home > by publication type > interviews > Mead: Despite Mistakes, the United States is with 'the Tides of History' in Iraq
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| Interviewer: | Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor |
|---|---|
| Interviewee: | Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy |
January 24, 2005
Walter Russell Mead, a leading analyst of American foreign policy, says that the majority of Iraqis favor what the United States wants for Iraq: “a republic profoundly influenced by the Muslim faith of the overwhelming majority, but one in which clerics do not assert dictatorial power over decisions made by voters.” Because this goal is shared, Mead believes the United States can still find some measure of success in Iraq. “I think that continuing to hold steady, working intensively, and seeking new and more creative and effective ways to help the new emerging Iraqi state develop security forces- so that it can ultimately be the guarantor of its own security- is a very doable policy at this point,” he says.
Of President Bush’s second inaugural address, Mead says that he found it a “very impressive and even, at times, a stirring statement.” He is pessimistic, however, about the prospects of warming U.S.-European relations, given the latest rift over a French and German effort to lift the arms embargo on China.
Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on January 24, 2005.
It’s been several days since President Bush’s second inaugural speech. As a historian, what was your impression?
I thought it was a very moving speech and a very significant speech. I think it reveals a lot about the thinking of the president. It’s not a detailed prescription for the administration’s foreign policy. It doesn’t really offer any insight into how the president will resolve the contradictions between the ideals he’s laid out in the speech and the practical realities any president has to deal with. Still, I think overall it was a very impressive and even, at times, a stirring statement.
When we had our last interview, you pointed out that foreign policy and moral issues are not contradictory. Will the administration’s foreign policy flow out of the morals and ideals expressed in this speech?
Well, it has to ultimately be consistent with that kind of a vision, but Bush was saying, I think, something more specific than this, and this is the point people ought to be debating as the country reflects on the speech. He said that in the world we live in today, our vital interests and our values have merged. That is to say, given the dangers of failed states, and of terrorism growing in countries where there are dictatorships, the United States can no longer afford to distinguish one set of vital security interests from another set of philosophical, ethical interests.
To an unprecedented degree, these things are now the same. You often heard in the Clinton years a lot of objection from conservatives to the idea of, say, calling HIV a national security issue. Bush is essentially saying HIV is a national security issue if it rises to the level of destabilizing the politics and civilized life of a country, because in that kind of chaos, very dangerous things for us can happen.
Taking off from there, if the president or vice president called you into his office and asked you for some advice on U.S. foreign policy priorities, what would you say? I guess you would have to start with Iraq.
Well, Iraq is a priority. There’s just no doubt about it. I remain- optimistic may not be right word for it- but it seems to me the strategic architecture or maybe geography of Iraq continues to favor the United States’ purposes there. That is to say, it’s rather clear that a very large majority of Iraqis would like to go down the path the United States would like them to go down. The Shiite clergy, in particular, remain committed to, essentially, the kind of program we wish reformers would adopt for Iran, which is to say a republic profoundly influenced by the Muslim faith of the overwhelming majority in Iraq, but one in which clerics do not assert dictatorial power over decisions made by voters.
It’s interesting that the violence by [terrorist leader Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi and other insurgents is looking less and less like political violence and more and more like terrorism aimed at preventing the majority from voting. This latest statement from Zarqawi, if it’s authentic, in denouncing democracy as inherently opposed to Islam, is very much a minority position within Islam.
So there is a real sense, I think, in which the United States is with the tides of history. Maybe we haven’t been swimming very elegantly with those tides, but the current is moving things in our direction. I think that continuing to hold steady, working intensively, and seeking new and more creative and effective ways to help the new emerging Iraqi state develop security forces- so that it can ultimately be the guarantor of its own security- is a very doable policy at this point. I think we should probably stop reading the news every day as if, every time a bomb goes off in Iraq, somehow it’s a defeat for the United States. That’s not actually what’s happening.
Now what about Iraq’s neighbor, Iran. Is war likely with Iran?
Events are going to determine where things go on Iran. Bush was asked very directly in the campaign, “Will you allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons?” And he answered, “No.” Nothing we have heard from the administration suggests any softening of that basic position. If there is a sign that the Iranian government is considering giving up its plans for a nuclear weapon, I haven’t seen it. They’re certainly not making it very clear. So, you would have to say the United States and Iran are still on something that looks like a collision course; however, we’re still a very long way away from the collision, I think. Hopefully, the Iranian ship will change course before we actually collide.
You spent a lot of time in the past year in the Middle East. Do you think there are now grounds for optimism between the Israelis and Palestinians?
What do they say- an optimist is somebody who believes things are as good as they can possibly get, and a pessimist is someone who is afraid the optimist is right. The election of Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] was really a very significant event. Also, the continuing decline of Palestinian support for armed resistance, which is linked to Abu Mazen’s victory, is extremely important and extremely encouraging. Much remains to be done. Hamas, which represents a pretty significant Palestinian minority, remains committed to, ultimately, the destruction of the Jewish state. So, we are by no means out of the woods on this.
