In September 2013, the EastWest Institute released Threading the Needle, a report offering bold new ideas for managing one of the most contentious issues in the bilateral relationship between the United States and China: U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Below are highlights of international coverage.
Writing for New Europe, EWI Professorial Fellow Greg Austin discusses possible scenarios for new East Asian alliances in 2014.
Read the original article in New Europe, or see below.
Much of 20th Century history unfolded in the shadow of events in Europe in August 1914, when major powers in Europe launched one of the most savage wars the world had seen. August 2014 is looking very different. The most powerful countries are as intent on avoiding war today as their European forebears were intent on making it 100 years ago. Yet the consequences of confrontations and alliances in this coming year may well determine much of what follows for decades to come.
The wild card for 2014 in global alliance architecture is the geography between China and Japan. It includes the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea and Taiwan. All three have changed their geopolitical character in significant and destabilizing ways in the past decade. Yet unlike 1914, geopolitics today is seated in an interlocking web of globalized investment, trade and networked communications. This globalization of interest seems to offer a massive counterweight to any shocks that geopolitical confrontation might deliver.
The major potential catalyst for a shock that I see concerns Taiwan. While we have seen a strong positive trend in the relationship between it and China, it is this new closeness that is itself creating the danger.
The United States has undertaken a strategic rebalancing to Asia to hedge against military destabilization there. That move, understandable in its own limited terms, has taken on more negative overtones for China as a result of the subsequent return to power in Japan of Shinzo Abe. He leads an unapologetically robust Japanese government, which is intent on normalizing its international security status, recalibrating its armed forces against China’s military modernization, and consigning apology diplomacy to the dustbin of history. There is now a naval arms race in East Asia.
Taiwan has done nothing to inflame the situation and has been promoting cooperative diplomacy between Japan and China. The conduct of Taiwan/China relations by both sides has been a model of cooperation. What is the crisis potential around Taiwan?
For decades, China has threatened the use of military force against Taiwan and any intervening U.S. forces to prevent the permanent separation of the island from its mother state. What we now see emerging is the opportunity for China to promote the permanent separation of Taiwan from military alliance with the United States.
China and Taiwan now have common cause against Japan’s uncompromising stand on territorial sovereignty over the disputed islands. Both claim the islands based on their common history as part of a unified China. The issue has become more emotional than ever. The United States position on the dispute has inflamed sentiment in China regardless of the logic of it.
A century ago, the change in allegiance of a strategically placed “client state” at a time of anxiety about changing balance of power was a classic recipe for military crisis. Luckily, the world has changed, Taiwan is not a client state of the United States, and aggressive war of the sort that such changes of allegiance once provoked has been outlawed for at least seventy years, since the signing of the United Nations Charter.
But there should be no mistaking the strategic trends. Taiwan’s geopolitical position is changing fundamentally and events in the past year and in prospect for 2014 suggest a quickening of the pace. The only question we have to answer is what form will any shift in alliances take, and what sort of crisis might it provoke?
Perhaps we can take a hint from the early days of the George W. Bush Administration when anti-China neo-conservatives tried to force more arms purchases on Taiwan that its parliament and government wanted. Those days are long gone, but they revealed the American geopolitical mentality at its worst and the Taiwan geo-economic mentality at its best. This is not as inevitable a partnership as many in Washington believe.
What is Taiwan’s situation? A 2013 paper from Brookings by Joshua Melzer shows China (including Hong Kong) now taking 40 per cent of Taiwan’s trade, with the United States dropping to a 10 per cent share. The reversal over two decades of the relative positions of China and the United States in Taiwan’s trade pattern is historic, even if as Melzer points out, the United States is a primary destination of production from Taiwan-invested factories in China.
Deeper analysis is needed. What is the significance of the statement on 10 October 2013 by President Ma Ying-jeou that the people of Taiwan are part of the Chinese nationality and that cross-strait relations are not “international” relations? What is the significance of the 30-year low in arms purchases from the United States by Taiwan?
