"Transitioning the White House: Challenges and Opportunities for Arab-U.S. Relations"
October 30-31, 2008 | Washington, DC
[RADM HAROLD J. BERNSEN] Today we will take up .. defense cooperation between the U.S. and its partners in the Gulf. Defense cooperation for many years has been considered an important, in fact, intrinsic aspect of our bilateral relationship with the Arab countries of the Gulf. In addition, basing in those countries and support from them are key elements in how well the United States carries out its current policies with respect to Iraq, Iran and, in fact, Afghanistan. The question for the next administration is how to improve and strengthen those relationships and the panelists this morning will explore this interesting subject from various aspects.
Our leadoff speaker is no stranger to the Policymakers Conferences, Doctor Tony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He's really become a fixture. I think he's spoken at perhaps all 17 conferences. We're not quite sure. He's an expert in every sense of the word. An informed analyst who is devoted to examining in detail the Middle East military, security climate and we're most pleased that he's back with us again today. Tony.
[DR. ANTHONY CORDESMAN] ..when we are talking about U.S. and Gulf military cooperation it is frighteningly easy to talk in terms of slogans, concepts and simplifications and we've been doing that basically with the Gulf Cooperation Council since 1980. And at the end of it there has been an amazing amount of expenditure and an amazing lack of integration, interoperability and effectiveness.
Now we do face an evolving range of threats. I'm not going to read you any of these PowerPoints [link below for briefing slides
This is not something simple. But there is a point I really want to raise. When I go out to the Gulf, when I talk people in the region, again and again there is a discussion of Iran as if it was some kind of hegemon. If Iran is emerging in military terms it is not because of Iranian strength. It is because of the lack of progress, cooperation, focus, and effective resources by the individual Gulf States.
I have watched people in the GCC military now for more than twenty years set the right priorities. I watched U.S. commanders focus on the right goals. But the results, while they have often been a steady improvement in the military capabilities of individual states have not been to create an effective Gulf Cooperation Council or to create the climate where the role of the United States and outside powers can be minimized, and the role of the Gulf can be strengthened.
For those of you who can't see this slide, it covers 10 years of military expenditures in the Gulf. During that period the Gulf spent over $400 billion on military forces and Iran spent $55 billion. The Gulf Cooperation Council, even without the United States, is spending 7.5 times as much on military forces, and it should, in the process, be able to get very high levels of effectiveness and create the basis for a very strong deterrence in defense without high levels of dependence on the U.S. for many scenarios.
If we look at arms sales the figures are far more impressive. Over the period from 1988 to 2007 the Gulf Cooperation Council states spent more than 15 times as much on imports as Iran. And while people talk about Iranian arms production, the numbers and the quality of what Iran produces as lead systems are little more than a military joke. And what you are watching in terms of the Gulf, in the Southern Gulf, is access to the most advanced arms and military technology in the world, most of which has been denied to Iran.
There are land force threats, but at this point in time, unless Iraq somehow comes under Iranian influence, a scenario for future meetings, John, since it seems remarkably improbable as something for the immediate future, the fact is that Iran has only one advantage, that's manpower. In terms of armor, the Gulf States have far more armor than Iran. In terms of tanks Iran is a tank heavy army but it's a force of obsolete tanks and the Gulf states have far more in terms of advanced tanks. And this ignores the ability of the United States to steadily improve its deployability of land forces.
In the air theater certainly Iran cannot be dismissed, particularly in terms of missile threats but if you look at Iran, Saudi Arabia alone has a vast lead in high quality aircraft over Iran. If the entire Gulf Cooperation Council is included and you look at advanced aircraft, it's a lead of around, again, 15 to 1. If you can explain to me how that makes Iran into a military hegemon I would certainly like to hear it. It would be a very good way to get an article.
Naval forces, many of the ships you see here for Iran date back to the times when I was in Iran under Ambassador Helms in the early '70s. It's nice to have companions in the process of aging but to see them as a military threat requires a great deal of caution. I would not dismiss Iran's submarines, its missile boats, its asymmetric capabilities. But this is not a modern navy and it certainly does not compare with the modernization of the southern Gulf States.
The problem quite frankly is not the Iranian threat to the GCC or the U.S. or British or French role in the Gulf. The primary threat the Gulf Cooperation Council faces is the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is the lack of effective coordination. interoperability, mission priorities; and these are not a lack of military advice or expertise within the Gulf. Perhaps in the '70s you could say that you were not talking about advanced well-educated military leaderships. You can't say that in the Gulf today and you can't say it in terms of the advice.
