Israel: Prof Heisbourg Addresses Conference on Global Trends From EU
Perspective
Herzliyya Institute of Policy and Strategy WWW-Text in English 13 Dec 04
[Address by Prof Francois Heisbourg, director of France's Fondation Pour la
Recherche Strategique, at the 5th Herzliyya Conference on "Global Trends --
A European Perspective"]
I will say essentially two things. The first is a very broad spectrum
nature and that is: If we look ahead 15-20 years and we ask ourselves what
are the big issues that will shape the nature of the international system in
which we are living and in which we will be living, and in turn, how will
these be affected by the way we handle, or mishandle, the Iranian issue,
Iran's nuclear program. One could always add one or more, but I think
there are really four basic really big issues, which are going to determine
the nature of the international system.
The first, and it will surprise you, is the rise of China. The manner
in which China will become the world's other great power will be of
absolutely essential importance, whether we have a new Cold War or not.
Whether we have massive regional instability or not in East Asia, with
global implications, both political and strategic as well as economic, will
depend on how China's rise occurs and how we handle that rise. And that,
in turn, will depend to a great extent on how we handle, or mishandle, Iran.
And I'll come back to that in a second.
The second big issue, which will come as another surprise to you is, of
course, the continuation of some sort of international nonproliferation
regime. By that I mean a situation in which the number of actual virtual
nuclear states remains fairly narrowly confined -- the five official states
plus Pakistan, India, Israel, no doubt North Korea, possibly Iran. Either
way, you have a limited number of those states or you have a breakdown of
the nonproliferation regime and you have Kennedy's prediction of 1963 then
actually coming true, when he said that "I greatly fear a world where in 10
to 15 years time there will be 25 nuclear powers and in 30 years time there
will be 30 to 40." That process was arrested in the following years, by the
advent of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and everything that accompanies it.
We may well find ourselves going back to the nuclear jungle forecast by
Kennedy back in the 1960's. And that, of course, depends essentially on
how we handle or mishandle the Iranian issue.
Third major issue: the modernization of the Middle East, transformation
of the Middle East -- I'll come back to that in a second. I don't think I
need to expand on the nature of the issue.
And last, but definitely not least, the combined issue of energy
dependency and global warming. This is becoming a first order set of
issues, in a way which I think is not the same as it was during the 1970's
and the early 1980's when we had the big energy problems, because this has
become an environmental issue, an issue with a very great potential to split
the countries of Europe and the United States of America. Here again we find
the shadow, as it were, of China, which is bound neither by the Kyoto
Protocols nor by any sense of self-limitation of its energy appetite,
following in, I would add, the example of the United States of America.
Now having these four big issues on the table. If I look at the
Iranian problem: How should we be coping with Iran and what is the true
importance of the Iranian issue? The true importance of the Iranian issue
for the functioning of an international system is threefold. First, the
one which is obviously the most sensitive to you folks here, is the way in
which a nuclear armed Iran could upset the regional balance and pose
potentially an existential threat to this country. I would add that
possession of a form of nuclear arms can obviously come in quite useful in
such circumstances above and beyond the existence of an alliance guarantee
with the United States of America.
The second implication is a somewhat paradoxical one, and I'd like to
bounce it off you because it may raise some questions. One of the
paradoxical implications of Iran's ambitions going unchecked would be, in
effect, to force some of the Middle Eastern countries, notably some of the
monarchies of the Gulf, to choose a tight, binding alliance with the United
States of America. Because in the face of a nuclear armed Iran, such
countries will not find security with their own means alone and will need to
seek security from elsewhere. For other countries in the Middle East, and
I suspect this will not be a controversial statement, other countries in the
Middle East may find it more to their advantage to go down the same nuclear
road as Iran would have taken. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Syria may, if
the nonproliferation regime breaks down, go down that particular road.
And the last implication is of a global nature. If Iran is allowed to
set a precedent in terms of the breakdown of the nuclear nonproliferation
regime, then I suspect we will have quite rapidly a breakdown of the
security order in East Asia. This security order is a key element, of
course, in terms of strategic and vital interests. Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan today live reasonably comfortably under the American security
umbrella, they have not felt compelled to go down fully the nuclear road,
even if on occasion they signal that they could go down that road if
circumstances changed. It is not entirely by chance, as they would have
said in the old Soviet days, it is not entirely by chance. You have
revelations coming out from South Korea, about South Korea's nuclear program
these days, revelations about what they did 20 years ago that come out
now, just by chance, and we have had a little bit of that also in Taiwan.
