Policy Podcast: U.S. Assistance to the Middle East

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QUESTION: Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you very much, Sean. Pleasure to be with you.

QUESTION: Good. I wanted to start off talking about an upcoming trip that you're going to make to the Middle East. You're going to be traveling to Israel, Egypt, as well as to the Gulf states to talk about our aid package that we recently announced. Talk a little bit about your mission and what you hope to accomplish.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: We'll be going out to the Middle East at some point this month basically to strengthen our security relations with our friends in the Middle East. It's now, I think without any question, the most vital area for the United States, what happens in the Middle East, in Iraq certainly, where we have 160,000 troops in Iran and we're trying to prevent the Iranians from becoming a nuclear weapons power.

On the Israeli-Palestinian front, we want to make inroads towards peace. So this is the vital area for us and we've got friends in the region that need to bolster their defenses against -- well, against instability, against terrorism, and against a future possible threat from Iran. And so we have announced a long-term program of military aid to Israel which continues the aid that we've been giving to Israel for the better part of three decades.

QUESTION: Is that about 30 billion?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: $30 billion over 10 years. We'll be giving Egypt about $13 billion over 10 years. We've been working with the Egyptians since the Camp David accords of 1979 to help bolster their defense. And we have had a military relationship with Saudi Arabia and with the other states in the Gulf, Kuwait and Oman and United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Qatar to try to help bolster their coastal defenses and to give them the kind of defensive assistance they need. So it's a big move by the United States to say that we're still the strongest power in the region. We want to take care of our friends. We want that to be a force for stability and peace and we think the best way to do that is to keep our friends strong from any kind of possible future aggression.

QUESTION: Let me go through each of the parts of this just briefly. With the Israeli aid package, this is, as I understand it, a slight increase over the individual --

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yes.

QUESTION: -- annual aid levels that we have given the Israelis over the past decade.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah.

QUESTION: What are they going to be spending this money on? Is this for them to buy arms? Is this for them to spend it for budgetary -- or what are they going to use that money for?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: The majority of it is going to be money that Israel uses to purchase military technology from the United States. And while they are the things that a modern state needs to provide for its defense, some of it will be money that will help subsidize efforts that the Israelis need to make to modernize their training and to keep their forces at an alert status, which is the kind of thing that all militaries have to deal with. So it's a bit of both. But the majority of it will be for purchases. And with the Gulf states and with Saudi Arabia as well, that is not money that we're giving them. This is money that they will use to purchase American military technology, so it's very much in our interest.

You know, we have been in the Gulf since Franklin Delano Roosevelt went there after the Yalta Conference in the spring of 1949 to start our initial relationship with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. We have been working with these countries for decades. It's not as if we just decided --

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: -- we're going to put arms in the Middle East and into an already militarized area. We're trying to help our friends to maintain the peace and maintain stability and prevent any future aggression.

QUESTION: You know, with Egypt, there has been some criticism in the press that we are going to continue with the security assistance package while Egypt doesn't make as much progress as we have asked them to make on the democracy front. It's a criticism. How do we address that? What do you tell the Egyptians in terms of political reform and is there any linkage between this assistance and their democracies?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, I think, Sean, you know, as in most relationships that we have around the world with countries, you know, you have a lot of important goals --

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: -- a lot of different initiatives in play. Some you can see the payoff in the short term and some in the long term. And in the case of Egypt, we have a profound stake in Egypt's stability. Egypt is a major Arab state and it's the largest and most powerful. In the case of Israel as is Jordan, we want to keep it that way. We also want Egypt to be able to deal with its own internal issues and want it to develop into a much more secure and vibrant democracy. And for that happen, of course, you know, we want to see them allow political freedom of expression. We want to see them develop into the kind of democracy that we see in other parts of the world. And that may take some time, but it's an important goal nonetheless.

And so it's not as if you just have one goal with the country --

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: -- or pursue one avenue with the country. We support Egypt militarily, but we also will challenge Egypt to become a better democracy, to become a country where people who stand up and call for political change aren't put in jail and that's very important that you have those -- you keep both in view and you balance the two. And I think we can -- I think we can manage to continue that effort with them and they know that we're doing this because we have a profound belief in the importance of their country.

QUESTION: One last one on this topic. We've seen the number $20 billion attached to the Gulf arms sales.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah.

QUESTION: Where do you think this is going to go? What's the order of magnitude we're talking about?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I don't know, because I kept telling the press when they called me about this $20 billion arms package, I don't know where you get the figure 20 billion, because we actually now have to go out and negotiate with the six Arab states with specific military technology that we choose to give to them and -- sell to them, I should say.

