Serving. Watch booktv this weekend on cspan2. So welcome. The scheduling of this book and panel is certainly timely given the rising crisis with iran. Look into that subject eventually, but the point of the book, entitled seven pillars, and the discussion is to look more broadly and more deeply at the drivers of instability in the middle east. From yemen to syria to iraq, and now with iran, the region more than ever seems in a permanent state of turmoil. Its become a land of endless wars. Tragically, despite decades of intense and often wellmeaning american attention and the expenditure billions of dollars, u. S. Policy has more often than not been a failure. Maybe the caveat more often than not is, its been absolute failure, if one accepts the basic aim was to foster stability and better life for the people of the region. Of course the ones ultimately responsible for a countries success or failure of the people who live there, but the catastrophe in todays middle east raises questions about whether the United States should continue to be engaged in the region, and if so, how. In this regard the editors of seven pillars, Michael Ruppert and Brian Katulis, and their cocontributors have given us a gift. Identify seven factors that affect stability or not and examine what they mean and the role they play. The pillars to identify our legitimacy, islam, arab ideology, the military, education, economy and governance. I personally found many of the authors perspectives to be unique and a useful basis to begin looking at all problems. Whether they can serve as a basis for a new bipartisan approach in the current poisonous political environment here is anyones guess, but at least the authors are trying to provide some factbased reality and analysis to encourage debate. So with us today, starting with my left, is Michael Rubin was a resident scholar here at aei, a veteran of the Bush Administrations iran and iraq team and has a phd and iranian history. He contributed to the chapter on legitimacy in the region. Next, Brian Katulis was a Clinton Administration veteran now at the center for American Progress with extensive experience in the arab world. Prior to joining c. A. P. He lived in egypt and palestine where he worked on governance issues for the National Democratic institute. He contributed to chapter on governance. And then we have Kadir Yildirim whos a a fellow for the middle east at the Baker Institute at Rice University picky research is both pluralism in the middle east and the interplay between religious authorities and Foreign Policy. He contributed to chapter on islam. We will try to keep the conversation lively and i will interrupt to keep everybody from not just going on and on and on. We will talk for a while and then open it up to questions from the audience. So to start im going to start with michael, and ask you, whats special about this book . What did you think was lacking in the scholarship or the analysis that required this kind of approach . If we look at the last half century of american interaction in middle east, by any metric like you said in your introduction the u. S. Hasnt been successful and is not democrat or republican thing. What we wanted to do was number one getaway for analysis based on use political calendar. Thats too easy and it doesnt work. But more broadly do a fundamental rethink of some of the issues and drivers in the region. In terms of legitimacy, for example, theres common core assumptions that its all about Good Governance. Thats what builds legitimacy but when were in iraq, people are willing to forgo in some cases Good Governance just so they can have Kurdish National flag or she had occurred flag over certain buildings. We also wanted to identify and look at the impact of things we hardly ever talk about in the United States. Sorry come in the region. Disruptive technology, hows that going to change things . How is foreign aid impact if legitimacy is in Good Governance . Then is foreign aid the right thing . Another conclusion, one of the rot issues most surprising to me personally when brian and i traveled across the region was many people if we asked the question, what represents the most legitimate government in the middle east . People tend to do Something Like lebanon and yet lebanon is often thought about in the United States and, frankly, many parts of the middle east as an abject disaster. We were trying to grapple with some of these issues from a much more academic and less political partisan approach. So what is legitimacy and why is lebanon seen as more legitimate than other places . We need to abandon this notion that one size fits all. Thats that easy for american policymakers to do. But ultimately people wanted legitimacy for whatever there they wanted representation for whatever their identity was the problem is of course identity changes with time. What was clear, however, is that people were increasingly finding themselves disenfranchised. This isnt just an issue of the arab spring. Its not just an issue of the antiiranian protest but there seems to be a failure of the traditionalism in the middle east which is why the chapter reimagining or reconsidering all ideology at play because take example of iraq. 40 of iraqis were born after the 2003 war. More than 60 of iraqis were born after the 1991 war which means no one has functional memory of what life was like under Saddam Hussein among the broad swath of the youth. Therefore, they are no longer willing to accept what we might have problems from some of the Islamist Groups but at least were not Saddam Hussein. People are looking at this generation which seceded many of these other ideologues and dictators in the region in