspapers and magazines, and published The Foundation of Geopolitics, an immediate best seller that was particularly popular with the military.

Since the early 2000s, Dugin’s ideas have only gained in popularity. Their rise mirrors Putin’s own transition from apparent democrat to authoritarian.

Dugin’s introduction to the political mainstream came in 1999, when he became an adviser to the Russian parliamentarian Gennadii Seleznev, one of Russia’s most conservative politicians, a two-time chairman of the Russian parliament, a member of the Communist Party, and a founder of the Party of Russia’s Rebirth. That same year, with the help of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of Russia’s nationalist and very misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Dugin became the chairman of the geopolitical section of the Duma’s Advisory Council on National Security.

But his inclusion in politics did not necessarily translate to wider appeal among the politics of the elite. For that, Dugin had to transform his ideology into something else -- something uniquely Russian. Namely, he dropped the most outrageous, esoteric, and radical elements of his ideology, including his mysticism, and drew instead on the classical Eurasianism of Trubetzkoy and Savitskii. He set to work creating the International Eurasian Movement, a group that would come to involve academics, politicians, parliamentarians, journalists, and intellectuals from Russia, its neighbors, and the West.

TO EUROPE AND BEYOND

Like the classical Eurasianists of the 1920s and 1930s, Dugin’s ideology is anti-Western, anti-liberal, totalitarian, ideocratic, and socially traditional. Its nationalism is not Slavic-oriented (although Russians have a special mission to unite and lead) but also applies to the other nations of Eurasia. And it labels rationalism as Western and thus promotes a mystical, spiritual, emotional, and messianic worldview.

But Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism differs significantly from previous Eurasianist thought. First, Dugin conceives of Eurasia as being much larger than his predecessors ever did. For example, whereas Savitskii believed that the Russian-Eurasian state should stretch from the Great Wall of China in the east to the Carpathian Mountains to the west, Dugin believes that the Eurasian state must incorporate all of the former Soviet states, members of the socialist block, and perhaps even establish a protectorate over all EU members. In the east, Dugin proposes to go as far as incorporating Manchuria, Xinxiang, Tibet, and Mongolia. He even proposes eventually turning southwest toward the Indian Ocean.

In order to include Europe in Eurasia, Dugin had to rework the enemy. In classical Eurasianist thought, the enemy was the Romano-Germanic Europe. In Dugin’s version, the enemy is the United States. As he writes: “The USA is a chimerical, anti-organic, transplanted culture which does not have sacral state traditions and cultural soil, but, nevertheless, tries to force upon the other continents its anti-ethnic, anti-traditional [and] “babylonic” model.” Classical Eurasianists, by contrast, favored the United States and even considered it to be a model, especially praising its economic nationalism, the Monroe Doctrine, and its non-membership in the League of Nations.

Another crucial point of difference is his attitude toward fascism and Nazi Germany. Even before World War II, classical Eurasianists opposed fascism and stood against racial anti-Semitism. Dugin has lauded the state of Israel for hewing to the principles of conservativism but has also spoken of a connection between Zionism and Nazism and implied that Jews only deserved their statehood because of the Holocaust. He also divides Jews into “bad” and “good.” The good are orthodox and live in Israel; the bad live outside of Israel and try to assimilate. Of course, these days, those are views to which he rarely alludes in public.

PUTIN’S PLAY

Since the early 2000s, Dugin’s ideas have only gained in popularity. Their rise mirrors Putin’s own transition from apparent democrat to authoritarian. In fact, Putin’s conservative turn has given Dugin a perfect chance to “help out” the Russian leader with proper historical, geopolitical, and cultural explanations for his policies. Recognizing how attractive Dugin’s ideas are to some Russians, Putin has seized on some of them to further his own goals.