What are the trends in people to people contacts? Is China’s policy of binding Taiwan to it with economic ropes (in place for twenty years) finally working? Does 17 years of the “one country two systems” model in place in Hong Kong have any impact in Taiwan?
Above all, what would the impact be of a scene in 2014 of Chinese PLA navy vessels defending Taiwanese national dignity and possibly its citizens against Japanese actions in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands–when the United States has been so visibly backing Japan, with the former having invoked the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty?
I will not predict an outcome for East Asian alliances in 2014, but are we approaching an historic tipping point equivalent in geopolitical significance to the events of August 1914? I believe we probably are. Much more skilful and creative diplomacy may be needed in East Asia than we have seen so far.
Read the article in China US Focus.
EWI’s policy report Threading the Needle: Proposals for U.S. and Chinese Actions on Arms Sales to Taiwan was the topic of a special panel at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. on January 14. The report’s authors Piin-Fen Kok, director of EWI’s China, East Asia and United States program, and David J. Firestein, Perot fellow and vice president for EWI’s Strategic Trust-Building Initiative and Track 2 Diplomacy, presented their findings and recommendations.
Moderated by Robert M. Hathaway, director of the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, the panel discussion was co-sponsored by the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. Joining the authors of the report on the panel were Richard C. Bush, director of Brookings’ Center for East Asian Policy Studies, and Zhou Qi, senior fellow and director of American Politics at the Chinese Institute of American Studies (CASS).
The panel focused on ways to reduce the mistrust that the issue of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan has historically generated in the U.S.-China relationship. “The current policies are failing from the standpoint of all three of the stakeholders,” David Firestein said.
Think tank experts, journalists from mainland China, Taiwan and the United States, government officials and representatives of the diplomatic community participated in the subsequent lively discussion. Questions touched on a range of topics, from the reception the report received in Washington, Beijing and Taipei to the annual cap on arms sales proposed in the report.
Bush and Hathaway hailed the report in their remarks. “This report is a very valuable resource… [it] will be one of those things I put on the shelf of books and reports that I need to get to at a minute’s notice,” Bush said. Hathaway added that this report on a difficult, highly sensitive issue was “unusually balanced, realistic and constructive.”
Watch the webcast of the event:
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Read the about the Threading the Needle launch event in Washington D.C.
The EastWest Institute has released a new discussion paper, Resetting the System: Why Highly Secure Computing Should Be the Priority of Cybersecurity Policies, which calls for a radically new approach to countering the vast and still growing array of today’s cyber threats.
Authors Greg Austin, professorial fellow at EWI, and Sandro Gaycken, senior researcher in computer science at the Free University of Berlin, outline specific steps to be taken to protect Internet infrastructures around the globe.
“We call for a new ecology of cybersecurity. It is based on the disruptive concept of highly secure computing, which relies primarily on much stronger passive security measures, independent of attack attribution,” they write. “This approach also helps to preserve freedom and privacy.”
Austin added: “The time has come for government and commercial customers to work with industry to set much higher standards for the security of software products, computers and IT services to reduce the potential exposure of citizens and businesses to serious intrusions on privacy or high risk damages.”
According to Gaycken, “Highly secure computing could help ease the tensions created by the current prevalent active defense approaches of several leading countries. We have to find a new common path.”
To start on that new path, governments need to work together more than they have up till now. “They should cooperate internationally to realize this new paradigm quickly and before high-end cyber attackers inflict more serious damage,” the report concludes.
Resetting the System offers bold recommendations, but admits that the necessary changes are expensive and the traditionally free, mostly unregulated market may balk at some of them. Governments can create the incentives for this new approach to cybersecurity, but the private sector will need to take the lead in implementing them.
To download the report, click here. To comment on the report, click here.
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Writing for CIO Insight, Karen Frenkel summarizes the key findings of Resetting the System in an engaging slideshow. Click here to view.
