PM - Wednesday, 15 February , 2006 18:36:00
Reporter: Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: Even given the troubled history of the Middle East over the last few decades, things at the moment look unusually precarious.
No one knows how Hamas will actually govern now its won the Palestinian election.
Iraq is still racked by violence and insurgency and Iraqis have only just managed to agree on a choice for Prime Minister, two months after the country's successful elections.
And Iran has resumed feeding uranium gas into centrifuges for nuclear fuel enrichment, with the West accusing Tehran of planning to get itself a nuclear weapons capability.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King's College, London since 1982.
On a visit to Sydney as a member of the Lowy Institute's International Advisory Council, he talked to me about whether this was a historical hinge moment.
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Well, I think Iraq is a hinge point for the reason that it was, on the one hand, such a controversial move to make against such international opposition, and it hasn't turned out as it should.
If it had all worked out as President Bush anticipated, with a combination of the discovery of weapons of mass destruction and happy Iraq embracing liberal democracy and enthusing over the overfall of Saddam, then that would be one thing.
But it hasn't worked out like that. The reasons for war now look… don't look credible and the insurgency is really challenging the Americans.
And you can see this in the latest American statement to the Quadrennial Defence Review, which has just come out, which is a much more sort of sober and cautious document than what would have appeared a few years ago, aware that they're facing a series of problems for which their basic military capability doesn't prepare them at all.
Conventional military force isn't very useful against an insurgency.
MARK COLVIN: But if they made a mistake going in, it doesn't necessary follow, does it, that they should now be pulling out. Or does it?
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: I think it's a complex axe to get right now, because it's clear that for many Iraqis the presence of American and British forces is part of the reason for resistance, but it's also clear that to some extent the key conflict that's now going on is between those who wish to stir up the Sunnis and those who are clear that this is the moment of sheer ascendency.
And the Americans, to some extent, are holding the ring rather awkwardly between that, trying to force a political compromise through and create the conditions under which those who would wish to disrupt that are not able to prosper, not able to succeed. That's a pretty tall order.
But it's difficult to see how it would be helped by precipitate withdrawal.
But I think it is important to demonstrate that withdrawal will take place at some point, that this is not a long-term prospect for Britain and America to stay there.
MARK COLVIN: One thing that the Iraq War has done is create a problem of overstretch, and that really becomes a major problem for the Americans when you look at Iran.
What can and should the Americans be doing about the Iranian nuclear threat?
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: I think the overstretch problem with regard to Iran is not really so much about a lack of military capability to take on Iran.
I don't think anybody would have ever expected an occupation on Iraqi lines and if they wanted to attack particular sites they have the military capability to do that. They're not short of air power and that's not overstretched.
The problem is that the forms of retaliation that might develop in Iraq, in Afghanistan, possibly with Hezbollah and Israel, would overstretch. That would cause problems with which the Americans would find it very difficult to deal.
And they may not get rid of the Iranian nuclear capability. They might delay it but they probably wouldn't get rid of it.
MARK COLVIN: So they could have a bombing campaign aimed at nuclear installations and that could start an absolute flurry of retaliation all over the Middle East?
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Yes. And I think…also, when the Americans are trying hard, possibly because of Iraq, to work quite closely with allies and through the UN using the International Atomic Energy Agency, quite differently from how they handled Iraq.
And I think that provides them also with a degree of cover, because they're aware that the military option isn't a great one, the economic sanctions route isn't particularly good either and the diplomatic route's got trouble.
So I think that, you know, some international problems don't lend themselves to easy solutions, and Iran may well be one of those.
MARK COLVIN: You think about strategy, military history all the time. Are you fundamentally an optimist or a pessimist?
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Professionally, you're almost under an obligation, if you think about strategy and international politics, to be a worrier, to be a pessimist. It's the job to look on the dark side of things.
If you let that penetrate every aspect of your being you become so totally gloomy and miserable that you'll probably become suicidal. And I think you have to recognise that actually the current situation isn't that bad. You know, my father and my grandfather went to war. I haven't had to do so.
Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people were killed in two World Wars. A recent, very good report by Canadian Human Security Centre demonstrates that actually the incidence of wars, the fatalities in wars are going down.
So I think we have to be careful, while thinking hard about where things could go wrong, if only to prevent them going wrong, that actually we haven't done as badly as sometimes it seems.
MARK COLVIN: Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King's College London.
You comments please?
... is this Prof. sending the right signals or not from your perspective?? 