Middle East & North Africa

The approach toward Iran from India is very different from that of the United States. In March 2011, India’s National Security Adviser, Shivshankar Menon, visited Tehran for discussion with his counterpart, Saeed Jalili, who is the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). Menon also met with President Ahmadinejad, the Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and Speaker of the Majlis, Ali Larijani. In June 2011, the Deputy Secretary of Iran's SNSC, Ali Baqeri, visited India “to attend the joint strategic committee of the two countries”, according to Iran’s Press TV.  In July 2011, India’s then Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, visited Tehran for the ninth round of formal ministry level bilateral consultations. Topics included terrorism, energy security, the North-South Transport Corridor, developments in Afghanistan and regional security. The two countries have a joint intergovernmental commission that had its 16th meeting in 2010, when six new agreements on a range of cooperative measures were signed.

Not everything is plain sailing of course. To secure its nuclear agreement with the United States, India had to experience humiliating pressure from Washington, including Congress, on how to conduct relations with Iran. The news this week is that unpaid Indian debts on oil imports from Iran will soon be paid in full, following reports several weeks ago that only two-thirds of the debt would be paid. In recent years, India has been Iran’s second or third biggest oil market (the position varies according to source). This is not surprising given India’s growth, its proximity to Iran, and the fact that Iran is the fourth-largest crude oil exporter in the world.

By contrast, the United States bans all trade with and investment in Iran.  In June 2011, India’s representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, made an appeal that is in direct and active conflict with the United States’ position. He said: “All efforts should be made to ensure that legitimate trade and economic activities of Iran and other countries do not suffer while implementing the measures sanctioned by the relevant [UN] resolutions.” (These UN sanctions are limited, in broad terms, to the nuclear-related and missile-related entities and activities of Iran, as well as certain military exports to Iran.)

Military ties between Iran and India have been bothering Washington as well. The parameters of this concern are well laid out by Harsh Pant and include direct military to military dialogue and information exchange. Of special interest though are reports from elsewhere, including U.S.-based Symantec and Russian company Kaspersky Lab, that the Stuxnet worm, understood by many analysts to have been designed in the United States or Israel to attack Iran, had by January 2011 infected many more systems in India than in Iran. Regardless of who invented Stuxnet, India and Iran clearly now have common cause in military strategic defence against cyber weapons – and the US or one of its allies may be on the other side.

This past week, an Iranian-flagged ship of the Iran India Shipping line, held by Somali pirates for 5 months, was rescued by the Indian navy, an ordeal and an outcome demonstrating that certain basic daily realities of security bring Iran and India together. Piracy is of course a lower level of concern than the vital strategic interests that India and Iran share in Pakistan and Afghanistan. India and Iran are good neighbors toward each other, even if India does observe the UN sanctions.  

The contrast between the Indian and American views of Iran could not be more stark. If Pant is right, then the United States needs help to end its “obsessive” behavior toward Iran. Should the United States look to pull back from its position on broad-ranging trade and investment sanctions against Iran? Obsession may not be compatible with effective diplomacy.

To read Austin's piece online, click here and scroll to pg. 5 of New Europe

On July 28, 2011, the EastWest Institute, in partnership with the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan, held the fifth and final meeting of the Nuclear Discussion Forum at the Mission’s office.  Bringing together states with different vested interests, the meeting series aimed to build trust and help surmount political barriers to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.  

Eduardo Ulibarri, Ambassador of Costa Rica to the UN, chaired the meeting, which was attended by representatives of 26 permanent missions to the United Nations, as well as representatives from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs and Department of Public Information. 

In the meeting, Amy Woolf, a specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy at the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, and Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, led a discussion on reducing the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines. 

Woolf discussed “the who and the what of nuclear deterrence,” adding, “Once we establish who we are trying to deter with nuclear weapons and what we are deterring them from doing then we can start thinking about reducing their role. Reducing the list of ‘the who and the what’ would mean reducing the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines.”

Kristensen said that the biggest challenge to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines is the fact that nuclear-weapon states did not do so at the end of the Cold War. Instead, he added, they  seamlessly transitioned their nuclear doctrines and found new threats to deter against.

Ulibarri stated that changes in the geopolitical environment and the evolution of thinking regarding the role of Nuclear Weapons have forced a reassessment of the position of nuclear weapons in national security policy. The new trends of thinking among academics, states, and international organizations include nuclear de-alert, pledges of no first use, strengthening negative security assurances, and establishing regional nuclear weapons-free zones.

