Iran's Tough Neiborhood and Efforts at Citizen Diplomacy

On the first of October, there was a meeting here in Geneva of diplomats from Iran along with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council”” China, Russia, the USA, France, Britain ”” and Germany which has been involved with negotiations on the nuclear program of Iran ”” and the Foreign Affairs representative of the European Union. A follow up meeting is planned for the end of October.

Obviously, diplomats do not say more to the representatives of Non-governmental Organizations than they say to the press. Thus I have no greater “inside information” than what has been reported in the serious media. However, the start of negotiations in Geneva brought to the city a host of well-informed journalists who joined a reasonably large number of local academics specialized on the Middle East and the permanent UN press corps used to high level negotiations. Thus there were useful conversations over more wine than the strict Muslim codes would approve.

There was a general feeling that holding the negotiations at all was a good sign and a start of a lowering of tensions. The negotiations are likely to continue beyond the two meetings in October in Geneva, and there are likely to be informal discussions at the UN in New York as the UN General Assembly is now in session.

The Security Council session chaired by President Obama and its resolution on working toward a world free of nuclear weapons has focused world attention on larger nuclear issues in a way that it has not since the late 1980s when the US-USSR Cold War was coming to an end. The Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama has added to considerations of nuclear-weapon policies.

Thus it was natural that talk among observers of the Iran negotiations largely concerned the nuclear program of Iran, enrichment of nuclear fuel, and what an Iranian nuclear weapon ”” if it were developed”” would mean for regional politics. Would the oil-rich neighbors seek a “nuclear umbrella” from the United States? Might they develop nuclear weapons of their own? What about the considerable nuclear arms of Israel?

With the emphasis on nuclear weapons, less attention was given to Iran’s “tough neighbourhood”, what I call the “current of instability” ”” a subtle energy current that runs from Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran-Iraq-Israel-Palestine-Lebanon-Syria. Each conflict and set of tensions has its local causes and history, but a shock in one sends an energy flow all along the line.

I would like to look briefly at what citizen diplomacy such as that carried out by FOR and other NGOs can do to take advantage of what we hope is a new willingness on the part of governments to negotiate. In a second, follow up blog, I will look at some examples of US-USSR citizen diplomacy and what we might learn that is useful from the efforts during the Cold War.

If my hypothesis of a “current of instability” is correct, then we have to look for efforts from States that have an interest in restoring stability or at least in not having things get worse. The stability-seeking States I see as China, Russia, India and Turkey. The US, England and France would also wish stability, but their largely military approach contributes more to instability than stability.

Of the stability-seeking neighbors of Iran, NGOs have little impact on the policy making of the governments of China, Russia or Turkey. Only India has a well-developed citizen diplomacy network, mostly due to persistent tensions with Pakistan. However, there are no India-China efforts, and contacts that existed between Indian NGOs and the USSR have largely dried up.

Therefore, citizen diplomacy efforts which include persons from only the USA and Iran are too narrow, though necessary as a first step, given the long break in US-Iranian government relations. It is necessary to reach out to individuals and groups working on policy questions in China, Russia, India, Turkey as well as people in the nearest circle of the “current of instability””” Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran. Increased violence and instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan do not make such efforts easy, but they make them all the more necessary. There is a need for FOR, IFOR and allied NGOs to evaluate their contacts for such geographically broad-based citizen diplomacy.