The "soft kill" on Iran--not so crazy?
Wednesday, February 1, 2006 at 3:49AM Buddy Michale Lotus blogs this segment from Bush's State of the Union last night (seems I am always flying somewhere during these big speeches!):
"Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity. The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people. The regime in that country sponsors terrorists in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon – and that must come to an end. The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions – and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian
regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats. And tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our Nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran."
This strikes me as a big signal in a big speech: We'll push your leadership on the nukes, and you Iranians do what you can on the inside. To me, that's taking regime change by force off the table for now, and I think that's Bush listening to his military and understanding that we don't have the ability, with the current tie-down of assets elsewhere, to make that a credible threat.
I am thinking more and more that Bush is done, major intervention-wise, for his presidency. Question now is whether Iran or North Korea dominate a 2008 election debate. The "winner" is probably teed-up next for some sort of big push leading toward military action. I would prefer that target to be North Korea, and not Iran, for a lot of reasons I've already stated in this blog.
If I were advising Democrats or Republicans, I would say: pick North Korea and kill two birds with one stone (bad Kim and win over China in strategic alliance in the process). On Iran, I think you risk creating two monsters (Iran you can't manage and China turned against you in the region). I would take the win-win over the lose-lose. And hopefully smart candidates, thinking about how they would actually rule and not just how they'd get elected, would see things similarly.
Read Lotus on this on Chicago Boyz: http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003898.html. As always, he is smart as a whip. His version of Fourth-Generation War I would actually wage.
UPDATE: Lotus continues in this vein.
Reader Comments (13)
"...understanding that we don't have the ability, with the current tie-down of assets elsewhere..."
I'm of the opinion (albeit uninformed maybe) that any plan to set back Iran's nuclear program wouldn't involve ground troops but a barrage of bunker buster bombs.
Our ground troops surely are tied up in Iraq, but I can't imagine we couldn't pull off a rather significant air strike if needed. I wasn't aware our heavy bombers were tied up in Iraq...?
And I don't see the Navy being too tied up in Iraq either.
Steven,
I don't think that would work. First, we don't know where all the sites are, so even if we hit a few that would only retard Iran's nuclear program for a couple of years. Second, if you are arguing that we could take the leadership down using only our airforce and navy, then you've missed the lesson of Iraq, mainly, that thanks to our Leviathan force, we can win any war against any opponent, hence that opponent is more likely to engage us not in the war phase of the campaign, but rather in the peace phase, which means that to defeat it we will need boots on the ground to either prevent, or crush any insurgency. We failed to do this in Iraq, and assumed that defeating the Iraqi army in the war phase of the invasion was enough to win, but ran straight into the wall that became the insurgency.
nykrindc,
I do in fact think we could retard their program and set it back a couple of years, which would give more time to any diplomatic solution. I don't think regime change is something on the table, certainly not short-term.
My primary point is, just because our ground troops are tied up in Iraq, doesn't mean we couldn't strike from the air, the effect of that of course is debatable.
I do in fact think we could retard their program and set it back a couple of years, which would give more time to any diplomatic solution.
But we get the same outcome following this strategy at a much lower cost.
I don't think that military intervention in the form of bombs is "hard kill", otherwise we killed Saddam with Desert Fox under Clinton. If that were the case, what was he doing in power afterwards? Heck what was he doing in power after Osirak many years prior?
I think that the hard kill, if it's going to happen anytime soon is going to be an intra-Shia affair. Sistani & co fundamentally believe that Khomeinism is a Shia heresy. A fatwa comes out to that effect and preaches revolution, the students go out into the streets, certain key elements of the repressive apparatus swaps sides and we have a new regime in Iran.
This scenario is hardly soft kill but it is also not going to sap the strength of our military in a further SysAdmin effort. I don't see President Bush's speech taking this scenario off the table. It could even be viewed as mildly encouraging of it.
TM Lutas,
Actually, I believe you are incorrect. Shiism has many different schools of thought. Sistani's, like Khomeini's are merely just the two most influential. Sadr belongs to the Khomeini school and this explains the rivalry between Sistani and Sadr in Iraq.
The most relevant form of Shiism here is Twelver Shiism. As Col. Pat Lang, from Sic Semper Tyrannis has said, in this branch of Shiism
This is what happened with regard to Ayatollah Khomeini with regard to the concept of the “Rule of the Religious Scholar.”Fellow Mujtahids disagreed and refused to endorse his doctrine, but this did not mean that they considered him a heretic.
I think your scenario could be plausible only if Sistani himself believed in a doctrine similar to Khomeini's where Mujtahids could rule. The fact is that he does not. That is the source of the disagreement of the two schools of thought.
