Following are two speeches by Chas W. Freeman: Why Not Try Diplomacy? and American Interests, Policies, and Results in the Middle East, both from early in 2008.

Why Not Try Diplomacy?
Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS. Ret.) March 28, 2008 to the University Continuing Education Association in New Orleans

I want to speak to you this afternoon about diplomacy as an element of statecraft. By now most Americans recognize that we are in a bit of trouble both at home and abroad. What is to be done? Is diplomacy a better answer than the use of force?
The Diplomat's Dictionary by Chas W. Freeman, Jr. -- Click here for more infoThe late Arthur Goldberg, who was both a Justice of our Supreme Court and Ambassador to the United Nations, observed that "diplomats approach every issue with an open.. ..mouth." A colleague and friend of mine, who served as Ambassador to China, once told me that "a diplomat is someone who thinks twice � before saying nothing." They set a high bar for a public speaker on diplomacy as an alternative to militarism, but I am willing to attempt it.
Americans believe in military power, and the United States has never spent so much on it. Internationally, given our diminished political standing and the collapse of the dollar, military prowess may be our only remaining comparative advantage. We certainly behave as though we think it is.
In current dollars, we are spending about 28 percent more on our military each year than we did during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and over one-third more than at the height of the Reagan defense build-up against the late, unlamented Soviet Union. We are spending considerably more on military power than the rest of the world put together � three and a half times as much as the highest estimate for China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea combined; and at least 12,000 times as much as Al Qaeda and all other terrorist groups with global reach. It is not clear what enemies justify all this money. Whoever they are, if military expenditures are the key to national security, we've got them where we want them.
In the first ten years of this century, U.S. defense outlays will total about five and one-quarter trillion dollars. Military-related outlays in other parts of the federal budget � like homeland security, veterans affairs, and interest payments on war debt � will add another $2 trillion or so to this, for a cumulative total of something well over $7 trillion in military and military-related spending. Our defense budget, including supplementals to pay for offensive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, is now about 5 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). Counting military-related outlays in other budgets, the percentage of our economy devoted to defense is around 7 percent. We have a huge economy and, in absolute terms, that is a lot of military spending.
We need a strong military even though we're not really worried about an invasion from Jamaica or Canada or Mexico or even Cuba or Iran. Unlike other nations' armed forces, what ours do is mostly not defense against foreign invasion or attacks on the homeland. Our military is configured for offensive deployment in support of foreign policy. It does deterrence, punishment, and conquest of real and potential foreign enemies. That is why our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are in Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Bosnia and dozens of other places around the world that have neither the intent nor the capability to attack us. It took 9/11 and its demonstration that we had no military means of preventing foreign attacks on US civilians to get us to worry about the possibility that such attacks might occur. We now have a separate department of government focused on that.
Somehow, however, despite all the money we've spent, the debt we've accumulated, and the sacrifices patriotic Americans have made in distant foreign lands, our leaders tell us that we have never been so threatened. Given all the enemies we have been making recently, they may be right. There is, of course, a time-tested political axiom in Washington that if something isn't working the answer is to add money and do more of it. So our president and the three major candidates vying to succeed him join in promising further increases in defense spending � without providing any indication of how these increases would buy us greater security. It's enough to make one wonder whether President Eisenhower wasn't onto something when he warned Americans against the danger of nurturing a "military-industrial complex" that would give us a vested interest in military spending, regardless of the nature and level of the threat to our nation.
Massive military spending has, in fact, become an indispensable part of our political-economy. In addition to buying remarkably capable and costly weapons systems, it feeds hordes of consultants and contractors and houses legions of academic specialists. These are very bright people who labor to develop theories of how military coercion might control foreign behavior. They produce threat analyses to justify continuing US military build-up. They consider how best to apply our military might abroad, and they work out the force packages and weapons system specifications to do it. The intellectual energy that massive spending has focused on these topics � as opposed to means of influence that do not rely on the threat or use of force � has revolutionized the American approach to foreign policy. One should never underestimate the impact of either federal spending or the resulting focus of the academy!
And one should never underestimate the ability of politicians to ignore millennia of human experience and to aspire to expediency if the academy gives them an opening to do so. Most of our leaders, in both major political parties, now espouse a reversal of the longstanding American view that coercion, especially through military means, is a last resort to be brought into play only when diplomacy � in the form of persuasion, diplomatic bargaining, alliance-building, and other measures short of war � has failed. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the sequence approved on both sides of the aisle was to shoot first, then send in the diplomats to mop up. Since this hasn't worked out too well, there is now a lot of talk about how to recruit more diplomats and buy more mops. That's probably a good idea, but it might be more effective and cheaper to involve the diplomats at the outset and avoid creating such a mess in the first place.
It used to be thought that the purpose of war is to secure a more perfect peace. That is an objective that invokes diplomacy to translate military triumph into new arrangements acceptable to both victor and vanquished. It implies war planning focused on the question: "and then what?" and the conduct of war in accordance with a strategy that unites political, economic, informational, and intelligence measures with military actions and a well-crafted plan for war termination. In Iraq, a brilliant general has belatedly come up with a credible campaign plan but his plan is still unconnected to a strategy. Our plan to end the fighting is apparently to hang around until the Iraqis decide to make peace with each other. That might take a while. In the strategy-free zone that is contemporary Washington, no one wants to second-guess a celebrity general, but any reading of David Petraeus' manual on counter-insurgency must lead to the conclusion that, in Iraq, "victory" remains undefined and missing in action.
