07/01/15 – Stephen Walt – The Scott Horton Show

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All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, it's my show, Scott Horton Show, live noon to 2 Eastern Time on the Liberty Radio Network, LRN.
FM, and just one guest today, but now it's time for him, finally.
It's Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, and of course famously the co-author of the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
Welcome back to the show, professor, how are you?
I'm just fine, how are you?
I'm doing real good, appreciate you joining us on the show today.
So you've written this very interesting article, What Should We Do If the Islamic State Wins?
Kind of looks like it's winning.
I mostly read Patrick Coburn and Mitchell Prothero when it comes to the news going on over there, and of course there's even more news coming out of Syria, but when it comes to their strength in Iraq, Coburn emphasizes that they rule a land the size of Great Britain, they've got a working system of conscription and taxation, they rule a population greater than the majority of UN member states, and they are, that's not a highfalutin name for a group, the Islamic State is a state now, and as he emphasized in one of his recent articles, it's not that they're that powerful really, but all of their adversaries are extraordinarily weak and none of them get along with each other, and shrug, it looks like maybe they are here to stay, what do you think?
Well I think it's important to sort of clarify what we mean by winning.
In my piece I suggested that winning means precisely what you just said, that they managed to stay in power in more or less the area they control.
I think the more important thing is that they're not going to spread around the world, they're not the beginnings of some vast revolutionary wave that is going to engulf the entire Middle East and beyond, although some of ISIS's leaders would like to do that, you know, we hear phrases like, you know, they control territory greater than Great Britain or larger than Great Britain, most of that territory is pretty worthless desert, you know, they've got no significant industry, not a lot of natural resources, not in fact an enormous well-educated, you know, advanced population, so it's still, you know, powerful by the standards of maybe some terrorist organizations, but very weak by the standards of some states.
The question we ought to ask ourselves is if they don't collapse anytime soon, how is the outside world going to deal with them?
Right, well, important question, I mean they're landlocked, so that's good, and at least officially they don't have any allies, although certainly the Turks don't seem, they have the power, I guess, to dislodge them, to attack them, but they seem to prefer them to the Kurds anyway, and so, and to Assad too, and so who is to do something about them?
I admit, and I'm happy, I'm proud to admit how wrong I was about this, a year ago I just said, look, it's a matter of months before they send in the paratroopers, the 3rd Infantry Division, the Marine Corps, to rouse these guys out of Mosul, because how can they possibly politically withstand this guy who's basically bin Laden himself up there on the, on the balcony, declaring himself the dictator, and I was totally wrong about that, apparently American politics and the American military establishment would rather let him be than do what it really would take to get rid of them, thank goodness, but, but yeah, other, other than that, who could take him?
You think Iran might actually really invade with their whole army to try to get rid of these guys at some point?
No, I think that's unlikely too, and I think what you're seeing here is the fact that most of ISIS's adversaries, and they have plenty, understand that they are not, in fact, a mortal threat, they're a problem, and we don't want to minimize the degree to which they're a problem, but as you've just indicated, right, that the Turks don't like ISIS, but they're worried that anything might happen there that might strengthen the Kurds or enhance a Kurdish bid for independence at some point down the road, so Turkey is ambivalent.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia doesn't like ISIS very much, but also doesn't like Assad, so they're not willing to commit themselves full force here.
Iran and the United States, we, we don't like ISIS, but we don't like each other very much, and we're reluctant to do anything that might enhance Iranian influence in Iraq even more.
Of course, Iran doesn't want to do anything that might enhance American influence in Iraq.
So in a sense, all of the parties that are opposed to ISIS have various disagreements amongst themselves, and if they really saw ISIS as the most serious threat they faced, that it really was going to start taking over, you would expect to see that coalition come together to do something about it, but in fact, most of its members have other priorities, which is why you're not seeing a really concerted, all-out effort to go at what is ultimately a problem, but again, not an existential danger.
Now, I wonder, are you surprised that even after the declaration of the caliphate, that they have continued to back the rebels and arm the rebels and work with Turkey and Saudi to back the rebels, now even rehabilitating al-Qaeda?
I almost can't believe it.
