Former U.S. Ambassador David Litt spoke about the conflict in the Middle East in D.H. Hill’s auditorium Wednesday, Sept. 23. Litt spent 34 years serving as a U.S. Diplomat, stationed in various locations including Niger, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He received his undergraduate degree in history and French from UNC-Chapel Hill and his graduate degree in international studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
How much did your education prepare you for your station in the Middle East versus your on-the-ground experience? Would you say one helped more than the other?
DL: My academic experience helped me not at all for my foreign service career, and I’ll tell you why. At Carolina, I majored in history, and I studied a lot of European languages. Then I went to graduate school and focused on European studies. My very first foreign service assignment was in Italy, and my very last foreign service assignment was in Germany 34 years later. Everything in between has been about the Middle East and Africa, and that was only by happenstance.
How did your experiences in the Middle East shape your opinion about how the Middle East is discussed in the United States?
DL: I frequently find myself curtailing my anger [when] what I read in newspapers or hear on the broadcast media references, with regard to some development in the Middle East, to something that happened four or five years ago. It is said as if that is past history, as if that is what happened way back, and in fact, that is such a very narrow window of time through which to assess development in an area especially an area such as the Middle East. The experiences that I’ve had in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and in Syria in the 1980s have shown to me that what they are experiencing today has its roots deep into history. Certainly the experiences I had 30 years ago are eminently relevant to not only what is happening today, but what potential solutions [can be found] for those societies.
How do you think we can improve the way we discuss the Middle East?
DL: I don’t know the answer to that. I think that the more input we get from credible experts and reliable practitioners of foreign policy, whether they are in the military or in diplomatic life, in intelligence services or in any of the other disciplines that have become part and parcel of our foreign policy toolbox today, as well as academia and the assessments of people that have studied the history of political Islam, for example, will tell us that what we are seeing today is not a new phenomenon.
Many cases can be traced back to the late 19th century when Islam, as a political force, was experiencing a revival from its heyday in the 10th, 11th [and] 12th centuries but those philosophers [and] political advocates, were effectively suppressed from being able to share their ideas in the commons. That led to where we are today in terms of erupting onto the political scene and, frankly, with some ideas that are kind of crazy, some ideas that are well within the observation of a political movement, and they’re all mixed up together, so we have to tease out, and the Muslim world itself needs to tease out what is and what isn’t relevant to them, what is abhorrent behavior [and] what is reasonable behavior. How do we provide accountability in our own society?
What do you think about the possible foreign policies of the presidential candidates? Do any stick out to you?
DL: No, not really to the extent that any candidates focus on the threats to our planet. What societies do over the next few decades will be determinant for the health of our planet and our ability as societies to negotiate with each other. The effective use of the commons will be critical. So, if a candidate is talking about that in a constructive way, then I think that is important. But, the other thing that I think is really relevant, especially for the conduct of diplomacy, is that diplomacy is executed by career professionals. The Department of State, such as the CIA, NSA and the U.S. military, are organizations that require effective leadership, and not just by smart policy people, but rather, by leaders who know how to utilize the institutional expertise of the organizations they command to carry out an effective foreign policy.
What specifically do you think are those environmental threats in the Middle East?
DL: I think the environmental threats in the Middle East are really confined to the population of the Middle East, and that is particularly the proper regulation of water. Water is a disappearing resource in the Middle East, whether we are talking about the Levant or the Arabian Peninsula, especially Yemen. [Yemen is] possibly the first country to run out of water. These are dramatic developments that do not rise to the level of importance in the American media, but they are critical for the people who live there. The role of hydrocarbons is important for those environments. As the international community, we need to shift from the use of heavy fossil fuels, such as kerosene [and] diesel, towards lighter fractions of natural gas and then beyond to where we don’t use fossil fuels at all. These societies are totally dependant on the production of fossil fuels for their income. I think a good example is the UAE, who I think have conducted policies that diversify its economy, and it’s now one of the leaders in the services and intellectual domain, certainly in the Middle East.
What can students do to become more involved with the situation in the Middle East?
DL: It’s not just history, political science and international affairs that are the ones that can inform our foreign policy, even though those are all important. I would of course put an even greater emphasis on history because I believe that the foundations of our foreign policy are located in historical legacy around the world of policies in Africa, Latin America, East Asia and the Middle East for sure. But, other disciplines are increasingly becoming prominent for a successful American foreign policy in the future, whether in the hard sciences — physics, biology, biochemistry — or in some of the social sciences: sociology, anthropology, communications, cultural studies and language studies of course. All of these will contribute to the issues that the United States will be a world leader in sciences and medicine.
What do you think the next big area of conflict and focus will be?
DL: All parts of our globe, as a unity, are fair game for people who want to contribute to the future of American policy. There will be developments everywhere that are relevant to the security of our nation, that of our allies and the health of the planet as a whole.