Greg Austin advocates Resetting the System in The Globalist.
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The EastWest Institute’s nextgen essay competition, seeking submissions of at most 800 words from under-35s, was held for the second time this November. The primary criteria set by the judges were the originality, creativity and viability of the ideas presented in each essay, together with the popularity of each entry among EWI Facebook fans. This year's theme focused on the global challenge of securing cyberspace and entrants were asked how they would make cyberspace safer.
The winning entry was written by Svenja Post (age 30) and Alexis Below (age 28), who are both currently working as junior research fellows at the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS). In awarding Ms. Post and Mr. Below first place, the EastWest Institute hopes to draw attention to this kind of thinking from the next generation, enhancing such efforts to make the world a safer and better place.
THE WINNING ESSAY:
Towards Closing the Cyber Sanitation Gap - Campaigning for Digital Hygiene
While the revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about state-sponsored intrusions into online privacy have been deeply unsettling to many, the growing everyday threats to our online activities posed by cyber criminals receive little public attention. Yet, in reality, the chances of someone you know being actively monitored by the NSA or its European counterparts are rather slim. The hacking of a friend’s or perhaps your own email, social media or online banking account are, to the contrary, instances of cyber crime that probably most of us have come in contact with. Personal consequences can be unpleasant (i.e. sending a round of spam emails to your digital contacts) or wholly devastating (in the case of online identity theft or serious financial loss). Although public policy and business practices have an important role to play in combating such malicious cyber activity, the key to making cyberspace safer is the adoption of effective digital hygiene habits by all of us.
In the debate about cyber security, one is faced with a multifaceted calculus of social, technological and institutional problems. But just as cyber crime affects everybody, every internet user plays a crucial role in the aggregate. Individuals may both become victims as well as involuntary helpers of cyber criminals. Once compromised, users can unknowingly spread malware, become part of a malicious botnet or have their personal information exploited for targeted phishing attacks on friends or colleagues. However, the best cyber security defenses of banks, retailers and social media sites are useless if individuals use weak passwords or the same one for all online accounts. Thus, effective long-term commitment to increase cyber security has to harden the weakest link: human users.
The explosive growth in the adoption of electronic devices by the general population has created an environment which is comparable to the health situation at the beginning of the 19th century when life expectancy was significantly shorter due to infectious disease, plagues, unclean food and water. The role of personal hygiene in maintaining good health was neither understood by the public nor by governments. A similar situation has arisen in cyberspace today: poor digital hygiene is the major factor contributing to increasing danger to cyber security and online privacy. More than technological advancements and governmental regulations, it was a change in human behavior that precipitated the dramatic decrease in infectious diseases until the 20th century. The history of disease and the role personal hygiene had in driving better health outcomes should be translated to the cyber security context of today.
In view of these circumstances, it is surprising how few resources are devoted to increasing digital hygiene and raising awareness among the general population. Organizations and individuals are not just poorly equipped to recognize security breaches. Moreover, internet users are not conscious of the need to protect themselves at all times. When shopping, sharing and banking online are only a click away, security often takes a backseat to convenience. To increase cyber security, users firstly have to accept that digital hygiene is important and that a set of practices have to be undertaken for the preservation both of their own and, ultimately, the public’s health.
Thus, perhaps even more than developing grand strategies and new governance arrangements for cyber security, it is important to raise awareness and strengthen cyber security skills of users. It is necessary to establish a common social understanding of how to keep users and systems safe when interacting with computers and networks. People and institutions have to make cyber security as high a priority as other day-to-day tasks. To quote Albert Schweitzer: “To me, good health is more than just exercise and diet. It’s really a point of view and a mental attitude you have about yourself.”
Governments should integrate digital hygiene into educational curricula and implement targeted “cyber sanitation” campaigns. Companies, especially those handling sensitive personal data, must educate and constantly remind not only their employees but especially their customers about digital hygiene needs. Through these public and private initiatives, we must integrate an effective digital hygiene routine into everyday digital life—and constantly adapt. Just as diseases continue to exist and germs have changed with the development of new medicine, malicious software will continue to evolve.
