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Former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker offered "Lessons from a Long War: Engagement in the Broader Middle East," based on his experience in the region Sept. 30 at Princeton University.

Crocker, a Princeton alumnus who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in the Middle East, served as ambassador to Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait before recently stepping down as the ambassador to Iraq.

Speaking at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Crocker began his talk by defining the countries that make up the Middle East, an area he called "difficult to define" and its definition varies between government departments.

"It is a challenging region, and the challenge starts simply by defining it," Crocker said before explaining that the region he calls the Middle East, which extends as far west as Morocco and "goes through the Arab world, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan," has more than the region in common.

"The countries I described carried some systemic characteristics," Crocker said. "We help ourselves in thinking in terms of this broader region. It is important to bear in mind that in many respects, this is how our most determined adversaries define [the Middle East], al-Qaeda in particular."

One of the main characteristics Crocker discussed was the Western presence in nearly every country in the region that "has a fundamental impact in shaping Middle Eastern political culture."

Beginning with the Crusades in the 1100s and continuing through the Ottoman Empire to British and French colonization to the recent U.S. involvement in the region, Crocker said that the "interaction has more often than not been a violent one, and particularly in recent times, that violence has occurred in the lands of the Middle East and not the West."

Crocker marked the modern period of the Western presence in the Middle East from Napoleon's quest into Egypt in the 1700s, starting centuries of French and British presence in the region.

"Most Americans have no idea that Napoleon was even in Egypt," Crocker said, referring to "ahistorical" Americans who do not understand Middle Eastern history. "He wasn't there very long, but the decline of the Ottoman Empire led to an era in which we saw at different times the West broadly penetrating into the greater Middle East," expanding from the British and France in Egypt, France and Italy in North Africa, and the British presence in Afghanistan, India, and Israel. "As one looks at this road sweep of the world, it is highly noteworthy, with exception of part of Saudi Arabia, that this entire area has been occupied by someone else's army at least once."

Crocker said that this historical background is one of the "historical forces" that comes into play in the current Iraq war, which he believes is still in its beginning stages.

"It wasn't so much that the planning was inadequate, but it was that by undertaking an operation of such magnitude, we were entering a large, dark cavern," Crocker said.

Crocker believes that disengaging now would put America's enemies in control of Iraq, hurting America's interests in the long run, but that things are "tracking in a reasonable direction," mainly due to the 2006 troop surge that helped control sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia sects in Iraq. According to Crocker, ending sectarian violence helped elect Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and created a platform for him that was not sectarian, an idea that resonated well with Iraqis "who had been through the horrors of sectarian violence."

As the Iraqis elect their own government and work out a constitution and body of law, the U.S. and the Iraqis worked out two agreements at the end of 2008: a security agreement and a pledge to be out of the region by 2011. Crocker, who was chief negotiator of the agreements, said that they contained the framework of a fundamentally different relationship between Iraq and the West in general.

"After that, you literally saw Iraq move off the front pages and fade from national debate," Crocker said. "I knew we wouldn't move from bad news to good news, but moving from bad news to no news was better than nothing."

Some of the term's agreements include an initiative to send young Iraqis to Western colleges and an improvement of relations between Iraq and Turkey, which Crocker called "significant" because of Turkey's membership in the European Union and its position as a founding member of NATO.

Crocker also worked with Iraq's neighbors to possibly engage with Iraq.

"When I arrived in Iraq, we had zero Arab ambassadors," Crocker said. "When I left, there were five. There is an opportunity to reshape those relations, but that requires cooperation on both sides, and there's hesitation still."

Regarding Afghanistan, Crocker believes that a "strategy of commitment" is necessary for success in Afghanistan.

"The current debate and the uncertainty it generates is causing... our adversaries to be encouraged," Crocker said. "[They believe] that a bit more pressure and pain and we will go home, and that's exactly what will happen, doubly so in the case of Pakistan."

Crocker also addressed Iran's nuclear capability during his speech. Since Crocker's talk, Iran met with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which includes the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France, and also met with Germany to discuss its recently revealed nuclear development site.

"The overarching question is what to do about Iran's nuclear quest," Crocker said. "As a self-perceived great power, Iran traditionally sought to inject power in other places... the Shah [frequently] demonstrated to the region that he had the capability to use Iranian force outside of Iran's border (in the form of helping other countries with their military campaign)."

Knowing that Iran believes itself to be a great power, Crocker said that anyone who rules Iran, not just current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will believe that Iran is entitled to acquire nuclear power.

"This is not just a whim of the Islamic rulers of Tehran," Crocker said. "It's a more difficult issue for us to get it.... I think it will emerge as a more troubling question for the Obama administration than either Iraq or Afghanistan will over time."