Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan M. Winer spoke to Harici: The NATO declaration emphasised the extension of NATO’s mission to the Middle East and Africa and the action plan to implement it.
While the world is preoccupied with the upcoming elections in the United States and the recent incident in which former Republican President Donald Trump was targeted by an assassin, reports from the United States say that Trump is now officially the presidential candidate for the November 2024 elections. Many are debating whether the attack will have any impact on the campaigns of Trump and his Democratic rival Biden. The two leaders have many differences in foreign policy and approaches to NATO, nuclear talks with Iran, the presence of US troops abroad, relations with Russia and activities in the Middle East.
Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan M. Winer answered Dr Esra Karahindiba’s questions on global developments for Harici.
Jonathan M. Winer served as the United States Special Envoy to Libya, Assistant Secretary of State for International Law, and Advisor to Senator John Kerry. With expertise in migration, US foreign policy, counter-terrorism, governance, economics and energy, he is currently a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Let’s start with the attack against former President Donald Trump? He was injured and critics say that the reason of the attack is Biden’s campaign portraying Trump as a candidate who should never become president again. How would it be reflected on both candidates campaigns and ballots?
It is completely inappropriate to politicize the attack on Donald Trump by what appears on the basis of the facts known so far to be the isolated acts of a lone gunman. Any suggestion that anyone but the shooter was responsible for it is reckless and wrong.
Can you share your insights on the most significant outcomes of the recent NATO summit and their implications for US foreign policy? How do you evaluate the fact that there is no message about Israel in the final declaration of the NATO Summit? Israel’s threat of war against Lebanon and the possibility that Syria in a wider scale, will naturally have negative broader impacts in the instability of the region. Will a new stance be taken regarding Israel’s actions?
Three things stand out in the NATO Communique issued at the NATO summit. First, united resolve to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine. NATO is not giving up to seek some settlement with Russia, but digging in, with commitments to deliver sophisticated air defense systems promptly and to include Ukraine in NATO in the near-term – though it appears, not until after the war has ended. Second, explicit warnings to China and to Iran that their continuing support for Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine will have consequences. Third, expansion of NATO’s mission to include the Middle East and Africa, including the first phase of an action plan to implement it. The Middle East and Africa initiative is the first concrete response by NATO to the systematic influence operation in this region that Russian has been building out for the past five years. It will likely take years before we know whether this southern initiative will meaningfully challenge the current dynamics in which Russia’s rewards to dictators and strongmen have overwhelmed the legacy of influence previously retained by France and other former European colonial powers.
The NATO Communique is a consensus document reflecting consensus strategic choices. Weak statements by NATO regarding Israel and Hamas and Gaza would not have been helpful to securing a cease-fire or humanitarian objectives. It would have been hard to achieve unanimity on what to say about this complex conflict. So it is not surprising that they did not address it.
To discuss Israel without discussing Iran’s role also would mischaracterize the overall dynamics of the conflict, which include Iranian involvement in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Yemen, including providing military support for attacks on global shipping by the Houthis in the Red Sea. I doubt NATO will wade into taking formal positions on this interrelated set of geopolitical conflicts anytime soon. It has enough on its plate.
Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the UK allows Ukraine to target Russian territory with the weapons given. What is your comment on other NATO countries giving Ukraine the authority to hit targets within Russia’s borders with Western weapons? Simultaneously, Ukraine targeted Russia’s nuclear early warning radar with unmanned aerial vehicles. Is it fair to say that this is a new phase in the conflict?
Ukraine’s leaders have long stressed that Ukraine is at grave risk if it is prevented from attacking military targets in Russia that are being used against Ukraine. NATO policy has now evolved to move beyond past constraints that limited Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. This evolution is a military and strategic necessity.
But hitting Russian soil with directly NATO members’ weapons will count as an attack and a defense from Ukraine’s side. Won’t this action make Russia’a argument that this is a proxy war of the NATO?
Russia is already arguing – falsely – that Ukraine is fighting a proxy war for NATO. It’s an audacious falsehood, given Russia’s initiation of the war two and a half years ago and its continued targeting of civilian populations. Russian propaganda should not determine decisions made by Ukraine or by NATO.
Trump’s criticisms of NATO are well known. As the presidential elections approach, the status of NATO under the Trump administration is being discussed. What is your prediction about the budget transferred to NATO and Ukraine’s desire to become a NATO member if Trump wins?
