I think what you mentioned is extremely important. A lot of times I get the feeling that a lot of effort is going into restoring the status quo ante. That is not sustainable.
What needs to be done...and I also have to say that we have to be very careful. I was being interviewed once recently and I used the expression “military solution” and then I stopped myself and I said, ”No, that's an oxymoron”. There is no military solution. Military action can provide a space, some quiet, and an opportunity, but the solutions have to be in terms of infrastructure, civil society, and education.
For example, one of the things that are very lacking throughout the Middle East is the concept of citizen, and that's the basis of pluralistic society. Until that is developed, we talk about democracy, but democracy without a notion of citizenship can end up being the tyranny of the majority, which we have seen in places.
So I think, first of all, we have to realize that the control we have over that region is quite modest at best. We have to keep a safe place—that's clear—and that may take military action, as long as we realize that's not the solution.
Once we have the safe place for society to develop, we need a civil society in which every citizen is equal and every citizen has an equal stake, and that is not the case in the Middle East now. Excuse the sexism, but it's every man for himself. So that has to change. There's no tradition of that. It's not like France after World War II, which went through a terrible destabilization but could go back to a society that had existed. That is not there in the Middle East. We're really starting from point zero.
The other thing is that we should not simply assume that the countries that we inherited in the Middle East are the countries that are going to remain. It's easily possible that there would be a reconfiguration of borders and political units there. We have to not necessarily promote that—no, that's not our job—but we have to be aware that it might very well happen.