Editor's Note:

Each fall the National Council on US-Arab Relations brings together a distinguished group of diplomats, government officials, business people, military officials, scholars and others to tackle the thorny issues surrounding US-Arab relations. SUSRIS has provided AUSPC speakers' remarks, which touch on the Saudi-US relationship, to you for over the last five years. In keeping with that practice we again provide for your consideration a collection of AUSPC presentations. 

Today we present the remarks of Ambassador Barbara Bodine. She is Director of the Scholars in the Nation�s Service Initiative and a Diplomat-in-Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Ambassador Bodine spent over 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service focusing primarily on Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf issues. 

She served as Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen 1997-2001, in which she saw enhanced support for democratization and increased security and counterterrorism cooperation, the establishment of a coast guard, resumption of Fulbright Scholarships for Yemeni students, initiation of a $40 million/year economic assistance and development program, and an indigenous landmine awareness and demining program. In addition to several assignments in the State Department�s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, she was Associate Coordinator for Counterterrorism Operations and subsequently acting overall Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Director of East African Affairs, Dean of the School of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute, and Senior Advisor for International Security Negotiations and Agreements in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. 

She is also the President of the Mine Action Group, America, a global NGO that provides technical expertise for the removal of remnants of conflict worldwide. Ambassador Bodine has also taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and lectured at universities and civic groups across the country and abroad as well as a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC and other media.

Ambassador Bodine was joined on the AUSPC Defense Cooperation panel by Doctor Anthony Cordesman, Mr. Jeffrey C. McCray, and Mr. Christopher Blanchard. Their remarks will be provided separately. The panel was chaired by Rear Admiral Harold J. Bernsen.

Additional AUSPC sessions which address U.S. and Saudi issues will be provided by SUSRIS in the coming days.

17th ANNUAL ARAB-U.S. POLICYMAKERS CONFERENCE
�Transitioning the White House: Challenges and Opportunities for Arab-U.S. Relations�
October 30-31, 2008 | Washington, DC

Opening the Aperture on Defense Cooperation
Ambassador Barbara Bodine

[BERNSEN] I first met our next speaker when she was sitting behind a desk as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait, I think it was 1992. Since that time Ambassador Barbara Bodine has accomplished a great deal and has been in some extraordinarily demanding positions.

She currently is Diplomat in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and she divides her time between Princeton and her home here in Alexandria. Please welcome Ambassador Bodine.

[AMBASSADOR BARBARA BODINE] There�s actually been a very interesting progression on this panel and I want to thank Mr. Blanchard for providing me the lead in for what I wanted to talk about. What I want to do is take the whole question of defense cooperation and look at it from a slightly different point of view. Not so much military cooperation but defense cooperation and those are very different. 

I think defense has been treated, defense cooperation has been treated increasingly far too narrowly. We�re looking at things; we�re looking at places. And I don�t discount the need for the military cooperation and the sales cooperation that�s been well outlined here, nor do I discount at all the threats that the Gulf States face. The Gulf has become over the last several years, certainly since I was in Kuwait, almost a continuous string of U.S. military facilities -- bases and access that range all the way from Oman to Kuwait. The sales figures Doctor Cordesman has very well outlined those. They are astronomical and we�ve had longstanding engagements with the militaries. Mr. Blanchard has described them as legacy arrangements. 

These are not insignificant and they are not unimportant and they do need to go forward but I do think we need to open the aperture considerably when we think about defense cooperation both from our point of view and from the Gulf States� point of view. The Gulf States are going to need a guarantor but we are not necessarily going to be the sole provider of those guarantees. We need to get away from what I think has become an overly militarized and slightly narcissistic U.S. approach to the Gulf. There was at least one chuckle on that.

The dependency has really become a far greater and far broader interdependency between us and the Gulf. Oil is talked about, talked about a great deal in the current campaign. It�s yammered about almost continuously. We are either going to become independent of Middle East states or those who don�t like us, and unfortunately sometimes those are used interchangeably. But it is oil and energy in its broadest sense. The trade has been talked about. The financial interdependence has been demonstrated in very real terms in the last few months. 

First, with a number of the Gulf states, with the Sovereign Wealth Funds, bailing us out and now as we�ve read in the press, many of them facing their own very significant financial problems. We continue to look at the Gulf States, however, as tin cuppers. I think it was General Wesley Clark the other day who talked about working with the Gulf States to prop up Pakistan. So we still see them as where we go see tin cupping. 

We also have greater political interdependence with the Gulf States. We have a sharing, an enduring sharing of goals. We still both are deeply dependent on the free flow of oil and energy, and this was recently stated of imports as well as exports. The territorial integrity and sovereignty of these states are both obviously critically important to them and critically important to us, and our friends and allies around the world, as is the prevention of a hostile power taking over the Gulf. 

