| Editor's
Note:
On
November 7, 2003, the "Understanding the Middle East Club," of the School
of the Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University,
hosted a forum on "U.S.-Saudi Relations" that featured panelists
Thomas Lippman, former Washington Post reporter, retired Major General
Paul R. Schwartz, Chas. W. Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia,
and Les Janka, SAIS graduate and president and chair of the Council on
American-Saudi Dialogue.
The
following is a transcript of Amb. Freeman's remarks. Also see: Saudi-American
Forum Interview Ambassador Chas W. Freeman -- A Relationship in Transition
LES JANKA: Our next
speaker is Ambassador Chas Freeman. Chas
is president of the Middle East Policy Council.
Ambassador Freeman also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for
international security affairs and served, as General Schwartz has mentioned,
as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Desert Shield/Desert Storm
period. But, Ambassador Freeman
is much more than a Middle East specialist.
He’s served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African
affairs. He was Chief of Mission
in our embassies in Bangkok and in Beijing.
And, I first became aware of his many talents when I was on the
National Security Council in 1972 when Chas served as the American interpreter
for the late President Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing.
Chas, the podium is yours.
CHAS FREEMAN:
Thank you. I’m going to
try to be brief. Both because I
wasn’t really aware that we were to make opening remarks until I arrived;
and also because, well I guess if I’m brief I’ll be a bit superficial but
that really doesn’t bother me at all. In
fact, I was once told by a wise man from the East that if something is worth
doing, it’s worth doing superficially.
I am actually a little bit reluctant to speak to American audiences
about Saudi Arabia because I find that in the audience there are people who
can rehearse the details of the educational curriculum of Saudi Arabia and
tell me what was allegedly said in which mosque on what date by imam
so-and-so. And, there’s an
enormous body of knowledge out there obviously on the part of people, who’ve
never been to Saudi Arabia, don’t speak Arabic, never met a Saudi, but they
know a lot because the conventional wisdom about Saudi Arabia is now
ubiquitous. Everybody knows all
sorts of things about Saudi Arabia.
I can say honestly that I didn’t
know a damn thing about Saudi Arabia before I went there.
In fact, my proudest achievement in 30 years of foreign service prior
to that was not to have served in the Middle East.
After all, why would you want to?
It’s the region that originally gave hypocrisy a bad name, and anyone
who’s been anywhere near it knows that in the summer, living in Riyadh is
like living in a hairdryer. So,
why would you want to go there? And
so, like Paul, when I was in Mozambique, I received a call from the White
House
asking me if I would be enthusiastic about going to Riyadh.
It took me about 15 seconds to develop the appropriate degree of
enthusiasm for the task.
And, when I got there, I discovered
something that I have discovered everywhere I’ve been – namely that
virtually everything I thought I knew about the place was wrong or at least
not accurate; and that Saudi Arabia was a very strange place indeed, quite
different from what I had imagined. When
I arrived there, Saudi Arabia was the fourth largest exporter of wheat in the
world. And, I can explain how
that happened if you want, but it’s not part of the normal image.
It was also, and I believe it remains, the largest importer of sand in
the world. The Saudi sand being
too fine to be used for cement. At
that time, Saudi Arabia was importing sand from Sweden and other places.
Anyway, enough said.
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"...there
hasn’t really been any
fundamental change in the interests
that bind
the U.S. and Saudi Arabia
together.
Oil. Saudi Arabia is
the
swing producer. It is
the only producer
who can bring down the prices when
there is an
interruption..." |
I think the point is that we need to
be careful before we accept the stereotype, particularly those developed in a
time of great emotion, and Saudi Arabia deserves a close look.
I agree with Paul by the way, that there hasn’t really been any
fundamental change in the interests that bind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia
together. Oil..
Saudi Arabia is the swing producer.
It is the only producer who can bring down the prices when there is an
interruption in supply, as it did when this happened in Venezuela.
Saudi Arabia, which now has a production capacity of about 10 million
barrels per day, will have to build that up to 20 million barrels per day
within 10 years at the given rate of increased consumption here and in new
markets like China.
Saudi Arabia is, as Paul said, the
epicenter of Islam. It makes a
big difference that the Ayatollah Khomeini never got to preach in Mecca or
that Osama bin Laden is not standing there as the imam, reading the prayers. Moderate management of the holy places of Islam, Mecca and
Medina, is very important to American interests.
Also, Saudi Arabia is a little place
about the size of Western Europe that happens to sit exactly between Europe
and Asia. You can’t fly between
Europe and Asia without flying over it, and you can’t get there by ship
unless you go around the Cape of Good Hope without going off the coast. When I was ambassador, even before Desert Shield
occurred, I found that my defense attaché was clearing some 30,000 U.S.
military flights a year through Saudi airspace.
So, this is a strategically located territory, even if it didn’t have
oil and two of the holiest cities on earth.