An article in Foreign Affairs accepting al-Qaeda, the enemy of America's enemy.
Let's rebrand the people who are still sworn loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York City, because hey, at least he's not Assad.
And I'm not saying that America should be backing Assad in this case, but it seems like the American government would think that, that hey, Assad is the best guy, that he's the moderate with his clean shaven chin, if anybody is, to keep al-Nusra and the Islamic State at bay.
And yet, here we are a year after the declaration of the caliphate, and America is still on the side of, you know, I guess they say al-Qaeda or al-Nusra and ISIS are enemies, but they have basically the same agenda still, even though they fight amongst each other some, they're still the rebels against Assad together, and I wonder what you think of that.
It seems absolutely amazing to me.
As amazing as it was in the in the lead-up to the declaration of the caliphate, it's ten times as amazing now, no?
Well, maybe you shouldn't be so amazed.
I mean, what's really going on here is the recognition that the United States does not have a significant dog in this particular fight.
The United States is a country, you know, with 300 million or more people, a 17 trillion dollar economy, mighty military forces, we're far from dangers, no hostile states near our borders, etc.
And ultimately, American security isn't significantly affected by who is governing Syria, who's governing Anbar province.
We have tended to exaggerate the strategic importance of a lot of these areas, and I think what you're seeing now is a tacit recognition that, in fact, we don't have to try and play kingmaker there and figure out who's actually going to run the place.
The second thing, of course, is that I think we now know that if the United States were to get actively involved, particularly on any kind of large scale, it would be likely to backfire.
It would play into precisely the narrative that the Islamic State uses, a narrative of, you know, crusaders and Western imperialism and American interference.
And the more the United States does, the more that narrative sort of takes hold, particularly among the Sunni population that, you know, resents the fact that we overthrew Saddam, resents the fact that we bungled the occupation, resents the fact that we've backed government in Baghdad that didn't treat the Sunni population of Iraq particularly well.
So I think what you're also seeing is a recognition that as bad as that situation might appear, and it certainly is a real curse for the people living under ISIS's control, the United States could easily make it worse by trying to go in there again and clean the whole place up.
This, I think, is going to be one of those unfortunate tragedies where we're just going to have to try to contain the problem and wait till things, for lack of a better phrase, sort of burn themselves out.
All right, well, I guess music's about to start playing.
We're going to have to go out to this break.
But on the other side of the break, I'll ask you, Stephen, whether you think that containment means training up the Iraqi army again, you know, at least in Shiastan, more money, more guns for the Kurds up north, the possible consequences of that, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi, the rest of the American allies in the region and their roles.
But hang tight right there.
We'll be right back with Stephen Walt from foreignpolicy.com in just a sec.
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Now here's the deal.
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Now they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress and the courts.
They betrayed their sworn oaths to the Constitution and Bill of Rights again and again and can in no way be trusted to stop the abuses for us.
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How?
We nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy.
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I mean it.
There's real reason to be optimistic here.
They've gotten their model legislation introduced all over the place in state after state.
I've lost count, more than a dozen.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
Talking with Stephen Walt from Harvard and foreignpolicy.com about this piece paging up.
It's called, What Should We Do If the Islamic State Wins?
And again, he clarified he doesn't mean come and conquer the middle part of North America.
He just means if they can hold on to the piece that they've carved out of Western Iraq and Eastern Syria so far, basically.
And that's what we're talking about here.
And what should be done about it?
And he's saying not invade.
Contain them.
It can be done.
There's plenty of precedent for it.
But now I wonder what exactly that means.
Because we talked earlier about the tension between the Turks and the Kurds, for example.
And if America goes arming up the Kurds, they seem to have less and less in common with the Shiite government in Baghdad these days.
And I wonder whether that might just accidentally lead to a whole other war between Iraqi Kurdistan and who knows who else in the neighborhood.
Right.
Well, the central thing to remember is that ISIS is primarily a problem for the people in the area it controls and for the countries that are its immediate neighbors.
And it's ultimately their job to deal with it, not ours.
I think there are reasons to question whether or not additional American military training is really even going to help.
We've poured billions of dollars and many years into trying to train Iraqi security forces, and they haven't been willing to fight very effectively in the battlefield, as the US Secretary of Defense pointed out last month.
