Newsletter No. 199
February 22, 2006

 

The following newsletter comes from J. Sean Curtin (Shingetsu Member No. 30). Curtin provides us here with the account of a lecture held in London last week. There was some discussion at this event about how Japan fits into the American Neoconservative vision of West Asian politics, among other topics of interest.

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NEO-CONSERVATIVE VISIONS OF THE MIDDLE EAST, POLITICAL ISLAM, AND JAPAN

On 16 February, Dr. Timothy Lynch of the University of London gave a presentation at Chatham House entitled "Neo-Conservative Visions of the Middle East and Political Islam." Dr. Lynch analyzed what American neo-conservatives have written about the Middle East and argued that their strategic clarity is more likely to succeed than not. He gave a detailed outline of the various schools of neo-conservative thought, examining the substantial differences that exist between them on Middle East policy.

He concluded the presentation with a passionate defence of neo-conservatism, highlighting what he believed are some of its strengths: Clarity, activism and resolve.

(1) Clarity: the neo-cons offer a forward-looking strategy for freedom and fight for good in a world which they clearly divided into good and evil. They do not indulge in the "fetish of complexity" that so often leads to inaction and makes "experts incapable coming to a conclusion." They offer "solutions not debate," an approach which can be described as "ignorance is strength."

(2) Activism: The neo-cons do not shy away from instability in the Middle East as in order for a situation to genuinely improve sometimes turmoil is required out of which progress will emerge. Ambiguity and half-hearted measures lead to failure.

(3) Resolve: Anti-Americanism does not work because at the end of the day the popularity of the United States in the Middle East does not actually mean that much and will not influence its policies.

After the presentation, an audience comprising about 40 diplomats, lawmakers and academics fielded some robust questions, highlights of which follow.

Sean Curtin: I would like to take your neo-con arguments outside of the Amero-centric/Euro-centric box and look at how the neo-con philosophy and doctrines are interpreted in Japan, one of the US's staunches non-Western allies. Japanese policymakers have problems understanding neo-conservative thinking on the Middle East, which some view as contradictory. It seemed that President Bush made the position crystal clear in his February 2005 State of the Union address: "America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond." His message was that only democratically elected regimes could truly have the legitimacy to represent their people. Japan is one of the major contributors to the Palestinian Authority and took the position before the Palestinian elections that the result would confer legitimacy on the winners. The US reaction to the unexpected Hamas win seemed to Japanese foreign policy-makers to contradict the earlier neo-con position and partially explains why Tokyo has only been lukewarm in distancing itself from Hamas. Tokyo also has good relations with Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, which it basically treats as a democratic regime. For non-Western allies of the US like Japan, with their own distinctive world view, the neo-con position does not appear to offer clarity. On the contrary, it appears ambiguous and unclear. Can neo-conservatism resolve the conflicting perspectives Washington's non-Western allies have of its policy?

Timothy Lynch: I will have to confess that here ignorance is my weakness. Japan does not occupy a huge amount of space in the neo-conservative canon, beyond the analogy, according to neo-con history, that if you can remake Japan as a democracy, which was a country without many democratic traditions, then there are not many places you cannot remake. I cannot answer the more important geo-political questions about Japan's role as it is outside my expertise.

Sean Curtin: But the neo-conservative argument is that they stand for clarity and what I am saying is from the perspective of a non-Western ally like Japan the position is not clear at all and lacks clarity.

Timothy Lynch: No, I do not think the position is ambiguous. The problem with allies finding positions ambiguous has been documented in studies of transatlantic relations in the nineties.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire (Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats): It would appear that it doesn't seem to matter what your allies think.

Sean Curtin: I was curious about the neo-con idea of "ignorance is strength." Does this owe more to George Orwell's 1984 or Pol Pot's Cambodia?

Timothy Lynch: A potent question on 1984 and Pol Pot. My argument is that surely if you are going to fight a war then the thing you don't need in public policy is ambiguity, and that is the point I am making. If you complexify the situation, render the enemy so complex you are in capable of responding to him, then you are failing in your first responsibility as a statesman which is defence of the realm. So, it is not an argument on behalf of ignorance, it is an argument on behalf of ignorance in a very concentrated strategic form.

Michael Cox (Professor, London School of Economics): Does that mean you have got to simplify the enemy in order to fight them more effectively?

Timothy Lynch: Yes it does.

Amin Hassan (Deputy Ambassador, Embassy of Egypt): What is it about political Islam that worries the neo-cons so much?

Timothy Lynch: There are some neo-cons who have a great respect for political Islam and believe it is perfectly capable of good government in Indonesia, and a whole list of emerging and transitional states. There is no problem with political Islam. I want to try to avoid being "neo-con lite" with my response, but let me suggest what the neo-con response to your question would be: Political Islam is not consequential. The problem is the nature of the state in which it operates or the state in which it is oppressed. If you can change that nature and if you can genuinely liberalize the political culture then political Islam will have no relevance. It may be that a few neo-cons are anti-Muslim, perhaps verging on racism, but that is an extremely small minority. The greater claim is that Islam should be put in a position where it doesn't matter. It should be like Christianity is in Europe, it doesn't matter. Perfectly fair and acceptable, what they want is imams to look rather like [British Arch-Bishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams. He is perfectly entitled to say what he wants, but is incapable of radicalizing anybody.

