[PROVIDED BY SUSRIS.COM]

Editor’s Note:

The 19th Annual Arab-US Policymakers Conference (AUSPC), organized by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, was held in Washington, DC, October 21-22, 2010, to tackle the question, “Arab-U.S. Relations: Going Where?” Over one thousand conferees considered topics across the spectrum of issues: geo-strategic dynamics of Iraq, Iran and Palestine; regional security challenges; defense cooperation; education and employment prospects; energy supply and security; business and financial developments; exports and markets; policy direction at the Arab League; and reports from America’s and Saudi Arabia’s ambassadors to each other’s country.

This is one of 17 SUSRIS posts that will feature AUSPC presentations – keynote addresses and panel discussions – across the broad range of topics discussed. You can track these reports, including SUSRIStube videos and other media reports about the conference at our new SUSRIS Special Section “AUSPC 2010.”  There you will find a listing of all the panels and speeches.

C-SPAN VIDEO THAT INCLUES THIS PANEL – CLICK HERE

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ARAB-US POLICYMAKERS CONFERENCE
GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES: WHAT FUTURE ARAB EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS?

[Ms. Anne Joyce] Thank you very much, and thank you to John Duke Anthony and the National Council for having this program. It’s broad, deep and complex and it gives us all an opportunity to examine issues that aren’t in the public debate all the time, at least from this perspective.

I think we have to be a little humble when we talk about education. We Americans tend to preach to others about it, as if it were the Philosopher’s Stone, whereby you could transform base metals into gold. Not quite. Education is necessary but not sufficient. We also have to talk about what kind of education we’re talking about. What is appropriate for any particular society? Are we talking about liberal arts education, critical thinking, technical training? There are many aspects to it and when you see our or unemployment rate at the moment, and the amount of discontent in our society about jobs and careers and so forth, we have a lot of questions to answer ourselves. How do we fit in our people into lives that are satisfying for them?

It’s good to take this up during an election season too, because the rhetoric out there is very hostile. You can feel the resentment and also the ignorance in the political debate and it’s very of painful, I think, for most of us.

In our field we also are aware that the political elites, the educated class, are often very guilty of groupthink and conventional wisdom. It’s also the case, that of course, in the public debate there’s a great deal of ignorance bandied about. So preaching to others about education is something I hesitate to do.

At any rate we have to all face the social divide that education sometimes produces and I think the backlash against the educated elite is inevitable. We see it in our own country and other countries as well. Before I forget to do this or if there was no time at the end I want to pick up on something that Chas Freeman, my former boss, said this morning. That is that public intellectuals should or have a duty to go out and try to mitigate hatred of Muslims which is everywhere in our society regrettably. So go out and reprove somebody for prejudice after this meeting.

Our panel today is wonderful and I know that because I watched the video of Dr. Mody Alkhalaf’s talk from last year. It’s really inspiring and wonderful. She will be our first speaker. I think I’ll briefly introduce all of them right now and then they can speak in order. I’ll let you read the more complicated biographical details. She’s the Director of Social and Cultural Affair at the Saudi Cultural Mission at the embassy here in Washington.

The next speaker will be Ms. Magali Rheault, senior analyst for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She does polling among Arab youth and more than that which I’m sure she’ll tell you about. I think polling doesn’t all involve why do they hate us.

The final panelist is Maggie Mitchell Salem who is well known to Washington audiences from her work at the State Department and the Middle East Institute. She is the Executive Director of the Qatar Foundation International in Washington and also in Qatar.

Our commentator will be John Moran who’s the distinguished Diplomat in Residence at the National Council on US Arab Relations this year. He’s a career member of the senior Foreign Service as well. It’ll be his job to pick up on what the panelists have said and that and ask provocative questions. Your questions will be included of course at the end as well.

So I’ll now turn the podium over to Dr. Mody Alkhalaf.

[Dr. Mody Alkhalaf] Salam Alaikum. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’m honored to be here again among another distinguished panel addressing an audience of this caliber. My first public debut to Western audiences was in 2003 when I started writing for Arab News. Those articles were mostly critical, asking for social change, predominantly regarding women’s rights. My Western audiences were very sympathetic and encouraging. The most frequent question I got was what’s it like living in Saudi Arabia.

Like I said, asked with genuine sympathy. And to their surprise my instant answer was always with the same genuity, “Are you kidding me? I would not want to be anywhere else in the world.” Why? I was living history, every day, literally.

Actually I’d give them an analogy. I’d also say for you to understand better because some people will criticize this. It was like standing in the exact center of a tornado, where you know that if you stand still it could kill you, but if you move in any uncalculated way it could be just as fatal. So the whole country was always calculating, moving, planning, keeping up to speed with the changes and the changes around the world.

Today this panel is on global education and employment challenges.

So much to say, so little time. So I’ll focus on just how Saudi Arabia has met global education challenges and has tried to develop its human resources in an attempt to solve parts, and emphasis on parts of the rising employment challenges in the region.

So, first of all my country has been built on Five-Year Plans, developmental plans since 1960. We are currently in the ninth Five-Year developmental plan and it includes a whopping 385 billion in new spending. So how is Saudi Arabia going to utilize it the next five years? Well over 50%, fortunately, will go to developing our human resources, 19% to social and health, a little over 15% to economic resources, over 7% to transportation and communication and 7% to housing.

[PowerPoint slides]

This is how we deal with it on a pie chart. So I think Saudi Arabia is actually a fine example for a panel like this. Now of course higher education is key to the new developmental plan. We are increasing the capacity of universities to jump from 500,000 to a 1.7 million. We are increasing postgraduate students to 5% of all students and that’s by diversifying our postgraduate programs. We are encouraging university collaboration with international institutions, and if any of you are affiliated with universities here you must have been contacted by Saudi universities. We are increasing the number of local scholarships, which I shall be discussing a bit more later.

Now our first university was established in 1958. Between 1958 and 2002, which is about four decades, we had eight universities and then in just one decade, between 2003 and 2010, the number of universities in Saudi Arabia has tripled.

Here I’d like to make a stop at two of those universities. The first, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KAUST, which I’m sure all of you are have heard of. As a world-renowned research center built over 9000 acres, it has faculty and students from all over the world to do research, to study and to address global issues.

The second stop, and I’m a bit biased here, because I’m faculty at the second university, which is Princess Noura University. Princess Noura University is the first all-female university in Saudi Arabia. It’s the largest in the region, it’s built over, it’s still being built actually, over 8 million square meters. It will be able to accommodate 40,000 female students. The campus will have of course administration buildings, educational buildings, it will have conference centers, a huge library, student and faculty housing, in addition to a hospital with 500 beds.

The private sector is also increasing in Saudi Arabia. It only started recently with the first university in 2000, but in one decade we have eight private universities excluding private colleges. When I was talking about local scholarships the government is funding students to study at these universities as well if they qualify.

Now key is building new facilities, and Ambassador Jubeir mentioned today that one way to tackle unemployment was to take the high school graduates and give them technical skills so that’s another thing the country is focusing on. Currently we have 68 technical education institutions but within five years those numbers will increase to 24 or 25, sorry, more technical colleges, 28 technical institutions and over 50 industrial training institutes, and that also will help resolve some of the unemployment problems.

We are also encouraging innovation in science and technology. How? Well first of all over 240 million in grants for research every year, and establishment of 10 research centers, 15 university technological innovation centers and here we are collaborating with the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology and at least eight technology incubators, again in collaboration with the King Abdullah University and other universities.

Also included in this five-year plan is the extension of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program. Now if some of you don’t know what that is, it started in 2005 with an agreement between King Abdullah and President Bush to increase the number of scholarship students in the U.S. It was supposed to be a five-year program but in 2010 it was extended for another five years. So why is this program so important and why did I choose it to be the focus of this presentation?

Wellm the mission of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program is to actively develop and qualify human resources for two purposes: to be world competitive in the market and to be a high caliber basis for both universities, public and government, sorry, and private sectors.

To achieve that mission KASP or the King Abdullah Scholarship Program is offering scholarships in all of these degrees from bachelors all the way to do medical fellowships. And what field do you think we are sponsoring? Well predominantly it’s going to medicine with all its branches, pure sciences and the medical sciences, but is that all our job market needs? Certainly not. It’s also sponsoring engineering, computer sciences and business with all their branches as well.

How are these candidates selected? Well if you, and this is a question I get common from university officials, in particular. If you are an undergraduate student you have to have at least 90% on your high school diploma, 75% on your achievement which is the three years of high school and 70 on an aptitude test which is just kind of like an SAT here. If you are going for your bachelors but already have a two year diploma you would have to have at least a GPA of 3.5 and no more than five years since your last degree. If you’re going for your postgrad then you would have to have a GPA of at least 2.7 and again no more than five years since your last degree. If you’re going for Medical Fellowship Residency it’s even simpler. All you have to do is get admission from an institute accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education. Now once these candidates are selected what happens? We send them almost all over the world, from the United States to Czech Republic in different numbers, to different degrees, of course.

Can you imagine the collective experience that these young men and women will have when they come back to their country? Okay, before the students go they are given a short orientation. They are told about their scholarship rights and responsibilities. It’s just a three-day workshop in three main cities in Saudi Arabia so we cram in as much as you can. Information about the country they are going to, as much social and psychological preparation you can give a student in three days, and sometimes guest speakers are invited from the Ministry of Higher Education or even from the countries they are going to, or former students to share their experiences.

Now once these lucky students arrive in the countries they are supposed to be in what do you think they get? Well full tuition in any university, Ivy League or smaller ones. Monthly stipend. They get full medical and dental coverage. They get reimbursements for attending conferences, workshops and symposia. They get rewards even for high GPAs and publishing papers. If they are married and have children they even get financial support for spouse and children, and for spouses they get another scholarship for the spouse. And even annual round-trip tickets throughout the years of study to Saudi Arabia and back.

Every time I discuss the number of students worldwide, I remember that joke about the multimillionaire who was asked about his net worth and his answer was before you asked the question or after you asked the question, to signify how fast it increases. So when people ask me how many students we have I want to say before you ask the question or after you asked the question. According to MOHE stats, Ministry of Higher Education, as of September 2010 we had 98,000 students worldwide, but Ambassador Jubeir today mentioned there were over 100,000 and I agree with him totally. At the cultural mission here in DC alone we get an average 300 to 500 a week.

So are there students studying in Saudi Arabia, certainly. Students abroad are only 18.5% of higher education students. This is a short diagram to show you how much we’ve jumped since 2005. We had about 10,000 students and now it’s 100,000 so in five years we’ve increased tenfold. We are fourth in the world in the number of international students studying abroad. And I think that’s impressive from a country so young as ours. And then if you compare it to number of residents we are actually the second in the world following only Greece.

If you noticed in the numbers and the schedule a few slides back I had three types of scholarship students. One we call the sponsored students and those are the one that are fully covered by the King Abdullah Scholarship Program. The second, from their name, are self sponsored and they come here with the hope of getting a scholarship once they’ve finished the language program or start their academic degrees and most often than not that happens. The third type is the employed scholarship student and those are fully funded as well, but not by the King Abdullah Scholarship Program but by other sectors they come from like universities, or ministries or private businesses.

Based on degree level, if you’re wondering, the majority of our students studying their bachelor’s degree. So the majority is bachelors, followed by masters then by doctoral then by medical fellowships.

If you notice the division between male and female, females make up about 30% of scholarship students worldwide. If we break it down male and female by degrees, most males around the world are doing their bachelor’s with 57% and females are equally working on their bachelor’s and their masters, followed of course by doctoral residency and other programs.

What are the students mainly studying? The highest majority of students all around the world in the King Abdullah Scholarship Program are studying business followed by engineering and computer science. If you go down to the lower numbers in the lower specialties you’ll find that they are doing journalism, mathematics, nursing, transportation.

This is no surprise to anybody. The top places where students are studying. The lion’s share of course is the United States of America. We have students in over 1000 universities here, 30,000 in the U.S. alone. Followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Malaysia, France, China and Austria, and I’d like to note here that I’ve taken out the Arab countries. Our students go to the Middle East as well and Arab countries in Northern Africa. The only continent I think we don’t have sponsored students in is South America. But we’re working on that.

So what are they doing in the country? Well they’re getting a world-class education. In the United States for example. They are going to the top 10 universities, but is that all? They’re breaking stereotypes and building bridges. They are taking every opportunity to teach about their country whether it’s one-on-one or in classrooms or on international week on campus.

They are teaching about our attire it even the controversial abaya or the beautiful jalabiya. They are sharing our food the famous kabsa, and they’re showing off their dance, by the way those are the George Mason students at the cherry blossoms in DC. And they are showing the world how to write their names in our language. They are learning about American society and about the other countries that they are studying in. They’re contributing with volunteer community service, visiting schools and nursing homes, sharing their compassion and their experiences. They are also raising the Saudi flag high and proud, alongside the American flag here and all other flags that they interact with.

In 2005 King Abdullah addressed the media explaining the reason for this program with these wise words, “For them to know the world and for the world to know them.” In August of 2010 the media responded and acknowledged the wisdom and honor of this program by naming King Abdullah among the top 10 world leaders.
Thank you for listening.

[Joyce] Thank you very much Doctsor Alkhalaf. That was excellent and although she went very fast it was comprehensible.

Okay since I had introduced Magali Rheault already she will come now to the podium and talk about the surveys that she has been conducted in the Arab world.

And I think she’s using that PowerPoint as well.

[Magali Rheault] Good evening. It is my great pleasure to be here this afternoon to address this extremely distinguished audience and also to showcase some highlights from the research that we conduct at Gallup.

