Opening Remarks
Dr John Chipman, Director General and Chief Executive, IISS
Your Royal Highness, Your Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen, we have had a tremendous 7th IISS Manama Dialogue, but we want to draw together some of the threads of the discussions that we have had this weekend and this concluding plenary is intended to provide an opportunity for our two speakers to give their own views on the subject of regional security cooperation, both the method and practice of it, but also to provide an opportunity to the delegates to give their own views on how we should take some of the ideas that have been presented over the weekend forward. We were delighted to have some very stimulating sessions this morning on four different subjects. I use my right, as Director-general of the IISS, to migrate from one session to another and attended all four sessions. I can testify to the seriousness of debate in all four of them. I think it is important in a summit of this kind not only to have public pronouncements and debate, not only the genuinely private bilateral meetings between the delegation heads, but also to have that exchange between top strategists and government officials in private, and this could take place in these private sessions this morning. I am glad that the wealth of attendance at each of these four special sessions this morning confirmed the utility of these special sessions.
We have broadly entitled the fifth plenary session as the changing nature of regional security issues. We have two speakers, and let me just say a word about each before I ask the first to take the floor.
It is a real pleasure for us to again receive Carl Bildt the Foreign minister of Sweden to an IISS summit. Carl Bildt has been the Prime Minister of Sweden, and now for many years Foreign Minister of Sweden. I think that there are very few European personalities who combine in one person strategic vision and thinking with diplomatic action and effectiveness as well as Carl Bildt. He is a person who is a strategic thinker and practitioner all in one; he brings to his diplomatic activities a very nuanced understanding of the international affairs and domestic situations of the countries with which he deals. He brings to his strategic thinking, a really wonderful and pragmatic experience, and so that mix is exactly what we try to celebrate at the IISS and is why we valued him for so long as a member of our International Advisory Council; we hope that one year he will return formally to that council. In the meantime it is a delight to welcome him as Swedish Foreign Minister and to have him provide his views.
It is with equal pride and pleasure that I also have on the panel today HRH Prince Turki, a real gentlemen, scholar and practitioner. One knows his tremendous commitment to public service in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and he too has this exact characteristic of combining in one person a capacity for strategic thinking and vision with pragmatic, effective and diplomatic action. After two decades leading the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services he turned seamlessly into a diplomat and had postings at the Court of St James in Washington. If I may reveal one important fact about the history of the gestation of the Manama Dialogue, it was in late 2003 and 2004 that the IISS began thinking about having an inter-governmental dialogue in this region. The very first person I consulted in London was the then Ambassador to the Court of St James, Prince Turki, who gave me very wise advice as to how we could begin this enterprise in the region. Amongst the many wise things that he told me was that it was important, if we were to do this, to anchor it in the GCC and have the ballast of this dialogue in the GCC and that was advice that I hope he thinks that we have followed and for which I am hugely grateful.
With those prefatory comments, could I invite Foreign minister of Sweden Carl Bildt to make some remarks?
Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sweden
Thank you John, and let me start by expressing my thanks to everybody concerned for what I think has been a most stimulating two days here in Bahrain, with important messages from King Abdullah, Secretary Clinton and many others. I believe John referred to when this dialogue was set up; these days have once again validated the extreme usefulness of this concept of an informal dialogue on the most vital issues of this particular week. However, let me make some remarks on the theme of this session, the changing nature of regional security issues. I think that there is little doubt that the concept of security has changed and keeps changing; it does so in several different ways. We can look at a decade that has been fairly turbulent in different ways. Whether that be 9/11 and the onset of the challenge of global terrorism or the 11/9 near death experience of the financial market with everything that followed as a consequence. You can argue that all of this turbulence, or in spite of this turbulence and these challenges, what has been confirmed is that globalisation is truly the megatrend of our times.
As a consequence of this megatrend of our times it is naturally the case that there is no longer any national security that is purely national. This region is an extremely good illustration of the growing importance of what I call flow security. In this age of accelerating globalisation, the true security of our societies, or its citizens, economy and state institutions, is to a very large extent a function of the security of the flows across borders, of the securities of all of those flows of persons, goods, capital, energy, information, whether it be digital or otherwise, that flows across nations, regions and the globe; that is the core of the process of globalisation. To secure all of these flows all the way naturally requires a high degree of collaboration; national security is no longer enough. Yesterday, Ahmet Davutoğlu talked about vision security and the need to have a vision; in an ideal world we would all now be talking about a functioning system of global governance and global security, resting on the ultimate wisdom and ultimate powers of a perhaps somewhat modernised UN Security Council. However, we all know that this vision is not the reality of today and is unlikely to be the reality in the foreseeable future. What we are seeing is clearly a trend in which different regional security arrangements are getting increasingly important; where an increasingly important element of the overall system of global security will be the individual evolution of these as well as the relationship between them.
