Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Sarah Montague. We are witnessing the end
of one era of world history, and the dawn of another. A new era of
disorder, more chaotic and less peaceful than the past quarter of a
century. That is the view of my guest today, Dr Richard Haass used
to work for the US State Department and is now president of the think
tank Council on Foreign Relations. He says that American foreign policy
is partly to blame. And that is why its authority has been damaged. So,
how dangerous is the world now, and what can be done about it?
Dr Richard Haass, welcome to HARDtalk.
Thank you. What do you mean by a new era of disorder. We are at a moment
in history where there is more power, more diffused in more hands
than ever before, and essentially we don't have the rules set, in how to
do with new technology or cyber, how to prevent the spread of nuclear
weapons. We don't have the breakdown of anything like order in the Middle
East, new questions about stability in Europe, a quarter of a century
after the end of the Cold War, questions about the future of the
Asia`Pacific. All of this with the United States, there is no clear
consensus about control in the world and there is no one else willing or
able to step into the shoes of what the US has performed over the last
quarter`century. And you think we will look back at some point in the
future and noticed this as a turning point? Very much so. A gradual one,
but a turning point all the same. Again, this summer, we mark the 25th
anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. A lot of
people look back and so the world came together, the UN Security
Council did what they were meant to. In some ways, what is more lasting
about the whole experience is that it is a hard one, of what we have
seen, increasingly great and major how was the last year don't control
the world anywhere close to what they did in the Cold War. Many more
actors, whether in the Middle East or other parts of the world, they
aren't stays at all. Groups like Al Qaeda and Isis are taking matters
into their own hands. There is decentralisation of
decision`making. And you are suggesting that means that the world
is far more dangerous than has been in decades? I believe so. Technology
is not concentrated, it is spread. Many more people and organisations
can cause real damage if they so choose. So yes, it is a harder era
for diplomats to try to corral. Is it Islamic State that you would
point to as one of the greatest threats to peace? For sure. Islamic
State, Al Qaeda, they aren't local organisations only, but they can
affect the region, and if they do, it affects oil. Also, when people go
there, they fight and come home. Returnees pose a threat so to this
country or anywhere in Europe, or around the world. Or in my country,
the US, they experience it in 9/11, what happens in a place, in a remote
village of Afghanistan, that is less remote but because of globalisation
and the ability of people and things to move across borders at great
speed, nothing is local any more. Everything has the potential to go
global. When you look at what is going on in the Middle East,
especially with the rise Islamic State, do you look back to the way
that America reacted to 9/11 as perhaps being partly, or largely,
responsible for what we are now seeing. A fair question, the Middle
East by any measure is the least successful part of the world. You
can look at three things. One is local realities, this is a part of
the world that has not come to terms with modernity. Relationship between
state and society, the dividing line between religion and the secular.
All of these questions have never been resolved in the Middle East.
They are major questions. We are seeing Sunni Shia disputes, Persian
Arab. But I believe the US made things worse. In 2003, by the war in
Iraq, that removed one of the balances in the least and put Shia
Sunni between one another in ways they had not been. And acts of
ownership in the United States. President Obama did not do, I think,
at the time of civilian use of chemical weapons, help create the
situation we are seeing in Syria, and send messages by the US was not
as active at it `` as it need to be. If we go back to the Iraq war, you
were in the US administration at the time. You joined in 2001, and left
in June 2003. At the time, we are going "this is a mistake, we are
going to regret this". Yes, I wrote a memoir that I could with my
colleagues, I thought it was not well advised. I thought we could
overthrow Saddam Hussein. Regime change, as difficult as it can be at
times as we have seen in Syria, is often not most difficult thing, but
what comes afterwards. For the same reasons as to when I worked for
President Bush in the light `` in the late 80s and 90s, I was very
uneasy about taking ownership of a society like Iraq, and keeping
things together there. I was against going to Baghdad in 1991 and against
going to walk in 2003. You were making these arguments, and for
hearing arguments made to the American people, not least about
Barack 's responsibility, but you knew you were wrong? `` war. Some
things I did, some things I didn't. Iraq I don't think had material
responsibility for 9/11, I don't believe Saddam Hussain was involved
in terrorism, he would not be involved in anything, I thought, he
could not control. I did think, like my colleagues, that Iraq possessed
some weapons of mass destruction. That was the conclusion I drew from
the fact that Saddam Hussein would not in anyway co`operate with
international weapons inspectors. I was wrong, and many of us were. I
did not think there was any misleading, people simply wrong. In
terms of what it meant now, the responsibility for what we are
seeing, how much is it to blame for the split of the tensions between
Sunni and Shia because of what has happened? This part of the world was
not pristine or perfect before the war in 2003, there's plenty of
responsibility to go around. Since then, if you blame the decision to
go to war in 2003, it was a bad decision, I thought it was
ill`advised, the US in some ways has arguably compounded it by some of
the things it did and did not do during the aftermath. I think
President Obama did in pulling US forces out of Iraq recently, we had
to go back and put several thousand US forces backing, and I'd been
corrected. These are difficult questions. You have to think twice
before you get ambitious about essentially getting involved in the
issues and DNA of another political culture `` I think that was
correct. When that came up with Syria, would you have argued that
America should have interviewed more in Syria? 100% `` intervened. The US
should have used military force when Syria violated that role of non`use
of chemical weapons. When you draw lines, any time you don't act, you
create doubts about your reliability. That is always to be
avoided. Secondly, we want to reinforce the notion that weapons of
mass destruction are not usable. I do believe the US missed an
opportunity to act there. It was an opportunity to strengthen the
potential alternative in Syria to these radical groups that had taken
hold. The fact that America did not get involved in Syria, that left a
vacuum that Islamic State were not able to exploit? Islamic State
exploited it, also the government of al`Assad, they were given a
breather. Not just the United States, the UK government, in
Parliament before the US made the 11th hour change. I believe that
affected President Obama 's decision as to whether they would not go
ahead. One wonders could be `` what could be achieved. We see the
situation at the moment, it is not great. But what would have been
achieved by the United States going in? A senior fellow at the Cato
Institute, he used to be an adviser to President Reagan, he said
Washington helped make the mess in Iraq and elsewhere, the US needs to
stop trying to dominate and micromanage the world. There are
enough, but there are mistakes and errors of omission. You cannot say,
in all situations, there is one approach, and the approaches that we
should do nothing. You cannot base an entire foreign policy on the
so`called lessons of Iraq. I think Syria is a strong demonstration of
what happens and the bad things that follow from the US doing too little.