[PowerPoint Slides]

Anne introduced me by saying that I’m a pollster. I’m a little more than a pollster. I’m a social scientist and I work for the Gallup organization. Anne, you also mentioned “why do they hate us,” and whether we can explore this. This is definitely a topic that my research center has explored. I’m just afraid that it would take basically more than the remainder of this panel and into tomorrow to fully explore these ideas with you.

So for this afternoon, for this evening I’m going to focus on entrepreneurship aspirations in the MENA region. I’m going to tell you how we go about doing this research, which some of you may already be familiar with, and then I’ll be looking forward to hearing your feedback and your questions regarding this work.

Dr. Mody focused on one very specific country, and I think Maggie will focus on also another, the Qatar situation. I’m going to bring you the 10,000-foot view. We have a very, very diverse region from Morocco all the way to Yemen, that I really want to bring you the big picture view and from the angle of employment or lack thereof and looking at entrepreneurship and how entrepreneurship can be a pillar, a core pillar, to address this challenge and that the whole region is facing, which is job creation.

As many of you know about 30 percent of the Arab world is between the ages of 15 and 29. We have a huge demographic cohort; in fact the cohort is about 100 million strong. So this is actually the largest cohort to enter in history, to enter what will, at least try, to enter the labor force. It’s certainly it is a demographic challenge but we can also see it as a demographic dividend. We need to think about how can we make the switch? How can we go from the challenge to the dividend? One of the things that we can do is by looking at young Arabs as today’s vital partners, if you like, with a stake in their society as opposed to viewing them as tomorrow’s beneficiary for whom we need to find employment.

Basically this whole work is the subject of my research with the Center for Modern Studies and Gallup has been working in partnership with a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization called Silatech. Silatech was created in 2008., pursuant to the vision of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah and Silatech’s mission is to connect young Arabs with employment and enterprise opportunities in their respective countries. But before we can address this challenge at least in a successful way we need to measure it. That’s exactly what we do at Gallup and our research focuses for this particular effort, initiative our research focuses on the voices is of young Arabs.

What we do is we measure their perceptions of basically the obstacles that they perceive in terms of being employed or creating a business, though we also want to better understand their aspirations and their dreams for a better future. This in turn, this whole entire body of research can and will inform policies and this is part of our dissemination efforts in terms of initiatives to remove these obstacles to employment and entrepreneurship in those countries.

I’m going to focus on highlights from our last report.

Just to give you a brief overview very, very briefly I’ll talk about methodology and how it is that how do we carry out this research. We’ll look at work preferences, whether people prefer, young people prefer, to work in the public sector or the private sector. We’ll look at how young Arabs view entrepreneurship in terms of whether it’s a good climate or not. How many young Arabs planned to start a business, what kind of demographic attributes and other attributes do we can we see in those aspiring entrepreneurs and then we’ll look at two key areas, perceptions, attitudes towards business entry variables as well as business outcome variables. Then we’ll take it all together and look at key learnings.

In terms of the methodology we cover pretty much every single country in the Arab League with the exception of Oman. In terms of Somalia, which is also, a member of the Arab League, we can’t really be polling in Somalia for obvious reasons. There is one region of Somalia where we can safely send our interviewers because all of this work is actually done in face to face interviews, so in Somaliland we can actually send people without them being killed.

We use random probabilities samples, which simply means that every single person in the country based on your sampling frame have an equal chance of being selected for this survey. And as I just mentioned we conduct face-to-face interviews of Arab nationals. This is an issue for the GCC countries that have very large non-national populations and the cohorts are age 15 and older. We conduct at least 1000 interviews twice a year. So we end up with, and that’s for every single country, so we have very large sample sizes that enable us to do some pretty interesting research.

We interview basically the whole gamut, rich people, poor people, the entire socio-economic spectrum. We’re not only in urban areas. A lot of the times the survey research work that you will see will only focus on urban areas because it’s a lot easier. We don’t do that. We really have more nationally representative samples that also cover the urban areas. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 to 4% depending on the country.

We know anecdotally that there is a preference for work for the government, as opposed to the private sector. Let’s take a look. Let’s see if we can measure this. In terms of all young Arabs so that’s across all the countries that I reference, between the ages of 15 and 29 we can see that their twice as likely to say that they would rather work for the government than for a business. Now about a quarter say that either would be fine. Now what’s really interesting is if you look at, among people who say they are planning to start a business in the next 12 months so we called them the aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s still a preference, they are really leaning toward government employment as opposed to private sector work. So this is a pretty interesting look at things.

I promise this is the busiest slide you will see in the entire presentation. I didn’t even put the numbers. I hate having lots of really busy things and numbers but here this is actually, and I’ll just do some highlights. It really shows you that there is a lot of variation across the region. It really is reflective of the great diversity that you have across the greater MENA region. It is this preference for being employed by the government is highest in Kuwait where 90% of young people say they will would rather work for the government and a business.

You go all the way but down to say, we will stop at Somaliland. Here you have a completely different picture, because we have 14% of Somalilanders between the ages of 15 and 29, who say that they would rather work for the government. 74% of them say that they would rather work for business. So when you are in the bottom part it’s not like everybody wants to work the first work for the private sector and the perfect example of this is Libya where we have 13% of young Libyans who say that they would prefer to work for the government. But then you have about a third, it’s actually 33% who say that they would prefer to work it in the private sector, and then you have almost half, 46%, who say either. So it’s really a very varied picture. What I’ve circled on the slide is Lebanon. Lebanon is basically the country that divides this entire list between above Lebanon is where people the majority at least the majority of young people would rather work for the government and below Lebanon is the minority, below 50%, who would rather work for the government.

That’s it. No more pain. We’re going with the next one.

Okay if we have this leaning toward government work we know that obviously government employment provides more stability, more security and that sort of thing but it is also important to look at attitudes toward entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. Are they positive, negative, neutral? So lets take a look.

Across the region again among young Arabs between the ages of 15 and 29, we have pretty solid, pretty strong majorities who, for the most part, have pretty favorable opinions of entrepreneurs. They also tell us that their communities are good places for rising aspiring entrepreneurs to launch their business. So overall it’s a pretty positive picture.

I want to show you, we asked this question are you planning to start a business in the next 12 months and this is a proxy for really measuring people who have thought about what it means to be a business owner and have done some of the homework to make this a reality in the next few months.

So across this set of countries that we surveyed in the Arab League, 15% of young people say they’re planning to start a business in the next year. Now looking at a number like this in isolation doesn’t really help us, so I want to bring you the view from the United States. It didn’t go very well, okay you can’t see it I don’t know why, but it is 4%. So 4% of Americans between the ages of 15 and 29 say they plan to start a business in the next 12 months. So there may be, obviously different reasons for this, but we have much greater interests in entrepreneurship across the Arab League.

Let’s look at differences across groups of countries. So here we group the countries according to their GDP, national GDP information, with the high income countries being of course the GCC countries, middle income countries being places like Syria, Algeria and the like, and then the low income countries which would fall into Mauritania, Somaliland, Sudan and so forth.

So we see here that there is actually a lot a variation depending on where people live. Where the highest, the proportions of people who are more likely to want to start a business don’t come from the poorest countries but actually from the more middle-income countries.

So what do aspiring entrepreneurs look like? Not surprisingly we can see that men are actually far more likely, almost twice as likely to say that they want to start a business compared to young Arab women. For men, business creation intentions are highest in the countries that are highlighted there, it’s at least 30% of them. I’m not going to read the list. For women we have at least 30% again in those four countries and as you can see there is some overlap.

What other attributes can help us define aspiring entrepreneurs in the region? Well we know that they’re more likely to be employed and to be employed full time. That’s very important to know. We also know and this is not only Gallup research, there it is an entire body of research, looking at the relationship between entrepreneurship and civic engagement, and this is borne out by our research as well, where aspiring entrepreneurs are far more likely to say that they volunteer their time or that they have helped a stranger in the past week. One last point on this slide, which is extremely important, is that the people who are most likely to be creating a business are also the people who are most likely to leave their countries permanently.

Okay, I promised we would look at business entry items versus business outcomes items, so here we go.

In terms of business entry we see that in terms of looking at feeling confident that I can find the people qualified to do the job that I need to be done in my business, we have a pretty strong majority of people of young people who say so. The picture doesn’t look as good when we look at two other extremely important aspects to launch a business and that’s the paper work that’s necessary to create a business at least in the formal economy and also access to capital and more specifically access to a loan, to start their business. So there is a lot of work that needs to be done and there is some variation across countries but this is actually pretty true in all the countries where we do this research. So lots and lots of efforts will need to go into removing these obstacles so the perceptions can improve.

Now in terms of business outcomes the picture is a little bit better than for business entry variables but as you can see here we have 59% of young Arabs who say that they trust their assets and property will be safe at all times. This is a pretty important business outcome with 34% who say no. Then we have less than half, 48%, who tell us that they would trust the government to let them, to let their business be very profitable and 42% say no. So here there is an opportunity for government policymakers to work on these issues to be improving these perceptions.

Taking it all together looking at a summary of the research and I just, in the time that I have, and I can see that I am even getting less time now, we know that we can see that entrepreneurship is definitely a critical component to be addressing the challenge of the youth bulge.

We also see that a majority of young people prefer to work for the government but there was a fairly large proportion of people who were undecided so that could be an opportunity to, I say here, sell the benefits of being an entrepreneur.

At the same time there are widespread perceptions of important business entry and outcome of barriers that exist. Finally and very importantly it appears that those who are the most committed to being entrepreneurs are also the ones who are the most likely to emigrate and this seems to suggest that business formation may not benefit their countries of origin.

Thank you very much.

[Joyce] Thank you, Magali Rheault.

We will turn to Maggie Mitchell Salem next.

[Ms. Maggie Mitchell Salem] Good evening and let me just figure out how to work this, do I have start first. Sometimes I think marrying Dells with Macs is a lot harder than anything else we are discussing.

In the meantime, while the presentation is coming up, I just want to say good evening to everyone here and who has stuck it out through the end of day one of a two-day conference.

I’d also like to note that the organizers did an excellent job of putting together this panel because it turns out that each of us are focusing on a very different but complementary area and so my compliments to the first two speakers.

I’m actually not going to focus entirely on Qatar, in fact I’m not focusing on Qatar at all. I’m focusing on a new organization which has the good fortune, but also the misfortune, of having the same name as a very large organization based in Qatar, and that is the Qatar Foundation.

The Qatar Foundation International is based in Washington, D.C. and is something very different although benefiting from the work and from the vision of Her Highness, Sheika Mozah, who is the head of the Qatar Foundation and who founded this institution as well as the Silatech.

The mission of Qatar Foundation International, you can see it there and read it at your leisure. You can also find this on our website at QSI.org. The mission of Qatar Foundation International is to build bridges; between young people, younger than the ones that I think have been focused on so far. We are focusing on middle and high school age students. Because we firmly believe that if you wait until someone turns 18 you might have waited too long. We are trying to bring cross cultural programs to young people in the U.S., in other parts of the world, and yes, Qatar as well and bring them together to learn, to lead, to listen, to find out about the other before they go to college, and for them to have ideas of the world and their place in the world at a much younger age.

The freedom of information means that a 10-year-old can know as much as I do and I consider that my eight year old knows a lot more about bugs than I’ll ever know, so information is there but as we know information has no meaning without context, without giving it something much richer than the words on a page. And we also all know that information can be distorted and if you give young people a chance to interact with each other at young ages and give them a chance to see the world and be a part of it, we think that that can make a significant difference.

So that’s what we are trying to do and I would just read the part that talks about our vision which is of a world that embraces and respects diversity, values life long learning and empowers individuals to take action to shape their future. That’s what we are trying to do with these young people in our inaugural programs.

A word about our donor, just to clear up any misunderstanding. Our donor unlike us was founded in 1995. We are operational for the past 18 months. So we are young and still growing and still taking in ideas and creating programs. It was founded by the Emir and the head of the foundation in Doha is Her Highness, and their mission is complementary to ours but different. Enough about our donor.

These are the areas in which we are operating. Global learning is the one that focuses on bringing young people together through programs focusing again on middle and high school aged students. These are programs that I’ll discuss a little bit later. Community engagement. Community engagement is an integral part of everything we do. It is not only a programmatic pillar it is a cross cutting theme for us. We believe that all participants in our programs should give back some of what they benefited from and that’s not just presentations when they go back home but giving their time as part of our programs. So we have a volunteer service component to all of the programs that we design.

Global public health is a new area that we’re still working on. Scholarships of course if you are in middle and high school you are looking at going to college, we want to provide opportunities for young people who meet a set of criteria that we are still forming from all parts of the world to benefit from the educational opportunities that are available in Doha at Education City but also at other institutions around the world. So stay tuned for scholarships.

And special opportunities is our area to foster new ideas that may not fit into any of the other areas that we cover because we really do believe that there are ideas out there that we may not have thought of and if they come to us and we think they fit our overall mission then we are interested in considering them. So that’s a word about us, just to give you some thoughts.

The crosscutting themes, I discussed one before which is volunteerism but others include collaborating with the best organizations in the field. We don’t want to own any of the space that were in. We can’t reach every young person in the world and we know that there are other people out there including some of the names behind me who are equally interested for other reasons, in reaching young people and designing programs that engage them effectively, whether it be in academic disciplines or just as people who can have a conversation and not scream. And if there’s anything that we can do at the end of this if we can produce people who can disagree and walk away and shake hands, in the atmosphere are we all live in, that’s been alluded to before, I think that would just be a huge coup. Enough of the soapbox.

