Beyond Peace (21 page)

The plain fact, painful though it may be to face, is that after thirty-five years of Castro's rule, the hard line against him has failed to get rid of him. It is time to shift the central focus of our policies from hurting Cuba's government to helping its people. It is unlikely that Castro, an isolated survivor of the Soviet world, could again mount a serious subversive threat in this hemisphere, even if Cuba's economy improves. Meanwhile, the condition
of his people is desperate and growing worse. They need food, they need the basic essentials of everyday life, they need the rudiments of a functioning economy, and they need freedom.

The unique nature of the relationship between the United States and Cuba gives us a special responsibility toward its people. As long as it seemed reasonable that severe economic pressures would help them overthrow the Castro dictatorship, it was appropriate to maintain those pressures. As long as Castro was part of a global network of communist aggressors, the embargo strengthened international security. But that network has vanished, and our best service to the Cuban people now would be to build pressure from within by actively stimulating Cuba's contacts with the free world. What has worked in China now has the best chance of working in Cuba.

This means we should drop the economic embargo and open the way to trade, investment, and economic interaction, while insisting that ideas and information be allowed to flow as freely as goods. Today's global economy is essentially a market economy. Where the market system penetrates, it carries along the seeds of political and economic reform. We should put the challenge squarely to Castro: If he wants his people to prosper, then let him open the door to goods and ideas. If he insists on keeping it shut, it will be clear beyond question that only his fear of freedom stands in the way of his people's escape from privation. If he opens it, then he opens it also to the winds of freedom.

•   •   •

The United States must learn to think of itself as an Asian-Pacific power in the same automatic, instinctual way that it thinks of itself as a part of the Atlantic Community. This is true not only because more and more of America's ablest new immigrants come from Asia but also because Asia will soon be the largest market for our goods, the greatest preoccupation of our policymakers in Washington, and the likeliest arena for the application of U.S. diplomatic and even military power. Just as we were preoccupied in 1993 with the civil war in the former Yugoslavia,
we may well be preoccupied in 2003 with the threat of war over which Asian country controls oil rights in the South China Sea.

If America is to play a constructive role in Asia, the American people must be comfortable with their new role as citizens of the Pacific. We must think of Asian peoples not as threats or adversaries but as worthy competitors and partners in ensuring peace and stability in a volatile region. Japan was once called the Great Britain of Asia. Our goal should be to feel the same commonality of purpose and values with the emerging superpowers of Asia as we do with the former empires of Europe.

To do so, we will have to get over our fear of the mighty new Asia of the twenty-first century. By the year 2000, 3.5 billion of the world's 6.2 billion people will be Asians, and they will produce over half of the world's goods. To pessimists, these facts spell a West in decline, an America relegated to the margins. These analysts proceed from the fallacy that there is only so much growth and prosperity to go around, that if “they” are up, then “we” must be down. It is true that the United States will get a run for its money from China as both an economic and a military superpower by the middle of the next century. But in purely economic terms, Asia's skyrocketing growth, and with it the growth of a massive Asian middle class of consumers, will create incredible new opportunities for the West if we rise effectively to the challenge.

The pessimists are alarmed by the pace of Japanese investment in Asia, which has now reached an estimated $60 billion, because they fear it is designed to keep American and European investors out. This attitude is shortsighted, counterproductive, and wrong. In fact, Japanese investment is helping to create conditions in Asia that will be enormously beneficial to the rest of the world for decades to come.

These opportunities are there to be grasped. We will end up on the sidelines only if, by our own shortsightedness, we take ourselves out of the game. If we stay in, if we compete and cooperate
as a full member of the Asian-Pacific community, everyone will score, and everyone will win.

Trade does not prevent wars, but it does require peace. As Lee Kwan Yew said to a joint session of Congress during his visit to Washington nine years ago, ambitious nations grow either by trading with their neighbors or, if they cannot trade openly, gobbling up their neighbors' territory. It is profoundly in our interest that the nations of Asia grow the peaceful way.

The ideal world beyond peace—for now, almost beyond imagining—is 188 equally rich nations trading with one another in a free, fair way, each producing what it does best and buying what it needs most. A generation from now, such an outcome may be within the world's grasp. Today, much of Asia is unimaginably richer than it was after World War II. If Asian nations that were once mired in abject poverty join the developed world in the beginning of the next century, as they are very likely to do, then the rest of the developing world—if it follows Asia's free-market example—may also pass from poverty to prosperity.

During the Cold War, Americans glimpsed the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region in the harsh light cast by two distorting prisms: the conflict between the Arabs and Israel and the threat of Muslim fundamentalism, represented by such events as the seizing of American hostages in Iran in 1979. Our overwhelming interests in protecting the state of Israel and combating extremist terrorists have left the powerful impression that the Muslim world is a ragtag conglomeration of crazy, poorly shaven Arabs and fanatical medieval Persians.

Instead it is a highly diverse community of 850 million people and 190 ethnic groups living in thirty-seven countries around the world. These nations control most of the world's oil and possess many of its most powerful armies, and in the century to come they will wield extraordinary trading power as well. In the era beyond peace, our commitment to Israel must not and will not waiver. Nor should our opposition to extremist regimes in Iraq and Iran when they threaten our interests. But in fashioning a new Muslimpolitik for a new era, the United States must learn to view the Muslim world not as a unified, radical geopolitical force bent on confronting the West but rather as a diverse cultural and ethnic grouping bounded by a faith in Islam and a legacy of political turbulence.

Our failure to appreciate the diversity of the Muslim world and the genuine threats its populations face has already contributed to the tragedy in Bosnia-Herzegovina—one of the most disgraceful chapters of the post–World War II era.