But I think the time is coming when the Bush administration needs to get back involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process with some of the intensity that we’ve seen in past administrations. In the early years of the Bush administration, there was definitely a tendency to want to avoid anything Clinton had done. Clinton had been heavily involved in the negotiations; therefore, Bush would not be. I think they’ve already crossed the line there. They understand that simply being anti-Clinton is not a foreign policy. I’ve certainly seen some very promising signs that people in the White House and State Department are looking at how the United States can bring more of its weight to bear on helping the Israelis and Palestinians find a solution. That’s going to be a priority, I think.
The president is going to Europe in February on the first overseas trip of his second term. When we talked last, you didn’t see much prospect of any change in relationships there until new elections occurred in France and Germany. Has anything you’ve picked up since then led you to think any improvement is in order since Bush’s reelection?
It’s still hard to see. It’s interesting that Robert Zoellick [former U.S. trade representative] has been [nominated] as Secretary [of State-designate Condoleezza] Rice’s top deputy. Zoellick brings a lot of strengths to the table, but one of the most important is the relationship he’s developed with a number of senior Europeans. So, we’ve certainly got someone now on the U.S. team who’s been able to work pretty constructively with Europe during a very difficult period.
But the stuff we’re hearing about France and Germany working together to get the European Union to drop the arms embargo on China is extremely troubling because, if you really look at it, there are not all that many places- there is the Middle East- but there are not many other places where the United States and Europe have a common agenda. After the Middle East, the highest issue on the U.S. global agenda is managing the relationship with China. I don’t think anybody thinks European sales of sophisticated arms or command-and-control equipment to China are going to make that job easier.
The Europeans are really willing, essentially for money, to act in a way that basically threatens some of America’s most vital interests. They are making a very powerful statement about what kind of relationship they think Europe and the United States have. I think it’s hard to see how much you can call that a partnership. They consider the money they make from selling arms to China is more important than their political relationship with the United States. That’s the statement, I think, they’re making. If that’s what they believe, well, this is a free world and I think they need to do what they believe, but I think it’s impossible that a decision like that won’t have pretty deep and powerful and continuing effects on the U.S.-European relationship.
I’m not familiar with this issue. Has it been in the news?
Yes, it’s been in the news, in Europe and here. From an American point of view, it’s funny if the Europeans think that we’re not moral enough to work with and so they have decided to partner with China. It’s a very strange position. But, as of right now, France and Germany are working to get that embargo lifted.
It’s as though the Europeans feel the United States is a warped nation, with a crazy leader.
You can have good relations with countries that you think are warped. Basically, most people in most countries think most people in other countries are warped. The French think the Germans are warped- and vice versa- and they manage to work together. So it’s really all about how important you think cooperation is and how many of your differences you are willing to swallow or look past in order to work together. In its first term, the Bush administration basically said to the Europeans that in areas we define as our vital interests or concerns, “We are not going to defer to you.” The European temptation now is to say, “Well, that goes double for you.” I’m not sure that selling arms to China is a vital European interest, and I think it might be a bit of a miscalculation.
I take it you’re not expecting any great cooperation with Europe on Iraq because at this point there’s not really much Europeans can do?
Again, I always thought that partly for partisan reasons, people who oppose the president’s policy in Iraq- and again, there are plenty of good reasons to oppose that policy, let’s not get away from that- have tended to exaggerate how much European help would make to us. If even in the actual invasion, the French and the Germans participated, as well as the Japanese, the British, the Italians, and the Spanish, I don’t think Al Jazeera would be saying, “Oh, it’s legitimate.” They’d be saying all the crusaders have united to destroy the heart of Islam and so on and so forth. Let’s not forget the Europeans are colonial powers in the Middle East. There is not a sense in the Middle East that the Europeans are any more legitimate as actors than we are.
Sometimes there is a desire to balance the United States and Europe off each other. So if the French are saying no to America, everybody says yes to France- but that’s not really because they love France, it’s because they see French support as a help in their contest with America. There’s no love affair going on here.
If we had Europeans helping to train Iraqi security forces, I don’t think they’d be getting trained much faster. I’m not sure actually if I were setting up a new security force that I would really want half a dozen different countries training different units in somewhat different ways. So both the willingness of Europe to do much to help us in Iraq and the actual difference it would make on the ground, I think, are not large. There are many other areas in the Middle East where, in fact, the United States and the Europeans could do a lot together and we would both be better off if we could cooperate. I hope the Bush administration will be focusing on some of those areas with the Europeans. I certainly hope that signs of greater U.S. involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace process will help to rebuild the U.S.-European connection.
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