We support multiyear programs recognizing that the programs we are engaging in require a long-term commitment. We seek areas, ways to incorporate our programs with appropriate technology. Again this goes to my earlier point that we cannot, not only can we not reach everyone, we can’t fly them all over the world, much as we’d love to throw them all on Qatar Airways planes and take them where ever they would like to go. It’s not going to happen. Its costly. So how else can we reach young people and put them together without actually putting them in the same room.

And lastly we emphasize cross-cultural collaboration and diversity. So our programs. What are we actually doing, what are we doing with these young people in places like DC, Doha, Boston, Portland, Honolulu and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

We are teaching them Arabic, obviously not the ones in Doha. We are also providing them with science and technology programs that the teachers engage on as well as the students and in doing all of this — none of this is unique let me just point this out. Teaching Arabic and investing in science and technology programs is actually a well-worn path and again one that many of these organizations are investing in.

What we’re trying to bring to this is a bit of a different angle and that is having teachers in Qatar and teachers in the U.S. talk to each other. Some of the concerns are the same. Teachers have to do a lot, often with very little training. How can they work together to build a curriculum that engages their students and we’ve already organized with the help of Cisco some tele-presence meetings, putting these teachers together to do just that. And we’re looking forward to having many more of these.

For the students. We did take students from DC and Boston to Qatar during their spring break after they’d been studying Arabic for six months. They met with Qatari students from sister schools. We have a network of schools and Qatar public schools so that we are reaching Qatari students and not just expatriates, and a boys and a girls schools because, if you know it the thing about Qatari public schools, they are gender segregated. So each school had two sisters schools and Qatar. The students met and interacted and then we took all of those students to DC and Florida for a science trip in July. It was astonishing to watch these kids who had had a week to interact previously and actually the girls had a little less time than the boys did. To watch them all together for 10 days and to see the sort of community that they built and I can tell you, and I know I’m in a sympathetic audience, if you could’ve built a bubble over those young people and protect them from the insanity around them it would have been a wonderful thing. Because for a moment in time it didn’t matter what label they wore. They were kids. They had differences and that was good because we don’t want everyone to look and sound the same. We want them to be different, but we want those differences to be respected and it was a really wonderful environment.

The kids noticed that the adults had a really hard time with some of this because there were some Qatari teachers and American adults on the trip. The kids did fine, so good news. Evolution might just work. But in noticing the tensions between some of the adults and some of the conversations that were taking place two of the young Qataris came up, well actually one young Qatari and one young Boston student who’d become very, very good friends decided that the kids needed just that bubble to operate in and to talk about that difficult issues that are out there.

The idea that as one of the young Qatari boys said to me, ”But, Miss, the Qatari girls aren’t suppose to swim in the public pool.” This is when we were at Disney World and all of the American girls, all the boys were in the pools swimming together and I notice that the Qatari girls wanted to go in. But they couldn’t go in when that whole group was there. And so I asked them all to leave and they did and they were very gracious about it but the young Qatari boy said I would not let my 13-year-old sister swim in this pool. And I said, I understand, but this is their choice. I’m not going to tell them what to do, some will, some won’t and that is it their choice.

I can tell you quite honestly that it was a very difficult conversation for me because my response, and I have spent a lot of time in the Middle East, but my response would have been typically American but that’s not fair. That’s not an issue of fairness, it’s an issue of cultural standards. And so I realized in thinking through my response, that I would not have been responding in a way that made sense. We would have been speaking on different levels. So when two students came to me with the idea of developing an online forum, where the kids could talk about some of these issues, we are calling it the “tough stuff” on the forum, but also fun things like games and books they like and movies they’ve seen. One of the Qatari girls I think is going to grow up to be “House” if any of you watch “House.” She’s amazing.

So to give them that protected zone, and we are going to be expanding it carefully because when you build a protected space, any of you who are on Gulf 2000 know that often what you think is a safe area is actually not very safe and people expose each other’s comments and that’s not right. So again hoping that kids can do better than adults, we are going to carefully vet who joins the community. But that’s what they built, that was their idea and we are incredibly proud of them. Again that goes to that fourth special opportunities category that QFI has.

When we see a good idea we like to try to encourage it and this is one that most definitely fit our mission and we are very proud of Damon and Fahad, who are both now on their way to Alexandria Egypt for a Young Civil Leaders Conference, Civil Society Leaders Conference, so we’re just thrilled with them.

This is just a little blurb from Fast Company which did an article on this online forum that we built and they said it perfectly. Participants on both sides come from demographics that are likely to be future influencers. It’s not every American teenager whose able to travel to Qatar or Saudi Arabia or any other country in the Middle East. And it’s not every resident in Qatar who can travel to America. I myself benefited from a Fulbright and went to Syria, never having stepped foot outside of the United States ever. This was in 1990 when Hafez Al Assad was [Arabic phrase] but he was [Arabic phrase] caught up with him.

It was an amazing experience, but again I was 21-22, so I’ve now completely dated myself. I’m glad that Her Highness had the vision to create an organization that could carry out a program like this, for younger people. Because it’s too late to wait till you’re 21 or 22 to see the world, or at least experience differences in the world if you can’t see it directly.

With that , QFI in the future. We are very happy, you can see the last line because I too am being cut off so you can go home and have dinner. Or go to the Iraqi Consulate.

We are actively seeking partners and ideas and ways of working with others. We don’t own the landscape. You have some idea of what we’re interested in doing but all of this going to the title of the conference, “Going Where.” I can’t speak to U.S.- Arab relations on the political space, but I can say having watched these kids and again, its not a Gallup’s sample size, and I don’t know that we randomly sampled very well, but we took inner-city kids and kids from Qatar we put them together and they went places, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially. So I have a lot of hope and I think the Saudi ambassador is quite correct. This is a resource. I have four kids so I can also say it’s a challenge, but the young people are a resource and they’ll surprise us if we give them the chance to think and be and build that world that I think we’d all rather live in.

So, with that good evening. Thank you.

[Joyce] Thank you very much, Maggie. We are running out of time and John Moran will be our last speaker. He’ll do some summing up and perhaps some commenting, asking questions. We will not have time for questions from the floor but Dr. Anthony has said that the National Council will put the questions online that have been submitted.

[John Moran] Good afternoon. I’ll be very succinct in my role as commentator to this distinguished panel. If I may I’d like to touch on the issue that some of our previous speakers, and certainly Dr. Alhalaf and Dr. Rheault, brought up today and that is the burgeoning youth population in the Arab world and its implications, not just economic implications, but indeed strategic implications as well.

This is a particularly important challenge for Saudi Arabia as many of us have noted and it is a difficult issue to address in light of the very large expatriate population throughout the Gulf, but particularly in Saudi Arabia. If I recall correctly according to a 2009 Saudi’s census there were approximate 18.7 million Saudi citizens and 8.4 million expatriate workers, which of course is a very large percentage of the population. I don’t know if that’s correct but I’m sure Dr. Anthony will correct me if it’s not.

I remember, I’ve served twice in Saudi Arabia, most recently in Riyadh. But when I was in Jeddah in the 1990s in our consulate there, the conventional wisdom among the expatriate community was that Saudis were not willing, for complex cultural and social reasons, to take entry-level positions, hourly positions in the services industry. I remember one expatriate telling me that there was a syndrome called “SIC” — Saudi in Charge, whereby you had Saudis in senior management positions but not many in junior management positions and virtually none in entry level or indeed hourly positions.

I think this has been conventional wisdom for some time so I was very surprised when I returned to Saudi Arabia as Public Affairs Counselor in 2008 to find so many young Saudis working in Starbucks, working in grocery stores, and doing a very good job, being very well integrated into the workplace, and with their Saudi and non Saudi colleagues. I don’t want to overstate that trend but the certain pragmatism that I’ve noticed among both the Saudi leadership and the Saudi population. There is not a cultural, from what I saw, previous position not to take these entry level jobs positions. And I think that’s something that perhaps bodes well for the country’s effort to implement Saudiazation, as they call it, and find jobs for this youthful demographic bulge in the population.

I’d like to touch on, also the efforts in education which my colleagues have addressed. If there is one thing, I’ve served in seven Arab countries, if there is one commonality I found among all of them, it’s the absolute obsession with education for their children. This is something that cuts across class lines, it cuts across sectarian divisions. It’s something that liberals, progressives in Saudi Arabia have in common with conservatives, and that is they see education on a pragmatic sense as something that will better the life of their children.

I think this is again something important in looking at work for youth in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Arab world. The Saudis, my impression is are approaching this problem in the same way they did the challenge of industrialization, as you know they went very, very quickly from a pre-modern economy to a very modern infrastructure and they did this by taking an innovation here from outside, a model from there, and bringing it in, assuring that it was within their own cultural context, but it bespeaks a very non ideological approach to dealing with problems, again a very pragmatic approach.

I think there is a good possibility and I would say we in the U.S. Embassy when I was there were fairly optimistic about it the direction of Saudi educational reform. Often I get the impression people view it as the leadership trying to impose modern values, values of tolerance and understanding, mutual understanding among cultures on a population that is not ready for it. But in fact, from what I’ve seen the population is very interested, again obsessively so, in education. I think they generally agree with the approach of the Saudi government in that regard.

[Joyce] Thank you all very much and I think you all know where to go now. I’ll turn the podium over to Admiral Bernsen who will say goodbye.

[Admiral Bernsen]

Thank you Ms. Joyce and the panel it was marvelous, very interesting for all of us. This ends our session today. It’s six o’clock as you know if you’ve read the program you are all invited to the Iraqi Consulate.

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Transcript by Ryan&Associates
http://www.patryanassociates.com

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PANEL BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. Mody Alkhalaf – Director of Social and Cultural Affairs, Saudi Cultural Mission, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia

[PROVIDED BY SUSRIS.COM]

Editor’s Note:

The 19th Annual Arab-US Policymakers Conference (AUSPC), organized by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, was held in Washington, DC, October 21-22, 2010, to tackle the question, “Arab-U.S. Relations: Going Where?” Over one thousand conferees considered topics across the spectrum of issues: geo-strategic dynamics of Iraq, Iran and Palestine; regional security challenges; defense cooperation; education and employment prospects; energy supply and security; business and financial developments; exports and markets; policy direction at the Arab League; and reports from America’s and Saudi Arabia’s ambassadors to each other’s country.

This is one of 17 SUSRIS posts that will feature AUSPC presentations – keynote addresses and panel discussions – across the broad range of topics discussed. You can track these reports, including SUSRIStube videos and other media reports about the conference at our new SUSRIS Special Section “AUSPC 2010.”  There you will find a listing of all the panels and speeches.

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ARAB-US POLICYMAKERS CONFERENCE
DEFENSE COOPERATION

[Secretary William Cohen] I am delighted to be here to chair this panel. It’s a program that has been in existence now for some 19 years. It’s been a great platform for discussing what I think is one of the most relevant and complicated relationships in the world. And that is the relationship between the United States and the Arab World.

Recent events, I think, tend to highlight the differences between the U.S. and the Arab World. But I travel a great deal to the region and I can tell you that we have far more in common than we do have differences. We share common security issues and these issues must be addressed in a very positive and constructive way.

Today’s panel is one that is going to focus on defense cooperation in the Middle East. I want to set the stage just for a few moments and quickly review some of the more complex and significant security issues that are facing the United States today in the Middle East region.

First, of course, we have Iran. The Iranian nuclear program continues to have a destabilizing effect on the region. It’s quite clear that Israel considers Iran with a nuclear weapon to be an existential threat. It is also clear that Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf states do not want to see a nuclear-armed Iran that might throw its weight around and also spread its revolutionary ideology. There are some in our country who believe that arms sales to our friends such as the Saudis and the UAE will serve as a counterbalance in the region against a nuclear-armed Iran. There are others who worry that the arms deal might just lead to an arms race in the Middle East. There are others who question why do we want to sell arms to people in the region who can simply cause even more harm to each other. So that will be an issue that will likely be discussed today.

The other issue would be the withdrawal from Iraq. We currently have some 50,000 so-called non-combat troops that continue the training of Iraqi troops for counter terrorism operations. But you may have noticed that the President said we are going to withdraw from Iraq. He said, basically, unconditionally, without regard to the conditions on the ground. And so, when it comes time during the course of this year, we’re likely to see a reduction in the 50,000 troops in Iraq, at a time when it is by no means clear, that Iraq is going to be stable enough to handle the security situation on its own. Also at a time when we’re likely to see a reduction of our troop levels in Afghanistan, all coming at a time when the Iranian nuclear program continues relatively unabated. So that will surely be a subject that will be addressed.

Yemen is ripe with instability. The Houthi rebel group in the north, the separatist region in the south, they continue to cause more instability of this struggling nation. Al Qaeda has moved in, has taken advantage of this. They are using Yemen as a staging and training area for terrorist attacks within the country and abroad.

And I think we could probably spend the rest of the afternoon talking about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and how it’s going to be moved forward and resolving the very thorny issues that continue to exist especially in talking about settlements. So our panelists will touch on many of these issues as well as the changing nature of the defense cooperation between the U.S., Europe and the Gulf region.

Our first panelist today is Doctor Anthony Cordesman who currently holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS. He has completed multiple security studies on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East generally among the many other topics that he addresses. I worked with him when I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee and we always turned to him for absolutely brilliant insight into issues affecting our security. He is going to be talking about the changing nature of the Gulf military cooperation with the U.S. and Europe and the changing nature of the Gulf military cooperation within the Gulf States, the GCC. So please welcome Doctor Anthony Cordesman.

[Dr. Anthony Cordesman] Thank you and I will get this right, Mr. Secretary. I’d like to very quickly skim through some key indicators. It’s very easy to talk in generalities. But I think to understand what is happening occasionally you have to found your opinions in hard numbers and hard trends. And let me begin with one of the key realities here.

