Plenary session 1

 

 

 

 

 

The Manama Dialogue was held against a backdrop of hesitancy, uncertainty and some confusion in US policy towards the Gulf region in general and Iraq in particular.  The November 2006 mid-term elections had provided an occasion where US voters punished the Bush administration severely, principally for the violence and chaos flourishing in Iraq. The Democrats, who had advocated an accelerated withdrawal from Iraq, or who had otherwise criticised the administration’s conduct of the war, had been rewarded at the polls with control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Taking charge of the key congressional committees dealing with defence and foreign policy, they were preparing to expose what they saw as the blunders of the Bush administration, to exert the powers of scrutiny and oversight they now enjoyed, and to force policy onto a new course.

 

With President Bush conceding that he had been dealt a ‘thumping’, there was a broad public expectation that US strategy would be noticeably overhauled. Donald Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary since 2001 had been a chief and controversial architect of the military and political strategy towards a conflict that combined the features of a civil war and an insurgency, was sacrificed by the White House to the prevailing public mood. Democratic relief at Rumsfeld’s departure, and the politically useful opportunity for the new congressional masters to demonstrate bipartisan magnanimity (on this point at least), ensured swift confirmation of Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense.

 

Meanwhile, the Baker–Hamilton Iraq Study Group’s report, published soon after the mid-terms and only a few days before the Manama Dialogue, made many recommendations as to how the United States might extract itself from an Iraqi quagmire on respectable terms and with some regard to preserving broad US national security interests. There were to be no ‘magic bullets’, however, and champions of the bipartisan report saw it primarily as a device by which the collective American body politic and foreign-policy establishment might publicly acknowledge the makings of a failure in Iraq and to recede from that prospect in a workable way. Detractors saw the report as putting a gloss on calls to ‘cut and run’. Commentators in the Gulf felt it had more to do with Washington than Baghdad. The White House received the study with public courtesy and, reportedly, private contempt. It was deeply unimpressed by the report’s advocacy of scheduled and arbitrary troop draw-downs and energetic engagement of what the Bush administration saw as the prime regional ‘spoilers’: Syria and Iran.

 

The White House kept its counsel and awaited the findings of its own internal military and diplomatic reviews. The outcome of those internal processes was to be announced a month after the Manama Dialogue: the Baghdad Security Plan required not a drawdown of forces but an increase of some 21,000 personnel, with the intention of pacifying the Iraqi capital and establishing lasting government control over areas currently serving as domains and killing fields for insurgent and sectarian terrorists and criminal elements. The plan immediately ran into controversy, with criticism coming from luminaries on both sides of the political divide. The new military leadership charged with carrying out the plan was quickly confirmed by Congress, which then immediately challenged the wisdom of their task.

 

These gathering political developments, leadership changes and still unsettled policy reviews ultimately proved too compelling to permit cabinet-rank officials from the United States to take part in discussions in Bahrain. The Manama Dialogue 2006 benefited from the endorsement and active support and interest of the Secretary of State, the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense, all of whom followed preparations for the Summit carefully and had formally announced their intention to participate. Happily, excellent and experienced substitutes were found to explain policy developments in Washington and their implications for the wider Gulf region: William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration; and Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State in the first George W. Bush administration.

 

Cohen remarked on the decline in the political fortunes of President Bush, who after the events of 11 September 2001 had benefited from a high degree of public support, expressed in renewed electoral mandates in 2002 and 2004 for the Republican Party and Bush personally. This had conferred some freedom of action in foreign policy. But the catalogue of problems in Iraq, and the loss of lives and resources there, stood in such contrast to the swift successes that had been advertised and expected that the Democratic Party had been able to seize on foreign and security policy as an area in which it could make increasingly effective appeals to public opinion.

 

It was in this context that the bipartisan Baker–Hamilton report had been issued. In the case of Iraq, there was now ‘just a brief window of time between now and the 2008 elections to talk about a policy position as opposed to a political one ... that window may close rather quickly’.

 

He noted that the terms ‘victory’ or ‘success’ had been substantially ‘defined down’. Cohen accepted the report’s argument that there was a limit to what the US could do in Iraq, and that much of the initiative and responsibility would have to come from and fall on Iraqi leaders. To that degree, setting a deadline of 2008 for a withdrawal of at least some US troops would concentrate minds in Iraq’s argumentative government and lead to more determined action against militias. While Cohen had no objection in principle to the recommendation that Syria and Iran, two countries with increasing influence and growing numbers of proxies in Iraq, be fully engaged by Washington, he was concerned that this be done from some ‘position of strength’, rather than as a demonstration of American weakness. Any approaches would among other things require greater solidarity and consistency among the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council: China and Russia in particular would have to better signal their willingness to confront Iran about its nuclear ambitions.

 

Cohen found himself in closer agreement, however, with the Iraq Study Group’s sense that the United States needed to re-engage in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process ‘in a very aggressive way’. He felt that American detachment of late had made it more possible for extremists like Hamas to flourish, and not enough had been done to support the moderate instincts of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. While a peace settlement in Palestine would not automatically solve all the region’s other conflicts, the energy spent on such an agreement would improve the standing of the US in Arab minds.

Cohen commented favourably on the appointment of Robert Gates, whom he considered capable. But he closed by warning again that there were just four to five months before the intruding presidential election cycle in the United States would manifest itself in ‘the fragmentation of any consensus that may be developed in the short term’ towards Iraq.

 

Richard Armitage began informally by noting that he had been introduced to the Middle East by His Majesty King Hamad of Bahrain and had been ‘hooked ever since’. He also described himself as a former ‘regime element’ of the Bush administration, and lamented the fact that the United States had after 11 September presented ‘a very angry face to the world … exporting that anger and that fear; we were snarling’. He felt this had to end.

