Jean-Claude Mallet, State Advisor, State Council, France; IISS Council Member
Thank you for these statements. My question would be directly drawn from what Dr Fox just said: ‘An Iranian nuclear capability will not be tolerated.’ I think one of the questions that we have with this sort of declaration, under the auspices of a theme that is strategic reassurance, Mr Secretary, is what we do with that, in terms of strategic reassurance. Your country and mine are nuclear powers. They are committed in this region. They have very deep interests of all sorts.
The question that can be fairly asked by observers is: what does this mean to France, the UK and others to utter this sort of sentence? What is the strategic reassurance, if any, that Europe, the US and others can give to this region in case there is a development that is perceptible and visible of a nuclear Iran, with a nuclear military capability? What is it we can say to them as we did in Europe here, in a different part of the world with different logic, with a very important stake? How can we answer the questions not only from people from this region, nations, states or governments from this region, but also from countries that are very heavily involved in this part of the world? I have an Indian admiral on my left. There are some Chinese in the room and others. What is it we can say when we come to this subject of strategic reassurance in the scenario you have quickly delineated?
Professor François Heisbourg, Chairman, IISS
Thank you to all of the panellists for very remarkable contributions. My strategic reassurance question would be rather more directed to Deputy Prime Minister Teo. You underlined in your speech that the very remarkable process of strategic reassurance in Southeast Asia was a result of the efforts of ASEAN countries but also flowed from the attitude of outside powers. Do you expect that non‑ASEAN players, notably the US and China, will in the future continue to play the constructive or at least benign role that they have played for the last quarter of a century? In particular, are you confident that the US will continue to have the will and ability to play its strategically stabilising role?
What do you make of China’s recent and much greater assertiveness in your region, which contrasts with the policies of the previous quarter of a century? As China outgrows the foreign policy principles laid down by Deng Xiaoping back in the early 1980s, what do you think China’s new consensus foreign and security policy is, or am I wrong to assume that there is foreign policy consensus in China? I would add that the answers to these questions are of course of interest also to this region.
Alexander Vershbow, Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, Department of Defense, US
Thank you to all three speakers. I wanted to take advantage of this plenary session to offer another transregional perspective, if I could, by touching on some issues that affect two of the regions in my portfolio in DOD, namely Europe and the Middle East. As many of you already know, the NATO alliance made some important decisions two weeks ago at the Lisbon Summit, which will affect NATO’s capabilities and its strategic outlook for many years to come. One of those was to take on territorial missile defence as an Alliance capability. The US believes that this decision is extremely important, as it represents a concrete expression of NATO’s commitment to mutual defence against emerging twenty-first-century threats, including those posed by proliferation of ballistic missiles, especially to countries here in the Middle East.
At Lisbon, NATO also took steps to enhance missile defence cooperation with Russia, which we believe is an important development as well, since it underscores that, in today’s security environment, NATO and Russia face many of the same threats and challenges, and can better address them by working together rather than at cross purposes. I mention missile defence because it is very relevant to this region as well. The US has developed a broad set of missile defence capabilities, both for our homeland and for our allies around the world, including the Middle East and Gulf regions. Even before WikiLeaks, it was well known that the US had deployed Patriot units to several of our Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners in order to deter and, if necessary, defend against possible ballistic missile attacks by Iran. We are assisting several of our partners acquiring or upgrading their own missile defence capabilities.
I wanted to take this opportunity today to emphasise that our NATO missile defence programme in Europe will in no way detract from our commitments to our friends and allies here in the Gulf or elsewhere in the world. In fact, because the lessons we learn in each theatre will be applied to other theatres, our missile defence capabilities here in the Gulf will benefit from our experiences and initiatives elsewhere in the world. In keeping with our flexible and adaptive approach to missile defence, we will continue to deploy assets here, both ashore and afloat, as our technology and threat assessments dictate. We would very much like to cooperate closely with partners and allies here in the Gulf region, and encourage them to work together, including within mechanisms such as the GCC, so that our missile defence capabilities are better integrated to support more effective deterrence and more seamless defensive coverage. Regional missile defence here in the Gulf could be another success story, to use the theme of His Highness Minister Abdullah.