None of these points today are being acted on with the effectiveness, the coherence and the cooperation that is needed. In every area, if they were, the level of deterrence and defense against Iran, the pressure on Iran to negotiate, the level of Gulf dependence on the United States could be sharply reduced.
Now this is a briefing on the Web, and asymmetric warfare is complex, it is difficult semantically. I'm not going to read you view graphs, but these are real cases, this is not a matter of misunderstanding, or dialogue or communication or the fact that perfectly rational bargainers on all sides do not meet with each other.
This a fact that military force gets used, it has been used, it is a threat and it is a growing threat as a result of Iranian actions. That is not simply the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, it is the Quds force, it is the use of the Vivak and a group of proxies and non-state actors.
Now we often hear the phrase, closing the Gulf. I think this is a worst case and a dangerous one. The problem is that what Iran can do is conduct long term wars of attrition at almost any level, against almost any kind of target in the Gulf with steadily improving anti ship capabilities, abilities to attack costal targets and abilities to attack off shore targets. That along with investments in long-range missiles and nuclear systems is where Iranian money is going. That is what you need to deter and that is what you need to defend against. And you have to do it through the entire Gulf. The constant focus on the Straight of Hormuz ignores the vulnerabilities of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, most of the UAE -- and these are matters of minutes in terms of anti ship missiles, and minutes in terms of strike aircraft. It is also obvious that no country can defend itself. This coast is a gulf coast. It is a coast with the Gulf Cooperation Council. Nations that do not have interoperable and integrated forces are throwing their money into the dessert or into the water, they are wasting and have wasted perhaps half or more of the sums that I showed you earlier because of a lack of effective movement forward. And yes the Straight of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, the Indian Ocean are vulnerable, and there are areas which are more than a matter of oil exports, they are a matter of Gulf imports.
Let me also note the unique vulnerability of the GCC states. We think in the United States in oil terms, the Gulf needs to think in terms of water. Seven to nine desalination plants basically make the Gulf survive. That seven to nine target complexes which Iran perfectly understands and commercial satellite photos will show you how weak the defense structures are at even the most basic levels.
The nuclear programs, this is complex, many of you have been trapped in reading about the NIE. Few people, even in journalism and even many experts, never read the entire reports of the international atomic energy agency and so what we often this strategic illiteracy in dealing with Iranian efforts.
I have tried to visualize this in ways people could understand and it isn't a matter of maps and bases. Let me show you one Iranian facility, the key facility where there are putting the centrifuges. You may never have seen a satellite photo but this is like the entrance to the Reagan [Ronald Reagan Building in Washington] parking lot, it's actually smaller. That is how they help conceal the facility because look at what it was like when they finished that facility. You'll notice the dummy building. And unlike Iraq, take a look at this from the road. This is a facility where you can put over 50 thousand centrifuges. You do not go to this level of concealment and hardening out an altruistic interest to fund your electric power structures, and it is time to get real about this threat.
We saw it start under the Shah. We documented illegal arms imports or I should say technology imports under the Shah, and the process goes on. We're talking about long-range missiles and while people often focus on Israel and Europe, something to remember about missiles is they have range payloads. You build large missiles because you may initially have large nuclear weapons. And you need them to cover targets in the region. Not remote targets or rationales for U.S. missile defense. And let me note it is my guess that we will have to live with Iran's nuclear weapons, and with nuclear-armed missiles. But what people often forget are the lessons of the Cold War. A country that wishes to take risks and in fact a country that wants to avoid risks can deploy missiles with systems that launch on warning or launch under attack. Once this force is deployed the problem of deterrence becomes critical. The U.S. can offer extended deterrence as it did to Europe but ultimately you're going to need some form of missile defense and missile cooperation. Again this is not the time to lecture all of you on the details of military cooperation. But I'm going to give you some checklists.
I'm also going to say, quite bluntly, there is not one useful piece of paper that has ever come out of the Gulf Cooperation Council that describes tangible progress in any of these areas. There is not a single sales pitch that I've seen by any defense contractor that explains how this should be done, I know that these recommendations have been made within the GCC headquarters. I know they have been made by U.S. military commanders, so I'm not giving you ideas that somehow have sprung from me. These are priorities, which in general have more than a decade of support by both the Gulf military and by the U.S. military, and which need action. Again, mission focus, interoperability, realistic large scale exercises, a focus on jointness, five-year plans that bring people towards integration and interoperability, these are mechanisms.