Trump’s four years in office was marked by capricious in-the-moment decisions to say yes to requests from authoritarian leaders in other states which were contrary to the advice of his own senior advisors on national security, generating push-back from within the government by both political appointees and career professionals. Given that dynamic, how Trump’s recurrently expressed hostility towards NATO and towards Ukraine would play out within the US government, within NATO, and globally, should Trump return to office, is unknowable.
By increasing its defense spendings, Türkiye is reached to the 2% target in NATO first time ever. Also, Ankara’s diplomatic power cannot be denied regarding its role in Russia-Ukraine talks. How do you see Ankara’s position in the organization as Türkiye prepares to host the 2026 NATO Summit?
Türkiye’s geographic location makes its continued support for Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s war against Ukraine essential for NATO, even as it also acts as a broker with Russia, as reflected in the all-too-brief Black Sea Grain deal. Ankara will continue to be an influential actor, so long as it avoids taking any position seen as fundamentally undermining NATO and its goal of defending Ukraine. The deal ultimately reached to enable Sweden to join NATO reflects the tough, nationalist (and one could say hard-ball) approach taken by Turkish President Erdogan, and also his pragmatism.
Türkiye’s anti-terror struggle in Syria with YPG is still an unsolved issue. This is according to Türkiye unfortunate that NATO allies underminers NATO borders’, Türkiye’s borders’ security. Then how do you see NATO members’ undermining Ankara’s key issues?
NATO operates by consensus, but NATO member countries do not have total agreement on any number of security issues. There is an extensive history here, including the need to combat the Islamic State a decade ago, that is relevant to this issue. The US and Türkiye have ongoing bilateral opportunities to work through issues on which they do not see eye-to-eye, and this goes on independently of multilateral discussions involving NATO members generally.
Presidential elections took place in Iran. New President Massoud Pezeshkian wants to revive nuclear talks. What is the US’s approach to the new Iranian President? When you consider it in terms of Biden and Trump policies, which leader will be closer to dialogue with Pezeshkian? What are your expectations?
In important respects, in the area of its foreign policy, including with Iran, the Biden Administration has continued the policies of the Obama Administration from the 2009-2016 period. It has never abandoned the goal of containing Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon through a negotiated settlement. By contrast, Trump has little regard for diplomacy generally, and diplomacy with Iran specifically.
You also served as the Special Envoy to Libya. Considering the point reached in Libya today, that is, the actual division, intransigence and interventions of third countries, can you say that the NATO operation that overthrew Gaddafi was “absolutely right”?
The goal of the NATO operation was to support the Libyan people who had engaged in an uprising against a dictator known for erratic and vindictive behavior, who had previously imprisoned and slaughtered political dissidents. Indeed, he literally ordered the very bones of political opponents ground into dust at Abu Salim prison.
NATO played no role in initiating the Libyan uprising, it supported it weeks later, with an air campaign after cities throughout Libya rebelled against Gaddafi. Such campaigns always have consequences. But blaming NATO for what has happened to Libya is misplaced. Libya’s own political class has failed them, just as Lebanon’s political class, for example, has failed Lebanon. The past decade of interventions by regional actors and by Russia have merely taken advantage of and exacerbated the internal divisions that had already impaired Libya’s ability to govern itself after Gaddafi’s death.
The US experienced a great shock when its ambassador was killed in Libya. And Libya was not at the forefront of the agenda for many years. It pursued a policy through his European partners, and European states could not come to an agreement on Libya for a long time. Now, does the US have a clear, understandable and targeted Libya policy? How do you evaluate the United Nations’ Libya policy, which has not been successful so far? Do you see a political reconciliation possible in Libya?
After our Ambassador was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi along with three other Americans, the Obama Administration paused for about a year to evaluate the situation, and then appointed both a new Ambassador and a Special Envoy – the position I held, charged with the goal of doing what we could to try to help stabilize the country. We sought to do this by working closely with a range of countries to help Libyans reach an agreement on an interim unity government in a process sponsored by the United Nations. We did that with the strong personal involvement of Secretary of State Kerry, National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Biden, and President Obama, among others. That effort, in which we worked to achieve alignment with many other countries as well as the Libyans, resulted in a new government and the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement, which remains the foundational document for the government that still remains in place in Libya, including the House of Representatives and the High State Council. During the Trump years, the US became less involved, reflecting Trump’s general disdain for diplomacy, other than deals brokered by his son-in-law and consistent with his personal interest. Over the past three years, the Biden Administration has had its hands full in dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the situation in Gaza, and managing the US competition with China, among other issues, and so has had more limited ability to focus fully on Libya.
