Lawfare Daily: The End of U.S. Ambition in the Middle East with Steven Cook

[Intro]

Stephen Cook: If we're concerned about great power competition in the Middle East and around the globe, and we need partners to achieve those kinds of things. If we are worried about preventing threats to Israeli security, we put ourselves at a disadvantage by engaging in this kind of transformative efforts to make other societies look more like us when they don't necessarily want that from us.

Scott R. Anderson: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Scott R. Anderson, general counsel and senior editor at Lawfare with Stephen Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stephen Cook: We need to devote our resources not to the idea of reviving the Palestinian Authority, which is deeply compromised in the eyes of most Palestinians and deeply corrupt, but to prevent the Israelis from resettling the Gaza Strip 'cause everything that we want to do in the region–even within my ideas about prudential conservatism–would be blown up by that.

Scott R. Anderson: Today we are discussing his new book, “The End of Ambition: America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.”

[Main Podcast]

Stephen, in this book you have put together a, a tour de force, I think it's fair to say a, a, a broad survey historically, policy-wise, every corner of the region, touching even a few areas that people argue whether it's part of the region or not, Afghanistan policy, things like that on occasion to kind of pull together this holistic picture with elements of prescription, elements of criticism.

A lot of content, a lot of observations crammed into 150 short, very readable pages, which is greatly appreciated by many. I, I enjoy my hundreds of pages books, but this one was a delightfully pleasant, straightforward, and, and really not dense, but informative read.

Tell me a little bit about what motivated this project, because this is obviously responding to this moment we're in and, and my, my sense is to a lot of the policy discourse around US, policy towards the Middle East. What is your sense of the state of that discourse and how do you see this project fitting into it?

Stephen Cook: Well first thanks. I mean, it's really nice to hear that someone thinks it's a tour de force and I, I'll tell you a little bit about the origins of the project and then I'll tell you how it became 150 pages because believe me, it didn't really start out that way.

The origins, you know, I have been kind of thinking about the discourse around U.S. Middle East policy for quite some time. I was, I had the opportunity to be in Tahrir Square at the beginning of the Egyptian uprising in 2011. And I remember I came back after, you know, four days and then you know, Washington, the full kind of foreign policy apparatus had kicked into gear to comment and respond to these extraordinary events in the Middle East.

And I remember going to a meeting at the Brookings Institution, and lots of people were talking about how the uprisings were now giving the United States an opportunity to get the Middle East, right. I thought that that was so strange having been in Tahrir Square and not hearing a single person say anything about the United States, certainly not. No one was saying, oh, now is the opportunity. Please the United States get it, get it right.

Then thereafter, we, you know, in the decade following that, those events, there was lots of discussion about withdrawal retrenchment fights about how the United States should deal with, with the Middle East. And I think a lot of the foreign policy establishment, for lack of a better term, took on this, this notion that withdrawal or retrenchment was probably the best thing for the United States to do.

Long time Middle East hands we're saying, we don't really, we can't do much in the in, in the Middle East. And I thought that this was, this also was wrong. So. It was an itch that I really needed to scratch over a long period of time having, you know, marinated myself in the arguments and debates here in Washington as well as what was going on in the Middle East.

And then, quite honestly, I was casting about thinking of things to write about. I was like, oh, maybe I'll write a book about Iraq 20 years after the invasion. And then it was COVID and I couldn't go anywhere. And I'm a firm believer if you're gonna write about a country, you really need to go there if not live there.

And so I said, oh, this is a great opportunity for me to actually explore these ideas that have been part of the debate in Washington for all this time, and sort of try to put my stamp on it. And, and, and, and, and this is, that's the end of ambition. That's the book that, that came out of this.

Now how it became 150 pages. There's, there's really two things. One, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, said to me, no one's gonna read a really long manuscript. So, you know, your previous books were in the range of 300 to 350 pages. You want to aim for between 150 and 220 pages. That's the sweet spot for what people are reading these days. So that was good advice.

But the first drafts of chapters two and three are a hundred pages long each. So, you know, because it's hard to write about U.S. Middle East policy without the urge to like retell every detail of the story, particularly when it comes to things like energy and oil or Israel in particular.

Israel, I think Israel was, the Israel chapter was longer than a hundred pages. But then some, some friends who read it said, look, these stories have been told before. You're losing the analytic edge by adding all of this history that everybody else has already written about. Drain that out. And I, you, you'll, you'll have a much more interesting and readable book. And that's, that's how it could be 150 pages with like 30 some odd pages of, you know, notes and bibliography.

Scott R. Anderson: A fair number of footnotes. But when you get to the end and you realize the last quarter of the book is mostly footnotes and bibliography, right. It's a, it's a delight.

Stephen Cook: I think people, I, people are very happy about that. Like someone told me. Yeah, exactly. They're like, it's an easy plane read. It's just, you know, especially if you're gonna the Middle East, you have to bring more than one book.

Scott R. Anderson: Yeah, yeah. Very much so. So you really start your analysis a century ago, almost a century ago, in the kind of post-war era, maybe even arguably going a little bit further back.

But the, the bulk of it starts at that era, but defining what emerged during the inner war period, World War II and the postwar period as the defining us interest in the Middle East, the central one being. Oil, you know, some sometimes controversial concept, but that you really drive energy security being a, if not the major motivating factor for U.S. policy.

