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What Does President's Speech Yesterday Mean for U.S. Policy in Mideast?
Aired November 07, 2003 - 07:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: So what does the president's speech yesterday mean for U.S. policy in the Middle East?
Joining us this morning to talk about it, Ambassador Richard Haass, who's a former State Department official and also president of the Council On Foreign Relations.
Good morning.
Nice to see you, Richard.
AMB. RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Good morning, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: The president, we heard him talk about the policy changing. And in the past you've written about and spoken about the democratic exception. I'll sum it up in a nutshell and you can tell me if I'm right. Basically, the U.S. will look the other way as long as countries are friendly and basically supportive of U.S. policies. What we heard from the president yesterday, does that mean that that is the end of the democratic exception from now on?
HAASS: It's probably the beginning of the end of it. What I think we learned on 9/11 is that what goes on inside these societies, what happens there, the fact that young men in particular grow up alienated, see corruption around them, don't see political or economy opportunity, have terrible educations, that all of that is not just their problem, it's also our problem, and that what happens elsewhere can become a security nightmare for the United States.
So I think what you're seeing here is raising this up on the American foreign policy agenda. That's something new.
O'BRIEN: Here's a list that the president said were due for praise. He said the steps that Bahrain has taken, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait.
Surprised at all by Saudi Arabia's appearance on that list?
HAASS: Well, barely on the list. What I think you really saw...
O'BRIEN: But on the list.
HAASS: What I think mainly you saw for the Saudis was more nudging them. Yes, the Saudis have announced that half of their so- called Majliss, their assembly of sorts, is going to be elected. But what I think this really is more the United States even sending a public message to the Saudi people and their leaders that even Saudi Arabia, for all of its oil, for all of its military bases, is not immune and we're no longer going to look the other way.
O'BRIEN: Here's what the president had to say about Iran.
Let's listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAASS: It's a threat, but it's basically a sign of almost the United States aligning itself with the two thirds of the Iranian people who regularly vote for reform. But it also simply reflects the fact that right now the United States is clearly alienated, to say the least, from the clerics who rule Iran. And there's hope in the United States and elsewhere that over time we can see the end of this type of a clerical regime there.
O'BRIEN: There are some people who would say weird to point out Iran at this point, since maybe the steps that have been taken lately are not huge, but they are sort of positive in the right direction.
HAASS: Well, actually right now Iran has one of the more open societies in the Arab and Islamic world, for all of its flaws, for all of our differences about foreign policy.
O'BRIEN: Do you think -- it's kind of a strange time to be pushing for more democracy and modernization, not Westernization, in the Middle East at a time when we have 100,000 plus troops there and anti-American sentiment is so high and there's so much hostility toward Americans, isn't it sort of a bad timing thing?
HAASS: The timing's not great. I take your point. And people aren't giving us the hearing we want because they're not happy with our Iraq policy, they're not happy with our policy towards Israel. But this is not a one shot deal. We're talking, really, about the U.S. policy thats probably going to last for decades. And this is one of the opening shots in a battle for ideas.
Essentially we're telling the people of the Middle East you have got to join the revolutionization of democracy, of open societies and economies. This is much more than a speech. We're really talking about a rotation of American foreign policy.
O'BRIEN: The president, as we heard, said that decades of U.S. interventionist policy was sort of over. In kind of a phrase, and I think we have a clip of it. Let's see if we can roll that now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: It's kind of a mea culpa, sorry, 60 years, six decades. Is that going to go far enough?
HAASS: It's actually really an interesting statement. It's, in part, a collective mea culpa. And -- but it's also a message. It's basically time to say now, from now on we are no longer going to look the other way. We made a mistake in the past by ignoring your educational systems, by ignoring your lack of democracy, by ignoring your lack of rule of law and markets. We are not going to make that mistake from here on in.
So it's putting people on notice that we're now going to have a much more complete relationship. In a funny sort of way, we're now going to have the same sort of relations with countries in the Middle East that we have with countries in Latin America and Africa, Europe and Asia.
O'BRIEN: But you've got to ask, can it work at a time when mistrust of the U.S. is so high, especially in the Middle East?
HAASS: It may not work in the next days or weeks. But this is not a days or week policy. This is a years or decades policy. Over time, we will get a hearing because you know what? No matter what people in the Middle East say today in reaction to the president's speech, ignore all the criticism. What matters is we now have put these ideas in circulation. And for coming years and decades, this type of speech, when it's repeated again and again, and also when the president meets with foreign leaders and they don't just talk about the Arab-Israeli question or they don't just talk about Iran and Iraq, but when the president now meets with the head of Saudi Arabia and Egypt and he says OK, we're done talking about foreign policy, what's going on inside your society? What are you doing to give your people hope? What are you doing to improve the quality of your education?
When we start putting this on the agenda time and time again, publicly and privately, it will make a difference.
O'BRIEN: Is there a tacit threat there -- what are you doing to improve conditions for your people, otherwise what happened in Iraq is what we're going to do.
HAASS: That's not the threat. It's more a warning to them in a different way -- either you will change gradually, either you will have evolutionary change or you will face revolutionary change. It's essentially giving them a heads up, you have got to begin to change or you will face revolution. We have a stake in your change because we don't want you to spawn generations of young men who get on airplanes and commit suicide and take us down with them.
We now have a stake in what happens inside these societies.
O'BRIEN: Ambassador Richard Haass, always nice to see you.
Thanks for coming in this morning.
