 Good morning, everyone. Morning. Welcome to Norwich University. Thank you so much for participating in Norwich University's Fourth Peace and Waste Summit in person or virtually. My name is Yang Mokoo. I am Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Director for Peace and Waste Center at Norwich University. I am so thankful to have this great opportunity to serve as Executive Director for this year's Middle East Summit. Yesterday, two keynote speakers and nine scholars and policy experts and two Norwich University students and two Dartmouth College students, they shared their unique insights about how to address so many difficult and entangled problems in the Middle Eastern region and the global community. So this morning, we will have two roundtable discussions. The first session will examine the complexity of the Middle Eastern politics and society. And the second one, we'll look into Western strategy toward the Middle Eastern region. Right now, I'm going to introduce a great scholar and professor, Dr. Roly Brookhand, in the Department of History and Political Science at Norwich University. We'll lead this first roundtable discussion. Now, I turn it over to Dr. Brookhand. Thank you. Thank you very much, Yang Mo. I wonder if we could give Yang Mo Dr. Ku a round of applause for his organization of this and the other panelists. The title of this panel is Complexities in Middle Eastern Politics and Business Consultant and Vermonter Tom Peters wrote, quote, if you're not confused, you're not paying attention, unquote. And so I hope this panel, nonetheless, will leave you with better ideas, at least of what to see as complex and better questions to ask as you look at events in the contemporary Middle East. Let me introduce the panelists, and then I'll tell you what we're going to do for the next time period until 1040, 1040. Starting on the end, Saïd Gokar is a UC Foundation Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. See, I can't see the nameplate, so thank you. Thank you. Yeah, if you could raise your hands when I introduce you, just to make sure. Is UC Foundation Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He's also a non-resident senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in the United Kingdom. Gokar is the author of a book on the Basij, the paramilitary militia of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Richard Moss is associate professor in the Russian Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College's Center for Naval Warfare Studies. His current research projects focus on maritime dimension of Russia's Syrian intervention. He also specializes in US-Soviet relationship during the Cold War and as an expert on the Nixon presidential recordings. Professor Moss previously served as a government and contract military capabilities analyst with the Department of Defense and as a historian with the Department of State. The University Press of Kentucky published his book, quote, Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow, Confidential Diplomacy and Detente in January 2017. Dr. Guy Ziv, on the end, is associate professor at American University School of International Service, where he teaches courses on US foreign policy, international negotiations, US-Israel relations, and Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. His current research project focuses on civil military relations in Israel. Dr. Ziv is a background in policy having worked on Capitol Hill and for Israel Policy Forum, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization that promotes American efforts aimed at resolving the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Dr. Diane Zuri is associate professor of security studies at the Naval Defense College of the United Arab Emirates. She also serves as a non-resident senior fellow and presidential advisory board member at Joint Special Operations University McGill Air Force Base, Florida. Dr. Zuri earned her PhD in political science from George Mason University in 2015. Her dissertation focused on Iraqi political alignments and alliances after the fall of the Both Party. Today, her major research interests are Gulf politics, US foreign policy, defense strategy, and maritime cybersecurity. Prior to her work in academia, Dr. Zuri served as officer in the United States Air Force and worked in the aerospace and defense industry. She is also a 2001 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and a 2006 graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Can we give a round of applause for our panelists? So I'd like, thank you. I'd like to start the discussion with a couple questions that I've prepared and then we will open the floor to questions from you all. We have microphones at both sides of the auditorium. First question, let's talk about Israel. Under the new Israeli government, under Benjamin Netanyahu is arguably the most extreme right-wing administration in that nation's history. Thomas Friedman has recently stated in the New York Times, quote, Israel today is a boiler with way, way, way too much steam building up inside and the bolts are about to fly off in all directions, unquote. How might the Israeli government's policies on settlements, judicial reform, and the treatment of its Arab citizens cause internal and regional unrest in the near future? Hey, first of all, good morning everybody. Can anybody hear me? This is working properly, great. So let me just start out by saying that when it comes to what we're seeing right now in Israel and if you've been watching the news, you've seen the demonstrations, this is very unusual and the reason it's unusual is because Netanyahu is, this is not his first rodeo. He's been, he's the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history. He's had many, many governments since the 90s but this time things are different and one of the reasons things are different is because a lot of Israelis who are not necessarily affiliated with the other side who might even be, who might have even voted for Netanyahu or for his Likud party feel that this particular government is, has taken things a little bit too far and more specifically the kind of legal overhaul that this government is trying to instill is really gutting the courts and weakening the Supreme Court to the point where they feel like their democracy is threatened. Now, keep in mind there are a lot of criticisms of Israeli democracy given the occupation of the West Bank and a lot of people find Israel's democracy to be flawed and despite the fact that it is somewhat flawed, it is a democracy nonetheless and one that Israelis are reluctant to give up and so what we've seen since the formation of this new government in late December is weekly demonstrations and not only have the demonstrations not died out we have seen more and more people joining the demonstrations. The momentum couldn't be stronger at this point as the government kind of digs in and is trying to pass these so-called reforms that as I said are really aimed at weakening the courts and so the reason this is important is a lot of minorities whether it's the Arab Israeli minority or the LGBT community or others who are not necessarily going to be safeguarded by the policies of this kind of far-right religious government they need the court to stand up for them and the court doesn't always do that but it does more often than not and so this is really kind of a test of where things are gonna head in terms of Israeli democracy. Now, one of the items on this government's agenda is not just the expansion of settlements but ideally from the perspective of some of the senior ministers annexation of at least parts of the West Bank which would really make things life even more difficult for Netanyahu should they pursue those policies as well given the Abraham Accords and the Abraham Accords are seen as Netanyahu's baby he facilitated these kinds of relationships the Trump administration of course was able to kind of seal the deal with some of these countries the UAE and Bahrain and others but these very countries have also made it clear that annexation is not something that they're interested in seeing they wanna see progress in the Palestinian front this government has no intention of pursuing that track and so things could be coming to a collision course very soon even with the friendlier countries in the region but for now the number one issue that is dominating the Israeli political scene is the so-called legal overhaul and even the Biden administration which was initially reluctant to weigh in on what is seen as kind of a domestic internal Israeli political dynamic is now increasingly vocal about its concerns over Israel's democratic future with President Biden having reminded Netanyahu in a phone call the other day that we share these kind of common values and one of those common values is like democracies basically and so this is kind of the current dynamic and we don't know what's going to happen it's too early to tell whether the government is gonna fold whether there'll be some compromises there have been initial attempts to demonstrate that the government is willing to kind of tone down some of the pieces of legislation but the demonstrators remain undeterred and unconvinced that it's sufficient. I actually want to talk about a regional impact of the Netanyahu new administration. If you think about the Netanyahu has been labeled or is as one of the right conservative Israeli politician that has a very aggressive foreign policy regarding to Iran. Under the Netanyahu as I said you know we witnessed the Abraham Accord agreement between Bahrain, between UAE and Israel and is continuing to the Sudan and other countries and it started to isolate Iran more and more. Since Iran nuclear program are developing right now 80, 40% of Iranian enrichment the Iranian was very concerned about the new administration. You know if you follow the news about the Middle East you have written about Saudi Iran deal broken by the China. In my humble opinion I think actually one of the reason that the Iranian and especially Iranian came to this conclusion that after two years talking with the Saudis time to sit down and you know sign the agreement was the possibility of Netanyahu administration attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranian came to this conclusion that it's better to reduce the tension the regional tension between the Saudi and between the UAE and Bahraini and just focus on Israeli. If Israel attack nuclear facilities of Iran we have only one enemies that we have to focus. This is a you know you can find it in history of Iranian foreign policies. If you have two enemy, three enemy try to you know tactically come with the agreement with one of them and focus on the most important one. Another thing that is happening right now and guys talk about it you know that this protest in Israel if it's continue the possible you know you can imagine two scenarios. Netanyahu will create a regional or external you know issue to distract this Israeli where you know public opinion. So the possibility of again attacking Iran is increasing. And if the Israeli will, the Israel as a country because of this protest is start to weaken it will provide opportunities for the Iranian proxy like Hezbollah for example or Hamas or a Palestinian Islamic jihad that try to expand their territories and undermine the Israeli as a state more and more. So if I want to summarize that you know we will you know in my opinion we will see that the possibilities of the regional conflict unfortunately is increasing. In any case scenario that you're thinking about. Yeah so yeah there's definitely been an uptick in far right rhetoric amongst the Israeli population and even very far right rhetoric that's anti-Palestinian coming out of government officials. So that's of concern especially to the Arab states in the region who have brokered deals with the Israelis and they're very pragmatic deals. So the focus is on economics and on collaboration and on a way forward. But these deals are brokered at the very highest levels of the society the elite. Underneath the elite you have all the constituent citizens many of whom are very very passionate about the Palestinian cause regardless of what the government has brokered. So it's very heartbreaking for many of the constituents within the other Arab countries to see what's happening to the Palestinian people. A lot of them are very pragmatic about it. They understand that to help Palestinians maybe the best way is to go through Israel. But when they see the far right rhetoric now and I quote people saying things like the Palestinians don't exist this is very heartbreaking. So I don't expect the Abraham Accords to fall apart unless there's something extraordinary that happens. But I definitely don't see progress for instance with Saudi Arabia for instance brokering a deal like the Abraham Accords with Israel which is the hope of the region is that Saudi Arabia normalizes relationships with Israel. But that's probably not going to happen so long as there's this far right rhetoric coming out of the Israelis. It's going to take some time. So I don't see anything going forward. I see it on pause until this is settled. But what you really have in the Middle East I imagine a triangle where you have Iran, you have Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent maybe the other Arab states in the region and then you got Israel. And they each have different goals and when one pushes too hard the other two will align to balance that like you see with Saudi Arabia and Iran just recently balancing Israel. So it's a signal to Israel, all right. So you'll see a lot of this going on and there's a lot of friction in the system. There's a lot of hateful rhetoric and I foresee the Arab states hedging and just waiting to see what happens. From a Russia angle there's not much to discuss on that except maybe the kind of tacit agreement that the Russians have with the Israelis. That the Israelis can strike Hezbollah or Iranian targets inside of Syria if they give the Russians kind of advanced warning and don't necessarily target Russian held areas or where the Russians are operating. That kind of tacit agreement has gone back probably decades in the sense and has continued with some ups and downs over the last few years and during the Syrians of war. The Syrians shot down a Russian IL-20, one of their aircraft after the Israelis did a raid in northern Syria and the Syrians were confused because it was the same attack angle. So there are definitely risks involved and there's always potential for crises but again that kind of tacit agreement that may be going on is I think that what Russia is looking for from the new Netanyahu government and it's kind of, it's entirely separate from domestic protests, it's separate from domestic Israeli politics as well. May I add something else? Yes. I want to actually, for the students especially, to think about the rise of religious extremism everywhere around the world. From India, Indian nationalism, even in among of the Buddhists in Myanmar that they are involved in genocide against Muslim to South America, Brazil, Bursuano and Yoruba Angelica in the United States. In Middle East, it seems from 1917, gradually we are witnessing the rise of religious extremism everywhere. If you're familiar with the Wilhelm Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, who believed that the God died in 19th century Europe, the God is dead. And for about 50, 60 years, the social scientists believed that the secularization is the destiny of all of the countries and all of the societies. Gradually they will be modernized and gradually they