Sadly, theories of coercion and plans to use military means to impose our will on other nations have for some time squeezed out serious consideration of diplomacy as an alternative to the use of force. Diplomacy is more than saying "nice doggie," till you can find a rock. Weapons are tools to change men's minds but they are far from the only means of doing so. As we are learning from our misadventures in the Middle East, they are also seldom the most reliable or least expensive. The weapons of diplomats are words and their power is their persuasiveness. Talk is cheaper than firepower and does less collateral damage, so it makes sense to try it before blazing away at the adversary.
There is another reason to regard force as a last resort. It creates ruins that cannot easily be rebuilt and resentments that cannot be easily be overcome. War is a form of demolition; its results are messy and its effects on those it touches are uncertain. In the age of globalization, moreover, military invasion is as likely to incubate terrorists with global reach as it is to overthrow governments and seize terrain. It makes sense to exhaust diplomatic remedies first, not to follow a script of "Ready! Fire! Diplomacy!"
Diplomacy is the art of pursuing the internationally possible. Its main drawback is that it involves the unpleasant task of interacting persuasively with usually disagreeable adversaries and sometimes tedious friends. Despite the example of useful, wide-ranging dialog with our Soviet enemies (conducted on the sound theory that one should never lose contact with the enemy diplomatically or militarily), a generation of American leaders seems to have concluded that we shouldn't talk to people who disagree with us till they come out with their hands up. But not talking to those with whom one disagrees is the diplomatic equivalent of unilateral disarmament.
Figuring out why others are doing things and explaining to them why Americans disagree with this and why they should, in their own interest, do things our way is the opposite of appeasement. And it is more likely to achieve results than ducking such encounters while loudly proclaiming that those we disdain to speak with already know what they need to do to appease us, so we don't need to reason with them. Substituting reliance on the intuition of our adversaries for diplomatic communication with them leaves few options. We can live with a surging mess or we can slap on some sanctions. When these fail, as they inevitably do, we can send in the B-2s and Abrams tanks. These are not good choices. The approach they impose creates more problems than it solves.
Our next president will inherit a daunting list of challenges: apparently interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; withering alliances; diminished international prestige and deference to our leadership; deepening estrangement between the United States and the Islamic world, a mounting threat to our homeland from the growing ranks of anti-American jihadis; a war-fatigued, equipment-depleted, disenchanted, and still untransformed US military; an increasingly lawless world order; and the emergence of a widening range of regional challenges to US influence and interests from the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Ch�vez Fr�as, and Vladimir Putin.
He or she will have to deal with all these issues while wrestling with a budget and economy in chronic deficit; mounting national debt amidst a credit crisis; recession; inflation; insolvent pension systems; decaying infrastructure � complete with collapsing bridges, pot-holes, and gridlock; a medical system that extracts rapidly inflating payments from middle class Americans without caring for the poor, sick, and destitute among us; and other developments that, collectively, undermine America as a model that other nations wish to emulate. It is tempting to conclude that anyone who wants to be president under these circumstances is prima facie mentally defective and unfit for the office. Still, some poor soul will be inaugurated next January 20 and will have to deal with all these issues and then some.
The new president might start by shaking off the constipated notion that diplomacy is, like military posturing, just a way of conveying menace or containing or deterring threats. These things are, of course, part of diplomacy. And it's true, as Al Capone once sagely remarked, that "you will get farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." Diplomacy is largely about adding the strength of others to one's own, but its greater mission is to take the political offensive by transcending the conventional wisdom and identifying or creating opportunities, and seizing them to the national advantage. That is what Truman did with the Marshall Plan and the formation of NATO. It is what Nixon did with his opening to China. It is what Carter did at Camp David. It is what Reagan did with Gorbachev at Reykjavik. The next president should look into how to restore our atrophied diplomatic capabilities so as to lift us from the mire into which we have sunk.
Resorting to diplomacy will not be as easy as it may sound. Secretary of Defense Gates has recently begun to speak to the lopsided priorities apparent in our budget, which underfunds diplomacy and forces the US military to do all sorts of things that would be more appropriately and better done by civilian foreign affairs personnel. Gates points out that there are fewer professional diplomats in our Foreign Service than there are personnel in military bands or a single carrier battle group. What our country spends on a year's diplomatic and consular operations worldwide is less than what we spend in six days of military operations in Iraq.
You get what you pay for. In this case, that's a superbly professional and supremely lethal military and an anemically staffed and undertrained diplomatic service led by inexperienced political appointees on sabbatical from high incomes. As one of the last century's greatest diplomats, Israel's Abba Eban, said of this peculiarly American practice,
"The bizarre notion that any citizen, especially if he is rich, is fit for the representation of his country abroad has taken some hard blows through empirical evidence. But it has not been discarded."
It has been 196 years since an amateur general � Andrew Jackson � last commanded US troops in battle not far from here. But to lead our diplomatic work abroad, especially in countries where the standard of living is high and the danger of anti-American violence is low, we still depend on amateurs who must learn on the job, hoping that their experienced subordinates will help them overcome their ignorance of the local language, paper over embarrassing gaffes, and avoid catastrophic mistakes. And in Washington, where Iraq has just reminded us how dangerous it can be to allow civilian armchair generals to substitute their military judgments for those of military professionals, we now staff our foreign policy apparatus almost entirely with people with no diplomatic experience. No other country in the world so values ideological reliability and party loyalty over professional knowledge and expertise. Only in America..