If you look at somewhere like Libya where there was military action, but
then no follow`through, we are in the situation now where there is a
dangerous vacuum? Yes, I was against the Libya invasion beforehand, I
thought it was ill`advised. The arguments were there, I did not
think the necessity was there, but I also thought if you are going to
favour an invasion and regime change, you had to be there for the
aftermath, to go in as the US and Europe did, I thought that was a
mistake, and reinforced questions about not giving up nuclear weapons.
Duffy was lauded in many capitals for having given up nuclear weapons.
When he was invaded after, that tall people and unfortunate lesson, not
get rid of nuclear weapons `` Gaddafi. When we went in, and did
not follow it up, that seems to be the worst. You remove the flow of
order. Gaddafi was deeply flawed, but we would not hang around to put
something less bad in place, what do we have now? Multiple failed states
in what was Libya. I think it is a fair question to say the people of
Libya arguably worse off now than they were under the deeply flawed
leadership of Gaddafi. And the same for Iraq with Saddam Hussein? You
can make that point. And yet you would argue that the US should have
got rid of President aside in Syria? At that point when he crossed the
line into use chemical weapons, I believe we should have used force to
strengthen the opposition, and reinforced the point that you cannot
use chemical weapons. If you are asking me to give you a perfectly
consistent foreign policy `` policy line, you can. One of the lessons of
history is that before you use any package of foreign policy tools or
military force, military intelligence, sanctions, diplomacy,
what have you, you need to look at the local situation. And so, in this
circumstance, what is likely to succeed, or at what cost, what do we
mean by success? What are the alternatives? The idea of
consistency is unfortunate and a bad idea.
We have a situation now, and as a result of what has happened, Robert
Gates, the former US secretary of defence, says that any former
secretary who advises US to stand a learn `` sent a land Army abroad
should have his head examined. That is rolled out? The US has had two
large footprints recently, one is Afghanistan and the other Iraq. We
are talking about more than 2 million Americans over the last
decade who have served in either of those countries. It is a large
footprint. We have more than 100,000 American soldiers in their for the
purpose of remaking societies. So yes, those kinds of ambitious heavy
on the interventions... No more nationbuilding? Nationbuilding,
maybe. We can strengthen security services and the rest. I don't think
we take a hands`off approach, but massively ambitious nationbuilding,
that can be the principal purpose. Stephen Ward, the professional Das
`` Professor of national affairs says that by cajoling, or getting
ignored and rebuked, maybe we should let them sort out the problems
themselves for a while? If anyone to American help, it should come at a
steep rise. He is speaking to the way Americans feel.
There is little appetite among the American public for other people 's
problems. But for every action there is an opposite reaction. What you
are seeing from the voices you talk about our reactions to what may be
seen as overambitious over exertions in the US, trying to do too much.
The danger for American follow `` foreign policy is that you do the
other extreme and do too little. What the Middle East chose is what
happens to a part of the world when the US does little. If you think
that any other region in the world, like Asia, or Japan, they are more
active and nationalistic, if you think these parts of the world can
sort themselves out on their own, without American involvement, I
think that is a delusion. The danger with some of the voices
you quote is that they have of learned the lessons, and of cannot
be a strategic posture of the US, but it is not all nothing.
There is another argument. They draw on the conclusion that America is
making things worse. That America will defy its history. There are
moments where American intervention has been counter`productive. Many of
the moments where American intervention have been incredibly.