The real problem I see with Iran is, as Barnett points out, China.
Even an airstrike would cause a ripple in China's economy that the current leadership can't afford to have happen. Energy shortages could easily screw up production capabilities and:
1. put a lot of Chinese out of work
2. reduce the Chinese standard of living that is keeping them relatively docile
3. cause a Chinese banking crash
4. all of the above
No matter what the outcome or its intensity, a downturn in the Chinese economy would certainly cause alot of Chinese to wonder whether their plight might somehow be the fault of their Government. And they're not about to let that happen.
Nope, we will eventually beat the Iranians by working from the inside out, doing what we do best, i.e. being a decadent (but very fun and profitable) cultural influence.
Let's load up those B-52s with belly button rings and 50 Cent CDs, and ROLL...
nykrindc - Here's what informed me on Khomeinism:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/4822
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/5835
Lest you think that this is just an isolated opinion, Juan Cole (who isn't from the same political faction) recognizes that Sistani rejects Khomeinism here:
http://www.agenceglobal.com/article.asp?id=153
You can get a great many good articles by googling for "Sistani Khomeinism" (no quotes).
There was a great confusion among the romans for decades as to whether christians were just a funny sort of jew or they were something entirely different. I think that Khomeinism's unique use of the term Imam for Khomeini is a huge signal, a signal that many in the West have not picked up. It would be like a modern christian religious leader starting to call himself "The Son of Man". The buddhists might not get it right away but any serious christian would in a heartbeat as an announcement of the end times and the arrival of the eschaton.
Combine that end times signalling with secular power and nuclear ambitions and you have an explosive scenario. Khomeinism is an explosive scenario and an aggressive heresy.
RVanValkenburg - It is very unclear whether the PRC understands the danger. The Cultural Revolution burned out their domestic gods and traditions and nothing has replaced them. Look at the recent campaigns against superstition and Falun Gong and you see an elite that is profoundly uncomfortable and illiterate in dealing with the language of faith.
The PRC will look and provide a road out for Tehran that would be reasonable if Tehran was sane (by PRC standards) and would profit all. Tehran, I believe, will not take the road, much to the surprise of Beijing. Beijing will be humiliated in a culture that values face in a way that perhaps Tehran does not understand anymore (since Ahmedinejad is purging the foreign ministry including the embassies).
Then what? In the end, it's a fiction that we're in a unipolar world. Other poles exist, it is just that the US pole is so much stronger than any individual rival. But the PRC cannot afford to be humiliated because it would trigger internal unrest. The PRC is looking for a way to balance all and leave everybody with enough face so that the PRC can get its own house in order. That's not the way Tehran is playing the game.
Lutas:
I'll agree with you that the Iranians may perhaps be too crazy to see the easy way out. And in saying that I will confine it to the fanatical set of mullahs and to Ahmadinejad and his group. By most accounts I've seen, the Iranian people are not nearly so bad.
I'll also agree with you that we are but the prime pole in a multipolar world. China, India and Russia are all playing for a different outcome than we are, currently. That of course suggests that to move on Iran, the U.S. needs to get serious about discussing and unifying our goals with the rest of the non-Iranian players.
All that being said, while the PRC may not understand Islamic wackiness, they definitely understand the economic underpinnings of keeping the Chinese populace under control. They may not know how to deal with Falun Gong or the rising Fundamentalist Christian groups, but I'm confident that they are keenly aware of the cause/effect relationship between pro-democracy uprisings and economic prosperity.
In the case of both the PRC and Iran it all goes back to maintenance of power. How each group of old men maintains power over a dissatisfied populace defines, IMO, the correct shape diplomacy takes.
Mullahcracy is wildly unpopular with John Q. Iranian, as a stand-alone idea. To that end, fomenting nationalism with a nuclear program and externalizing inherently internal problems makes sense if you are trying to stay in power. A population will tend not to revolt if they see their problems as coming from the U.S. or Israel, and they see their government as actively confronting these external threats. This is pretty much Authoritarianism 101.
In China however, the government can maintain power by making sure every citizen (or at least a large proportion) is enjoying a relatively comfortable existence and thus is less inclined to disrupt the status quo with a lot of pro-democracy talk. A middle class that is growing in both size and affluence is a lot less likely to revolt. So China has to keep the oil and money flowing to maintain stability.
So ultimately it boils down to this: We secure China's cooperation by protecting their power structure, and change Iran's power structure by taking actions that will not overtly make us part of the (perceived) problem. How we align those two goals (along with the variety of other goals at work here) is way over my pay grade.
