Mission report washington, D. C. And chicago, united states


Coping with a Fragmenting MENA Region



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Coping with a Fragmenting MENA Region





  1. The situation on NATO’s southern flank is particularly complex and, there is little clarity on what precise role, if any, the Alliance should play. Several speakers, including Christopher Chivvis, Adjunct Professor of European Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and an Associate Director at the Rand Corporation’s International Security and Defense Policy Center, suggested that defining a NATO strategy for the south is proving very difficult. NATO’s partnerships with the countries of the region have had only a limited impact even as threats to security have multiplied. The challenge now is to find a way to make these partnerships more substantive. As regional security deteriorates, NATO can ill afford to stand on the sidelines, Mr Chivvis emphasised. In a briefing at the State Department, Mr Heffern noted that the US administration does not envision a military solution to the Syrian conflict, although military pressure may eventually be necessary for finding a political solution.




  1. Mr Chivvis told the delegation that the deteriorating security situation in parts of the Mediterranean and Middle East poses an even more unnerving challenge to allied countries than does Russia. The nature of the Russian threat is relatively clear as is the proper response to that threat. This is not the case for the multifarious security challenges the international community confronts in the MENA region. Increasingly western publics are more focused on this set of challenges perhaps even than those posed by Russia. NATO’s role in that region, however, is less well defined while the challenges it potentially confronts are multifarious and highly complex. Although allied countries generally recognise the nature of the threat in Eastern Europe and precisely what is needed to address it, no such clear policy prescriptions exist with regard to the MENA region. This in itself should be a source of concern, Mr Chivvis said.




  1. Mr Townsend agreed that NATO needs to focus more attention on the south, but it needs to recognise that those who live in the region should ultimately be responsible for conducting any necessary ground operations. It is their territory, their homes and their terrain and NATO is probably well advised to focus on training as well as air and intelligence support. He also warned that NATO cannot allow itself to be divided between those more focused on the east and those more focused on the south. NATO is about 360-degree security, and solidarity is essential to its proper functioning. He too suggested that the EU needs to work more closely with NATO on these core security issues and that it makes no sense for these two institutions to compete or to operate without proper coordination.




  1. For many citizens in Allied countries daily life may be more affected by what is transpiring on NATO’s southern flank, particularly in light of the burgeoning refugee crisis. Europe’s migration predicament has become so serious that it is recasting politics in many allied countries. This too could impinge on how security policy is conceived and formulated within NATO itself.




  1. NATO’s approach to the region, Mr Townsend noted, has been predicated on the Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. But beyond NATO’s support for the operations in Libya and important joint training and exercises, there has been little operational substance to these partnerships. Political relationships with many countries in the region are often problematic, and the region as a whole is beset by internal political tensions and open conflicts. Making this all the more difficult is that there has been no consensus within NATO on how to approach the region or whether NATO should even be a primary player there.




  1. Russia is one common factor shaping events to NATO’s east and to its south. In Syria, Russia is concerned about ISIS, but its primary objective is to back the Assad regime and to protect its own interests in the region. Russia also has an interest in complicating NATO planning. It seeks opportunities to demonstrate that the Atlantic Alliance is weak and divided. Still Russia will be a factor in any eventual solution to the Syrian crisis and the broader regional issue. Egypt may need to be as well, and it also shares Western concerns about developments in Libya where ISIS has begun to develop a powerful presence.




  1. Both Mr Chivvis and Mr Daalder believe that NATO members should reject any notion that the Alliance is not positioned to make a positive contribution to security in the MENA region. Mr Chivvis suggested that NATO should engage more deeply both with the African Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council in order to impart its experience on managing complex security coalition operations, something that might facilitate future operational cooperation. Mr Daalder and Mr Chivvis agreed that NATO could be a hub for sharing counter-ISIS intelligence and that the Alliance should be working more closely with the EU on this particular front. A deeper level of NATO support for Tunisia would also be helpful given both the strides that country has made in building a democratic order and persistent vulnerabilities that threaten that achievement. Finally, Allied governments should not rule out the idea of NATO playing a significantly more active role in taking on ISIS. Mr Chivvis stressed that it would be very helpful in this regard if cooperation between NATO and the EU were deepened. Each offers important but different assets to building stability in the south and it is not helpful that the dialogue between these two institutions is limited due to several outstanding diplomatic questions.




  1. The delegation also met with Michele Dunne, Director and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Program. She spoke about the migration-refugee crisis as a shock to the entire region. The Middle East has long been troubled by wars and civil upheaval, but never have we seen so many countries in turmoil at once. The refugee numbers point to the human suffering this has precipitated: 9 million Syrians have left their homes, as have 2.5 million Yemenis and half a million people from Libya. In Egypt, a country that seems relatively peaceful, 3,000 people have been killed over the last year. In Gaza 2,000 were killed in the war with Israel and two thirds of these were civilians.