So, the challenge represented by the Iranian issue is actually of very major
importance and seen from Europe, these three dimensions have to be taken
together. Of course, from the European standpoint, it is possibly that the
last is of the greatest importance; that is, the breakdown of the nuclear
nonproliferation regime, the breakdown of the strategic order in East Asia
as well as in the Middle East, and in the case of East Asia an unstable East
Asia with new opportunities for conflict and misunderstanding. How would a
nuclear triangle between China, Japan and the United States, get along? Or
South Korea, North Korea, China, Russia, the United States to take an even
more complex figure? Very, very difficult to imagine how this could be
pursued with the same level of stability and security as is the case today,
and if you don't have a stable and secure East Asia you don't have a
functioning world economy. And that is also one of the aspects which one
has to take into account.
What are the strategies that we can implement under those circumstances?
In my view, there are essentially three possible basic strategies, which are
not totally incompatible mutually, elements of which can overlap or
dovetail, but which at the end of the day are actually quite different if
you take them to the full, to the extreme development. The first is what I
think is the current American strategy. I say what I think is the current
American strategy because I don't know what the current American strategy
is. I hear neither the brandishing of sticks nor the brandishing of
carrots from our American friends for the moment. I hear occasional voicing
of doubt or support vis-a-vis what the Europeans are trying to do, but I
don't actually here a strategy being formulated. I think the American
strategy is one of playing for time, hoping that events in Iran may lead to
a different type of leadership. Whether this is promoted or not through
measures which would facilitate the advent of a new leadership, I do not
know. Today, a regime change is not, officially at least, the overt or
public policy of the United States of America. But in the absence of any
open expression of an American choice, by default, I think that this is the
US strategy -- hoping for the best, helping or hindering the Europeans as
the case may be at different points in time and eventually hoping that in
the rather factious polity constituted by Iran, a different leadership may
emerge with which it may be easier to work on these issues.
The second strategy is the forceful one. One assumes that Iran is not
going to be dissuaded, is not going to be convinced to stop its nuclear
program. The consequences of this happening are so dire that they cannot
be contemplated. Negotiations can either fail or can only be assumed to be
a dead end, therefore, forceful action has to be considered. The problem
with this strategy is that there was actually a window of opportunity last
year in which such a strategy could possibly have been contemplated with
some chance of success. At least the threat of such a strategy maybe could
have helped lead to a situation where the Iranians would have been forced
into a situation in which their program could not be realized. Last year,
well over 300,000 American combat troops were in Iraq, 40,000 combat troops
from Britain were in Iraq -- these were strategic assets at the time. Most
of Iraq was actually quite peaceable for a few weeks and if there ever was a
moment to brandish the stick, or indeed to proffer the carrot, that was it;
that was 2003. Now I hear here and there from my friends in Washington that
there may have been some sort of attempt to talk, to do some
back-channeling, essentially make them wise up. I also understand that
this did not actually go to the point of either brandishing really big
sticks or offering very big carrots.
Now, the situation has much deteriorated. The troops in Iraq are no
longer assets, they are liabilities. They are liable to increase the holds
of Iranian subversion in Iraq. They are not usable against Iran, but the
Iranians can use local assets against the American troops. Not a great
situation. As for only using air or Special Forces to get rid of the
Iranian program, well this is not like with Iraq. As a Frenchman, I speak
without hesitation in favor of what you did with Iraq in 1981. I know that
there was a debate inside the circles of government here in the weeks which
preceded the strike, was it a wise thing to plan or not a wise thing to
plan. Well, I think history has proven that it probably was a wise thing
to do, that it may have lengthened the time for Iraq's nuclear program by
several years and those several years were incredibly precious because at
the time of the invasion of Kuwait Iraq was not yet a nuclear power. It
probably would have been if Iraq had not been bombed. But this is not
about Iraq. Here we're talking about stuff which is up to no RAD standards
in some cases. We also know from the Iraqi experience that there are
things we know and there are things we know that we don't know, and as Don
Rumsfeld would add, there are also things that we don't know that we don't
know. And anybody who thinks that he has a complete list of targets in
Iran, must be a very very confident person, possibly over-confident. So
the forceful choice, I suspect, is not one that offers too many attractions
at this stage.
So, we are at option three: we negotiate. How to negotiate? Well, when
you don't have many big sticks it becomes rather more difficult. You want
the sticks in the background but they have shrunken in size. Still, you
have to negotiate with what you have. And what do we have? We have some
European carrots, they're not negligible, but we have very big carrots on
the American side. They are called diplomatic recognition, they are called
trade, there are all sorts of things that the Americans can also put on the
table. If we want to have a chance of making the current so-called
voluntary suspension by Iran of its enrichment activities into a legally
binding deal, the Americans are going to have to weigh in. I think that we
have done our part; I think the Europeans actually have done it reasonably
well under the circumstance. The learning curve was actually rather rough, I
would add, Iranians are not easy partners as some here may know. But the
situation where there is no US policy is one which cannot be allowed to
stand. This is simply too important not to have some sort of active US
policy rather than a passive one.
Voila. This is what I had to say, I am within time by 42 seconds.
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