 

Armitage began his survey of the greater Middle East by arguing that the heavy expectations for rapid democratisation heaped upon Iraq were more than its history and society could bear. The cases of post-war Germany and Japan provided no model for Iraq, with its special circumstances of colonialism and then authoritarianism, to emulate. It had been unwise for the US to attempt in the initial phase of the aftermath of the invasion to put into power political exiles who by definition were detached from and had no standing in Iraq’s political system. This had produced delay in a gradual political reconstruction and had wasted precious time.

 

Describing himself as a friend of Israel, Armitage was however sharply critical of the political and military strategy adopted towards Hizbullah in the recent Lebanon war.  Remarking that ‘it takes a soldier with a bayonet to bend an enemy to our will’, he chastised Israel for its ‘antiseptic’ approach to fighting, preferring air power over ground forces. The deficiencies of this approach had allowed Hizbullah to exhibit resilience, and thus record a political triumph that emboldened it in confronting the elected Lebanese government. It had also provided Iran and Syria with a large measure of satisfaction.

 

Armitage expressed concern over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. If the international community failed in its project to establish a secure, democratic and moderate state there, there would be spill-over effects for Pakistan that would undermine the present Pakistani leadership. The result would be a ‘whole new ball game’ for the wider region and for India.

 

He felt that the ‘good news’ was that Washington was attempting now to construct an ‘all encompassing policy’ towards the region that took account of how its many problems and conflicts related to each other: ‘we’ve been treating many things as if they were one-off, and they’re not necessarily one-off’.

 

The discussion period focused mainly on policies towards Iran and Iraq. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a British Conservative Member of Parliament and former Foreign Secretary, asked whether and on what terms the US might be willing to offer Iran a ‘grand bargain’. In principle this ought not to be more difficult than reaching an arrangement with Libya, and arguably the stakes and incentives were higher. Armitage felt that Iran desired ‘nothing more than a correct relationship with the United States’. He thought that diplomatic engagement of Iran was not necessarily a sign of weakness, and that it would be useful, as in the course of traditional diplomacy, to directly exchange views and ‘gain intelligence’ about Iranian intentions. Still, in view of Iranian obfuscation on the nuclear dossier, the onus lay on it to demonstrate that it was interested in a serious discussion. Cohen also felt that the US ought to be prepared to talk to Iran, but was doubtful whether at this time Washington had sufficient leverage to reach any kind of agreement on favourable terms.

 

Turning to Iraq, Professor François Heisbourg, IISS Chairman, questioned Cohen’s sense that the Baker–Hamilton report was correct in its insistence that the Iraqi government ‘do more’. Was the lack of action on the part of the Iraqis a reflection of their unwillingness or inability? If the latter was the case – something that would have to be proven rather than merely surmised – what was the point of heaping more demands and transferring blame on to the Iraqi government? Cohen replied that without more sign of progress being achieved by the Nuri al-Maliki government, American confidence would rapidly decline to a point at which the whole US endeavour would become politically unsustainable.

 

Lord Powell of Bayswater, former Foreign Policy Adviser to British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, felt that the Baker–Hamilton report was no more than a routine academic study that ‘isn’t really related very much to the real world in Iraq’. It was a plan, inspired by former US President George H.W. Bush and his confidant, James Baker, to ‘get junior out of there’. But the abandonment of Iraq would produce even greater bloodshed and turn Iraq into a haven where terrorists could plot against the US and others. Withdrawal now would be rather like Winston Churchill having quit or surrendered in 1941 or 1942 in the face of ominous odds. It would demonstrate that the United States and its allies had no staying power. Armitage agreed that Baker–Hamilton was directed primarily at political audiences in Washington. Cohen noted that at a time when reductions in British deployments had been foreshadowed, staying power was not only a matter for the United States to consider. It was also incumbent on other countries worried about the implications of a withdrawal to think about how the huge burden of the commitment to Iraq could be shared.

 

Mikhail Margelov, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Russian Duma, noted the election in November 2006 of the first Muslim Congressman in the United States. What did this signify? Cohen felt that local politics, rather than wider structural issues or trends, had been decisive in this particular development. It was encouraging nonetheless.

 

Waleed Al Banawi, Vice Chairman, Banawi Industrial Group, Saudi Arabia, asked what Cohen considered to be the single most important recommendation of the Baker–Hamilton report – though he acknowledged that the authors of the report saw it as a single whole rather than a ‘fruit salad’ from which one might pick and choose. Cohen identified the following as all being important: the proposed shift in US military activity away from combat to training of Iraqi forces; the value of indicating to the Iraqi government that the US military commitment will decline at the end of 2008; and a reinvigoration of US efforts towards the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.

 

Professor Aboumohammad Asgarkhani, University of Tehran, asked whether US ‘failure’ in Iraq had made it possible for Iran to push ahead with a nuclear programme with apparent impunity. Cohen felt that the Iranians were ‘benefiting enormously’ from American problems in Iraq. He rejected the suggestion of Hossein Mousavian, Adviser to the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, that his country was concerned only about the development of civilian nuclear energy and had complied properly with its inspection obligations. Why, Cohen asked, had Iran consistently rejected proposals that would go towards meeting international concerns about Iranian intentions?

 

The final question came from Roy MacLaren, Chairman of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, who asked about the impact on the NATO commitment to Afghanistan of any withdrawal or draw-down of forces from Iraq. Armitage felt that the political commitment to Afghanistan was stronger and more firmly established in the American public mind, since the terrorist threat had emanated so clearly from that country in the past.  In addition, the stakes for NATO’s credibility and future were so high in Afghanistan that the US commitment would persist. Cohen felt there was scope for NATO members and others to do more in Afghanistan, which otherwise would recede into a ‘Hobbesian’ state of affairs.