Nayan Chanda: I’m Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal Online. We are very pleased to have with us in our studio R. Nicholas Burns, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and currently Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Welcome.
R. Nicholas Burns: Thanks very much, Nayan.
Chanda: So, I’m so delighted that you are here with us today, having covered the whole world for the State Department until a year ago, you are perhaps one of the still leading experts on the major issues roiling us. So, why don’t you give us just in a nutshell, as to what do you think the major challenges faced by President Obama today? Major international challenges.
Burns: Well Nayan, thank you very much for the invitation to be here at Yale and to be part of the YaleGlobal Online series. I would say that President Obama, as the new American President, faces an extraordinary number of challenges. And the degree of difficulty that he will have in meeting these challenges is truly forbidding. I support him and wish him well. But if you think about what is on his diplomatic plate right now, obviously the most prominent issue is the global economic crisis. He is spending, it seems, most of his time on that, which he should. He’s just come through a meeting with the G-20 leaders in
London which, made some progress in empowering the IMF to deal with aspects of this crisis, but I think we’re still waiting to see the full dimensions of a coherent aggressive international response to the crisis.
I do feel that President Obama has made the right steps here in the United States with his stimulus package and with the bailout packages for both our financial institutions and now for our automobile companies, but clearly there’s much more that needs to be done, both in
America and overseas. And that has to be his first priority as a global leader.
But if you look beyond the global crisis, to see the daunting foreign policy agenda that he inherited from President George W. Bush, I don’t think we’ve seen such a difficult foreign policy agenda in along time.
Chanda: What are the three most important challenges that he faces?
Burns: Apart from the financial crisis?
Chanda: Right.
Burns: Well, I say that first of all, he needs to continue to cope with the two wars that we’re fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan. He’s laid out a very good plan for a timetable to withdraw American troops from
Iraq. It’s going to be difficult, obviously to do that in a way that tries to maintain stability in
Iraq, but of course that’s the intention. I think he has a greater challenge in
Afghanistan, where the war is heating up. Where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been more aggressive and perhaps even more effective, unfortunately, over the last several months and years. And he’s going to add American troops but also try to effect a greater, a more coherent counter insurgency strategy. I would think those two wars would be a first priority.
Second would be global climate change. The United States did not participate in the
Kyoto regime. We are now pledged to participate. President Obama says we will, in the Copenhagen Process. That’s a very good step to put American back into the middle of the international debate, as a participant. As one of the leading carbon emitters, and historically as the largest carbon emitter and it’s a welcomed step. And I hope it does restore some of the credibility that we lost as a country because we were not participating in what most of the people around the world felt was a global priority.
And third, I’d say there’s a complex of issues out there that are really global if you will, transnational in nature. And they cannot be met by the
United States alone. They cannot be met by a country that’s either isolationist or unilateralist. They have to be met by an
America engaging with the other leading countries in the world. Everything from international narcotics cartels and crime cartels. We’re seeing some of that on the Mexican-US border now, to the fight against pandemics, to the fight against terrorism to the fight against nuclear proliferation, the trafficking of women and children.
Chanda: And of course, piracy.
Burns: And of course piracy. We’ve seen that very dramatically off the Horn of Africa in recent weeks. This complex of transnational issues is going to require an unprecedented level of international cooperation. And it means that all of us have to be multilateral and think multilateral. And I think President Obama is heading in that direction.
Chanda: So, this plethora of challenges that you just outlined, they are so disparate in nature, and how is the State Department or
US government organized to deal with this very disparate nature of challenges?
Burns: Well, some of these challenges, some of them like piracy or terrorism, in part can be dealt with through a strong military. In the Horn of Africa, or Indian Ocean, we’ve seen a high degree of cooperation among the NATO countries and countries like China, beyond NATO, all working together to try to police the sea lanes, so that the world’s traffic, the world’s goods can be channeled through there very safely, without the threat of piracy. But some of them have to be confronted, and I think probably most of them that are transnational in character, by diplomacy. By a broad based diplomacy, either through a traditional cooperation among countries or through foreign assistance programs, and here I think that the United States needs to strengthen its diplomatic core, and needs to strengthen its capacity to be active diplomatically. I guess, relative to the rest of the world, we have a very large diplomatic core, but relative to our own military, it’s quite small. And I think any country has to balance its hard and soft power. And the instruments available to it to be effective and I think the challenge for the
United States at this stage, is to put more money and attention into diplomacy as a first line of offense rather than a last resort.
