Excerpts from "The Hegemonic Quicksand"

The National Interest, Winter 2003/04

Zbigniew Brzezinski

From the standpoint of American interests, the current geopolitical state of affairs in the world’s principal energy-rich zone leaves much to be desired. Several of the key exporting states—notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—are weak and politically debilitated. Iraq faces a prolonged period of stabilization, reconstruction and rehabilitation. Another major energy producer, Iran, has a regime hostile to the United States and opposes U.S. efforts on behalf of a Middle Eastern peace. It may be seeking wmd and is suspected of terrorist links. The United States has sought to isolate Iran internationally, but with limited success.

Just to the north, in the southern Caucasus and Central Asia, the newly independent energy-exporting states are still in the early stages of political consolidation. Their systems are fragile, their political processes arbitrary and their statehood vulnerable. They are also semi-isolated from the world energy markets, with American legislation blocking the use of Iranian territory for pipelines leading to the Persian Gulf and with Russia aggressively seeking to monopolize international access to Turkmen and Kazakh energy resources. Only with the completion, several years from now, of the U.S.-sponsored Baku-Çeyhan pipeline will Azerbaijan and its trans-Caspian neighbors gain an independent link to the global economy. Until then, the area will be vulnerable to Russian or Iranian mischief.

For the time being, the powerful and exclusive U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf region and the effective U.S. monopoly of significant long-range warfare capabilities give America a very considerable margin for unilateral policymaking. If it should become necessary to cut the potential nexus between the proliferation of wmd and conspiratorial terrorism, the United States has the means to act on its own, as it proved in bringing down the recent Iraqi regime. The problem becomes more complex, however, and the chances of a solitary American success more ephemeral, when the longer-range consequences of a violent strategic upheaval are taken into account.

It is difficult to envisage how the United States alone could force Iran into a basic reorientation. Outright military intimidation might work initially, given the gaping disparity of power between the two states, but it would be a gross error to underestimate the nationalist and religious fervor that such an approach would likely ignite among the 70 million Iranians. Iran is a nation with an impressive imperial history and with a sense of its own national worth. While the religious zeal that brought the theocratic dictatorship to power seems to be gradually fading, an outright collision with America would almost certainly re-ignite popular passions, fusing fanaticism with chauvinism.

While Russia has not stood in the way of any decisive U.S. military efforts to alter the strategic realities of the region, the current geopolitical earthquake in the Persian Gulf could jeopardize America’s efforts to consolidate the independence of the Caspian Basin states. American preoccupation with the mess in Iraq, not to mention the cleavage between America and Europe as well as the increased American-Iranian tensions, has already tempted Moscow to resume its earlier pressure on Georgia and Azerbaijan to abandon their aspirations for inclusion in the Euro-Atlantic community, and to step up its efforts to undermine any enduring U.S. political and military presence in Central Asia. That would make it more difficult for the United States to engage the Central Asian states in a larger regional effort to combat Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A resurgence of Muslim extremism of the Taliban variety could then even acquire a regional scope.

These risks could be lessened by closer U.S.-eu strategic collaboration with regard to Iraq and Iran. That may not be easy to achieve, given divergent American and European perspectives, but the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs of any compromise. For the United States, a joint approach would mean less freedom of unilateral action; for the European Union, it would mean less opportunity for self-serving inaction. But acting together—with the threat of U.S. military power reinforced by the eu’s political, financial and (to some degree) military support—the Euro-Atlantic community could foster a genuinely stable and possibly even democratic post-Saddam regime.

Together, the United States and European Union would also be better positioned to deal with the broader regional consequences of the upheaval in Iraq. Significant progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would reduce the Arab concern that U.S. actions directed at Iraq’s regime were inspired by Israel’s desire to weaken all neighboring Arab states while perpetuating its control over the Palestinians. Moreover, strategic collaboration between the United States and the eu would make it easier for Turkey to avoid a painful choice between its loyalty as a U.S. ally and its hopes for eu membership.

