Agenda: With George Friedman on the Middle East
Video Transcript:
STRATFOR CEO George Friedman discusses the differences between the unrest in North Africa and the Persian Gulf and why the West should be closely watching what happens in Bahrain.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
There's an arc of uncertainty in the Muslim world from Casablanca to Cairo and from Aden on the Red Sea through Bahrain to Baghdad and Tehran. Some but not all the uncertainty is caused by uprisings. Where will this all end?
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman.
Colin: George, what are the potential geopolitical implications of these events on the rest of the Middle East and beyond?
George: The situation in North Africa has for the moment clarified itself. You've got a military junta running Egypt. It's promised elections and we'll see if they happen. Tunisia has settled into an unsettled state and of course we have the chaos in Libya. But Libya is simply not that important a country to have broader geopolitical implications. The most important things are happening are happening in Bahrain. And they're happening in Bahrain right now because Bahrain is both connected by a causeway to Saudi Arabia, has a large Shiite population, a Sunni ruling family, and is a port for the U.S. 5th Fleet. Everything comes together.
What we need to be looking at right now is Bahrain and beyond that Saudi Arabia to see if this wave of unrest enters Saudi Arabia, which would be an enormous event or if it bypasses it. It's altogether possible, I don't know, but it is possible that everything will settle down. But even if everything settled down internally, we would still be facing the Iranian question of the Iran's status in the Persian Gulf once the United States completes the withdrawal from Iraq. And, along with that, we'd be facing the question -- it's a very difficult one -- of what is the relationship between the Shiite communities of the Middle East, and particularly of the Persian Gulf, to the Iranian regime. And I think that's really what we have to be focusing about. The most important geopolitical event is the rise of Iran, the role of the Shiites in that rise and what happens next.
Colin: You said people who start revolutions very seldom finish them. Should that happen will the region to descend into chaos?
George: Well, in the first place, let's understand what I'm saying by that. I'm saying that just as in the Russian Revolution, the revolution was begun by liberals supporting Kerensky, what ended the revolution was the Bolsheviks. The people who finally take power are frequently those who are the most coherent and well-organized group whereas the initial demonstrators lose power because, while they are able to bring down the regime, they're not able to create a replacement. One of the places that we saw that in was in Iran, where the demonstrators in 1979 came from a fairly wide group of people but at the same time it was Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters that took control. So one of the reasons that I don't think the region will descend into chaos is simply because there will emerge movements that are better organized, better controlled, that'll stop the chaos, but they'll probably implement regimes that are inimical to what the original demonstrators wanted. Certainly they won't be what Western liberals were expecting to see happen. Revolution opens the door to the best organized and most ruthless.
Colin: Do you see Islamists, if not jihadists, gaining power and influence as a result of this instability?
George: You really, the only way to answer the question of "Are the Islamists or Jihadists taking power?" is to look at each country separately. I mean it's a massive mistake to look at the region as a whole; it's highly differentiated. For Egypt my expectation is that the jihadists will not be strengthened. The army is still very strong; it is quite hostile to the jihadists and has a tense relationship with Islamists; it is pro-American; it maintains its treaty with Israel. I see it as possible that the army is forced out of this position but they won't go easily. So my expectation is that no, that won't happen. In the Persian Gulf the question is not going to be whether jihadists of the Sunni variety take control, it's the degree to which the Shiites of the Iranian persuasion, if you will, take control. And that's a very different question. So the expectation of chaos in the region I think really misses the point. This also has to be remembered that this is a region that had tremendous political instability back in the 1960s and early 1970s. There were revolutions sponsored by Egypt's Nasserite government, sponsored by the Soviets, in many countries and there's been quite a bit of instability. But since 1970, these regimes have been extremely stable, so stable in fact that people have conducted revolutions and grown old in them as we can see with Gadhafi, as we saw with Mubarak, as we saw with others. So the region I think is not descending into chaos. It is not even necessarily descending into change yet. What it is doing at this point is rotating leaders and there is a big difference between that and revolutionary change.
Colin: Thanks George, George Friedman ending this week's Agenda. Thanks for listening.
