U.S.-Saudi Arabia - Anne-Marie Slaughter - Conference

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ITEM OF INTEREST
May 18, 2009

U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium
Conference Transcripts -- Session 3
Anne-Marie Slaughter

Editor's Note:

Last week a major forum addressing the state of and prospects for the relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was convened in Washington by the New America Foundation (NAF) and the Committee for International Trade (CIT) of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Distinguished speakers spent the day providing perspectives and insights on what the relationship should look like, how economics was shaping the national security picture vis a vis the relationship, the challenges for America in the region and how the perspective on these challenges look from the Saudi Arabian point of view.

Today we are pleased to provide the transcripts from the third and final session, "Through Saudi Arabia's Window and Other Lenses: Middle East Dynamics and Stakeholder Challenges". Among the featured speakers was The Honorable Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State and the Former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University.

Separate emails will provide each panelist's remarks and the question and answer period transcript. You can find all of the conference materials and related links at a new SUSRIS Special Section. [ "U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium" - Conference Special Section ]

Video MP3

U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium
Conference Transcripts -- Session 3
The Honorable Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director of Policy Planning, Department of State
Former Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University

[Anne-Marie Slaughter] Thank you. Things have genuinely gotten complex when as fine a Cartesian mind as my friend Ambassador Vimont speaks of increasing complexity rather than being able to reduce things to three clear principles. I will attempt that, at least three lenses, and try to talk about the region and Saudi Arabia from a functional perspective, from the lens, through the lens of partnership and through a more global lens. I should say before I do that I wanted to speak last only to give you a break between State Department perspectives, since my colleague Bill Burns spoke to you at lunch. I thought if you listened to these distinguished speakers between, you might forget enough of what he said that you would not recognize it when I said it again. I also want to thank Steve Clemmons, my friend the irrepressible Steve Clemmons. The New America Foundation is very dear to my heart. When I accepted the job at the State Department, I had to resign from all my boards, and I can�t say I did so with a uniformly heavy heart � indeed in many cases I was jumping for joy, but in the case of the New America Foundation, I was very sorry to step off the board, and I�m very pleased at least to be able to benefit from the programming here in Washington.

So I said I would start with a functional lens. When we talk about the Middle East in general, and when we talk about Saudi Arabia, or any major country in the Middle East, we immediately I think take a strategic perspective. This is the most challenging strategic region in the world. Saudi Arabia has played a key strategic position for the United States for many decades. And indeed we heard about a strategic regional architecture or regional security architecture, which is both necessary and complicated from a strategic perspective. I don�t challenge that perspective, but I think we often miss the opportunities that come from a more functional perspective. And when I say functional, I mean the things on the ground that people and local governments and national governments need on the ground to improve the conditions in their country, the lives of their people. And from that perspective, whether it is water, or health, or as we heard earlier education and those tremendous Saudi initiatives in education, but indeed there are initiatives in education throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Any of these, or science connected to education, but building scientific infrastructure, telecommunications. In all of these areas there is actually much more going on on the ground now than there has been, starting in North Africa, moving across to the Middle East and beyond. If we were to think about mapping the region less in terms of grand strategic architecture and more in terms of functional networks where their different groups, different projects involving different countries in each of these areas and other functional areas, I think you would see a denser set of relationships than we do when we look just strategically, and you would see Saudi Arabia often playing a very important role in those relationships that we again do not necessarily see when we look more strategically.

Now the obvious one is energy � that is both strategic and functional. But again, I would focus on things like looking at water resources throughout the Middle East, looking at how to build a new and educated population, with the younger generation. Science, health, very little known that diabetes is a huge challenge in the Middle East. We�re used to thinking about that in the United States, less so in the Middle East. What can be done to combat that health threat and others? How do we engage the countries in the region? How are they already engaged?

So I would start by suggesting that as we look at our relationship with Saudi Arabia and we look at the relationships of Saudi Arabia with other countries in the region, we pay more attention to the functional relationships that are already there. How do we bolster those? How do we connect them? How do we strengthen them? And ultimately, how do we connect them to a grander strategic architecture?

Second point is the lens of partnership. Many of you probably have seen the article �The King and Us� by David Otway in the Foreign Affairs issue, the previous one to the one that just came out in January and February, which says that the U.S.-Saudi relationship has been a special relationship, but now, I�m quoting him, this is not coming from me, it has been a special relationship and now increasingly the Saudis would prefer to see it as an ordinary relationship. I�m not going to take a view on whether that�s right or not, but I think that may not be the right way to frame U.S.-Saudi relations, in terms of a particular kind of relationship, but rather to look through the lens of partnership. The difference is partnership rests on common interests, so in those areas where we have common interests, we are partners. But it also allows for the possibility that there are areas where we do not have common interests, and then we have to agree to disagree, or we diverge. So if we think about it from that perspective, and again you heard from Bill Burns at lunch, he talked a great deal about our partnership with Saudi Arabia. It means asking the question first of all what are our common interests? Where do we in fact agree on specific policies? Now, the most obvious is the one we just heard about � we both have a very strong interest in an Israeli-Palestinian peace. A stable, durable peace that will help shore up the region as a whole. So there we share the interest of the Arab Peace Initiative, we have a strong partnership, we hope to build on that partnership.