Although Dugin has criticized Putin from time to time for his economic liberalism and cooperation with the West, he has generally been the president’s steadfast ally. In 2002, he created the Eurasia Party, which was welcomed by many in Putin’s administration. The Kremlin has long tolerated, and even encouraged, the creation of such smaller allied political parties, which give Russian voters the sense that they actually do live in a democracy. Dugin’s party, for example, provides an outlet for those with chauvinistic and nationalist leanings, even as the party remains controlled by the Kremlin. At the same time, Dugin built strong ties with Sergei Glazyev, who is a co-leader of the patriotic political bloc Rodina and currently Putin’s adviser on Eurasian integration. In 2003, Dugin tried to become a parliamentary deputy along with the Rodina bloc but failed.

Although his electoral foray was a bust, some voters’ positive reception to his anti-Western projects encouraged Dugin to forge ahead with the Eurasianist movement. After the shock of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, he created the Eurasianist Youth Union, which promotes patriotic and anti-Western education. It has 47coordination offices throughout Russia and nine in countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Poland, and Turkey. Its reach far exceeds that of any existing democratic-oriented movement.

In 2008, Dugin was made a professor at Russia’s top university, Moscow State University, and the head of the national sociological organization Center for Conservative Studies. He also appears regularly on all of Russia’s leading TV channels, commenting on both domestic and foreign issues. His profile has only increased since the pro-democracy protests of the winter of 2011–12 and Putin’s move around the same time to build a Eurasian Union. His outsized presence in Russian public life is a sign of Putin’s approval; Russian media, particularly television, is controlled almost entirely by the Kremlin. If the Kremlin disapproves of (or not longer has a use for) a particular personality, it will remove him or her from the airwaves.

Dugin and other like-minded thinkers have wholeheartedly endorsed the Russian government’s action in Ukraine, calling on him to go further and take the east and south of Ukraine, which, he writes, “welcomes Russia, waits for it, pleads for Russia to come.” The Russian people agree. Putin’s approval ratings have climbed over the past month, and 65 percent of Russians believe that Crimea and eastern regions of Ukraine are “essentially Russian territory” and that “Russia is right to use military force for the defense of the population.” Dugin, then, has proven to be a great asset to Putin. He has popularized the president’s position on such issues as limits on personal freedom, a traditional understanding of family, intolerance of homosexuality, and the centrality of Orthodox Christianity to Russia’s rebirth as a great power. But his greatest creation is neo-Eurasianism.

Dugin’s ideology has influenced a whole generation of conservative and radical activists and politicians, who, if given the chance, would fight to adapt its core principles as state policy. Considering the shabby state of Russian democracy, and the country’s continued move away from Western ideas and ideals, one might argue that the chances of seeing neo-Eurasianism conquer new ground are increasing. Although Dugin’s form of it is highly theoretical and deeply mystical, it is proving to be a strong contender for the role of Russia’s chief ideology. Whether Putin can control it as he has controlled so many others is a question that may determine his longevity.

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/3/31]

[Foreign Affairs] Man in the Middle

Why Abdullah Gul Will Disappoint the West

By Steven A. Cook

Many observers, both in Turkey and abroad, believe that this is Turkish President Abdullah Gul's moment to shine. In recent months, Turkey's democracy has careened wildly off its democratic path, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has resorted to increasingly authoritarian measures -- including a ban on access to Twitter and YouTube -- to suppress what he believes is an existential threat posed by his onetime ally Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish cleric who has followers in positions of influence throughout the government. Erdogan seems intent on trying to excise Gulenists from Turkish society entirely. Erdogan's paranoia has also moved the AKP toward becoming an authoritarian cult of personality.

This is where many Turks, Europeans, and Americans have hoped that Gul would step in to steer Turkey back onto a democratic course. In mid-February, Gunay Hilal Aygun, a columnist for the Gulen-affiliated Today’s Zaman, asked, “Will President Gul let the Turkish people down?” The Financial Times picked up on this theme a few weeks later when the editorial board called on Gul “to take a stand” against Erdogan. What these observers seem to want is for Gul to come down from the apolitical confines of his presidential office and directly challenge Erdogan for leadership of the AKP, with a promise of restoring the party's original coalition, which included pious Muslims of all stripes, Kurds, secular liberals, and the business elite. These hopes aren't entirely fanciful, but they are far too optimistic. In fact, they have fundamentally missed Gul's broader reading of Turkish politics.