Before the United States invaded, Iraq was the dominant conventional power, relative to Iran by a decisive margin. [PowerPoint Slides] If you look at the red lines, and these are only a few of the force ratios involved. You can see to the left, that Iraq led Iran in every capacity. Today we are just beginning to give Iraq some capacity in main battle tanks. That is the only conventional land weapon system that we will equip Iraq with before we withdraw. In the case of the air ratios Iraq led in air combat before the invasion. Now it has no armed combat aircraft and has no immediate plans to purchase these aside from a limited up arming of some helicopters.

This is not something that has to continue. The United States worked with Iraqis to develop a modernization plan from 2009 to 2011. It is supplying 144 M1 battle tanks. There has been talk of F-16 sales. But several things have delayed Iraq’s military modernization very, very seriously, and far below the levels we had planned to see when we withdrew. One of them is the lack of the formation of government and the ability to take decisions.

A second is that Iraq’s ministries simply did not have the capacity that we had hoped for and expected to see in implementing plans. But the most critical one has been a budget crisis that began in the spring of 2009 that led to a freeze on the expansion of critical elements of the Iraqi armed forces, that has led to a serious decline in the readiness of Iraqi manning, the underfunding of operations and maintenance and the virtual paralysis of investment programs. This crisis is easing but it cannot really be resolved until a new government is not only chosen, but is in place. So what we had expected to have at the end of 2011 now can still be achieved. But it will be 2013 at the earliest. And for us to complete even the anti-counterinsurgency programs, the anti-counter terror programs will run about two years later than we had originally planned. And at this point in time we do not have, because Iraq does not have, a plan for the modernization of its conventional forces. Worse than that, because of the way the Iraqi budget is structured, most of the budget goes simply to paying for manpower in the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense.

All of these numbers are presented in much more detail in a briefing we put out on the CSIS web site today. They are Iraqi numbers and quite frankly they’re also numbers, which were made very clear, and their content and impact was made very clear, in reporting by the Department of Defense. But there are no miracles here. We need an Iraqi government, as Ambassador Crocker pointed out, that is unified, willing to act, and can define what strategic partnership means and act upon it. That won’t come with the selection of a government. It will take perhaps another six to eight months to bring the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense back to the level of effectiveness we had hoped for and have it begin decision making.

Iraq will not be able to fund the programs it had thought to fund. Its budget crisis extends far beyond the defense sector and it will be years before its petroleum revenues can fund the programs it wants. The U.S. has put forward, tentatively, plans to provide critical military assistance as well advisory missions after we leave.

I think the Administration has made those plans quite clear. But let me say there are several ways we can lose a war we have seemed to have won. One is in how Iraq’s politics deal with the security agreement and the development of Iraqi forces.

A second is for other Arab states to basically leave Iraq outside the structure of security and economic cooperation. And the third major threat to Iraq at this point, in deterring and in dealing with security issues, is the United States Congress, and perhaps the media and the American people. Unless we see a strategic partnership with Iraq as something we are willing to fund over the next half decade there is no practical way that Iraq can move forward with anything like the effectiveness that it needs.

Let me also note that strategic cooperation in this region is changing radically. We would think a few years ago about the conventional balance. Secretary Cohen has mentioned the nuclear side. But Iran has put most of its assets into creating asymmetric warfare capabilities. And that is the area where it has a significant advantage over other states. We are often fixated on the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz but when you look at the overall Gulf it is one of the richest target environments in the world. You can attack almost anywhere in the Gulf, onshore or offshore. Our inability, frankly, to look at the entire Gulf is a serious issue, not within the U.S. military or CENTCOM but often on the part of think tanks and strategic analysts outside the Department of Defense. The vulnerability here is shown in broad terms in this satellite photo of Ras Tanura. Let me note something about modern communications. You can get incredibly high-resolution photos of every sensitive facility in the Gulf, off the web. And frankly looking at some of those photos it is obvious even from them that the security arrangements are dysfunctional. We have not looked at security of facilities and we have not looked at the ability to repair them. And it is no secret because it is in the open literature, when we talk about Gulf cooperation you have probably six of the most critical, vulnerable targets in the world. These are the desalination plants. There is no redundancy, there is no backup. If these plants are hit at a critical point the water that is critical to the cities in the Gulf disappears along with critical parts of the power. And after 20-odd-years of talking about the need for redundancy, to have critical replacement parts to avoid long lead items and to avoid creating added vulnerability the practical progress in these areas could be politely described as zero, if not negative. You do not have security cooperation purely in active defense.

In terms of the capabilities. I have heard people talk rather carelessly about Iran as a hegemon of the Gulf. That bottom line is the level of Iranian defense expenditures since 1997. That darker red line is Saudi Arabia alone. The top line is the Gulf Cooperation Council. The problem is not resources. And none of these figures include our presence in the Gulf. It is efficiency. It is organization. Now we have states that are reacting. The impact of the Iranian growth of capability on the Gulf States is not something Gulf States say politically and openly, wisely I think. But if you look at the increase in arms orders of the last five years, they are clearly responding. That is not simply the Saudi set of orders, it includes the UAE, it includes Kuwait and it includes other states that are smaller. And it is important to note here that when we talk about an arms race in the Gulf that the Saudi purchase is not out of context of a consistent pattern of cooperation in arms sales with the United States that has gone on in the last six years not does it produce some vast bulge in capability. After every F-15 that Saudi Arabia has on order today is delivered it will have fewer combat aircraft than it had during the Gulf War in 1991.

It is time, I think, to look at balances, not at dollar figures. And look at capabilities because they’ve had to phase out the F-5E and they have dealt with the Tornado and other systems. Now in terms of total arms orders, I quoted 8 to 1 for defense, the Gulf Cooperation Council has led Iran by a factor of 54 to 1. With all the limits, if you put Iraq in, it is 62 to 1. And these are declassified figures from DIA. This is not a sort of random think tank estimate. Although I should probably never say that about think tanks. When it comes down to the practical structures, the other thing is, what we can do and Iran cannot do, is provide a level of sophistication and technology which makes Gulf arms orders far more effective and far more advanced than Iran can possibly get from any source.

Now, I won’t take you through all of the numbers. But I would will say that the National Council will make this briefing available to you and what it tells you is that basically, in every meaningful way, if the United States could be omitted from the Gulf balance you would find that the Southern Gulf states would have a decisive lead in equipment, numbers and quality over Iran in every meaningful element. I’ll skip through those, the numbers will be available for you.

Where does the problem lie? The one area where Iran has a massive buildup is in paramilitary and asymmetric forces. We don’t have simple numbers or ways to really compare these. But if you look at these you can see where Iran is a threat. And you’ll also see where Iran is building things up. Most of you are familiar that Abu Musa and the Tunbs were, shall we say, thoroughly acquired from the UAE by the Iranian government in past years. What’s very interesting to see is to look at overhead photos of Abu Musa and the Tunbs and find out that strangely enough Iran has done far more to create infrastructure and potential defense capabilities on those islands than it has on many of its other islands, which have been Iranian since Iran emerged as a modern state. There are a lot of ways to talk about policy but occasionally you might want to look at a few facts. In terms of asymmetric warfare capabilities Iran has put assets into naval capabilities as well as groups like the Al Quds force and a presence outside that area. It has critical advances in mine forces. There basically is almost no modern mine warfare capability in the Gulf today. You have five aging Saudi minesweepers and you look at the Iranian capabilities. You look at landing craft, but that’s, I think, a minor issue.

Now let me just very briefly talk about the other area of change. It would probably be a healthy development if the Department of Defense or some source that has access to classified data would provide a realistic picture of the Iranian missile effort. Because a great deal is said to exaggerate this threat and misstate its capability. It is becoming a very, very serious potential threat. At this point in time most of those missile remain in development. They have, as far as we can determine, unitary conventional warheads, or unitary chemical weapons. Remember that Iran is a declared chemical weapons state, something that often gets lost in the focus on nuclear. We have no indication that these missiles are either highly reliable or highly accurate. And the fact is that a conventional unitary warhead, because of the way missiles close and the velocity with which they hit, have about 1/3 of the lethality of a bomb of the same size. So a 2000-pound missile warhead, even if they could launch one, would have roughly the equivalent of a 750-pound bomb if you could hit a target with it. The problem is that you can’t decouple these developments from the obvious issue. Why do you do them? Because if you’re going nuclear, all of these equations and realities change.

In one of our problems in analysis is to focus only on the nuclear breakout capability and not on their overall force developments. That leads the whole issue of major changes in defense cooperation. Let me say that as a Republican I sometimes find that there is a religious belief in missile defense within the Republican part of Congress unrelated to either the real world progress or test programs. There is unfortunately, sometimes an equal religious belief they can’t work. What is critical however, is we need interoperability. We need integration. And as is the case in dealing with asymmetric warfare, you need constant exercises, tests, and integration of command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance that cuts across what are the deep national barriers between Gulf states. To do this we need real world plans, real world programs and real world interoperability between the United States and its Southern Gulf allies.

Finally, just a minor issue about nuclear. You can say all you want about the good intentions of Iran, but let me just note, his is the facility [slide] at Natanz, and I think, again, sometimes pictures are very useful. Any of you who have ever seen an underground parking garage under construction may note that what you see here is a small down ramp. That was an attempt to conceal the scale of the underground facility that was being built, which houses some 30,000 centrifuges in terms of capacity. It is hardened in multiple chambers and strangely it does not seem particularly peaceful.

In terms of concealment once they finished the excavation, that’s an overhead picture of what this actually looks like. It basically is a small building which in no way seems to house, or hide, what is a vast underground complex. If you can believe this is a peaceful project designed purely for the purpose of creating nuclear power, let me just close by saying that after this briefing I’d be happy to discuss real estate derivatives with any of you who have that level of credibility.

With that, thank you.

[Cohen] It has been said that amateurs study strategy, experts study numbers. With Mister Cordesman you have an expert. He does a brilliant job at analyzing strategy but also looking at the numbers and integrating the two of them. So thank you very much, Tony, for that.

Our second panelist today is Joseph McMillan who I had the pleasure of working with when I was at the Department, not the State but DoD. Mr. McMillan is a career member of the Senior Executive Service, he was appointed to be Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs back in 2009. In this role he is the principal adviser to Secretary Gates in the formulation and coordination and implementation of strategy and policy involving Africa, Europe, NATO, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. So please join me in welcoming Mr. McMillan.

[Joseph McMillan] Thank you Secretary Cohen. I would hasten to add I have to fix that biography. I am usurping my boss’s prerogatives to be “the” Principal Adviser to the Secretary of Defense.

It’s a pleasure for me to be here. One of these days I’m going to learn that when I see Tony Cordesman’s name on a panel that I ought to just say I’ll be a commentator but there’s really no point in my duplicating the substance of what he says.

I strongly endorse his analysis of the region and I think perhaps it’s most useful for me on that basis to take a step back and try to put this into a strategic context that bridges what Kathleen Hicks started to tell you before she was so rudely interrupted and the details of what Dr. Cordesman just went through in his presentation.

I would like to start by talking about broad US national security interests in the Middle East. I going to say some things that you’re going to think don’t sound very much like security interests but there is a reason for that.

Since the 1940s we have seen energy security as probably the chief interest that we have, certainly in the Gulf area, if not in the Middle East as a whole. It also, as is well known, the security of the State of Israel when Israel was created soon became a major concern of the United States as well and more broadly the creation of an enduring peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Both of these, energy security and Arab-Israeli peace, clearly still are centerpieces of American strategy towards the Middle East. But as time went by we became more and more concerned about other issues and when I was working for Secretary Cohen in our Near East, South Asia office we were focusing increasingly on things like nuclear proliferation, other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, the growing threat of terrorism, even if you stretch a little bit beyond the core of the Middle East, it’s obvious that it’s also a center of the struggle against narcotic trafficking. And in fact, I can remember a conversation I had when some one came and talked to us about these new transnational threats. Sitting in the Middle East office, I said well what do you mean and they went down the list of the new transnational threats. And I said, “narcotics is us. Terrorism is us. Proliferation is us.” Tell me about these new threats are that you are talking about. Well now we have a new, new transnational threats that we are dealing with. You heard Katherine Hicks talk about the increasing focus on anti-access capability, but that’s largely in the context of the Gulf region that we worry about anti-access problems.

We talk about state weakness. Yemen is a classic case of state weakness, and Secretary Cohen mentioned that earlier. Not just Yemen but if we can get past the habit we have of thinking in terms that our bureaucratic boundaries are real lines and real divisions than we simply take a quick ride across the strait of Bab el Mandeb we come to Somalia that’s an even better example of state weakness, and the ability of terrorists to it take advantage of that weakness even more so than Yemen.

So all of these transnational threats that we think of as being new in fact are embedded in the strategic picture of the region. And the U.S. interest in preserving stability and protecting our strategic relationships are not just the classic state on state issues that we traditionally think of but it’s embedded within that broad picture of the nontraditional threats as well.

But at the same time 9/11 brought to the front what a lot of us had been working in Middle Eastern affairs have recognized for a long time, that there are other strategic challenges that face the region that the United states has to worry about, such as political development, the expansion of economic, education and social opportunities, the human right’s question, including questions of how to handle aspirations of women, how to handle aspirations for religious freedom and aspirations for more representative governance.

There is nothing new about these issues on the regional agenda but a lot of people in the United States and a lot of people in the West in general, and I think and a lot of people in the region itself became more acutely aware that there are consequences to a lack of progress in these areas and so in a way that they weren’t, when I was working for Secretary Cohen, these issues to have become security issues and issues that we have to think about as we are thinking about a security strategy toward the Middle East.