Moreover, in a sense, it fuels the continued problems between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, because the Baghdad government is Shia dominated.
If we pour lots of money into building up a primarily Shia army, that's not going to win much popularity in the areas where the Islamic State now is.
The other problem with sort of viewing this as an American project is that the more we do, the more everybody else in the region will just free ride on our efforts.
There's a long history of that going on.
So I think, while there may be a sort of limited role for the United States to play, ultimately, we have to recognize that the Islamic State is not likely to spread very far.
It's gonna be, I think, relatively easy for its neighbors to contain, and the American role should be very much a sort of backstopping role at most, and not particularly alarmist.
One final element to that is we ought to recognize that a group like ISIS, through its use of social media, is going to be able to inspire some degree of copycat or lone wolf type attacks, and we've already seen a number of those in a number of places.
That's going to happen.
The good news, such as it is, is that those dangers are relatively modest.
Some people are going to be affected, some people are going to die, but it won't be a large number, and it's certainly not going to be sufficient to destabilize whole regions or overcome other countries unless we sort of take the bait and fall into their trap and do a lot of stupid things that facilitate their efforts to win additional sympathizers elsewhere.
One final point I'd make is that this is a radical organization, and although it's been more effective than I think many people expected at the beginning, it's got lots of internal divisions within it.
It's prone to quarrel with others.
It likes to condemn anyone who disagrees with it, including other Muslims, infidels, and apostates, and heretics.
This is not an organization, in short, that's likely to be very popular, either where it currently exists or anywhere else.
It'll attract some degree of sympathizers in other places, but not very many of them, and I think we can take a rather measured view of the danger it poses and wait for it to burn itself out.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, that's a lot of what happened to ISIS Jr. back when it was al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2006, was they just pushed their luck pushing everyone around.
It wasn't just that they had to deal with the Americans and the Shiite militias, but in the lands where they were supposedly welcome, they found themselves quickly pretty unwelcome, and it seems like, you know, yeah, I agree that that's certainly the best hope, that they'll just have so little legitimacy over the lands that they already control that they'll undermine themselves from within.
It seems likely the way they crucify people for, you know, victimless crimes and this kind of thing.
I mean, they're way out of control.
We've seen this movie in some earlier historical episodes.
You know, after the Bolshevik Revolution back in 1917, you know, a number of people in the West who were sympathetic to it flocked to Moscow because they wanted to support the revolution and they thought it was the wave of the future.
And in many cases, these were people who rapidly became disillusioned by what they saw and by how things ultimately proceeded.
So, you know, the same sort of thing, I think, is already, there's some evidence that this is happening with ISIS.
It's got people coming from different parts of the world to support it, but once they get there, they discover it's not some sort of wonderful Islamic paradise.
It's actually a rather brutal, unforgiving regime, which doesn't, in fact, have a lot of resources, doesn't have a lot it can do for the people under its control.
And I think we have to have enough confidence, you know, both in our own institutions, but also in institutions elsewhere in the Middle East, that they will ultimately prove more appealing than the 7th century vision that ISIS is putting forward.
Now, it seems like over all these years, whether we're fighting against them, like in Iraq War II, we're fighting for them, like in Libya in 2011, our government just is, as Michael Shoyer once said, Bin Laden's indispensable ally, even in death, spreading, accomplishing his goals for them, basically.
And I'm reminded, I'm sure you're familiar with Shoyer, the former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, and he can be very hawkish at times.
And I saw an interview with him on Lou Dobbs, where he was talking about how crazy it was that we were backing the Mujahideen against Assad.
And Lou Dobbs asked him, well, should we back Assad against them?
And I thought he might say, yeah, you know, and he goes, no, because that, he's getting smart again, not angry.
That will play right into their narrative, that it's America and the Jewish Israelis and the Shiite apostates, they're all in it against us, true believers in this kind of thing, fight the battle of Armageddon, Dabiq, and whatever, this kind of deal, just like what they want.
And I wonder whether you think very many people in Washington, D.C. understand what you were explaining about how, you know, what their narrative is, how important it is to their narrative that they're the enemies of the Americans, and how counterproductive it might be to even switch sides to those who are fighting against them in Syria, or to keep backing their enemies like in Iraq right now.