Chanda; I think you have mentioned in an earlier occasion that the United States diplomats, number of diplomats, are actually smaller than musicians in the US military band, right?
Burns: It’s a lamentable fact that there are more musicians in the armed forces bands of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines than there are American diplomats. Someone even told me there are more lawyers in the Pentagon than American diplomats. If that’s the case, then clearly we’ve got to re-order our national priorities so that our diplomatic power is equal to our military power, or at least equal attention is given to it. Because I do think, while any country, and certainly any country like ours, needs a strong military, and I don’t want to see our military weakened. I do think that we have to understand that the majority of the challenges that the globe is facing and will face in the future do not always lend themselves to military action. They more often lend themselves to type of work that we’re trying to do, for instance, on HIV/AIDS prevention in southern Africa or in
Haiti in this hemisphere. Or the anti-poverty programs in Brazil, or in
India. And you need people who are trained in that aspect in international work, not just trained in war fighting.
Chanda: Let’s stay, for a minute on the piracy issue. The piracy seems to me is more a symptom of a serious problem than the cause of current problem in the Horn of Africa.
Somalia is a failed state. And people have no jobs; apparently fish has been depleted by foreign fishing vessels in Somalian waters. So even the fisherman have difficulty making a living. And in this situation, they are taking to piracy, not because of an ideological reason but for pure economical reasons. So, by simply sending gun boats there, are you going to solve the problem?
Burns: Well, I think you probably have to put together, that the global community will have to put together a combination of short term measures and longer term measures. And the short term, despite the fact that people may be poor, and of course people are suffering in a very weak, fragile, failed state as you say, such as
Somalia. But that is no justification to turning towards, to turning to piracy which is of course a barbaric practice from one thinks of it from another age, from the 18th Century more than the 21st Century. And it’s obviously illegal internationally; it puts people’s lives in jeopardy, as you’ve seen, um, very dramatically just over the last couple of days. And so, one has to speak out against piracy and convince the Somali’s practicing it that it’s wrong, and that they should cease and desist.
But of course in the long term, I think you’re right to suggest, that we also have to look at the conditions which have produced this lamentable state of affairs.
Somalia is one of the least governed or at least well governed countries on earth. It’s had a series of failed governments and therefore, it is the responsibility, in part, of the international community to try to help in whatever way we can, to see a more stable, more responsible, more law abiding government in Somalia that won’t be a refuge for terrorist groups as Somalia has been in the past, and continues to be and certainly won’t be a haven for pirates who prey upon commercial shipping. The world, you know we think of globalization maybe the personification of it is the jetliner. But much more of the world’s goods, food aid for poor people, and oil and gas are, and exports that countries depend upon, they depend on sea traffic. And so, safe commerce in the seas, free of piracy is an international good, and therefore the world needs to speak out against the pirates, but also, as you suggest do something in the longer term to make sure this problem can disappear.
Chanda: Talking about failed state,
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan became a abode of Al Qaeda because it had become a failed state. And now, President Obama is trying to win
Afghanistan by sending more troops. Is that going to do it?
Burns: Well, I think to be fair to President Obama, he sees a NATO alliance that is not succeeding in
Afghanistan. He said during the campaign and has said since becoming president that
Afghanistan is in effect Ground Zero in the American fight against Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was harbored by the Taliban, infamously so, before 9/11. We had to act rightfully to dislodge Al Qaeda and the Taliban from power in
Afghanistan. And so, I think he’s right to turn to it and say that we cannot fail there, we have to succeed at least in blunting the impact of the Taliban offensive on the Afghan government. And we need to put in place a comprehensive policy. And I think to be fair to him, he said yes we need to add troops, some for combat in the southern eastern parts of the country, some for training of the Afghan National Army, but we also need to add money, and assistance, and rule of law programs and help to the United Nations and NGO efforts to help the villagers of Afghanistan that a quite rural country, to survive this extraordinary difficult situation.