So as complex as these interests are they face a range of multidimensional challenges just as complicated as the interests themselves. We can take it geographically but that wouldn’t capture everything. Dr. Cordesman talked about the Iranian challenge which is clearly very much on our scope and we spend a great deal of time thinking about how to do deal with this both politically and if political means fail it’s part of the business of our department to think beyond political means obviously and I don’t want to overstate at all the prospects of that, but clearly these are matters of concern.

Not least of course we think of the danger of a conflict between Israel and Iran. Israel clearly has concerns about Iranian behavior that is perhaps more acute and immediate than ours for understandable reasons. Israeli action would complicate our position in the region immensely and so this also is one of the dimensions, one of the main challenges that we have to deal with it.

At the sub state level we have the attempts I mentioned earlier of Al Qaeda trying to establish safe havens in fragile states. Yemen and Somalia I already mentioned. But in Iraq itself we still have a continuing challenge of Al Qaeda trying to regain the toehold that we and the Iraqis, had a reasonable success in taking away from them a few years ago, but it is a constant struggle to keep them from reemerging as a very serious threat in Iraq.

The threat of renewed ethno-sectarian violence again in Iraq. It’s very true that as Secretary Cohen and Dr. Cordesman laid out, we’ve accomplished an amazing amount of success in Iraq. And I would say as somebody dealing with that country it didn’t surprise me that the job was a lot harder than some people expected it to be in 2003. But it also surprised me if you had asked me in 2007 would we be where we are in 2010 I think that I would have laughed at you because I never would have imagined that we’d have this much success. But the job is far from done.

I’ll be reinforcing it in a couple of minutes the point that Dr. Cordesman made about the need to follow through with the program and not to simply assume that that at the end of 2011, at the end of the current plans for military engagement there, that the job is somehow done and the United States can walk away altogether.

Then the whole issue of other Iranian proxies elsewhere in the region that’s equally destabilizing. As people have come to call it a Hamastan in Gaza and Hezbollahstan in southern Lebanon, continuing challenges to stability in the region that have little to do who is the classic state on state model that we think of in conventional military planning.

The regional dynamics are also changing. The balance of power is constantly shifting and realigning. There are always ups and downs in the state of Arab-Israeli tensions. At one moment we think there is hope for progress on peace the next moment things are falling apart. This is a customary part of the life of people who work the Middle East but it’s no different now, it doesn’t show any signs of getting any better in the future. It’s something that has to be worked and we have to be prepared to react to. And the changing U.S. force posture in the region, Secretary Cohen mentioned and express some concern about the prospect of the United States getting forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011, alluded to the prospect of reductions in forces in Afghanistan over the course of 2011, although I think the degree to which we anticipate quick withdrawal from Afghanistan has been widely overstated in the way people have understood the Administration’s policy and I can talk about that if people like.

And then again the other challenges in the region that we all know about –demographic crises and resource pressures. Ambassador Jubeir got a question about the Saudi demographic challenge. I’m happy that he is so optimistic in saying this youth bulge is an opportunity for his country. I wish Saudi Arabia all the best in dealing with it that way. I will remain agnostic and wait and see whether it really turns out that way but I think throughout the region the demographic challenge is very serious and something that the United States has a very strong interest in seeing dealt with in a productive and successful way.

And finally the question of regime succession. I feel silly even bringing this up because I can remember probably writing papers for the Secretary when he was first coming aboard into DoD, and we probably wrote them for Dr. Perry when he was coming aboard, and probably for Secretary Cheney and his predecessors as well that the region is facing an imminent crisis of regime transition as rulers are becoming older and older. But I think the actuarial charts are catching up with us at some point, and so there’s a number of countries where the people that we have been accustomed to dealing with for decades now are almost certain to be passing from the scene in increasing numbers and who will replace them is not always clear. In some cases, the rulers think it’s clear. Whether it really is clear we will see when the time comes. But this again is a challenge that we have to be prepared to deal with.

So what I’ve laid out here are multifaceted interests, multifaceted challenges and the obvious conclusion to this is they require multifaceted conclusions. I’m not going to surprise anybody by saying that. I will say that one of the pleasures of coming back into the department with this Administration is, I think, we have a team of leaders who understand more clearly than has been the case in the past that these challenges do require holistic inter-agency, whole of government solutions.

The Secretary will remember, I’m sure fondly, that during his tenure we used to drag him out to the Gulf every six months whether there was anything to talk about or not. It paid huge dividends for us in establishing the relationships so that when there was something that needed to be done, he, the chairman and the other senior officials in the Department of Defense could call their counterparts and get quick action because the personal relationships had been built.

What we heard consistently from our partners in the Arab world, in particular, was why is it only the Defense Department that was doing this kind of engagement. Well now I think we have broader engagement across the board and we certainly have a broader appreciation that this list of problems that I’ve identified can’t all be solved by the Defense Department alone, despite the fact that we have clearly the most generous set of resources in monetary terms to deal with these problems. But they include this task that Dr. Cordesman mentioned of consolidating Iraqi stability getting it re-integrated into the region, forging a long-term partnership as the U.S. forces drawdown. This is indeed going to require resources on the part of the American taxpayers to succeed but I think we’ve invested a great deal of blood and treasure so far, and I think not to get into a sunk cost fallacy, the benefit of continuing to make what is a relatively modest investment from this time forward, clearly would pay huge dividends for this county in terms of regional security.

I have pretty much covered the other aspects of things that we need to be giving attention to throughout the region. I would only say in the Gulf specifically, to the point that Tony Cordesman alluded to a little bit really needs to be reinforced and some of you here in this room are people who can make it happen. Which is that one of the great advances that can be made would be for the GCC member countries to get to the point where they genuinely can collaborate together in the area of security and to multiply the forces that they have, that they’ve spent billions of dollars acquiring, but that they aren’t getting the leverage out of that they could be getting with cooperation.

I know this is easy for me to say. I know it is hard for these countries to do. We spend a great deal of diplomatic effort and military/diplomatic effort trying to highlight that the Gulf countries biggest rivals are not each other, and sometimes we feel it that that’s the way to behave, is that they are greater threats to each other then the Iranians across the way or in past decades than the Iraqis were to the north. But it really is something that all of us need to get past. We need to combine the common efforts of the United States, other allies, the Gulf countries and other like minded powers within the Middle East to deal with the threats that we face, because it none of these countries can do it by themselves.

With that I will stop and thank you it very much.

[Cohen] Joe was absolutely right. As a matter of policy I traveled to the Gulf at least twice a year sometimes three times. But there was this second rule. Don’t visit just one Gulf state make sure when you go you visit all of them. Otherwise there will be some repercussions that will flow across your desk very quickly.

In any event our final panelist is Christopher Blanchard a Middle East policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service, CRS. I know that many of you have read his reports on subjects such as the Gulf Security Dialogue, U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and the war in Iraq. Today Mr. Blanchard is going to discuss US congressional actions and views in regard to current defense issues in the region. It is my understanding that he served as chair of the panel last year, so it is a pleasure to welcome him now as a panel member. Thank you very much.

[Mr. Christopher Blanchard] Thank you Mr. Secretary. Sort of the opposite, big shoes to fill. I see you are collecting titles, Ambassador.

Again thank you to the Council for inviting me back as a presenter at this time on such a distinguished panel. I should note at the outset that my remarks today are my own and not those of the Congressional Research Service. I should also say that it’s not every day that a former United States Senator and Secretary of Defense introduces you to talk about congressional views of Middle East defense policy the day after a $60 billion arms sales is announced to Saudi Arabia. So it should be no sweat.

I’ll do two things briefly this afternoon, first I will address the news of the day and make some observations about the views and reactions in Congress. Second I will try to address the theme of the conference and discuss some lenses through which Congress is likely to view future U.S. defense policy initiatives in the region.

So, on the proposed arms sales notified yesterday, as you’ve seen comments from officials are suggesting the administration is fairly confident that Congress will not act as, quote, a barrier to it the arms sales and media reports have not featured thus far many statements to suggest otherwise. This could lead observers to conclude that by historical standards there is a rather remarkable lack of Congressional opposition to what by all accounts is a major arms sale of major importance that features technology that Congress has objected to in the past.

If we look back to Octobers past, October 1981 was the AWACS and the F-15 upgrade confrontation in Congress, with a House resolution of disapproval narrowly being voted down. October 1992, again another consideration of a controversial F-15s sale. So what accounts for the apparent shift in the Congressional approach?

I can’t and won’t try to definitively speak be for my bosses, members of Congress and Congressional staff, but I will say as many in the audience know and panel members know from personal experience in the cases I refer to there is more going on up on the hill than meets the eye.

In the current case the Administration in general and Mr. McMillan’s office in particular, worked very hard behind the scenes to gain approval for the sale. Prior to yesterday’s announcement there was careful scrutiny of the details of the proposed sale and others by the committees of jurisdiction and by other members of Congress.

Beyond that I’d argue that the priorities demonstrated by Congress’ current approach are familiar and consistent. The changes in regional conditions are in fact the key factor to explaining the difference in response we have observed so far.

Congress and the Executive Branch have actually shared priorities with regard to arms sales in the Middle East but they differ about the relative importance and about the impact that individual cases will have on those priorities. Both branches seek to contain and counteract regional threats, to maintain the physical security of key allies and to maintain the strength and long-term strategic partnerships. At times however these priorities compete. At present members of Congress as my colleague, Dr. Katzman, alluded to earlier today are voicing clear concerns about Iran, its role in the region, its nuclear program and its potential to threaten U.S. allies both in Israel and in the Arab states.

These concerns are most evident in the bipartisan support for expanded sanctions legislation and congressional insistence that the Administration enforce existing sanctions rigorously. I would submit that these concerns are in fact creating synergy among potentially competing priorities that I described earlier. This synergy is a key factor shaping Congress’ response to the currently considered sale.

Other contributing regional factors are Israel’s quiet consent to the sale, its recent commitment to purchase F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and the Administration’s strong endorsement of its partnership with the Saudi government as an ally in its campaign against Al Qaeda.

So turning to the theme of the conference and looking ahead a little bit. The proposed sales suggests the administration is seeking continuity in a key strategic relationship at a time when many in Congress have questions about the future of the U.S. role and their presence in the Gulf after the withdrawal from Iraq is complete.

That fact, combined with concerns about Iran, suggest that Congress may be more open than it has been in the past to considering certain arms sales and endorsing certain policy initiatives, particularly to the extent that they advance the type of agenda that Dr. Cordesman and Mr. McMillan have described as necessary today.

In other words, sales and initiatives that address asymmetric, maritime, border security and critical infrastructure threats and that begin to make progress on achieving true interoperability that can lessen the regional strategic burden on the United States are likely to be looked on more favorably.

Whatever course the administration chooses to take, however, Members of Congress are likely to weigh future authorization, appropriations and arms sales requests through three different lenses.

The first is the traditional lens of oversight and compatibility with broad policy goals. And this is in line with the issues that Mr. McMillan raised that are nontraditional security concerns. For example, in Yemen right now, the Administration is seeking and implementing a significant expansion of counterterrorism and security assistance for using funds appropriated to the Department of Defense.

Congressional concerns about the end use of that assistance and wider concerns about its compatibility with broader U.S. goals on corruption, human rights, government and development will continue to apply in that case. And I would argue they will be applied to others including Iraq.

The second lens, and this is certainly in the news at the moment, is fiscal discipline. The clearest example of this and a current congressional approach is the transition to Iraq. Congress has long sought to ensure that U.S. security assistance to Iraq will prepare Iraq’s security forces to provide security for their own country and lessen the burden on the United States. At present debate focuses on remaining U.S. investment that is necessary to help Iraqis meet minimum essential capability goals outlined by the administration.

Some in Congress are seeking to ensure that Iraqi, rather than U.S., funds are invested in key remaining sustainment and logistical needs. In it to future this approach suggests that Congress may continue and increase its scrutiny of grant assistance programs and may favor more reliance on use of FMS, Foreign Military Sales, funded training and equipment programs. This would be similar to models already in place in Saudi Arabia but also in place in Iraq.

The third and final lens is a political lens. And here we also see some caution about countries where the U.S. has clear interests and the Administration feels it has important goals. If shared strategic perspectives and security concerns have the potential to create the types of synergy I mentioned earlier that’s facilitating the Saudi case and other cases differing or uncertain strategic perspectives have the potential to jeopardize congressional support for assistance programs and arms sales.

In Lebanon, for example, the August border incident drew the attention of many in Congress but it added momentum to a trend that has seen increasing questions raised about the ultimate purpose and goals of the U.S. defense assistance. These questions of course also divide Lebanon’s political leadership. As such pending decisions about the future of that program may be weighed in light of developments in Lebanese politics, particularly with regard to a national defense strategy. And perhaps most importantly, in Iraq. Congress has appropriated taxpayer funds for a massive, multiyear investment in the training and equipping of Iraq’s security forces. The administration has articulated a desire to a long-term security partnership with Iraq. While there are multiyear programs to supply major defense equipment already underway and under consideration, the scope of the future defense relationship remains unclear. While many in Congress also have articulated a desire to capitalize on the U.S. investment thus far, it is reasonable to expect that Members of Congress will weigh policy and arms sale proposals regarding Iraq in light of the positions adopted by the new Iraqi government when it emerges, as well as its regional orientation and its own plans for and use of its military.

Thank you

[Cohen] Our final speaker of the panel is Gen. Joseph Hoar. As with Mr. McMillan, I had the pleasure of working with General Hoar when he was then serving as Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command, during the early 90’s. Following his retirement from the military he set up, oddly enough, a consulting firm, J.P. Hoar and Associates and he is engaged in business development in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. General Hoar is one of our most outstanding military generals and a great public servant, so General Hoar it’s a pleasure to see you. Welcome to the panel.

