Kenneth M. Pollack is an an expert on Iraq and the Persian Gulf and the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a senior fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy Studies Program.
Pollack was an Iran-Iraq military analyst with the CIA from 1988-1995. He was director for Persian Gulf Affairs on the NSC from 1999-2001, and director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the NSC from 1995-1996. Additionally, he has been senior research professor at the National Defense University and director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He is the author of The Threatening Storm: The Case For Invading Iraq, which was published by Random House, and Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (University of Nebraska Press).

In The Aftermath Of The War

An interview with Kenneth Pollack

by Cemal Ucar

Now that the war in Iraq is over, which will be the next stop of the campaign?

It is clear that there are people in the Bush administration who would like to take a very strong hand with Syria, and perhaps even invade Syria. I think that they base this on Syria's support for Hizbullah and other Palestinian terrorist groups and also the fact that Syria is a brutal dictatorship like Iraq. I might add that whether or not the United States will invade Syria is a very open question. I actually think that there are good reasons to believe that the U.S. will not do so. I think that the case for mounting an armed forces operation against Syria is much weaker than it was for Iraq, and I think that right now because of the extent of the involvement in Iraq, it is going to be very difficult for the U.S. to mount something significant against Syria.

Does secretary Powell's visit to Damascus suggest there is some kind of reconciliation under way?

It is entirely possible but it is also important to remember that secretary Powell's say in what this government does is sometimes more minor than I think his position as secretary of state would suggest. Another word, secretary Powell is not the only decision maker in the United States and we should not assume that if Colin Powell is able to work something out with the Syrians that this will necessarily mean that everyone in this administration will buy into it.
The American government is very deeply divided. And they are deeply divided on almost every issue you can possibly imagine. And, right now the division over Syria is one where it does seem there are some in the Bush administration who would like to mount an attack on Syria and others who absolutely don't.

Who then are the falcons in this administration who would like to proceed towards Syria, it seems Secretary Rumsfeld is one of them…

Yes, although I do not know what secretary Rumsfeld thinks, there are certainly some in the office of the Secretary of Defence who do think this way.

We have seen before the war that Turkey did not take the necessary measures to allow the American forces to build a second front. After the war the Turks sounded differently. What is the administration's stance towards Turkey now, or are they divided on this issue, too?

I think the divisions are much less on Turkey, much more in harmony. I think there is a strong recognition in this administration that Turkey is a tremendously important ally as the United States needs to do everything it possibly can to bolster the relationship but simultaneously recognising that Turkish interests in Iraq mean not necessarily the identical to American interest in Iraq and obviously the United States wants to make sure that Turkey's minimum security requirements are met in Iraq but we don't necessarily want to simply turn over the administration of post-war Iraq or the shape of a future Iraqi government to Turkish designs.

What does it mean withdrawing American forces from Incirlik air-base right now?

This is simply a recognition of the fact that Iraq is no longer a military problem and therefore there is no longer a need for operation Northern Watch.

Can we say that for Turkey the situation has changed, that this is not the same situation as after World War II or during the sixties when the Americans had that missile crisis with the Soviet Union.

Yes. The military threat to Turkey has been vastly reduced over the last fifty years. Obviously Turkey still has security issues out there the instability in the Caucasus, Turkey' centuries long feud with Greece, obviously there are still problems in Iran and Syria and elsewhere but there no longer is the kind of major military threat to Turkey that was there in the cold war.

Does Turkey remain a strategic point for the U.S. government for the future as a bridge between Europe and Asia?

No question. Turkey has been thought of this way for at least the last ten or fifteen years arguably for longer. Remember that Turkey was originally one of the members of the Cento-Pact as well. The U.S. has always thought of Turkey as not just being a member of Europe but also a member of Middle East, an important member of the Middle East.

Let us talk about Iran. Do you see any challenges there for U.S. foreign policy in the immediate future, i.e. difficult issues concerning the U.S. or the neighbouring countries?

Iran is going to be important on a number of issues out there. There is the issue of democratisation in the Middle East for example. And Iran is through its own process of democratisation at the moment not doing very well Iran has backslid pretty badly in terms of progress toward democracy. There is the issue of weapons of mass destruction and the Iranians seem determined to acquire nuclear weapons which creates a problem throughout the region. They are spawning problems of proliferation elsewhere provoking the United States and probably frightening the Israelis.
There is the issue or terrorism which the United States has put on the global agenda as being its highest priority. Iran is one of the worst supporters of terrorism throughout the region. And beyond that there is the issue of Iraq and the reconstruction of Iraq and clearly the Iranians are determined to have their say in a future Iraqi government, and that, too, is going to bring them into clashes at least with the United States and possibly with the Iraqis, with the Turks, possibly with the Saudis, possibly with other countries.
So for all these different reasons Iran is going to be a source of tensions in all these different ways.

Now one of the big problems in the Middle East concerning Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, the Kurdish issue. The U.S. seems to be in support of the Kurds in north Iraq but. Do you see any chances that the U.S. might try to tackle the Kurdish question as a whole?

No, I honestly do not. Right now Washington's concern is principally for Iraq as a country, what the United States wants to do is to ensure that Iraq is a stable and prosperous democracy and their greatest concern is that the Kurds of Iraq remain integrated into that unified country that their rights are protected in the country and that they have a political voice equal to their demographic weight.