I would also like to mention that another important decision made at the NATO Summit was to strengthen NATO’s partnerships, including those beyond Europe. We have had the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative for some time. Now, there is an opportunity to move beyond somewhat theoretical consultations and find areas for concrete cooperation that could strengthen our ability to meet concrete security challenges. This is an opportunity not just in the area of missile defence, but perhaps in other areas, where NATO could work not only with the countries of the region but also with the GCC as an institution. I would be interested in His Highness’s thoughts on the potential for the GCC to take on a more active role in defence, including missile defence. Could that be a potential area for engagement with the NATO Alliance?
Ms Hayfa Ali Al Mattar, Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bahrain
I thank the panellists. My question is about trust out of conflict. This morning we heard a very good model of border architecture, trust out of conflict. I believe it was about Syria and Turkey – a new architecture of border and structure. Today, it was mentioned again. I would like to ask Mr Teo and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed as well: is it applicable in the GCC? As Mr Teo mentioned that as well, I would like to ask about the barriers that ASEAN faced, and the model of countries in ASEAN to implement trust out of conflict.
Dr John Chipman
Liam, could you answer this very delicate question posed by Jean-Claude Mallet: what does it really mean when we speak about ‘strategic reassurance’ here, in light of the Iranian challenge?
Dr Liam Fox
It is a key question that Monsieur Mallet asks. We first have to consider what the region and world would look like if Iran were to become a nuclear weapon state. Firstly, it would have profound implications for the equilibrium in the region itself, possibly long term and possibly irreversibly. More than that, if we have a nuclear weapon state in Iran, what does it mean for other nations? It is very unlikely that other nations will stand by and watch that imbalance on a nuclear basis. We are likely to see a new nuclear arms race developing. That is the last thing we should want to see. After all the sacrifices we made in the Cold War and all that we fought for to avoid the potential of nuclear conflict, surely we want to give something better to the children of our nations than a new nuclear arms race. We must have higher ambitions than that.
Having said that as a broad aim, we have to do what we say. The question was phrased as, ‘What do we do in case there is a nuclear Iran?’ Well by that I understand a nuclear weapon state. The question here is of international resolve and credibility. If there is strategic reassurance, it is to our allies in the region that the international community is serious about what it has said in the Security Council and serious about what we have said with government leaders across the world. The last thing that we want is for our allies to think that we lack resolve and are trying to decide what is plan B if we are not successful. We need to maintain the line; we need to maintain our resolve; and by a process where we are ensuring non‑proliferation alongside disarmament of the existing nuclear powers, we will move, I believe, to a better position of equilibrium. But the last thing that we should talk about is, ‘What if?’, the ‘what if’ being if we fail in our own resolve. That is the last way to reassure our allies or indeed or own people.
Dr John Chipman
Sheikh Abdullah, I think you were asked about your views on missile defence and perhaps also implicitly on the particular relationship the United Arab Emirates seeks to have with NATO through the Istanbul Security Initiative, given that you are one of the four countries that have made formal arrangements in this regard. Sheikh Abdullah.
HH Sh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
[As translated from Arabic: I believe that the new cooperation among NATO states - and according to what has been agreed recently, we hope this includes Russia - we believe that it will achieve many positive things, not only on a regional level, of course, but also on a global level. It will open up ways for technological development and for the development of the concept of a missile defence.
However, if we are speaking about the states of the region, my colleague from the United States of America mentioned special programmes of cooperation between the United States and the Gulf states relating to the development of our security and military capabilities for air defences, either capabilities shared among the states of the Gulf Co-operation Council or capabilities shared bilaterally between the United States and these countries.
However, I believe for a number of reasons that the capabilities existing at present require a considerable measure of further development. Firstly, because these programmes have been inoperative due to various circumstances, but I hope that the new NATO resolution or the formula by which NATO relates to the states of the Gulf Co-operation Council - I hope that the states of the Council will benefit from this formula and that no party will understand that this is aimed at or intended for developing our defences or our defensive capabilities, whether it is in the area of developing our defensive capabilities in the ballistic field or elsewhere.