And, finally of course, since 9/11,
we’ve acquired a very direct, urgent interest in cooperation with the Saudis
on the issue of terrorism. This
is because the target of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda is Saudi Arabia -- the
overthrow of the Saudi monarchy. It would form a defiant, crusading
Islam -- an Islam that
would once again be aggressive and ostentatious in a way that it had not been
since the eighth century A.D.
I
don’t think Osama bin Laden is going to succeed. His method has been
to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and thereby, seek to
withdraw American support from Saudi Arabia and to end cooperation between the
two of us. In
terms of the vilification of Saudi Arabia’s image in the United States, I
have to give the man high marks. I’d
give him an "A." And to say
anything kind about Saudi Arabia is to invite a reprimand. To say anything unkind about it is to win points.
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"... I
hear it stated as a fact, an
incontrovertible axiom, that
religious
education, especially
Islamic education in madrassas..
leads to violence..
I
know of no evidence for this
theory at all." |
|
There are, underlying this -- because this is SAIS
you are all thinking great
thoughts about how the world is organized -- I think there is a set of
suppositions that underlie some of the
negative images of Saudi Arabia and of Islam at the moment that may need examination. For example, I hear
it stated as a fact, an incontrovertible axiom, that religious education,
especially Islamic education in madrassas to use the English plural, leads to
violence. Religious education
leads to violence. I know of no
evidence for this theory at all.
I
suppose one could look at the Catholic education of the members of the IRA,
and show that Catholicism is inherently prone to blowing up department stores
in London. Or, one could look at
the behavior of Pat Robertson, who right up until the moment Charles Taylor
was removed as president of Liberia, was funneling money to the man on
religious grounds and conclude that Protestants are inherently prone to
genocide. Or, one could of course
talk about the Jewish militant who shot 53 people in a mosque in Hebron, that
therefore the Jewish religion is inclined to mass murder.
I think this is all really farfetched.
The case might be made for Islam having a similar effect on people, but
I don’t think it has been made. I
think this is one of those wonderful unexamined propositions that passes into
the conventional wisdom and is overdue for examination.
Second, I think there is sort of the
assumption that Osama bin Laden is sort of a scruffy guy with a beard, who
looks good at the supermarket checkout. I
don’t know if you have ever seen the Weekly World News that
periodically features pictures of Osama and his alleged gay lover Saddam
Hussein, which is actually a kind of neat concept that only Americans can come
up with. Osama bin Laden is
exactly the sort of guy who graduates from a madrassa.
But of course the man is an engineer.
And one of the most wonderful things, in fact the only wonderful thing
about the atrocity of 9/11, was that it allowed everybody to pick up their pet
rock and attribute terrorism to that.
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"So,
we’re told that poverty breeds
terrorism, although Osama comes
from a
family that is sort of the
equivalent of the Rockefellers in
Saudi
Arabia and certainly didn’t
have a deprived childhood financially." |
So, we’re told that poverty breeds
terrorism, although Osama comes from a family that is sort of the equivalent
of the Rockefellers in Saudi Arabia and certainly didn’t have a deprived
childhood financially. And, most
of the people who came here, the 15 Saudis who came and did 9/11 were from the
privileged background. However,
poverty causes terrorism. Environmental
degradation causes terrorism. Sexism
causes terrorism. Whatever your
pet rock is, that causes terrorism. Arab
culture breeds terrorism. But, in
fact, all the evidence seems to me to suggest that the causes of the terrorism
are a combination of humiliation and a search for revenge on the one hand
along with the lack of alternative weapons – people who have M-16s don’t
need to blow themselves up in order to strike targets.
They can do it at less cost to themselves.
So, grievance and desperation seem to me to be at the root of it.
We especially ought to ask ourselves
a question or two about who is the enemy.
I mean, to the extent that Iraq has not eclipsed the war on terrorism,
which I think in Congress it has. And
actually, Paul, I think part of the reason for the relative respite from Saudi
bashing in the last couple of weeks is not that we understand Saudi Arabia
better or that we’ve done any serious thinking about Saudi Arabia or the
Middle East, it’s just that we’re now in such trouble in Iraq that that's
absorbing this.
At any rate, perhaps it is too much
to ask the American people, 70% of whom believe Saddam Hussein or the Iraqis
did do 9/11 despite the absence of any evidence or connection at all, to
engage in effective reflection on this. But,
I think we do need to understand who the enemy is and who the enemy is not.
And in this connection, the U.S. government clearly understands that
Saudi Arabia is an ally in the war on terror.
And, the Saudis understand that they need the United States equally to
combat the threat of terrorism in the kingdom.
The trouble is that both governments find themselves defending the
relationship against increasingly hostile publics.
All of the animosity that now exists in the United States towards Saudi
Arabia is fully mirrored in Saudi Arabia in attitudes at the popular level
toward the United States.