So, it’s a combination of military and economic measures which together might form an effective counter-insurgency strategy. That’s the bet that he’s making. And I think that he’s right to suggest this more holistic approach is the only possible road towards success and I support what he’s doing.
Chanda: The Taliban in Afghanistan, do you see them as different from Taliban in
Pakistan? Because President Obama has indicated that he is willing to talk to some moderate Taliban in
Afghanistan. But I do not see that’s the case in
Pakistan. Is there a difference, you think?
Burns: Well, I think it’s an enormously complicated problem and I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Taliban on both sides of the border. I would say this; it seems to me that it would not be logical to talk to the leadership of the Taliban at this point, people like Mulla Omar, because they are the heart of the problem and the source of the terrorism that is being inflicted mainly upon the Pashtun population on both sides of the border, the Pakistan-Afghan border and the Afghan military. It may be possible, we’ll have to see, for the Afghan’s themselves, the Afghan government, to launch some kind of a program that would encourage rank and file Taliban to give up their arms, to give up the arms struggle, to return to a civil society, and to pledge their allegiance to the Afghan state and the Afghan government. We’ve seen in many parts of the world, this take place, most prominently in our own hemisphere in Columbia were over 40 thousand, I believe, para-military forces from the left and right have put down their arms over the last 4 or 5 years, and have come back to civilian life, peacefully, largely, but no solely in Columbia. And so, if that’s possible in Afghanistan to work with the rank and file, then obviously one should look at it very carefully, the Afghan authorities should look at it carefully. But I wouldn’t suggest, and I wouldn’t support at this point, talking to the leadership of the Taliban.
Chanda: But, basically, nation building is still an important component of winning in
Afghanistan, right?
Burns: It is, and I’m afraid the phrase is out of vogue. But I think nation building is important. What it means is that for the most part, when we’re dealing with very highly complex problems in rural states with very poor infrastructure like Afghanistan, we cannot rely on the military alone, despite their best efforts, to resolve these intractable problems. We have to look to the type of measures, education and literacy programs, and food programs and infrastructure development to help average people, to help poor people get back on their feet and have some hope for the future.
If that’s what nation building is, then I’m for it. And I think we should speak more clearly here in the
United States. You know there are some people in our political system who think that nation building is somehow a product of failures from times past. I don’t necessarily agree. I think it’s the hard work that we need to be engaged in as an international community to help fight poverty and hopelessness, and to help fight the roots of terrorism. Because, as you suggest, over the long term we’ve gotta go to the source of these problems. And the source of them is to give people hope to live a better life.
Chanda: This giving people hope to live a better life requires of course spending of resources and skills, you need people to build roads, hospitals, schools, provide services. And it seems that doing that, of course, poses a problem in Afghanistan, because I understand that Pakistan military is now beginning to say that they will not cooperate with the United States if
India, with its 1.2 billion dollar program of building schools and hospitals and roads, do not stop doing so. How does one solve this problem?
Burns: I don’t know if that is Pakistani policy, but if it were to become Pakistani policy, it would be a major mistake. The fact is that, you know the problems of
Afghanistan are not going to be resolved, as you and I know, overnight. It’s going to take many many years to rebuild the infrastructure of the country, to re-open all the schools that need to be re-opened, to allow young girls to go to school, the Taliban doesn’t want that to happen. To allow people to begin to take back control of their lives, become productive as farmers or as small business people. People need hope to do that, and they need money to do that, they need foreign assistance to do that, and we should be engaged in that kind of enterprise. I don’t think we can afford to turn down assistance from great countries like
India. India has a major role to play in
Afghanistan through all the efforts that you suggested. And I think the Indian role in helping Afghan villagers and helping the Afghan government has been very positive. And so, I don’t think we’re in the position to say this country cannot participate in the rebuilding of Afghanistan because of differences between Pakistan and
India. I think that would be a grave mistake. And
India needs to be given its place to work alongside of the rest of us to help the Afghan people.
