Examination of Witnesses (Questions 91-99)
14 DECEMBER 2004
DR STEFAN
HALPER AND
DR DANA
ALLIN
Chairman: Dr Allin, Dr
Halper, may I apologise, we have had a private meeting and of
course the deliberations of the Committee have been interrupted
by a division. I fear that there will another series of divisions
at half past five so we will seek to contain as much as we can
within the time available. May I call first on Mr Hamilton.
Q91 Mr Hamilton: Sorry
to have kept you waiting, gentlemen. I wanted to start off with
President Bush's recent electoral victory. It was obviously a
much clearer result than in 2000, four years ago, and I wondered
whether the clarity of the result and the Republican majority
in Congress is likely to affect President Bush's foreign policy
over his first term and whether you think that his attitude towards
the Middle East and the war against terrorism is going to harden
or be any different from the first term?
Dr Halper: Let me say that the
question of the decisive nature of the victory, the majority in
Congress and the second term all have different dimensions and
different effects. The decisiveness of the victory, I think, is
a confused result in foreign policy terms because the administration
succeeded in conflating terrorism in the Iraq War such that there
could be no clear opinion rendered by the public on support either
for Iraq or not, or worry about terror. In that respect the election
itself shed very little light on where the administration is on
the question of Iraq. It did provide an endorsement on the issue
of terror. As far as the Republican majority is concerned in Congress,
it is a larger party now and there are different voices in it.
It is still a very conservative party and it is clearly supportive
of the war on terror and the Iraq War, but there are some new
voices—and we can talk about that in a minute. In terms
of the second term there is the question of balancing his legacy,
how he interprets it, and what it means in terms of the administration's
foreign policy. I think principally second-term Presidents—Reagan
would be an example—tend to become more pragmatic, they
become more cautious, they often become more inclined towards
negotiation, as Reagan did with Gorbachev. In this term however
this President is concerned about terrorism and it may take some
of the wind out of the pragmatic sail.
Dr Allin: I would not find anything
in that to differ with. Although it was in historical terms a
very narrow victory, it was also a convincing victory. The President
and his administration clearly feel vindicated by it. Given that
the President governed and the administration governed in both
domestic and foreign policy terms in a dramatic way as though
they had won a landslide, when they narrowly lost the popular
vote, you would expect the impulse of the election, as suggested
by your question, to drive—and it is hard to see how it
could be more explicitly ideological—a continuing strongly
ideological foreign policy.
Q92 Mr Hamilton: It could
be more aggressive, though, could it not?
Dr Allin: However, there are the
constraints of reality and Iraq is not going very well. Even a
deeply ideological administration has to recognise some of the
constraints on US policy. I suppose this is a crude way of putting
it but not so long ago we were asking is Iraq the first step in
a series of transformative projects that would involve the use
of military force elsewhere? Leaving aside the whole question
of Iran which is a complicated one, I would think not. We do not
have the resources for it. On the Middle East specifically, there
is a possibility, I would say, and it is only a possibility, that
the President, who obviously feels strongly about what he feels
strongly about and has made a commitment to the Road Map and to
a Palestinian state, and although there are a lot of countervailing
currents in the United States and the US administration, the question
is opaque, I would not be surprised to see a more concentrated
effort, including a degree of persuasion on the Israeli Government.
Q93 Mr Hamilton: Chairman,
may I just come back and ask about Syria. Obviously you mentioned
Iran and clearly that is very, very complex and the idea that
the US military would be contemplating or President Bush would
be contemplating military action is, I hope, open to question,
but Syria surely is much more straightforward, is it not? It is
a very similar regime to the former Iraq. Do you think the US
Government is considering military action against Syria?
Dr Allin: I will just say briefly
I do not know but I think it is probably implausible at this point.
There are arguments for confronting Syria but the United States
also needs Syria's co-operation in stabilising Iraq and I do not
think there is a sense that the United States is operating from
a position of strength at this point.
Dr Halper: I would simply add
to that that there has been a good deal of discussion about Syria
but it appears as if the prospect has clearly diminished, just
as it has with Iran, and there are very clear reasons for that.
In the case of Iran an attack would certainly bolster the Mullahs
and it would discredit the opposition. Secondly, there is no guarantee
that an attack would impact all nuclear sites or the nuclear capability.
Thirdly, unless you would like to come back to this, the British,
French and German initiative in concert with the IAEA[2]has
brought a great deal of progress on Iran and it seems to have
created a kind of informal model which is very interesting because
the elements of that model with reference to Iran are not unlike
what we see in North Korea. There is a trade component, a financial
component, then a movement away from enrichment and towards light
water nuclear systems, and the US is in the background with the
threat of force if progress is not made. If you look at how we
have muddled into this, we have got an approach, it has provided
a kind of problem management process and it is actually working
as far as Iran is concerned and to a degree as far as North Korea
is concerned. Washington does not want a confrontation with either
of these countries at this point.
Q94 Mr Olner: At this
point, you say?
Dr Halper: At this point.
Q95 Sir John Stanley:
I do not mind who bats first on this one but could you just give
us your view as to the Bush administration's position as to how
much of the occupied West Bank they consider the Israelis should
withdraw from?