I am reminded of the story of a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Mac Toon, a crusty career diplomat who went aboard an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean for a meeting with the admiral who commanded its battle group. At the end of their discussion, the admiral leaned over to ask, "What's it like being an ambassador? I've always thought that after I retire I might want to try it." Ambassador Toon replied, "That's funny. I've always thought that, when I retire, I might try my hand at running a carrier battle group." The admiral said, "That's ridiculous. A naval command requires years of training and experience." But so do the management of foreign policy and diplomacy, if the ship of state is not to be sailed onto the rocks or beached in the desert.
It is a truism that skilled work requires skilled workmen. Americans are now without peer in the military arts. To prevail against our current enemies, we must attain equal excellence in diplomacy. We do not have the margin for error we once did. But even if we devote the equivalent of a whole week's worth of the Pentagon budget to the arts of peace � rather than the three days or so we now do � fixing our Foreign Service will take time. As our military know better than anyone, it takes decades to train, exercise, and professionalize personnel. After years of overemphasis on military means of conducting our foreign relations, getting up to diplomatic snuff will also require a serious investment in intellectual infrastructure comparable to that we have devoted to the military arts.
If we build a diplomatic capability to match our military prowess, we will gain a key building block of national strategy. But a bigger, better Foreign Service will not in itself create such a strategy. Nor will it solve the underlying problem of national strategic illiteracy. We suffer from what one of our most sophisticated foreign policy practitioners, Chester Crocker, has called a "statecraft deficit." It is inspiring to observe the professionalism of our military, which is the most competent in history. It is painful to observe the extent to which military requests for direction from the civilians whose control they are taught to revere go unanswered. The fact is that we � and those we elect and appoint to lead us � are remarkably poorly prepared for the preeminent role in world affairs we now play.
Our educational system bears major responsibility for this. Most Americans can't find Louisiana, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan, on the map. Many are unversed in history, still less diplomatic history. Few have been exposed to any instruction in how to reason about foreign affairs or statecraft and its diplomatic, intelligence, and military tools. Almost none have been tutored in strategy. This is understandable. It is largely a reflection of two factors, both of which have changed.
First, until recently, the American homeland was apparently invulnerable, and the United States was the leader in most fields of human endeavor. Foreign policy was therefore something we inflicted on others without fear of reprisal, not something they did unto us. And we didn't think we had much to learn from foreigners. Foreign affairs and national security didn't seem like anything the average American citizen had to worry about. But 9/11 changed that forever.
And, second, the formative influences of the Cold War, during which the United States led half the world against Soviet communism, are still with us. Then, the capacity of the Soviet Union to annihilate us imperiled our very existence. Its predatory ideology menaced our values; its imperial ambitions threatened our interests and those of many other nations.. The threats to both values and interests became so thoroughly merged that we forgot how to distinguish the two, though they are very different in their functions and import.
Attempts at historical revisionism by the proponents of militarism notwithstanding, the fact is that we won the Cold War by patient adherence to a strategy of containment, not by butting heads on a battlefield. Containment relied on diplomacy � on measures short of war � to build and sustain alliances backed by the deterrent power of great military strength. Some may profess to regret that we did not join in battle with the Soviet Union to roll back its empire. I am glad we substituted patience for belligerence. Our strategy did not vary over forty years. It formed the foreign policy outlook of three generations We did not have to think about strategy. In many ways, we appear to have forgotten how to do so.
We now face a world in which our personal security and that of our communities is threatened, but our national existence is not. As a people and as a nation, we are challenged from many directions and in many ways, not by a single "evil empire" that we can count upon to rot away from within. To secure our domestic tranquility against foreign assault and to lead the 21st Century as we did the last one will demand of us a higher level of strategic conceptual ability and civic literacy than we have had to demonstrate for decades. And it will require instruments of statecraft adequate to the task � diplomatic, informational, and intelligence capabilities of the first order, backed by military power without peer and a prosperous, attractive, and open society.
Two millennia ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca advised the Emperor Nero of the vital importance of setting objectives. "If a man does not know to what port he steers, no wind is favorable," he pointed out. It was good advice, even if Nero didn't take it. It is worth pondering in our current circumstances. Our debate about the challenges before us is almost entirely tactical not strategic; cast in terms of our politics rather than external realities; and focused on preventing change rather than turning it to our advantage.
Yet, for example, we risk reaping the whirlwind if we simply leave Iraq. We cannot do so safely and responsibly without defining realistic objectives and using our withdrawal to advance toward them. If we continue to aid and abet counterproductive behavior by all sides in the Middle East, we should not be surprised when they turn on us. If we do not define a feasible end-game in Afghanistan, we will just incubate more anti-American terrorists while expanding the world's heroin supply.
If we cannot decide what sort of international monetary reserve system should replace the currently collapsing one and persuade other stakeholders to act with us to fix it, we will drift into increasing economic misery. We must develop a plan to reunite the Atlantic region behind the rule of law and other Western values or see these eclipsed by ideas from other regions of the world that are rising to new prominence. Without a vision of mutually beneficial coexistence in our hemisphere, events and the anti-American dreams of others will bring needless trouble right up to our borders. If we are not positioned to help as Cuba, North Korea, Burma, and other troubled nations enter periods of transition, we must expect that they will change in ways that create new problems for us and their neighbors. If we have no positive agenda for enlisting Chinese and Indian power in common causes, they may well apply their power in ways that undercut ours, annoy us, or even injure us.