will be secular. But from 1917, something happened. In the Middle East, we are witnessing the rise of the Islamist radicalism, mostly because of the defeat of the Arab countries of Israel and the humiliation they went through it. But even in the United States, Jimmy Carter was the first president who bring the religion back to the politics. Climb that I'm a faithful man. And from Jimmy Carter, you are witnessing this rise of, the importance of the religion in politics became important in the United States. So it's not only, this is a trend, everywhere is happening. God is coming back to take revenge. I'm making a joke. But you will see it and you will see much more from this rhetoric, from the Israeli rise, religious, the more playing rule by the Haredi, by the Orthodox, by the conservative, to the Middle East, from Nishia, to the Indian, to the Buddhist, to the Christian. If you think about it, even in Russia, since 2008, the Orthodox Christianity is coming back and aligned with the Putin, they are trying to frame even Ukraine war as a war of the Orthodox Christianity versus the Western liberal idea. Although we know that the Ukraine is also part of the Orthodox Christianity and the Kiev is one of the most important center. But they are framing it, that our religious values are under attack. So maybe you're asking your survivor or witnessing a religious extremism everywhere from Israel to democracy like United States or India. I was thinking about it and I think it's related to the economic hardship. From 1917, again, you have a trend of new liberalism that gradually spread out through the whole world. And through that, you know, the life of the people everywhere gets worse and worse and worse. You can talk about it. This hopelessness of the people, find opportunities for the religious organization or religious group to bring the idea that the God will give you the peace. And people are becoming poor, becoming more religious. That's one explanation, the clash of civilization with Samo Lantik is another explanation that the identity became important day by day because of the globalization. But please think about it. Why, you know, all of this extremism, religious extremism are increasing. And when we talk about Israel, Iran, Saudi, even Russia, you can see the politics through this framework of the religion and politics. Thank you very much. Let me turn our attention to what Dr. Zuri identified as one of the other triangle, the other eye country, Iran. And ask a question about Iran. For those of you who've been following the news to the extent that reports can get out from Iran, there's been a revolt against Islamic law and economic stagnation by younger men and women, folks your age and older. And the harsh response by the government, which has been brought to the world's attention largely by social media. With more than half of Iran's population being under the age of 35 and thus having no direct knowledge of the 1979 revolution, this could be an existential threat to the current Iranian government. Do you see the protests as gaining in legitimacy and power within Iran? And separate from that, is there the possibility of an Iranian spring happening within Iran and its immediate neighbors as a result of these protests? So I can start with that one. Anytime you see a revolution, there are actually stages to revolutions. And there's a deep literature on this if you're interested. But typically after a revolution, there is a power vacuum. And this happens everywhere that there's a revolution because once an old regime goes away, you're left with sort of nothing to maintain that state. So imagine for instance, you take out the government here, you take out the leadership, you take out the police. So there's a power vacuum. And the question is what fills that power vacuum if there was to be a revolution in Iran? And we don't necessarily know. We've seen other places where the revolutions and we were very hopeful that it would be a revolution to democracy. But instead it was a revolution to something else that was counter to US interest. Or maybe it was worse in our imagination for the people that were in that place. So we don't know what would come after, but I'll point your attention to one group that really hopes to take control. And I'm not sure if that would be the best for the Iranian people, but there's a group called Mujahideen Al-Kalq, M-E-K. And this is quite a fascinating group. They were actually housed at Victory Base in Iraq for a while. They were kicked out of Iran. They were actually considered a terrorist. They were on the US list of terrorist organizations. They were actually taken off, but they're an opposition group to the government in Iran. But they were ousted. And so a lot of them now are in Paris and they're in the United States. And Senator John McCamel, he was still alive, was a really big supporter of M-E-K. He saw them as having a lot of potential for going back to Iran, because when a regime goes away, you need a capable entity to run a state. And they presented themselves as a sort of Western aligned alternative that we could fund. And this is something the United States does. They fund opposition groups in exile. Now I'll tell you this, there's a big problem with that. You might end up with a Franken state. That's what I call it. I'm borrowing from the literature. But imagine you take the head off of a state and then you put a new head on. Sometimes that doesn't work either. So I don't think that it's hard to predict the future. I have no idea what's gonna happen in Iran. I think there's sort of the possibility there could be a revolution, but you wanna keep your eye on it. Look for that power vacuum. Look for what replaces the people and be wary of any sort of attempt to create a Franken state. I continue. A few things actually. You talk about the guy, you talk about Israel. Iran is a second country. Again, for the student, if you want to understand Middle East, I really recommend to focus on four countries. Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. The four big player in the region. And there are differences, but they are very important player. The second thing is about the concept of the label of the spring. Unfortunately, Arab Spring was labeled, we gave it to the Arab movement, to the mass protest, it started in 2011 in Tunisia and spread out to the Egypt and later on to Yemen and Syria. And after 10 years, the Tunisia was the only countries that transit from authoritarianism to some kind of the democracy, some kind of the fallout democracy. From 2009, this trend, this process completely reversed. And right, not Tunisia is authoritarian regime under a personalistic leader, a president that, so it was an Arab, actually, winter and not the spring. But the concept of a spring is beautiful. There is something about it. Is it 2022, a mass protest is Iranian spring? And we talked a little bit yesterday, but some of you are new. So I have to say, first, Iran is a revolutionary country, the country that some scholar labeled as a movement societies. It's a very shaky society in terms that there have been a lot of protests and revolution and revolt in the modern history of Iran. In 20th century, there are only two countries in the world that seen too big revolution. Russia, 1905, 1917, and Iran, 1905 constitutional revolution and 1979 Iranian revolution. This Iranian society has seen much more revolt and protest compared to the other societies in the South America and East Asia. So it's a very movement societies. It's very difficult to control it. It's like a wild horse. And the Islamic Republic tried to control that. Every time people find opportunities that are coming and protesting. This is the last round that started from September. It's going on. Yesterday was an Iranian New Year and for the first time after 44 years, at the time of New Year started, Iranian start to protest, chanting the slogan against Ayatollah Khomeini. We never seen that. So the movement still is alive. It just need to find the time. Why the movement is not able to change the regime is because of the massive security forces. We have more than 17 security forces from the Malaysia called the Basij to the national police that is not really police, is more security forces and the Revolutionary Guard, IRGC, and a lot of Malaysia and paramilitary organization. Islamic Republic, in my opinion, has lost is, you know, every political system is based on mainly three pillar. Legitimacy, the abilities to deliver and co-opt people and repression. Islamic Republic has lost the legitimacy completely. They are not able is, again, we talk about the demification of a state. It's a very incompetent political system. And the only thing that they are focusing right now is the security force. As long as the security force are behind Ayatollah Khomeini, the possibility of, you know, transforming this revolt to the Revolution is very, very difficult. But if the Ayatollah Khomeini pass away immediately or suddenly, yes, there is a possibility. Of course, we have to think about international context. Russia and China, we are going to talk about China later on. But Russia and China are supporting Islamic Republic as Iran supporting the Bashar al-Assad. The last thing that I want to say, Zori talked about M.E.K. M.E.K. is opposition to the Islamic Republic is the only organized, military-trained opposition to the Islamic Republic. During the Iran-Iraq war, M.E.K. collaborated with Iraq against Iran, against the Iranians. And then, you know, they actually get involved in a lot of terrorist act. The United States labeled them as, put them as a terrorist organization for about 12 years. Right now, they are not terrorist organization. But M.E.K. has two problems. First, M.E.K. is a cult. Has all of the characteristics of a cult. There is a leader have been appointed after he passed away, his wife. And they indoctrinate people as a cult. If you read the story about M.E.K. and how they are organizing their institution, you will be shocked. So first, the second, M.E.K. has a Islamic leftist ideology. You know, we talk about the Islamism as a political movement. Most of the Islamist movement are the right wing, are the conservative. There are some leftists and M.E.K. is one of them. They are a combination, their ideology of Islamism and the leftism. And in my opinion, both of these ideologies is very dangerous and if you put it together, you create something else. The third problem with M.E.K. is a very unpopular among of the Iranian. Inside of the country, there is very difficult to find somebody who support them. They don't have any social base inside the country. So in my opinion, even I know why the United States are supporting M.E.K. They want to undermine the regime, but they don't have a chance to consolidate power, to take a power. If you compared in 1979 when Khomeini came to the power, you will realize Khomeini was first very popular. He was a Grand Ayatollah. He has a network of the mosque and the clergy and was able to mobilize. M.E.K. doesn't have anything. M.E.K. has a small core military-trained group with a very dangerous ideology. So my advice is use them, but don't invest on them. I just thought maybe I would add a few comments from a U.S. foreign policy angle because that might be of interest to some of you who were too young when the Arab Spring occurred, but the Obama administration was caught off guard. You had these young revolutionary leaders in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East who were looking for U.S. support for their anti-authoritarian protests. And President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were caught off guard and only when it became crystal clear that Ben Ali was on his way out from Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak was on his way out from Egypt. Did they call? Did President Obama call for an orderly and peaceful transition? And so what he was facing with here was kind of a balancing act, balancing our interests and our values. And that was kind of a key overarching theme, I think, in terms of the U.S. response to the very unexpected Arab Spring that many of us now refer to as the Arab Awakening. Given that that spring turned into a winner very quickly. What's interesting, though, is a lot of those revolutionary leaders were disappointed with how late we were in the game to call for that transition to power because from a purely U.S. foreign policy interest perspective, we had dealt very intensively with Ben Ali of Tunisia for decades and Mubarak and other kind of authoritarian leaders, Mubarak was a regular guest at the White House for decades. And these were leaders who were seen as moderate, who were helping us in our so-called war on terror. And yet now we were asked to support the very people who were trying to overthrow our allies. And so that's just one kind of interesting perspective. You get a very different perspective from Israeli politicians back then who were criticizing the Obama administration from the opposite angle. Not for stepping in too late, but for abandoning, as the Israelis saw, longtime U.S. allies. And they were concerned that if the Obama administration was so quick to abandon Mubarak and Ben Ali and others, maybe he would do that with other allies as well. So very, very different kinds of political reactions to the Arab Spring back then. But focusing on what's happening in Iran today, I think you can look at the United States foreign policy toolkit as having many, many different options. I mean, we've engaged in regime change very aggressively in the past. We talked about that yesterday. And so you have kind of a range of options from military intervention to funding opposition groups, providing logistical support to opposition groups to strengthen the economic sanctions, and then of course, doing nothing. And every single one of these options, and there are others that I haven't mentioned, has consequences. And so one of the even doing nothing has consequences. And so just something to think about when you're trying to kind of analyze this from a U.S. foreign policy standpoint and trying to think of what the United States can and should be doing, every single one of these options has potentially very consequential ramifications. Can I add something? Sorry. Let me ask, did you want to? Richard, please go ahead. Sorry about that. Look at from the Russian perspective, what Gaya was just describing as the contradiction between American principles and American interests. The Russians have highlighted this and consistently in their messaging for a lot longer than since the Arab Awakening or Arab Spring. The U.S., in Russia's view, tries to sponsor what Russia calls color revolutions. You saw color revolutions in Ukraine that resulted in the ouster of a Russia friendly government. You saw the ouster in Lebanon of government and the Cedar Revolution. You saw these other aspects. And Russia views it as the United States meddling in the affairs of other countries. And sponsoring these color revolutions. So Russia then contrasts and says that it stands against these color revolutions and this meddling by the United States and it is in favor of a multipolar world and that they try to support allies. Unlike the United States, like with Mubarak, for example, having the U.S. seen or being portrayed as having abandoned Mubarak or the Obama administration, Russia then contrasts it and uses it as justification when they intervene in Syria to bolster their longstanding ally. Though Russia's role in that, they do plenty of meddling on their own, as we all know. And a lot of the justifications are kind of circular logic. Like if you look at the Ukraine example, one of the reasons they went to war last year against Ukrainians because they claim that the Ukrainian government is illegitimate. It was a coup that overthrew legitimate government of Ukraine of Viktor Yanukovych, who's now living in Russia, incidentally. And they claim that there's not been a legitimate government since 2014 in Ukraine despite elections being held and accepted under international monitoring. But again, it's a question of Russia portraying itself. And as for Iran, I think Russia will continue to go to the hilt to back Iran. And I think they are very grateful for Iranian support, things like suicide kamikaze drones that they've been buying from Iran and using in Ukraine as they've depleted their stockpiles with their own precision strike munitions. And Russia will encourage the regime that the only way that the regime fails in Iran is if there's a relaxation of repression. Russia doesn't have any qualms about supporting repression. So again, they will fully back the Islamic regime in Iran to try to prevent regime change or whatnot. Also an important reminder from the 1979 revolution in Iran. Homedi was not even in Iran at the start of the revolution and the protests had been going and building steam for months and months and months. I think they started in 1977. 