In the Nuclear Discussion Forum, previous meeting topics included overcoming obstacles to a Middle East nuclear weapons free zone, managing and verifying disarmament and providing negative security assurances to Non-Nuclear-Weapon States.

“Our common intent to contribute to these issues has led us to come together despite our political differences,” said Byrganym Aitimova, Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations, greeting participants. “Our biggest gain is that we are all now more optimistic that we can work together in this field.”

Overview of the Nuclear Discussion Forum

Over the past seven months, the Nuclear Discussion Forumhas acted as a laboratory for innovative thinking, enabling frank discourse to bridge East-West divides on the roadblocks towards achieving “global zero,” or a world without nuclear weapons. The forum also built trust between states, which is a necessary step for overcoming the political obstacles that hinder bilateral and multilateral efforts towards nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.

The forum was sponsored by the government of Kazakhstan, which has been a leader in nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. After its independence, Kazakhstan found itself owning the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal. Ultimately, the Kazakh government made the decision to destroy the Soviet weapons or move them to Russia; the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site in western Kazakhstan was closed; and all intercontinental ballistic missile silos were destroyed. Kazakhstan went on to lead the successful effort to establish the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ).

The Forum, which met five times between February and August 2011, engaged the UN diplomatic and policymaking community, including representatives from nuclear weapon states, non-nuclear weapon states, international organizations, and outside experts. Each meeting featured a speaker and discussant with a specialized area of knowledge relating to disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation. After initial remarks from the speakers, an open discussion followed in an effort to build trust among key states, identify the next milestones towards global zero, and mobilize international political will around concrete and practical actions.

“The topics discussed were the most salient on the international Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation agenda,” said Jim McLay, Ambassador of New Zealand to the UN. He added that he was awaiting concrete recommendation from the final report, which would serve as a roadmap to global zero.

In September 2011 EWI will disseminate a record of proceedings that highlight the main findings from the series. The work and outcome of the Forum will be presented in a panel event at the UN General Assembly First Committee meeting on October 24, 2011.

The Red Sea is bordered on the West by Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti, and on the East by Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In the north, touching the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea are Israel and Jordan. Somalia is not a Red Sea littoral country but, sitting on the Gulf of Aden, commands the waterway linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The news this past week of Saudi deportation of an Eritrean Christian for proselytizing (instead of executing him) is a small glimmer of hope in an all too grim narrative of civil conflict, political repression and humanitarian problems. For example, just this month in Yemen, air strikes continued against extremists in the south of the country linked to Al Qaeda, while protesters and security forces continued violent clashes in a number of cities over political liberalization.

Linkages across the Red Sea deserve more attention. For example, President Bashir of Sudan met with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia this month to discuss the difficulties of transition by Sudan after the secession of South Sudan. These difficulties include civil conflict, repression and state-sponsored violence. Just last week, Saudi Arabia officially recognized South Sudan as an independent state, but Saudi news sources describe Sudan as a “close ally” of the kingdom. There are about half a million workers from Sudan (north and south) in Saudi Arabia.

By contrast, Eritrea is something of a pariah state among its neighbours, in large part because of its support to terrorist groups, notably Al Shahab in Somalia, and military occupation of small parts of Djibouti territory. A recently completed report by a UN Monitoring group has reportedly recommended a stiffening of UN sanctions against Eritrea. The country has just been accused by the United States of covering up a large scale humanitarian disaster.

If ever a region needed creative new thinking, new dialogue and indeed an improvement in regional collaboration, the Red Sea littoral surely is one. The active Saudi diplomacy on political unrest in Yemen and Egypt in the first half of 2011 is a key marker of the need for and potential of a stronger Red Sea political community.   

Critics might complain: do we need yet another regional organization? There is after all a number of institutions where these countries can meet to promote dialogue, common political interests and economic prosperity if they were so inclined.  For the moment, they are not even so inclined.

The pundits should not decide. Given the emergence of stronger civil society activism in some countries of the region, and given the high need for more effective policies to promote peace, security and prosperity, the idea of a Red Sea political and economic community is certainly worth canvassing at an unofficial level. Of the littoral countries, only Saudi Arabia has the resources to fund such a regional dialogue. This would be a useful course of action for the Saudi government to consider.

At the same time, there can be a useful role for external actors, either governmental or non-governmental, to promote new regional dialogues on security and economic relations among Red Sea states and communities. The idea of a Red Sea community can be used as a unifying and peace-building idea in this troubled region.