Chanda: Turning to Pakistan, what can the United States do to bring some modicum of stability and reduce the threat of terrorism that is growing in
Pakistan everyday? What can the
US do?
Burns: Well, certainly, it’s primarily going to be up to the Pakistani people and Pakistani leadership to regain control of their country and to regain some forward momentum in trying to stem the tide of terrorism, terrorist groups inside
Pakistan itself - indigenous groups - largely, and to return law and order to the country. No country outside Pakistan can do that for the
Pakistan people. But we can be good friends. And I think that Pakistan is in a time of great need, and of great crisis, and so it needs constant support from its friends like the
United States.
What President Obama’s administration has been talking about is a continuation of the military assistance to the Pakistani military to fight the terrorist groups, which of course, is vital, but also to increase economic aid, particularly in those parts of Pakistan that find the greatest levels of poverty and the greatest levels of terrorism. It seems to me that that’s a positive approach, of course, the test of it will be in the implementation of these programs but I think President Obama has been right to suggest that this more comprehensive approach in
Pakistan must take place. I think, obviously the Pakistani government is going to have to find a way to be more effective in fighting terrorism.
The fact that the Taliban has had full freedom of action in major parts of the border areas, inside Pakistan, the fact that Al Qaeda appears to have found a sanctuary inside
Pakistan, is really reprehensible. It cannot be in the long term interest of
Pakistan to see that situation continue. And so, I know that the Pakistani government has many, many problems before it, but this problem of security, of taking back control of their own country, and of preventing those terrorist groups from doing harm to Pakistanis as well as to Afghans across the border and to the foreign militaries there, there to protect Afghanistan, that’s a very tall high priority. And the Pakistani government simply has to find a better way towards success.
Chanda: To move to the neighbor
India, you signed, and you actually negotiated, and you were the lead negotiator, in signing this Indo-US civil nuclear agreement. In the light of what has happened since the agreement was signed and actually signed into law, by President Bush, now what has been the development on that score?
Burns: You know I, when one looks at South Asia these days, it’s not hard to find problems, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh. But there’s a bright spot called
India. I’m very bullish about the future of US relations with
India.
India is a great democracy. Seven hundred and fourteen million people are eligible to vote, this month and next in the world’s greatest and largest election, the Indian elections. Our two countries, the US and India, for quite a long time now, for the better part of the last fifteen years, have been embarked on this process of trying to build a big relationship, and a positive one in education.
We have more Indian students in the
United States than any other group of students now. In agriculture, we’re both great agricultural countries, we have a history of cooperation, we’ve deferred to that, in space and space research. In high tech, where Hyderabad and Bangalore are such important partners of Silicon Valley and Route 128 in
Boston, so there’s a lot that we can be doing. The civil nuclear court, I don’t think we ever believed it was going to happen, like the way it did, like it did. But it became a symbolic centerpiece of this new relationship. We never thought, in starting it, that it would become the most important and most visible of the issues, but it did become that symbol of this new relationship.
Chanda: It became that symbol because of the US sanctions against
India for all these years. That was a kind of real point of bitterness in their relationship otherwise, which was growing. So, this civil nuclear agreement removed that contentious issue from the relationship, is that what you…
Burns: I think so. You know it was the elephant in the room. We all knew it. And in 2005, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came back from her first visit to
Delhi, she had seen Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. She decided that we would go forward and negotiate the civil nuclear treaty effectively to end the American sanctions on India, and to try to end the international sanctions on
India. It was a very tall order. I frankly, did not, was not quite certain, when we began negotiating the treaty, I was the lead American negotiator, that we could be successful. But we were. And in the process, I dealt with two extraordinary Indian diplomats, Ambassador Shyam Saran, and Ambassador Shankar Menon. We developed trust. We developed a strategic direction for how to get this, how to accomplish this major undertaking. And we brought our two governments much more closely together. There was a anomalous situation, anomalous, where
India was abiding by the rules of the International Non-Proliferation regime, but kept outside of the system because of transgressions in the 1970s.