1977. Yeah, they started in 1977. You didn't actually have the overthrow of the Shah until 1979. And it was seen as the relaxation of repression and the Islamic regime because of Homedi's popularity and clerical base, he was able to kind of co-opt what had been started by a wide variety of youth. So we still have the youth factor involved in Iran. It's very young population. But again, from the Russian perspective, they will back that regime and will discourage them from any relaxation of repression. I don't know how that ends up. No, I want to add a few things, only very fast. First, in terms of the Arab Spring and the contradiction between American interests and American values, one of the topic was if we support dictator, this undermine our values, if we support protest, the Islamists will get the power and then it will undermine our security and interests. And they were right. If you have an election in any Islamic countries, and I think most of the Islamic countries, if you have a free fair election, Islamists will gain power. Lebanon. You know, Lebanon, in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, in Tunisia and Naqda, in Syria, the opposition of Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, again, Islamists, but the Shia Islamists, who see. There is only one country. If there is a fair and free election, the Islamist has no chance. And it's Iran. Why? Because Iranians have experienced that 43 years of the Islamism as a political ruler. The other countries don't have this experience. The people don't have this experience. The Islamists are an opposition group who gave you this idea or drove you a very beautiful utopia, but because they have not been tested, they have not been, you know, they didn't show their competence or incompetence. In Islamic Republic, we know that what is happening in Iran after the collapse of the Islamic Republic, the Islamist doesn't have any future in any scenario for the Iranian next political system. That's the first one. The second one, based on what we talk about Israel, you know, America and Russia, I want to talk, I want to bring it for the students, think about authoritarian co-optation, authoritarian learning, and authoritarian collaboration. You know, since 2005, a new wave of the revolution called the colorful revolution from, you know, it's actually in 1988 from Czechoslovakia, but the orange revolution in Ukraine was the biggest one. The revolution that usually people are coming, protesting the result of the fraud election, and then peacefully, unlike the traditional revolution, they occupy the power. After 2005, 2006, 2007 in Georgia, in Ukraine, the dictator tried to adopt, learn what is happening, and they tried to manipulate the election, they tried to build a counter-revolution measurement. So they learned and they adopt. They learned from 2009 in Iran, the green movement was part of this colorful revolution, happened after the fraud election. But the Islamic Republic, because they learned from Ukraine and Russia, and in other cases, they were able to control it. After Arab Spring happened, authoritarian learned how to deal with it. So authoritarian, the dictator usually are stupid, but they are surrounding themselves with, most of them, with the clever guys that worked with them, gave the advice, and they're learning, they're adopting, they are not static, they learn and adopt and collaborate with each other. In terms of the Syria, Iran, Russia, if something happened to Iran, Russia, until right now, you know, supporting, the China, not militaristically, but politically, you know, economically, as they support Iran. Iran supports Venezuela, Russia supports Venezuela. So you cannot see any case scenario just in isolated. You have to see with the other regional and international actors. Let me ask one final question of the panel that will then bridge the opportunity for you all to ask questions as well. When Americans think about the Middle East, their word cloud might contain three i's and an o. Iran, Israel, Islam, and oil. If you could insert one word to expand this word cloud that speaks to a challenge or issue that Americans should know about, what would that be? And if you could explain. That question, I thought about it a lot. And I couldn't come with the one word because I want to add it, you know. If you think, all of us has a different expertise. So if I want to add another word to this, it's not a good thing to be honest. Everything that I talked about in the Middle East was either sectarianism, was all the, you know, political instabilities or authoritarianism. Most of the, you know, the only countries in Middle East that had the cloud democracy is Israel. Almost every other countries are authoritarian regime. So from my point of view is authoritarianism and thinking about why this region is so resilient to democratization. If I had to add one word to that list, it would be family. So in Arab countries, family is the building block of the entire society. And they are very, very conservative when it comes to the idea of what a family is. And their family ties are very deep within the entire society. So the entire governing structure revolves around the idea of your family. And so I have come to the conclusion that while some places from the Western view are authoritarian, when you're in the society, you begin to realize that one, some places don't meet the preconditions for democracy. Number two, there are some places that function very well, not as a democracy, but using family ties and ancient networks of governance that are very unfamiliar in the West. And this is quite functional in many places. I also think that the idea of, I'll leave you with one last thought besides family. I believe it's also possible in the Middle East to be pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. And I think that's something that you're going to see come up in the discourse. It is possible to be pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. And I think that's the only way that that conflict is going to be solved peacefully. So I would think about it as families and pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian. I would say one theme that has been kind of consistent, Professor Roberts highlighted this yesterday, and we've talked about it on almost all the panels is interference, both internal and external interference in the Middle East. So whether it's America, whether it's Russia, whether it's Iran interfering in Syria or Israel attacking Syria, or Syria attacking Israel, there is interference and a lot of this is the legacy of colonialism and these lines that were artificially drawn by various empires. But it is one of those, I guess it's maybe one of the root causes of the issues and gets back to the theme of the entire conference is peace possible. Maybe it is. If all sides agree to kind of keep to themselves, and you have less interference from internal and external actors, then maybe individual countries can get their houses in order and you can have peace. I don't know the odds for that. Like Yogi Berra said, prediction is hard, especially about the future. So there's that, and again, there are always going to be vested interests in various countries relating back to Said's theme about authoritarianism. Countries that are willing to repress their own people, kill them in the street, the 1500 you mentioned in the- Yeah, in two days. In two days, you mentioned that yesterday. So complicated problems, but again, all goes back to interference, kind of unintended consequences. And I'll just quickly second what Dr. Golkar said here. I'm going to also steal your word here, authoritarianism, I think most accurately, unfortunately, defines and characterizes the Middle East with the exception of Israel's fragile democracy, which as I mentioned earlier, is moving in that kind of more authoritarian direction under Netanyahu's government. But authoritarianism repressive societies is the reality that I think so many Arabs and Muslims in Iran and to a lesser extent in Turkey are living under. So I think that's the reality that we need to deal with. Thank you all very much for your answers. I'd like to open both microphones up to folks who would like to ask a question of the entire panel or directed at specific individuals. And I'll start with Mark. Roland, I'm Dr. Michael Krause and I've really admired this panel or this entire peace summit. One of the insights, perhaps my operational background is showing here, Iran, 23 million Aziris, 2 million Turkmen, X number of Baluchis, Syria, tribal, Iraq, Kurdistan, tribal. Saudi Arabia, certainly tribal. Could you give us insights on the potential weakness of Iran, for example, to the pressures of tribalism and the redrawing potentially of some of the national states versus those that have a predominant population that is not in Iran's case Persian and similarly the Kurds in Iraq and for that matter Turkey. And then the religious extremism of some of the other nations. So insights on tribalism, how that plays with authoritarian regimes and might there be an opening Allah for the particularism enhanced in tribalism. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's hilarious for me. So first, as you said, Iran is a multi-ethnic linguistic countries. We have Persian, we have Azari, we have Turk, we have Arab, we have Baluch, we have Turkmen. But you have to remind yourself that Iran is a historical state. There are a few historical civilizational states. China, Iran, India, Egypt. Iran is the first nation state created under the Safavid, almost with the same borders. A little bit, they lost it to the Ottoman, a little bit, the Russian annexated the Kaskas area Azerbaijan and the Britain annexated the part of Afghanistan. But these entity for more than 2,500 has been always a political entity called Iran. The second I think, so the national identity is very strong compared to the some countries who created out of the, you know, the First World War, the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, like, you know, Transjordan, Syria, you know, Iraq, these countries all are created under the map. You know, so the national identity in Iran is very, very strong. Some of the ethnic group, like for example, Azari, has very inter, you know, connected with the other group like Persia, that the first thing. You know, the Baluchis are again part of the Persian and Iranian families, you know. The country's name is Iran and Iran is a historical name. If you studied the name of Iran, came from the Avestar, one of the, you know, about 2,500 years old religious book as a land of the noble people. And in terms of the linguistic, the Baluchis, the Lord are part of this, the court are part of this ironic, you know, families. The other is as part of the Turkish speaking language, the Arab, of course, the Arab. But first, there is a strong national identity. Second, all of this ethnic group are living on the borders of Iran. Imagine if, for example, part of the, you know, in the modern world, it's very difficult and unrealistic to think that the Baluch are able to separate or the Kurdistan can be separated because Kurdistan is divided between four countries. And the separation is not a solution. The problem is we are thinking if we gave them the country to the torch out of these four countries or the Baluch out of three countries, we will solve the problem. We actually, we create much more problem. In the United States, just think about your countries. The people are coming with a different identity background. I'm Iranian, there are some French, there are some. And we are becoming American, we are living here peacefully. Why? Because there is no political repression. At least, you know, there is, but not too much. You have boys. But we need for the Middle East is not trying to change the border because it's very bloody. Some cities, for example, like Urumye in Tehran, in Iran. We have Persian, we have Turkish, and we have court. If we start this separation, it will be very bloody process. My solution for the tribalism is modernization and democratization. The court here, the majority of them are based in Tennessee, Nashville, but they don't want to create a new court that's in Nashville. None of them wants to do that. Even the taxation, they cannot separate the country. Why? Because we have a democracy and we have a moderate. If we try to modernize the Middle East, the trend started in UAE in Saudi and other countries, I think people have less concern about the separationist movement. The problem is political repression, undevelopment, and violence. And we can fix it through the modernization, creating a modern democratic, you know, respecting the rule of law and democratizing. And you have a contradiction between principles, like self-determination and the Kurdish problem, largest ethnic group in the world without its own country. And as Said just mentioned, they're in multiple countries, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran. And the principle of self-determination is one that the US takes very seriously. But again, the interests and you get to the outside interference aspect, you have the question is, can a Kurdistan kind of develop in a peaceful, non-bloody way? I don't know, there's, again, American interests are that you have stability and peace. At the same time, the principle is that the Kurds probably should have their own, their own kind of homeland. And they do have a basis of it in Northern Iraq. And they fought for it, and that should be recognized, the Kurds fought to take their cities and their villages back from the Islamic state. So they fought with the multinational coalition, and that should be recognized. And same in Northern Syria, incidentally, which is one of the areas that's not under Damascus' rule is, again, the Kurd problem, which the Turks consider many of the groups in Northern Syria to be terrorist groups who've committed terrorist acts in Turkey in decades past. And that was one of the reasons that Turkey got involved in Syria. Now, again, we have these contradictions and you're not gonna square the circle, I don't see a way. Even in Canada, you have actually the French that they want to separate it, but the problem is self-determination, the other part of the country doesn't want to that. In Spain, you have boss that they have this same problem. And you have to think about the court. We