And we don't have a complete list of that yet. Things may drop off the list and things may be added. So I think it's important that the press understand we just don't know what the final number is going to be and we won't probably for a good five or six weeks. But when it -- when we put it together and once we notify Congress, then we'll make a public announcement and defend it as in the best interests of the United States.

QUESTION: I promised it was -- that was the last question, but I have one more on that topic. What sort of reaction have you got from the Congress?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, I think Congress is doing what Congress should. Congress is asking lots of questions. And we told -- we've had informal briefings with Congress, but we haven't had a formal --

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: -- notification. And so I'd prefer to withhold comment. I think most members of Congress would too until they see the details. And then in our constitutional process, the Administration will go up to Congress and say, "Look, here is what we want to do, here is how we want to manage these long-term military assistance relationships, do you agree?"

And then we'll have a discussion with the Congress and we'll see where it goes. It's my hope that the Congress will decide what past congresses have decided and that is that in addition to our relationship with Israel, we have very important relations with the moderate Arab countries; the countries that are going to be critical to building a long-term peace with Israel, the countries that will be critical to sustaining a democratic Lebanon and to trying to help the Iraqi Government get on its feet and try to push back against Iranian attempts to destabilize their region. These are our friends.

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: They don't always look like us in terms of our democracy.

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: They don't always act like us. Sometimes we even disagree with them. But for the most part, they're countries that have the same interests that we do and you can't get along in the world without friends. These are our friends in the Arab world and so we need to be supportive of them. And I think that argument, Sean, is going to be, I hope, a convincing argument for the members of Congress.

QUESTION: Let me shift a little bit further east to a country that we don't consider a friend, Iran. President Ahmadi-Nejad recently said that they are going to continue with their nuclear programs, there's nothing we can do about it, that we might as well accept it as a fait accompli. Where do we stand now in the Security Council in terms of the next resolution?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, you know, I think Iran's rather isolated. We've gone through a process where we offered to negotiate with the Iranians. We made a big offer. Secretary of State Rice said she'd be there. No American Secretary of State has had negotiations since the 1970s with Iran. It was a big offer; they turned us down. We said, okay, if you can't negotiate, we're going to have to raise the cost to you of your illegal, very unwise behavior of trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability; we're going to sanction you in the Security Council.

So we got together and by unanimous vote in the Council, that includes Russia and China -- in December, sanctions, in March of '07, this year, sanctions. And right now, we're working with the Russians and Chinese and others to develop a third Security Council resolution.

QUESTION: How do you -- there have been a number of news stories about Chinese -- new Chinese opposition to a Security Council resolution. How do you think that's going to go with the Chinese?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, I think, you know, we don't have an identical policy that China -- the point of view with the Chinese. The Chinese have been less enthusiastic to push forward the sanctions in general than we and the Europeans and even the Russians have. What we have said to the Chinese is this: We need to speak with one voice. And if a country is out there, a big country, a powerful country like Iran seeking a nuclear weapons capability against the will of everybody else in the international system, it's your job, China, to help us push back against the Iranians.

And so I assume that the Chinese will come around and I assume that China will support this, and then after a lot of discussion, sometimes disagreement. And it's important because if you look around the world, Iran has very few friends. Who is sticking up for Iran these days? Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus, Syria. That's just a gang of four; that's quite a motley crew.

Who is opposing Iran? All of the leaders of the Third World who were part of the nonaligned movement, you know, for decades with Iran: India and Egypt and Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria and Brazil. They're all voting against Iran and implementing sanctions against Iran. That tells you something. This is not a disagreement between the United States and Iran; it's really the world and Iran. And so we want to keep that international unity on this issue and it's very important to us.

QUESTION: There's been a lot of talk recently over the past couple of weeks about this engagement between the IAEA and Iran. Put us inside the room there. How can you describe the --

Well --

QUESTION: -- I know you're not in the room.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I'm not in the room in the meeting.

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Let's make that clear.

QUESTION: Right.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: But --

QUESTION: Didn't want to imply that.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: This extraordinary situation where, for the last couple of years, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is a watchdog group of the United Nations which tries to keep countries from becoming a nuclear weapons power, they've been asking Iran formally a serious question and the Iranians have been stiffing the IAEA. They've been refusing to answer.

So now the IAEA has sent a delegation to Iran to say, "Can you please answer these questions?" And so I feel this is the least the Iranians can do. It's a minimum of what they should have done two or three years ago. And the fact that they're not doing it now is quite objectionable. So I don't think we should give Iran a lot of points for having answered questions that they should have answered several years ago.