  1. This is all happening at a time when the United States shows a declining interest in the region, in part, due to the very difficult experiences of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Yet the United States and Europe have to live with the consequences of this instability. The other source of frustration is that the states in the regions with which the international community needs to partner, are themselves at fault for many of the problems that have triggered this instability. Tunisia is one of the few countries where this does not seem to be the case and the Carnegie Endowment has run a major project on the situation in that country entitled: “Between Peril and Promise: A new framework for partnership”. Tunisia has made great strides in reforming its institutions and it has done so in a democratic manner. But it faces threats both within and beyond its borders, and it needs international support if its democratic experiment is to survive.




  1. Ms Dunne stressed that the nature of conflict has also changed, as many of the protagonists in these wars are sub-state actors, many like Daesh with radical agendas. There are underlying reasons for these changes. The Middle East is demographically very young and this is often associated with turbulence. Harnessing youthful energy requires employment prospects but these prospects do not exist. Poor governance is a critical reason why, and this has been a central source of frustration and political alienation. Daesh noted that the US invasion of Iraq utterly altered the regional balance of power. The implications of this are still playing out in the Gulf. The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has entered a new phase. Iran exploited a moment of Saudi distraction to enter into the Yemen conflict. The Saudis are now pushing back, and this has inflamed sectarian sentiments throughout the region. But it would be a mistake to reduce events in the region to a simple sectarian conflict. Energy price changes are also a factor in regional politics. Its decades-long reliance on oil exports left much of the rest of the economy under-developed. This leaves Saudi Arabia in a relatively weak position.




  1. Vali R. Nasr, Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, told the delegation that the defeat of Daesh will ultimately require cooperation with Iran. He suggested that Iran’s decision to engage diplomatically on the nuclear question constituted a very significant gamble by the Iranian government. While Tehran has implemented its part of the nuclear deal rather quickly, the United States has moved much more slowly, a development which could put the agreement at risk. Mr Nasr suggested that failure to implement quickly could represent a squandered opportunity.




  1. Mr Nasr also noted that there is a certain tension between those who subscribe to the idea that the deal signed with Iran was a narrow nuclear deal and those who see it as the beginning of a changed diplomatic relationship. This tension is evident within the US government as well. Secretary of State John Kerry is convinced that the deal marks the beginning of a broader strategic shift, which might result in Iran returning as a normal rather than a revolutionary participant in the global order. Signing the deal was clearly a risk for the Iranian government but there seemed to be a broad consensus that doing so was the right thing. They too are wrestling with the question of whether the deal marks a technical change or points to a broader political and diplomatic shift. In any case, signing the deal posed a great risk to the regime as it goes against decades of Iranian rhetoric about the dangers of the United States. Indeed, the current cooperation with the United States represents a massive shock to the Iranian body politic.




  1. In some respects, the Iranian regime is in a difficult position as it cannot easily walk back from the deal. Iranians have already dismantled important facilities and so backing out would come at a great cost. This could have implications for domestic politics in Iran. The people clearly yearn for a collective return to the world community, and they are also hoping for new economic opportunities. Many Iranians see this deal in these terms and recent parliamentary elections seem to have boosted the position and the leverage of reformers in that country. These elections are consequential, Mr Nasr said. Some key hardliners lost their seats, something that rarely happens in elections in this part of the world. All thirty seats in Tehran’s constituencies went to the reformers. The results provide a strong indication that President Rouhani will be re-elected in 2017. The electoral mandate reformers have won gives them significantly more leverage.




  1. Again, the problem is that the United States has been very slow to uphold its part of the bargain and a number of commercial deals are being held up because there are concerns that the Treasury Department might again impose sanctions on companies doing business with Iran. This appears to be holding up an Airbus sale to the Iranian national airline flagship. The problem appears to be bureaucratic. The nuclear deal was signed with the State Department, but much of the implementation now lies with the Treasury Department which has moved very slowly and with a degree of uncertainty.




  1. Mr Nasr also suggested that, while much of the rhetoric in the Gulf region focuses on the nuclear weapons issue, that is not really their primary concern. They are actually more worried about Iran moving into the good graces of the West, which would upset a number of assumptions that have shaped the region’s strategic culture in recent decades. This is unfolding at a time when the Arab world itself is in great disarray and the US-Saudi relationship has considerably worsened. In fact, these Arab concerns are not off the mark. If Iran has learned that diplomacy works, then we are indeed entering a new era, particularly as Iraq and Syria are in such a deep crisis, Saudi Arabia is losing its energy leverage and a range of sub-state actors appear to be partly setting the regional agenda. Mr Nasr noted that Iran is now an implicit partner of the West in both Syria and Iraq insofar as it is directly or indirectly taking on ISIS. This could represent a fundamental change in regional diplomacy and it suggests that Western stakes in the nuclear deal with Iran are significantly greater than is often thought and clearly transcend narrow nuclear proliferation matters. Indeed, if Iran were to withdraw from its fight against ISIS, the problems for the international community could mount significantly, Nasr warned.




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