think that the court are one united group. It's not, in terms of the linguistic, they are four different dialects that they don't understand each other. In terms of the religion, there are Shia, Sunni, Yazidi, and other religious groups. So when is the, I know they are suffering in all of these countries, without any doubt. There are less in Turkey, more in Syria, in Iran. But the problem is not separation because if you start this process, this will continue like a cascade and create a blood shed in the whole Middle East. If you need a piece, that's not the way to go. That's modernization and democratization and try to give them both development and the voice. Dr. Nick Roberts. So thank you, everyone. I wonder if I can add a word to Dr. Broken's last question to ask you guys a question, which is if I were to add a word that we haven't really talked about, it would be humans, human beings live here. And what do human beings do? They create culture. And so if maybe to start talking more about peace in the Middle East and the culture in the Middle East rather than what we've been talking about all of the problems in the Middle East, can we talk a bit about all of the culture? So Dr. Zuri, you come from, you're living in the UAE. I mean, I'm quite certain you're living a royal life over there. Some of these cities, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, I mean, these are the height of modernity and peace, actually, I mean, incredibly safe cities to live in. Iran, I'm not sure I've ever met an Iranian person who can't off the top of his or her head start reciting poetry. Israel, some of the best TV these days is being our Israeli series being made. We could maybe have a very friendly debate about who has the best cuisine, the Turks, the Iranians or the Afghanis, but there's some incredible culture in this region. So I wonder, can we talk a bit about these types of things that are going on in the Middle East now, whether it's Israeli TV series, Iranian poetry, infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. Even if we go back in time, the leader of the Tunisian revolution that kicked off the Arab Spring was a young musician who went by the name of Al-General. And so there's a whole lot of stuff like this that we can talk about. I wonder what some of your thoughts are about this. Thank you. I'll tell you something interesting about Abu Dhabi. So Abu Dhabi, I believe, is the only place in the Middle East that has a mosque named after a very famous Jewish woman. The name of this mosque, it's a mosque, the name of the mosque, Mary Mother of Jesus Mosque. Okay. The Emiratis also have what's called the Abrahamic Faith Center. It's a synagogue, a Catholic church, and a mosque all in one. They just opened it. And it's a testament to the fact that each religion has its background in Abraham, okay, the founder of all three. So there's some concerted effort in the Emirates to definitely recognize shared heritage. But beyond that, there's a concerted effort to get ahead in technology, to be modern, to provide a safe place for families to grow. And some of that comes with the things that in the West we tend not to like, which is surveillance, okay? There was a murder in Abu Dhabi a few years ago, one murder, okay, if you can imagine. And a woman was murdered. They caught the murderer within 30 minutes because they're being surveilled. Everything is surveilled. It's one of the most surveilled cities in the world. And that is not typically what we like as Americans is all that surveillance. So there's a trade-off. And that's something that I think can be hard to reconcile. But yes, the culture is fabulous. And I highly recommend that anyone that's interested in the Middle East visit and see these things for yourself. I'm coming from a very verbal culture. So I have always had something to say. We have two different approach to look at what is happening in the Middle East, the state-centered approach, and the society-centered approach. And because we are political scientists, so naturally we are talking about the state. The state is a big gorilla in our world. But I appreciate your question. Thinking about Middle East, I want you to remember, Middle East is very complex. And one of the complexity of Middle East, not in terms of the religiosity, in different denomination, in different tribe, in different way of life. When we think about the denomination, Shia, Sunni, and a body in Oman, or when we talk about the ethnicity, Arab, Persian, Turk, et cetera, et cetera, but you have to think about the social life in Middle East. In terms of the social life, you have the very conservative Muslim, we call them Salafi Muslim, you will see them with the Borqa, with the Komplit, Hejaab, and you have a very modern people who are living like Americans, like Westerners, you cannot distinguish between them until they start to talk. Until they start to talk, they have accents like me, very thick, so you will realize, okay, this not. But in terms of the music, in terms of the movie, in terms of the cuisine, we are becoming very, very similar. Unfortunately, this machinization of the world is happening that our music are becoming the same, our food are becoming the same. By the way, we have the best food, that's for sure. But yeah, I want you to remember this complexity. And the last thing that I want to tell for my American audiences, maybe you can't believe that, but in 1905, there was a man from Nebraska, Boscoville, who fought against the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union, the Russian at that time, and have been killed in Tabriz. And since 1905, have been named and remembered as a freedom fighter in Iran. We still respect this guy, there are a lot of books, a lot of movie about this guy, I'm not sure if you know that, but I want to remember that from 1905, there was a collaboration between freedom fighters everywhere, so remember that one too. I would say there is some hope, maybe wars can, instead of being rockets and bombs, maybe it could be more like the Hamas War between Lebanon and Israel. If you're not familiar with that, it's a great example. They're a town and one or the other was saying that they made the best Hamas and they were going for the Guinness Book of World Records, they made the largest preparation of Hamas and eventually it got to the point where they were using construction equipment and at the end of it, they would donate food to hungry people and all over the country and it was tons and tons of Hamas. So if there is a war to be fought, may it be like that, get your. And we are out of that fog, we don't have any climb over the Hamas. That's Arab-Israeli conflicts. Professor Arnold. Yes, thank you. I teach military history here at Norwich, in fact I brought my class with me today and many of them are going to be in ROTC, they're going to be future officers. If you could just offer them maybe one takeaway that they could take home with them today about the possibility of regional conflict, what is something that they should pay attention to or something they should just keep on their minds as they move through their careers. Thank you so much. I mean, the only thing I would add and this actually might also answer Dr. Roberts's earlier point, is it's probably a good idea to learn about the various cultures if you're going to be studying them, if you're going to be traveling there, even just on a quick visit because we have obviously our own ways of doing things, we have our own way of living, we have a tendency to really see things from a certain vantage point which may not always apply to other cultures. So I teach a negotiation class and I think one of the important elements of a successful negotiator is to understand who it is that they're negotiating with. For example, there was a lot of concern when our first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was picked by President Clinton, there was a lot of concern, how is she going to even be able to go to the Middle East and meet with Arab leaders in these conservative societies? And it turns out that it was never an issue and she handled it very well and they handled it very well and so I think just kind of knowing and understanding other cultures and kind of the dos and don'ts so that you're not offending others, I think is an important piece of the puzzle. There was one very kind of comical yet disturbing moment when the Israelis and the Palestinians were negotiating at Camp David in July of 2000 and the participants have just arrived, President Clinton goes into the cabin and then Ehud Barak Prime Minister, Ehud Barak and President Yasser Arafat are both motioning to each other to go in first and Barak who is kind of a very playful character shoves Arafat into the room and everybody's laughing, including Arafat and it turns out that that was seen as a slight and was very offensive to the dignity that Ehud Barak simply did not consider even though he's a smart guy, a brilliant strategist but it just didn't even occur to him that he might be doing something that's very offensive so that would be my kind of takeaway. Learn the culture, listen and learn before you kind of judge or do something that could potentially offend the other. Kind of a corollary to what Guy just said, learn languages, learn languages you get insights into culture, you get insights into history. There's meaning and power behind words so understanding how those things develop in different places is a great way to get on top of that. My language skills are not great, I joke, I speak, I dabble in languages so I speak some Spanish, I speak some Russian, my English is okay I think. I've been working on that for a really long time but also there are cultures within cultures as well so military don't get so hung up within, I am an army air defender so don't get so caught up in that that you don't recognize, okay well what does the surface warfare officer do in the Navy? What does the Marine infantry officer do? Kind of be able to bridge those, so in addition to looking out to the world also look to within your organization and try to kind of learn the lingo and kind of the culture there so that would be my advice. I would only add as an Americanist you don't come to those countries with a blank slate, you come to those countries as an American with all the complexities that that presents and you don't have a choice for that. You may think you're the most well-intentioned humanitarian who's ever lived but you go abroad with baggage that people will project onto you because of the history and knowing then that history of the United States and interventions is really important to understanding how you will be perceived over there and you don't have much of a choice on that but you can educate yourself so that you can know what your own responses might dictate in terms of how they view you. Even some few phrases or words can actually open the doors for you so I cannot speak a lot of languages or I'm trying to learn only a few phrases to meet when I'm meeting somebody but in terms of the Middle East I think again Dr. Roberts said that poetry is a very beautiful window to the soul and mind of the Middle Eastern. Arab poetry, Persian poetry, Turkish poetry and it's very important for us. We see the world through the lens of the poetry and that's why it's very messy because you know but learn poetry, try to read and memorize a few. It will open the door to other cultures, to the Middle Eastern cultures. Do we have time for one more question, Professor Koo or do we have to? Okay, if we could have one more really quick lightning round question. Got it, all right. Well thank you guys for coming out here. I have a question just broadly to the panel. A few days ago two members of the Likud party in the Knesset, Moshe Gaffney and Yaqab Asher two long standing members and political allies of Benjamin Netanyahu introduced legislation to make it illegal to proselytize within Israel which is punishable by jail time. Given the Likud party is currently the largest in the Knesset and there's a decent chance that this bill is made into law what are the implications for the United States Israeli relationship especially given the fact that the most stalwart defenders of Israel are evangelical Christians within Congress and not to mention the fact that over 200 million Americans call themselves Christians. And I guess a follow up question to that is would Benjamin Netanyahu strike down this law as an infringement of free speech and religious freedom to appease and show support for his United States connections or would he allow it to stand in order to support his Likud allies within the Knesset? So that is my question. Thank you. So I guess I'll quickly take that because I know we're out of time. Netanyahu in the past all his previous governments contained at least one or more liberal parties to kind of balance out center left or even a left leaning party to kind of balance out the right wingers that dominated his governments. This is the first time or one of the first times where there is no such centrist or center left party. In other words, he is the liberal element and in order and I think Dr. Roberts kind of alluded to that yesterday he is the most liberal person in this government and he assured the international community as well as the Israeli public when he formed this government that he's got his hands on the wheel that he's the one who's gonna be making these decisions. So I don't wanna make any predictions about this particular bill or that bill. There's been a lot of rhetoric. Some of it is really just performative and not necessarily aimed at passing significant legislation. But I do think that this is a real test case for Netanyahu and he's gonna really be, I wrote a piece on how this government that he established is he's creating a monster. This is a monster of his own making and it's gonna give him a very difficult time as he tries to kind of navigate, placate his coalition partners, which he can't afford to lose. But at the same time, he does not want to turn Israel into an isolated pariah state. And I think this is one of many bills that we're seeing now that he's gonna have to put his foot down and say, we can't do this. Well, I wanna thank Dr. Gai Ziv, Sayid Gokhar, Dr. Diane Zuri, and Richard Moss. If we could give them a round of applause for coming in all the way. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. And we have another panel convening here in 10 minutes. So in two minutes, we're gonna begin the last semi-session. Please have a seat. Dr. Ali, this morning. Dr. Ali, this morning, should come to the stage. Hello, everyone. Just that this is the last, the 2023, this one was summit round the table session. So, I'm gonna introduce the chair of this round table. The retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel, William McClell. Norwich class of 1991, McClell currently serves as the 56th Commandant of Cadet and Vice President of Student Affairs at Norwich University. He was commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1991 after graduating from Norwich. As a Marine, McClell developed into a distinguished leader. He commanded the first battalion, fifth marines, and the first marine regiment. And the crisis response Marine Air Ground Task Force for the U.S. Central Command, as well as serving as an advisor team leader in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He served overseas in multiple operations, including desert thunder, Iraqi freedom, enduring freedom, and inherent to resolve. In his final tours, he served as a Director of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, followed by serving as a Marine Corps Liaison to the U.S. House of Representative. Now I turn it over to Kamadan William McClell. Thank you. Thank you, Yang Mo. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our final roundtable in our fourth annual Peace and War Summit, where we're gonna discuss looking forward Western strategy towards the Middle East. And I'll point out it's Western strategy, not U.S. strategy. I'd like to begin introducing, I hope we have our fourth panelist joining us in Yang Mo when he does come, if we could just have him come right down and join the panel. But I'll start with Dan Cheriak, is the Director and Principal of Cheriak, Consulting Incorporated in Ottawa. He's a senior fellow with the Center for International Governance and Innovation in Waterloo, the fellow-in-residence with the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto, a distinguished fellow with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in Vancouver, and an associate with BKP, Economic Advisors in Munich, so covers the entire continent and across the pond. He's had a 31-year career with Canada's civil service. He retired as the Deputy Chief Economist at the Department of Foreign Affairs in International Trade, and he's written extensively on international trade and finance, innovation and industrial policy, economic development with a particular focus on the digital transformation and the economic and technological roots of great power conflict, so he brings a great deal. Dr. Ali Disboni is a welcome associate professor and chair of military and strategic studies program at the Royal Military College of Canada. He's an associate fellow at Queens University. His current research includes the formation of the Wahhabi State in Saudi Arabia, the genesis of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, and right-wing radicalization in selected NATO armed forces. He's published numerous collaborations, one of which was the future trends of Canadian military operations in the Middle East and the terrorist resourcing model as applied to Canada, and his latest collaboration is developing strategic lieutenants in the Canadian Army. He's a media commentator on Middle East and Iranian politics, and he received his PhD from the University of Montreal and speaks four languages, English, French, Persian, and Arabic. Dr. Jeremy Pressman, right next to me here, studies international relations, protests, the Arab-Israeli conflict, US foreign policy in the Middle East. He co-founded and co-directs the crowd counting consortium, an event counting project that's tallied and made publicly available, data on all manner of protests in the United States since 2017. He received his PhD in political science from MIT and previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He's held fellowships at Harvard, at Brandeis, at the University of Sydney, and the Yukon Humanities Institute, as well as the Norwegian Nobel Institute where he was a Fulbright fellow. His most recent book is The Sword is Not Enough, Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force, and he's written several other books that will come to play during our discussion. And at the end, we have our own Dr. Nick Roberts, an historian of the modern Middle East and Islamic world. As many of you know, he's an assistant professor of history here at Norwich. And for this academic year, he's the inaugural W. Nathaniel Howell, post-doctoral fellow in Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies at the University of Virginia. He earned his doctorate from Notre Dame and he earned his masters of arts and history from Georgetown in his current book project, A Sea of Wealth, Said Said Bin Sultan, his Amani Empire, and the making of an oceanic marketplace draws on research from more than a dozen archives across four continents. So those are our panelists. Now, before we get into the questions I have for them, I wanted to give a short preamble. When I was a student here in the late 1980s, the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the rise of Japan as a challenge to our economic power were two overarching themes that we grappled with as students. It permeated the national security framework and all students thought about it, not just those that were getting commissioned. The situation on the Korean Peninsula was not far out of our students' minds. Many of us concerned and studying how we might apply our trade to that conflict should it come out. European command and Pacific command were the dominant voices in the Department of Defense. And despite a brief jump in importance during the First Gulf War, Middle Eastern concerns played often a distant third to Europe and Asia in terms of strategy formation in the United States and the West in general. After the attacks of 2001, the Middle East and the global war on terror became the dominant considerations in national security and foreign policy decision making for the next two plus decades. My first year back here at Norwich, past becomes prologue and I find our focus again, focus back not on the Soviet Union, but on Russia. And I find the other half of our mind focused towards Asia, not this time with Japan as an ascending global power, but now it's China replacing Japan as our economic adversary, but now combined as a military adversary as well. Korea again runs third. The regions of the world covered by UCOM and now Indo-Paycom again dominate our discussions about national security exactly the way they did 35 years ago when I was a student here. And yet there remain substantial problems in the Middle East. We've touched on Iran and their nuclear ambitions, Israel-Palestine, the remnants of ISIS and its offshoots throughout the region, Russian and Chinese activities in the region, and of course we still have the flow of oil that afflicts global markets. With all of those observations in mind, I'd like to pose the first question to the panel. Can you describe our historical pre-golf war strategic approach to the Middle East and give us some idea of some approaches that the West got right during that era and what we got wrong during that era? And I know Dr. Roberts, you had some ideas immediately that we were discussing before the panel. If you could kick us off. I'd like to keep this to about five minutes. So very quickly, one of the things that I think the United States got right in the Middle East actually I would say has nothing at all to do with the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. And that is that the United States did a much better job decades ago of keeping its own house in order. That the past, let's say 20 years, since 9-11, I'll just say some examples from my own personal life. Since I graduated college, the average cost of living in the United States has increased 60%. My generation has 3% of wealth in the United States. It's the lowest percentage any generation has ever had in US history. And so here I'm drawing on, for students in the room, Dr. Richard Haas, the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has a great book where he says nation building begins at home. And so I would submit that one of the things that the US did right in the world, not just the Middle East, is take care of itself. The second thing I would say it did right was it practiced restraint. So for example, the 1954 invasion of Egypt for control of the Suez Canal by Israel, France, and Great Britain, President Eisenhower said not on my watch, he stopped it immediately. And in fact, the power of that was not just stopping a conflict, but that actually made the United States look incredibly powerful on the world stage. So restraint itself can be a tremendously powerful show of force. So those are two thoughts I would provide for the first question. I'll have a go as well. The United States is a big player in the world and it doesn't always pay attention to the impact that its own decisions for its own purposes have on the rest of the world. You know the phrase that oil is black gold. In the 50s and 60s, it literally was because the price of oil in terms of gold flatlined. You knew exactly what the value of oil was in terms of gold. When President Nixon took the dollar off gold, the price of oil in terms of gold gyrated enormously. It was an enormous amount of uncertainty injected into the world economy and no economy was more subject to the uncertainty and to the implications of wild gyrations and the value of its principal commodity than the Middle East and the rest is history. In terms of what US got right before Gulf War in 1991, if I got the question. I think a couple point, containment. George Cannon doctrine against Soviet Union, I think generally it was positive. Realism, most of the time depending, gives good insights into how contain adversaries and foes. Mutual containment Iran-Iraq war from US perspective that was kind of weakening. The two strongest adversaries of the state of Israel but also states were not in line with US interest in the region. So that was losing Iranian monarchy as an ally was on the downside of the picture of things before like during Cold War. I'm gonna stop there. Just two quick points. One is since we're talking Western strategy maybe to connect to Dr. Roberts point and bring in Britain, which was a country that had a long run as a global empire but eventually as it happens, its material capabilities could no longer keep up with its responsibilities. And so we see first as Dr. Roberts mentioned the Suez War and the British's humiliation there and then in the 1960s the end of the significant British role in the Persian Gulf. So a reminder of material capabilities and what your economic and political base at home is like is ultimately gonna affect your ability to project power and to be involved abroad. Well, thank you. Thank you all. Now to take it to the next step, we all saw Western strategy change remarkably after the attacks of 2001 and evolve during the global war on terror. What overarching lessons do you think we should have learned that must remain in the minds of Western strategists today as they analyze our approach towards the Middle East keeping in mind the ascendancy of Russia and China back to the place that they used to occupy? Dan, please. I have one snippet to add here. In so far as American interventions in the Middle East were qualified as an investment in America's security, we fight them over there so we don't fight them over here. Then the principle of investment applies and you have to take into account the uncertainty. As the uncertainty effect rises the hurdle rate for that investment soars. And I don't think that the hurdle rate for the investments in what looked at this way in terms of going into Iraq or elsewhere were taken into account. And so you have to be extraordinarily certain of the outcome of the event and war of course is the most uncertain event possible which guides you to restraint. I'm gonna say a couple words. I'm not super optimistic about Washington DC leadership. However, I'm very optimistic about the American forces generation rising from Afghanistan and post Iraq publishing books, being part of the national debate and how to make policies, how to think of the world and most important in my view because it impacts the world. How United States defines its own national interests. So I am confident in the potential of that generation of military and military policy leadership to contribute to that. I'll add something which is yesterday I made a misstatement which is so I see four students that we reached to another professor and I took to DC and I said we went to all of these government agencies and institutions and they all said no one here in DC has time to read a lot, right? I said we need it on one page. I was wrong. There was one place we went in DC where they said the opposite of that and that was in the Pentagon. We were meeting with the Army G2 head of Army Intelligence. She said to the students, you guys need to read books and she said not just read books, you need to read books with footnotes and the historian in me was just leaping with joy. She said you need to read the footnotes more carefully than the book. And so one of the things I think that we've learned from this 20 years of the global war on terror is just how deeply we have to study and think and read team ourselves to think about all the different possibilities, things that could go wrong, things that could go right. Beginning with the labels we use, like the idea of a war on terror. Terrorism, there's a great book out there by a guy named Randall Law, History of Terrorism. He says terrorism is as old as humankind and as new as this morning's news. You're never gonna get rid of terrorism. And so some deep careful study, deep careful thought. About how we were to respond to 9-11, I think would have done the country a lot of good. I think just to build on that point, there's a risk when you define something in terms of an amorphous concept instead of many other conflicts which are defined in terms of a specific enemy. And so I would second that and also the way it's kind of had an open-ended function in time. And if you think about September 11th, 2001, 21 and a half years ago, and if I'm doing my math right, and here we are with Congress debating whether to finally close the authorization for the use of force. So I would build on that point first. The second thing I would say is about nationalism. I think sometimes we forget how powerful nationalism is, how powerful people's devotion to their own society is. And it's kind of ironic to me that we forget that because we each feel quite passionate about our own society and particularly at a school that trains many military leaders, people who've made a decision to help defend and advance the national interests of their country. We often, and I don't just say this here, we often forget the extent to which people in every country feel that way about their territory, about their culture, about their society, about their agency. And so I think sadly the last 20 years have been a reminder of that, that we need to be quite cognizant of. Well, now then with that as a preamble to the heart of the panel, acknowledging the emphasis of national security making on Europe and Asia Pacific region at this time and taking into account the lessons you believe we should have learned from our deep past and our recent past, I'm gonna call you out and ask what should Western Middle Eastern strategy look like in the future? And if you could run it through the lenses of your various backgrounds, where we touch on not just military posture, but what economic policies, what sort of partnerships should we be developing? What should be our diplomatic priorities and what sort of desired outcomes would we like to see in the information realm that will maybe mark our future in the Middle East as a little bit more successful than what we have exhibited in the past? And we've got 20 minutes to chew over this topic, so I'd love to see where it goes. Yeah, let's start with you, Nick. I'll start with a few things. So one is, okay, let's bring some history into the conversation, which is that I think that one thing we're seeing is that the Middle East is now, as it always has been, enmeshed in global, whatever global is. So China, Russia, Africa, this is all a very interconnected part of the world. And neither the United States nor any other country is ever going to be able to compartmentalize it away from the rest of the world. That being said, I would say that one of the things that I think the United States should do is instead of very often our reflexes, let's identify our weaknesses and think about we can improve. But the United States has some tremendous strengths that no