It has been a long time since Americans had a positive vision or clear objectives for these and many other pressing issues. I could go on, but the afternoon advances, and New Orleans beckons. Let me close with the obvious point that we cannot hope to appeal to the conscience of humankind if we do not continue to embody its aspirations. If we do not restore our country's good name, others will not follow when we lead or share the burdens we take up. To regain the cooperation of allies and friends, we must rediscover how to listen, how to persuade, how to be a team player, and how to follow the rules we demand others follow.
We must do this because we Americans cannot successfully address the problems we confront on our own. Our need for foreign partners has never been greater. Fortunately, the world's desire for partnership with America has not really gone away. Beneath the layers of resentment and animosity laid down by our recent behavior, there is still much goodwill toward the United States. This "fossil friendship" will not last forever. For now, however, it is a resource that American diplomacy can mine to rebuild the respect of allies and friends for our leadership and to unite them behind an American vision of a better world. A return to diplomacy, not threats and the use of force, is the surest path to the reassertion of American leadership. It is time to rediscover and explore that path.
Thank you.

Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr.ABOUT AMB CHAS W. FREEMAN, JR. Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, Jr. succeeded Senator George McGovern as President of the Middle East Policy Council on December 1, 1997. Ambassador Freeman was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense for his roles in designing a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system and in reestablishing defense and military relations with China. He served as U. S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm).

American Interests, Policies, and Results in the Middle East Amb. Chas. W. Freeman, Jr.

The following remarks by Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS. Ret.) were made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program in Cambridge on February 11, 2008. We wish to thank the Middle East Policy Council for making it available.
American Interests, Policies, and Results in the Middle East: Energy, Israel, Access, and the Containment of Muslim Rage Amb. Chas. W. Freeman, Jr.
The last time I was in this hall, I spoke about the uplifting subject of the return of China to wealth and power.
Tonight I will speak about another region of the world, part of which is also accumulating wealth and power at a huge rate. The Arab Gulf now racks up about $800 billion in balance of payments surplus each year, and the amount seems set to grow. The cost of energy - the region's major export - shows every sign of remaining high, indeed, rising higher still in years to come. The flow of global liquidity to the Arabian Peninsula and adjacent areas is not a short-term phenomenon but a long-term shift in global wealth, with enormous implications for the United States and other countries.
This rise in wealth delights the region's inhabitants but, from an American perspective, the Middle East is currently a depressing place. It is a region from whose peoples we are increasingly estranged. It is a part of the world in which the introduction of a massive American military presence has paradoxically coincided with the steady diminution of U.S. political influence, loss of market share by American business, and displacement of America's former cultural preeminence.President George W. Bush and King Abdullah bin Abdul Al-Aziz from the President's recent visit to the Middle East. White House photo: Eric Draper
A few weeks ago, President George W. Bush made his first visit to the Middle East. (This is something that presidents seem to decide is the thing to do as they prepare to leave office. An earlier example is Richard Nixon's nostalgic tour of the region just before his impeachment. Nixon evidently felt unappreciated in Washington - "misunderestimated," as it were - and sought solace in Arab hospitality.)
Those of you who have spent time with the Arabs will understand this. I don't know what his Arab hosts thought about Nixon but Arabs are reliably polite to guests, even guests they do not like. As a case in point, consider the cordial manner in which they recently received the Iranian president, Mr. Ahmadinejad, despite his having numerous characteristics they, like others, consider obnoxious; not to mention an incorrigible character flaw in their eyes - in that he, poor fellow, is Persian.
The Arabs are marvelously hospitable. Yet for the first time that anyone can recall they greeted an important American guest, the 43rd President of the United States, with a series of exceptionally blunt public comments that no American can take pleasure in reading. Their opinions of American policies in the Holy Land, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and most pointedly toward Iran make very painful reading indeed. On his first full day in Riyadh, for example, President Bush was greeted with an editorial in the leading English language paper that analyzed his policies and concluded: "This is not diplomacy in search of peace, but madness in search of war." That sort of language would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
Clearly the new century has brought with it a new world. The problems for us to ponder tonight are why this new world is off to a particularly bad start in the Middle East and what we can do about this. American policies in the Middle East, more than anywhere else, account for the dramatic fall in our prestige around the globe. The new world of the 21st century is being shaped by events there and our role in them. The Middle East - except in its own estimation - has long been peripheral to global politics. It has now moved to their center.
I have come to this conclusion with some reluctance. I spent my whole career trying to avoid the Middle East. After all, it was where hypocrisy first got a bad name. It is a long time since it has been the home of a world power, so its diplomacy is inherently parochial and aimed at manipulating external actors. And, while the United States has long seemed attracted to the Arab-Israeli conflict like a moth to a flame, I am not into self-immolation.
When the first President Bush asked me to serve as his ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 1989, he went out of his way to assure me that it was a quiet sort of place where nothing ever happened. With that happy prospect in mind, I settled into life in Riyadh just in time to play a role in shaping Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The intensity of that experience built relationships with people and leaders of the region that have kept me engaged with it ever since, despite my better judgment.
Why isn't the United States doing well in the Middle East? It seems useful to go back to basics. I will speak tonight in very general terms about this region from the perspective of American interests. What are American interests in the Middle East and how do they relate to each other? All things being equal, what sort of policies would you expect the United States to follow, in light of those interests? What policies are we actually following? And what are their consequences? If things are not working out as we hoped they would, what might we do to remedy or mitigate this situation and turn it to our advantage?
I will address these questions briefly and therefore somewhat superficially. Years ago, however, a great professor of political science from MIT, who knew what he was talking about, told me that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing superficially. I have always taken his advice to heart.