However, I would like to return to what I said a little earlier. In the states of the Gulf Co-operation Council we have realised much in the way of achievements, and no one will censure us if we turn our attention to the development of our defence capabilities, and no one will reproach us if we are sensitive in the case of parties who want to destabilise the security or the stability of our countries. For this reason, I believe that we will first of all experience an increase in cooperation in the organisation of the military and defence systems of these countries, but we also hope to benefit in a fundamental way from our allies in the West, including the United States of America, in the development of our military programmes in general and our defence capabilities in particular.
I would like to speak briefly about the Istanbul Initiative. I believe that the Istanbul Initiative, at least as far as we in the Emirates are concerned, needs much revision. This Initiative, in my opinion, could be considered outdated, as it does not comply with the least of our requirements at the present time. Our lack of enthusiasm for this initiative is not because it is an initiative which is unacceptable on our part but because it is an "outdated" initiative, as Westerners say.]
John Chipman
Thank you very much. I think that is an encouragement to all of us to think freshly as to how these kinds of arrangements can be modernised. Deputy Prime Minister Teo, you had the easy question to describe Chinese strategy: whether it is entering a new generation, and indeed whether there is an internal consensus on what that Chinese strategy should be, and additionally even to explain how that might affect relations in this region. Over to you.
Teo Chee Hean
Well, I will try and answer Ms Al Mattar’s question first, about building trust and confidence and work my way to the easy question, as you put it. ASEAN started with a lot of internal conflicts. Practically every country had a quarrel with every other country within the original five in ASEAN, and then Southeast Asia was divided by the Cold War, with Vietnam on the other side. So what did we do? I think within the original five ASEAN countries, we decided that development and a better life for people really was a common goal and a common vision and we would work towards that. The path was not always smooth; it was not always easy and progress was not always fast. But I think as we took small steps and we realised the benefits of cooperation, that encouraged us to take bigger steps and build more confidence and trust among each other. From time to time, it was helpful – helpful in a strange sort of way – that there were big external threats. If you are frightened about the same thing at the same time, then you tend to work better together. That creates more consensus to work together to build more trust and confidence.
We also learned how to set aside our differences and to manage them without them getting out of hand. Eventually, within ASEAN we slowly evolved a certain way of dealing with things. If we disagree, we know how to disagree in a civil way; we know how to behave in a certain pattern. So there is a set of behavioural norms that gradually evolved and we found a way of working together. When we brought in the new members – Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia – they too implicitly subscribed to this set of norms of behaviour. So when Vietnam came in after a really very long and difficult period of almost continuous war for 40‑50 years, I think they must have asked themselves the question, ‘Compared to our ASEAN neighbours, why can we not do better than them economically? Why is it not possible to build a better life for our people? Why can Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City not be better and brighter than Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore?’ The answer, obviously, is that it can be and it depends a lot on what you do as a nation and how we work together as a region.
I think that basically is the way that we have worked together internally. But we also want to help to shape our external environment and so we want to make sure that ASEAN is not divided, because in history, when ASEAN has been divided, it has become easy for us to be exploited and used by external powers for their own purposes; to settle their own differences. So ASEAN countries have decided that they will remain unified and work together and try not to be split or separated. So that maintains peace and stability within our region. We also want to draw our external partners into a pattern of behaviour that also is cooperative and is able to manage conflicts. So we believe that it is not possible to solve regional problems just with regional solutions; it is unrealistic to keep others out, because they do have legitimate and very strong interests in our region. To try to keep them out would be unrealistic and probably not possible. So the issue remains how to manage them and manage the different interests in a way which is constructive and helpful to the ASEAN countries as well. Hence we have set up those various structures that I described earlier – the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus and so on – to bring them together in a cooperative way. All our member countries have signed on to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which has certain principles of non-aggression and non-interference and so on in it.
This brings me now to the US and China. We know that the US wants to be, is and should be involved and engaged in the region economically, socially and culturally and contributes to the defence, security and stability of the region. And we know that China is a growing power. So how do we deal with and reconcile these two major powers? We can leave them alone and let them have their differences, and then just be bystanders and stand aside and not contribute in any way, and we may end up being caught up in any differences that they may have. Or we can try and shape the environment and shape the way that both countries behave in our region, so that we provide points at which they can engage each other in a cooperative way and at which they can speak with each other.
