Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has described the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab Al Mandeb strait due to the Iran war as “a very big concern”, adding that “every country on the planet is affected by [their] closure”.
The global disruption “is a sign of our times”, Mr Eide said in an interview with The National on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. “That war, but also the war in Ukraine, with the effective closing of much of the Black Sea, has global consequences,” he added.
Mr Eide, who previously served as Norway’s minister of defence, said those recent wars were “in contrast to most of the wars over the last 30 years, [which] were terrible if you lived there, but you didn't really register here at the New York Stock Exchange”.
Addressing the global economic fallout, Mr Eide said: “We are a seafaring nation and we are a trading nation. We experience that our ships and other countries' ships are blocked; that transport gets much more expensive, that it's interrupted.”
The consequence is a “less effective world, less peaceful but also less economically prosperous world", he warned. "That means that some countries will have GDP reduction, some countries will have less growth, and this is a problem for everyone”.
No 'complete military victory'
The Norwegian Foreign Minister said the Iran war “demonstrates the limitations of military power. You can have a lot of capacity to blow up things with precision-guided missiles, but that's not the purpose of war.”
“As a former minister of defence, I know that the purpose of military tools is either to deny someone to do what they would otherwise have done, or it is to force them to do something they wouldn't otherwise have done. If you can't check on either of those, you have failed, and I'm afraid that we're seeing the limitations of warfare.”
The war on Iran failed to achieve tangible objectives, and same is true of the war in Ukraine, Mr Eide said.
“From Russia's perspective, this was supposed to be a special military operation lasting days or weeks, and here we are, way into the fifth year, and they have control of 20 per cent of Ukraine's territory. In my view, that's 20 per cent too much, but it also means that they failed to conquer 80 per cent.”
Here again “the limitations of military power is what is being demonstrated”.
Mr Eide warned that “every day this war continues, it gets harder to rebuild”.
Asked what it would take to achieve peace, he said: “It has to be a lasting peace … we know very well from history that the way a war ends casts long shadows on the following years, and the postwar eras tend to be longer than the wars, and it's very hard to change things once a peace agreement is signed.”
Mr Eide stressed the importance of mediation and peace to end the war in Ukraine. “All wars end, so someday … this war will end with some kind of agreement. There's no reason to think that either side will have a complete military victory.”
'Gaza is largely stuck'
The same applies to much of the Middle East. Mr Eide described the situation in Palestine as “a very bleak picture”.
“Gaza is not moving forward. Of course, the war ended of sorts, but there's still killing going on.”
He said the Board of Peace, established by US President Donald Trump in an attempt to transition the government of Gaza, “is struggling to really get movement there; despite the fact that there is an agreement about the demobilisation of Hamas, it hasn't really yielded the results we were hoping some months ago”.
While “Gaza is largely stuck, which is tragic in itself”, he added that “the onslaught in the West Bank by violent Israeli settlers, where we see extreme violence against the Palestinians, is in many ways politically even worse”.
While the level of violence is not at the extreme witnessed in Gaza, “the political consequence is that this is undermining what we actually have of a Palestinian state”, Mr Eide said.
However, support at the UN level and among member states is high, with 157 countries recognising Palestine as a state. “Paradoxically, we are in a situation where a Palestinian state is further away on the ground than ever before, while it's becoming more popular here than ever before,” he said.
Norway, which hosted the Oslo Accords in 1993, “is very committed, more than most countries” to establishing a two-state solution, Mr Eide said. Even so, “I'm the first one to say that we're very far away from the goal”, he added.
Asked whether the Israeli elections will affect the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, he said: “I don't think [we] will have a government which is pro two-state solution, but maybe somewhat easier to talk to.”
However, he also expressed concern about the coming days, saying: “I'm worried that things might even get worse before the election because some of the parties in the government seem to try to double down on some of their, in my view, quite extreme policies as we move to the election.”
Mr Eide made a point of saying that “although it's publicly known that I'm quite critical of this Israeli government, I like the country, I like the people, but I've seen a very, very strong shift to the right”.
He voiced concern that “it's a long way to go before Israelis recognise that their path to a safe future lies in also allowing their neighbours, the Palestinians, to have their own state and then to live in peace together with them”.
'New Syria being built'
Mr Eide was recently in Syria where he met with President Ahmad Al Shara, and said the country was “on the right track”. He added: “I have to say I am quite impressed by what President Al Shara and his team is doing.” In recent days, there have been protests in Syria due to rising costs, especially with measures to reduce fuel subsidies. Mr Eide said: “It's no surprise that you have economic worries and protests … this is a country that has more than 13 years of a really, really brutal civil war … and 50 years of dictatorship”.
Describing his first meeting with Mr Al Shara weeks after the latter came to power, he said: “He told me that what he wanted to build is a Syria that is inclusive for all Syrians, but not sectarian.”
Mr Eide lauded the Syrian government’s efforts to avoid “conflating political parties with ethnic groups … that is what they are beginning to achieve”. He added: “I see that more and more of these different groups are actually signing up to this project. Of course, many things can go wrong, but it could also go right.”
He believes it is important to “clearly give Al Shara and the new government the benefit of the doubt and try to help with not only humanitarian aid but also early investments, trying to show that there is a peace dividend, that there is real economic progress coming out of peace”.
In Syria, “the old state is gone, and a new state is being built. This is really hard work, and that means you need to consolidate power.” Mr Eide explained. He made it clear that consolidation is crucial “before you can create an inclusive and more or less democratic society”.
That is something the wider region should support, the Norwegian Foreign Minister said. “I think all the neighbours should be happy that this time we have a Syrian leader who cares about Syria, not about everything else, not what's happening in Lebanon, for instance, allowing the Lebanese to find their own way, and I hope that other neighbours like Israel can also respect that this might actually be a strong state, but a strong state for good.”
Mr Eide contrasted the situation in Syria with that of Lebanon, which he also recently visited. “It's interesting to contrast because in Syria you have a state-building exercise, basically building from scratch, going reasonably well. In Lebanon, we have an established state that is weakened by the fact that they're not able to exercise authority in the south of the country because either Israel or Hezbollah or a mixture of both are more powerful than the legitimate government.”
The Norwegian minister voiced his support for a new international force in Lebanon, as the mandate of the UN force, Unifil, finishes at the end of this year. “Going from a relatively large UN peacekeeping mission to nothing is not healthy.”
