Good morning. I would like to thank John and the IISS for organising this wonderful gathering. I would like to thank all those from the Kingdom of Bahrain. General Khalid, it is great to see you here this morning. I offer our appreciation to you for the wonderful hospitality of your country in hosting this conference.
It is an honour to be part of this great panel and part of this session, although I do have the observation that requiring a US Army General Officer to speak without PowerPoint slides, and without a laser pointer, surely is a violation of the interrogation standards in the US Army field manual, and is cruel and unusual punishment. I do have my laser pointer just in case, and I will do my best to speak without those communication aids.
Beyond that, I should note that, yesterday, candidly, Secretary Gates addressed a fair amount of what I was going to cover today. I guess that is his prerogative, as our Secretary of Defense. Perhaps Secretary Cohen could give us some views on that. We regrouped last night. I thought that what I would do this morning is to build on his comments; briefly review the challenges we face in the region as a whole, outline the general approach to considering and addressing them, and propose a few concrete steps for the way ahead in developing further the regional security architecture.
I would like to note that there is a fairly robust architecture already in place, but there are certainly numerous areas where we can build on this cooperatively. Beyond this bottom line, I would also underscore the importance of comprehensive approaches to the complex challenges that we face as we develop the architecture. Again, as many of the previous speakers have affirmed, cooperative comprehensive approaches are indeed essential.
We face, in this region, a number of interrelated threats and challenges, from transnational to state-centric, to those that blur the lines between transnational and state-centric threats. At the transnational level, violent extremism is, needless to say, the most pressing challenge. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates pose the greatest such threat to many states in the region. Other extremist groups also threaten security. The extremist ideologies of these groups tear at the very fabric of societies. Al-Qaeda and the syndicate of like-minded extremists who cooperate with al-Qaeda are resilient enemies capable of planning and executing horrific barbaric attacks.
There has been progress against such groups in the region, especially in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in Iraq. It has been a privilege to be part of that with some very courageous members of the Iraqi Government, and of the Iraqi Military who are here: Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, General Babakir Zibari, and others.
There has been progress in other states as well. However, extremist networks remain resilient and indeed robust in some areas, and we must not relax the pressure on them.
Other transnational challenges include narcotics and arms trafficking, piracy and smuggling. These elicit activities, as other speakers have noted, undermine the rule of law, threaten legitimate commerce and the flow of strategic resources, and in some cases actually sustain terrorist networks. In fact, the revenues from some of these activities are, in essence, the oxygen that keeps various movements alive. These activities must be curtailed if international efforts to combat terrorist financing, and thus terrorism, are to succeed. There has been more focus on some of these problems in recent years, but it is clear that they require considerably more attention.
As Secretary Gates noted yesterday morning, we also face in this region state-level threats posed by nations that seek to undermine the security of their neighbours and, ultimately, to destabilise the region. This has played out in forms well short of open conflict through, for example, the deployment and continued development of ballistic missiles and through provocative actions at sea. These activities have the potential to produce situations that can escalate. Efforts by coalitions of like-minded nations to dissuade, deter and be prepared to – as a final resort – respond to intimidation and aggression are, of course, very important in ensuring that situations do not in fact result in actual conflict.
Finally, at the nexus of transnational and state-centric challenges is a third type of challenge we face: states supporting operatives, militia elements and extremist groups in other countries. In an effort to weaken legitimate governments, these states employ lethal proxies, facilitate the flow of extremists, and pursue other types of interference such as political intimidation, bribery and, even on occasion, assassinations. These activities represent a very dangerous and destabilising marriage of influences and capabilities; a marriage that all states in the region must work to expose and de-legitimise.
Before moving on to ways to address these challenges, I should note two additional complicating factors. Firstly, some states in the region play a dangerous game of allowing or accepting extremist networks and terrorist facilitators to operate from or through their territory, believing that their own people and governments will be immune from the threat. In the long run this never proves to be the case, as we have seen recently and repeatedly throughout history.
Secondly, as Secretary Gates observed yesterday, efforts designed to develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems for them magnify the potential dangers of all of these challenges and make efforts to counter such proliferation of enormous importance.
Though the challenges are indeed many, the responses to them have also been numerous. Like-minded nations of the international community and in the region have been responding to these challenges by coming together around a set of concepts and approaches. We have been finding and pursuing cooperative and comprehensive solutions to address common problems and advance shared interests. This is the framework around which the regional security architecture is forming and has been forming for a number of years, indeed for a number of decades.
The complex transnational threats that we face require cooperative solutions, pursued in partnership. Undertaking multilateral activities in the pursuit of common interests combines military, diplomatic and economic capabilities of like-minded nations, builds capabilities where required, and leverages comparative advantages of the participants. As history has shown this kind of cooperation in a region and internationally can, over time, persuade destabilising actors to reconsider their actions. Increasingly, nations in this region have come to recognise the importance of strengthening multilateral partnerships for this purpose.