Gul has carefully cultivated his reputation as a moral voice in Turkey's transition to democracy, and in recent months he has not shied from expressing his displeasure with Erdogan's style of leadership. In response to the government’s ban on Twitter after Erdogan vowed to “eradicate” the service, Gul tweeted, “The wholesale shuttering of social media platforms cannot be approved. I hope this practice will not last long.” Months earlier, at the opening session of the Grand National Assembly, Gul distanced himself from the prime minister's increasing authoritarianism, declaring, “I have always acted with the awareness that democracy requires tolerance, patience, perseverance and sacrifice. I was also mindful of the fact that democracy is a system of checks and balances.” And in responding to last spring's Gezi Park protests, Gul’s diplomatic manner and vocal support for peaceful dialogue with protesters contrasted starkly with Erdogan’s thuggish defiance.

All of this is consistent with Gul's demeanor in meetings with journalists and private interlocutors, where he has offered implicit but unmistakable critiques of the prime minister. He has also hinted that he might return to politics sometime in the future, raising speculation that he would challenge Erdogan. The fact that the president has not been caught up in the ongoing corruption scandal that has enveloped Erdogan and the AKP since last December has only intensified speculation about Gul’s political plans.

But for all of his appealing attributes, Gul has consistently stopped short of taking action. Rather than use the powers of his office to thwart Erdogan’s worst instincts, Gul has done the opposite. Since last June, he has signed into law a slew of restrictive measures supported by Erdogan and passed by the AKP-dominated Grand National Assembly. These new laws range from restricting the Internet to making administering first aid a criminal offense under certain circumstances, to prevent good Samaritans from giving aid to protesters. Gul has also signed into law a measure that strips the independent Supreme Council of Judges and Public Prosecutors of its power to make any judicial appointments and transferred that authority to political appointees at the Ministry of Justice.

Gul's aides have tried to paint his actions as attempts to make the best of a bad situation. For example, Gul approved the Internet access bill but included the proviso that the parts of the legislation that most egregiously violated international norms be revised. Yet Gul's more idealistic supporters were stunned that he would give his assent at all. They couldn't understand how the man whom they believed clearly disapproved of Erdogan's authoritarianism had been so willing to act as his accomplice.

But Gul's behavior should not come as such a surprise. It is the product of his understanding of Turkey's present political situation and his own broader political goals. The fact that Gul has failed to challenge Erdogan doesn't mean there aren't differences between the two men. There is no reason to doubt that Gul is sincere when he expresses democratic ideals. But for the present moment, at least, Gul believes that it is necessary to subordinate his ideals for the sake of maintaining the stability and strength of the AKP.

As Turkey's president, Gul is legally not permitted to have a political affiliation, and he has done his best to stay above day-to-day politics. But his past as a political operator can’t be denied. Gul -- along with Erdogan and a number of others -- is a founder of the AKP. As they built the party in 2001 and 2002 they looked to dysfunctional coalition governments of the 1990s, which were composed of various small parties with limited appeal, as a cautionary example. They observed how personal rivalries pushed the previously venerable Motherland and True Path parties into oblivion. Gul and his partners wanted their AKP to rise above all that and to be able to capture a broad share of the public. Just 14 months after founding the AKP, the new party garnered 36 percent of the vote in national elections. The rest is history.

Whatever his other political beliefs, Gul believes that the AKP remains the only vehicle for Turkey’s transformation (and for his own personal ambition). In that sense, anything that Gul does to fracture the AKP would be devastating to his own lifelong political project. Even if he knows that the AKP has lapsed from its reformist origins, Gul likely believes that its disintegration would be worse, since it would return Turkey to the destabilized politics of the recent past.

And Gul would not be wrong to think so. If he directly challenged Erdogan, he would surely receive praise from Turkey watchers in Europe and the United States. But that would hardly compensate for the bruising political battle he would have initiated with Erdogan. For all of the discussions about fissures developing within the party since the Gezi Park protests and a few resignations after the corruption scandal broke, the AKP has remained remarkably cohesive and loyal to Erdogan. Most of the party’s parliamentarians owe their position to the patronage of the prime minister, and Erdogan remains wildly popular among the AKP supporters in the public. Gul has loyalists of his own in the party, of course, but the apolitical nature of the presidency has constrained him from broadening his base within the AKP.