The internet has transformed our world and revolutionized our daily lives. While insecurity in cyber space may not (yet) put your life at risk, it can make your life and the lives of those around you quite uncomfortable. As personal hygiene is essential for good health, digital hygiene is crucial for a safe and enjoyable online experience. In the end, the old health motto also applies to the cyber realm—you can’t enjoy wealth if you’re not in good health!
This essay was also published by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University. Read the published article, here.
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Svenja Post has been a Junior Research Fellow at BIGS since September 2013, where she is working on comprehensive crisis management issues and emerging security challenges. Svenja Post holds a graduate degree in political science, law, and peace and conflict studies from the Philipps University in Marburg. She is a doctoral candidate at the Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. In her PhD thesis, which is under review at the moment, Svenja Post looks at the challenges comprehensive crisis management poses for the European Union and its member states. She also was a guest researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations and DAAD Research Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. Before the start of her PhD, she assisted the European and Transatlantic Security Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Svenja Post also is an active member of Women In International Security Germany (WIIS.de).
Alexis Below has been a Junior Research Fellow at BIGS since August 2012, where he is working on selected issues at the interface between foreign, development and security policy. He studied International Relations, International Economics and Conflict Management in Dresden, Beijing, Bologna and Washington, D.C., receiving his Master of Arts from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in 2011. Prior to joining BIGS, Alexis Below worked for the nongovernmental organization Partners for Democratic Change and as a consultant for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). He also gained professional experience working for, among others, the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), the Federal Foreign Office, and The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). At BIGS, Alexis Below works on the collaborative research project fit4sec, the competence center for security and technology, funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education, where he is focusing on vocational training and university-level education for civil security.
The EastWest Institute would also like to congratulate the two other finalists:
Ben Van Meter
Click here to read Ben's essay.
Nicolas Zahn
One of the many legacy issues of Imperialist Japan and World War II, the longstanding Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute has been inflamed by actions and rhetoric from both China and Japan. The sharpening rhetoric and the increasing militarization of the dispute raise worries over a possible conflict in the region.
Speaking with EWI interns Bethany Allen and YiYang Cao, Piin-Fen Kok—director of EWI's China, East Asia and United States program—discusses factors underlying the recent escalation of tensions and offers strategies to reestablish regional trust and cooperation in the East China Sea.
While opposing claims of sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands have been a mild irritant in Japan-China relations for over 40 years, the dispute has escalated rapidly since 2010. What key factors have contributed to this escalation?
2010 was a turning point of sorts for China’s maritime diplomacy, as China became visibly more assertive in staking its maritime territorial claims against its neighbors. This included a diplomatic standoff with Japan over the incursion of a Chinese fishing trawler in waters off the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Japan has become increasingly concerned about China’s military modernization and what that means for the latter’s defense of its maritime claims in the East China Sea.
For its part, though, Japan hasn’t helped matters much: It has refused to acknowledge that the sovereignty of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is disputed and nationalized the islands in 2012, much to China’s chagrin.
Finally, China blames the U.S. rebalancing in Asia for emboldening Japan and other claimants in their maritime disputes against China, while the U.S. has reiterated its commitment to coming to Japan’s defense under the terms of the U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty. All those tensions—and lots of historical baggage—are coming into play in light of China’s announcement of a new Air Defense Identification Zone, which covers the disputed islands.
Intense nationalist sentiment has played an important role in this conflict in both China and Japan. Yet China’s leadership faces a particularly delicate balancing act if it wants to harness the power of popular nationalism to bolster its claim on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Can you address the role of nationalism in both China and Japan, and explain why nationalism within China could potentially be a double-edged sword?