saying is that the represent us. We have in the United States as much as we complain about politics, usually a 9095 incumbency rate in congress. In places like iraq its around 1216 . People are adrift and that makes it a dangerous moment. Sobriety, he wrote about governance. The form of governance that has evolved been imposed on iraq saddam was overthrown, is it working . Do you see it working . Dead iraqis have to come up with Something Else . Doesnt try to have to help iraq come up with Something Else . Great question and ill answer that in the second. I first want to highlight the subtitle of the book is what really causes instability in the middle east, and my simple after spending nearly two two years h Michael Rubin on this project is, its Michael Rubin and neocon who are more wandering warmongering. [laughing] its a joke. Before this latest episode, if you would see whats happening in the last week and then what was happening just a few months before that, young people in the streets of baghdad and in major cities and iraq questioning the very old order, the political order that is in iraq. Protesting corruption, Poor Services and a bunch of things that quite frankly go rent the region like we do and we get together and regularly, are the sorts of things that impact every country in the middle east. This sort of crushing demographic, social, economic pressures. Inside of iraq, quite clearly despite multiple elections the Current System of governance and government is not helping the people. One of the point of this book, and is not a new point because if you go back to the air of you in Human Development report 16, 17 years ago is the structural factors that contribute to stability are quite weak and in those 15, 16, 17 years since they have gotten weaker. In a place like iraq, quite clearly, and this is where i joke about michael, for do have our differences. He was in favor of the iraq war. I was in. He was against the iran nuclear deal. I was. But the one thing we agree upon is to dig deeper and wife who wanted to this book and in the chapter on governance, i talked a bit about iraq is not about its National Governments. I talked about this experiment that urged under the Islamic State, spend a couple of pages on it and it shows you responsive governance and discontent with the government that is not responding, plants the seed for the sorts of instability that we saw under, happen and are back under the previous prime minister, that groups like the Islamic State exploited. We should have learned by now, many years after the iraq war, that the United States get fix these factors but its important to factor these fundamental Building Blocks for stability in our analysis. As we say today the hot take somebody going to do next at the cycle of isolation which is quite dangerous. Isis was a new phenomenon, and there has been failure of governance, failure of leaders in the middle east for a long time. So why at this moment did a group like isis have an opportunity to rise and at such a profound impact . Multiplicity factors in some of it is tied to this generational transition where you just simply have you crushing. If the government in place like iraq are not responding to people will rise up in various different forms. The isis model which again was shortlived and i dont think as much legitimacy in the long run was created in response to an ineffective government. There are more tools now in a place like iraq under saddam sitting it was a dictatorship. There wasnt as much open space for people to produce change. I think that theory behind the iraq war, 2003, and we dont want to go back and debate that, the theory behind it was flawed in that we just topple regimes and eliminate or decapitate the top, then some of freedom will spread. We know that didnt happen. Like it et cetera in the Islamic State in particular is that you have multiple fight going on inside iraq, civil war first and then a system of governance that simply was responding. Thats the main point is those conditions are still there. Iraqis are still looking at the National Government with a caretaker government. Carol, i would challenge the notion Islamic State was all that new because if we go back in history theres any number of millennial, whether it was the future of the grand mosque in a concern not or go back a century before that, the sudan. What i do want to draw out from what brightest talk about any number of issues on governance, beyond simply this, monarchy versus republican so forth, but what does this mean for the nature of american diplomacy if we are still in many ways limiting ourselves to interactions with representatives of government who are under siege whether those governments know it or not, are we missing the broader picture both in terms of diplomacy and intelligence when it comes to the middle east . Obviously, whats the remedy to that . The United States has to do with the government that are in power, no . To some extent. We have to do with the the government who are in power but, for example, how much time to diplomats spent outside the walls of embassies versus, talking and just interacting on a local market as opposed to simply interacting with government . We dont do want to bring in u. Policy too much but one of the aftermaths of benghazi, putting the root of that crisis the side, is just locked out upon which american diplomats find themselves. When you go to beirut and both brian and i went to beirut together, the u. S. Embassy in beirut is basically living under the same security parameters they did during the civil war. Its a tactical point. Their sister gigi point which i think for u. S. Policy in the middle east we are