Fletcher Features
Les Gelb – Terrorism and US Foreign Policy |
| Dean Bosworth introduced Dr Les Gelb, President of the Council on
Foreign Relations in New York City, who received his BA from Tufts in 1959
and his MA in 1961 and PhD in 1964 from Harvard University, as a speaker
in the Charles Francis Adams lecture series. Dr Gelb has had a distinguished career in journalism, winning the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1985 when he was National Security Correspondent for The New York Times. He is currently president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Trustee Emeritus of Tufts University. Dr Gelb presented a discussion of terrorism and US foreign policy in relation to areas around the world, including North Korea, India-Pakistan, al Qaeda, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Korea is an area of the world that bridges the old Cold War with whatever happens today,” Dr Gelb said. Not being able to resolve the Korean situation in years past, makes it more difficult now, he added. “North Korea is a vestige of a time past,” Dr Gelb said. It is a leadership cut off in its commitment to totalitarianism, and is ignorant of, and arrogant towards, the world, he added. In relation to the North Korean admission of its nuclear program, Dr Gelb said some people argue that North Korea feels by acknowledging its nuclear program, and almost throwing their defiance in the United States’ face, is good way of bargaining. However, Dr Gelb believes this has created a near certainty that other states will find it impossible to resume negotiations with them. Dr Gelb said the situation will be made worse when, faced with strained relations with the US, North Korea might find it necessary to sell missiles and possibly nuclear technologies and materials to South Asia and other parts of world, including to terrorists. “They are desperately in need of money and without the prospect [of US assistance], they will inevitably turn to sale of WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction],” Dr Gelb said. With respect to Pakistan and India, Dr Gelb expressed his concern over an escalation of conventional warfare to that on the nuclear scale. He rejected the notion that nuclear conflict is more inevitable between Pakistan and India than it was between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as Pakistan and India might not behave according to the same rationale of nuclear deterrence. Dr Gelb is worried about a more dangerous threat. He worries that if Muslims in Kashmir succeed in pushing India into using military force the region will become incredibly dangerous as military defeat could bring nuclear weapons into play. “Neither India nor Pakistan can afford to lose conventional war,” Dr Gelb said. “I don’t want to see them get into a box where they can’t do sensible things.” While he gave credit to Pakistani President Musharraf for his honest attempts at moving to some form of democrat state and acknowledged his valuable assistance to the US in dealing with the war in Afghanistan, Dr Gelb worries that Musharraf is either supporting in one way, or turning blind eye to, extremists. “Everyone plays a balancing game,… particularly in countries that are poor, in the midst of a political cauldron and divided by religion,” Dr Gelb said. Dr Gelb then moved to his view of the United States’ preoccupation with the Gulf. He said it is not clear what the US is trying to do there. He believes the United States took necessary action in Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda the right to act as sovereign terrorist state. “To me it was beyond the bounds of international law,” Dr Gelb said. He said the action against was justified by both traditional international security and international law. However, Dr Gelb is concerned not enough attention is being paid to the future of Afghanistan. “Whatever is happening in Afghanistan is very important to us, but all that has been shoved aside with respect to Iraq,” he said. Dr Gelb believes President Bush is right to get rid of Saddam Hussein, although he thinks he is going about it in the wrong way. He made a case for the removal of Hussein. However, he questioned Iraq’s purported connection to al Qaeda. He said there was no question Hussein has had active contact with Palestinian groups, but believed a traditional link with al Qaeda is probably non-existent. In Dr Gelb’s view, such a connection was highly unlikely until year ago and Iraq is dangerous enough not to necessitate a proven connection to terrorists before action is taken. Dr Gelb said most nations don’t want to go to war despite their agreement with the US about the threat Saddam represents. He said Europeans fear the large Muslim populations in their own countries might become disruptive should they join in a war against Iraq. With respect to Iraq’s immediate neighbors, Dr Gelb said they all detest Saddam Hussein, but are more frightened of the potential reactions within their own nations because they lack confidence in their own regimes’ legitimacy. Dr Gelb said the Bush administration finally saw the critical truth that it could not accept high risks without United Nations support. He said the 15-0 vote in the Security Council was impressive – an astonishing statement on the part of countries around the world, who felt US diplomacy at the UN was a charade. However, how the US deals with the Iraq situation is going to be an interesting and tough test, according to Dr Gelb. In his view, the US cannot go to war without support, nor without careful planning for the aftermath of a military victory. “It is the height of irresponsibility to go in there and win and watch that country subject to the kind of horror that could bring the rise of anti-Americanism,” Dr Gelb said. He said it was likely that Shi’ites would turn against Sunnis, Kurds in the north would turn against Sunnis and each other, and that the Turks would move troops in the northern part of Iraq thus paving the way for other countries to pick Iraq apart. “As soon as there’s victory the floodgates open,” he said. Sharing arrangement must be in place so each group has a unified stake in the country’s future so they do not kill each other, he added. Dr Gelb also stressed the importance of preparing the US at home before a war against Iraq is initiated. He believes the leadership should be doing more to prepare borders and cities for more terrorist attacks at home. With respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Dr Gelb believes what goes on in Iraq will affect these negotiations. He thinks in the end the only settlement possible will consist of Israel conceding almost everything the Palestinians demand. However, Dr Gelb did not think the prospects for this were good. “Something happened a few years ago that made such settlement almost entirely impossible no matter what US does,” Dr Gelb said. He argued that Yasser Arafat’s “walking away” from two peace plans put forward by Israel – conceding more than Palestinians had imagined – has radicalized the Israeli side. Dr Gelb said peaceniks became hawks and compromise was rejected. “Arafat walked up to moment of truth and walked away from it,” Dr Gelb said. He said Arafat was clearly not ready to say yes, given that he had done nothing since the Oslo agreements to prepare his own people for compromise – “even compromise that gives them a lion’s share of deal”. In concluding, Dr Gelb urged the Fletcher community to have a hard headed debate about the causes of terrorism, as it is an issue we are going to dealing with for the next 20 years at least. Dr Gelb answered questions from the audience. The lecture was followed by a luncheon. |