The most obvious American interest in the Middle East does not distinguish us from others. We want reliable supplies of energy from it. About 60 percent of the world's energy reserves are to be found in and around the Persian Gulf. Sixty percent! The entire world is dependent on these reserves, both for present supplies of oil and gas and even more so for future supplies. Saudi Arabia alone has about one-fourth of global reserves. Iran and Iraq each have another one-eighth or so. Over two-thirds of future additions to global oil and gas supplies will originate in this part of the Middle East. Almost one-third of current supply comes from the Persian Gulf region.
It is therefore not surprising to turn on the TV news (which, of course, bears the same resemblance to analysis that pornography does to art) and to observe much gnashing of teeth about "U.S. dependence on Middle East oil." But it's wrong for our political pundits to encourage us to think about energy as a matter of bilateral trade. It is not.
Energy is sold into a global market and bought from a global market. This market functions like a pool or reservoir. Producers discharge their product into it, and consumers draw what they need from it. The level of the liquid in the pool rises in response to the balance between input and output. Prices rise and fall accordingly.
It is not the United States that is dependent on energy imports from the Middle East; it is the world. It doesn't matter whether America imports energy directly from the Middle East or not - actually we are less dependent on the Middle East for energy than the Europeans, Japanese, Chinese and Indians. If supplies to us from the region are cut off, we can and will buy elsewhere. But, if Middle East oil supplies are interrupted to any customer, everyone in the world, including American consumers and the U.S. economy, suffers a price rise and takes an economic hit. The economic importance of Middle East energy lies in its indispensable contribution to the global economy, not how much of it flows to the United States as opposed to elsewhere. What is at stake is not an American interest but a global interest in which we Americans participate.
On this basis you would expect, first, that the United States would pursue policies which promoted stability in the Persian Gulf region, thereby bolstering the stability of its oil and gas production and exports, and reducing price volatility and its impact on both the United States and global economies. And you would expect the United States and others to be concerned about permitting a single producer, especially an unfriendly one, to dominate the region's oil and gas production and gain leverage over the global economy. To that end, you would expect the United States to be interested in sustaining a balance of power within the region rather than allowing a single nation to dominate it militarily. (Indeed, the Carter doctrine and the Gulf War were both in large part efforts to preclude such dominance, in the first instance by the Soviet Union and in the second by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.) And you would expect that United States to do everything we could to avoid the destabilizing radicalization of the region's politics or the spread of conflicts that could interrupt energy exports, The last thing on Earth we should want in terms of our own well being is an escalating conflict between ourselves and the oil producers of the Middle East.
A policy emphasis on stability would, I think, have a natural corollary. Since energy exports from the Persian Gulf are a vital interest of all participants in the global economy, not just the United States, you would expect Americans to seek burden-sharing, asking other consumers of energy to do something other than take a free ride on us. After all, we are only one of many beneficiaries of Persian Gulf stability. Why should the United States take sole responsibility for managing the security and assuring the exports of the peoples of that region? Why should our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines risk their lives to assure China's, Europe's, Japan's and India's economic prosperity and well-being through reliable access to Persian Gulf energy? Ponder that, please!
A second very important American interest in the Middle East, given the prestige we have committed to it, is securing the state of Israel by achieving acceptance for it in the region in which it has been established. Israel cannot enjoy security if it is regarded as legitimate only by those outside its own region. It is not enough for Europeans (who initially sponsored the colonization of Palestine by European Jews and then carried out, collaborated, or did nothing to stop the Holocaust) and Americans (who liberated European death camps at the end of World War II) to declare the establishment of Israel to have been right and proper. To assure the long-term survival of a Jewish state in the Middle East, Israel must be accepted by the other peoples of the Middle East.
Given the commitment of the United States to achieving Israel's acceptance, you would expect us to place great importance on:
* brokering mutually respectful arrangements for stable borders between Israel and the Palestinians,
* peaceful coexistence between Israel and its neighboring states, and
* Israel's political, economic, and cultural integration into its region.
Among other things, to the extent we Americans believe that the spread of democracy bolsters stability, you would expect us to wish to see the example of Israel's democracy emulated in the region. Israel's democracy denies full rights of citizenship to one-fifth of its inhabitants and any rights at all to the millions it rules in the occupied territories, but it is still perhaps the world's most robust democracy, with a level of public discourse on policy matters that is or should be an inspiration to other countries, including our own. In short, you would expect the United States to use our influence to promote reconciliation and make peace rather than to widen conflicts or begin new wars in the region.
The erratic and often half-hearted manner in which we have pursued these goals, especially in recent years, accounts, in part, for Israel's isolation from other states in the Middle East. The sad fact is that 60 years after the State of Israel's founding, almost all Americans and many Europeans strongly back it, but it is still seen as illegitimate by the peoples of the region where it was established. The Arabs see Israel as an artifact of Western colonialism in their midst, an unappeasable power in perpetual search of Lebensraum at Arab expense, a cruelly oppressive sectarian occupier whose policies justify violent resistance, and the principal impetus for the radicalization of politics in both the region and the broader Muslim world. The region sees Israel as a hegemonic military threat, not as an appropriate partner in its politics, economics or culture.
These perceptions, no matter how objectionable to an American audience, represent a major failure of both American policy and the Israeli policies that the United States has facilitated and underwritten. They underscore the boldness of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's promise that, if Israel can work out a mutually acceptable deal with the Palestinians, he and his Kingdom will ensure that all Arab states normalize relations with Israel.