And Gul has surely noticed, during this extended season of Turkish political tumult, that Erdogan has proved to be a fearless combatant. The Gulenists within the police, judiciary, and state prosecutors’ office have thrown virtually everything at him, and the prime minister has only responded in kind. Erdogan’s call for a ban on Twitter and YouTube reflects his willingness to do Turkey harm in pursuit of trying to save himself.

Erdogan's evident lack of judiciousness is the reason that outsiders believe Gul should assert himself; from Gul's perspective, it also the reason he should refrain from doing so. A civil war between pro-Erdogan and pro-Gul factions of the AKP would only serve to benefit their common political enemies, the Kemalists. When Kemalism was the dominant ideology in Turkey, pious Turks like Gul and Erdogan were subjected to routine repression. The rise of the AKP has mostly reduced Kemalism to a hollow ideology, something to which many Turks only pay lip service as they go about their business. But Kemalist forces still exist in Turkey throughout the judiciary, the bureaucracy, academia, big business, and the military. To the extent that a fight with Erdogan would provide an opportunity for Kemalists to return to the fore of national politics, Gul will avoid taking on his old ally.

The president is likely better off avoiding a direct confrontation with Erdogan, signaling his disapproval for the prime minister’s excesses, and hoping that the electoral process provides an opportunity for Turks to alter their country’s current nondemocratic trajectory. The key word is “hope.” Although Erdogan has given up the idea of becoming president under a new constitution that would have granted the presidency broader and more direct political powers, AKP lieutenants have openly floated the idea of changing party bylaws to allow him to serve additional terms in his current office. If that happens, which seems likely, Gul will remain under Erdogan’s shadow. Perhaps Gul is planning to bide his time until Erdogan thoroughly discredits himself with his supporters. But, in that case, he may be waiting a long time. All of Erdogan’s excessive actions to date -- banning Twitter and YouTube, attacking civil society organizations, intimidating the press, and making accusations about foreign plots aimed at bringing Turkey to its knees -- have played well with his constituency.

It is hard not to sympathize with Gul. He is the voice of reason -- or at least portrays himself that way -- in a political environment where so many seem to have taken leave of their senses. But he also believes he has no good options available to him. By wading into the AKP morass, he thinks he would ultimately only be doing damage to himself, his party, and Turkey as a whole. Those who are desperately waiting for Gul to make a move will most likely remain disappointed. He will remain outside the battle -- torn between his political ideals and his calculations of political interest.

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/3/27]

[Foreign Affairs] Islamist Outlaws

Saudi Arabia Takes on the Muslim Brotherhood

By William McCants

On March 7, Saudi Arabia took the extraordinary step of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, on par with Hezbollah and al Qaeda. The move came just two days after the kingdom, together with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, withdrew its ambassador from Qatar because of Qatar’s alleged support of Brotherhood interference in internal politics. Although Saudi Arabia’s dislike of Brotherhood political activities abroad is well known, for decades the kingdom has tolerated (and sometimes even worked with) the local Saudi branch of the Brotherhood. Its sudden reversal is an expression of solidarity with its politically vulnerable allies in the region and a warning to Sunni Islamists within its borders to tread carefully.

This story goes back to the Arab Spring, when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia’s longtime ally, was ousted, and Egypt elected Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood­–linked politician, to fill his shoes. Riyadh feared that the group, now empowered, would try to export the Egyptian revolution regionwide, calling for action against the House of Saud and displacing Saudi’s friends and allies such as the UAE. Those fears were not entirely unfounded.

In Saudi Arabia, members of the Muslim Brotherhood had been at the forefront of the Awakening movement, a push in the early 1990s for political change in response to alleged Saudi government corruption and the basing of U.S. troops in the country. But, as the political science professor Stéphane Lacroix documents in his book Awakening Islam, most members of the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood had quickly fallen into line once the regime began to arrest or sanction its leaders. The Saudi Brotherhood simply had too much to lose: its members helped build the Saudi state and occupied important positions in the religious and educational establishment.