Because both countries face domestic challenges, especially on the economic front, nationalist sentiment is a useful tool for leaders to rally their domestic constituents and consolidate their own political standing within the country. In Japan, we saw the role nationalism played in the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, as Tokyo’s Governor Shintaro Ishihara announced plans to purchase those islands eventually led to the national government buying them instead. And nationalism is at the core of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s slogan of a Chinese Dream, whose key premise is to “realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (shixian zhonghua minzu weida fuxing). Nationalism within China—and Japan—could potentially be a double-edged sword if strong sentiments within the population forces the hand of the leadership into doing things that could escalate rather than defuse tensions. This risk is particularly real in a relationship as emotional as that between China and Japan.
When China first announced the new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), many in the shocked global community declared it a poorly executed fumble possibly resulting from lack of communication or factional struggles. Yet less than two weeks after the announcement, there is now a growing consensus that the ADIZ is in fact a carefully calculated move in China’s larger strategy for the region. What is that larger strategy, and what role does the Chinese leadership envision for the new ADIZ?
While we can only guess what exactly was in the central leadership’s minds as they signed off on a new ADIZ that overlaps with the ADIZs of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, I can see a few strategic objectives achieved with this move.
First, China is seeking to enforce a new status quo in the East China Sea that the rest of the region—especially Japan—will have to deal with. By including the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in its ADIZ, and requiring aircraft to report flight information when they enter the airspace over that area, China is responding, in its own terms, to Japan’s refusal to acknowledge the dispute.
Second, China is putting its money where its mouth is and staking its claim as a maritime power. Other ADIZs are expected in the South China and Yellow Seas, where other maritime disputes exist. And it is hardly a coincidence that the ADIZ announcement and the maiden voyage of the Liaoning aircraft carrier down the South China Sea occurred within days of each other.
Third, the ADIZ could test U.S. security commitments in the region. Politically, it could test the U.S. commitment to Japan’s defense in the event of armed conflict with China. As it is, the U.S. had to assuage Japanese concerns over its advice to American airlines to comply with the Chinese ADIZ’s flight reporting requirements; the Japanese government had instructed Japanese carriers not to do so. From a military perspective, the ADIZ could also be part of China’s anti-access strategy aimed at deterring the ability of U.S. forces to come to Taiwan’s defense in a timely manner.
Immediately after the announcement of the ADIZ, the U.S. Secretaries of Defense and Secretary of State condemned the Chinese ADIZ. American bombers were flown into the disputed airspace. What is the U.S. role in this dispute?
The announcement of the ADIZ has presented an opportunity for the United States to reiterate its commitment to its security allies in the region and to its rebalancing strategy. This commitment had been questioned by Asian leaders when President Obama missed a few key summits in October due to the U.S. government shutdown. Although the U.S., Japan, Korea and China all flew military airplanes into the disputed airspace, I don’t think that any of them wants to intentionally start a military confrontation. The U.S. role would be to try and prevent the escalation of tensions on all sides that could lead to miscalculations and armed conflict.
During Vice President Biden’s recent trip to China, he did not demand the removal of the ADIZ. Was this tacit acceptance on the part of the Obama Administration of the ADIZ as a fait accompli?
It is impossible for the United States to demand the removal of the ADIZ, simply because other countries—especially Japan and Korea—have already established ADIZs in the region, and the United States itself has several ADIZs. At the same time, the U.S. faces a delicate political balancing act: On the one hand, it needs to show that it is standing firmly by its allies; on the other hand, it has to present itself as a trusted broker of peace and demonstrate that it is not out to contain China.
Beijing has stood firm against calls to rescind the ADIZ, so it seems likely that the new ADIZ, while dangerous, is here to stay. What steps do China, Japan and other regional players need to take in order to prevent escalation and establish deeper trust and cooperation in the East China Sea?
First, a mechanism for crisis communication and management needs to be implemented, at least between China and Japan (perhaps facilitated by the United States), if not involving other regional players as well. China and Japan have had on and off talks about a defense hotline. That would come in pretty handy at a time like this. Second, regional players need to engage in serious dialogue to develop rules of the road for their militaries to deal with one another in the region. The United States could play a very useful role in facilitating these discussions among all parties concerned.