Now that was originally the Soviet Union, that is well passed, but the issue of hostile powers and hostile forces is still very relevant. But these terms have changed over the thirty-plus years since they were first formally articulated in the Carter Doctrine. 

The free flow of oil as I said is now also the free flow of investment, imports and other trade. Territorial integrity and sovereignty is not simply that from outside powers, but the domestic stability security and long-term legitimacy in these states. And as I said the hostile regional powers are not just external powers such as the old Soviet Union but both regional hegemons and domestic threats. 

These are not issues that can be dealt with by military cooperation solely. I think one of the key elements of those of us from Princeton called the Cannon of Saint David of Petraus is that these are 80 percent political and only 20 percent military. And therefore I think when we start looking at defense cooperation we have to redefine it in more broadly political terms, diplomatic terms, more in terms of a dialogue and less of a lecture series and more in terms of partnerships. 

The Gulfies do want to play. I�m sorry. I mean that term affectionately. The Gulf states do want to and have begun to play a far greater regional role and we need to recognize this. Their broadening financial power has led to a greater political engagement around the region. Many of them have taken on some very productive, constructive roles in conflict resolutions in the region. And much of their investment is now leading to some job creation in the region and the investments that the U.S. itself would not do but would certainly do to prop up our broader interest. 

The media revolution that has taken place within the Gulf has changed the political dialogue and the political landscape in the entire region in ways that are fundamentally positive and also need to be engaged and supported. Do they want our continued engagement? There are some very interesting reports that many of you may have read from Brookings and the Council on Foreign Relations last spring where they made it very clear that they still do want our engagement and our support and our encouragement on fundamental issues such as reform and liberalization, political, social and commercial. But they want it done again more as a dialogue, more as a partnership and less as a lecture series. 

We also need to look at the size of the footprint of our military. This is what I mean by the militarization of our foreign policy. It is not sustainable in the long-term. It is not necessary in the long-term and I think one of the primary challenges of the new Administration is going to be to enter into some real strategic discussions that go beyond strictly military. On how we can better engage, reduce our footprint down to something around the 1989 level, build up their external defense capabilities, but more than that look to other partners who might be able to come into the Gulf and provide some of the external guarantee role that we have played in the past.  I am not in any way suggesting you return to the twin pillars program. I was around for that and I don�t really think that is operable. But what I would hope would be the first task of the new administration would be to move away from a defense cooperation mentality that is strictly based on military presence, military sales and engagement with local militaries, and broadens the aperture, political, financial, economic and diplomatic across the board.

These are states that have been good friends of ours for 20 or 30 years. We share strategic goals, we share strategic missions, but we need to change the tone, the structure and the content of the dialogue. 

Thank you.

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Arab-US Policymakers Conference (AUSPC 2008)

Transcription Services by Ryan & Associates

About Ambassador Barbara Bodine

Barbara Bodine is Director of the Scholars in the Nation�s Service Initiative and a Diplomat-in-Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Ambassador. Bodine�s over 30 years in the US Foreign Service were spent primarily on Arabian Peninsula and great Persian Gulf issues, specifically US bilateral and regional policy, strategic security issues, counterterrorism, and governance and reform. Her tour as Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen 1997-2001, saw enhanced support for democratization and increased security and counterterrorism cooperation, the establishment of a coast guard, resumption of Fulbright Scholarships for Yemeni students, initiation of a $40 million/year economic assistance and development program, and an indigenous landmine awareness and demining program. Ms. Bodine also served in Baghdad as Deputy Principal Officer during the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait as Deputy Chief of Mission during the Iraqi invasion and occupation of 1990-1991, and again, seconded to the Department of Defense, in Iraq in 2003 as the senior State Department official and the first coalition coordinator for reconstruction in Baghdad and the Central governorates. 

In addition to several assignments in the State Department�s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, she was Associate Coordinator for Counterterrorism Operations and subsequently acting overall Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Director of East African Affairs, Dean of the School of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute, and Senior Advisor for International Security Negotiations and Agreements in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

Since leaving the government, Ambassador Bodine has been Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Governance Initiative in the Middle East at the Kennedy School, Harvard University, Fellow at the School�s Center for Public Leadership and the Institute of Politics, and the Robert Wilhelm Fellow at MIT�s Center for International Studies. She has also taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and lectured at universities and civic groups across the country and abroad as well as a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC and other media.

Ambassador Bodine is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Secretary�s Award for valor for her work in occupied Kuwait, the Secretary�s Career Achievement Award and Distinguished Service Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Santa Barbara, and has been recognized for her work by other agencies. She is the President of the Mine Action Group, America, a global NGO that provides technical expertise for the removal of remnants of conflict worldwide.

Ms. Bodine is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is a past Regent of the University of California.

For more information: http://www.princeton.edu/

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