US looks at Middle East policy

MARK COLVIN: The killing of hundreds of people in Egypt last week shocked the world, but it still paled compared with the continuing slaughter in Syria – a full-blown civil war.

Two and a half years on from the beginning of the Arab Spring, two of the biggest countries in the region are in utter turmoil.

It poses huge diplomatic conundrums for countries with an interest in stability in the Middle East, not least the United States.

Michael Singh is managing director of the Washington think tank The Institute for Near East Policy.

I asked him how the changing situation had affected policy thinking.

MICHAEL SINGH: They have challenged I think what has been the US desire to sort of step back from this region; to disengage a little bit, as it were, after the kind of lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think they’ve opened the eyes of policy makers in Washington, but also elsewhere in the world, that really we need to remain engaged in this region, and that by stepping back…

MARK COLVIN: What does engaged mean?

MICHAEL SINGH: I think engaged means we can’t simply sort of stand on the sidelines and wait for conflicts to resolve themselves, because Syria’s a good example that conflicts won’t simply resolve themselves. You have a stalemate there.

MARK COLVIN: But what would America do about Syria?

MICHAEL SINGH: I think it’s not just America in a sense. I think America’s role in the region has typically been as sort of a broker; to bring together coalitions to address issues. I think without America’s role it’s hard for those coalitions to form.

And so I think if you look at Syria now what you see is a stalemate. Neither side really has the wherewithal to win, but neither side is going to lose either. And some kind of external influence is going to be necessary I think to bring that to a conclusion.

MARK COLVIN: But what exactly, and particularly when you’ve got Russia and China on the other side?

MICHAEL SINGH: Well from my point of view what you really need to see is, I think you need to see more assistance from the United States and allies to the Syrian opposition. I think that could take the form of training assistance, equipment. You may need to see more forceful external intervention in the form of, say, no fly zones, air strikes and – but all of that should be with an eye towards changing the military equation in a way that makes a diplomatic solution possible.

MARK COLVIN: But let’s be practical there. You give more assistance to the opposition, you’re likely to be giving more assistance to fundamentalists, to people who, as with the sort of blowback in Afghanistan, are eventually going to turn against you.

MICHAEL SINGH: Well I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I think it’s the extremists and the Islamists who are actually the better armed now. And I think it’s the more moderate opposition, or let’s say the more secular opposition, which feels as though it has no real allies out there in the world because we haven’t stepped forward, Europe hasn’t stepped forward.

So look, the extremists have the weapons now, they have the financing now, because they’re getting it externally from countries in the Middle East for example. And so I think if you want to strengthen other parties in the region, you don’t want to see sort of Syria become a sort of Grand Central for jihadism then that means you do have to support the alternatives.

MARK COLVIN: But there is already conflict between the jihadists and the more moderate ones as you call them.

MICHAEL SINGH: There certainly is.

MARK COLVIN: You could be fuelling a sort of third front in civil war.

MICHAEL SINGH: Well I think, look, you know the way that these types of conflicts tend to go is that if, for example, the opposition were militarily victorious, what would you expect? You would expect them to then potentially turn on one another because that unifying interest of toppling Assad would be gone and suddenly the rifts between the sides would be laid bare.

I think that’s why you don’t want to see a military victory by either side, including the opposition. You want to see a diplomatic solution whereby each side has to accept the other’s sort of continued existence.

MARK COLVIN: Now if we turn to Egypt. Should the United States just admit that it’s a coup and stop pussyfooting around the language?

MICHAEL SINGH: Well look I think that we over emphasise our centrality to this issue. What you have in Egypt are parties who are very inwardly focused, very focused on consolidating their domestic power. And so the first question, as before, needs to be: how can we influence this nation, which is quite vital to our interests, to our allies’ interests, in a positive direction?

We’ve been dramatically unsuccessful in that regard recently. We’ve been very reactive. And so I think with regard to US assistance, we have to recognise that US assistance is, if it’s going to be anything, it needs to be a tool to influence Egypt’s future, not simply a reactive sort of step.

MARK COLVIN: How do you do that? The military, which is now in power, is the recipient of the biggest aid. I mean, billions of it.

MICHAEL SINGH: Right.

MARK COLVIN: Do you cut that off?

MICHAEL SINGH: Well I don’t think that this is the moment to cut off aid, because I think that, look when you see what’s happening in Egypt now, this has been going essentially since the fall of Mubarak in March of 2011. Neither – no side, I should say, has acquitted itself well. There’s been a sort of a constant low level turmoil which occasionally flairs up in this way. And I don’t think that the right step is to simply walk away now from the strategic relationship that we’ve had with Egypt.

MARK COLVIN: Not even if the alternative is supporting a military which is slaughtering people? I mean they may be people that you oppose, the Muslim Brotherhood, but they are still being slaughtered in large numbers.

MICHAEL SINGH: Well I don’t think the United States opposes the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the United States has gotten a lot of flack inside Egypt for being too close to the Muslim Brotherhood, which I’m not sure is quite fair either.

But I think you’ve put your finger on part of the problem, which is that the aid shouldn’t be seen as this is aid for the military. I think that what we want is a strategic relationship with Egypt.

And what we want to do is influence not just the military, but influence all sides of the conflict to sort of commit themselves to moving in a different direction. To building, to starting to build the foundations for a democratic state, which is not, I think, what we were able to do in the first interim period before that coup. And now we need to learn from those mistakes and do that.

MARK COLVIN: Michael Singh is managing director of the Washington think tank, The Institute for Near East Policy. I was speaking to him in Sydney this afternoon.

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