Some people say the Kurdish issue as a whole would be the next big issue on the agenda in the Middle East.

I would disagree and I don't think that the U.S administration considers the Kurdish issue the next biggest one on their agenda.

Do you think this will be a topic to be raised in the forthcoming talks of the U.S. administration with Syria or Iran?

I think that the United States has not done enough for the plight of the Kurds for decades, and I would like to see the United States raising the plight of the Kurds more regularly with all of these different governments. In the case of Iraq this is one of the reasons why it is critical. The U.S. will help Iraq to build a stable society where the Kurds will no longer be oppressed, where they can realise their own aspirations, where they can speak Kurdish whenever they wish, and realise all the political freedoms to which they are entitled.

At the moment the Turkish government is again trying to exercise influence in Northern Iraq by playing the Turkmen card and inciting differences between the ethnic groups. Do you think that this could harm the process?

There is no question that the willingness of any of Iraq's neighbours because of their own fears could be one of the greatest problems in Iraq. It is not just the Turks intervening in the north it is also the potential for the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Saudis intervening on behalf of the Sunnis, the potential of Iran intervening on behalf of the Shiites.
Any of this would simply complicate the situation and make it that much harder to realise the kind of true democracy that would give all citizens of Iraq the potential to live their lives the way that they would like to live them.

The Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, recently visited Damascus. Afterwards he told the press that Turkey, Iran, and Syria would continue their dialogue. This has been interpreted as a coalition against alleged Kurdish aspirations of autonomy or independence and the reconstruction of Iraq as it is planned right now.

From the perspective of the United States government my sense is that the Bush administration does recognise that for the Turks, and apart from that for the Syrians and Iranians as well, Kurdish independence in Northern Iraq is a red line. And I think that the United States is going to make it very clear that they are not going to allow that to happen in the foreseeable future because it would be a red line for the Turks and because it would lead to the potential disintegration of the Iraqi state.
They are trying to make it very clear that while respecting Turkey's red lines regarding the Kurds they are not simply going to turn over Northern Iraq to Turkey or allow Turkey to dictate exactly the status and the nature of the Kurdish lands inside of Iraq, that the Kurds are going to be protected, that they will have all the freedoms of the other Iraqis, and that as long as they do not declare statehood everything else ought to be negotiable.

How do you feel about the forthcoming Iraqi interim government? Will it be able to solve the internal problems of Iraq? What kind of system is going to be established in Iraq, what will we see there?

I do not know what kind we will see but the only kind that will work would be a true democracy, one with geographic representation, one with some kind of a bill of rights like our own which guarantees certain protections to all of its citizens, one with all kinds of checks and balances to make sure that essential government regardless of who it is controlled by, Sunnis, Kurds or Shiite Arabs, does not have the ability to oppress any of the other groups inside the country.

This does look very much like the American plans after World War II, the plans that were made for the reconstruction and rebuilding of Germany and other countries, including something like a Marshaal plan. But in my opinion Iraq seems to be a different case. There is an other mentality here, this is an Islamic country, a Middle-Eastern country. Do you think such plans will work here, what I mean to say is, this is, after all, a Western concept that is about to be applied to this country?

I think that if you had a system or government that was brought in by the West, and the United Nations is much better suited than the United states to do it and if you allowed it to grow under UN auspices, if you allowed that system to take hold in Iraq over a period of time I think it is entirely possible. This is certainly what has happened in Germany and Japan. Particularly Japan was certainly not a Western country. What we have seen over the last fifty years is that a democratic system can grow in any kind of soil. Turkey is a majority Muslim country and yet it has a functioning democracy. Bangladesh is a Country with a functioning democracy and there are many other places where people said democracy could not work But it has worked. I has never been perfect, it's not guaranteed, there are also places where it has failed but there is no reason a priori going in to believe that democracy can't find a way to take root in Iraq.

There has been a lot of criticism before and also after the war in particular by a number of European nations that the United States has acted without the legitimation of the United Nations Security Council and thus has sort of undermined the entire UN system.

First, I think it is true that the U.S. has clearly gravely weakened by its pre-war diplomacy the UN security council. I would not say that the fault was entirely with the United States. Although the Bush diplomacy was very regrettable and awful I think that the German, French, and Russian positions did more to undermine the authority of the security council, actually, because the Bush administration at least had the basis of seventeen UN resolutions that demonstrated that what it was doing was legal. There was a recognition among many countries that what the U.S. was doing was entirely legal and reasonable under those statutes.
It was the Germans, French, and Russians who were using the security council to apply their own political interests. So it was as much their fault as ours.
Second, post-war Iraq is an opportunity for the security council to demonstrate its relevance. And again I am deeply dismayed as much by the French, and German, and Russian stance as I am by the American. I think that the French and Russians standing up and saying we will veto any resolution that legitimises the American operation is simply using the security council as a forum for their own narrow political agendas which further undermines the security council.
My hope would be that all of these nations would satisfy these petty differences and recognise that what is best for Iraq and the Iraqi people, for the United States, and for the entire World and the United Nations is for them to come together and recognise that the reconstruction of Iraq has to be an international project.

Thank you very much.