Our third interest is military, commercial, cultural, and religious access. We need access to the region for our military because we can't travel between Europe and Asia or vice versa without going through it or over it, The Arabian Peninsula is the size of Western Europe. Tens of thousands of aircraft cross it each year. The United States military could not operate in Iraq or in Afghanistan without overflight of Saudi Arabia. Nor could we use the huge airbase that has been made available to us by Qatar and from which we direct all air operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We could not access the headquarters of the 5th Fleet in Bahrain or our army installations in Kuwait that support our military operations in Iraq. We could not confront Iran if we decided, in accordance with our constitutional processes or even despite them, that it was in our interest to do so. In terms of its location astride strategic lines of communication, the Middle East is an area that is vitally important to our ability to act as a world power. No wonder Al-Qai'da focuses on breaking the Saudi-American relationship and making cooperation between us infeasible!
But military access is not the only kind of access we need. The adherents of all three Abrahamic religions - Jews, Christians and Muslims - want untrammeled access to their holy places in Jerusalem. For the world's Muslims, pilgrimage to Mecca (in the Hejaz on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia), is a religious obligation and a visit to the historically related sites in Medina is also important. The United States, I have been reliably informed, is still a secular country but we have a great interest in non-discriminatory access to holy sites by those attached to the great world religions. Denial of such access embitters and enrages. It promotes conflict, not reconciliation, and it provides the moral justification for wars of resistance.
Then, too, we want access to the Middle East for our businesses, for the benefit of our economy. Commercial access is particularly important when, as now, high oil prices lead to huge transfers of dollars to the region, Dubai is merely the best publicized example of the mind-boggling boom that the Gulf is experiencing. This is a region that was once the preserve of American business, the only place outside North America, where cars designed in Detroit were the dominant form of transportation. (Gulf Arabs like SUVs and other gas guzzlers as much as Americans do. But the economics of gas-guzzling there are different. In Saudi Arabia, for example, they currently pay only about 17 cents a gallon at the pump.)
Our declining market share and the inability of our companies to compete effectively for the huge new projects underway in the region as well its rapidly expanding markets, are a tragedy for our companies and a blow to our economy. It is especially ironic, given the extent to which we have failed to respond to higher prices by curbing our appetite for the region's major export - oil.
also needs to maintain access to the region culturally. It is in our interest for the peoples there to come to our schools, universities, staff colleges, and training facilities and to carry home with them both an understanding of the United States and feelings toward us that facilitate cooperation. It is in our interest to understand them. To do this, we must meet them on their own ground. We can't do business with them if they can't visit our showrooms or train on our equipment; nor can we do so if we cannot serve them where they live.
You would therefore expect the United States to lay major emphasis on military partnerships in the region as well as trade promotion, cultural outreach, and the encouragement of travel between the Middle East and the United States.
Fourth, we have an interest in the containment of problems that arise in the Middle East. Some of you may remember Dean Rusk's insight that, "at any time of day or night, two thirds of the world's people are awake, and some of them are up to no good." Well, the Middle East is the epicenter of that phenomenon today. Its anguish, fear and rage are uniquely infectious, given its status as the focus of three of the world's great religions. One-and-a-half-billion Muslims - a fifth of humanity - pray in the direction of Mecca five times each day. Not a few of the 34,000 sects into which the world's two-billion-plus Christians divide themselves believe that the reestablishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East heralds the rapture of Judgment Day. Many, if not most, of the seven million members of the Jewish Diaspora are passionately connected to Israel. The bitter divisions of the Middle East are contagious and can easily translate into global wars of religion, prejudice, persecution, and terrorist campaigns. It is not in the American interest, still less the world's, for the 21st century to be dominated, as most of the 12th to 17th centuries were, by religious strife linked to a "clash of civilizations." European history provides ample evidence of how ugly and destructive such conflicts and the hatred and discrimination they engender can be and of how difficult it is to halt them once they begin.
Based on this, you would expect a careful American attention to dialogue between faiths and the enlistment of religious authority in the cause of reasoned compromise among the various contending parties in the Middle East. You might also expect the United States to seek allies amongst these authorities who could discredit extremism among their co-religionists.
If these are descriptions of the main interests of the United States in the Middle East and the policy approaches they might logically produce, what policies are we currently following?
With respect to stability in the Persian Gulf region, we have given up on the idea of maintaining a regional balance of power and substituted our own unilateral military presence for this. When there was a rough balance between Iraq and Iran, the United States did not have to be present in the region in force. We could remain over the horizon and practice rapid deployment so that, if the balance started tilting too much in one direction or another, we could throw our weight behind the weaker side without ourselves becoming directly involved on the battle fields of the Middle East. This is what we did during the Iran/Iraq War.
When that war exhausted Iran but left Iraq still vigorous enough to try to take advantage of the imbalance by invading Kuwait, we were prepared to intervene to liberate Kuwait and to cut Iraq back to a level that Iran could balance. We accomplished both objectives with Operation Desert Storm.
Then, out of frustration with Saddam Hussein's unexpected survival in power, we unilaterally decided that we would practice what was called "dual containment," a policy that required us to maintain a large military presence in the region to balance both Iraq and Iran, This policy, which is the father of the current one, was and remains the most expensive, the most strategically fatiguing, and the most politically irritating of all strategies we might conceivably adopt. It guarantees continuing friction with the peoples of the countries hosting our forces and raises the possibility of mounting blowback. Now that we have flattened Iraq, however, there is no obvious alternative to it. It appears we are stuck in both Iraq and the lower Gulf.