Dr Allin: My sense is that the
Bush administration does not consider that to be the fundamental
question. They believe the fundamental question is the nature
of Palestinian governance and state and democracy. This is the
first order question: does the Palestinian entity develop into
a real democracy and a democratic state? There has to be some
recognition that viability is an issue and that viability has
a territorial component, but if you are asking is there a dominant
view in the Bush administration that the eventually Israeli withdrawal
has to be on the 1967 lines, my sense is that the administration
is, like on many things, divided on this but, no, that is not
the driving argument. Having said that, there is a line, and I
cannot swear that it is new but it was heard recently from Steve
Hadley, that the planned withdrawal from Gaza and from just four
settlements in the West Bank is seen by the administration as
a down payment on an eventual settlement. I interpreted this language
as meaning we do recognise that if there is a suspicion that the
Sharon Government might want to more or less use this withdrawal
as a fait accompli for a final settlement that this is
not something that the United States would support.
Q96 Sir John Stanley:
Dr Halper, what is your answer to the question please?
Dr Halper: I have nothing to disagree
with in my colleague's comments, except to say that both Zbigniew
Brezinski and Brent Scowcroft, the national security advisors,
to Carter and Bush I, have stated publicly that they are fearful
that the Israelis may be thinking that a withdrawal from Gaza
and a few selected areas in the West Bank is not the first step
but rather the last step, and therefore because the level of distrust
is so great at this point between the parties, that there is no
option except for the United States to move to attempt to impose
a solution together with whoever will join it. That was their
statement. I do not know that in Washington there is a great deal
of discussion about percentages of the West Bank or specific areas
that they are expected to see where the Israelis will withdraw.
There is a fair amount of discussion about the elections on 9
January and calls for them to be expanded beyond elections for
President but rather for municipal and also parliamentarian seats.
Q97 Sir John Stanley:
Can I ask you the same question from the Israeli Government's
perspective. What is your interpretation of Prime Minister Sharon's
policy in the West Bank? Do you believe it is a policy of effectively
de facto annexation of the greater part of the West Bank
and leaving the greater part of the settlements intact or do you
believe that if the Sharon Government got the security assurances
that it is seeking they would be willing to uproot those settlements
and go back to the 1967 boundaries?
Dr Allin: I honestly do not know.
I am familiar with the arguments that Prime Minister Sharon has
a plan and that is to more or less to stop with this first phase,
to make it the last step. The question is admittedly opaque in
the context of Israeli politics because he can always claim he
has to deal with the settler lobby and cannot be completely open
about the final status. This may be an illusive way of putting
it. I am not an expert on Israeli politics and certainly not on
Ariel Sharon but I almost have the feeling that he, along with
many Israelis, including Israelis on the right, accepts the demographic
realities, accepts that the land has to be substantially divided,
therefore accepts the inevitability and the necessity of a Palestinian
state but somehow wants to combine the creation of a Palestinian
state with the defeat of the Palestinian movement because that
has been his life-long battle. Of course that is a contradiction
in terms but it is possible to hold contradictory goals in one's
mind.
Q98 Sir John Stanley:
Dr Halper, what are your views on the Sharon Government's policy
intention or otherwise towards the settlements on the West Bank?
Dr Halper: I think his government
sees politics as the art of the possible, as the rest of us do,
and they will push their position as far as they possibly can.
He is moving to a new coalition, he may involve Labour, there
may be some moderating influence in that and there may be moderating
influence from Washington in the form of an insistence on a broader
electoral process going forward. This is all to be negotiated
as time proceeds. There will be a fair amount of pressure from
the Israeli side to sustain their position as long as they can
but ultimately they will have to conform to the pressure which
is put upon them.
Q99 Chairman: Gentlemen,
before I go further on the Middle East with Mr Hamilton, back
to changes in Washington, how should we interpret the personnel
changes that have taken place so far? Some claim that Secretary
Powell had become fairly marginalised at the end and it is a good
thing for the conduct of US foreign policy that an insider is
Secretary of State, namely Ms Rice. How do you interpret the changes
that have been made thus far?
Dr Halper: I think that the issue
which arises with Secretary Powell's coming departure is the very
troubling possibility of group-think which could easily happen
given the configuration of the senior staff positions. If you
look at Paul Wolfowitz in a continuing position, John Bolton continuing,
Steven Hadley, now the National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams
soon to be named the Deputy, if you look at Douglas Feith, whose
troubled tenure as Under-Secretary for Defense continues for the
moment, the key players remain. These were the architects of the
neo-conservative policy and those appointments reflect the value
that the President places on loyalty. It also reflects his determination
to reduce dissention among his senior ranks and, as any corporation
does as it is moving to its next term, to consolidate senior management
and to stream-line it. It also reflects the President's comfort
with policy direction, his belief that Iraq can be recast as at
least having the preconditions for market democracy and that the
region can move towards democracy, and finally I think it points
to his acceptance of a neo-conservative theory both of Iraq and
more broadly of the region.
2 International Atomic Energy Agency Back
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