As we learned in Iraq in recent years though, complex problems require cooperative actions by coalitions and partners but also coalitions approaching comprehensive approaches. Such approaches involve significantly more than the application of just military or ‘kinetic’ action. In fact, they must do far more if they are to address not just the symptoms of current challenges, but also their underlying causes. The lack of sustainable economic development in certain parts of this region, for example, is not just a social or humanitarian issue it is a serious security concern as well. Without economic opportunity, poor and disenfranchised communities can serve as hotbeds for the spread of violent extremism, eventually even becoming failed states.
To account for these kinds of linkages, our approach to regional challenges must again be comprehensive. For example, the strategy that we employed with our Iraqi partners and coalition members against al-Qaeda in Iraq and its extremist allies involved actions along multiple lines of operation and employed a variety of non-kinetic as well as kinetic military approaches.
Throughout the region, approaches of this type are being pursued in a number of cases. Governments are not just conducting operations to bring extremists to justice, they are also encouraging and sponsoring voices of moderation to counter extremist messaging. They are re-educating and rehabilitating detained extremists, supporting education and job training, engaging families, promoting tribal outreach, and contributing to international efforts to disrupt terrorist financial networks and the flow of foreign fighters.
I mentioned the guiding concepts of cooperative and comprehensive approaches because although I am about to discuss security-specific opportunities to expand the regional security architecture, we must always keep these security-specific initiatives grounded in the broader framework of the cooperative and comprehensive endeavours required.
Turning now to security initiatives, I would like to discuss five areas of action and opportunity. While programmes in these areas are already being pursued by many nations in the region, there is much opportunity and further need for us to expand our efforts. Firstly, we can expand existing bilateral air and missile defence initiatives and work towards true multilateral cooperation in this important defensive area. Ongoing initiatives include the pursuit of a shared early warning capability. This is obviously an important effort to maximise our collective defensive potential. Efforts to develop a common air picture in this area are another important aspect of this work. These capabilities are intended to reduce reaction time to imminent threats. In addition, various bilateral active missile defence measures that are underway are vital elements of regional deterrence and of defensive cooperation, and they should be expanded also. All of these will, of course, require the expansion also of interoperable command, control and communication capabilities. These are the critical enablers for such initiatives.
Concerted persistent efforts will be required to expand these initiatives, but they are worth the effort as they will not only enhance our collective defensive capability, they will also serve as a very important manifestation of our collective will and our collective deterrent posture.
A second area for further cooperation is that of ‘combined maritime security operations.’ Much is ongoing here with several maritime coalition task forces in operation. In fact, the Commander of some of those is here with us: Admiral Gortney. Given the increase in piracy off the Gulf of Aden, which has been commented on, and off the Somali coast, more robust operations will undoubtedly be required. The more we collaborate to address this threat – and I note the collaboration, in fact, between Admiral Gortney’s headquarters and the EU mission – and the more we do this in coordination with shipping companies and maritime associations taking the measures that Secretary Gates pointed out, the more effective we will be.
Counter-proliferation and counter-smuggling operations are additional areas in which combined maritime security operations are important. Such operations can also help limit the illegal transfer of WMD and ballistic missile components, and they can help to disrupt the flow of illegal narcotics, as well as explosives and weaponry used by extremists.
A third way we can expand the security architecture is by increasing information sharing and intelligence cooperation. This is another area in which much progress has been made in recent years. Nonetheless, the transnational nature of the terrorist threat requires operating as much as possible on a ‘need to share’ rather than a ‘need to know’ basis as we work together to dismantle networks. We are striving to operate that way and in that spirit with the coalition partners serving with Central Command, as we did, frankly, with our Iraqi partners and all our coalition members in Iraq.
A fourth area of opportunity in this region is ‘critical infrastructure protection.’ The efforts of Iraq and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, among others, again show how one can ensure critical facilities and infrastructure are hardened and protected by a trained force, and they provide good models for the way ahead in this area. Efforts like this can help ensure the free flow of strategic resources and commerce to the world’s market and are thus important internationally as well as regionally.
Fifth and finally, we can leverage regional training centres for greater collective benefit. The Gulf Air Warfare Centre in the UAE and the soon to open King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre in Jordan are examples of very impressive facilities, and there are others in the region, as well as important headquarters in various countries in the Gulf States in particular. Leveraging these training centres and headquarters, and the already substantial number of bilateral and multilateral maritime air and ground exercises we conduct, will improve our abilities to work together and hone the experience of our various forces. The training centres represent important opportunities for multilateral training, capacity building and partnership, and we should seek to leverage them in major multinational exercises that can supplement the important existing programme of joint operations that is already ongoing, and combined exercises.
These are all ways to improve the regional security architecture and thereby enhance our ability to address common challenges and protect shared interests. They are part of a broader effort to pool our considerable resources and leverage each nation’s comparative advantages in pursuing comprehensive solutions to the transnational, state-centric and other threats in the region. Through this effort we have the opportunity not just to increase regional security, but also to build on the momentum in the region, supporting greater economic development and further progress in other areas, as well.
I can assure you that we at Central Command look forward to partnering with the forces of the states represented in this room, and some others not here, in such endeavours. I look forward to discussing these and other issues during the final part of our session today. Thank you very much.