Scroll to page 7 to read Austin's piece in New Europe

One of the biggest mistakes in decision-making for war and peace is over-simplification. This is one conclusion of a profound and sadly overlooked book from 1984 called “Ideology of the Offensive” by Jack Snyder. Europe and the United States appear to have fallen into this trap of over-simplification with their Iran policy.

The danger is that policy-makers overlook the limits of their knowledge and discount the possibility that they may be inflexible. According to the book, “most public policy problems entail considerable complexity and uncertainty”. We know most elements of the problem “only in an approximate way”. The strategist develops “relatively simple but effective techniques for scanning and organizing information about the problem and for structuring and evaluating different options”. “Discrepant information is either ignored or incorporated into the belief system in a way that minimizes the need to change the system’s structure”.

The belief system (orthodox doctrine) about Iran is dominated by the idea of a “rogue state”. In the 1990s, the Clinton Administration would put Iran and Libya in that category, with others. George Bush put Iran, Iraq and North Korea into the “axis of evil”. These terms may be rhetorically useful for speech writers but they are desperately unhelpful and counter-productive for policy-makers.

President Obama tried to break the hold of such a rigid and doctrinaire approach to Iran in his Nowruz speech of 19 March 2009 but failed to do so. The explanation for failure of that overture lies not in Iran’s lack of meaningful response, but because it was just easier for senior officials in the United States and Europe to continue with the doctrinaire approach.

The suppression of anti-government demonstrations in Iran after the 2009 presidential elections only stiffened the appeal of the orthodoxy for Western officials. The persistently rejectionist approach and bellicose language of a handful of Iranian leaders toward Israel also buttressed the power in the West of the single orthodoxy about Iran. In the Western official view, the only way to deal with Iran is to see it as a rogue state. No other perspectives should intrude.

The main reason why policy-makers prefer a doctrinaire and rigid approach to Iran is that it usefully disguises the basic weakness of their position, both in respect of Iran and in respect of the region as a whole. The United States and Europe now have very few levers of power and influence anywhere in this strategically vital region and appear to many people to be in retreat, both through withdrawal of military forces and through alienating key allies on the Arabian peninsula. Moreover, domestic political orthodoxies in Europe and the United States (about subjugating foreign policy to human rights issues) and domestic interest groups (Iranian expatriates and pro-Israel groups) make it so much easier to stick with the Iran orthodoxy in foreign policy.

But by any objective standard, our policy toward Iran is lazy, is stuck in a rut and simply does not correspond to our needs. A change in policy is urgently needed. It has to be driven by a reassessment of those needs. Iran’s importance today to the West is several degrees of magnitude greater than it was a decade ago, but we have more rigid confrontational policies than at that time and we have even less room for maneuver. In addition to a reassessment of our needs, we need to search more robustly and creatively for new levers of influence. Continued and intensifying isolation of Iran defeats any opportunity for influence. Can we afford to treat Iran as a pariah state or do we need it? If we waiting and hoping for regime change, that may be bad policy because we have no way of knowing whether it will come before or after the next crisis.

Click here to read Austin's piece in New Europe

Click here to read the article in Today's Zaman.

Some newspapers have been manufacturing anti-AK Party stories, not based on factual evidence but because of the prejudice they hold against the AK Party. Supporters of the government here at home and in the West should make a point to emphasize the untruthfulness in these deliberately misleading stories. Mediators have always had a crucial role in history as people who are able to employ rhetoric understandable to both sides. One such mediator is Zuhal Kurt.

She is on the board of directors of the EastWest Institute, a global think tank and highly effective in the US. She is also the chief executive officer of privately held Kurt Enterprises, whose investments include 6News, a satellite news video broadcast covering Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. Kurt Enterprises even owns a race horse training company, Kurt Systems, which uses advanced technology to help improve speed and stamina in race horses.

As an experienced and ardent student of Turkey, she brings valuable insight to understanding Turkish politics and the AK Party’s popularity. She thinks that the AK Party has played a crucial role in solving Turkey’s identity crisis, which she maintains has been in place since the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. She says the country is still experiencing a paradigm shift and undergoing a process of reconstructing its identity. The most effective steps in defining Turkey’s identity have been taken by the AK Party, according to Kurt. Since the time it was founded as a new republic in 1923, Turkey has faced an identity crisis, Kurt believes. She asserts that this crisis has cost the country much in terms of constitutional, political, social and economic development.

