Transcript

Session 3
Allies and Coalition Partners

Coalition Opportunities and Challenges in Central and Southwest Asia

General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret.), Special Advisor to the Secretary of State, and former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command

Zinni: Let me begin by taking you back to another period in our history. And it was the period after the Second World War. And we were blessed at that time, I think, with men like George C. Marshall, President Truman, and others that saw that we couldn’t do business as usual. America was basically an isolationist country. Our foray into the First World War and then withdrawal caused us not to bring to bear our influence in a positive way, and we ended up with the potential problems of repeating what had happened in the past.

And at that moment, I think you saw brilliant men decide that a major strategy requirement was necessary. I think we are at that moment. I am disappointed in the National Security Strategy. At this moment when we need a Marshall Plan, we get an anticipatory self-defense. I mean, I don’t even like the term. It’s a typical bureaucratic Pentagon term that doesn’t say anything. It says something about us protecting ourselves. It is focused on going to war with a two-bit criminal who is easily deterrable and containable.

And our reason for going to war is because we don’t know what he has. In other words, we are going to go to war over another intelligence failure. I mean the whole process and the whole thought that leads us to a strategy that is so weak and so ineffective and incapable of meeting our requirements is amazing at this time.

Let me talk about a region that stretches from Southeast Asia, Philippines, Indonesia, around to the Sub-Continent, Southwest Asia, Central Asia into the Middle East because it, right now, is the critical region. It is the Europe of the post Second World War. If you think back again to that period, men that created the strategy realized they had to confront several things.

One, they had to stand and fight against an ideology, one that was counter to our values, counter to the way we thought, counter to what we thought the world should be like. It was communism and it was on the march and it was scary. So they had to have this ideological confrontation. The second thing they had to do was contain enemies. And these enemies had tentacles that reached into our own hemisphere out to Southeast Asia, not only the Chinas and the Russias but the Eastern Europes, the Cubas, the North Koreas.

And this process of containment sometimes, didn’t always work. Those that practiced it and understood it were more successful than those who let it fail. Eisenhower wouldn’t go into Indochina to support the French. He believed he could contain communism. Kennedy and Johnson had a different opinion and we had a horrible war that was probably unnecessary. It didn’t prove out the domino theory.

The other thing we had to do was aid, support, and help the reconstruction of a major region of the world, Europe. Not just physical reconstruction, not just creating and building everything that had been destroyed in this horrific Second World War but restructuring Europe in the way it looked at each other, the way it looked at the world, breaking patterns that were historical and were self-destructive.

And the other component of this strategy was how to set up a security structure and a set of relationships that would allow us to do this. Now let’s apply this kind of thinking to the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. Where are we now? Why is this region important? Well, it is obviously important for one reason, energy. It is also important because instability in this region tends to spread like lightening across the globe and destabilizes the world.

We need access to this region. I mean anybody that understands geography can look at the Suez Canal, Baba Mendeb(?), Straight of Hormovs(?), the Straights of Malacca and know that we, obviously, need to control this part of the world, have access to it. [PHONE RINGS] I think it is your broker, Jack.
In addition to that, weapons of mass destruction cause us angst in this part of the world. Now there is a mixed story on weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, India and Pakistan are scary; Iran, possibly developing WMD; possession of other countries of biological and chemical and possibly even nuclear weapons. But Jack mentioned a “good news” story. In Kazakhstan, where we managed to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, we made the incentives of moving away from that positive.

And I think we need to look at this part of the world in light of a broader, grander strategy than simply one of how do we justify pre-emption and self-defense, but more one of reaching out. I would give you several priorities. One is the war on terrorism. And it is unfortunate that we capped it with that term because it is more than that. A war on terrorism is going after the symptoms. It is attacking, very simply, a problem that is a manifestation of extremism.

And we’re going to have to deal with extremism more than we are just with [PHONE RINGS – INTERRUPTION] My hearing aid. Now I can’t hear it.
But I think if we deal with terrorism, we deal with the tactical part. We obviously are going to conduct military operations that were all described here. Some, and I agree with Jack, are little bit crazy that we are going to have people independently acting not under the control of a commander-in-chief or combatant commander now. Transformation now means changing the dictionary. I realize that. No more National Command Authority, no more CINC(?). No more engagement. We have transformed to a different lexicon, so far.

But I think if we continue the military operations and the innovation that has come out of these and the lessons learned, we will be successful on that front. Law enforcement, I think, will be successful in breaking down the cells that are in over 60 countries of the world. I think if we get the laws we need and the cooperation with the financial institutions, we’ll help cripple, again, another mechanism that is important for their survival.

But you have not hit at the center of gravity. The center of gravity is a bunch of disenfranchised, pissed-off young men. And they are flocking to a cause that has nothing to do with religion or ideology. They are flocking to a cause that, because of their political, social, economic condition, this sense of being wrong, they are easy cannon fodder for the mad mullahs that want to drag them in.

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And they see us as flawed and at fault because we present an easy target, not that we have done anything wrong. We need to approach this broader ideological problem like we approached communism, like we approached the idea that we had to defeat the ideology and prove it wrong, not just take care of its manifestations, in this case, violence in the form of terrorism.