In any event, just to wind up, I
think there’s a lot of evidence that the Saudis have engaged in a fair
amount
of soul searching. Those who
doubt this should probably read the speech of Crown Prince Abdullah at the
Gulf Cooperation Council in December 2001, which is one of the most remarkable
political documents of the age -- in terms of its recognition, its call to Arabs to stop blaming
other people for their own mistakes and to look within themselves to struggle,
to improve the situation. One could look at the Beirut initiative when he said Saudi Arabia would be the first to normalize
relations with Israel in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, not the
last; Saudi Arabia would
bring the Arab world with it -- in that the remarkable departure from past
policy; or his proclamation of a reform charter for the Arab world.
| Saudi Arabia has
very serious problems with its fiscal crisis and the demographic
challenge that are very difficult. But
it does seem to be thinking about these things.
Frankly, I would be happy if the United States were doing a
little more intelligent thinking about the situation we have gotten
ourselves into than we are. And, in this connection, I don’t think things like soft
rock and Lebanese pop music interspersed with the equivalent of the CBS
news is really.. think if you listen to that for 100 hours, you might
go nuts actually.
You know,
you might have a more favorable view of U.S. policy, but if that
happened to you, all you would have to do is turn on Fox News, which is
widely available in the region. And,
all of the good would be undone, which is to say that nasty things that
an imam or two might say in a mosque are more than reciprocated by nasty
things that people say on television here in the United States.
Perhaps, we all ought to cool it.
Thanks.
|
"...all
of the good would
be undone, which is to say
that nasty things that an
imam or two might say in
a mosque are more than reciprocated by nasty
things
that people say on television here in the United States." |
LES JANKA:
Thank you Chas. It’s
really been a broad exposure to a lot of interesting things to think about in
the kingdom. I would just like to
add two other points in thinking about what we know or think we know about the
kingdom or that we think might not be accurate or find not to be accurate.
There’s two significant data points that always come to my
mind as I think about the U.S.-Saudi interaction and the challenges that the
kingdom is facing. The first is
that half of all the people in the population in Saudi Arabia are under the
age of 20. Think of what that means in
terms of social change -- pressures on education,
pressures on housing, pressure on jobs -- a lot of things in the region that you’ll have to worry about.
The other one, the notion that perhaps the Saudis don’t really understand the
United States, and they don’t see us for what we are, and, it’s amazing that they can’t understand why Americans’
answers and policies aren’t better appreciated.
I’m always reminded that in the Saudi government, in the Saudi
Cabinet, there are more American-trained PhDs than there are in the American
Cabinet and American Congress combined. So,
it’s not a question of a country that doesn’t understand America.
They know where we are coming from.
Audio
Version: http://www.sais-jhu.edu/ Transcripts
of presentations by General Schwartz and Mr. Lippman will be provided
separately.
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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). He was
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the
historic U.S. mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa and Cuban
troop withdrawal from Angola.
Chas. Freeman served as Deputy Chief of
Mission and Chargé d'Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok
(1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984). He was Director for Chinese Affairs at
the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American
interpreter during the late President Nixon's path-breaking visit to China in
1972. In addition to his Middle Eastern, African, East Asian and European
diplomatic experience, he served in India.
Ambassador Freeman earned a certificate in
Latin American studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico,
certificates in both the national and Taiwan dialects of Chinese from the
former Foreign Service Institute field school in Taiwan, a BA from Yale
University and a JD from the Harvard Law School. He is the recipient of
numerous high honors and awards. He was elected to the Academy of American
Diplomacy in 1995. He is the author of The Diplomat's Dictionary (Revised
Edition) and Arts of Power, both published by the United States Institute of
Peace in 1997. Ambassador Freeman is Chairman of the Board of Projects
International, Inc., a Washington-based business development firm that
specializes in arranging international joint ventures, acquisitions, and other
business operations for its American and foreign clients. He also serves as
Co-Chair of the United States-China Policy Foundation and Vice Chair of the
Atlantic Council of the United States. He is a member of the boards of the
Institute for Defense Analyses, the regional security centers of the U.S.
Department of Defense, and the Washington World Affairs Council.
Previous Positions
1995 - Present Chairman of the Board, Projects International, Inc.
1994-95 Distinguished Fellow, United States Institute of Peace
1993-94 Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs
1992-93 Distinguished Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies
1989-92 U S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
1986-89 Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, African Affairs
Recent Honors
1995 Elected to American Academy of Diplomacy
1994 Distinguished Public Service Award (Policy innovation in Europe)
1994 Distinguished Public Service Award (Contributions in Defense Policy)
1994 Order of 'Abd Al-'Azziz, 1st Class (Diplomatic Service)
1991 Defense Meritorious Service (Desert Shield/Storm)
1991 CIA Medallion (Desert Shield/Storm)
1991 Distinguished Honor Award (Desert Shield/Storm)
Recent Major Publications and Writings
Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy, U.S. Institute of Peace Press,
Washington, D.C., 1997.
The Diplomat's Dictionary, Second Edition, revised, U.S. Institute of Peace
Press, Washington, D.C. 1997
Source: MEPC.org
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