[General Joseph Hoar] Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I think as most of you realize my duty here for the next few minutes is to comment on what has been discussed already. For somebody that is dyslexic trying to keep four people straight in what they said, and under what conditions is going to be difficult. But let me start by talking for a few moments about the threats as perceived in the Gulf because this is I think very important to the arms buildup. I think it bears on the almost unanimity in the U.S. government that we have to do more to assist our Arab friends in being able to protect themselves.

A number of years ago the then Foreign Minister of Qatar, Hamed bin Jassim traveled to Tehran, he spoke to his opposite numbers in the Foreign Ministry. He said that while Qatar had supported the United States in the liberation of Kuwait and in the attacks Iraq, that he wanted to reassure his colleagues in Iran that Qatar would not participate in an attack against Iran. His interlocutors told him that he had it all wrong, that if Israel or the U.S. or both attacked them, they did not have the capability to reach the United States, but they did indeed have the ability to reach the United States’ friends along the coast of the Persian Gulf. So this was the message that came back and resonated within the GCC.

During the discussion that Tony mentioned the issue of facilities security, let me just give you a couple of examples about the vulnerability. Exxon Mobil has had a joint venture in Qatar, for I guess I’d nearly 20 years now, with liquefied natural gas and I think there is an executive here from Exxon. I think that the capital expenditure for Qatar gas and Exxon Mobil now on this very mature project is something on the order of $20 billion. It is all fixed and it is all easy to see right along the coast.

If you go down to the UAE, the principal point for gathering offshore oil extraction is on Das Island. Das Island is a very small island 187 miles at sea from Abu Dhabi, very vulnerable to attack. We heard about missiles and their capability but perhaps the more important one that Tony had mentioned was the ability of Special Forces or Al Quds, or these fellows to come ashore and attack widely dispersed things.

So there is a very real sense among the Gulf countries of this threat. Unfortunately as we heard earlier the cooperation among the GCC to work together to provide for their defense, both Tony and Joe alluded to this, is not forthcoming. Any of us who have had the opportunity to work with our Arab friends on cooperating with one another in some of these ventures, particularly in complex areas have had a very difficult time. I can tell you that about 15 years ago or more I spent three years trying to convince the GCC that their air defense system should begin with what we call Common Air Picture, so all six countries could look at the screen and see the same aggressors moving into the region and coordinate how old they were going to deal with them.

Alas it was an abysmal failure. When I left, nothing happened. My successor nothing happened. Tony Zinni after him nothing happened. We hope one day this is going to come to fruition but it’s a very first step in dealing with an air threat. We have a long way to go with our friends but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to work with them.

I think that our efforts in many ways have been successful. Chris mentioned the robust training that is going to go on in the future with the Iraqis. There has been a very significant training program going on with our Arab friends in the region for very many, many years. We routinely train with each of these countries. Egypt holds a bi-annual exercise called Bright Star. It is very large and very extensive, all the services participate. Frequently when there are U.S. services units committed in the region, they stay out and then sequentially do some exercises with some of the other countries. The services that do a particularly good job of this of course are the special forces, which are perhaps overcommitted right now but the fact of the matter remains that that is their business to train and they do an affective job of that.

The Marines by virtue of being aboard ship are often able to go ashore into these various countries and work with their hosts as well.

Let me continue just with the training for a moment because it is important. This training, some of it is funded by us, some of it just bonded by a host country and it varies according to who gets the help. Egypt as you know gets the most foreign military funding, $1.3 billion a year, which was tied to the Camp David Accords.

On a personal note I always felt that at CENTCOM my responsibility to the countries with which I worked was to act as an advocate for the things that they wanted to do if it made sense.

I sometimes think that we lose that kind of thinking. For example, in Egypt there has been discussion with the Egyptians of abandoning a heavy armed force consisting of tanks, armored personnel carriers and so forth, and they should pay more attention to counterinsurgency operations. The response from the Egyptians is, we are not going to conduct counterinsurgency operations, our Armed Forces are designed to defend the homeland, therefore we want to have tanks and armored personnel carriers and set forth. I think that’s meritorious, I think it makes sense and when we can, we should support our allies who perform many, many other services in assisting and moving forward our foreign policy in the region.

Finally, under the rubric of training is the attendance of military officers on formal military education in the United States. And as I think most of you know there are provisions for young Captains for Majors, Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels all to attend courses in the United States. I spent some time this week with a delegation of Kuwaiti officers, the senior officer had been back here to school four different times. Excellent English, very comfortable in the milieu here in the United States, very big supporter of what we do. We get our money reinvested 100 times over from these officers that come to the United States, live in our society and work with us.

You could almost compare it to what Ambassador Al Jubeir said about the 30 some thousand students in the United States. It’s King Abdullah doing essentially the same thing of bringing young men and women to the United States to study so they have an opportunity to experience our culture firsthand.

Mr. Secretary, I think I’ve run out of time and thank you very much.

[Cohen] We have time for some questions. I have been receiving some and I’ll try to repeat them but I might open up, and put to the panel a couple of questions and see if we can get some response.

There was an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, as I recall the March or April edition in which the title of the article says “After Iran Gets the Bomb.” In your opinion, Dr. Cordesman, is Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Is that inevitable? And if so what does that mean for the reaction on the part of other Gulf States?

[Dr. Cordesman] “Inevitable” is an awfully strong word. And you use the phrase quite correctly “a bomb” because that’s about as far as thinking seems to go. You don’t have a nuclear force of one bomb. You have a nuclear force where you have to have a delivery system. You have to have enough bombs to create some kind of capability to target. While we think of nuclear weapons as being inherently devastating the fact is that small fission weapons, lethal as they are, are radically different in impact from that kind of thermonuclear weapons where we know that Israel acquired the technology and test data from France, as well as the baseline designs for its missile program.

So we’re not talking about Gulf countries alone. We are talking about what already is a nuclear arms race where you have, I think, re-targeting, re-posturing, development of improved boosters and potentially sea launched systems being examined within Israel. And the problem that Iran may or may not understand is, that if you have a 25-year lead over your opponent and you do acquire nuclear weapons they will continue to improve and develop their capabilities.

Now when it comes down to the Gulf States, their immediate short-term option essentially is missile defense, and the United States has announced a willingness to use what is called extended regional deterrence. It’s been very careful to note that that might be regional deterrence in terms of conventional precision weapons rather than nuclear weapons.

We are looking at a process where once is starts, if Iran even goes to a breakout capability, it will at a minimum force the United States to develop different contingency plans and, I think, it is fair to say that Israel has already begun to examine these. If it begins to put missiles in the field with nuclear weapons, then the basing mode, the nature of those missiles will not only affect missile defense and how we see the problem but how Gulf states might see whether they can or cannot acquire their own nuclear armed systems. There are, at this point, seem to be only two potential suppliers, one is Pakistan and the other is North Korea.

This is something where the only caution I can give is once this starts, as everyone has learned the hard way, it is remarkably difficult to stop. It is extremely interactive and for every action one side takes it tends to provoke an equal or different reaction and not always the wisest one. So I think that really, we as a country concerned with arms control, people in the Gulf and people in Iran need to stop talking about this as if it was a toy, where if you had one bomb it suddenly gives you a new macho status in the international community, and begin to look at just how risky and dangerous this process is and what it could trigger for everyone involved.

[Cohen] I would point out that Israel did not seem to wait until Syria developed a nuclear capability before taking action against a reputed “A-bomb.”

[Cordesman] I think you’re absolutely correct and they didn’t wait until Iraq did, but that fundamental difference at this point in time is, while we all focus on about three or four known facilities, if you look at unclassified sources like the National Threat Initiative that Senator Nunn has been involved in, you’re talking about more than 80 scattered facilities involved in some kind of nuclear research or centrifuge production. Some of them are up in Mashad, which is really difficult for the “IAF.” So I think we’re talking about a force already or a threat already technologically mature in fundamentally different ways.

[Cohen] Joe would you like to comment on that? Anything from CRS? No?

Let me go on. We have here, does the imminent need for force security, and the security of civilian, international organization personnel, security of humanitarian aid workers risk militarizing civil society operations to a point where they are inevitably ineffective. Said another way, does providing security for foreign personnel create a self-fulfilling prophecy of low intensity conflict that is also self-negating?

[Cordesman] If I may. It has been 20 years since a blue flag provided people with security anywhere in the world. What everybody knows is if you have undefended UN or NGO presence, one of the fastest ways to push people out and to score a victory is to attack an undefended aid or UN mission. And we have a few unfortunate, tragic examples in Iraq as well as Afghanistan of what has happened. I think the unfortunate choice is you either defend the aid effort when it is under attack or the aid effort collapses and is abandoned. But it cannot hope to operate unless someone chooses to protect it.

[Cohen] Is it your assessment that the threat posed by Iran is being greatly exaggerated much as the question of set down Hussein having weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false? Paraphrasing a question that has come from the audience.

[Hoar] May I take a whack at that? I’m not sure about the aspect of nuclear weapons but certainly the assistance to Hezbollah as we see in Syria today and in Lebanon is going to be a serious threat. And if what we read in the “Defense Weekly” is true the Israelis have planned a more aggressive sort of ground attack should they find themselves in this same circumstances they did a few years ago fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. So that’s a much greater threat than heretofore and again Hezbollah supported by Iran.

[Cordesman] If I may pick up a little on that. I think part of our problem is that you go from a trend to the worst possible case, turn it into a war and then you get a disaster scenario. So I think everyone in the U.S. in this room realizes that according to the Gulf press we invaded Iran at least seven times over the last eight years. That perhaps indicated that the U.S. threat can be exaggerated to.

But what bothers me about Iran is you need to look at nuclear and missiles together, the threat these pose relative to asymmetric and the use of non-state actors together, and you do not know their intentions, and you do not know the contingency of the scenarios and you can not predict them. But I would urge anyone who wants to really think about Iran to read what Iranian commanders said in “Military Week” this year. There were a whole host of statements, about 15 of them that went into considerable depth. And in that rhetoric, if you take it seriously, are a whole series of warnings. So I think that sometimes we focus far too much on the nuclear, we are far too careless about Iran as a hegemon; but it is important to listen to what Iran says and it is particularly important to look at the overall development of Iran and where it is going rather than exaggerate where it is right now.

[Cohen] In your opinion would the transfer of S300 technology by the Russians to Iran pose a significant threat or have destabilizing impact?

[Cordesman] I think it would be very the stabilizing but one needs to be careful because when you talk about the transfer you always to get into how many? Will they update the sensor net? Will they create the kind of integrated facilities to tie these systems together? And the S300 comes, I believe, in four or five models. Somebody here in the military may be more expert on this and it really does make a difference which set it is transferred. But right now when you look at what they have it consists largely of U.S. systems dating back to the Vietnam era, Chinese copies of the SA-2 — which basically the Israelis broke electronically over a quarter of a century ago — a few obsolete SA-5’s and some very limited defense system called the Tor M.

If they got the S300 their ability to deter any time of air operations against them would be increased by any order of magnitude if it was to deploy as an effective system.

[Cohen] Anyone have any additional comments?

What is it the United States doing to reduce the likelihood or risk of inadvertent or accidental conflict between our naval forces in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and the IRGC? Joe that looks like it’s for you.

[McMillan] Well I think it is for me and I’m not sure that I can say very much about it. So I think I might have to pass on giving an answer and you can interpret that as meaning whatever you care it to interpret it as.

[Cohen] Would it be fair to say that we are doing everything we can to reduce the risk of an inadvertent conflict?

[McMillan] There are bridge-to-bridge communications that we periodically conduct, and the Admiral probably is better qualified to address this from his own experience than I am, and it’s been going on for quite a long time.

But there have been some initiatives that people have put forward to do a more formal set of discussions, off-line discussions, that would lead to something similar to the old US-Soviet, I shouldn’t say old because it is still in effect, the US-Russian Incidents at Sea Agreement. And those have been put foreword kind of in public environments by people who do Track Two kinds of undertakings and I would note that they have been put forward and I would decline to say how well we are picking them up or not.

[Cohen] I’m not sure what you just said.

[McMillan] I’m not sure what I just said either.

[Cohen] The reverse would seem to be true here. If we are not doing what we can to avoid either a risky situation, miscalculation, mistake in terms of intent that could produce a conflict, then the reverse of that is where we are doing everything we can to increase the risk so that it would then cause the Iranians to back off.

I raise this in conjunction, as I’m thinking it through General Hugh Shelton just had a book that’s been published and it’s called “Without Hesitation,” and in it he describes a meeting he had in the Situation Room in which there is a conversation taking place among some of us. And he’s over with an alleged cabinet official, I say allegedly because he does not identify who the cabinet official is. And the cabinet official asked General Shelton is there a way that we could actually fly the U2 lower and slower so that Saddam Hussein could take it down therefore we would have a reason to attack Iraq. General Shelton had quite a comment in response, I won’t repeat it exactly, but he said, “Yeah we can do that as soon as we qualify your backside to put in the U2, we can fly it as low and slow as you’d like.”

And so I think from our perspective, my perspective, it would be we should take every reasonable precaution to make sure that it we are not starting some thing, which could have the untoward consequences that Dr. Cordesman has just suggested. And without knowing what that could lead to could it escalate very quickly, so chances are we are taking

[McMillan] I guess I would say that, not to carry it to the absurd to do everything possible, we could take the Fifth Fleet out of the Gulf and that would reduce the prospect of a confrontation close to zero, which clearly we are not going to do, on up to negotiating a formal agreement which seems to be very difficult because of the state of diplomatic or lack of diplomatic relations between two countries.

