AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE THE SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT AT 100: RETHINKING THE MAP OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST PANEL I: IS COLONIALISM TO BLAME? PANELISTS: SCOTT ANDERSON, AUTHOR OF “LAWRENCE IN ARABIA”; MARTIN INDYK, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; ROBERT KAGAN, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; DAN YERGIN, IHS MODERATOR: MICHAEL RUBIN, AEI PANEL II: THE SYKES-PICOT LEGACY, NOW AND IN THE FUTURE PANELISTS: ELLIOTT ABRAMS, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS; RYAN CROCKER, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ AND SYRIA; ADEED DAWISHA, MIAMI UNIVERSITY; OLIVIER DECOTTIGNIES, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY MODERATOR: DANIELLE PLETKA, AEI 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM MONDAY, MAY 16, 2016 EVENT PAGE: http://www.aei.org/events/the-sykes-picot-agreement-at-100- rethinking-the-map-of-the-modern-middle-east/ TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY WWW.DCTMR.COM MICHAEL RUBIN: Welcome to the American Enterprise Institute and our panel on Sykes-Picot at 100. I want to thank you all for being here. Of course, anniversaries matter, and this is one of the most significant anniversaries at least in the crafting of the modern Middle East. Now, the Sykes-Picot Agreement may not have been implemented as it was originally designed, but few would doubt that it has had tremendous impact on the eventual shaping of the Middle East. And I’m thrilled that we have a two-panel conference. Danielle Pletka, the vice president for foreign policy and defense at AEI, will moderate the second panel, but I’ll be talking a little bit about the history panel. My name is Michael Rubin. I’m a resident scholar here. I’m a historian by training, which means I get paid to predict the past. Admittedly, I only get that right about 50 percent of the time. But I have a very distinguished panel. Sitting next to me is Scott Anderson, who is a war correspondent and a New York-based author who has written a very recent book on Lawrence of Arabia and the shaping of the modern Middle East. Then we have Dan Yergin, who is probably the country’s top expert on oil and the impact of oil in the Middle East. Many of you know his various books on the history of oil, and there will be another one coming out shortly. And then two colleagues from Brookings, Martin Indyk, who is, of course, the vice president of Brookings and also an expert from both academically and a policy practice standpoint, the Arab-Israeli situation. And then last but not least is Robert Kagan, who is a tremendous historian of American strategy, American policy the world over but with a continued interest in the Middle East. Now, you come to these events not to hear the moderator, but to hear the panel. We’re going to have a conversation — an extended conversation among our panelists and then I’ll open the floor to questions. But I’d like to start out by just asking our panel, let’s just cut to the chase, bottom line, upfront: was the Sykes-Picot Agreement the original sin when we look at all the problems which are confronting the Middle East today? Arbitrarily, Scott, you’re the history here so let me start with you. SCOTT ANDERSON: Yes. I mean, to a degree, I believe it was. I mean, it was — what you saw immediately after — Sykes-Picot, of course, is a bit of a metaphor. With the imperial carving up that happened in the Paris Peace Conference almost instantaneously, the entire Arab world went up in flames, riots or civil war, all the way from Morocco over to Iraq within a year. So I don’t think — I don’t think it’s the cause of everything that’s come. It’s not like without Sykes-Picot or without some imperial carving up by the British and the French that this would be a peaceful and vibrant land. I think it was always headed for deep problems. But, yes, I think that absolutely the way it was carved up, it sort of set the fuse. DAN YERGIN: Just to — I mean, to say, I mean, obviously three empires collapsed in the First World War. Each one of them collapsed in a different way: one became the Soviet Union after civil war, one became all the states of Eastern Europe, and then you had this. And, you know, so they were confronting — obviously, this was during the battle of Gallipoli that they were actually working this out. The question was what was going to come next. And Sykes himself said, well, it could be partition. It could be spheres of influence. It could be what later became known as mandates or they could devolve into five provinces. The question was just what was going to come out of this. That was — there was no clarity. MR. RUBIN: Let me ask just a very broad question. When we look at the Middle East — MARTN INDYK: That was pretty broad. MR. RUBIN: That was pretty broad. But when we look at the Middle East and we talk about carving it up into individual states, how disparate were the various identities at the time? And did Sykes-Picot largely conform with those disparate identities or was it completely arbitrary? And let’s face it — I mean, the Middle East has never been homogenous. So how different were we really talking from Sykes-Picot versus reality? And, again, we don’t need to go in any particular order, but — MR. INDYK: Just a couple of points. First of all, what you were dealing with was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the collapse of the order that existed there. In some ways we’re dealing with a similar collapse of the order in the same area. Let’s not forget, Sykes-Picot applied to the Levant, to that area from what was then kind of Palestine through Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, Mesopotamia. I mean, that was it. It didn’t deal with Saudi Arabia. It didn’t deal with Egypt. It didn’t deal with North Africa. But in that area, there was a collapse of the order, so the question then is what is going to replace the order. And that is necessarily a very messy process, as Scott has indicated. But as a result of that, you know, the states that emerged were essentially more or less what you could have expected. I mean, it’s hard to imagine a counterfactual that would have — OK. So Lebanon would have been smaller. You know, Palestine — Israel might have been larger. They might have divided the Jewish state on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Arab state on the East Bank, I mean — but, you know, how exactly would have looked — would have been different? If King Faisal had managed to establish his reign, he would have ended up fighting with the Maronites, the Kemalists, the Turks and the Zionists one way or another. So I think, in a sense, it’s a question that doesn’t have a good answer except in understanding that when empires come and go, when orders collapse, there is necessarily a great deal of chaos. And then the question is, who is able to establish order out of this chaos? And that is a similar kind of situation than what we face today. MR. RUBIN: I’m actually going to try to bring Bob into this conversation. And when we talk about the political debate now, and that’s something we talk about in a second panel, I mean, of course, the American political debate in recent years has been consumed by various ideas with regard to foreign policy, whether it’s realism, whether it’s neo-conservatism or any number of other isms out there or philosophies, liberal interventionalism and so forth. But if we want to go back to the aftermath of the Sykes-Picot agreement, we really have the United States asserting itself perhaps in a way in which it hadn’t asserted itself before. And, of course, I’m referring to Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points and issues with regard to national sovereignty. This is something which certainly the Iraqi Kurds have been putting forth most recently in terms of being the largest ethnic group, if you will, that didn’t have a state come out of the process — the lengthy process. But when we look back at Woodrow Wilson and when we look back at the 14 points, is this really a fair reading that we have — the real interplay of ideology, and if we can just look at history as a lens, does this mean that — are there any parallels today that you see in terms of what might come next as various ideologies compete in the region, especially when it comes to freedom, national liberation, democracy and national sovereignty? ROBERT KAGAN: I was getting ready to answer the first part of the question, then you got to the second part of the question. I’ll think about that for 10 minutes and then I’ll get back to you. I just want to say one word about the first question you asked originally, which is, you know, was our victory in World War II the original sin that led to the division of Europe? The answer is yes. And this is the problem of reading history backwards, you know. Every good deed you do, every success you have creates failures and disasters. Every solution creates another problem and we’re always looking for it. If you could just go back and like get everything right and you could have known what would happen 50 years later, et cetera, et cetera.