Active strategic partnership between the United States and the European Union would also make it more likely that Iran could eventually be transformed from a regional ogre into a regional stabilizer. Currently, Iran has a cooperative relationship with Russia, but otherwise either wary or hostile relations with all of its neighbors. It has maintained a relatively normal relationship with Europe, but its antagonistic posture toward America—reciprocated by restrictive U.S. trade legislation—has made it difficult for European-Iranian and Iranian-Japanese economic relations to truly prosper. Its internal development has suffered accordingly, while its socioeconomic dilemmas have been made more acute by a demographic explosion that has increased its population to 70-odd million.

The entire energy-exporting region would be more stable if Iran, the region’s geographic center, were reintegrated into the global community and its society resumed its march to modernization. That will not happen as long as the United States seeks to isolate Iran and is insensitive to Iran’s security concerns, especially given the presence in Iran’s immediate neighborhood of three overt and one covert nuclear powers. More effective would be an approach in which the Iranian social elite sees the country’s isolation as self-imposed and thus counterproductive, instead of something enforced by America. Europe has long urged the United States to adopt that approach. On this issue, American strategic interests would be better served if America were to follow Europe’s lead.

A promising start in this regard has been made by the European initiative on the complex issue of the Iranian nuclear program, an issue that should not be addressed in a manner reminiscent of the earlier U.S. exaggerations of the alleged Iraqi wmd threat. In the longer run, contrary to the image projected by its ruling mullahs—that of a religiously fanatical society—Iran stands the best chance, of all the countries in the region, of embarking on the path traced earlier by Turkey. It has a high literacy rate (72%), an established tradition of significant female participation in the professions and political life, a genuinely sophisticated intellectual class and a social awareness of its distinctive historical identity. Once the dogmatic rule imposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wears thin and the Iranian secular elites sense that the West sees a regionally constructive role for Iran, Iran could be on the way toward successful modernization and democratization.

Such a progressive alteration of the region’s prevailing strategic equation would permit implementation of the Caucasus Stability Pact proposed by Turkey in 2000, providing for various forms of region-wide cooperation. To make it effective, not only Turkey’s and Russia’s involvement would be needed, but also Iran’s. Iran’s reorientation would also permit wider economic access to the energy resources of Central Asia. In time, pipelines through Iran to the Persian Gulf could also be matched by parallel pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, branching out also to India. The result would be of major economic (and potentially political) benefit not only to south-central Asia, but to the increasingly energy-ravenous Far East.

Progress along these lines, in turn, would help advance the third strategic priority for this region, the need to contain both the proliferation of wmd and the terrorist epidemic. Neither issue is susceptible to a quick resolution. But tangible movement on the first two priorities—Israeli-Palestinian peace and the remaking of the region’s strategic landscape—would undercut some of the popular support for anti-Western, especially anti-American, terrorism. It could also make it easier to concentrate on the struggle against Middle Eastern terrorists while reducing the risks of a more comprehensive religious and cultural clash between the West and Islam.

Moreover, an effective halt to further nuclear proliferation in this conflict-ridden region will ultimately have to be based on a regional arrangement. If Iran is to forsake the acquisition of nuclear weapons, it must have alternative sources of security: either a binding alliance with a nuclear-armed ally or a credible international guarantee. A region-wide agreement banning nuclear weapons—on the model of the convention adopted some years ago by South American states—would be the preferable outcome. But in the absence of regional consensus, the only effective alternative is for the United States, or perhaps the permanent members of the un Security Council, to provide a guarantee of protection against nuclear attack to any state in the region that abjures nuclear weapons.

The effort to stabilize the Global Balkans will last several decades. At best, progress will be incremental, inconsistent and vulnerable to major reversals. It will be sustained only if the two most successful sectors of the globe—the politically mobilized America and the economically unifying Europe—treat it increasingly as a shared responsibility in the face of a common security threat. Struggling alone makes the quicksand only more dangerous.

Zbigniew Brzezinski is former national security advisor to the president. This article is excerpted from his forthcoming book, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership (Basic Books, 2004).