Over the past 10 years the AK Party government has constructed a new Turkey where so many constituents are different. That alteration has resulted in new classes and rules. And for Kurt, the new order naturally has its opponents. There is group of people who have a hard time adapting to the new and transformed Turkey. “Change is not an easy thing to accept. But when we look at the overall situation, Turkey is a totally more powerful and dynamic country compared to what it was 10 years ago. In that time Turkey has tripled its national income and attained an economic growth rate that was unimaginable before. Now citizens of European countries are seeking to immigrate to Turkey. Turkey is not only a strong power in its region but one of the pivotal powers in the world. These are very positive indicators,” says Kurt.

Although there are very positive signs in Turkey about the AK Party government, and it has gained half of the voters’ trust, some of the foreign media’s interpretations of the AK Party are in no way positive. Suspicions about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s strong personality and tendencies toward totalitarianism are hardly comprehensible for supporters of the AK Party. But Kurt thinks Erdoğan should use a calmer rhetoric and embrace the West as well as the East. The harsh attitude he took in his election campaign and on certain occasions may be understood as domineering. Kurt thinks he does not need such an attitude because he is on the right track. She also notes: “He got 50 percent of the vote in his third term. This is unprecedented in Turkey’s political history. If people think that Erdoğan has been in power for too long, they should know that this is normal for Turkey. For instance, the country’s ninth president, Süleyman Demirel, was in power for many years. Turkey’s politics do not produce as many politicians as other countries do. People do not give up political power easily.”

Kurt recalled that in his victory speech Erdoğan sent messages to different parts of the world. “While he embraced the Balkans, North Africa and neighboring regions, he mentioned Europe only once and did not mention the United States at all.” However, Kurt said she believes Erdoğan should embrace the entire world. Kurt said Erdoğan needs to be more realistic and less emotional and populist in his approach to Israel. She claims: “Turkey should see Israel as a pluralistic society not a one-dimensional state. There are so many peaceable people in Israel. When the Mavi Marmara incident happened, many Jewish citizens of Turkey became anxious. But Fethullah Gülen’s statements in The Washington Post [that the flotilla had disrespected Israel’s authority as a state], brought them relief.”

Kurt says that she gets many questions in the US on whether Turkey is becoming a fundamentalist country; she responds: “I totally disagree with this idea. Although Turkey is a conservative country, it will never be fundamentalist. In Turkey the culture of religion has never led to fundamentalism.”

She adds: “What I love most about this government is its policies to break prejudices. Ten years ago we were not able to talk about minorities and their rights. Even though there are no concrete solutions yet, we are talking about them freely. There is discomfort about Erdoğan in the Western media, but I think the prime minister can solve this problem by taking some easy steps.”

In a series of interviews with BBC EWI Senior Fellow Najam Abbas discusses the state of U.S. - Pakistan strained relations after the May 2 killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Euronews asks EWI’s Greg Austin how Osama bin Laden’s death affects al Qaeda and the world.

Critics of John Paul II's beatification this Sunday say it's both too hasty and just plain wrong. Too hasty because his successor, Benedict XVI, waived the customary five-year waiting period and started the beatification process right after his death in 2005. Just plain wrong because of the wave of allegations about cover-ups of clerical sex abuse during his tenure.

Whatever the merits of those arguments, there's a completely different reason to welcome the Polish pope's beatification at this particular moment: It fittingly coincides with the Arab Spring, and his pontificate offers valuable lessons for those yearning to be free from oppression. John Paul has been hailed for his role in toppling communist regimes. But he deserves just as much recognition for demonstrating that the push for a more representative political system is fully compatible with a deep commitment to core religious beliefs—so long as it includes full respect for differing faiths. Across the Arab world this respect is all too often absent.

In the early 1980s, I was based in Rome for Newsweek and traveled with John Paul on his whirlwind pilgrimages. Proximity bred deep admiration for his conviction that, as he put it, "There is a moral logic that is built into human life." His repeated appeals to his countrymen and others to live by their moral convictions were a driving force of the peaceful revolutions of 1989, inspiring dissidents to live "as if" they were free. This meant decrying injustice, refusing to acquiesce in the pretences of "socialist democracy," and demanding real democracy instead.