Well, I think there are people in Washington who do understand the risks or the danger of acting in ways that reinforce the message that our opponents are trying to convey.
I think President Obama gets that.
He understands that, you know, we want to be careful not to appear to fulfill the kinds of, you know, prophecies or analyses that the other side is putting forward.
But I think what is often forgotten in Washington, because our foreign policy establishment really is addicted to a high level of global activism and trying to run the world, is that, first of all, you know, power, and especially military power, is a pretty crude instrument.
And when you use it, it always generates unintended consequences.
It always has effects you can't fully anticipate.
Second, that social engineering, trying to remake other societies along this sort of American model is extremely hard to do.
It almost never works.
We've seen it fail in Iraq.
We've seen it fail in Afghanistan.
We've seen it fail in Libya, fail in Yemen, et cetera.
And that we need to approach a lot of these problems with a certain degree of humility, that we're not going to be able to fix them.
And the more we try, the more likely it is we'll just make things worse.
You know, as something we got to know from our own national experience, you know, people don't like taking orders from foreigners, even if those foreigners are well-intentioned.
And when we show up with a lot of capability and a lot of force and a lot of power, it naturally generates a lot of resentment, even when we're there ostensibly to help others.
And finally, that trying to come in and reorder the entire Middle East isn't necessary.
It's not essential to American national security that we turn that entire region into a set of pro-American democracies, even if we knew how to do that.
And if the United States, you know, backed off more, allowed those countries to govern themselves without as much American interference, I think we would find ourselves actually more popular in the region.
We would face less hostility from groups like ISIS.
And those groups would have much more trouble gaining any purchase in other societies.
But that calls for a real revolution in how the United States approaches much of the world, and especially the Middle East.
All right.
Now, when you talk about the relative weakness of the Islamic State, I know you're not being Pollyanna about it.
You're trying to be realistic in the face of hysteria and that kind of thing, basically.
But at the same time, you know, like you talked about it, it's in their interest to pick a fight with us, to get them to, to get us to fall for the same trick of, you know, escalating over there and playing into their hands and that kind of thing.
But I wonder whether you think that maybe in Washington, D.C., that they are, you know, a little bit too naive, you know, for their own good about just how dangerous these guys ultimately could be when it comes to that kind of thing, that, again, they're pursuing this policy still of trying to train up and arm moderates to work.
There's the new army of conquest and whatever, continuing to follow this policy in Syria, even after the rise of the caliphate, the declaration of the caliphate a year ago and that kind of thing.
Did they just think that, you know, oh, well, I mean, Obama explained to Jeffrey Goldberg, or they talked about it in the Atlantic interview in 2012, that, yeah, you know, weakening Assad or getting rid of Assad, replacing him with a democratic government, or however they phrase it, would be a great way to weaken Iran's authority, you know, power and influence in the region, you know, yeah.
So I wonder if you think that they think that really, yeah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, whatever, they're basically just a bunch of kooks waving AK-47s over their head.
They're no real threat, but Iran really still is the threat.
And so maybe they actually don't mind the caliphate so much, even a year into it, as long as they're helping to contain the Iranian revolution that Bush Jr. imported into the southern part of Iraq in 2003 and has solidified since then.
And this is that redirection from 2007, right, to back the Sunnis, even the jihadists, if it means weakening Iran.
And I'm sorry, because I know I sound too true-three conspiratorial about it, but I'm just trying to be, you know, New Yorker magazine about it.
Well, I guess it would be, at one level, sort of reassuring to think that we had a really sophisticated, subtle, you know, playing our enemies off against each other kind of strategy.
I just, I don't think we've been anywhere near that skillful.
I think we've sort of blundered along, and we've avoided in recent years some of the bigger mistakes we had made in the past.
But I don't think, you know, that what's driving U.S. policy is the kind of really sophisticated and, I might even say, sort of ruthlessly Machiavellian approach that you just laid out there.
You know, I think that the administration understands that ISIS is not a mortal threat, which is why their response has been measured.