other country can imitate. And that is kind of going off my last question is this idea of culture, of soft power. I remember a decade ago, a long time ago, I was in Tunisia, living in North Africa. I was driving along the border with Libya. And it was quiet, just olive trees and stuff like that. And all of a sudden, I thought I was going crazy because I thought I heard American pop music. And I checked the radio, I know the car radio wasn't on. I'm in the middle of nowhere along the Libyan border. And I said, I get closer to this building. I said, oh, that's Beyonce. The fact that I was hearing Beyonce playing in the middle of the desert of the border with Libya, that's American power. And I would say that's not a bad thing. I mean, come on, Beyonce is amazing. But this brings up broader points. I often say to my students, hey, did any of you ever think, I'm gonna go get my undergraduate degree in Shanghai. Everyone wants to come to the United States for an education and for culture. And so I think that kind of leaning into those strengths and not necessarily looking at everything in the world through a military lens or just through an assumption of this is a problem that needs to be controlled by the military because first of that's bad for the military to begin with. But those are some thoughts maybe to just get us started but also speaking even broader, what we're seeing in the Middle East and the rest of the world is really a, I wouldn't say it's a decline of US power because we don't even need to speak of the United States as a constant reference for everything. But what we are seeing is kind of a return to a more natural, you could say, organic homeostasis on the world stage. So it is incorrect to talk about the rise of China or the rise of India or the rise of Iran. We're seeing the re-rise of Iran and China and India. These countries, these societies have always been tremendously powerful and flourishing. And I think what we're living through is an acknowledgement in the United States and certain parts of Europe that the world is kind of returning to this more organic homeostasis. So if I can follow up, what the Middle East needs most is stability and development and a reduction of uncertainty. Uncertainty is a killer for economic development. And the United States policy has not been oriented towards stability in the Middle East. It has been a wrecking ball by going in militarily into Afghanistan and then into Iraq. And the sanctions which are imposed on Iran also represent a form of economic warfare. So the question is how do you then build down that instability and reduce uncertainty and here you are talking language which is very similar to China's. China's values are stability and the iron rice bowl it is providing economic certainty, moderate prosperity if you will, to their population. So there is a point where if we go into continue with our Middle East policy is now a contest for hegemony between China and the United States that exacerbates the uncertainty about what that outcome will be. You heard from Ambassador Alutani that they don't want to choose because forcing that choice creates an uncertainty as to which way they will go and what that will imply for their societies and their economies. So I think we need to find a language on which we can agree with China and which emphasizes that which is most important for the Middle East. So that's where I would put the emphasis on in relation to the military posture the withdrawal from Afghanistan was also destabilizing. It was done rapidly and as we heard yesterday from one of the students it was now well-prepared in terms of handling the human side of things. I would not recommend that the United States even if it wants to withdraw and build down its forces in order to refocus its force focus on the Far East that it should do so on an extraordinarily stable, predictable, well-signaled manner and just emphasize the stability for the region and certainty for its populations. We'll get to that. A few points here. I'm not sure to what extent they have internal consistency but I do my best to be in coherence with other input here. A student presentation yesterday about some international issues cause for optimism again. They presented about North Korean stuff, Iranian proliferation and they brought a neocritical perspective. I liked it very much. So that's being said. I'm a bit worried about an American side, the polarization in the society and politics. How they can America first and America as a however you wanna brand it, peacemaker, deal breaker, leader of the free world. This tension in the U.S. foreign policy needs somehow to find a middle ground or compromise. Otherwise, one president, you correct me if I'm wrong, gets into some international commitment and the other sees that maybe U.S. wants to rethink that or revise that, right? So that's a second point. Our extension and resources. You heard about Paul Kennedy theory of the fall, rise and fall of empires. That applies to China. Actually people are saying that China is getting involved in the Middle East is a good thing because they are getting back to reality now. They cannot be on the margin, they are in the game. So coming back to Washington, this overextension and resource is a consideration that U.S. Nick talked about the number of the military bases in the world. It's a lot and the military commitment. So that's something to think about. American dream, there is some, it's still there, but there is debate how that dream gonna go forward. I think Americans, despite polarization, there is a consensus, I may be wrong, there is a consensus across the nation that nation building and state building, we should go beyond it using military forces and mission to export liberal democracy, good intention, but doesn't give the expected result. So I don't see the future generation of security mission would be for nation building. They're rather for a stabilization, assistance, stuff like that. So that would be, I'm gonna finish on this one before going to Jeremy is the focus on counter-terrorism approach toward Middle East. Maybe that should go, we gotta go beyond that counter-terrorism U.S. policy to Middle East, like one hammer and all problems look like an A. And go beyond the perspective of what Ben said in terms of development. Other stuff in Middle East that the nation need, but that gets us back to the question of polarization. Chinese, Russians, and others, they are a bit also asking themselves what does really Washington think? I'm gonna finish on this, Jeremy, promise. Saudi Arabia, we know why Iranian got close to Saudi Arabia previous round table, somehow. But we don't know why Saudi Arabia kind of got close to Iran. We know Iranian reason, but the other way around we're not sure. Does Saudi Arabia think or ask themselves questions about what U.S. intentions or long-term, short-term, medium-term plan is in the region? So again, I get back to polarization. Somehow, impacts the views and perceptions of the partners in the NATO and beyond about what U.S. direction is, despite the noble intention. So one general thought, and then maybe some more specific thoughts. I tend to think we're in the midst of a global struggle right now, and it's a kind of age-old struggle. It's the struggle between popular social movements and popular mobilizations of people trying to take control of their political destiny in the face of repressive governments that wanna maintain power and wanna weaken and stop those movements. And we see that in Iran right now. We've seen that recently in a diverse array of countries, Belarus, Sudan, many other countries around the world. So there's nothing new about that in some sense, but we're in a different technological age. And I think some of the early thinking about some of the new communication technology, social media and otherwise, was that that would work to the great advantage of the popular mobilization. But I think what we've learned in recent years, and why is it for those scholars who are studying the success and failure of social movements, are they observing a kind of decrease in the success of social movements when they're trying to overturn their repressive government? Maybe it's because those governments have started to master those tools and understand how they can actually use those tools against the popular mobilization, against the protest movements. And so while I think in a moment like that, there's gonna be a temptation for a powerful government like the United States to want to intercede, I don't have a perfect answer on this, but I think it's something the United States should be very cautious about. Again, whether we're thinking about a country like Belarus right very close to a major US adversary and allied with a major US adversary, Russia, whether we're talking about Iran, obviously a decades long hostile relationship between the two, the ability, the temptation of a superpower is to wanna jump in, to wanna influence events, and that's got to be something that's very carefully calculated because oftentimes I think the risk is that we're gonna taint the protestors or taint the popular mobilization by trying to make a connection. And then just a few specific points sort of less related to that. For the United States, in terms of thinking about the Middle East, I suppose one of the biggest questions is to think about the reliance on authoritarian governments. And we've talked about the previous panel talked a lot about authoritarianism. And again, there's nothing unique to this about the Middle East or even this current particular period as those of us who are older in the room know that the question of what kind of governments the United States should ally with was very central to the Cold War as well all around the world. And important US allies that helped the United States win that Cold War, some of them were not democratic countries. And that was a crucial part of the fight. But I think what we also see in the Middle East, if not other places, is sometimes the cost that the United States pays by allying itself with a segment of society, a segment of the elite at the expense of maybe the opinions of a wider swath of the population. And there's no easy answer to this. I don't have the answer, but I think about two different kinds of relationships. Sometimes the United States has been consistent, relatively consistent with an authoritarian country like Saudi Arabia. And that's difficult when you have differences with Saudi Arabia. When Saudi Arabia, when the leadership kills a Washington Post columnist and then you're trying to grapple with that, but you've taken a position of consistency. That's very difficult. At the same time, we could look at a country like Iraq and the US-Iraqi relationship where we've talked about yesterday about some of the back and forth, right? The United States working closely, relatively closely with Iraq in the early 1980s, to very different situation, go for 1990 sanctions into the 2003 invasion. So it's not an easy question, but I think we really need to be cognizant about the costs of setting ourselves against where the majority of the population thinks. And maybe Iran is a cautionary tale in that. I defer to some of my colleagues who know more about Iran, but thinking about the US proximity to the Shah and then the total flip to since 1979 and 1980 in terms of US-Iranian relations. The second point I wanted to make just on the side here is about the particular, and I'll be brief on this, is about the particular mix of instruments that the United States uses in its foreign policy to caution ourselves about, even with a country like Iran where there's much hostility and much reason for that hostility and much tension to remind ourselves in the US and maybe in other Western countries that the United States government retains the full array of statecraft, the full array of instruments across the spectrum. And we often say that to remind about the military dimension. I actually mean the opposite here. To remind ourselves that as much as economic sanctions are one tool, economic incentives are another tool that states hold. As much as the use of military force or the threat of military force is one technique that states have that the United States or other states also have the possibility of diplomacy and negotiation. And so the first, I want to say two final things about this, a lot of the attention that's been on this Chinese role in mediating the Iranian, Saudi, whatever it is, and we'll find out. Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's something, but so one point is you have to have considered that you could use negotiations and mediation to have played a role in that. And to the extent that sometimes the United States maybe doesn't put enough emphasis on the possibility of mediation and diplomacy, you're gonna miss that opportunity. And then the last point I wanted to say kind of going in a different direction is we see, I don't have to tell you that the United States right now is quite a partisan country. We talk about polarization, radicalization, fragmentation of the United States, questions about U.S. democracy. I don't think we can understand January 6th without understanding the tenuous nature of American democracy right now. So I think that induces a little humility, but specifically on this question, to use the example of China mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I know a lot of people said, oh, this shows that China's ascending and this is where was the United States and stuff. But I was just as a kind of thought experiment, I was trying to imagine one of the media channels that might be more cynical or hostile towards the Biden administration had they learned that the United States was engaged in secret negotiations with Iran, right? How would that have played in Washington, D.C. if it spilled out that the Biden administration was facilitating secret negotiations with the Iranians? I don't know for sure, but I think there would have been some partisan tension. I'm not trying to point fingers on this issue at one particular side. What I'm trying to suggest is that part of the history that you steered us towards was a history where there wasn't unanimity in the United States on every step of the way that we've talked about, but there was often a much stronger bipartisan consensus, certainly about confronting the Soviet Union. And that the loss of that consensus, whether it's on the question of Israel-Palestine, whether it's on the question of Iran, whatever the question is, the loss of that consensus I think is gonna come at a price for presidents of either party who are trying to advance the U.S. national interest. Several of you talked about stability as being one of the goals, and I'm often reminded when I was young, my family would take these cross-country trips and it's several children in the back seat, mom and dad were up front, and we would leave Minnesota and the eruptions from the back seat, parents would be involved in who did what to whom. There was a sense of fairness about deciding what happened. By the time we hit the North Dakota border, no one was interested in fairness anywhere. What they wanted was quiet. And it was a different sort of approach to achieving stability. One was to get to the root of problems and try to settle it and eventually patients wore out and they just demanded quiet. When you all approached stability, can you give us any insights as to how people can maintain that first approach for a little bit longer because it tends to involve a lot more attention. It tends to involve a lot more real discernment of what is the nature of the disagreement to begin with. So