But equally impressive was his understanding of different cultures, religions and traditions. Above all he believed in freedom of conscience—for his fellow Poles when the communist authorities were trying to block the building of churches, and for persecuted religious communities anywhere. He in no way saw this as contradicting his strict constructionist interpretation of his own faith, and he refused to cede ground to those Catholics who wanted more elastic beliefs to live by.
John Paul convened leaders of many religions wherever he went, urging not just tolerance but genuine reconciliation. He fiercely condemned anti-Semitism, and he was the first pope to visit a synagogue and Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. He also defended the right of Muslims to practice their faith freely in Western societies, making an equally historic first papal visit to a functioning mosque during a Syria trip.

But he emphasized that tolerance and understanding work both ways. If Western societies should respect the rights of Muslims to practice their faith, he argued, Islamic countries need to respect the rights of Christians to do the same—even countries like Saudi Arabia. And no one, he emphasized, can ever be justified in invoking their religion as justification for murdering those of other faiths. After 9/11, he encouraged the representatives of a broad range of faiths who gathered for the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi to condemn any violence in the name of religion.

In big ways and small, John Paul lived the doctrine of inclusiveness that he preached. During the long journeys to Asia, Latin America or Africa, he would sometimes show up in the economy-class section of the papal plane where our highly international press contingent was sitting. On those occasions, the journalists would toss him questions in a variety of languages. Almost always, he replied in whatever language the questioner used. This was an impressive display of his formidable linguistic skills, but it was also living proof of his commitment to breaking down national and cultural barriers.

If he were still alive, John Paul would view the current upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East with hope. He would applaud the courage and ingenuity of Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians and others in employing new tools, especially the social media, in their drive for liberation. During the struggle for freedom in Poland, activists used the available technologies of that era—everything from illicit printing presses to videotapes—in the same way.

But he would also be concerned by the violence of the regimes that are hanging on to power at all costs, and he'd be wary of some of those who are leading the charge against them. In particular, he'd warn against replacing secular dictatorships with religious dictatorships.

Violence, John Paul wrote, is a product of the denial of the humanity of "the other"—anyone who believes something different. His beatification provides a timely reminder.

Mr. Nagorski is vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute.

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Click here to read this article in the Wall Street Journal

Many are enthralled because maybe they see a little bit, or even a lot, of themselves in the young (and older) Arabs demonstrating and rallying in the street. The grievances the Arabs have expressed are more common than most of us would like to admit: high unemployment and underemployment, the loss of hope, crushing political and cultural oppression and repression, massive corruption, the selective use of the rule of law or complete lack of the rule of law, the powerful influence of connections (in Arabic wasta and koosa), poor leadership that has done little for the common person, increasingly cavernous differences between the haves and have-nots, declining living standards for many, and bankrupt educational systems, amongst many other problems both perceived and real.

Who could say that he or she did not feel some sympathy with those brave Arabs who have been hitting the streets, putting their lives and livelihoods in danger, and crying out at the top of their lungs that they want democracy, freedom and hope? Probably only the dictators and their cronies who have robbed them of their heritage and their hopes could do that. However, even they in their hearts of hearts could feel the pain of the street. Many of the current and recently ousted leaders did not start at the top and many came from poor backgrounds in small villages. That is one of the pungent ironies of all of this. And, yes, it does stink.

Many are concerned because of the effects all of these uprisings and revolutions could have on oil, gas, and other markets. Still others are concerned about what all of this might mean for the strategic calculus of the region and world. The Middle East and North Africa are vital areas for trade and resources, but also for cultural, political, and now revolutionary forces. In many ways, this area is the center of the Muslim world. It is also a place that has uncountable and powerful connections with Central Asia, South Asia, Europe, Africa and more.

Others are concerned about the immigration that may happen. Still others are worried Al Qaeda may gain from this. Even in some of the most geographically distant areas of the world, such as China, there are concerns that this unrest might spread toward them. The leadership of countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and some of the Central Asian states should be losing sleep over this. The grievances we hear from the Arabs echo in the streets of Caracas, Harare and many more places. The Arab world has become the heart of revolution. These are mostly revolutions of the people, those who are Ibn al balad, (a son of the soil) and the shaab (the youth).  They are  looking to be free from the yoke of economic, cultural, and political repression that has constrained them and their countries from reaching their potential.

However, there also seems to be movement toward more government control and regulation of businesses and even outright nationalizations of some businesses in some countries where the corruption and inequality were over the top. A revolution in economic ideologies that counters the neo-liberalism and free market ideologies of the World Bank and the Washington consensus already seems to be taking hold in places like Egypt and this may spread. This is far from universal. It will be interesting to see how Libyan economic ideologies develop after 41 years of the irrational, mercurial, and "socialistic" policies of Qaddafi. There is also a lot of confusion on the ground about where the "Islamist" groups of the region will fit into the future. The seeds of future revolutions may be sowed already in the region. It is very difficult to tell where all of this is heading.

