Elliott Abrams, Council On Foreign Relations

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ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SENIOR FELLOW FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, TALKS ABOUT LIBYA AT BLOOMBERG SURVEILLANCE

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

SPEAKERS:

TOM KEENE, BLOOMBERG SURVEILLANCE HOST

KEN PREWITT, BLOOMBERG SURVEILLANCE CO-HOST

ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SENIOR FELLOW FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

8:37

TOM KEENE, BLOOMBERG SURVEILLANCE HOST: From the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams. Good morning.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SENIOR FELLOW FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Good morning.

KEENE: What has changed over the weekend? I mean it becomes a blur. I think we become numbed to so much of this. What has changed over the weekend?

ABRAMS: Two things. One, Gaddafi is not doing well. His efforts to strike back and crush this rebellion don't seem to be working and you do get virtually unanimous world condemnation and action against him in the UN.

Secondly, it looks as if there is a shipment of oil from the eastern part of Libya as you were mentioning a couple of minutes ago. That's new.

The third thing I guess is we see the rebellions continue to spread. There was something in Oman, which is really about the sleepiest place in the whole Arab world, in addition to continue demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia. So the spirits continue to rise.

KEN PREWITT, BLOOMBERG SURVEILLANCE CO-HOST: How does the region look a year from now?

ABRAMS: Oh, boy. I think first of all it looks variegated. That is it is not going to be the same in every one of these countries. And some of them are going to be quite calm and others are not. I think it looks difficult.

That is this is not going to be a Czech Republic style velvet revolution where a year from now in every one of these countries we are going to say, oh, that's wonderful. That just looks like Vermont or New Hampshire, you know, the way the democracy is working. In a lot of places, I think there will be continued demonstrations and dissatisfaction.

And one thing that does worry me, in a place like Egypt people may be expecting magic in the economy. You know, I'm poor, I don't have a job, this will fix it. A year from now, those people will still be poor and still not have jobs. And what worries me is the possibility of kind of Argentina-style economic populism.

PREWITT: Well, in the case of Libya anyway, let's say Gaddafi falls and leaves or whatever. It's a real power vacuum, isn't there? I mean there are no trade union - no organizations really except tribes. Is that what happens? It descends into tribalism?

ABRAMS: Well, you certainly don't have the kind of society you have in Tunisia. You don't have the army the way you do in Egypt. And it may - it may descend that way. There is a little bit of hope. People do seem to be spontaneously organizing in the east.

There are some remaining officers from the free officers movement of which Gaddafi was a part that overthrew the king in 1969. If you take the prestige of a few of them and some of the notables in the society - engineers, doctors, professors - it is possible you can get some kind of provisional government.

I hope that the Europeans and we are thinking about that - meaning the White House - right now and are reaching out to people and trying to help them put together a provisional government because it may just be a matter of days before Gaddafi goes. And I don't think he leaves the country. I think frankly the way this ends is with him dead.

KEENE: Elliott Abrams, you've got a weekly standard article. You've got a lovely sentence here, "Once again silence is the right response for countries with no options and no capabilities. For the United States, the right reaction to such threats and such fears is to call Musa Kusa - (well, excuse me,) the right reaction here is to do more than silence." Explain that, please. What would you like to see from the administration?

ABRAMS: Well, the administration has been, in my view, behind the eight ball for days. It was very quiet when the Arabs and Europeans were denouncing Gaddafi, the United States was not doing much.

And the reason the administration kept saying was there are Americans in Libya and we have to be silent until they are out. Well, the striking thing about that was the Europeans weren't silent and they had people in Libya. The Arabs weren't silent. They had people in Libya.

When we finally got our people out, we did it by a ferry that sat there for three days and then was able to move. You know, the Chinese sent a gun boat and so did several of the European countries. My feeling was that we looked weak. That we looked afraid of Gaddafi.

Musa Kusa is the intelligence chief and now foreign minister. And what I thought we should do is to call him up on the phone and tell him touch an American, take an American hostage and you are a dead man. I think that is the kind of language Gaddafi and his henchmen understand a lot better than diplomacy and careful restraint in language.

PREWITT: Well, as you put it in your Wall Street Journal op-ed recently, Musa Kusa, his suave and murderous intelligence chief, Michigan State University class of '78.

ABRAMS: Yes, Musa Kusa is really quite a debonair fellow, perfect English, well dressed, expensive suits. And, you know, a Spartan fan I suppose.

But a lot of American blood on his hands. This is the guy behind PanAm 103, the plane that they blew up in the sky over Lockerbie. It is quite a crew.

KEENE: When you look at the crew of nations of the Middle East, one thing I noticed this weekend, Elliott, from people from all persuasions is they are pretty much exhausted by it. What is the self-help prescription for the Middle East?

You know, to get out, you think of Albert Hourani and you go through a colonial stage and a little bit of true capitalism in Egypt maybe in the middle part of the last century. Do you see a self-help prescription across the Middle East.

ABRAMS: You know, one of the good things about the way these revolts have played out is that they are all coming from within. Arab regimes have fallen when we knocked them over, for example, Iraq.

This is not coming from outside. This is not long lines of the history of colonialism or of American intervention. This is entirely internal and spontaneous. And that shows the kind of life for -

KEENE: Right.

ABRAMS: - Arab society that we haven't seen in a very long time.

KEENE: Well, are we, Elliott, unfortunately we are short on time here, but are we just slaves to our oil policy here? Is that all we are really talking about?

ABRAMS: We have been too much, and I hope that one of the things that this teaches is yet again to move away from the dependence on Arab oil. The oil producers have generally been some of the most retrograde countries when it comes to reform.

They just spend all that money to buy off public support. The king of Saudi Arabia did it again today, to spend some of the reserve. That is not a substitute for reform, and I wish they - it would be better for them as well as for us if they would learn that lesson.

KEENE: Let's leave it there. Elliott Abrams, thank you so much, the Council on Foreign Relations. Ken, that's not talk you usually see in the op-eds. Tough talk there.

PREWITT: Yes.

***END OF TRANSCRIPT***

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