David Newsom Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

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U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World

One of your books is called The Imperial Mantle, and it reflects what became a major interest in your work, which is relations with the Third World. You had a number of important ambassadorships -- to Indonesia, to Libya, among others. I get the sense, and it's included in your introduction to the book, that this trip that you took as a young person just out of school impacted the way you saw the world, and helped guide you in your understanding of our relations with the Third World as you became an American diplomat. Talk a little about that.

My career, really, beginning with that trip, paralleled the breakup of the major European empires. I had the good fortune to witness it beginning in Karachi, right after the partition of India, and ending up in our own former colony, the Philippines. Beginning with that trip, but even more in the diplomatic missions that I had, I realized that the world was going through a tremendous transformation. The lives of billions of people were being changed. I never had the feeling that the magnitude of that was fully appreciated in the United States.

Our own position with respect to it was ambivalent, because while we professed having been a former colony ourselves, that we understood these people, we didn't really understand what was going on, because our revolution was against people or our own race. We were establishing a rich, independent country. But the revolutions of the twentieth century were against people of a different race and often led to severe economic problems. So the decolonization revolution was totally different from ours, and we never fully accepted that. Our rhetoric often made people in the newly independent countries expect things from us which we weren't able to deliver. I think that's part of our problem still.

Is there a particular case that you can cite of a mission you had, or a problem you had to deal with, where this really hit home to you?

In general, one of my frequent complaints is that when you come back to Washington, and you'll get a question, "Why doesn't ruler X or country X do what we want him to do?" You try to say, "Well, he's got a political problem," and you get from some people in our country, "Well, that's too bad, that's his problem." You get the feeling that a country, like the U.S., that is so alive to politics doesn't really understand or take the trouble to understand that other people have political pressures which constrain their choices.

In Libya, before the Kadafi revolution, we had an air base, Wheelus Air Base. In the 1967 War, the Arab-Israeli war, Libya wasn't a combatant. It felt very keenly about the Arab cause, and the air base became a very sensitive issue. I was fortunately given considerable discretion, including the discretion to close down the base for several weeks until the heat had passed, because I understood the political problems that the king was facing. And I was able to persuade Washington of that fact.

Let's talk a little about some of our current relations, bringing this experience that you have, these ideas about what we haven't understood about the world. [Let's list] some of the countries and hear your comments about the kinds of things that we need to think about. Israel, would be an example.

Well, you talk about Israel. In the context of its relations with the Palestinians and then with the rest of the Arab world, Israel is a unique case, because it's a country in which there is tremendous interest and support within the United States, which often limits what we can do.

As diplomats.

As diplomats.

I think an American diplomat in the Arab world must do his or her best to explain the political circumstances and emotions and interest in the United States, but hoping at the same time that whatever administration is in power will understand that this is an issue of deep emotion in the Arab world, where we have major interests. I think every administration, including this administration, has tried, often with great anguish, to balance this.

One thing that comes up, that the Bush administration is now discovering, is how the past limits our ability to do everything that we want to do, particularly in the developing world. In a country like Jordan, for example, where we consider it a friendly, supportive country, the degree of cooperation we can get from the Jordanian government has to be prefaced or understood in the light of Jordan's close association with the Palestinians, the intense feeling in many Arab countries about the existence of Israel. Our diplomacy is constantly a balancing act between what we see as in our interest to do and what is conceivable that other countries can do without themselves suddenly being in peril.

Let's name another country. What about Saudi Arabia? Do you see that relationship changing a lot now, or have the issues we're hearing about been present over this whole period?

I think the Saudis themselves have a dilemma. They have recognized for many years the importance of the United States to their security, to their economy. But for decades, the primary concern of Saudi rulers has been the preservation of the Saudi family and the Saudi rule. We've seen, in recent days, Saudi efforts to preserve that link with the United States by taking what they see as a positive step: the Abdullah plan for Middle East peace, a rather courageous step from the standpoint of Saudi politics -- and then hoping desperately that the reaction of the United States will give them a degree of support in the Arab world that will balance these interests.

What about Pakistan?

Pakistan is a country that has, ever since partition, had trouble establishing itself. You remember it lost East Pakistan, and it has four provinces in West Pakistan that have different characteristics and require a certain amount of juggling. And then all of this has been overshadowed by the Kashmir problem, which began when I was in Pakistan in 1948.

Did you go to Kashmir at that time?

No, we in Pakistan were not encouraged to go to Kashmir at that time. But when we got together with our friends from the embassy in New Delhi, it use to sound like an inter-dominion conference where you were arguing about the Kashmir question. There are so many parallels between the Kashmir problem and the Israel-Palestinian problem, in the sense of infiltration, and the question of who stimulates the infiltration. Is it a natural outgrowth of the oppression of an occupying power, or can it be controlled? And Pakistan is, of course, a country where we have had to balance in spades our interest with relations with rulers that we've not particularly liked to endorse.