And it seems, from my reading, quite reasonably for the United States, for, you know, several decades, at least during the Cold War. Tell us a little about what those core interests were, how you see them manifesting, and how effective US policy was during this area. 'cause you actually speak of the Cold War as an era of relatively effective Middle East policy, at least in view towards those core interests.

Stephen Cook: Right. And, and for Star Trek fans, I call the, the chapter the prime directive. And it really was a, the major issue that drove the United States to the Middle East. The Middle East was largely a backwater in American foreign policy. Basically, the United States was able to fight and support its allies in World War II based on oil from the United States and the Americas.

But in the interwar years, there were major fines in the Persian Gulf, and American companies went out there to exploit and harvest this, this energy. The Middle East again, was not that important to the United States in the conduct of World War II, but after World War II. So there was this commercial interest that was very important.

But then after World War II, there was a strategic interest in it. Most of the oil resources that were used in the reconstruction of Europe, Western Europe, came from the Gulf, the bulk of it, actually from Saudi Arabia. And so the reasoning behind the kind of interest in oil and oil from the Gulf was that if you're going to have a healthy capitalist economy that's gonna confront or, or, or demonstrate something different to people in Europe who might be attracted to the idea of communism in the Cold War.

You need to have the energy resources from the Middle East now for a long time at the end of, after the end of World War II, we didn't invest. The United States didn't even actually invest that much in oil security because the British were east of Suez. The United States had three old ships that sort of patrolled the Persian Gulf, sort of showing the flat.

But then in 1971, when the British withdrew east of Suez, all of their bases, everything they got out of, essentially the region was handed over to the United States. Washington didn't deploy forces into the region in the early 1970s. Remember, this was during the Vietnam War. It wouldn't have been palatable even though leaders in the region really wanted the United States to be there, although they couldn't say so publicly.

So there was gradually an increased presence of American forces in the region. This really began this kind of modern. American presence in the region really began in earnest after 1971, but this idea that oil from the region was critically important to the security of the United States and in the struggle against the Soviet Union was something that American policymakers started talking about.

As early as 1945 and the British were the junior partners because they had already been there in helping to secure the free flow of energy resources and the freedom of navigation in the waters around the Middle East, which were so critical to energy flows to Europe. Since that time, the United States has positioned forces in the region for a variety of reasons, including, you know, regime change and so on.

But at the same time, oil has remained important. You know, Operation Desert Storm, I talk about it in the book that, you know, the administration, the George H.W. Bush administration said, look, this wasn't a war for oil. Okay. It wasn't a war for oil. There were other principles involved, right? But there wasn't an underlying question about if Saddam Hussein held onto Kuwait, he would control huge amounts of oil resources, not only Iraq’s, but Kuwait as well as be able to menace Saudi Arabia, which is, you know, the most important kind of oil producer in, in the region and in the world in, in many ways.

So Operation Desert Storm was not solely or only about oil. The protestors in the streets in, in, in 1990 and 1991 got that wrong, but they weren't entirely wrong. Oil was a factor in, in that, and, and in part, despite regime change in Iraq and all kinds of other things that the United States has gotten itself wrapped around the axle in, in the region, oil has been a mainstay of our concerns.

Just think about what happened in 2021 and 2022. We came out of the COVID pandemic sort of in 2021 and everybody engaged in revenge travel and people are flying everywhere, driving everywhere. And the price of oil went was up and the price of gas. Suddenly there was a huge demand and gas prices started going up. This had an impact on President Biden's popularity.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, which also had a massive impact on the global oil market. And gas prices went up further and had an impact on President Biden's popularity as well as on the. American economy, and that's when we saw those very significant spikes in inflation.

And so the president, despite not really wanting to deal with Saudi Arabia's, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was forced in part to go to Saudi Arabia and make amends with the prince who he had essentially made persona non grata at the White House, in part because the administration really wanted the Saudis being a, a, a, a producer and in fact a swing producer of oil.

To pump more oil and moderate gas prices for American consumers in the health of the American economy. So there's nothing that we do in the Middle East that isn't connected to the free flow of energy resources, whether it's for our own economic health or the health of our, our allies and friends around the world.

Scott R. Anderson: So you, you draw a kind of distinct contrast, I think between Cold War era policies and kind of post Cold War era policies. Not a completely, you know, dichotomy. I think you have your criticisms of Cold War era policies, overreaches and you know, potential negative externalities that arose from that.

And the same, you have some, something good things to say about post Cold War policies as well. But nonetheless, you make the case that the U.S. policy was a lot more effective, at least to the core interest, and particularly energy security interest during the Cold War. Draw that out for me a little bit.

For folks who haven't got a chance to dig into the book, what do you think was more effective about Cold War policy and perhaps why and and where has the thread been lost since the end of the Cold War in an era where the United States, in theory is the hegemon?

Stephen Cook: Right. This is the crux of of, of the book, and what I say is by dint of what policymakers wanted to do, what they sought to achieve during that post World War II, Cold War era, the United States was pretty successful.

The oil flowed, we helped Israel's security and the United States remained the dominant power in the region, beginning in the 1970s, in the service of those two other interests, free flow of energy, resources, and helping Israeli security after the end of the call. There were two, there are two critical dates, and in my standard end of ambition talk, I, I always ask people, I say, what is the date?

February 26th, 1991, what does that do for you? No one remembers that. That was the day that Saddam Hussein essentially waved the white flag and the United States and its coalition in Operation Desert Storm, were, were successful. And then I say, okay, fast forward 10 months. What? What about December 26th, 1991, how quickly people forget, it's the last time the hammer and sickle flew over the Kremlin. It came down on the day after Christmas, 1991.