At the recent ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus in Hanoi, for example, the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie met together. The two of them had not met before and they were able to sit down in the same room, talk to each other and meet with each other. That, I think, was helpful and probably helps to break the ice between them and set the defence interactions between them back on a positive path again. So these are small ways in which ASEAN, by arranging the furniture, if you like, in the region so that people can sit around the same table and try and talk in a cooperative way, will help to engage both the US and China in a cooperative way.
I think for the US, François, if you ask whether they have the will and whether they will continue and have the capacity, I think the ‘why’ answer is because the Asia-Pacific region actually is a contiguous region to the US and of vital interest to the US, so there is a very strong reason for them to remain engaged. If you ask whether they have the wherewithal, I think they have. Their defence expenditure is half the world’s defence expenditure, so I think they will have the capability for a long time to come. I think that the country has a great capacity to reinvent itself. I was in the United States studying when Japan was number one; that was the theme then. China is number one; that is the theme now. But I think the US has a great capacity to reinvent itself and to coexist with other powerful nations like Japan and China. So I think the US is a resident power and will continue to be there.
China is trying to discover what its own role should be. It is growing from basically a continental, inward-looking country to a country with an international outlook and also with maritime interests around the world, because it is importing and exporting like it never did before. So it has to find its way in the world, and I think that what we would like to see is for China to be more engaged in those fora that make the big decisions in the world. So some of the statements have been said about whether the IMF and the World Bank will continue to be the private preserve, if you like, of the US and Europeans, or whether the developing countries can have a look in, I think are very positive. If they are involved in setting the rules, they are more likely to want to play by the rules and that is positive. So when you see China getting engaged in taking other countries to the WTO, I think that is positive, because it means they believe in the rules and they want to play by the rules. That is what we would like to see.
Dr John Chipman
Thank you very much. I think we will just take a round of four more questions and give the last word to each of the three on the panel.
Brigadier Benjamin Barry, Senior Fellow for Land Warfare, IISS
As all three nations have committed blood, treasure and political capital to Afghanistan, I would remind them the Pentagon’s recent report to Congress assessed that the 2014 deadline for handover to the Afghan lead on security and the withdrawal of NATO forces from a combat role a year later was worrying many of the Afghan people, who felt that the Taliban would win after NATO withdrew. This, of course, is very un-reassuring to them. Indeed, strategic failure in Afghanistan would hugely erode reassurance and deterrents in the region in the medium term. Could the speakers assess their confidence that this very challenging timeline will make sufficient difference to affairs in Afghanistan quickly enough to reassure the Afghan people?
Robert Rosenkranz, Chief Executive Officer, Delphi Financial Group; IISS Member
Dr Fox I think made about the strongest statement of resolve with regard to the threat that nuclear ambitions in Iran pose. I noted in the UK’s defence review that one of the areas of increased emphasis is cyber capabilities, both defensive and perhaps offensive as well. I am just wondering if he would like to comment at all on the relationship between these two phenomena.
Reza Najafi, Head of the Disarmament Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iran
Since there are some references to Iran, I need to make a short comment. I am the Director for Disarmament and International Security in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As repeated many times by my officials at different levels, I should just remind those who refer to the possibility of Iran as a nuclear weapons state that Iran does not need nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly rejected nuclear weapons and we are one of the main supporters of nuclear disarmament. We have been very active during the different meetings, particularly in the NPT review conferences, and it was a proposal by Iran and the other members of the Non-Aligned Movement to have a convention for the prohibition of nuclear weapons with a deadline of 2025 for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. So talking about the ‘if’ and ‘what’ is just speculation about an imaginary situation.