there are different types of stability that can be achieved. Some are short-term, some are long-term, but each of you mentioned stability at least one point. Is there anything you can bring up that could help the strategist of the future achieve a stability that has some roots that allow it to stay more stable for longer because it addressed the right things? I'll jump in here with an economic theory. It's called the theory of second best. You're probably not familiar with this, but basically what it says is if in an economic framework all parameters are set to optimum, and then you take one and remove it from the optimal position, now you're at a suboptimal outcome. The question is, does retaining the other ones at optimum is that the best outcome possible? And the answer that the theory of second best tells us is that keeping the other parameters at optimum is not necessarily the best outcome then. So once you're in a suboptimal world, theory stops guiding you as to which direction to go. You really have to fly by the seat of your pants in terms of finding out what next step is actually going to be better. Is it towards the optimum or is it towards something that you would normally not consider? So when we're looking at the Middle East, we're in just a whole lot of suboptimal positions. So the way forward has to be something which is pragmatic and experimental and gradual and see what works and if you can nudge the system towards a more stable, quieter outcome, then you're moving in the right direction. So pragmatic experimentalism on the way forward I think would be a thought as a principle in terms of, excuse me, in terms of enhancing stability. And your readout should not be whether American interests are directly served but whether in fact the situation in the Middle East is becoming calmer. Related to that is, it's interesting you bring that up because I've often said I wish I had studied more psychology. And I wonder why it is in the minds of policymakers and perhaps all of us in that when we see one thing happen in the world we automatically think that it's coming at our expense. So China negotiates this deal with Iran and Saudi Arabia that all of the questions were, wow, does this represent the decline of American power? Is this a bad thing for us? And I always wonder why. I mean, in fact, I can't see many reasons why it's not a good thing that China negotiated this deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And I hope it holds true, I hope it works. Because as Dan was saying, the stability is a good thing. And people, countries, states talking to each other is a good thing. One of the things, if we're talking about how can the United States, in the Indian Ocean region, in the Middle East, if the question is how can we extend United States influence and so forth, one of the things that I would like to see a return to is a greater mindset toward the idea of soft power. And especially education. When other people come to the United States and spend four years to get an undergraduate degree and something that, it's like an oil spot on a piece of paper. I mean, it does spread certain values and not even American values, but greater tendencies toward just human beings understanding each other and so on and so forth. Economically in the region, I think one of the things that the ambassador was talking about yesterday, and this was a distinctly Emirati approach to the world, is just a very ideal, he kept talking about, let's not have ideology, let's not have ideology. Just a very kind of down to the core of the issue approach to the world. And I think maybe the world might be going back toward that, let's not approach the world necessarily through some sort of grand ideology, but rather just more basic goals. So at this time, we've got a chance for folks to line up and ask the panel what the burning questions you have. I see we've got several students out there, so I hope you've got some questions because the Middle East is in your future and you will be grappling with opportunities and challenges throughout your young adult time. Drogshan, are you ready? Always. Thank you so much to all the panelists for being here and for sharing their insights. From the previous panel, something that I want to add to all the words or terminologies that they want to add about Middle East is one woman, very important one. I mean goodness, we dragged America behind us because we were being oppressed, so let's not forget that. Obviously it's a metaphor, but women were the rhetoric behind why America went to Afghanistan, one of the other country I come from. But at the same time, we mentioned family in the Middle East, so women are the drive, the number one drive to function in the family and also they are the core and the fundamental element of how the society works, even though they don't have much representation, but it doesn't necessarily mean we can undermine their role. Especially for you, sir, I'm gonna call you out here, Dr. Ali here. I'm sure your mother plays a big role for you to sit here in this chair. So for you, you should be the first one to mention it. And then for Professor Roberts, mentioning the soft power here about the role of the United States. I believe that's an amazing and an excellent point, but something about the symposium in the past two days, we see that the question is about the impossible mission of peace in the Middle East, but do we see the names that are mentioned, United States, China, Japan, all these other elements? If we are looking at it at this as a novel, do we see the Middle East as a protagonist here or all these other countries as the protagonist? So if you could have the insight about that and something specifically to Colonel McCullough here, how do you see this symposium being an element for Norwich community to be able to support the students that come from that region in this community? It's to not make this symposium so detached from the members that have come to this place, but rather bring it in an existential way to say each one of us how we can play our role and what could be to take as a leader of the community for you. I know it was a lot, so I appreciate your responses ahead of time. Thank you. Quickly on this, Valentine was supposed to be here. She had some emergency, couldn't make it. So we shuffled around the panel. So she would be really the best person. You could connect them to answer. And your question also brings in the critical theories and alternatives and constructivism in the peace building. And that's a big deal now in international debate, schools and also media. Women, minorities, you're right. Our two days panel, well made it best because we didn't have much time. We're a state focused, non-state actors a bit, but we didn't go, well, again, it was conceived originally that Dr. Muqaddam will be here, but that didn't happen. So however, Nick brought up a lot of critical voices in terms of defense, investment, and the impact on a U.S. economy. How it created a monster that we cannot control. Frankenstein scenario. Anyway, so we had a lot of critical voices, but where do you wanna go? It was conceived in the program to be covered, but for some reason beyond our control didn't happen. Very, very quickly, so we can get as many questions as possible. I tried to do justice to your question in some way yesterday in my presentation in that we all, we do need to acknowledge that we are here in the United States, North Americans here on this panel, debating what peace looks like in the Middle East. This is not the Middle Eastern people debating for themselves what peace looks like in their countries. And that is empire. And perhaps a cautionary tale, you know, again, I mentioned people don't like having historians in the room because a historian will say, name me an empire that has not fallen apart. And Drugshawn, we'll talk more later as we always do, but anytime we can get distinguished thought leaders in front of students to debate about any topic, we're fulfilling the requirement that I believe we have to challenge people's thoughts, get them introduced to ideas they may not have heard before and to go back to their barracks room or their residence hall and fall asleep thinking about the new idea that they heard, then we are being the university that we proclaim that we are. So you and I will have many discussions as will all of the students here. On this side, we had someone patiently waiting. I had a quick question about the new ideas and the new government types of, there's constant debate between nationalism and globalism and even the new thoughts of neo-medievalism and the rise of private armies in countries such as Turkey and how these will affect the Middle East and for a positive or negatively. I can say one. Yeah, let's hit this one. Do you want to say one there? I mean, I think in the tension between globalism and nationalism, I mean, you're highlighting an important facet of the last 40 years. I mean, you're building on some of the things that Dan has said over the last two days about the changes in the international economy and how that has connected states and peoples in different ways, but the extent to which it's often in tension with nationalism and it can very much create some of the instability that some of the foremost proponents of globalization purport that they're trying to avoid. So I would say that in terms of globalism and nationalism, that's one of the big tensions of the last two decades and it's a continuing tension. You briefly mentioned the word neoliberalism, right? Which, neo-medievalism as well. Oh, neo-medievalism. Neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism, yeah, neo-medievalism. Oh, neo-medievalism. Sorry, so I'll stop. I thought you said something. Neo-medievalism, wow. I guess I can sort of add a little bit to what Jeremy said there. In terms of like, if you think about the evolution of the economy, the industrial economy, at one point had increasing returns. So that meant that there were supernormal profits and there was a lot of rivalry to capture those industries. And that was the era of the early phase of industrialization. And you saw empire building. Countries built empires in order to have captive markets and to have captive resources. Colonialism and the era of the scramble for Africa, for example, came out of the early industrial era, the economics of it in one way, if you look at history through an economic lens. When you get to the post-war period, that changed. By that time, the global economy was sufficiently large that the economies of scale were exhausted. When I was going to university in the 70s, the stylized fact that we assumed was that there were constant returns of scale and a constant labor share of income. They're called the Caldor Facts in the economic literature. And these are indicated that the world was competitive. Now, how did the world evolve under a competitive framework? It involved by spreading industrial activity throughout the world. So we wound up with a made in the world economy. The book, The Global Factory, was written in 1985. Ten years before the World Trade Organization was formed. That world integrated East Asia and other countries into it and it wasn't neoliberal in the sense that we think of it as a bad thing, which is concentrating income at the top percentiles. It was very friendly to development. And it was not at odds with nationalism in any way. That was one of the best periods, in fact, for internationalism. What changed was when you had, again, technological changes that introduced new increasing returns industries and protection into the system through intellectual property, which then concentrated income. You saw the rise, the profit share of income start to rise around 1980. The labor share starts to fall. And then all of that tension is transmitted into national political frameworks. And you wind up with populism emerging, being naturally stoked by the change in income distribution at the national level. At that point, you have the tension between globalization and nationalism, if you will. But it's not because of the industrial economy. It's because of this intellectual property, this knowledge-based economy, and then later the data economy. So what we have to do in terms of understanding the impact of globalization on our economies is to understand which segment of the economy, if you will, is generating that tension between global and national and address that with policies that dampen down the tensions internally. What we need is an income redistribution system in the West, because as someone said, Nicholas said, his generation has the lowest share of income, of 3% of wealth. That's not a tenable situation going forward. We simply did not manage the distribution of wealth implications of technological change. So it's not a nationalism versus globalization. It's an understanding of your actual economics of production. I'll leave it at that. I'm gonna just add one word quickly, is immigration and demographics is a big part of it. Which is not properly economic process, but is the different societies, not only Americans, but others, non-Western societies. Resistance to globalization has a heavy demographic component to it too, yeah. So what we'll do, let's take a question from both sides because sometimes the answers somewhat weave together. So we'll get your question, and then for Sergeant Walker we'll get yours and hopefully we'll be able to answer both simultaneously. So my question is centered around both today and yesterday. So yesterday we heard talk about maybe letting the Middle East decide its own economic policies and let it decide its own fate in terms of its little hemisphere that it has, and I can't help but think about the Monroe Doctrine that we had in the early development of our country. So one big question that I had in order to spur the Middle East development, would it be more prudent in Western strategy to sort of implement a quasi-Monroe Doctrine in the Middle East, primarily not centered around making sure American or Western influence is in the Middle East, but making sure that the Middle East maintains its own little sphere of cultural influence and its own sphere of self-determination? Good morning, gentlemen. So this question is actually kind of pointed towards you, General McCullough. I just finished a book called Wolves of Hunman Province about your unit in Afghanistan, and something that I found really interesting is a lot of your marines were issued money right off the bat getting there that they were kind of instructed to use towards the infrastructure in the area to kind of prop that up. My question is kind of bouncing off of that, what he was going after. Do you see that working on a larger scale? I see it as kind of like a money pit, like do we throw money at the Middle East or is it better to just stick away? But I think there's another thing that's been brought up a lot at this conference is do we have a responsibility to help out here? We played a big part in the Middle East in the past few years, and it's been a part of my life since I was born, so do we have a responsibility to the Middle East to help out, and where do we attach that money to? How does that money get there, and where it needs to go to actually fix the issue? Questions? I can take the first one a little bit, maybe the end of that one. So I would say no, I wouldn't support a quasi-emon row doctrine for the Middle East. I think the implication is again about a framework in which as outsiders we would know better than what the people who live in the region would do, and I don't think that's the direction, and at this point in the 21st century that U.S. foreign