So suddenly the United States was alone in the world, had demonstrated awesome military force in the Gulf and had a lot of power, but. I wasn't really sure what to do with it until kind of, you know, somehow somewhere in the mid 1990s. We decided we could remake the world, and the Middle East was one of those places where we sought to remake the world outside of the Middle East.

We expanded NATO, we supported economic shock therapy, and in the Middle East, we said President Clinton said he wanted to pull the countries of the Middle East into the 21st century. So there comes into view the differences between the post World War Cold War era and the post war era. You know, arguably 1945 to 1991, the United States sought to prevent challenges and threats to its core interests, oil and Israel and its primacy.

After 1991, the United States sought to leverage its power to transform the region that is this ambitious effort to transform the region. And they, we tried to do it in a number of ways. Clinton team had, you know, went all in on the peace process, and peace was a good thing. But they also thought that if finally the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians was brought to an end, and then the broader Arab/Israeli conflict were brought to an end, the rationale for the big national security states in the region would disappear, and there would be a transition from authoritarianism to more democratic open and just political systems.

It sounded really nice, but in reality, it doesn't get at the heart of why there are these authoritarian political systems in the Middle East. Doesn't really have much to do with the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Then we had obviously, you know, the 9/11 attacks and the answer to our terrorism problem was supposed to be democracy, and we were gonna transform Egyptian society and Saudi society, and of course, Iraqi society through Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Although to be fair, Operation Iraqi Freedom was presented to the American people as an effort to disarm Saddam Hussein, who was a threat to the world, which turned out not to be true. There was a debate within the Bush administration should they just put, you know, some Iraqi general in the chair that Saddam Hussein had been in or something else, and President Bush said, no, no, no, no, no. We can't just go halfway around the world, disarm Iraq and not build a democracy there. It wouldn't be worth it. So we tried to do that.

And then of course, I think probably more controversial for some people in this book, I look at the JCPOA and say hey, this in and of itself was also a, a transformative effort. Remember, President Obama talked about Saudis and Iranians and others sharing the region? Well, I think the JCPOA was in part an effort to do to to, to begin the process where they would fundamentally transform the regional dynamics in the Middle East.

Our return on the investment in all of those things is zero. Less than zero. We paid a tremendous price. People in the region paid a tremendous price. So it strikes me, it struck me after digging into all of this history and so on and so forth, that when we try to prevent bad things from happening, were actually much better at it and we could actually be somewhat constructive when we try to transform, make good things happen. We're actually quite bad at it, and we fail and we destabilize the region.

Now, let me just say before, you know, some of your listeners start freaking out at me. There were, as you intimated, setbacks and moral costs of our successes during the Cold War. I mean in service of the prime directive the United States supports regimes whose values run completely opposite to American values and, and ideals and principles.

There was a cost for our support for Israel, that's the perhaps permanent statelessness of the Palestinian, of the Palestinian people, and the cost to maintaining our primacy, which was a lot of money devoted to our primacy in the Middle East that could have been spent elsewhere. But nevertheless, given what policymakers wanted to do–ensure the free flow of oil, prevent threats to the free flow of oil, prevent threats to Israel, prevent threats to our primacy–we were pretty successful costs and all.

Scott R. Anderson: So let's dig into that question a little bit because I do think that's a core underlying challenge that we've seen us policymakers, particularly in the post Cold War era, but not exclusively really wrestle with is how to reconcile interests and values.

You know, we saw President Obama come in very skeptical of engagement with the Middle East. You know, aimed at, kind of winding down, eventually espousing the pivot to Asia concept. That's kind of become, in different terminology still, the defining strategic move of bipartisan consensus really at this point of the United States in the last 10 years, nonetheless gets sucked into the Arab Springs, sucked into the ideas of democracy, of human rights and values.

How do you see those values informing U.S. policy? What role do they have if U.S. interests dictate stability or preference for stability and stability, you know, reinforces a status quo that is inherently detrimental to what we take to be at least rhetorically and as a matter of treaty obligations, universal human rights?

Stephen Cook: Yeah, it's, I, you know, these are all questions that I take on in, in the book. First on this question of pivot to Asia. I think this is incredibly shortsighted. We are a country with global interests, and as I say in the book for the United States, the Middle East is important. It is literally in the middle and it is important.

The flow of energy, resources, flow of ideas, commerce and sort of the Middle East really is, is the middle and so much is important to us in terms of those interests that that I outlined, I think. One of the problems that the United States has had is disentangling these interests from our values, and there was an effort during George W. Bush's administration through the freedom agenda to sort of bring those into alignment.

And you're quite right. President Obama was deeply skeptical of this, but then the Arab uprisings happened and he gave a speech in May, 2011 that his predecessor could have given, I mean, which he talks about making the world as it ought to be, rather than how it is, which was striking for him. I, I talk about that speech as well in, in the book.

And what I say is both Bush and Obama were wrong. One, Obama was wrong to talk about a pivot to Asia because the Middle East is gonna, is a factor in our relations with Asia and Asia and the Middle East is a factor in Asia's relations with the United States.

But, but more germane to your question, the reason why we can never reconcile our interest in our values in the Middle East is by dint of what those who we have to work with in order to ensure our stability and if we wanna be successful once again in the region. Attending to those interests and other important goals, we're gonna have to stop talking about our values being consistent with our interest, at least in the Middle East.