The reaction to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Would the world
have been a better place of Saddam Hussein got away with that? Would
have he been rejected from Kuwait without us, of course not. But look
at what happens in Yemen. The reaction to that is Saudi Arabia
forms a coalition of people who have a more direct interest. Perhaps that
is a better way to sort out the problem. It is a dangerous
precedent. The United States is involved. The Saudis have made his
decisions on their own. The Saudis have reopened reacted to events in
Yemen. `` overreact. They have now made this a major test case for the
leadership of Saudi Arabia. If this does not work out in Yemen, and this
is not the kind of place you want to get ambitious, nationbuilding in
Yemen will not be any easier, it will question the degree to which
the Saudis have prestige and their military forces. It is pushing back
against Iran. For sure. But there are hand in Yemen was quite modest.
Take a step back. This is a glimpse of the world to come. When countries
like Saudi Arabia say, we cannot depend on the United States. We have
to make these strategic decisions on their own. If they do that here and
the Chinese or Japanese or someone else do it in Asia, the Russians do
it in Central Europe, this is not the world we will relish. This will
be an increasingly dangerous world. You mentioned something about the
argument of Gaddafi, who gave up his weapons and found his country
invaded and him ousted. You made a connection between what happened to
Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Ukraine, which gave up its weapons. You
believe that sends a powerful message to states, that they are
safer with nuclear weapons. I am sad to say that, but yes. North Korea
has not been attacked. What worries me, and we are looking at a country
like Iran, they have made the conclusion that having some nuclear
weapons is not a bad insurance policy. We talk about
non`proliferation and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. We talk
about it in principle. When you look at the fact that it is America with
its nuclear arsenal, is it likely that Iran is going to restrict its
ambition so that it effectively removes the option of having them?
It is essential. That Iran not realise that ambition. As bad as the
Middle East is now, I compare it to a modern 30 years War, imagine how
much worse it would be, not just if Iran has nuclear weapons, but if
injured, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, you name it.
Can you imagine what the next crisis would look like? If some of these
states are not stable and they fell out of power, who might get hands`on
nuclear weapons? How do we stop it? We do it through negotiations backed
by sanctions. If that works, great. If it does not work, military
intervention. I do not want it to come to that. There are real risks.
But with six nuclear power is, with some of those states being
inherently unstable, that is a nightmare. You talk about North
Korea. Do you see North Korea, it is a sort of dictator in an isolated
country. It is not isolated. It is in the middle of the Asia`Pacific.
It is not isolated by any stretch. It is not fill me with equanimity.
It is developing the stuff of nuclear weapons. It is developing
long`range vessels. It is turning them into warheads. It is quite
possible that in the next American President's tenure, the head of the
intelligence is going to walk in and say, North Korea has the ability to
put nuclear weapons on top of long`range missiles that can reach
the United States. What will we do? This is a country that has seen
millions of its own people die in a skirmish and genocide. That is a
worrisome scenario. So you want to ever is the next president to be
able to ratchet up their policy on North Korea? We should be talking to
China about what to do. China has more influence over North Korea than
the rest of the world combined. China should not want to see another
crisis on the North Korean peninsular caused by this
leadership. What China does not want to see is the thousands of American
troops sitting in South Korea in any way moving forward and moving on.
Then let us talk about how we move this. What would it take for if you
are unified Korea? Might not be strategic outcomes on the Korean
peninsula that are better than having a divided peninsular with
North Korea and military threat to the region's stability with nuclear
weapons? That is a conversation were padding. Much more recently you have
been involved in a situation which arguably is one of the successes of
modern diplomacy. We go to Northern Ireland. Perhaps it is the
juxtaposition. Northern Ireland, which many people say, look at the
success that was the result of negotiations and a negotiated
settlement. And yet, the recent negotiations failed. They failed on
the outstanding issues of the raids and flags. And the legacy of the
past. You saw the facts of the bitter divisions of decades.
Absolutely. Northern Ireland is one of the most divided societies in
Europe. Most of the kids go to single tradition schools.
Neighbourhoods are divided. This is still a segregated society. When
politics are so based on identity, it is so hard to get compromised.
But it was partly the diplomatic recess and there were elections that
many people saw as a way out. To hear the outcome from the talks,
because you said those who held the problems of power, that would be the
unionists backed by the British government, the need to be willing
to meet others halfway. Many people suggested one of the reasons they
were not were because of elections. It is largely based on the work we
did on the legacy of the past. The past remains for them to implement.
It also shows it is a glass half empty, half full. Things are a lot
better than they were 15`20 years ago. The fact that things are better
has removed some of the urgency. When things get a little bit better,
it makes it more difficult to get over the finish line. Can you see
things breaking down? I can, that is not impossible. In the troubles,
3000 people died. I can see violence happening again. We have a new
generation that did not experience the misery and danger of the
troubles. There is a little romance there. I can imagine a demonstration
overflights and parades getting out of hand. I cannot rule it out. When
you are involved with five parties, did you have your faith in diplomacy
tested? My faith in many things was tested. But again, I thought we made
some progress. Because it was so difficult. Absolutely. We did not
succeed in getting an agreement. The good news is, an agreement was
reached which was predicated upon the negotiations. It still has not
been implemented. To me, unless things move forward, it is the
bicycle theory. People fall off. Thank you for coming on HARDtalk.
A rather different complexion to the weather for the rest of the