HAASS: Thanks, Soledad.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Policy in Mideast?>
Aired November 7, 2003 - 07:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: So what does the president's speech yesterday mean for U.S. policy in the Middle East?
Joining us this morning to talk about it, Ambassador Richard Haass, who's a former State Department official and also president of the Council On Foreign Relations.
Good morning.
Nice to see you, Richard.
AMB. RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Good morning, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: The president, we heard him talk about the policy changing. And in the past you've written about and spoken about the democratic exception. I'll sum it up in a nutshell and you can tell me if I'm right. Basically, the U.S. will look the other way as long as countries are friendly and basically supportive of U.S. policies. What we heard from the president yesterday, does that mean that that is the end of the democratic exception from now on?
HAASS: It's probably the beginning of the end of it. What I think we learned on 9/11 is that what goes on inside these societies, what happens there, the fact that young men in particular grow up alienated, see corruption around them, don't see political or economy opportunity, have terrible educations, that all of that is not just their problem, it's also our problem, and that what happens elsewhere can become a security nightmare for the United States.
So I think what you're seeing here is raising this up on the American foreign policy agenda. That's something new.
O'BRIEN: Here's a list that the president said were due for praise. He said the steps that Bahrain has taken, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait.
Surprised at all by Saudi Arabia's appearance on that list?
HAASS: Well, barely on the list. What I think you really saw...
O'BRIEN: But on the list.
HAASS: What I think mainly you saw for the Saudis was more nudging them. Yes, the Saudis have announced that half of their so- called Majliss, their assembly of sorts, is going to be elected. But what I think this really is more the United States even sending a public message to the Saudi people and their leaders that even Saudi Arabia, for all of its oil, for all of its military bases, is not immune and we're no longer going to look the other way.
O'BRIEN: Here's what the president had to say about Iran.
Let's listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAASS: It's a threat, but it's basically a sign of almost the United States aligning itself with the two thirds of the Iranian people who regularly vote for reform. But it also simply reflects the fact that right now the United States is clearly alienated, to say the least, from the clerics who rule Iran. And there's hope in the United States and elsewhere that over time we can see the end of this type of a clerical regime there.
O'BRIEN: There are some people who would say weird to point out Iran at this point, since maybe the steps that have been taken lately are not huge, but they are sort of positive in the right direction.
HAASS: Well, actually right now Iran has one of the more open societies in the Arab and Islamic world, for all of its flaws, for all of our differences about foreign policy.
O'BRIEN: Do you think -- it's kind of a strange time to be pushing for more democracy and modernization, not Westernization, in the Middle East at a time when we have 100,000 plus troops there and anti-American sentiment is so high and there's so much hostility toward Americans, isn't it sort of a bad timing thing?
HAASS: The timing's not great. I take your point. And people aren't giving us the hearing we want because they're not happy with our Iraq policy, they're not happy with our policy towards Israel. But this is not a one shot deal. We're talking, really, about the U.S. policy thats probably going to last for decades. And this is one of the opening shots in a battle for ideas.
Essentially we're telling the people of the Middle East you have got to join the revolutionization of democracy, of open societies and economies. This is much more than a speech. We're really talking about a rotation of American foreign policy.
O'BRIEN: The president, as we heard, said that decades of U.S. interventionist policy was sort of over. In kind of a phrase, and I think we have a clip of it. Let's see if we can roll that now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: It's kind of a mea culpa, sorry, 60 years, six decades. Is that going to go far enough?
HAASS: It's actually really an interesting statement. It's, in part, a collective mea culpa. And -- but it's also a message. It's basically time to say now, from now on we are no longer going to look the other way. We made a mistake in the past by ignoring your educational systems, by ignoring your lack of democracy, by ignoring your lack of rule of law and markets. We are not going to make that mistake from here on in.
So it's putting people on notice that we're now going to have a much more complete relationship. In a funny sort of way, we're now going to have the same sort of relations with countries in the Middle East that we have with countries in Latin America and Africa, Europe and Asia.
O'BRIEN: But you've got to ask, can it work at a time when mistrust of the U.S. is so high, especially in the Middle East?
HAASS: It may not work in the next days or weeks. But this is not a days or week policy. This is a years or decades policy. Over time, we will get a hearing because you know what? No matter what people in the Middle East say today in reaction to the president's speech, ignore all the criticism. What matters is we now have put these ideas in circulation. And for coming years and decades, this type of speech, when it's repeated again and again, and also when the president meets with foreign leaders and they don't just talk about the Arab-Israeli question or they don't just talk about Iran and Iraq, but when the president now meets with the head of Saudi Arabia and Egypt and he says OK, we're done talking about foreign policy, what's going on inside your society? What are you doing to give your people hope? What are you doing to improve the quality of your education?
When we start putting this on the agenda time and time again, publicly and privately, it will make a difference.
O'BRIEN: Is there a tacit threat there -- what are you doing to improve conditions for your people, otherwise what happened in Iraq is what we're going to do.
HAASS: That's not the threat. It's more a warning to them in a different way -- either you will change gradually, either you will have evolutionary change or you will face revolutionary change. It's essentially giving them a heads up, you have got to begin to change or you will face revolution. We have a stake in your change because we don't want you to spawn generations of young men who get on airplanes and commit suicide and take us down with them.
We now have a stake in what happens inside these societies.
O'BRIEN: Ambassador Richard Haass, always nice to see you.
Thanks for coming in this morning.
HAASS: Thanks, Soledad.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Policy in Mideast?>