Unfortunately, I did not notice any reference to the real nuclear weapons which already exist in the Middle East; we know that at least 200 nuclear warheads have already targeted or been located to target all capitals throughout the Middle East. So I wonder how we should deal with that issue. The same applies to Iran’s possible missile threat, which indeed is an exaggeration of the situation. Everybody knows Iran was the last country in the region to go after missile development. If you remember very well, during the eight years of war, Iran did not have the capability to retaliate to the constant missile attacks on Iranian cities, so we were out of deterrence capabilities and were obliged to go after the development of missiles for defence. It was repeatedly announced by our officials that Iran will only use its missile capability for defensive purposes. So making it a pretext for the missile shield, as it was referred to, is not the issue in the region; it is a kind of guerrilla missile shield. Those who are engaged in this issue will remember very well that it goes back to the 1980s and Reagan’s so-called ‘Star Wars’, which indeed, as an expert of disarmament, I should say is only for the US to get superiority in all areas of military capability. For that reason, Russia was one of the main opponents of such a plan and of course there is some other speculation that it is for China as an emerging power in the near future. So I was just obliged to make this comment, because there were some references to my country. I hope I have made myself clear on this.
Dr John Chipman
Thank you very much, Mr Najafi. Just before I take the last two points, I should make reference to two studies that the IISS has recently conducted that are relevant to remarks made this afternoon. We published a few months ago a very detailed 170-page document on Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and I want to underline that the title of the dossier was ‘Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities’; it was a neutral assessment of the technical capabilities, which we have distributed to the Islamic Republic and indeed to others in this area and we would be delighted to hear any comments you might have on that. But it shows a very extensive range of work that has been conducted over the last several years. I think I should also point out, because the Russia‑NATO relationship was mentioned by Sheikh Abdullah, that we are very proud that just a week before the NATO summit, an IISS joint study with a Russian institute on the Russia‑NATO Strategic Concept was briefed directly by Oksana Antonenko, our IISS colleague here, to President Medvedev, and we are led credibly to believe that it was one of the reasons why President Medvedev took the decision to attend the NATO summit. He felt comforted that the relationship between NATO and Russia would move to a more strategic level rather than the administrative one that had been characterised by the previous workings of the NATO-Russia Council, and he knew that we had talked to people at NATO about our report [and] it received approval. So we hope that was a constructive contribution that the IISS made. We really have time for two crisp questions; no short speeches.
Shka Zeina Al Khalifa, First Secretary, Embassy of Bahrain to the UK
My question is to Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed. Your Highness, what do you think is the most ominous threat to the GCC and how can it be addressed? My second question is what are the priorities for the United Arab Emirates as Chair of the GCC in the next 12 months?
Hassan Elbahtimy, Researcher, Verification Research, Training and Information Centre, Egypt
Many speakers here and elsewhere have emphasised the importance of the regional dimension. My question is whether the future P5+1 talks with Iran over the nuclear issue can or should be opened to wider regional participation, perhaps in a fashion similar to the six-party talks that dealt with nuclear and wider security issues in Northeast Asia. Thank you.
Dr John Chipman
Thanks very much. I think we now have to close and return to the panel. Let us do it in this order: Minister Teo, Liam Fox and we will end with His Highness Sheikh Abdullah.
Teo Chee Hean
With regard to Afghanistan and the 2014 deadline, I do not pretend to be an expert on this, so I will defer to Dr Fox, who had the last word on this, but I would say that what is important is whether the Afghan people are prepared to take responsibility for themselves and the extent to which they are prepared to open a new chapter for themselves and work towards peace, stability and progress for their country. I think it depends much more on that than almost anything else.
Dr Liam Fox
In terms of cyber capability, in the UK press, and I cannot answer for anyone else, we hear about the threat or the potential threat of cyber attack. This is no potential threat; this is already happening. We need to invest in the capabilities to protect our critical infrastructure from that sort of attack. In our defence review we did decide we needed to divest ourselves of some of our Cold War-legacy equipment in order to be able to invest in some of the capabilities we will require in the future. We cannot be sentimental when it comes to national security; we have to be very hard-headed. It was not particularly aimed at any one country, but a generally increasing threat.
On the issue of Iran, if Iran does not want to have nuclear weapons that should make the P5+1 talks relatively simple. If Iran wants to be transparent with no more hiding of nuclear sites; if it wants to meet its legal obligations and fulfil its obligations under the NPT (Non‑Proliferation Treaty), then we can move forward. Again, I reiterate the point I made: the international community has no quarrel with the people of Iran; we have a problem with a government that seems intent on following a policy that is contrary to international law and the legal obligations to which they have already signed up. That is what needs to be addressed.