That détente ended with the Arab Spring, when a number of prominent Islamists added their names to a 2011 petition calling for political reforms in the kingdom. They also obliquely criticized the lack of political freedom in Saudi Arabia by lavishing praise on fellow travelers in Tunisia and Egypt. Even Nasir al-Umar, a hard-line Sururi (a blend of Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafism), was singing the praises of democratic change. Then Crown Prince Nayef and future Crown Prince Salman pressed them into silence. According to one person I spoke to on a recent trip to Saudi Arabia, some were forced to sign a pledge to cease criticizing the lack of political freedom in the kingdom. But the renewed détente was fragile, hinging on events in tumultuous Egypt.

There was some reason for Saudi Arabia to fear for its allies in the region as well. Under Mubarak, Egypt had been a dependable Saudi ally. But Morsi sought to chart a neutral course between Saudi Arabia and Iran, following an early fundraising visit to the kingdom with an attempted rapprochement with Iran. The United Arab Emirates was worried, too. The Brotherhood has had a small presence in UAE since the 1960s, but after 9/11 the government started to see the group as a national security threat. It didn’t help that when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt some members of the UAE branch began agitating for political reforms, going so far as to sign a petition calling for elections and real authority for the UAE’s advisory council. The government responded by arresting group members across the country, including men belonging to an alleged terror cell with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

In response to what they saw as Egyptian meddling, Saudi Arabia tried to economically isolate Morsi and hasten his departure. In May 2013, just two months before the military overthrow of Morsi, the Egyptian finance minister complained to the Saudis that Egypt had only received $1 billion of the $3.5 billion in aid promised after Mubarak’s downfall. When the Egyptian military overthrew Morsi just a year into his rule, Saudi Arabia applauded and quickly promised Egypt a new aid package of $5 billion, together with one from the UAE for $3 billion and from Kuwait for $4 billion. When the new regime massacred Brotherhood protestors in August, the taciturn King Abdullah uncharacteristically voiced his public support for the slaughter as a blow against terrorism. When the new Egyptian government declared the group a terrorist organization in late December 2013, Saudi Arabia followed suit. When UAE decided not to replace its departing ambassador in Qatar -- partly to punish Qatar for its refusal to discipline an influential Qatar-based Brotherhood spiritual leader who preached that the UAE is against Islamic rule -- Saudi Arabia recalled its own ambassador in solidarity.

Saudi Arabia’s moves have provoked some unhappiness at home. Saudi Islamists, particularly the Brothers, are convinced that Morsi’s overthrow was part of a Saudi plot to roll back Islamist political gains of the past three years. In defiance, they festooned their social media profiles with symbols of Brotherhood resistance and criticized their government for its complicity. The defiance has become more muted recently, after the local press reported that the government was contemplating declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. According to former members of the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood I spoke with, the 25,000 or so members of the Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia reacted to the news of the deliberations by preemptively keeping a low profile, closing some of its gatherings so as not to further stoke the government’s ire. Until the Saudi government actually begins making arrests, its recent announcement is more of a shot across the Brotherhood’s bow than an attempt to sink the ship.

Nevertheless, person after person I interviewed asserted that the level of Islamist anger toward the Saudi government is higher than at any time since the early 1990s. That does not mean Brotherhood leaders will move against the regime in the near term. In the 1990s as now, they have too much to lose institutionally. There is also some benefit in a wait-and-see approach, which is why Salman al-Awda, a prominent Saudi Islamist, is privately counselling his followers to wait for the regime’s factions to sort things out among themselves. But the younger rank-and-file Brothers in Saudi, like those in other Brotherhood franchises outside Egypt, are starting to lose hope in peaceful political change. That frustration can lead to apathy. But it can also lead to violence -- and if it does, the Saudi government’s decision to declare the group a terrorist organization will have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/3/17]

[Foreign Affairs] Break Up in the Gulf

What the GCC Dispute Means for Qatar

By Bilal Y. Saab

On March 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain announced that they had withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar, claiming that Doha had been violating a clause in the Gulf Cooperation Council charter banning interference in the domestic affairs of fellow GCC members. The decision, unprecedented in the GCC’s history, hints at significant changes to come for the GCC and the balance of power in the Gulf.