Indeed, many are confused by these revolutions. How could an area that was assumed by many to be so stable collapse into anger and dissent so quickly? Well, they really were not that stable to begin with. The people saw the weaknesses of the seemingly powerful leaders, their bluff and bluster, and moved on them. Those leaders were brutal because they were weak, much like schoolyard bullies.

Having about 20 years experience in the region and having lived in Egypt for six years, I could feel the anger and frustrations steadily build in many places. Once they saw the chink in the ostensible armor, they went for it. Once they saw weaknesses in the security forces and intelligence services that had kept them down, they were no longer intimidated. Although this is not a part of the world where passive resistance had any know track record, suddenly it took hold and worked well.  The results will have profound effects globally—for the EU, Africa, Asia and the world economic and political systems in general. This is just the beginning of a new wave of change.

What might this mean for Iran? My guess is that Arab Spring could visit this country sooner rather than later. What does this mean for the Shia-Sunni tensions? These tensions are part of the rebellions in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria and could spread to others, and not just in the region. The elephant in the room is Saudi Arabia, which has the largest conventional proved oil reserves in the world, is the largest oil exporter, and has most of its large Shia population living just above its largest oil fields. And Iran has been stirring up trouble there.

What might this mean for Israel and the Palestinians?  The Palestinians are surely thinking about what this might mean for them. Also, the Palestinians are working through the UN to get many countries to recognize them. This could be one of the reasons why things have been more peaceful there than many might have expected. The Palestinians are employing new international tactics, and even internal tactics, such as passive resistance, which some thought impossible for this community. If Israel does not react in a strategic manner, and with a long term view toward its relations with its near and far Arab and Iranian neighbors, it could find itself in a very difficult bind in the near future.

What could this mean for the United States? This could either be an opening to a better future with the people of the region or a strategic disaster of epic proportions, depending on how the U.S. handles the manifold and powerful challenges this situation presents to it.

This is a time that calls for great leadership in the U.S., the EU, the Middle East and North Africa and more. Without such leadership, the results of these revolutions could be quite bad. If the Arab Spring spreads further into the larger oil producers such as Libya's neighbor Algeria, Iran and even Saudi Arabia, then all bets are off for the economic, political and even military fallout. The same could happen if various energy nodes--Ab Qaiq, the Al Basra Oil Terminal and the like--are seriously damaged or compromised. Then we have Yemen possibly disintegrating into multiple failed states, while Somalia, another failed state, serve as the other bookend to one of the most important oil and other cargo transport areas in the world.

Under certain scenarios we could be looking at $200-300 per barrel of oil and massive economic shocks to the world. I doubt that we are ready for any of this. The U.S. Government may shut down because Democrats, Republicans and the Tea Party cannot even agree to disagree. This is not comforting in a world facing such daunting challenges. The EU countries which are far more vulnerable to energy shocks from North Africa and the Middle East, seem even less prepared to handle the potential fallout. The least developed countries, many of whom heavily depend on imported oil, and particularly Sub-Saharan African countries, could be in for one of the greatest economic shocks of their recent histories if these events spin out of control. The global implications of these events and the unpreparedness of most countries to develop proper policy options to counter the economic and political shocks that could come from them are potentially profound.

None of this is predetermined and we can hope for the best. But hope is not a strategy and, although necessary, it is far from sufficient for the great leadership and strategizing that will be needed. This may be a time to go back in time and look at the rules of leadership as defined by George Washington, such as basing decisions on what is right rather than what is popular (now there is a thought), having a vision of a better future (and not just next week), doing what you say you will (instead of just saying what people want to hear), being honest, being responsible for decisions (no buck passing), doing research and development on decisions (not basing decisions on the 1% factor), building relations (not going it alone), being balanced (not extreme), being humble (not arrogant), learning from defeats (instead of just blaming others), and, observing things as they are -- not what you would like things to be.

Trying to understand  what is happening in the Arab world today, and developing sensible strategies in response to those events, is like sailing a ship in high and shifting winds, and in a very thick fog. You need very good leadership or you might just hit the rocks.

A former EWI senior fellow, Paul Sullivan teaches at the National Defense University and Georgetown University.  All opinions expressed are those of Professor Sullivan and do not represent those of The National Defense University, Georgetown University or any other entity he may be associated with.