The second important thing in this region and the single most important thing in this region is the Middle East peace process. If we ever found a way to get the peace process on track, you will be amazed at the effect in this region. At the positive effect, at the changes in attitude, at the reduction of violence, at the way extremists will find it difficult to recruit and to change minds, and the sense of cooperation that could be generated from that.

We also have to, in reconstruction, pay attention to countries we have let down in the past. Most important in that list right now is Afghanistan. We came to Afghanistan and helped them defeat the Soviet Union and then left. And we left the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Right now they are on the edge. I found it interesting listening to a panel here that described victory in the war on terrorism.

I must be missing something. I don’t think we are there yet. And talking about how great conditions are in Afghanistan now-- I just spent, a couple of weeks ago, a couple of hours with President Karzai. He is not getting fulfilled pledges. The money is coming for humanitarian aid and not for reconstruction and development. They are facing a winter now that is going to be tremendous, tremendously difficult for the refugees and others.

This is our model we are pushing out there. And we had better get this model right and get it correct. And before we start destroying other countries and reconstructing them, we had better work on this one. In Pakistan, we have a country that is trying to democratize and has a lot of problems in getting there. But the alternatives to General Musharraf aren’t good. You want a hard-liner, you want a fanatic, or you want chaos, which will make Afghanistan pale in comparison.

And they looked at us with doubt about our commitment to the region. Jack mentioned Central Asia, when sub-altern(?) Sheehan parachuted on his shooting leave to Kazakhstan, they were welcoming us with open arms. They saw America as change. They were out from the Soviet Union. They were looking for their identity. Who were they? They were trying to discover what it meant to be an Uzbek, a Kazak, a Tergi, a Turkman, a Tachik. They did not know. Were they Muslim? They didn’t know.

And south of their border were evil people that were going to give them answers, that were going to cause them trouble. And they asked for our help, help to reform their military, help to make some political judgments and social adjustments. And that help, as you heard from Jack, wasn’t there. We have now suddenly discovered them, when everybody knew the threat that was coming out of Afghanistan, not only from extremists but from the world’s largest producer of poppy seeds and heroin and drugs that were moving through Central Asia into Europe and eventually into the United States.
And we were doing little to curb the criminal organizations as well as the extremists that were coming out of there. In the Middle East we spent 50-sum years creating relationships that are very delicate and fragile, with two very different cultures. Believe me, I was responsible for a number of years maintaining these relationships. This required full-time maintenance everyday. You can destroy them and lose them in a heartbeat.

So some idiot back here has to entertain a brief as to why should make Saudis the enemy. You’ll get a self-fulfilling prophecy and you will rue the day that you did it. Where is the Marshalls that wanted to create positive relationships, bring issues to the table and sort them through where we had misunderstandings, or we needed to deal openly about issues that we were on different sides.

Why are we looking to destabilize the region and go to war? Those relationships are critical in rebuilding. There is an important country that is undergoing change and it gets little mention in this part of this world and that is Iran. The father of the revolution, the land of the Ayatollah where it all started is about ready to do a 180-degree turn. The question is whether that turn comes from a violent revolution or a slow, steady revolution that may take some years.

But it is happening. And the youth of that country will not stand for the extremist form of government led by religious fanatics. What are we doing to encourage that and help it and not destabilize it? When that turns, it is going to send the biggest signals to the failure of extremism and radical Islam. It will be a failure that was sent out to all parts of the world when Russia and the heart of the Soviet Union collapsed and their ideology was proved false.
You go way down this list and somewhere at the bottom you find Iraq. Not headed by Adolf Hitler, this is not Munich in 1939. It is headed by Tony Soprano, you know. And we could take him out any time we want to. He is a thug. He is containable and he is deterrable. We talk about 9/11. On 10/11 and 11/11 when we were hot on the trail of Osama bin Laden, he called for a jihad.

He got no response. The people didn’t answer his call. The leadership in this country was talking about this not being a war against Islam, not being a war against Arabs. This was a war against very specific extremists that committed violent acts. Those were good words. It was coming from the bully pulpit. The only pulpit that speaks now is Jerry Falwell down south here, our mad mullah speaks to their mad mullahs.

That is the dialogue that is going on. It is all lost in this passion over this tinhorn crook in Iraq. And we are about to do something that could ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started because it is unnecessary. We have an Arab and Islamic street that is very unstable. We have a peace process that could go up in smoke and the Israelis drawn into a fight that will make the images on Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV explode across the region.

We will commit a lot of treasure and a lot of lives not just ours but of people in that region that will just help insite and create those images. I’m looking for George Marshall. And I take a lot of heat over that but at the same time we had threats and had to deal with them, and I would argue that this is not the most threatening period in the history of our lives.

When I was in first grade I took a pillowcase to school because we had to cover ourselves up, get under our desks because the nukes were coming. And the little girls all cried and the little boys said, “Shut up. I want to hear the bombs.” But we lived through a period, all you guys who are balding and gray headed, where we faced the total destruction of this planet and got though it, pretty damn smart, with some exceptions.

This doesn’t compare to that. And we had better be careful how we approach it. We need thinking people. We need allies. We need friends. We need help as the sole superpower restructure the world, this part of the world. They are going through a tough patch. They have got to adjust their own social and religious beliefs to modernity in the 21st century. We can do it for them, but we can help them through it.

And if we don’t, we are going to become part of the problem and suffer the consequences. Now for the peace part of this presentation —

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