The dispute between GCC members had been simmering for a while, and it was only a matter of time before it boiled over. In December, during a GCC Summit in Kuwait, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi had been close to singling out Qatar for its alleged financing of terrorism in Syria and elsewhere. But, at the last minute, the Saudis pulled the plug to avoid embarrassing their Kuwaiti hosts. They opted instead to give Doha a stern private warning. A couple of weeks before that, Saudi leaders scolded new Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim during a meeting in Riyadh that was arranged by Kuwaiti leader Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad. The 33-year-old Tamim was asked to make serious adjustments to his country's foreign policy, including that the country stop allegedly funding al Qaeda­–affiliated groups in Syria. The young Tamim reportedly agreed, but requested some time to make the necessary changes.

Tamim eventually managed to reduce Doha's involvement in the Syrian conflict. But, realizing that it had lost in Syria, Doha doubled down on outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots in the region, including Hamas. In addition, it continued efforts to cozy up to Iran and Turkey, support the Al Houthi rebels in Yemen, and test the waters with Hezbollah. In doing so, Doha was touching every nerve and ringing every alarm bell in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, where officials were doing all they could to finish off the Muslim Brotherhood (including labeling it as terrorist group and propping up Egypt's military chief, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, by paving the way for his presidency).

No wonder, then, that the Bahrainis, Emiratis, and Saudis soon accused Qatar of trying to undermine the GCC and recalled their ambassadors. But where does this leave Qatar? Tamim has two options, neither of which is good. He can either fully comply with the wishes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE -- which would cost him his relationship with Qatar’s old guard, including his father -- or consolidate his role by working with his father's allies and freeing his country once and for all from the shackles of Saudi influence and an increasingly irrelevant GCC.

Tamim might not survive the first scenario, given how difficult it would be to confront not only his family but also the enormously influential ex-prime minister and foreign minister Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani. But the second option wouldn’t be easy, either. In that scenario, Qatar would more forcefully ally itself with Iran, with which it already has strong economic ties. It would also get politically and economically closer to Oman, which already has friendly relations with Tehran. But that wouldn’t come without costs either. The Sultanate is essentially in the GCC doghouse for refusing to adopt the group’s standard line against Iran. Should Qatar join that club, it will be hard for it to ever reverse course with the GCC.

Should Qatar become friendlier with Iran and Oman, it would signal the death of the GCC and herald a new power alignment in the Gulf. It would also severely complicate U.S. plans in the Middle East. For some time, the United States has encouraged the Arab Gulf States to think and act more collectively to enhance Gulf security. But with increasing tensions among GCC members, including possible divorces, this goal seems increasingly unrealistic. Washington may come to see that its Gulf allies will not be able to provide regional security anytime soon and, as a result, think twice about plans to reduce the U.S. political and military footprint there.

Qatar's spat with its Saudi and Emirati neighbors also creates another policy dilemma for the United States. Washington has strategic relations with all three states, which will become difficult to manage if they aren’t on speaking terms. It is possible that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi could even lobby the United States to help shut down money flows out of Doha under the guise of counterterrorism. But Washington might not be receptive. Qatar hosts the Al Udeid Air Base and the Combined Air and Space Operations Center, which coordinated all of the U.S. attack and surveillance missions for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, although the U.S. Treasury Department and State Department may show readiness to entertain Saudi and Emirati punitive measures against Doha, the Pentagon will probably put the brakes on any such plans.

In the coming days, the departure of the Saudi, Emirati, and Bahraini ambassadors from Qatar will likely trigger rushed consultations among the Arab Gulf States. And these will probably lead to some sort of political settlement to defuse the crisis. But make no mistake about it, this is a new political era in the Arab Gulf, one in which individual states are charting their own courses and where the idea of unity, no matter how hard Saudi Arabia pushes for it, is rapidly fading.

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/3/6]