The tools apply to different kinds of war. It is not a matter of buying more arms in most cases. It is a matter of using arms wisely, with the integration with the training, with the manpower quality, and above all the unity that's needed. We can provide technology. Britain can provide technology. France can provide technology. We can keep a technical edge as well as a resource edge if the Gulf States use this wisely. The same tools can be applied to areas like asymmetric warfare at least as long as we are dealing with a rational opponent in Iran to reinforcing deterrence and defense against Iran's use of weapons of mass destruction.
Let me make a last point about this, yes missile defense, cooperation and counter terrorism where frankly I think the Gulf has done well on an individual level. Certainly countries like Saudi Arabia have demonstrated that they have lessons to teach us. But if we're going to move forward here what we really need is to stop thinking this in terms of national secrets, national defense programs, arms buys where the key point is often the glitter factor, something different, something expensive, something better than anybody else.
What we need are credible defense plans, transparency, clear plans for cooperation on the part of Arab states -- because it is cooperation within the Gulf States not between the United States and individual Gulf countries that is the key. And quite frankly it is transparency and public accountability. There is no reason in terms of security not to make these defense plans public. There is no reason that states cannot provide the same level of financial detail and the same explanations for arms buys that they provide for buying schools or roads or desalination plans. There is no excuse for what selling countries do today. And it is countries not contractors that deserve the blame. There is no excuse for what buying countries do. The next step in cooperation will only occur if we get credibility, effectiveness and transparency.
Thank You
[BERNSEN] Tony, thank you for those very interesting remarks.
QUESTIONS POSED TO DOCTOR CORDESMAN IN THE Q AND A PERIOD:
[BERNSEN] ..How has the debacle in Iraq and the other American foreign policies, which the Arab leaders have not agreed with, had an effect, a negative effect, on defense cooperation specifically reducing U.S. leadership and influence?
[CORDESMAN] I think all of us could answer that question. It is on the one hand quite clear from one opinion poll after another, just looking at the shift in some of the arms import patterns to Europe that might otherwise have been purchases from the U.S., that it has had an extremely powerful effect and I think all of us who visit the Gulf are aware of how many people in the Gulf particularly the southern Gulf are concerned with what happened in Iraq can see this.
The term debacle is not necessarily one I would use, but it's scarcely something which met any of the neo-conservative objectives that were being discussed before we went in.
At the same time I do think that "A", in terms of actual day to day military cooperation and cooperation in counter terrorism, that has often been very good. When it comes down to the discussion of defense issues, training, other areas, the extent we do have exercises, the cooperation remains. And I think that as Ambassador Bodine pointed out the real question may, for all of us, may be not whether mistakes were made in Iraq but how do you: rebalance the structures so the southern Gulf states emerge diplomatically, militarily strong enough to contain and deter Iran and other threats, remain tied to the United States as we reduce our presence to much lower levels without eliminating or reducing the confidence that southern Gulf and other states may have in our presence?
The only comment I would make is I don't see any other country than the United States and the southern Gulf States that can provide any serious military and security cooperation. It isn't going to be Britain. It isn't going to be France. I am not terribly enamored about the idea of it being Russia or China. And until somebody can define where these people are coming from, my experience in watching this situation, is they aren't coming and they can't, at least the people we would like to have and I suspect the southern Gulf would like to have as allies, and people who can help deter and help secure them.
[OTHER Q AND A]
[BERNSEN] ..A rather provocative question, but a very good one. Isn't it time, perhaps not necessarily for this panel, but it doesn't directly relate to defense cooperation, however isn't it time to publicly repudiate, make a clean break with the neo-con agenda, that Oslo is dead, that regime change in Syria and Iran are necessary. Do these still seem to define our foreign military paradigm even to this day? Or should we repudiate it? Would it be useful?
Nobody wants to touch that one.
[BODINE] I guess I'll just say that the judgment on that will be made in less than a week. [U.S. Presidential Election]
[CORDESMAN] I can't resist in making one comment. Some of you here are old enough to remember neo-liberals, and the best and brightest in Vietnam, and the problem I have is they seem to meet at a common point.