Our invasion removed Iraq as a reliable supplier of oil to world markets. Our threats to bomb Iran have added to regional instability and uncertainty, and led to additional rises in oil and gas prices. Recent polling data shows that we are now seen by the region's peoples as the greatest threat, not the greatest contributor, to its security.
By pursuing a unilateral course, rather than organizing our allies, friends, and other nations who have a stake in the secure flow of energy to assist us in maintaining order and stability in the region, we have put ourselves in the position of being held accountable for anything and everything that may go wrong there. We have also chosen to give everyone else a free ride on our unilaterally assumed responsibility for the security of the world's energy trade. As a consumer nation, we share interests with other major oil and gas importers, including newly emerging importers like China and India.
Instead of making common cause with them, however, we have chosen to deal with oil and gas producers through uncoordinated bilateral relationships or, in the case of Iran and Sudan, non-relationships. This has compounded the incoherence of our domestic energy policy, leaving us with no policy response to rising energy prices, no strategy for future energy security, no commitment to conservation or demand management, and no answer to climate change beyond an apparently counterproductive farm subsidy program.
Meanwhile, next door in the Holy Land, it has been years since we made a serious effort to promote negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians or even exercised our own judgment about the issues that divide them. Rather, we have reflexively supported the efforts of a series of right-wing Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the Palestinians rather than make peace with them. Our recent embrace of the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and a secular Arab state - the so-called "two-state solution" - is widely seen in the region as too late and too little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more like an Indian reservation than a country. Such status will not be accepted by the inhabitants of the occupied territories; nor will it be accepted by the six-to-seven million-strong Palestinian Diaspora. It would inflame rather than relieve Arab resentment of Israel. It would not lead to normalization of Israel's relations with other Arab states. Far from achieving the acceptance of Israel that is essential to its long-term survival, it would assure the continuation of efforts by other states in the region to erase Israel from the map. It would risk further globalization of asymmetric warfare in the form of terrorism against Israel and its supporters overseas, including the United States.
Ironically, November's gathering at Annapolis was, as feared, all spectacle and neither process nor substance. The glimpse of Israel's unilateralist vision of the Palestinian future that the run-up to it afforded has invigorated interest in a one-state, as opposed to a two-state, solution. As he left Annapolis, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert pointedly noted the danger of this trend, which promises to force his country to choose between its character as a Jewish state and a democracy that rejects the practice of apartheid. This is not a choice that the founders of the State of Israel ever envisioned. It is one from which thoughtful people must recoil. If there is a better way forward, we must help Israelis and Palestinians find it.
Let me turn now to the issue of access. In every respect other than military, our access to the region has steadily diminished. Despite the amazing level of economic activity in the Gulf catalyzed by the rise in energy demand and prices, most business is going to European and Asian rather than American companies. This is a trend that would call out for reversal even if we weren't running a chronic trade deficit. The region's imports are increasingly priced in euros, sterling, and other currencies, while its exports are still denominated in dollars. The dollar is sinking under the impact of chronic budget, trade, and balance of payments deficits. This is fueling inflation both in the Middle East and here at home. It is creating strong domestic political pressure on oil producers to dump the dollar. Serious questions are being raised about whether the little green portraits of dead presidents we have been in the habit of exchanging for oil and other commodities will not have to be converted into some other currency before they can be exchanged for energy. The impact on our economy of such a development would be grave.
As our business presence in the region declines, Arab travel to the United States for business, study, or pleasure has not recovered from its post 9/11 collapse. Far from it. While visa issuance rates are up, visa applications are way down. Those few who are able to obtain a visa often encounter degrading search and interrogation practices at the point of entry in the United States as well as while traveling within it. The human ties that are essential to resilient relationships between us continue to fray and attenuate, despite far-sighted efforts by a few in the region, like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, to sustain them.
Militarily, despite all the hoopla about our offer to sell $20 billion in weapons to the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs, it is not at all clear that they intend to pick up on the sales pitches our companies have made. Increasingly, others who are more politically acceptable - Britain, France, Russia, and South Africa - overshadow us as arms suppliers in the region, and China, India, Korea, and Pakistan are queuing up behind them to take their piece of the action in a game we no longer dominate. We continue to transit in high volume to bases we have been lent in the Gulf and to those we have built in Iraq. But this is on sufferance, not pursuant to defense treaties or agreements, still less an agreed strategy. Our talk about attacking Iran in association with Israel has further encouraged the Gulf Arabs and Egypt to seek new and less belligerent military partners in Europe and Eurasia as well as to pursue rapprochement with Tehran.
And finally, to turn to matters of religion -- from Indonesia to Guyana the United States is now perceived as conducting a Crusade against Islam, not a war on extremists who usurp the good name of Islam for their own foul purposes. The unwelcome notion of a clash of civilizations is turning out to be a case of self-fulfilling paranoia. We have no dialogue of consequence with Muslim religious authorities. Nor have we sought allies among the many Muslims who share our disgust with the perverted actions of Islamist extremists. If the first requirement for a successful campaign against terrorist insurgents is the discrediting of their cause and their ideology, we have yet even to attempt this. If the measure of success in such a campaign is, as former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld declared, eliminating more terrorists than we create, then we are losing this war.