Now, that's not to say I, that I don't want to hear a president of the United States talk about democracy and freedom, but the fact of matter is, is that our interests don't allow us to, or it, it would be self-defeating. And I think we have evidence of how self-defeating it is to try to transform these societies.

First of all, no one wants to be transformed by an external power. We, I think it's, it's pretty clear. And then, I mean, this is hard to take. I'm really actually a nice guy and I used to really believe in democracy promotion. I don't kill puppies. I like flowers. You know, I'm, I'm a good guy. But if you're gonna be kind of coldly analytic about this, a more democratic Egypt or a more democratic Saudi Arabia is probably not advantageous for American interest because we know that American policy in the region is actually quite unpopular, particularly as it relates to Israel and Palestine.

And so the fact that we have partners who are willing to work with us and make it relatively easier and relatively less expensive to achieve those interests, I think is important. I think that the more that we talk about human rights and democracy, they're less willing to work with us. They're more willing to hedge with the Chinese who don't bother them about human rights and democracy. They're more willing to hedge with the Russians who don't bother them about human rights and, and democracy.

In addition to the fact that when we try to apply this pressure on countries in the region, we never really get anywhere. It's almost like a wasted effort. How for all of our efforts to promote human rights in a place like Egypt, have we been successful? Egypt is the most, one of the most repressive countries on the face of the earth. It's not, our efforts have not made it more democratic, haven't made it more stable.

So if we're worried about free flow of energy resources, if we're if we're concerned about great power competition in the Middle East and around the globe, and we need partners to achieve those kinds of things, if we are worried about preventing threats to Israeli security. We put ourselves at a disadvantage by engaging in this kind of transformative efforts to make other societies look more like us when they don't necessarily want that from us.

I'm not saying that Arabs don't wanna live in more democratic societies, but they don't want the United States necessarily coming in and saying, okay, this is how you should organize your societies. These are the principles by which you should, you should live. These are the institutions by which you should live. That's especially a problem now, post our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the deterioration of our own democratic institutions, which people in that part of the world are looking at very, very closely.

Scott R. Anderson: So it, it's an interesting position, not an unfamiliar one, I think for people who have wrestled with the consequence of U.S. policy in the Middle East and the kind of demands of broader strategic interests that derive towards collaboration with regimes that are autocratic and, and, and otherwise contrary to a lot of us values, at least seemingly on their face.

But it strikes me as a harder argument to make, or at least more complicated, one in a post Khashoggi killing, post Yemen conflict environment because we've seen now pretty visibly in the last five or 10 years, at least two pretty major case studies where you've seen a departure from U.S. values really compromise a U.S. relationship with one of these allies in a way that I think is, was not driven by the executive branch or strategic policy makers by any stretch of the imagination.

I mean, both the Yemen conflict was something that was largely supported by the Obama and Trump administrations until congressional support, bipartisan congressional support really kind of undermined that as well as a popular driven by a popular resistance and objections that were surprisingly vocal for a foreign policy issue in the United States domestic audience.

Stephen Cook: Yeah, sure.

Scott R. Anderson: And the Khashoggi killing again, is, is, is shocking. I mean really, really drove really actors across the world to move against the Saudi regime and set some limits on types of engagement. And while you're right, some of those were walked by back by President Biden out of necessity for energy policy the relationship still is not the same of what as what it was, and in particularly in Congress.

Yeah, you know, you have people much more willing to be vocally critical of, of Saudi Arabia and U.S. engagement with Saudi Arabia, again, on both sides of the aisle and backed up by constituent preferences and, and viewpoints.

So I guess the question is, is it so easy to divorce value questions from strategic questions when you take into account the domestic calculus? The need for these policies to be sustainable in the medium to long term if what you're aiming for is stability.

Stephen Cook: It's a great, it's a really good question, and, you know, to give credit where credit is due up until the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi there were actually very, very few voices in Congress who raised any concern about the situation in Yemen. I, I mean, I think in the Senate it was Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee. I mean, two people who couldn't be as far apart in worldview as possible, converged on the terrible situation in Yemen.

The Saudis, for those of your listeners who aren't kind of read into this, the Saudis walked into the Yemeni Civil War on behalf of the internationally recognized government and proceeded to make a dire humanitarian situation even worse by a bombing campaign against the Houthis which is this group that hails from Northern Yemen that had essentially taken over the, the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

And what the Saudis were saying were, these are fanatics, these are, you know, the, the, the Houthis are fanatics, a cat’s paw of the, of the Iranian regime, which they weren't at the time. Now they actually are. And they made this situation terrible and Sanders and Lee were raising the alarms about what was happening in Yemen, and no one was much interested.

And then of course, Jamal Khashoggi, who was a, you know, periodic columnist for the Washington Post, had once been, you know, deeply involved in the Saudi power structure, but had become a, a, a, actually, a relatively mild critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was, was murdered in this horrifying, horrifying attack on him at the Saudi Consulate in in Istanbul.

And that that has colored the U.S. Saudi relationship undoubtedly the case since then. And let's go back even further, there remain important questions that Americans have about the Saudi role in the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 still remains, I think, visceral. If you just kind of ask people what is it that you think when you, when you hear the word Saudi Arabia, you'll get, you know, 9/11, and then you'll get oil and then maybe you'll get Jamal Khashoggi.