Except for the brief period when President Trump responded to entreaties by Egypt and the UAE to back Khalifa Hifter’s failed effort to take Tripoli by force, with the help of Russian “mercenaries” backed by Russian President Putin, US policy towards Libya has been consistent. Today, as was true a decade ago, the US wants Libya’s political class to enable free and fair elections in Libya, for both the parliament and the President, and then to abide by the results to form a unified, inclusive government that meets the needs of the Libyan people.
For political reconciliation to take place, Libya’s political leaders need to accept the idea that there will be more for everyone in an inclusive government that bring stability, and that their people deserve to share in the benefits of Libya’s national resources on an equal and inclusive basis.
Securing such elections and the formation of an inclusive and unified Libyan government have been made harder by the presence of foreign military forces in Libya, especially the rapidly-growing Russian military presence, which it is using to project force to a range of dictators in Africa, as I have described in some detail in my recent writing for the Middle East Institute.
The US is not unrivaled in the Middle East today as it used to be decades ago. Powerful regional countries can oppose the Washington when their own interests are harmed. It seems that other global powers such as Russia and China have also become a significant power in the region. How do you evaluate this new multipolar future of the Middle East?
The Middle East has long been among the most complicated regions in the world, with clashes of interests among many competing groups, religions, forces, ideologies, nationalities, tribes, and other identities. Regional powers, post-colonial powers, local forces and political groups have always competed for influence. The US role has at no time been without such competition and rivals, as reflected 45 years ago when OPEC decided to raise oil prices in a move that was visibly against US interests.
For any non-Middle Eastern country to have sustained influence in the Middle East, it has to offer benefits to not only to the relevant local leaders, but to their people. The US has many strengths and much to offer, but the US cannot succeed without maintaining partnerships with those who share common interests with the United States. To do that, takes focus and attention, and deep engagement that seeks to build enduring relationships to achieve common goals.
Due to Russia’s cynical support of dictators and warlords in Africa, western interests and Russian interests in the region are currently close to a zero-sum game. But what Russia is doing there, especially in Africa, will ultimately backfire, as the people of those countries find themselves unhappy with having their lives dictated to them by unelected juntas and strongmen backed by Russian pretorian guards. The US should be working on helping elements of civil society to empower a new generation of people with tools that will enable them to build better options, and ultimately better societies. It can be a long slog, but in the end, people demand opportunity and freedom, just as they require food, shelter, health care, and other necessities. Major foreign powers can either be on the side of the people, against them, or absent. The US needs to be both present, and visibly on the right side of these aspirations, just as Russia is present, and visibly on the wrong side of them.
African countries have been colonised until a very near history. Their sources have been exploited by Western countries. The poor people could not get benefit from their own lands and natural richness. Maybe those countries did not have a chance but to try a cooperation with Russia. What would be your comment?
The evidence is not that African juntas, strongmen, and coup leaders are now partnering with Russia in order to improve the lives of their poor, but instead, to get military support to maintain power. In any case, typically involving significant corruption as well. Moreover, Russia has been trolling for African partners for some 60 years now, going back to the 1950s. I can’t think of a single case in which it has gone well for the underlying populations until Russia is eventually pushed out, as took place when Sadat severed relations with the Soviets from Egypt in 1981.
One of the topics which is discussed most recently is the complete withdrawal of the US from Iraq. In my interviews with both Northern Iraqi officials and Baghdad authorities, I recognized that current politicians want the United States to stay. In fact, analysts in the US states that, far from withdrawing, the US would increase its military presence in Iraq and Syria. What is the final strategy on this?
As near as I can tell, there is no final decision on the future role of the US in Iraq. For the US to stay in Baghdad and/or Northern Iraq, the respective parts of the Iraqi government would have to want a continued US presence in those locations, and secure continued agreement by the US that is in its mutual interest to stay. Whether such agreements will be possible and in the interests of all of the relevant parties is interconnected with Iranian and Kurdish relationships with Iran and its Revolutionary Guards, including Iranian malign activities in both Iraq and Syria. There are legitimate arguments that the US should stay, and others that it should depart. But there is no good reason to make a decision now, ahead of US presidential elections at a time of great regional uncertainty and multiple plausible scenarios for trouble.
What would be the scenerious of the US presence in Iraq if Biden wins or if Trump wins?
I do not think the scenarios are very different based on which administration is President. I have little to say on this topic at this time beyond my previous answer.