In our discussions these days, many have pointed at the experience and indeed the model of Asia; South-East Asia has gone from being a region of strife and conflict to a region of booming prosperity and increasing integration taking into account numerous remaining challenges.
Of course, Europe is part of that important pattern as well. Once the source of the greatest of conflicts, the wars that spread across the entire world, it has step-by-step transformed itself into a source of different concepts of regional integration and security. Overall, it must be said that it has been a remarkable success story. Today’s European union is the largest integrated economy in the world; it is by far the largest trading power, larger than the second and third combined; it is the greatest source of investment to the rest of the world; it is the largest destination of investment from the rest of world. These are important enough, but the key thing is that it is today a region of peace. The institutions of integration have clearly delivered in that very important respect. Let us be honest: the forces of nationalist emotions and prejudices still lurk under the surface of our different societies. However, clearly the days of that dominance is behind us.
The concept of integration in Europe is clearly a very ambitious one. We struggle with these ambitions on a daily basis. At the moment, we are discussing taking even more advanced steps of economic and financial integration, caused by the need to help certain member nations such as Ireland and Greece who have entered profound economic difficulties. Each step of integration illustrates the need to go even further in integration; it is very ambitious, sometimes difficult, but clearly the trend of our age.
I came here on Friday evening directly for the summit meeting of the OCSE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Astana in Kazakhstan. It was the first time since 1999 that the 56 nations of the OCSE have tried to meet at that level. Of course, that organisation goes back to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, a long time ago, and was given new impetus with the momentous political changes in Europe, with Paris in 1990; it delivered a lot, primarily during the 1990s, but has been somewhat slower since then. The OCSE brings together very different nations covering a vast area. In the concert of security it is comprehensive in that it includes the military, the political, the economic, the human and human rights; individual security dimensions of security. Progress has been very uneven across the area of the ACSE and on the different issues. This was vividly illustrated, to put it mildly, during our discussions in Astana, but it has still been most valuable in providing an umbrella of basis commitment to concept of comprehensive security for a vast part of our work.
The region we are now in, is of course very different. However, I would argue that the imperative of broader security cooperation and of a broader and more comprehensive concept of security is as strong here today as everywhere else in the world. Some of the most complex security issues that the we are facing in the world in the years ahead are to be found in the region between the Nile and the Indus with the Gulf in the middle.
This includes the more traditional issues, but also the new demands of flow security as illustrated by the challenges of energy security as well as piracy in the Indian ocean; an extreme dependence from the rest of the world on the flows of energy out of here and large dependence in terms of global trade on the security of the trading routes in the Indian Ocean.
The most fundamental of all security challenges in this wide region is the economic and demographic one; how to provide jobs, opportunities and hopes for the future and one of the youngest, and in terms of democracy, one of the most dynamic regions in the entire world. Seen in a longer perspective, there is an enormous opportunity in this. However, seen in a somewhat shorter perspective, there are of course a number of problems and challenges that need to be tackled. I would argue that regional cooperation will be as important here as it has been to Europe, South-East Asia and other dynamic regions in the world.
The GCC countries will be the core of the coming regional cooperation structure of the wider region. In many ways, developments here are pointing the way to the future for the entire region. However, it must of course be much wider. Look at the vision security of the region; it must one day also provide for the full integration of both Iran and Israel with the entire region. Both countries have much to contribute and their development would be boosted significantly both in terms of security and economic potential, by being truly part of the region. A momentum of peace would create a momentum of prosperity for the region as a whole. Among the many regional cooperation projects possible then would clearly be the continued development of new energy sources including nuclear; a zone free of nuclear weapons must remain our aim; to also be a zone of integrated development of the peaceful use of nuclear energy to generate the non-fossil power that will be necessary for the economic development in view of the demographic development of all of these countries. I happen to say that this does not seem likely to happen in the next few weeks, months or shorter perspectives. However, when discussing the imperative of regional cooperation in the more comprehensive form in this game of globalisation, I believe that it is important to also see the long-term possibilities that exist. Today, this vast region between Europe, Africa and South and Central Asia is often seen as a hotbed of conflict and confrontation. However, if regional cooperation really develops in a comprehensive manner and if the economic potential is unleashed and the political conflict is eased, managed or even solved then I am quite certain that it will develop into a dynamic region in between a dynamic Europe and the dynamic economies of South, South-East and East Asia. Thank you.
Dr John Chipman
Carl, thank you so very much for sketching out that panorama of regional security cooperation.