policy should be going. I think we've seen the cost in the past, not just with the U.S., but many empires around in the last few hundred years, the cost of that approach, and so I don't think that's the direction that we'd want to go. I can jump in here, so if you think about the Monroe Doctrine and think about the economic performance of the region that falls under that, it's not been stellar, and basically empires are extractive, they're not constructive. The place where America's influence was by far the best was in Western Europe and the Far East Asia where America was building bulwarks against communism. So America was investing in Korea, in Japan, in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Southeast Asia, and making those countries wealthy with trade, providing incentives, as Jeremy was saying, as opposed to sticks. And East Asia prospered, Western Europe also prospered under American support. It was a Marshall Plan that was injecting money and development as a bulwark against Soviets. But in its own backyard, America was extracted, it gave us the term banana republic. So it's not good to fall into the sphere of influence of someone. North Korea is the worst country in the world and it's in the sphere of China, but everyone around China is doing very well because they're able to balance against China and have the support of the United States. So think about the principle that you don't want to be in someone's sphere of influence, but America can do good and create wealthy allies, powerful allies, by supporting their interests when they are in fact balancing. And in terms of throwing money, remember that money can be, if it's distributed, it can lead to all kinds of violence as people scramble forward. So throwing money at something, you have to be very, very careful about how you do it and I would urge again, pragmatic experimentalism, if investment in a region can actually dampen a conflict, remove a bone of contention, then do it, but try it out and if it works, roll it out. And I say one thing for you, Matthew, on your last question to General McCullough, does the United States have a responsibility? My answer to that would be, as I said to someone yesterday's, turn your question into an answer, turn it into a statement. I would like to hear what you think, not now, but this fall when you take my class, where we're going to be talking about just, that's one of the things, this class that a few people here have signed up for, the costs of war, we're gonna be debating these types of things and anyone, I've already invited Colonel Dr. Krauss, anyone's welcome to come join and talk about these things with us. So you've already got your homework. Great. And I do have you captive for another year, so we'll have multiple discussions, but someone can guide you through some Thucydides and when you start looking at people's motivations for taking certain actions through that lens of fear, honor, and interest and realize not everyone on the world stage has the ability to work in their own interest and sometimes their motivations are strictly through the fear and honor lens, it'll give you some insights as to how we interact with other places. They have a strategy they're trying to enable as do other powers, it happens on the margins of where powers meet and I've just given you a homework assignment. It's a tough book to get through, but it's worthwhile and you'll use it for life. Absolutely, thank you, sir. So Dr. Roberts, I'm gonna direct this question primarily towards you. So you advocated for a much more soft power approach to the Middle East with education specifically. Are you advocating for a complete withdrawal of American forces from the Middle East and if so, how would you suggest we deal with extremist groups that are inevitably going to fill the power vacuum in the Middle East and also going off of that, to what extent do we have a moral obligation to protect people in the Middle East from groups like these? Good question and I'm proud of you for asking me a tough question that I'm not really sure how to answer. No, and I almost feel like I'm a politician running for office and you're asking me like what my position is. I think that anyone saying let's withdraw would be silly from a policy perspective, but also I don't think that we necessarily have to differentiate or say that soft power means the military is not involved. So there have been instances where the military has done some tremendous public good for the world. So let's say we have two Marine officers here. Let's just say there's a hurricane in country X, huge infrastructures distort water to people starting to cross the road, infrastructure running again. So the military is not necessarily always used for hard power, but I do think, I think it's fair to say that one thing the United States has overextended itself and that is something that the US military has made of standing for itself. Listening to last five questions, four questions, you see this tension between retreat, not retreat sorry, isolationism and responsibility that Matthew said. So this tension is in the US foreign policy, America first or as I said. So nation building and a state building with military forces. Listen, don't forget I'm gonna just give you a catchphrase as time is running. US national debt is, how much is it? 13? Is a lot. There is a nation building to do here as a foreign observer from Canada as well as they can grasp, okay. Okay, pass the ball to you guys. Thank you. All right, it looks like Yanimo, we should have time for one more. Okay, make them quick, concise. Awesome, good morning. So we talked a lot about stability and how the US is tied in and the West is tied in with the Middle East. So kind of building off that stability and looking at it from the other side of the coin. Are Russia and China as well interested in stability in the Middle East or is it in their best interest that the US is tied up and Professor Roberts as you said potentially overextended in that region? So this question is open to the panel. With regard, so China's been a topic of the panel over the last few days and their role in the Middle East as well. And it seems that their overall message and vision for the Middle East, their pole of power as it is reemerging is in opposition to the American one of spreading this patchwork of liberal democracies that we were pursuing in the late 90s and early 2000s in the region. And given that that vision hasn't come to fruition over 20 years of us attempting to do it, does the United States need to pursue a different course, one more of realism like we did with the Soviet Union in the 20th century or was this a failure of execution and on the ground during the early 21st century? So over the past two days, we've seen how complex of a question this is, but to make it concise, yes or no, do you think peace of the Middle East is possible? To the middle of the question, do China and Russia want peace in the Middle East? I think one interesting thing, I think the other interesting thing but on the other hand, if someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that after 9-11, on the day of September 11th, the first foreign leaders, in the country they were slow with, was Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Putin said, hey, I wouldn't do anything, this is a huge problem for all of us, right? I'll do what I can to support. Now, things changed, but I can assure you that when the United States was admired in a two front war occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, who knew that the Russians and the Chinese were pretty happy to sit and watch that happen, because it was deep and perfectly right. So, but yes, I would say peace in the Middle East is probably possible, but it's likely, I agree very much with Professor Mottari who spoke last night, and we're seeing this last post-war war to all of this stuff that's happening, if you look at the long work of Middle Eastern histories of the Republic of Iraq. Please. So, I would say first of all, there's a halfway house between withdrawing your military from the Middle East and enhancing stability, stop shooting, okay? Be there, but don't shoot, and just try to tamp down. Second thing I would pick up on the point about Professor Mottari's comment yesterday, which I think it was at the dinner, so for the benefit of everyone here, he was talking about the possibility of kind of European Union style confederation in the Islamic world in Central Asia, and if you now think about the dynamics of US involvement in the world in the post-war period where its greatest successes were in East Asia, where it promoted strong economies surrounding China, and in Western Europe where it promoted and accommodated the European Union, trying to promote such a concept in the Middle East might actually be ideal. Just to give you a sense of the US involvement in Europe, when the Europeans wanted their common market, their common agricultural policy, this was not in the US interest, direct interest. It was in the interest of building Europe and the United States accommodated, so that's the kind of long-term thinking, taking short-term movements to try and promote some kind of integration, economic development. The European Union started out as a coal and steel community. You can build something up in the Middle East that would resemble that, that would be brilliant. Maybe we'd agree, I don't know, that peace in the Middle East is a very broad term, so when I think about that, let me focus in on a couple of things. I tend to think about Israel-Palestine because that's what I do a lot of my research on, but let me just set that aside and say, you know, I think of three civil wars going on in the Middle East right now, in Libya, in Syria, and in Yemen, and so I think if the question is, will those civil wars end, they will end. Civil wars don't generally last forever, and one thing I hope we can pay attention to in developing Saudi-Iranian relations is the extent to which that has a positive effect for the civilians of Yemen, right, the people who've been in a pretty brutal humanitarian situation for a number of years now. So do I think that peace in the Middle East can happen? Yeah, and I'm thinking in particular about those civil wars. In terms of the United States attempting to spread liberal democracy in the region, I have to say, I think maybe taking issue a little bit with the question, just in a friendly way, that the US has mixed motivations and sometimes the United States is pushing democracy and human rights and otherwise other times when it seems like that will conflict with pro-US interests, the United States is much less willing slash unwilling to do so, and we've seen that repeatedly, for instance, with the US-Saudi relationship, bear in mind the United States itself is wrestling with democracy, and so there's a certain assumption, I think, when we ask that question, sometimes we know what we're doing and we're gonna teach other people that. Maybe we need to figure out what we're doing, right, and I say that with some humility about the struggles that our country faces right now, and I'll leave Russia and China to others who are... Just the last word on the, maybe it's a good exercise for you guys as students is also for scholars, the fragmented thinking about Middle East peace and conflict. When you think about the conflict in Yemen or Libya, Syria, you've got to think also how it is connected to Iranian proliferation, right, to extremism, to US action in Syria or Russian deployment in that country, and Chinese incursion. As long as you think in a fragmented way about the issues of Middle East, you want to go far. I understand there is a pragmatic side to it. You wanna focus on problems one by one, you don't wanna search for Magic Johnson solution. However, in terms of analysis you need to have as a student on Middle East, a framework to connect Syria to Libya to Yemen to Iran, Israeli situation and all that. For example, I finish on this, you cannot ask Iranians, be it monarchy or mullahs now, not to have ballistic missiles and nuclear weapon and allow and tolerate in nuclear Pakistan and nuclear Israel or whoever else comes up. It's just not possible, okay? So you've got to just get them connected all those issues together. I would just point out two items. Earlier you heard us talking about the drive towards stability and military planner in the room. Both peace and war are not permanent states. I think that drives us at times to have goals of stability holding off war for as long as possible because once war is let off the leash, you don't always know the results that you're going to have. The passions of the people become inflamed and stability seems to be more in line with many of our goals to hold off the leash coming off for as long as possible. When it comes to what some of our adversaries do there in the Middle East, I'll go back to what I told Matt about looking at things through those lenses of fear and honor and interest. When we see our adversaries doing things there, just because they're doing them does not always mean that it's in our worst interest to have the results that they may achieve. At times, even your adversaries goals may align with your interests and it requires I think a clear eye and a clear analysis if they are willing to undertake the work that is required and it achieves something that achieves perhaps the stability that we would hope for, hold off war as long as possible. If someone else does it, maybe that's better for us. It's worth entertaining and policymakers should look through that lens for condemning actions that we may have taken on our own had someone else not done them. That can help you analyze those things. And I think out of time. Okay, thank you so much. Let's give a round of applause for the panelists. So the last two days through a series of presentations and discussions, we had a great opportunity to broaden and deepen our understanding of the Middle Eastern region and the dynamic global community. Distinguished speakers and guests, thank you so much for your participation in this year's summit. I think I have some comments to do, but especially just right now, some scholars and people, they talk about the possibility of the rise of outbreak of World War III. So witnessing the Russian expansion of war in just the North Korean nuclear and missile kind of tensions and US-China strategy rivalry has been intensifying. So that I think even just during this summit, we just learned a lot of kind of complex problems in Middle Eastern regions. So I think definitely just the current leaders, national leaders and international leaders, they have to be really cautious and make every effort to prevent the rise of these kind of military conflicts. Also try to promote peace and stability in this world because billions of people's lives are contingent upon their strategic decisions. But future leaders, right, I think it's really important for you guys to deepen and broaden your perspective and knowledge over all these kind of international conflicts and problems and issues and tangled problems so that just the witnessing and facing this challenging world, but because of you guys, when you guys become the leaders of this nation and this community, in the international community with deep knowledge and just the humble character and just the strategic kind of insights and all those things, just that we can make this world a better place to live in. So anyway, thank you so much for your participation again. And at this point, we end Norwich's 2023 Middle Eastern Summit. Just I hope you have a nice day and just to see you at the future summit. Thank you again.