Agenda: With George Friedman on the Middle East
Video Transcript:
STRATFOR's CEO George Friedman examines why the democratic uprising sweeping through the Middle East will likely bring superficial rather than lasting change.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Colin: Turmoil of one kind or another continues throughout the Middle East, which remains a region of high risk. But is change as inevitable as some predict?
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman. George, an independent observer looking at the Middle East might conclude the region is gradually becoming more unstable.
George: Well, the casual observer would be right about it appearing to become more unstable. I'm not certain how unstable it's actually becoming. Egypt has moved from a period of demonstrations to a fairly stable situation with the old regime in power. Tunisia has settled down; of course Libya has not. When you look at the Persian Gulf there is the potential for instability, but actually you have a fairly stable situation now. At this moment you have a great deal of instability in Syria, but it's not clear which way the army is going to go so you don't know how unstable it is. There's a kind of perception of massive instability, but I'm always struck by how little has actually changed of substance.
Colin: How do you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the major players?
George: The outside powers, which in this case Iran we would count among those, the Europeans, the Americans, they all have interests in the region. In some cases for example the Americans and Europeans want change in Libya, for example, and otherwise in Bahrain they are not particularly interested in change. But it's the Iranians that are really pressing for the most significant change, which is that as the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, they want to create a new political order in the Persian Gulf as well as a potentially new economical order. So far, at this moment, they been checkmated -- David checkmated by the Saudis in Bahrain. The United States has not yet left Iraq, so it's not clear what's going to happen there. But this is the important change that's happening in the region. What Iran is going to do and that's tied to what the Americans are going to do and so on. But again I want to emphasize that, and this really makes my view somewhat different from those of many other people, is that we've had a lot of sound and fury. I'm not saying it signifies nothing, but I'm saying it is less significant than some have wanted to say. People have talked about how an enormous democratic revolution is sweeping the region. Certainly there have been demonstrations. Demonstrations don't constitute revolutions. Revolutions don't always constitute democracy and so on. So when you take a look at what's happened in the region, sometimes there's less there than meets the eye.
Colin: On the present agenda, we have Egypt seeking ties with Iran, issues of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and in Palestine a deal between Hamas and Fatah.
George: It's interesting. These are three interesting things and it makes the point I'm trying to make. There is the very real possibility of Egypt opening diplomatic relations with Iran. That makes for a difference. It's not clear how much of a difference; it is not clear that the government of Egypt is going to go so far as to align itself with Iran. They have very different interests and very different ideologies. So yes, it's happening; how much does it mean?
Similarly, Hamas and Fatah may be moving toward some sort of rapprochement, but it's not here yet because in the end Hamas remains in control of Gaza. In the end the Fatah remains in control of the West Bank. It's not clear that Hamas is giving up any of its control in Gaza in practice. And it's not clear that the Fatah is giving up control in the West Bank.
The United States has indicated that it might be prepared to remain in the country but the Iraqi government has not indicated that it's prepared to ask them to stay, and under the agreements signed they can't stay unless they're invited to. So there are these incredibly important indications of something happening and when you drill down what you have to say is, well it hasn't happened yet. It may happen soon and it may be important but at the moment all we get are indications and really for the past few months what we've been seeing is a vast overestimation of what has happened and, in fact, very few leaders leaving, when leaders leave the regimes remain in place, some countries like Libya, a relatively small country, being plunged into civil war. It's not that nothing happens is not that they're not important but that's sort of seachange that people were expecting a few months ago simply hasn't happened.
Colin: Business and other strategists like to try and forecast the future. In the context of what you just been telling me, what should we be looking for as a change activist?
George: I think the most important thing to look at is the military. In most of these countries and many of these countries, the military has been the foundation of the regime. So in Egypt for example, we see that the military has remained in control even though the leading personality, Mubarak, may not be there. In Syria, we see the inability of the demonstrators to really unseat the regime so long as the army remains loyal to Assad, and the army will remain loyal to Assad because he's made it in their interest to do so. He's made it very good to be a soldier. And when you look at the region you see a highly militarized region. It very frequently is also part of complex social organizations, but the thing to really look for is: will the army break? One of the things that happened in Libya was that the army to some extent split, not enough to unseat Gadhafi, but enough to create a civil war. In Egypt, it didn't. In Syria, it hasn't. In Bahrain, the Saudi military was quite prepared to act and act effectively.
The thing to really look for is the foundation of the regime. The foundation of a regime is the military. If the military holds together, there will be very little change. If the military splits apart, you may get a civil war. If the military turns against the regime, you will have real change. But the reality of the region in many cases, not all but in many cases, is that the military determines what's going to happen. And so far, you've not had the wholesale rending of the military that you've seen in Libya.
Colin: Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil exporter, is apprehensive and a leading actor. What are the Saudis doing?
George: Well what they're doing as far as they can is to make sure the change doesn't happen. Within Saudi Arabia, they've been very aggressive to make certain that risings by Shiites or others fail. Along the periphery of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf, they've already had one military intervention in Bahrain. When you really look at what they're doing, they're essentially doing everything they can to prevent a wholesale change in the region. And, so far, they've been quite successful. Now their problem of course is, Iran. Iran is more than a match for Saudi Arabia. Iran seems to want to have massive change in the region and they seem to have the resources to facilitate it. So much of this in that sense has boiled down into a confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran along a series of proxy states, Bahrain being the example, with the United States sort of hovering nearby, not quite certain how to respond or whether to respond at all. But what do the Saudis have to do? The Saudis have to do precisely what they're doing -- using their inherent military force, their political influence and their money to cause those who oppose regimes around them to fail.
Colin: George, thank you very much.