I'm talking about like my high school friends who aren't, you know, involved in this kind of, this kind of work. But I think, and, and, and, and President Biden also to his credit, wanted to hold the Saudi's feet to the fire on their human rights record and what they were doing in, in Yemen. But of course, very quickly strategic interests impinged on this principled approach to foreign policy.

And it wasn't just Saudi Arabia. I mean he, he said he wasn't giving a blank check to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the authoritarian leader of Egypt. And in May, 2021, just a few months after he came to office, had to deal with el-Sisi because there was a conflict between Israel and Hamas and Gaza. And if you're gonna deal with Gaza, you have to deal with the Egyptians. And so I don't dismiss any of these human rights isues whatsoever. But what I say is, is what is the larger context here? What is it that we're trying to do?

And when it comes to Saudi Arabia, now what we're trying to do is outmaneuver the Chinese in the Gulf, and that's why we're engaged in this negotiation with them over a security pact. And initially prior to October 7th and prior to the terrible war that has unfolded between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the idea was because Saudi Arabia was so unpopular on Capitol Hill, there had to be a piece of this security pact in which Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel, something the Saudis already want to do.

But this normalization would be part of the security pact as the sugar to get members of Congress to swallow the security pact with the Saudis. Things have changed since the war, and I think that the security pact is a good idea if you're thinking in terms of these larger strategic interests about China being a rising power and impinging on upon American interests in the region and elsewhere.

So that is something that takes, should take priority because we're unlikely to get anywhere on this question of human rights. And the more we bang the drums on human rights, the more the sa, it encourages the Saudis to actually hedge with the Chinese, which is precisely what we don't want to happen. So in addition, on this Israel piece, it no longer makes sense.

On questions of human rights and Israel's conduct in Gaza, Israel is no longer as popular as it once was. So if the administration has a good case to make on a security pact with Saudi Arabia on this broader strategic context on the competition with China, on the competition with with Russia, on ensuring that our core interests like the free flow of energy resources remains secure. It should make the case to Congress directly on that where human rights questions are going to come up. There's really no way of getting around it based on who we are.

But I think policymakers need to understand that there are going to be consequences of hammering away on this issue. In a very public way, which will, as I said, compel, encourage the Saudis to explore their relations with others as well as the Emiratis and the Egyptians, as even the Israelis as they've already done and need to weigh whether that is good for the United States over the long run in this broader strategic environment or not?

It's a tough, tough thing. Believe me, I struggled over this. Like I said, I'm a, I'm, I'm a nice guy. I believe in, I believe in human rights. I'm just trying to give people a sense of how the world is rather than the way we would really like it to be.

Scott R. Anderson: So you spend a good part of the book criticizing I think two sort of recent, the two recent eras and kind of dominant, popular thinking about Middle East policy. The, the big part of the criticism is on the kind of transformational moment, particularly the post 9/11 Iraq war transitional moment which you take target at, but don't spend too much getting into specifically because frankly, I think its historical moment has passed and there's not that much grasp for it. Few people are defending the virtues of the Iraq war at, at this point, Brett Stephens.

Stephen Cook: I can name them one hand, but yeah.

Scott R. Anderson: Yes, a few. A few are still out there doing it. Not many.

Stephen Cook: John Bolton. You're right.

Scott R. Anderson: Yeah. The other target is the, I, I think, kind of consensus view of the moment, at least in a sort of, not the core kind of foreign policy blob to use a somewhat derogatory term that gets thrown around, but certainly a vocal, increasingly prominent, increasingly looked to by the media and to some extent, popular grasp that has, that has roots in both parties, brings we left and white rings in both parties. And that's the kind of restraint crowd.

You call out the Quincy Institute specifically as kind of being the harborer of this movement. Although of course there are other groups, Defense Priorities. Carnegie's got a big group of folks working on this. And there are lots of fellow travelers that have been in much more conventional circles. You know, frankly, a lot of your ideas even meld in and pull a lot from their sort of thinking, but you do kind of call them out as as going too far in the other direction.

Stephen Cook: Right.

Scott R. Anderson: Making the pendulum swing in a lot of ways, that's what your project is responding to, I think is this kind of dominant trend. As you teed up for us, tell us about what you think they get right and what you think they get wrong. Most specifically when it comes to this idea about, and we recalibrate in regards to the Middle East.

Stephen Cook: I, I'm glad you picked up on the fact that the restraint crowd to me is, is very, very interesting. It's not just, you know, there's lots of people just derogatory about the restraint crowd and, you know, I've read a lot of this work and I'm like, you know, that makes sense. And that's, that's an interesting point.

And, you know, perhaps the quote unquote blob, and I hate the term 'cause I'm a card carrying member of it, and I think it's derogatory, but should think about interrogate to use a, a terrible word that they use in, in traditional academia a lot our assumptions about America's role in the world, the use of force, what are we trying to do? And I think what the, I think what the restraint crowd hasn't necessarily articulated, but what I take from them is, hey folks, let's understand what's actually important to the United States and the world and devote our resources to it. And I think that that's really important.

What I, where I think that they go too far and where I think the end of ambition try to, it, it's not, it's not necessarily a specific corrective to the restraint crowd, but it is a response to 'em and say, hey, let's realign our resources, but let's not, let's not withdraw, let's not retrench. These things don't work. There's reason to be in the Middle East, but let's resource our presence in the Middle East to what is actually important to us and what our goals are. And I, I, it comes from this.