Second, and looking at the title of this entire conference, the U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without an Equilibrium. I�m not sure if we can bring equilibrium to the world, but I�m quite certain that we and Saudi Arabia both have a strong interest in establishing a stable equilibrium in the Middle East. That both of us looking at the region � the neighborhood for Saudi Arabia, a key strategic region for us � see the value in reestablishing a stable equilibrium as we withdraw troops from Iraq, as we reintegrate Iraq into the region, and of course as we all address the problems of Iran. So there too we have a strong partnership.

We also have a strong interest in prosperity throughout the region. And here I don�t think we�ve paid enough attention to a U.S.-Saudi economic partnership, not simply with respect to oil or our bilateral relations, but with respect to developing a strong economy throughout the Middle East, which can among other things absorb the tremendous youth-bulge of often unemployed young people today, but also lay the foundation for a diverse economy, that if you have Israeli-Palestinian peace, is also going to be critical to rebuilding the region. So looking at it much more an economic lens.

And finally, again in terms of partnership, a Middle East based on tolerance. We�ve heard a lot about the Interfaith Dialogue, King Abdullah�s Interfaith Dialogue. It is a very important initiative. One, in my view, that it deserves as much attention as the Arab Peace Initiative, because it is a statement about a view of Islam, about a view of the great religions of the world coexisting in the Middle East. I agree with Former Senator Fowler about the links between President Obama or the spiritual connection there, and the understanding of the role of religion in people�s lives. The idea of a partnership working together for an Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East and more broadly around the world is a very important area of partnership.

So if we think about it again from a functional lens, from a lens of partnership, and we focus on where we do have common interests, where we don�t, we don�t try to force those through a relationship where it will not necessarily work, and finally to think about Saudi Arabia through a more global lens. I lived last year for ten months in Shanghai, which I recommend for no other reason that it changes your view of the global map irrevocably, those of us who have grown up of course with the Atlantic as the center of the map. Well, from China actually the Middle East looks like the center of the global map. Actually from Chinese perspective, China is the center of the global map, but as a westerner living in China, I was very conscious continually of essentially the rebuilding of ancient trade roots of the old Silk Road. The number of not only Chinese but Asians generally, moving back and forth to the Middle East. Patterns of trade that were around before this country was either discovered by the Europeans or even before Native Americans were here as best we can tell. These are very old relationships, and they are being re-forged rapidly. If we think about Saudi Arabia and the Middle East more generally from that perspective, we once again see it really as a crossroads of the world, not just a neighborhood that is strategically important to the United States, and often a source of difficulties.

Similarly, it�s important to think about the countries of the Middle East, and particularly Saudi Arabia, as having a much more diversified global portfolio. Of course the relationship with the United States is very important, but it is not the only relationship of key importance to the Saudi government, and when you look at it from global perspective, you realize the strategic interests the Saudi government has in having a diversified portfolio. If you think then also of the role that Saudi Arabia has played recently in the G20. Saudi Arabia was the only OPEC member in the G20. If you think about efforts to work on Darfur, we immediately think about the influence of the Saudi government. When we think about Pakistan, we think about the efforts and the partnership that we need with the Saudi government. So more broadly, we often, I think, in the United States have thought about our relationships with Saudi Arabia, like our relations with many countries, in a kind of hub and spokes model. We�re the hub, to us, and we think of our relationships primarily bilaterally, so we look at our bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia. Increasingly, and exactly as a result of the complexity Ambassador Vimont described, the number of actors, the density of relationships in all directions, we actually, we are of course a hub, a central node in many global networks. But there are many other nodes, and there is an increasingly complex web of networks, and in that context, Saudi Arabia is playing and increasingly important role with its own web of relationships.

So I would conclude by saying as we think about the United States and Saudi Arabia in a world without an equilibrium, we ought to be thinking functionally through the lens of partnership, through a global lens, but we also ought to be thinking of the tremendous opportunities that are there for us to work with the Saudis, but also for Saudi Arabia to work with many other countries in reestablishing an equilibrium that would start in the Middle East and extend outwards. Thank you.

[Visit the SUSRIS Special Section "U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium" for the transcripts from this and other panels and additional resources.]

Session Three Video

Courtesy New America Foundation

Video MP3

Speaker Biography:

The Honorable Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director of Policy Planning, Department of State
Former Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University

The Honorable Anne-Marie Slaughter is the Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State. She was Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University from 2002 to 2009. Educated at Princeton, Oxford and Harvard in both international law and international relations, Slaughter has written and published in both fields. Her work at the juncture of the two disciplines helped pioneer the current emphasis on cross-fertilization between international relations and international law. Her most recent book is The Idea that Is America, Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World, published by Basic Books. She is also author of A New World Order, in which she identified transnational networks of government officials as an increasingly important component of global governance.

Source: New America Foundation / Committee for International Trade

AGENDA

Panel III: Through Saudi Arabia's Window and Other Lenses: Middle East Dynamics and Stakeholder Challenges

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