Last week, the P5+1 major world powers convened in Geneva to strike a six-month interim deal with Iran on Tehran’s nuclear program. The deal, which essentially freezes Iran’s nuclear program, granting limited relief from UN sanctions, has sparked sharply diverging reactions.
EWI's Bethany Allen spoke with Raymond Karam, EWI program associate and Washington, D.C. representative, who discussed the implications of the deal.
The nuclear deal with Iran has drawn strong criticism as a compromise that exposes fractures in the sanctions coalition against Iran, dismantling hard-won sanctions without having reached the goal of implementing maximum limits on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Are the concessions to Iran’s nuclear fuel-making program a reasonable step in the right direction, or do they pose a grave danger to the future of non-proliferation in the region?
It is important to remember that the P5+1 (or EU3+3) which negotiated and signed off on this interim deal with Iran includes all five Permanent Members of the Security Council in addition to Germany. These are the same countries that passed the sanctions resolutions.
The deal itself, which is a renewable six months interim deal, puts limits down on Iran's nuclear program that would make it harder for Tehran to build a weapon and easier for the world to find out if it tried.
In it, Iran agreed to cap its enrichment level to a maximum of 5 percent, which is well below the 90 percent threshold needed for a warhead. Iran also pledged to "neutralize" its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium—the highest level acknowledged by Tehran—by either diluting its strength or converting it to fuel for its research reactors, which produced isotopes for medical treatments and other civilian uses.
Iran also agreed to halt work on a planned heavy water reactor in Arak, southwest of Tehran. Heavy water is a compound used to cool nuclear reactors, which do not need enriched uranium to operate. Heavy water reactors also produce a greater amount of plutonium as a byproduct, which could be used to make warhead material. Iran does not currently possess the technology to extract the plutonium, and promised in Geneva not to seek it.
The deal also gives inspectors from the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, faster and broader access to Iran's atomic facilities and obligates Iran to address all UN Security Council concerns, including those around the Parchin military compound outside Tehran. Parchin has been suspected of housing a secret underground facility used for Iran's nuclear program, a claim denied by Iran. UN nuclear inspectors twice visited the site, but seek a third tour.
In return, Iran receives a rollback in some sanctions—a total package estimated by the White House at $7 billion back into the Iranian economy—but the main pressures remain on Iran's oil exports and its blacklist from international banking networks during the first steps of the pact over the next six months.
It also opens up $4.2 billion from oil sales to be transferred in installments over the next six months as various compliance stages are reached. That's still a very small sum in a country that was once one of OPEC's top exporters.
The deal also offers Iran some sanctions easing on gold and other precious metals, as well as Iran's automobile and aviation industries and petrochemical exports. The P5+1 further agreed to hold off any new nuclear-related sanctions for at least six months in exchange for Iranian adherence to the deal.
Above all, the deal removes the immediate threat of unilateral military action and the potentially grave consequences such action would have for the world and the authority of the United Nations. The interim agreement now gives the negotiating states six months working space, and up to a year if renewed, to achieve a comprehensive peaceful settlement. The US is now able to move away from the rhetoric of military confrontation that neither President Obama, the U.S. public nor the world is comfortable with and instead share responsibility with all other permanent members of the UN security council, Germany and the EU, thus strengthening the P5+1 and facilitating action that will need to be taken within the Security Council and the UN system.
What challenges will the U.S. face at the negotiating table six months from now, when participating powers will seek a more permanent agreement on Iran’s nuclear program?
The next six months of negotiations will be very difficult as success would require another vast investment of effort and political capital from both presidents, and would be hostage to developments elsewhere, especially in Syria. There is a threat that the deal could fall apart almost immediately in the face of hardline objections in Washington and Tehran. A congressional vote now for more sanctions would almost certainly derail it. Iranian conservatives would see such an act as American duplicity and it would make it extremely hard to ever seal another agreement. Iranian conservatives would be likely to accelerate Iranian nuclear development, bringing a conflict closer.