I used, I often quit that, you know, Washington D.C. is probably the smartest workforce in the world. Yeah. I mean, you can't, you can't go out in front of the council on foreign relations and swing a dead cat and not hit someone who has a PhD. Right? But if you ask 10 people on the street in Washington, D.C. what does strategy or what does strategic mean? They have no idea. And they would say some synonym for what's important.

And what I'm asking for is not necessarily a grand strategy for Middle East, it's just to understand what's important to us, how to resource the government to achieve those interests, understand how our partners will respond, how our adversaries respond, understand whether these things are actually achievable. And one part of the book, I say, look ensuring that the free flow of energy resources outta the region requires military force. That's much, much more expensive than promoting democracy in the region.

But one has a realistic chance of being successful and the other one doesn't, and the other one, the one that doesn't, is a lot less expensive. So tell me about the costs here. And so I think that the restraint crowd is right on a variety of things. I think they're wrong about the Middle East. They just wanna wash their hands in the Middle East. Like there's no real important interest in the Middle East.

It's all driven by domestic politics.  It's, you know, the pro-Israel groups and, and, and so on and so forth. And I don't think that that's the case. And I think that withdrawal is too radical a solution for the United States and the region, given the range of traditional interests that we've had and things that are important to us going forward. Yeah. But I like the restrained people. I think there's, they're very nice people. Many of them. Very nice people. Very nice people.

Scott R. Anderson: I mean, that kind of brings us to the crux of the argument. What do you think are the defining interests for the United States in the Middle East at this particular moment? You know, energy is still prominent.

Energy is still important. Energy markets are changing. Energy consumption, patterns are changing, right? Frankly, not maybe that different now than what they were 30 years ago, but 30 years from now could be really dramatically different. Global commerce still a big concern separate from energy markets.

But yeah. What, what are the driving interests and where does that lead you in terms of what a, what a U.S. posture should look like in broad strokes?

Stephen Cook: So there's, there's six things that I, that I lay out and let's talk about energy since you, since you brought it up. You know, and I, and I say this as an EV driver and as someone who composts and all kinds of good things like that, but it strikes me that even if the, you know, national intelligence estimate of October, 2021 is right, that an energy transition will begin really in earnest after 2030.

It will be a long time, if ever, that we can actually decarbonize our economies. Not that we shouldn't try, not that we shouldn't, you know, have a new mix of, of energy and that will continue to make the global energy market for, for hydrocarbons important. And that means the Middle East is going to be important to us.

And I, I commend to everybody the work of my, my colleague Megan O'Sullivan and her colleague Jason Borda, who wrote a, a, I think a, an important piece in foreign affairs a couple years ago about the energy transition and talking about the kind of jagged nature of this transition.

And that this jagged transition, which we see post COVID or invasion Russian invasion of Ukraine, makes countries that are producers of hydrocarbons. Much, much more important at certain moments and then will be less important. And then there'll be moments when they're more important because this transition to, you know, solar and nuclear and whatever will be take a long time and will be very, very uneven.

So what I say is, is that this continues to be an interest and we need to continue to do some of the things that we have been doing, but we don't need 150,000 troops in the in the Gulf to do that. We don't even need 45,000 troops in the Gulf, which is around where we are now to ensure the free flow of energy resources. We can do this in a much more modest way.

The other five are legacy interests. Our interest in Israel, I think is a legacy interest. Helping to ensure Israeli security or helping to prevent threats to Israeli security will remain important for some time. But clearly the politics of the U.S. Israel relationship are changing, particularly within the Democratic party, which means 10, 15, 20 years from now the bipartisan consensus that we've had on Israel for the last 50 years, which is clearly breaking down now, will no longer be the case.

And so what I say is, is that at this moment when Israel remains largely popular and still enjoy support on Capitol Hill, we should end the 10 year memorandums of understanding that obligate the United States to provide anywhere between 3.5 and 5 billion dollars in aid to Israel and replace those with security pacts and treaties and so on and so forth, which will take the temperature down on the relationship and normalize the relationship.

Israel's a country with a GDP per capita of $52,000 a year. Now my economist friends will say, well, that's not the best measure, and so and so, but it's something that people can grasp that's more than some of our traditional allies in na, in NATO. There's nothing that really obligates us to do this in perpetuity, and I think it would be better for both countries to normalize our relations.

And then some of the others, you know, counter-terrorism. Very familiar to your listeners and readers. Although my plea in the book is can we just read our own counter-terrorism strategy and do it that way rather than some of the things that we have done in the past and even still do it?

Non-proliferation is something that'll be familiar, but what I say in non-proliferation is, look, we have to recognize that the Iranians are nuclear capable and that that provides tremendous incentive for its neighbors to proliferate as well. And while we should do many things to prevent the Saudis, for example, from proliferating at that moment when they do, we should actually help secure their nuclear program because we don't want a destabilizing nuclear arms race in the Gulf.

And if we help them stabilize it, make it redundant, create means of communications with their counterparts in Iran. We'll be in much better shape the, the idea that we should run around with our hair on fire, that the Saudis might proliferate. I mean, I understand why people do that, but we also have to look at this in a coldly, calculating way.

We tried for 40 years to prevent the Pakistanis from proliferating, and they still did. And then, oh, President Obama went in and said, okay, well now we need to stabilize their program. We should do that, and we should be prepared to do that rather than have a fight about it. And then I lay out a couple of new things, climate.

I don't think we're gonna solve the climate crisis. I think we should do things to mitigate the climate crisis. But in the Middle East, what I think we should do is try to help people adapt to high heat and water scarcity, because what do people do naturally when they confront high heat and water scarcity?