On the question of Afghanistan, we are not trying to create some perfect Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan, one of the poorest parts of the world; we are trying to create a stable enough Afghanistan, which is able to manage its own internal and external security without reference to or requirement of the international community. I think we must also recognise that, as the situation improves on the ground and there is greater stability, prosperity to an extent and governance, it is very likely that the government of Afghanistan will want to exercise its own sovereignty.
There has perhaps been a mistake in international thinking; we have always assumed that ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) would be the prime mover in Afghanistan, when it was always going to be the case at some point that the government of Afghanistan would want to take more control of their security. They want to take control of their security by the end of 2014; we should welcome that and work with them to ensure that they have as much capability in both their army and police force as possible.
I say to the British contingent, we have a tendency in the United Kingdom to view Afghanistan through the prism of Helmand, because that is where British forces are. Only 3.5% of the population of Afghanistan live in Helmand and only 1% lives within the area currently controlled by British forces. We should recognise that more than 50% of the violence in Afghanistan comes from just nine districts out of more than 400. We need to keep it in balance; there is a lot of progress being made in Afghanistan. There are considerable problems remaining, but we should … engage with the sovereign government now and encourage them to take as much control over their future as possible, recognising that ultimately we are not trying to determine a particular model for Afghanistan to follow, but merely to ensure that the model it does follow does not pose a risk to ourselves or our allies. We want a stable and prosperous Afghanistan that does not create a security vacuum into which the forces of transnational terrorism would be drawn once again.
HH Sheik Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
[As translated from Arabic: As far as Afghanistan is concerned, I believe that it is necessary to think about some practical steps. Firstly, from our point of view, we believe that Pakistan's stability is very important for the success of the task in Afghanistan. Secondly, the Afghan government is better than the government which existed in past years; it works better, supports its people better and cooperates with the international community better.
Thirdly, the states present in Afghanistan should focus more and in a better way on Afghanistan's development in all areas, and especially in the economic field. It is not reasonable that less than 15% of public expenditure in Afghanistan goes to projects in Afghanistan. This is certainly not the best means of helping Afghanistan. A greater presence of Islamic states - until now the number of Islamic states present in Afghanistan is less than can be counted on the fingers of one hand - I believe that it is our problem as Muslims to deal with the problem of extremism in Afghanistan, help our brothers in Afghanistan escape from their distress and stand with our friends in the West and in NATO in completing their task in Afghanistan as quickly as possible.
The last point which I want to clarify is that we should remove imaginary timetables from our thoughts and from the manner in which we deal with Afghanistan. If we set imaginary timetables, the Taliban or al-Qaeda will wait until 2014 to take over this country. I hope that we will be able to leave Afghanistan before 2014, but I believe that the existence of imaginary timetables is not helpful.
I would like to speak briefly about the Gulf Co-operation Council in reply to the lady's question. I believe that the basic danger which we in the states of the Co-operation Council face is confronting extremism. We must confront extremism in its different senses, whether ideological or another type. I hope that during our chairmanship, the Emirates might be in a position to improve economic cooperation between the states of the Co-operation Council, but also to focus in great measure on concluding a number of free trade agreements between the states of the Co-operation Council and other blocs and states such as we have implemented with Singapore.
The gentleman at the back asked or wanted us to compare the P5+1 talks and the six-party talks to resolve the Korean problem. I believe it is a serious question. Why do the states of the Co-operation Council not play a role in the dialogue with Iran? Why do the West and the P5+1 believe that resolving the Iranian nuclear issue is a subject which only relates to themselves?
The solution is to be found in this region and will emerge from it. I believe that our allies in the West should also revise their strategy in their dialogue with Iran. They should consult with the states of the Co-operation Council; the states of the Co-operation Council should play a role, a role equal to that of these states in these talks with our neighbour Iran.]
Dr John Chipman
My instincts were right; I was confident that as we drew this to a close we would get a very practical suggestion and I want to thank all three panellists for their realism, strategic thinking and their passionate defence of practical goals, especially these last words in favour of leaders in the region helping to frame the strategic outcomes for the region and be the authors of their own strategic scripts. This is what the Manama Dialogue is meant to animate and incubate and we thank all three speakers for their subtle and nuanced approach to this very difficult question.
