The civil war raging in Syria is only the most recent example of a conflict spilling over to affect additional regional actors
By EMILY B. LANDAUDoha Forum521(photo credit: MOHAMMED DABBOUS / REUTERS)
As one of the most conflict-ridden regions in the world, the Middle East is sorely in need of a region-wide framework for conducting interstate dialogue on security issues. But is this feasible? Some would say that the levels of animosity and hostility in the region preclude even thinking in this direction, certainly not without resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, with other potentially explosive conflicts negatively impacting regional stability should this conventional wisdom be accepted without question? The civil war raging in Syria is only the most recent example of a conflict spilling over to affect additional regional actors, including Israel and creating a common interest for the affected parties to discuss unfolding developments in order to limit wider conflict scenarios.Iran’s nuclear ambitions are another example of a development with dangerous regional implications that should be discussed in a regional framework. Colin Gray, a notable critic of nuclear arms-control talks, argues that such negotiations will always be futile. When they are needed, he asserts, they are impossible to advance because of existing mutual hostility and the adversarial states’ concomitant desire to hold on to their weapons; and when states can fruitfully discuss arms control, he maintains such talks are no longer needed because by then mutual hostility will have been eased or the conflict resolved.What Gray, a professor of international relations at Reading University, misses, however, is that even when hostilities run high, there can be common interests, such as those that developed between the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, to reduce tensions and the risk of unintended escalation to mutually destructive nuclear war.But even if one can show that states in the Middle East have a common interest in setting up a security forum, getting them to agree to sit down with Israel may still seem far-fetched. But it is not unprecedented. The multilateral talks that were part of the Madrid peace process of the early 1990s were such a forum. While these talks were explicitly linked to bilateral peace talks at the time, the regional agendas that emerged could have outlived, and in some cases did, the failure of the bilateral process. The talks on water, for example, continued well beyond the failure of the bilateral negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians, due to the interest the parties had in continuing to advance a common agenda.Nevertheless, it would be unrealistic to expect the regional parties to be capable of setting up a security dialogue forum on their own; significant external help will be needed from strong international actors like the United States and Russia, or whoever else buys into the idea and has the ability to both press and cajole the parties to come to the table.How does the indefinitely delayed proposed conference on making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction tie into the idea for a regional security forum? While the configuration for discussing a WMD free zone has reached a dead end, a forum for regional security dialogue could include discussion of all WMD, as long as the overarching framework is regional dialogue rather than the specific aim of doing away with WMD, which enables the Arab states to turn the spotlight solely on Israel.The Arab peace initiative is also relevant to the forum idea. First, if embraced, it could provide important support for setting up regional talks. But even if not, the proposal itself serves as a reminder why states should not be deterred from putting forward ideas that might initially seem unrealistic; once out there, they become a focal point for further discussion and debate.An Israeli proposal for setting up a regional security dialogue forum for the Middle East would be a proactive and positive step, and deserves serious consideration. Dr. Emily Landau is director of the Arms Control and Regional Security program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. She teaches nuclear strategy, negotiations and arms control at a number of universities in Israel
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