They migrate and migration destabilizes politics in countries where people are trying to get in. Just look at our, our situation, our own southern border, and how that has had an impact on our politics. And we have a natural experiment to this in 2015 when a million Syrians showed up in Germany and said, we're seeking refuge from the horrors of the Civil War there, and Angela Merkel, then Chancellor did the right thing and let these people in.

But it also contributed to a perversion of German politics and now that you have like a real Nazi party in Germany with like 20% support. And so what we want to do is we want to help provide technical assistance to countries, even countries across conflict lines in the Middle East that are vulnerable to water scarcity and high heat.

Manage those problems to prevent people from migrating because it does strange and weird things to places where we have core global interests, like in the stability, prosperity, and unity of Europe in, in addition to prosperity in in the Middle East. And then of course there's great power competition, which we talked about a bit here, which is look, in theory, the Chinese have a similar set of concerns as the United States in the Middle East, free flow of energy, resources, freedom of navigation, but they're not willing to play ball.

They're not willing to uphold their responsibilities in these regard, in this regard by, you know, cutting separate deals with the Houthis and the Red Sea because they wanna bog the United States down in the Middle East so that we can't devote resources to East Asia. That's something that I think the restrainers have been very clear about and very perceptive about.

And so given that the Chinese don't really wanna play ball, there are things that the United States can do. To try to outmaneuver China in the region. There are things that we shouldn't try to match them with, and there are mistakes that we've made in the past, which I lay out in the book, but that there is a great power competition in the Middle East as well as globally, and that we should prepare for it and approach our partners in the region in ways that are different from when we were trying to transform, when we were trying to transform the region.

Scott R. Anderson: You know, I think you typify, if I recall correctly. Your policy is a small c conservative policy seeking to reinforce the stability of the status quo, and particularly those elements of the status quo that serve us.

Stephen Cook: I call it prudential conservatism.

Scott R. Anderson: Prudential conservative. That's the phrase I was trying to remember. Right, right. That's exactly right.

Stephen Cook: Which is, it's funny, the origins of that were, when Richard Haass, a mentor and former president of the Council, read the manuscript. He's like, all right, you gotta call it something. I was like, that's good advice. It's like, no, no, no, you really have to call it something.

So I sat around in my office writing down phrases and like going to like Marion Webster online and looking at synonyms for words and, and prudential conservatism. I actually sounds weird, but I actually, I like it. I think it captures what I'm, what I'm getting at here

Scott R. Anderson: And, and there's an appeal to it, but there is a underlying assumption to it, which is one that I think people have really wrestled with the veracity of over the last 20 years and are wrestling with again now in the context of Gaza, which is the inherent stability of the status quo.

You know, I think a motivator after the Arab Spring kicked off in the Obama administration was not necessarily that this is a moment where we can proactively seek to change things in our own image. There was some sure, a threat of that, but part of it also was that, well, maybe what we have is actually not that stable to begin with, and preserving interests in an unstable environment is challenging.

Then we saw the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria related to that, but also kind of a separate phenomenon where I lived through a lot of other people, lived through that was incredibly chaotic and presented all sorts of challenges and very much underscored the extent which the status quo was not stable is still not stable to this day.

Yeah. And now Gaza's resurrecting these same questions. I mean, Gaza is in many ways and the, and the horrors of October 7th are a product of. A status quo that right the Netanyahu government had kind of propagated and supported in terms of Hamas dominating Gaza the United States had signed on board with, by allowing the two state process to kind of atrophy and hit a point where it really did not mean much to many people.

We all thought we were, I mean, the assumption of a lot of actors was that we were in a status quo that for the time being is gonna hold and serves our interest well enough. And that's proven to be, I think, pretty disastrously wrong. Yeah. In the context of Gaza, how do you deal with that? I mean, is there a space for some prudential transformative to say where we can look to see where points of instability might exist and seek to address them? Or does that venture too far in a direction where those sorts of scenarios are too hard to predict that we can't do that and we're just gonna have to live in an inherently unstable system?

Stephen Cook: You wouldn't be surprised if I were to say yes and no to that. I, I assume you will, as you know, the perfect answer from a, from someone who's an actual trained social scientist.

Yes and no. You know, I, I'm sympathetic to this, this point, my, my second book, which is called “The Struggle for Egypt.” The, the, the radical intellectual project of that book was to say, hey, folks. You all think that this country is so stable and it's actually not. Egyptians have been rebelling against the people who've ruled over them for the better part of the last 150 years.

Get with the program, you're completely reread, misreading the, the, the kind of dominant, most interesting political narrative in the, in, in, in this country's history. So I'm, I'm, I'm sympathetic that you know this region. Has not been as stable as it's been made out to be yet there's been this kind of stability within this instability, right?

So we have this extraordinary moment. Arab leaders are o, are overthrown and so the expectation is that there will be this kind of progressive political change and, and more democratic and just, and open societies and. We have in Egypt, basically a, a narrower dictatorship than you had under Mubarak, to the point where you have people in Egypt saying, geez, things were better under Mubarak.

In Tunisia, the, the country that was, you know, the one quote, unquote one Arab Spring success story, which I was skeptical of anyway, is back to being as repressive as it was under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown in January, 2011. So. Yes, yes and no. It's unstable, but there's something important to understand that what I think, and this is one of the assumptions that I think people get wrong in Washington, is that when there's a dramatic event, this will propel some sort of change in a kind of positive direction when what we've seen is sort of reversions to status, quos some version of status quos.