quite likely at the end of a 40 year period that began with events in 1979, the Islamic Revolution in iran, soviet invasion of afghanistan and the number of things that led to the u. S. Come having its engagement primarily be focus on what our military does. Look at where we are today and discussing and worrying about whats the next move and what will or military do. To me this point that michael makes which is tactical but its important that our diplomats and the Diplomatic Service has been decimated in the last couple of years. They are our eyes and ears and understand societal trends and we are flying more blunt. The last point is i think it opens up question of whether the United States should actually be spending aid money and other things in countries that simply lack the capacity to do this, that maybe theres a strategy for thinking more modestly about our engagement, thinking about those beacons or outposts where the relative progress in places like tunisia. Maybe a dollar spent in tunisia and time spent in tunisia may ultimately be a lot better than other parts of the middle east. But we dont even have that discussion because we are reacting to mostly military moves and military centric moves and not thinking about how to do we diversify the portfolio. I want to bring kadir into the conversation. Is religion more important in the middle east today than it was before . It is. It is very much so, but one of the fundamental misconceptions about middle east in terms of religion, politics, we tend to assume that this has been the case all the time. But if you go back 40, 50 years ago what we will see is the dominance of secular governance, secular ideologies and how islam parties and groups, they were existent many of them but theyre much slower, much less influential in terms of policymaking, in terms of the able to affect other groups in the society or how governments were acting in terms of Foreign Policy or domestic policy but over the last 50 years things have changed dramatically a thing. Iranian revolution was a big turning point, but also more important, something that brian mentioned, secular ideologists have failed throughout the middle east at threat the 1960s and 70s and early 80s. Failed as leaders . In terms of policy. The fundamental issues were political and economic come and they failed to deliver on their promises, on what people were expecting. This is what chris anticipated. The rising come significance of these religious groups, later on, fundamentalist groups and later on more violent extremist groups throughout the region. They key problem here, they re was not just in terms of their own popularity, within their borders. The Muslim Brotherhood in 2011, 12, 3040 of the vote, but more importantly i think they were able to dictate the parameters of the discussion in terms of the policy issues that were ongoing. They arise, influenced secular groups, nonreligious groups, political groups, so much so that they felt the need to bring in religion to the own discussions, to their own sort of policy proposals so to speak. One good example is whats happened in turkey today. Erdogan and akp have come to power in 2002, and hes a massive politician like he has been so successful in terms of changing the political system in turkey, in such a way that the secular parties are unable to determine the agenda, political agenda. They are unable to discuss issues in a way outside of the parameters set by erdogan himself. And one problem here is that if you think about this in terms of religious competition on the framework of religious competition, that means you or political, both religious and nonreligious, will try to cater to the demands, religious demands because people will want more of that, that it carries currency and lyrical debate. But erdogan has not been uniformly successful. He was successful in growing the economy in the early years, and but he has run into more trouble now and he has run into political pushback. So, i mean, islam, do you see them using islam in his religious police more as a Political Tool to advance his political career or do you think that this is just so indigenous to the people of turkey that every politician Going Forward is going to have to encompass religious beliefs more into their way of right. I cant speak to his personal belief. Thats beyond my sort of focus as a political scientist. What i can tell you, religion is an important element of his political discourse. When we look at overtime, changes in terms of the intensity that emphasizes religion in the political discourse. If you look at the time until 2011, 12, 13, from 2001 when the party was first established, religion differently as significant a role. But once his political prospects were i think receiving as a result of the Corruption Scandal first and then later on the other issues that have come up, losing elections to some degree, then he started actually using more religion, partly because he wanted to bring in some of the more conducive element especially among the kurdish voters in turkey and some of the nationalist vote. What we see is depending on the time he has used religious discourse. This is really important. This is also for other leaders in the region. Going back to the issue brian mentioned about tunisia, i fully agree. A dollar spent in tunisia is going to go much further compared other parts of the world in terms of Foreign Policy. Because its a newly democratize contacts and what is underline overall support for a lot of these political groups is economic and political issues. Once those issues are addressed first and foremost, i think were most likely going to see a decrease in their support that thats