In your book you emphasize history in the legacy of imperialism, and that clearly is involved in that conflict. But I'm curious about the legacy of our own policies in that area. As we move into this post-9/11 era, we think about the world in light of the tragedy at the World Trade Center and the acts by Osama bin Laden. To some extent, what we're seeing in that area is a result of some of our policies in an earlier period -- that is, supporting the Mujahadin, who were opposing the Soviet Union. Comment on that.

Certainly, our support for the Mujahadin in Afghanistan, which seemed necessary and logical at the time, comes under the heading of the "law of unintended consequences" now coming back to haunt us. But if there is a legacy affecting the United States in the developing world or the Third World, it comes out of a belief that grew out of the imperial age, that somebody else is always manipulating their politics. I was in Baghdad during the royal regime, and people used to argue when a new cabinet list came out of the king's palace, "Did this come out of the American Embassy, or did it come out of the British Embassy?"

I think still today, in much of that part of the world, there is a feeling that, "We are not really responsible for much of our problems and our disasters because the imperial presence is still manipulating us," and that imperial presence is now the United States. I was once in the desert in Libya talking to a sheik there, when I was accosted about the American responsibility for the Crusades, and I had to explain a little bit of history. But there is this belief that we suffer from, that we have a capacity to shape events if we just wanted to, and if we don't shape them, it's because we have some malevolent desire not to shape them.

So what you're suggesting is that there is a historical legacy which marries itself to the obvious power we have in the world, which then leads to an apparent equation, this was caused by that, which may not be the case. But that is actually in people's minds.

Yes. And that's why I titled my book The Imperial Mantle, because I think we have, in the minds of a great many people, assumed that mantle in Iran, where we have special problems. Part of the problem still arises from a belief that we were manipulating their politics in the time of the Shah, and if they re-establish relations with us, that manipulation is going to begin again.

Just one example of that: When the hostages were seized in November of 1978, we wanted to send an emissary to talk to the post-revolutionary Iranian authorities. We sent an emissary as far as Istanbul, and then we were going to get an American military plane to take him the rest of way. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said, "We don't want any American planes landing in Iran, because you'll send in counter-revolutionaries with them." So there's this belief that we're constantly trying to overthrow the revolution with them.

With your understanding of this history of the region, and of your understanding of American politics and the way we make foreign policy, do you see any obstacles as we adjust to this new war against terrorism? Where do you think the problems lie for us?

There's always going to be a continuing problem of the ability of our diplomats to explain the politics of a strange foreign society, and the limitations of a foreign ruler in cooperating with us in such a thing as the war on terrorism. I think the Executive leadership may come to understand that, but then it needs to be explained to members of Congress. One of the problems that the United States is often faced is that there are many voices who speak to both our leadership and our members of Congress. So those who don't really want to accept the way politics may be portrayed by the State Department can find somebody else who will say, "Well, they don't know what they're talking about."

So you're talking about the politics in the particular country ...

That's right. That affects American politics because of the degree to which foreign countries lobby the Congress, and not just lobbyists for a country, but for exile groups.

Iraq is a perfect example of that, where you have an exile group that has close ties with members of Congress, who are trying to convince members of Congress that getting rid of Saddam Hussein would be a pushover. Whereas, people in the Department of State and, I think, Defense and others, see the obstacles in much more complex terms. But the politics of the Iraq question is very much affected by the different voices that play upon the Washington scene.

So it's not just the facts, but the dance within which the facts play themselves out.

When we were trying to deal with the Iranian revolution before the Shah was overthrown, we had the problem of a very effective Iranian ambassador in Washington, who was saying, in effect, "The Shah is strong. Don't worry about him. The State Department is just panicking." And yet, all of the indications were that all the support for this man was eroding. But dealing with the U.S. politics, we were dealing with multiple voices, contrary voices.

How much do you think the world has changed with regard to the fact that it's not just state-to-state relations that are so important, but all these manifestations such as nongovernmental organizations and so on?

The non-state actors and their growing power are not a new phenomenon, because all through the decolonization period you had the liberation movements, which were basically non-state actors which had their lobbyists in Washington. But al Qaeda is a dramatic and unwanted extension of the power of non-state actors.

My sense after reading your books and talking with you is that you really don't buy the argument of Huntington, of a "clash of civilizations," for example, between us and the Arab world, or the Islamic world.

No. Religion is a factor, because religion also is a factor of identity, and when identity is challenged, people react. But I think if there is a division in the world, it's much more a division in the economic status of peoples, their historical backgrounds. There's still something of a division in the world between the former colonial countries and the industrialized countries, but that varies so much with individual countries in the developing world that you can't say that there is a clash.

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