Overall, this is not a pretty picture. Given our substitution of talk radio for serious analysis of the sources of Muslim rage and the paralysis of our politics post 9/11, it has taken some time for our society to recognize that things have not been going well and to begin to ask what we might do to change course. The next administration is clearly going to inherit a thoroughgoing mess in the Middle East with implications that extend well beyond it. We face an unprecedentedly complex challenge to our statecraft in the continuing anarchy and mayhem in Iraq; the siege of the Gaza ghetto; the refurbishment of Taliban credentials as the defenders of Islam and the political rights of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan; the entrenchment of Iranian political influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria; the collapse of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians; our estrangement from Turkey; the emergence of a democratic opposition in Egypt openly committed to abrogating the Camp David arrangements; the unrebutted appearance of an American military crusade against Islam; the lack of an energy security strategy; Iran's continuing development of a nuclear industrial base that will in time permit it to field nuclear weapons; the impending spread of nuclear technology throughout the rest of the region; the alienation of allies and potential partners in dealing with these problems; and the absence of strategies or proposals to address any of them except through air strikes.
What is to be done?
Given the daunting number of challenges, I'm tempted to leave them to whomever we elect on November 4. But, since none of the presidential candidates has dared take them on, let me propose a number of thoughts for your consideration.
Perhaps it is time for the major consumers of oil to organize ourselves to join Arab and other producers of oil in managing the global market for it to mutual advantage. At present, there is no organized exchange of information or collective bargaining between producers and consumers of energy. Both sides could benefit from exchanging planning information and views, like unions and management, we share an interest in assuring each other's continuing economic development and prosperity and avoiding unpleasant surprises. It would also be timely and appropriate for the United States to discuss with other consumers how to share the burden of defending the seaborne oil trade as well as bolstering a renewed balance of power in the Gulf. As a related matter, we might do well to put our heads together about how to develop a truly multilateral reserve currency system to replace over-reliance on the dollar and reduce the perils to our economic health that that increasingly entails.
Second, we badly need to develop war termination strategies for both Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq is the more urgent of the two. It is in our interest to achieve the earliest possible restoration of Iraqi sovereignty and independence. Iraq today is not in most respects a sovereign country but one occupied by the United States. Although we did not want this, we stand there in the position of a colonial power. Iraq's inhabitants look to the United States military - not to the Iraqi government we shelter in our "green zone" - for patronage, support and resolution of their problems. They also see our presence as a more pressing problem than the political presence that Iran has established in their country under cover of our occupation of it. So, for the first time in history, many Iraqis lean toward Iran. If we weren't there, most likely they would distance themselves from Iran.
For many, many years our permanent presence in the Gulf consisted of nothing but four ships. We now have hundreds of thousands of sailors, soldiers, airmen, marines, and contractors on station. The region does not want this. Most Americans do not want it. In the end, such a presence is not politically sustainable. We must find a way once again to rely on a regional balance of power between the Gulf Arabs, including Iraq, and Iran. Our withdrawal from Iraq should be conducted in such a way as to facilitate the phased achievement of this.
It is also time for the United States to develop different policies toward Israel and the Arab lands it occupies. Our objective should be a peace that would trigger the broad normalization of Israel's relationship with the Arabs that the Saudi-orchestrated Arab League proposal promises. It serves neither our interest nor Israel's (as opposed to the interests of expansionist politicians in Israel) to support Israeli policies and practices that, far from serving this objective, undercut it. The blank check we currently offer Israel enables it to adopt policies that serve parochial and short-term interests at the expense of long-term interests. Principal among such long-term interests is Israel's survival as a democratic state with a Jewish identity. Our unconditional support deprives Israelis of the need to make choices they must make in their own interest, and it aids and abets the adoption of policies that are unilateralist, militarist, counterproductive, and inevitably self-defeating. Our assistance to Israel, as well as our diplomacy, must be conditioned on goals and benchmarks that produce progress toward reduction of tension and negotiated coexistence in the Holy Land. There are many in Israel who have clear ideas about how to do this and who are eager to harness our power to the ending of their conflict with the Palestinians, if empowered to do so.
Finally, we need to start over in our relationship with the religious leaders of Islam and their secular counterparts, and to focus them on cooperation against the terrorist enemies of both Islam and the United States. We have begun to do this at the local level in Iraq and, as a result, Al-Qa'ida is now on the run there. Both in Iraq and elsewhere, Al-Qa'ida has murdered huge numbers of Muslims - many, many more than it has killed Christians or Jews. Yet our public diplomacy, such as it is, has concentrated on explaining away or defending Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and "extraordinary rendition" rather than on seeking common ground with the world's Muslims, the vast majority of whom share our horror at Al-Qa'ida's amoral tactics and reject its deviant vision of Islam. We have an open invitation from the religious leaders of the Islamic world to open a dialogue to explore the possibility of a coordinated approach. It is past time for us to respond.
Part of this response must, I believe, embrace reconsideration of the garrison state we are currently constructing at home. We need to strike a much better balance between the open society that is the source of our greatness as a nation and security from those determined to punish us for the perceived iniquities of our policies. We are a nation defined by our ideals, not our territory or ethnic origins. That is the source of our appeal to the world and the font of both our domestic tranquility and our influence abroad. If we abandon our ideals in the name of defending them, we defeat ourselves. I have long felt that all the world - including its most troubled regions - would still follow America, if they could only find it. We must rediscover it to them.
Thank you very much.

Late on Tuesday,[March 10, 2009] Freeman issued the following statement:

To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was "asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse." I added that I wondered "whether there wasn't some sort of downside to this offer." I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else's, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.