QUESTION: Right. The timing is rather curious --

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- just before a UN Security Council resolution.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: They're trying to deflect attention from the Security Council resolution to throw us off the scent and deny us the ability to move forward in the Council -- in the Security Council and that's not going to work.

QUESTION: Let's move to another major portion of your portfolio, India, and the recently concluded civil nuclear deal, the so-called 123 Agreement.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah.

QUESTION: Explain to us where this sits in the process. I mean, this is -- as I understand it, this is part of a process of regularizing the relationship between the U.S. and India on the nuclear front. Where -- at what point are we in this process?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, think of India and the United States this way. We're the world's oldest democracy. India is the world's largest democracy. It's a billion people. It'll overtake China in population in about ten years. It's a country that has a lot of the same interests that we do: for stability, for democracy, for peace. We've been working with them to help combat HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, for instance.

So, you know, we're countries that are -- two countries that are coming together. And what we decided to do was try to take away the major impediment in that relationship. India conducted a nuclear test way back in the 1970s and cast them -- and was made an outcast in the international system because they weren't supposed to do that; it was against the Nonproliferation Treaty. And for three decades, they've been proverbial of a country -- proverbial leading the country outside with their nose pressed against the glass looking in.

Well, we have a phenomenal situation where you've got other countries inside the nonproliferation system like Iran who are cheating. So Iran is inside cheating; India is outside not cheating, playing by all the rules. And we've said, does it make sense to keep the largest country in the world outside of the one part of the international system that tries to limit the proliferation of nuclear material and nuclear fuel and technology; and the answer is no.

So President Bush has been coming -- I think quite courageous. He balked three decades of conventional wisdom. He said, "I'm going to go forward and work with the Indians," and he's done that. We've had a two-year negotiation. We now have an agreement that's been approved by the U.S. Congress, Democrats and Republicans, by overwhelming margins, margins that American companies will be able to sell nuclear fuel, nuclear reactor design and help build nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes, for electricity production, so that the billion people in India can have a safer, cleaner, in terms of climate change, more efficient energy source to help them power their agriculture in their industries as that economy grows.

This is a big step. It's a very big step. The United States has led the way and now I'm quite confident that the rest of the international community will decide this autumn to make the same type of decision for an international policy and we'll all be able to work with India in a way that we haven't for the last three-and-a-half decades. So it's really quite an historic event.

QUESTION: So our timeline -- we're looking at over the course of fall --

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yes.

QUESTION: -- putting all these pieces together.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah, I think so. And the Indians need to go out and they need to work with Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director of the IAEA, on their individual agreement. They need to get the Nuclear Suppliers Group. These are the 45 countries that that have nuclear power in the world -- not nuclear weapons, but nuclear power -- and get all those countries to agree, yes, we're going to treat India the way the United States is.

And if we can get that done, then we'll have an historic new agreement. Congress will then take a final vote and we'll have really turned our entire relationship around with India. This is important because any country needs a friend. We need friends, despite our power in the world. India is about the biggest and most important friend you can get. It'll help us solidify the American position in places like Afghanistan. I think it ought to help try to resolve some of the problems between India and Pakistan and it'll make the United States and India into friends and partners in a way that we've never been able to be before. So I, frankly, think it's one of the biggest strategic moves that the United States has made in recent years. And I think it's been bipartisan. So that means that you've got support of both political parties here and that's important to sustain this over time.

QUESTION: One final question.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah.

QUESTION: And this a question that is more important than American foreign policy or American national security; to do with the Red Sox.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Absolutely.

QUESTION: Still a member of the Red Sox Nation?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Red Sox Nation.

QUESTION: So we're coming up on mid-August.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah.

QUESTION: How do you see things? This is a week -- we've got a tough month ahead of us, a lot of away games.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah, we're playing the West Coast right now.

QUESTION: A lot of West Coast right now.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I'd say this, Sean, as a fellow member of Red Sox Nation, there's no question in my mind that we're not going to have an August when -- the way we had in years past.

QUESTION: Right. Agreed.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: And we're not going to have the kind of ignominious collapse that we experienced in 2006. I think with our --

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: It was -- excuse me, I think we have the best bullpen in baseball. We have the best starting five in baseball. Pitching is 75 percent of baseball. When you get to the playoffs and the series, it's 90 percent. I think the Sox will go all the way and reclaim the World Series championship for the (inaudible) America, Boston national (inaudible).

QUESTION: Let's all pray for that. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nick Burns, thanks for joining us.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thanks, Sean, a pleasure. Thank you very much.

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