And I'm, I'm kind of the, I, I hate to be this way after this terrible war in the gods of strip think. The more likely outcome in Gaza is some reversion to some terrible status quo. At least the Israelis are setting up for that, right? They'll ring Gaza with, you know, air defense systems. They're building roads so that they can get in and out, like what they do in in the West Bank.

I think it's more likely we're gonna see that than we are gonna see a two state solution. But there is something, and I have communicated this to my friends who have much more influence over policy than I do, which is there is something that we can do and it is within this kind of. Idea of Prudential conservatism about using our resources for the right things that will help advance our interests, not because we think it's gonna transform the world, but for example, when it comes to Gaza, I think people have underplayed the possibility that the Israelis resettle the gossip strip.

And I think that that's a, a greater possibility than people make it out to be. It's not just. The right wing in Israel's fantasy, and they're talking about it and the idea if is against it and so on and so forth. These caravans have a way of showing up in places even when there's no electricity and water, and suddenly they become some Israeli settlement, you know, net sere 2.0 and after October 7th, I don't think those settlers are gonna wanna live amongst Palestinians.

And I think that this requires their, their project requires actual ethnic cleansing. And what I think within the kind of idea of what can we do, rather than just sit back and say the world is terrible and be cynical about it, and so on and so forth, we need to devote our resources not to the idea of reviving the Palestinian Authority, which is deeply compromised in the eyes of most Palestinians and deeply corrupt, but to prevent the Israelis from resettling the Gaza Strip.

Because everything that we want to do in the region, even within my ideas about prudential conservatism would be blown up by that. That would be a massive strategic setback for the United, the end of the Abraham Accords, the end of kind of integration in the region.

The United States, as you know, Israel's primary patron in the world. It would make our, our situation much, much more difficult, even if it's true that the Saudis and the Emiratis and Egyptian, no one really cares about the Palestinians, but think about the impact on publics in, in the region. So that is something that we can do also.

You know, like I say in the book, I don't want presidents of the United States to stop talking about our values, but I do want them to understand that there are consequences to our talking about our values and that we may not get where we want as a result. But this is not something like, let's just drop this. I mean, there is a dark, certainly dark aspect of it.

I have myself traveled this road from where I thought, you know, the United States could do good things in the Middle East in terms of democracy, promotion, and had written about it and written about it. And then I think the evidence, you know, 10, 12 years later would suggest that we can't, and that our efforts to promote Palestinian statehood are, I mean, what's the definition of crazy here? Right? Keep doing the same thing over and over again. It's the right thing, but I'm not sure we're going to, we're gonna get there.

So more limited goals, like preventing the Israelis from resettling, the Gaza Strip would be something that I think is something good we can do.

Scott R. Anderson: So Stephen, we we're almost at time, but, but while we're recording this, we are operating against the backdrop of the first of two national conventions for the major political parties.

We're we're hearing debates about the potential future presidents, the agendas they're gonna be addressing, where we're hearing representatives of the people of all stripes, legislators, governors, candidates, and representatives at the conventions themselves talk about various aspects of policy. I don't think we're gonna hear the Middle East feature very prominently in those discussions.

Maybe a little bit, probably not very much really for either party. But it's there in the background. It's, it is this issue that is inescapable, especially in light of the ongoing Gaza conflict which is maybe the, probably the most likely valence we're gonna hear on this. You know, you wrote this book, 150 page book, I think, because you wanted to appeal to a broader audience to engage in these broader conversations that do hit not just the most elite, elite and the highest of the ivory towers, but also the day-to-day policy makers, and to some extent.

The day-to-day voters and the day to day citizens trying to wrestle with how the United States should be dealing with these really hard policy questions. What is the big takeaway you want them to have from this book, for those who may not be willing to shell out, you know, 1995 for, for a copy? What is the thesis statement you want them to walk away with to the extent you can get them to get that, take away that much?

Stephen Cook: Yeah, no thanks. I, I appreciate that and, and really. The idea is, and you're right, it's not, it's not just for the elite of the elite, it's it, the book is very much written as you now know. The, the way I talk and the the argument to everybody delegates at the RNC, delegates at the DNC, everybody in between is that the Middle East is important to us.

And it's been so painful over the course of the last two and a half decades because we lost a sense of what was important to us and thus lost a sense of proportion. And that if we understand what's important to us and and, and devote the resources to defending or sacrificing and investing in those, we actually could be constructive, more constructive than when we go off in the world and say, hey, we need to make the world look more like us because that'll be, that'll be safe for us.

I think that's the kind of counterintuitive point that I end on, and I, I genuinely believe it, but to turn our backs on this region is, is actually to be asking for trouble that it will in our lifetimes and our children, our grandchildren's lifetimes remain very, very important. And that's why, that's why we need to understand what is important to us there and not have these kind of Washington, D.C. based fever dreams about transformation inform our policy. We need to be much, much more clear-eyed about it and then we'll be successful.

Scott R. Anderson: Well, there's a lot more we can talk about in this universe. We are unfortunately out of time. But Stephen Cook, your new book, the End of Ambition, America's Past, present, and Future in The Middle East is Out as people are listening to this. Thank you so much for joining us here today on the Lawfare Podcast.

Stephen Cook: I appreciate your time. It's been a great discussion. Thanks.

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