The fact is that it isn't whether you're neo-conservative or neo-liberal you either can cope with reality, show some adaptability to other societies and their priorities and you focus on what you can actually achieve or you don't. So I would hope that what we get as of Tuesday, regardless of who is elected, is an administration that treats people as partners, focuses on reality and deals with the art of the achievable regardless of whether they are neo-conservatives, neo-liberals or as the ultimate threat vegetarians.
[OTHER Q AND A]
[BERNSEN] ..It seems that many U.S. policy makers are obsessed with Iran now just as they were obsessed with Iraq before. Do they realize that many Arabs now view the U.S. as more dangerous than Iran? We always seem, we the U.S., seem to always be obsessed with finding someone to destroy. Comment?
[CORDESMAN] You know, the reality is Iran does not emerge as a state whose actions are irrational. It does emerge as a state who actions are consistent in building up the resources to carry out asymmetric attacks. It does make use, for its own interest, of proxies, groups like al Quds force and non-state actors.
You cannot look at the Gulf and U.S. dependence on the Gulf as well as global dependence on the Gulf and ignore the realities of what it does in terms of missile forces and nuclear forces. Does that mean that Iran will act irrationally or that we will have to go to war, or that you can't create security structures or look as Barbara suggested far beyond the military dimension.
The answers are no, but when you talked about military cooperation you look either at non state issues, terrorism because those are threats you have to deal with, or you look at the actors in the region which represent the most serious potential threats. To sort of wish all of this away is about as dangerous as to become obsessed with worst cases, which may never happen. You have to deal with the realities you face.
[OTHER Q AND A]
[BERNSEN] One more question for Doctor Cordesman. Tony, you talked about the Iranian influence on the Gulf, can you talk about the Iranian influence on the Caspian Sea and how that might effect regional stability in and out side the Gulf region?
[CORDESMAN] Iran's influence in the Caspian obviously has created, and I'm not sure that in any way I would criticize Iran on this, a pressure for a Caspian solution to energy resources which Iran's goal and national views are that if they have the energy that don't want a regional solution because the energy is on their boundaries and they get more money that way.
I think that more broadly when you look at what is happening in this area you do not see a destabilizing Iranian presence as a key factor in the Caspian states. If anything it has stood aside from the obvious issues, the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. But what you also see is a group of relatively weak states, which are not necessarily all that stable for the future with a very strong state to the north.
So I think that looking at the Caspian in Iranian terms is not the way I would look at it all. I would look at it in terms of each of the states involved and probably more in terms of their ability to take internal decisions which will give them stability and development, rather that somebody on the outside being the major problem.
[BERNSEN] In the late 70's early 80's the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia was opposed by AIPAC. At the end of the day the sale was successful. But there was virulent opposition. Would you comment on the situation today and have we learned any lessons?
[CORDESMAN] Well let me just make the point. You have to, in the Department of Defense, make a declaration to Congress, obviously of the sales and you have to list what programs are under way.
Mr. Blanchard was talking about some of these. You ought to take a look at those declarations because among other things we are now upgrading the AWACS with levels of technology transfer, which if you had anything like the problems we faced during the AWACS debate would never have taken place.
You have quiet cooperation and an awful lot of advanced technology not only with Saudi Arabia but countries like the United Arab Emirates who've been able to bargain their way into access to software and code data, which in the past would have been almost unthinkable.
In honesty I think you also have a much more conflicted view within AIPAC and Israel. Because you do not hear, when you are in Israel, rhetoric about Saudi Arabia. You hear rhetoric about Iran. You hear rhetoric about the Hezballah. You hear rhetoric about the different kinds of threats.
I'm not sure that means we've matured all that much, certainly any Arab state has to consider how the Congress will react and there's been still a lot of Congressional rhetoric which frankly isn't all that popular with people in the Israeli defense forces or foreign ministry, which often see it as more destabilizing than useful to Israel, which is always a kind of interesting perspective when you come from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to Washington.
Is there still a problem? Yes. Do we have the kind of sensitivity we had then and the practical barriers we had then. No. I think that if anything the questions asked about Iraq are more relevant. Would Saudi Arabia have made exactly the aircraft purchases it is making today if we had not gone into Iraq? If we had been more flexible in dealing with the problems of the war on terrorism? If we had shown that we were more able, as Barbara has pointed out, to listen? I suspect it might have had a somewhat different purchase profile. But that is not something you can blame on AIPAC.
Source: Arab-US Policymakers Conference Web Site (AUSPC 2008)
http://www.auspc.org
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