Unfortunately, in Washington and in, you know, big segments of the media, there are people who like to spend a lot of time, you know, sort of threat inflating and offering a very alarmist views, either as a way to sort of wage partisan political warfare, or because that's a way of getting people to watch cable news, right, with, you know, lurid tales about beheadings and a sort of 24-7 cycle of paranoia.
You know, ISIS is a group that has maybe 30,000 to 50,000 people under arms, most of them badly trained, not particularly well-armed.
You know, that's sort of the size of a couple of American infantry divisions.
We're told that it has revenues of, you know, $2 million a week, which sounds like a lot at first glance, but, you know, by the standards of a state, really quite paltry.
They don't have significant resources.
The one place where I would agree with what you had to say is that, you know, if you step back and look at what America's overall strategic interest in the Middle East, you know, for decades it has been to make sure the Middle East remained divided.
I mean, it wasn't controlled by a single hostile power that, you know, might manipulate the oil supply or do other things that we would find objectionable.
And one could argue that today the Middle East is more divided today than it has been in any period in recent memory.
That has various unfortunate consequences, both for the people there, but also because it does spill over in small ways outside.
But in terms of the United States facing a real strategic threat emanating from the Middle East, I think that, in a sense, is more remote than it might have been at other times.
There is, I think, a long-term concern with Iran as a potential, you know, regional power, which is, I think, why the administration has been working very hard to cap Iran's nuclear program and then eventually work towards a more constructive relationship with Iran, hoping that Iran's own policies moderate over time, and at the same time doing what we can to reassure others in the region that we're going to strive for a balance of power over the longer term.
But I guess as I look at the Middle East today, the thought that any country is going to be able to dominate that region, whether it's Iran or Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Egypt, or any radical groups are going to be able to try and dominate the region, I think that's very remote now and is likely to be quite remote for, you know, several decades to come.
And I'm sorry if I made it sound like I thought that Bush had deliberately imported the Iranian revolution with the war of 03.
Obviously, that was his gigantic mistake that they weren't going to get the Hashemite kingdom of the clean break paper after all.
So I didn't mean to say that.
That obviously would have been off the deep end.
But I mean, they are, as we talked about, and I'm sorry, I'm keeping you over if you got to go.
It's okay.
But they are still they would have us believe that al Qaeda is the lesser evil than Assad in Syria right now.
So that policy of getting rid of him to weaken Iran apparently has not gone away.
Or am I oversimplifying it too much?
Or?
Well, I think you're just it's just illustrating how complicated this situation is and how you know, none of these parties are really parties that we want to be particularly close to.
Certainly, one doesn't want to embrace the side and say, you know, all is forgiven.
But the fact is, because of the complexity there, because of the fact that we don't have reliable instruments of influence with most of these groups, it's very hard to anticipate what the results of any significant American intervention would be.
You know, as we've seen in other contexts, like Libya, even an intervention that succeeds and accomplishes exactly what we wanted it to accomplish, which in the case of Libya was the removal of the Gaddafi regime, ultimately produces the result that we didn't want, which was a failed state and a place where extremists can can go and and cause more more trouble.
But I think again, this is a the real prescription here is for a certain degree of humility about what the United States can and can't accomplish in this context.
And the recognition that fortunately, our national security and prosperity does not depend on what happens there.
Right.
All right.
I'm sorry for keeping you so long.
Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Appreciate it.
Sure thing.
Pleasure talking with you.
Okay, guys, that is Stephen Walt.
He teaches at Harvard and writes at foreignpolicy.com.
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Hey, I'll Scott Horton here for off now.org.
Now here's the deal.
Due to the Snowden revelations, we have a great opportunity for a short period of time to get some real rollback of the national surveillance state.
Now they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress and the courts.
They betrayed their sworn oaths to the constitution and bill of rights again and again, and can in no way be trusted to stop the abuses for us.
We've got to do it ourselves.
How we nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy.
The off now project of the 10th amendment center has gotten off to a great start.
I mean it.
There's real reason to be optimistic here.
They've gotten their model legislation introduced all over the place in state after state.
I've lost count more than a dozen.
You're always wondering, yeah, but what can we do?
Here's something, something important, something that can work.
If we do the work, get started cutting off the NSA support in your state, go to off now.org.