Amin Hassan: I think this kind of reasoning completely fails because political Islam cannot be taken that lightly as the protests about the cartoons demonstrate. Remember, not all religions are alike and this is a religion that is motivating its own followers, sometimes in benign ways, sometimes in bizarre ways.

Timothy Lynch: The neo-con response would be that you get this kind of overreaction because it suits the interest of the Arab regimes to promote it. It is rather embarrassing for moderate Muslims who would rather deal with this problem about the images of Mohammed in some other way.

Mamdouh G. Salameh (World Bank Consultant): In my modest opinion, the idea that the neo-conservatives are interested in democracy in the Middle East is nonsensical. They are interested in natural resources, in this case oil, and the protection of Israel, and both of these are inextricably linked. I will illustrate my point with a concrete example. The invasion of Iraq was all about oil. The neo-con's basic tenet is: He who controls the oil resources and oil routes, controls the global economy. Through this kind of power the neo-cons hope to prevent the emergence of China as a superpower, which is now dependent on Middle East oil. Here is some food for thought, Iraq's proven and recoverable reserves amount to 300 billion barrels which at current prices amounts to about 18 trillion US dollars, roughly one and a half times American GDP. With all due respect, anyone who suggests that the US went to Iraq to establish democracy needs to have a brain scan.

Timothy Lynch: I basically dismiss the premise of the question. True, oil is very important, in fact it is too important to wage war over. The neo-conservative position is very clear in this respect unlike the position of others. The problem in the seventies and eighties was because we wanted stability and oil we were prepared to sanction all sorts of repression. Today oil is now secondary because 9/11 changed things. 9/11 introduced clarity and the absolute necessity of tying democracy to security and the importance of oil moved down the ranking of variables in the equation. You invade, you seek to transform the Middle East, not because it is the good thing to do for securing oil, no you could have simply secured the oil by just going along with repressive regimes, no, you do it because it is the right thing to do. We democratize sufficiently so we don't get suicide-bombers. In all honesty, I thought the argument that everything could be reduced to Marxist economic determinism was long dead.

Mamdouh G. Salameh: Oil is the main reason for invading Iraq. Let me remind you, at the beginning of your lecture you said: "We only have enough resources to commit to strategic arenas. Iraq was a war worth fighting, Zimbabwe is not." Why not Zimbabwe? Because it has got nothing to do with Israel.

Timothy Lynch: Zimbabwe is not funding, financing and facilitating terrorism and actually exporting terrorism or anti-Western terrorism. It is certainly unpleasant and the regime has a terrible human rights record.

Hossein Kashani (Embassy of Iran): I would like to know what impact neo-conservative thinking is going to have on the Iran nuclear issue? The United States is a country which says it favours democracy, and if you compare Iranian elections to other countries in the region, they are very fair. How is this going to influence the nuclear issue?

Timothy Lynch: In some ways Iran is more straightforward for neo-cons to deal with because it is a state. The prefer war and deterrents that are aimed at a state. In some respects, this also counts for North Korea, and that is why they are describe as an axis of evil because they are states with defined territories. America has a good track record of facing down nuclear states. So from a neo-con perspective, Iran is less complicated to deal with than you might imagine...

Staffan Carlsson (Ambassador, Embassy of Sweden): History was discussed in your presentation, and I would like to ask about the eighties. I just do not understand the neo-conservative vision of the 1980s. It simplifies the administration of Ronald Reagan by describing it as: "facing down the enemy." You cannot possibly describe what his administration was doing in 1985 and 1986 as "facing down the enemy." In fact he was basically engaging with the enemy, negotiating with the enemy and he could not have foreseen then that by the end of the decade the entire Soviet system would have imploded. So, the reality does not tally with the neo-conservative view.

Timothy Lynch: Mr. Ambassador, the answer is that from a neo-conservative perspective the Reagan administration lasts from 1981 to 1985.

Michael Cox: And the other half?

Timothy Lynch: The other half was just not as good.

Staffan Carlsson: In 1985, you did not know the Soviet economy was collapsing.

The above presentation and debate took place at Chatham House (Royal Institute for International Affairs) in London on 16 February 2006.

 

Profile: Dr. Timothy Lynch

Since 2005, Dr. Lynch has been lecturer in US foreign policy at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, where his research and teaching interests include the politics and ideology of US foreign policy in and after the Cold War. His first book was Turf War: The Clinton Administration and Northern Ireland (Ashgate, 2004). His current book project is Days of Infamy: How America Responds to Attack, from the Lusitania to the TwinTowers. He was a lecturer at the University of Leicester (2003-05) and the director of the Boston College Centre, Dublin, Ireland (2000-03). A Fulbright scholar, he holds a PhD in political science from Boston College.