I think it’s fair, not just fair to say, it’s true. The Fifth Fleet does whatever they can to minimize as the chances of an unintentional conflict happening because of miscalculations by either side. There are some limits obviously on the degree to which you can communicate with the Iranians. They use the methods that they have available to them and are continuously thinking about how you can continue to reduce that prospect of conflict that I, I’m hesitant to say anymore.

[Cordesman] If I could pick up on a specific case. I think we all remember the British boat that was seized in Iraqi waters and basically created a temporary hostage situation for the British naval personnel involved.

If you allow those situations to occur, because any reaction might escalate, you then create an incentive to keep testing the limits. Or you find yourself, as Joe has pointed out, pushed out of capability. And we’ve had low-level incidents in the Shatt al Arab and along the Iranian border which create a similar case. So finding the mix between avoiding any unnecessary conflict and avoiding signals that could lead the other side to escalate, forces you to get as subtle as for Mr. McMillan’s answer was.

[Admiral Bernsen] I had the pleasure of being over to visit the Commander Fifth Fleet not long ago and this particular issue was the subject of much discussion. He was of the opinion that the training our forces was sufficiently good, that they were able to minimize the possibility of some kind of confrontation, and that there was some communication with the Iranians. And that since that one confrontation in the Strait sometime ago that there had been no provocation, particular provocation subsequent to that point in the Strait of Hormuz. He seemed reasonably confident.

[Dr. Anthony] I’d like to add to Admiral Bernsen’s talk. Since 1996 the National Council has taken more than 135 officers selected by General Petraeus and his predecessors to the region and the most recent one we took was in mid-March and we spent two days on a dhow, an Arab wooden traditional sailing vessel, in the Hormuz Strait and the two days that we were there 300 Iranian boats came within 50 feet of us. They saw the close-cropped haircuts of the Americans and knew exactly who they were or suspected correctly who they were. They grinned from ear to ear and saluted the U.S. Central Command officers and the US Central Command officers grinned from ear to ear and saluted the Iranian ones. 300 boats inside of 48 hours came within 20 to 50 feet of vessels on which U.S. Central Command officers selected by General Petraeus were sailing.

[Cohen] Much attention has been focused on the security issues surrounding the Gulf but what about the security of the Red Sea. Obviously there are piracy issues but don’t the Red Sea routes become increasingly important as Saudi Arabia further industrializes its West Coast.

[Cordesman] Let me just take a stab. I think that first the United States has worked, as has Britain and France, closely with Saudi Arabia because at this point it’s Gulf Fleet is much stronger and more effective than its Red Sea fleet. We also have seen a real concern with not simply the Red Sea but Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. And I think that’s very justified, first because there are some maps that show how quickly pirates adapted, expanded their range, and became a problem. We also know from the history of, strangely enough Libya, using mines in the Red Sea, there are examples of how dangerous even a limited presence can be as a threat.

You have other difficulties. It isn’t just Somali. It’s Eritrea and Sudan that you have to consider as issues here. So the Red Sea is not as yet been critical but the Red Sea is next to the Gulf of Aden and if you look it at the density and the way in which the Somali pirates adapted in the Gulf of Aden you’ve got to be very careful. Now I believe that the arms sales that we are giving to Saudi Arabia don’t directly address this but another thing to remember is that the helicopter capabilities that we’re providing, also can be used to deal with low-level threats at sea, that the AWACS does have a very advanced maritime patrol capability and does not have to operate over the Gulf, so there is the ability to strengthen regional capabilities there.

[Cohen] Another question. Does a close security relationship especially one that includes arms purchases from the U.S., close cooperation of U.S. forces and even offering base facilities to U.S. forces between Arab states and the United States actually put the governments of these states at greater risk.

[Hoar] I don’t think that there is any doubt that when you have large facilities, Bahrain comes to mind right away and Hal [Bernsen] knows this better than I, but when you have a headquarters of numbered fleet in Bahrain, ashore, in Hal’s time it was afloat, that’s a target that would certainly be very lucrative to an aggressor in that part of the world, certainly. But there are not many permanent facilities like that. The U.S. Army has a large training facility in Kuwait and there are Air Force, a fair amount of Air Force activity in both Qatar and UAE.

[Cohen] We have quite a pre-deployment element in Qatar with a subset of CENTCOM right there and have had for some time.

[Blanchard] I would add. I think there is pretty clear bipartisan support for regional allies demonstrated over a long period of time, both in the Executive Branch and Congress. So I’m not sure from the perspective of the U.S. commitment that you could say that doubts were warranted. On the other hand I’d also add I think it’s a bit naïve to think that Bahrain, for example, would be more secure without the Fifth Fleet. I just don’t believe that with regards to its neighbors that would be the case.

[McMillan] This is actually one of the many balancing acts that you have to do when thinking about force presence in the Gulf. I’ve noticed we’ve answered this question in terms of does it make them a target for other countries to attack. Clearly one of the issues the Saudis faced during the 1990s was domestic political objections and resentment about the presence of large American forces in Saudi Arabia. And I think there’s a balance that we have to figure out how to strike, between being able to have force capabilities, able to respond to crises in the region, while not getting so big and so heavy-handed that we become a political issue that the countries in the region have to deal with domestically. And my sense is that at the moment we’re doing it pretty well but there is always a strong temptation to replicate in the Gulf, the way that we have defended other areas with different political realities. So I’m always cautioning, yes, we do have to be able to protect air power in the Gulf but that doesn’t mean we have to build Ramstein or Yokota. We need to find creative ways to maintain that presence and the capability without the political downside if it’s possible.

[Cordesman] I think there are two other issues. One, a lot depends on the degree of partnership you have and whether you are building up their capabilities and it is clear that you are acting in their interests and not simply on your own. Arms sales and the way they’re structured, programs that give them real capabilities, do have, I think, a major set of signals. One thing Joe mentioned and I think is very critical, is how discreet are we in the way U.S. troops behave and operate in these countries, because there is a significant cultural difference. And I think that’s been greatly improved over the last 10 to 20 years.

So a lot of this is the way you manage it. But as Chris pointed out would Bahrain be safer without a US presence? Is Qatar providing air facilities in Qatar out of sheer indifference to its own security? No. Because it provides it with a major degree of capability. We always forget that Kuwait has already been invaded once. Would it be better off relying purely on Kuwaiti military forces without U.S. contingency capabilities and bases in Kuwait? And I don’t want to go through the entire Gulf Cooperation Council, but the word I would really use his partnership and I guess after that sensitivity. Because as long as we treat Gulf countries as real partners and as long as we really respect them, I think the balance is very clearly that we provide added security.

[Cohen] On that positive note, we will conclude this panel. I would like to thank the panel members for their contribution and this will conclude this panel.

Transcript by Ryan&Associates
http://www.patryanassociates.com

[PROVIDED BY SUSRIS.COM]

Editor’s Note:

The Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir and his counterpart at the U.S. Embassy in the Kingdom, Ambassador James Smith, traded perspectives on the relationship from their respective posts in Washington and Riyadh at the Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference last week. It was a welcome update and overview on the health of the relationship and the challenges the United States and Saudi Arabia face.

Ambassador Al-Jubeir updated appraisals he shared at last year’s AUSPC and the April 2010 Chicago BusinessOpportunities Forum with a review of: the history of U.S.-Saudi ties; the positive story of the 30,000 Saudi students in America – up tenfold since 2003; the vibrant travel between the countries reflected by the 70,000 visas for the U.S. and 65,000 visas for the Kingdom last year; record investment levels; and the recent, robust defense cooperation marked by a landmark arms sales package. He reminded the conferees about the daunting regional issues that confronted Saudi and American decision makers as well as the Kingdom’s role in the world. Ambassador Al-Jubeir reflected that the relationship still faces challenges and disagreements but that he was optimistic about the future of the ”very pragmatic and solid” strategic partnership. A day later Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Ambassador Al-Jubeir’s predecessor at the Kingdom’s diplomatic top spot in Washington, focused sharply on the disagreements with a blunt assessment of the U.S. Government’s performance in Middle East policymaking. Prince Turki’s keynote address, Ambassador Smith’s presentation and other AUSPC panels and speeches will be posted to the new SUSRIS Special Section. [Link]

Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir
Arab-US Policymakers Conference
Washington, DC, October 21, 2010

“Saudi Arabian-U.S. Relations: The Saudi Arabian Ambassador’s View from Washington”

[Remarks as delivered]

In the name of God, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate.

Thank you for the very kind words and allow me to express my appreciation to the National Council for hosting this very important conference once again.

The subject matter of my talk is the “Ambassador’s View from Washington.” That’s a fairly tall order. There are many, many views in Washington and many, many ambassadors in Washington. So I will talk a little bit about the history of our bilateral relationship, the challenges that they face, the state of our relationship today, and the steps that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken and continues to take in order to bring our worlds closer together. And then I will be happy to take questions.

The relationship between our two countries is now in its seventh decade. In the 1930s, when your Army Corps of Engineers was building the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, your business community built an 8,000 mile bridge to Saudi Arabia. Americans came. They discovered oil. They put down roots among us. They launched what was to become a very important relationship to both countries as well as to the world.

The relationship took on a political dimension when the late King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the late President Franklin Roosevelt on the USS Quincy at The Great Bitter Lake in Egypt in 1945 at the end of World War II. That cemented the diplomatic aspect of the relationship. And then of course the military relationship began in the early 1950s when the U.S. started its first military training mission to Saudi Arabia.

Over the past seven decades, our relationship has seen the coming and breaking of many storms. We have dealt jointly and effectively in facing the challenges to our respective nations as well as to the Middle East region. And with every decade and with every experience, our relationship has come out stronger than it was before.

Allow me to very quickly go through some of the history of that relationship, because people tend to forget or not put things in their proper context.

In the 1950s and 60s, when it was not fashionable to be America’s friend, Saudi Arabia was. In the 1950s and 60s, when our region was consumed by radicalism, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States were able to confront that radicalism, and in fact prevail over it. In the 1970s and 80s, when the Soviet Union was on a rampage … expanding its influence or seeking to expand its influence in Central Asia, in the Horn of Africa, and even in the Middle East, it was Saudi Arabia that was one of the key countries in preventing a Soviet takeover of the region.

Of course, we all remember the joint effort between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States in the 1980s in support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, which led to their defeat of the Soviet Union, the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan and subsequent to that the collapse of the Soviet Union as a communist state.

The relationship was again tested and came out with flying colors in 1990/1991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and when our two countries put together a coalition of over 32 countries to liberate Kuwait and restore its legitimate government.

Then of course our next big challenge was the tragic effects the criminal effects of 9/11, when we discovered that 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia. It was devastating to us. It was a big blow potentially to the relationship. It cast doubts in the minds of Americans about Saudi Arabia. It unleashed a tremendously critical and negative portrayal of Saudi Arabia in the United States and in the rest of the world. We in the Kingdom dealt with this issue. We examined the threat that we faced. We confronted it head-on and we came out of this experience — we meaning the United States and Saudi Arabia — with a much healthier and much stronger relationship than we had before the events.

Today, when I look at our relationship, I like to quote, as I always do, but that doesn’t mean I agree with the political philosophy but Ronald Reagan. He used to say that “facts are stubborn things.” And when we look at the facts of the relationship between our two countries today versus where they were even as recently as 10 years ago, I think the numbers are staggering.

Today as we speak, we have over 30,000 Saudi students studying at American colleges and universities. This is an all-time high number. We have never had that many students studying in the United States. They will come back and they will be advocates of the bilateral relationship. They will be ambassadors for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia while they’re here. And they will be ambassadors for the United States when they go back.

This is a very important and strategic step and decision that was made by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques after his meeting with President Bush in Crawford in 2005. To put the number in perspective in 2003 the number of students in the United States did not exceed 3,000. So we have ten times as many students today as we had back then.

Another example is the travel between our respective countries. The number of visas issued by the American Embassy and consulates in Saudi Arabia last year, to Saudi citizens was about 70,000. That is an all-time high number. And the number of visas that our Embassy and consulates in the United States issued to Americans is about 65,000. That also is an all-time high number.

When I look at investments between the two countries, they’re at record numbers. We are on track to double the American investment in Saudi Arabia over a 60-year period in a matter of five years, if we exclude the investments in Aramco. I can cite a joint venture between Aramco and Dow Chemicals that will amount to over 20 billion dollars. Alcoa is doing a joint venture with Ma’aden to produce one of the biggest aluminum smelting complexes in the world at the value of over 14 billion dollars, and the list goes on.

So when I look at the numbers and the facts, I see a very healthy and robust relationship. When I look at the interaction between our two governments, we have worked very hard, both of us, over the last six or seven years, to institutionalize our relationship. To build bridges directly between different agencies of our government so that they can handle problems at a working level rather than have each problem grow and literally grow out of context.

We are able to deal with consular matters that involve visas and duration of visas and child custody cases. We are able to deal with commercial issues like commercial disputes between companies. We put them in channels where they can be dealt with at a working level rather than turning them into political problems. We have a very close cooperation in the field of counterterrorism and terror finance. We have programs in term for critical infrastructure protection. We have programs for exchanging information on identifying radicalism and extremism and ways of dealing with it. I believe these issues have helped to solidify and cement a very strong and very important relationship.

The arms package that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is discussing with the United States is a testament to the strength of the relationship. It is the largest package in the history of the two countries’ and I believe that it reinforces the commitment of both nations to the relationship as well as to the security to our region.

Though having said all of this, it doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements. We do in a number of areas. And where we have these disagreements, we don’t shy away from expressing them. We are frank and open with each other. We believe that honesty is the most important element in any relationship—honesty and clarity. And we make sure that, we try our best, to make sure that we are very clear and direct with our American friends on a number of issues and also on the challenges that we believe we need to pay attention to.