The symbolic center of the Muslim world, the Persian Gulf region, is unquestionably a vital interest of the United States. It is a bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa, sits atop 55 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, and contains two of the world's most vital chokepoints—the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz. It is also the most violently unstable region in the world.

Since 1980, more than 1.4 million people in this region have lost their lives in wars and terrorist attacks. Over the last forty-five years, Israel and its Arab neighbors have fought five wars—in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982—that have claimed the lives of more than a hundred thousand people. In 1992, Israel and its closest neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, spent $11 billion for defense. In that same year, the United States provided $1.8 billion for military aid and $1.2 billion for economic aid to Israel and $1.3 billion for military aid and $900 million for economic aid to Israel's Arab neighbors. Militarization of the region is not attributable to the Arab-Israeli conflict alone. Syria invaded Jordan in 1970; Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990; Libya invaded Chad in 1980; Syria occupied Lebanon in 1976; North and South Yemen fought a decade-long civil war before uniting. Iran has attempted to subvert democratic governments by funding terrorist groups in Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan. Muslim-versus-Muslim conflicts have cost ten times as many lives as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those conflicts would have taken place had there been no Cold War and no Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace between Arabs and Israelis will not signal the end of conflict between Muslim nations in the area.

The West has a vital interest in maintaining access to Persian Gulf oil. Europe depends on the Gulf for over 75 percent of its oil, Japan for over 90 percent. While the United States receives only 6 percent of its oil from this region, the ripple effect of an oil cutoff from the Persian Gulf would cripple U.S. industry. Such a cutoff would be fatal to the industries of our allies in
Western Europe and Japan. As long as the West remains so dependent on Gulf oil, we must maintain the capability to defend our friends in the Persian Gulf region.

The United States also has a critical interest in the survival and security of Israel. The United States and Israel are not formal allies, but we have a moral commitment that transcends any security agreement. As I bluntly told a bipartisan meeting of congressional leaders at the beginning of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, “No American President will ever let Israel go down the tube.” Israel is the haven for millions whose families endured incredible suffering in the Holocaust. It is the only democracy in the Middle East and from its birth has been besieged by countries committed to its destruction. The depth of our commitment is demonstrated by the fact that since our recognition of Israel forty-five years ago, the United States has provided $40 billion in economic and military aid to Israel, more than twice as much as was spent under the Marshall Plan. The fact that Arab governments have finally recognized the existence of Israel is testimony to their recognition that our commitment to the survival of Israel is a pillar of America's foreign policy which will never be shaken.

The dramatic handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on September 13, 1993, in Washington could usher in a new era of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This would be a historic achievement of the greatest magnitude. Whatever diplomatic agreements Israel and its neighbors reach, it will be necessary to follow up with very substantive economic aid programs to give the parties a stake in keeping the peace. These programs must not be allowed to fail for lack of financial support. In addition to the parties involved, the United States, Japan, the nations of Western Europe, and those in the Persian Gulf region have a stake in preserving peace in the Middle East and should not hesitate to make the investment needed to preserve peace.

The major threat to our vital interests in the Persian Gulf
stems from radical regimes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Libya, and from the terrorist organizations that they support inside and outside the region.

Since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, he has made Iraq a major regional power by resorting to brute force within and outside the country. He has crushed domestic opposition in Iraq, murdered opponents in the Middle East and Europe, and expanded his power base throughout the Arab world through terrorism and intimidation. Iraq has a population of only 18 million but controls 11 percent of the world's oil reserves. Its military establishment is larger than the United Kingdom's. Even after the Persian Gulf War, Iraq's armed forces are the fifteenth-largest in the world, with more than 2,300 tanks, 310 fighter aircraft, and a million troops. Despite the efforts of the United Nations, Iraq has the most advanced nuclear weapons program in the Middle East except for Israel's.

Iraq's recent enemy, Iran, has more potential than any other nation to be the dominant regional power in the Persian Gulf. With a population of 60 million, 10 percent of the world's oil resources, and a modern technological infrastructure, Iran has more military and economic power than any other country in the Middle East except Turkey. It has an army of almost one million troops and has gone on a military buying binge in the former Soviet Union and China.

Since the end of its war with Iraq in 1988, Iran has undertaken a diabolically subtle strategy to export its brand of extremist Muslim fundamentalism without disrupting its economic relations with the West. It has funded extremist movements in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Afghanistan, supported radical regimes in the Sudan and other countries, and embarked on an ambitious program to develop its own nuclear weapons with the aid of North Korea and China.

Iran is the major sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, supporting Hamas in southern Lebanon, bankrolling Muslim terrorist groups based in Tehran and the October movement in
Egypt, and forming terrorist hit squads to assassinate Iranian dissidents in Western Europe. It has extended its ideological reach into Central Asia, focusing on Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Because it launched the Persian Gulf War, Iraq gets more attention in the West, but Iran is by far the greater long-term threat. Iraq's threat is only military. Its secular philosophy has no appeal beyond its border. Iran's threat is both military and religious.

As Israel's Prime Minister Rabin pointed out when we met in New York in late 1993, Iran's tactics are ominously similar to those of the Soviet Union's infamous Comintern before World War II. Rather than supporting openly pro-Iranian movements in target nations it seeks to dominate, it supports nationalist opposition movements that advocate its brand of extreme Muslim fundamentalism, just as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union supported indigenous communist parties in noncommunist nations. Rabin explained that this allows an Egyptian, for example, to be an Iranian-oriented extreme Muslim fundamentalist and a loyal Egyptian at the same time, just as members of the Soviet-controlled indigenous communist parties in the West during the Cold War could be communists without being openly disloyal to their own countries.