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If events in the Middle East seem to take you by surprise, don’t feel alone. Edward S. “Ned” Walker spent the better part of his career as a diplomat working in the Arab world and Israel. He is the only U.S. diplomat ever to serve as ambassador to Egypt and to Israel. Over the course of three decades he worked with the likes of Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright at the State Department and the United Nations, focusing on Middle East policy.
During his diplomatic postings he worked closely, at various times, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Egyptian Presidents Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. He has worked directly with both the current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.
Still, Walker was in Egypt just one week before the January 2011 uprising in Tahrir Square that toppled Mubarak’s dictatorship. Even with all that background, he admitted, “I can honestly say I had no idea what was coming.” What was coming was a ripple of popular uprisings, some violent, some non-violent, that toppled longstanding regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, and sparked what now appears to have evolved into a prolonged civil war in Syria.
“We weren’t paying attention,” said Walker, 72, who will be speaking at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica on Tuesday, Oct. 2, at 5:30 p.m. “It {preparations for the Egyptian protests} was all happening on social media, and we weren’t watching. Social media hadn’t been noticed back then.”
Another social media phenomenon, YouTube, played a role in the more recent series of events that led to the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which left four people dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens. The flames of that protest were fanned by activists who charged that the film The Innocence of Muslims denigrated the prophet Muhammed.
Walker, who knew and admired Stephens, said that the ambassador’s death never should have happened. “He should not have been there without proper security. It’s clear that if you had to do it over again, you wouldn’t let him go there the way he did. Part of it is that Chris was very dynamic. He didn’t like security—none of us {diplomats} do. It isolates you from the people. Another aspect is that he had come to Benghazi as our representative to the Benghazi rebels. They were his friends, and they still are.”
Walker, who left the State Department in 2001 and is currently teaching a course on the role of culture in foreign policy at Hamilton College in Clinton, argued that while the trailer for the film The Innocence of Muslims may have ignited the protests, the fuel for the firestorm it unleashed had been building up for years. “This {film} was a very small operation,” Walker told The New Times in a telephone interview from his office, “not a legitimate effort. The director was a porn director, the producer had been in jail. They threw it out there in July and it just sat there for two months until somebody picked it up and translated it.
“It wasn’t any mystery that it caused this kind of violence. Look at the background: We are not that popular in the region. The bad feelings are a holdover from our claims of exceptionalism and the {George W.} Bush invasion of Iraq,” which Walker referred to undiplomatically as a “stupid idea.”
“There is a feeling that the invasion of Iraq was not justified, and that sovereignty should stand for something. This is a region with fresh memories of colonialism, and there is a widespread fear that what we are seeking in the region is not democracy, but political control.”
A Philadelphia native, Walker is a 1962 graduate of Hamilton College, where he currently holds a chair as the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Global Political Theory. His 35 years in the foreign service included postings to Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
If you go to hear him, you might want to ask a question about Iranian nuclear ambitions. He is convinced that nation is seeking nuclear weapons and that the United States and Israel differ only on the timing of a potential attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Or consider his views on Syria, where he believes America has no good options for influencing the strife.
“This is a conflict that both sides perceive as a fight to the death. If the Sunnis overcome the Alawites {Assad’s minority ethnic group}, the Alawites will be hanging in the streets or become completely marginalized,” he said. This is clearly a guy with a lot to say about one of the world’s most troubled regions.
Munson-Williams-Proctor is located at 310 Genesee St., Utica. Admission to the lecture is $10. For more information, call 797-0000 or visit www.mwpai.org.