I don’t have to remind you that our region is full of challenges, whether it’s Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, the situation in Lebanon, the peace process, or the situation in Yemen, in Somalia we have to worry about terrorism and pirates. We have a financial crisis globally that we have worked closely and with our G20 partners to overcome. And then of course there is the continuing situation involving energy security and the supply demand situation in energy.

Having said this I would like to give you a sense of the Kingdom’s view on how we see our role in the region as well as in the world. The Kingdom’s objective is to seek stability and security for its people and for the region. Saudi Arabia is a status quo power. We have no ambitions beyond our borders. We would like to live in a safe peaceful and prosperous neighborhood. Our efforts have been geared towards building bridges, not destroying bridges.

You see this approach translated domestically in the launching of the national dialogues in Saudi Arabia so that we bring our nation together to face the challenges that we have to confront or deal with as a nation.

Externally the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques has launched an Interfaith Dialogue that began in Makkah with the gathering of over 600 scholars and religious figures from the Islamic world representing all sects in order to look at the issue of dealing with each other and dealing with other faiths. That was subsequently followed by an interfaith conference in Madrid that was attended by representatives of all the major religions and cultures, and it culminated in November of 2008 at a high-level meeting at the United Nations that brought together all representatives of all the faiths in order to reinforce the common values handed to us by our Creator and in order to use religion and the values enshrined in all religions to bring people together rather than to divide them.

Irrespective of one’s faith, we believe that all faiths believe in the principles of compassion and mercy and love and peace and taking care of the less fortunate. All religions reject violence and extremism and crime. All people of faith share the same values when it comes to the importance of maintaining the integrity of the family, the importance of protecting the environment, because if one part of our globe suffers, the rest of the globe suffers with it. And so faith, as part of this initiative, is to be used as an objective to bring people together rather than divide them.

You also see it in the universities that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has launched. This connecting with the world I mentioned earlier that we send our students abroad. We also established the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology that is essentially an international university. Its students and faculty hail from over 50 countries. It has cooperative relationships with over 40 of the world’s top academic institutions. We share research. We share knowledge. We share students. And this is another way of connecting with the world.

So to go back to the original headline, or title of my talk, “An Ambassador’s View from Washington,” I believe that the view of the relationship is a very positive and healthy one. I think the future of our bilateral relationship will continue to grow stronger and deeper and more robust. I have no doubts about this. I believe that the ability of our two countries to deal with the challenges either that they both face, or that the relationship will inevitably face from time to time is a very pragmatic one and I think a very solid one. So I’m very optimistic that the future, God willing, will be even better than the past.

[Questions read by Dr. John Duke Anthony, President, National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations]

Question: Status report on King Abdullah’s peace proposal, March 31 2002, in Beirut unanimously endorsed by the 22 Arab countries, members of the league of Arab states. Where is it and why hasn’t it been more positively received by the Israelis on one hand and elements of the United States on the other?

Ambassador Al-Jubeir: The Arab Peace Initiative, which was adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut remains on the table. It is now become the key reference points for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not only was it adopted unanimously by the 22 Arab countries, by all the members of the Arab League, but also by the countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference at the extraordinary summit in Makkah held in December of 2005. So not only would it bring peace with all of the Arab countries but all of the Muslim countries have committed themselves to peace.

We are puzzled that the Israelis have not responded favorably to this. The Peace Initiative has all the elements for settlement. It stands for peace and just settlement for the refugees. It represents peace and normal relations, with all that entails between Israel and the Arab countries. And the answer probably ought to be directed to our colleagues in parts of the U.S. government in terms of why they haven’t responded.

But in all fairness to the Obama Administration, I believe that from the very beginning, President Obama has made references to the Arab Peace Initiative and to its importance. I believe in one of his very first speeches, he commended the Peace Initiative and saw it as a basis for resolving the conflict. We need a will to reach a compromise, which the Arab world has displayed but we don’t see on the Israeli side. We need a flexibility, which the Arab world has shown but we have not yet seen on the Israeli side. There has to be a strategic decision made that peace is an objective.

I believe the Arab world has done this by agreeing to the two-state settlement based on the ‘67 borders, an end of claims and a beginning of a state of normal relations. We don’t, we haven’t really seen that on the other side. What we see is a focus on details, process rather than substance.

We have been, when I say we, I mean the Arab League as a whole, and the Arab League has made this point repeatedly, that it is important to define the objective of the talks and then invite the parties to negotiate towards that objective so it is clear to everybody where we will be going and where we will end up. I believe that the Arab Peace Initiative has defined this objective and what we need is the will to negotiate towards this objective. Peace making has never been easy and I don’t believe it ever will be easy. It needs strength and resolve and it needs flexibility. I think in terms of the efforts of the Obama Administration, there is no doubt in our minds that they have sincerely and very diligently tried to move the process forward. But our doubts lie with the other side.

Question: We have a question about Saudi Arabia’s concerns with Iran, Iraq, and or Yemen. You can do all three of them if you like or take the one that’s of greatest concern to Saudi Arabia perhaps to dispel some of the myths of the stereotypes that people report about Saudi Arabia’s views, needs, concerns on those three issues.

Ambassador Al-Jubeir: All three countries are neighbors of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and all very important neighbors. Our view in terms of Iran is that we hope the Iranians will abide by international law and subject their nuclear program to inspections. We don’t deny their right to have peaceful nuclear energy as long as they live up to their obligations to the international protocols that define how you exercise this right. We believe, more broadly speaking, that all of the Middle East should be free of all types of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.

With regards to Iraq, we feel for our Iraqi brothers. We feel that Iraq is going through a very difficult and very challenging situation. The lack of formation of a government is a matter of a concern not only to us, but to a lot of other countries. We believe that the Iraqis have a constitutional process and the constitutional process specifies how you arrive at the formation of a government. And we would hope that the Iraqis will follow that constitutional process and that they will be able to put together a government fairly expeditiously that is representative of all of Iraq. Iraq has a challenging future ahead of it. But we have no doubt that the energy of the Iraqi people and the resources of the Iraqi nation will help them go back to normalcy.

With regard to Yemen, Saudi Arabia has very close and very historic ties with Yemen. Yemen is facing many challenges and deserves our unwavering support. The Yemenese government is facing challenges and primarily one of the Al Qaeda trying to establish itself in Yemen, and we must do what we can to deny them that ability. Yemen faces economic developmental problems, which we believe the world must come together to support them on. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has, and continues to be, one of the largest supporters in terms of economic assistance to our Yemeni brothers and we will continue to do so. We hope that, God willing, that Yemen will be able to overcome the economic challenges that it faces and emerge with a more prosperous future.

Question: Yes, thank you. You mentioned Saudi Arabia’s strategic objectives being stability and security en route to prosperity. Saudi Arabia has an unemployment problem; it has a youth bulge problem. The oil and energy industries are famous for not employing so many human beings but being capital intensive. What can you say about this situation in terms of the youth and the employment situation in Saudi Arabia barring on those strategic objectives of security and stability? We have a whole session later this afternoon, but there’s many people are concerned about the youth aspect and the lack of jobs and the need for placing more than 100,000 people who graduate from secondary school in some forms of employment and if that’s just not successful, it’s a social issue. It could become a political issue. It could become a security and a stability issue.

Ambassador Al-Jubeir: I think that the peace and stability starts at home. If you have a peaceful and stable society, you could work towards a peaceful and stable region. The future of Saudi Arabia lies with its people. Our youth are our most precious natural resource and how we prepare them for a future, the opportunities we give them in terms of education and the opportunities we give them in terms of the marketplace, are critically important to the wellbeing of Saudi Arabia in the decades ahead.

It is ironic that 30 years ago people complained that Saudi Arabia didn’t have enough people. Now they argue maybe we have too many people. I see this as a blessing of riches. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia embarked on tremendous economic reforms by opening up its economy, by revitalizing its tax systems, by its investment laws, by joining the World Trade Organization. What we have seen as a consequence of Saudi Arabia’s accession to the World Trade Organization at the end of 2005 is we have seen the acceleration of growth rates—almost a doubling of the rate of growth. With it has come acceleration in foreign investment in Saudi Arabia.

We have seen an expansion of the Saudi economy to today. It is close to 500 billion dollars, our GDP. The investments that are taking place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will generate jobs and they are generating jobs. The students that are being sent from Saudi Arabia abroad and we have 100,000 students studying all over the word, of whom 30,000 are in the United States, will come back and be equipped to enter the marketplace and become productive and prosperous citizens.

With regards to the graduates of secondary schools, Saudi Arabia has in place vocational training centers in order to teach people trades and then provide them with loans or grants so they can open small business and join the marketplace.

So I believe the issue of our youth of expanding the Saudi economy, and generating jobs for our citizens, while it is critically important to any government, I wouldn’t make it as dramatic sounding as we hear sometimes when outsiders look at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Question: Last question focuses on about five years ago, there was a consensus that America’s and Saudi Arabia’s and the other Arab World producer’s strategic interest was energy security. You don’t hear that so much anymore in the United States in comparison to a divorce that in the last two presidential state of the union addresses, in this administration, the last two in the previous administration, the president called for ending, or curbing, America’s reliance of foreign oil. Most people see that as code words for ending reliance on Arab and Islamic oil and gas. How did we get from the energy security to this divorce issue? Not divorce from driving or transportation, but just not driving or having transportation on Arab or Islamic oil or gas. And the implications of this, for the relationship, not just between the United States and Saudi Arabia, but the United States and other energy producers in the region.

Ambassador Al-Jubeir: Well I think this is the function of the political process in the United States. A lot of things take place and a lot of things happen and a lot of things are said during what many people in the U.S. call the “silly season”, so we can’t take it too seriously.

I think that the issue of oil is fungible. It doesn’t matter where it’s produced. It all goes into one theoretical or hypothetical pot and demand for oil takes oil out of this hypothetical pot and provides the supply. If you have a shortage of oil in one part of the world, it is going to have an impact on the price of gasoline in another part of the world.

So whether the United States imports all of its oil from the Middle East or none of its oil from the Middle East, it will have no impact on the price of oil or gasoline in the United States, should there be a crisis in the Middle East or elsewhere.

I think the people realize that the world oil supply is a finite resource. You can’t make it. Once you extract it, it’s gone. The world cannot rely on oil indefinitely as its major source of energy. And Saudi Arabia as the largest oil exporter and as the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, over a quarter of the world’s oil reserves, has been at the forefront for the past 30 years of calling for the development of alternative sources of energy, because we know that there will come a point—it could be 20 years, it could be 50 years, it could be 60 years from now—where the world’s energy needs or demands outstrip the ability of oil-producing countries to supply it. So the as the energy pie, so to speak, increases because of demand, the additional energy, we believe, ought to be supplied by alternative sources.

In order for those alternative sources to become economically viable we have to start now so that in 20 years they make economic sense. We are not afraid of alternate sources replacing oil. Quite the contrary, we believe that if you develop alternatives gradually, you will have a smoother transition away from oil.

In 1960, oil replaced coal as the primary source of energy in the world. And here we are, 50 years later, coal production has not decreased from where it was in 1960. But the energy pie, the energy requirements of the world have gone up and coal’s share of that pie has shrunk but coal production has not. So when people assume that oil producers are against alternative energy, I think that’s a fallacy. It will not affect us in the long run, it will not take away from out market share in the long run, our ability to produce, but it will make for a more stable transition in the future as the world moves away from the supply of energy.

So back to the original question: A lot of things are said during political campaigns. A lot of things are said in order to make headlines. A lot of things are said in order to be sensational and we have learned that we deal with the realities and we don’t deal with the emotions.

H.E. Ambassador Adel A. Al-Jubeir – Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques

Transcript by Ryan&Associates

About Ambassador Adel A. Al Jubeir

Adel A. Al-Jubeir was appointed by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz as Ambassador to the United States on January 29, 2007. Ambassador Al-Jubeir presented his credentials to President George W. Bush at the White House on February 27, 2007.

Mr. Al-Jubeir was born February 1, 1962 in Majma’ah (Riyadh Province), Saudi Arabia, and attended schools in the Kingdom, Germany, Yemen, Lebanon, and the U.S. He obtained a B.A. summa cum laude in political science and economics from the University of North Texas in 1982, and an M.A. in international relations from Georgetown University in 1984.

In 1987 Mr. Al-Jubeir was appointed into the Saudi Diplomatic Service and posted to the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC, where he served as Special Assistant to the Ambassador. In 1990-91, he was part of the Saudi team that established the Joint Information Bureau at Dhahran during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. He was a member of the GCC delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference in October 1991, and a member of the Saudi delegation to the Multilateral Arms Control Talks in Washington, DC in 1992. In December 1992 he was dispatched with the Saudi Armed Forces to Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope.

Mr. Al-Jubeir was appointed Director of the Saudi Information and Congressional Affairs Office in Washington in 2000, and was named Foreign Affairs Advisor in the Crown Prince’s Court in the fall of 2000. In August 2005, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz appointed Mr. Al-Jubeir to the position of Advisor at the Royal Court.

Mr. Al-Jubeir was Visiting Diplomatic Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, 1994-95. He has lectured at universities and academic institutions in the U.S. and appeared frequently in the media. In 2006, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of North Texas.

Source: Saudi Embassy

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• Adel Al-Jubeir on Fight Against Terrorist Financing, at Embassy Press Conference with Senior U.S. Officials
• Appointment of Adel A. al-Jubeir – Saudi Ambassador to the United States
• Summit Press Briefing: Adel Al-Jubeir – Crawford Summit