Chanda: When you say abiding by the rules, meaning
India was not engaging in selling nuclear technology to others, is that…
Burns: Exactly right,
India had been a good steward of its own nuclear materials, and fissile materials. It wasn’t selling those materials on the international black market, as unfortunately other countries had done, including
Pakistan through the A.Q. Khan network. And so, we felt that
India, as the soon to be largest country in the world, had to be brought back into the center of that Non-Proliferation regime, in order to modernize it and strengthen it. It was a great battle. There was a great human cry from members of the Non-Proliferation think tank community. In the
United States, there was a very active US Congress on this.
Chanda: Because it was seen as rewarding bad behavior. India has flouted the international community by testing nuclear devise and
United States is rewarding it by signing this deal.
Burns: And we saw it differently. We saw it as recognizing that
India of course was never going to go back to a pre-nuclear age. We weren’t assisting
India’s nuclear weapons program whatsoever; in fact, we built a very strong wall separating American assistance to the civil nuclear sector and no American assistance to the nuclear weapons sector. But
India had been abiding by the rules of the international community on that civil nuclear side, in terms of civil nuclear power plant construction, control of materials. And we thought to have a largest country in the world, when India takes over
China, it will be the largest country in the world in population, outside this system, fundamentally weaken the system. And that we had to move on to try to work with India for the creation of safe and reliable civil nuclear reactors, in a country that is badly in need of greater energy supply and at a time when all of us are trying to face climate change and coal burning societies like India and the United States are part of the problem. And we both need to reconfigure our energy grade. So, there were a lot of reasons why we went for this. It was an astounding success; we had major votes in US Congress in favor.
Chanda: So, how did you pursue the very skeptical Congress and skeptical Nuclear Non-Proliferation supporters to actually support this bill?
Burns: It was a highly complex and esoteric agreement. Hundreds of pages in length. And so, we had to, if you put all the plans together, the separation plans and the agreements, so we had to in essence make this very difficult argument that the conventional approach to India had not worked over 35 years. That there was a better way to work with
India. It would not recognize India as a nuclear weapons power, it would help
India on the civil nuclear side. And I think that argument became, not only possible, but it became a successful argument to the great majority of members of Congress, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
So, it was good to see that this relationship between the US and India has bipartisan support among Republicans and Democrats in the US and between the Congress Party and the BJP Party, the two major parties in India. That’s the source of real strength as we move ahead in this relationship and despite all the problems in South Asia, I think that President Obama has a major opportunity to continue what President Clinton and President George W. Bush both succeeded in doing, and that’s building a stronger relationship with India both in economics, trade, technology and science, and also in military cooperation. I don’t believe we’re ever going to be allies, formal treaty allies with India the way we are with Japan or
Germany, but we will certainly be close partners. And that bodes well for stability in South Asia as well as
East Asia.
Chanda: So, what does this military cooperation imply? Is it a naval, air, land, what kind of cooperation?
Burns: It’s, you know, for a good ten years now there have been a series of cooperation in air and on the sea to make sure the two militaries can work together when they need to. We had to do it. We had to work together. On December 26th, 2004 when the tsunami hit, so violently, so brutally,
South East Asia, and the subcontinent, and the Indian and American, Japanese and Australian militaries worked together very well to rush relief supplies to the effected populations. There’s a very good example where in the wake of a natural catastrophe our two countries can use our military forces for peaceful purposes. And it seems to me that India and the United States have large congruent interests for promotion of democracy and the success of democracy worldwide, where the two largest democratic countries in the world, for stability in South Asia, India’s region, but also globally.
And obviously the Indian Ocean is going to be as well as the
Far East will be a source of hopefully stability in the future, not instability. And if it is to be so, then we have to rely on Indian American cooperation in part to make that happen. Robert Kaplan has written a terrific new article in Atlantic Magazine about the future of the
Indian Ocean. I recommend it to you and your readers. And he tries to think through some of the challenges that we’re gonna face in balancing China, India, the United States, Japan, Australia, all these countries that will play a role in the future of the Indian Ocean and the Far East. And I think that US Indian cooperation can be a very positive element in that.
Chanda: Well, on that positive note, thank you very much for speaking with us Ambassador Burns.
Burns: Thank you Nayan, it’s been a pleasure to be here, thank you.
Chanda: Thank you.