Columbia professor Gary Sick believes Iran's nuclear program is growing, U.S.-Iran relations are getting worse and the United States' will continue to expand its formal presence in the Persian Gulf region.
Sick -- a professor of international affairs at Columbia University and a former National Security Council member under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan -- delivered the keynote speech of the "Borders, Battles and Cultural Bonds" conference at Penn last Friday.
Sick's speech traced the history of U.S. foreign policy in the Persian Gulf, beginning with the placement of troops in the region during World War II.
He noted, though, that at first the U.S. was hesitant to become involved with the politics of the Gulf region.
"Even when the British withdrew [from the Persian Gulf] in 1971, the United States did not rush to fill that vacuum," he said.
Sick explained that the reason the U.S. eventually assumed a position of power was in the "context of the spread of the Soviet Union," although he said that access to oil in the Gulf was "always the number-one issue."
He continued with an explanation of the relationship between the U.S. and Iran during the Nixon and Carter administrations. The 1979-1981 Iranian hostage crisis revealed that the United States' "strategic position in the area was collapsing."
Sick also gave the audience an analysis of U.S. policy during the Reagan administration, stating that "the Reagan administration put a lot of meat on the bones of" Carter's Persian Gulf policies.
It was during the Clinton administration, however, that Sick said he observed "the formal entrance of the U.S. into the Persian Gulf as a sustained military power."
Although Sick said he was reluctant to speak about current U.S. policy in the Gulf, he did express his belief that "we have moved from a position as leading internationalist ... to a position of distrust" in multi-lateral treaties.
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet -- one of the conference's organizers and a professor of Middle East history at Penn -- believed that Sick was the right choice for their keynote speaker because "it is important to bring to the floor the historical context" of current policy.
College sophomore Dylan McGarry felt that Sick's speech gave "a very different perspective from what you get today."
"It's not often you get to hear someone speak who has lived through those generations," he said, referring to Sick's involvement in multiple presidential administrations.