The most important challenge is to ensure that the permanent agreement limits the activity of the Iranian nuclear program to plausible civilian uses subject to comprehensive monitoring as required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. To quote a recent op-ed authored by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz: “Any final deal must ensure the world's ability to detect a move toward a nuclear breakout, lengthen the world's time to react, and underscore its determination to do so.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has labeled this deal “a historic mistake,” arguing that Iran, like North Korea in 2005, is using diplomacy as a distraction to allow it to make a jump forward in its nuclear program. Do you believe that this is the case, or is Iran making a good-faith effort to reach rapprochement with global powers after a decades-long standoff?
Despite the negative response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the agreement, the deal is not really a bad one for Israel. For the first time in a decade, Iran will be freezing its progress on its nuclear program, and is even rolling back certain parts of the program that particularly concerned Israel.
Netanyahu has made it his mission to protect Israel from a potential Iranian nuclear attack and for a while, it looked like Israeli military action—with or without U.S. involvement—was simply a matter of time. But, now, most of the world wants to find a diplomatic resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem, compromising with Tehran in order to avoid another war.
For Netanyahu, the devil is not in the details but in the bigger picture, as he believes that the deal fast-forwards American-Iranian relations and may thereby redraw the strategic map of the Middle East. Israel enjoys its status-quo as the Middle Eastern unchallenged military power and any potential challenge is viewed as a threat.
However, Israel will need to adapt to a changing world where its military power, while still unmatched in the region, won’t be enough to ensure its security. It will need to consider other means of protecting its interests and defusing tensions.
Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. partner in the region, is not alone in its fear that the deal marks a shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East. With the U.S. pivot to Asia, news of secret U.S. talks with Syria and Iran, and speculation that U.S. influence in the Middle East is on the decline, will we begin to see regional realignments in response to the changing political milieu?
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have been lumped together with Israel as opposed to the deal struck in Geneva. However, the Gulf States have taken a different approach
The Saudi government issued a carefully worded statement that cautiously welcomed the deal adding that it “views the agreement as a primary step toward a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear issue provided it leads to a Middle East and Gulf region free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.”
However, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies are not merely concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. They have a more profound fear that geopolitical trends in the Middle East are aligning against them, threatening both their regional stature and their domestic security. Their basic assumption is that whatever’s good for Iran will, somehow, come at their expense.
With Iran dominant in Iraq and Lebanon, holding onto its ally in Syria, and now forging a new relationship with Washington, there are few obstacles to its regional dominance. Internally, Gulf monarchies are afraid that this will encourage Shiite populations to oppose their Sunni rulers.
On the other hand, the Geneva agreement reflects an Iranian desire to change their relationship with the rest of the world, and by default with Iran’s Gulf neighbors, making the Middle East safer. Improving relations with regional countries is a central plank of Iran's diplomatic policy under its new president, and both President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif have made overtures towards Iran’s Gulf neighbor. Last week, they welcomed United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed to Tehran and have embarked this week on regional trips that have taken them to Kuwait and Oman. There is indication that a trip to Saudi Arabia could also be on the horizon.
The Obama Administration does think that the U.S. is overcommitted in the Middle East, and seeks to “pivot” at least some American foreign-policy resources and attention to East Asia. Substantial increases in domestic energy production have made the Middle East less important to American energy calculations, though Persian Gulf oil and gas will remain significant for decades to come. That is reason enough for the U.S. to maintain good relations with Gulf monarchies. But the overall trend is toward a diminished role for the Middle East in the global energy market.
Still, there are many common interests to keep the allies united, including shared worries about Iran’s regional influence and about Al Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as an absence of alternative arrangements that meet their security needs.
EastWest Direct is an ongoing series of interviews with EWI experts tied to breaking news stories.