Reliance on airstrikes to retard nuclear development does little to change the actual processes (they'll just keep on trying, and in more secretive and hardened ways), and nothing to address the intent of such development. IMO, that intent is what we need to be targeting, as it is much more far reaching and difficult to harden.
To effectively change the intent, we need to change the regime. That can be done through invasion or through negotiation. Invasion, aside from being logistically difficult for us and economically difficult for everyone else to go along with, makes us part of the problem. Negotiation, on the other hand, may afford us the opportunity to infiltrate both economically and culturally and do our patented Westernizing magic.
Barnett makes a similar case in the latest book. My only question after reading it is this: How do we engage people who a) have such rabid animosity to us; and b) certainly understand the historic gravitational pull of infidel trade and culture?
TM Lutas,
I understand that there is a divergent opinion on Khomenism, however, I believe those experts are wrong on this issue. The way in which Sistani may affect Iranian rule is through his influence as a separate voice within Shiia Islam. In fact, his influence as an objective Mujtahid not tainted by the corruption and repressive aparatus of the Iranian theocracy gives him far more credibility in the eyes of average Iranians, that his influence will be felt alot in time. Because he disagrees with Khomeinism, while not branding it heretical, and because the Iranian people are fed up with it, he will likely be a power channel for dissent and the eventual withering of the Iranian theocratic state. Karbala and Najaf have traditionally been very influential in the development of Shiia Islam and now that they are liberated from Hussein's dictatorship are likely to regain their position within the Shiite world. Given his influence, Sistani along with the Iranian people will likely be the best hope for the "soft kill" scenario in Iran.
RVanValkenburg - You misunderstand my point in precisely the same way I fear the PRC might. It is not that Iran is crazy. They are playing a different game, or might be playing a different game. If they are setting themselves up to immanentize the Shia eschaton, Iran's completely sane moves in that game would look random and crazy to atheists, even non-muslims because the goals would be radically different.
nykrindc - Iranian jails are filled with mullahs who would side with Sistani. Soft-kill transmitters who actually do side with Sistani will quickly join them. The Iranians have a very well developed process for handling this dating back to 1979. There is zero evidence that I've seen that they've lost the will to repress (which is what doomed Gorbachev's USSR). At worst, they'll outsource to Hezbollah goons to fill in thinning ranks of local thugs.
Sistani may try soft-kill first, may even be trying it as we speak. When such a try fails, the only alternatives for him would be a fatwa calling for revolution or ceding to the likelihood that the future of Shia for the next generation will lie with Khomeinism. Sistani may see that soft-kill is a dead end and just go directly for the hard-kill as soon as he's laid the groundwork sufficiently. I suspect that this may require radically smaller US ground forces in Iraq in order to avoid the accusation that he's a US puppet.
Lutas:
OK I misunderstood before what you were getting at. I still don't wholly agree though.
China is A LOT deeper inside Iran than we are, economically and diplomatically. If anything I fear that WE understand the goings on of the theocratically nutso set even less than the Chinese do, by force of them having up close contact we haven't had since I was in short pants.
One thing's for sure though: The Chinese have a degree of influence that we don't have, and will never have if we play our cards on this wrong. To that end, I go back to my original idea that the negotiations in this matter need to deal much more with the interests of the Chinas and Indias involved than with the Iranians themselves.
I'll also take it a step further. **OPINIONS TO FOLLOW**
I'm beginning to be more and more of a mind that Iraq was really about Iran all along. Iran is and always has been a more far reaching type of problem child than Iraq. While I won't go so far as nykrindc as to say Iraq was an overt set up for the Iranian soft kill, I think Iraq was low hanging fruit in which we could easily demonstrate an alternative to mullahcracy. Through Iraq we have the opportunity to set up an agitation factor for the Iranian people that neither Ahmadinejad nor the mullahs could exert a huge amount of direct control over.
I also see Iraq as a means to remove the battlefield against Islamic radicalism to a more Leviathan friendly locale, rather than keeping it isolated to the relatively more difficult Afghanistan. Iraq serves to bleed off 4GW manpower and political capital into an area where it can more easily be dealt with (by no means easily, but MORE easily) by our non- Sys Ops military.
I dunno if that's right or not, but I like to think the current leadership is that cagey.
BTW Lutas,
Good post on your blog about the oft maligned and misunderstood Laffer curve. Hopefully the supply side spirits will again rattle their chains in '06 and '08.
RVanValkenburg - Thanks for your kind thoughts on my Laffer curve post. If you'll look through my archives you'll also find stuff on how Iraq is very much an updated "Operation Torch" Iraq was simply the most convenient landing spot from which to launch the Big Bang. Most regimes in the ME could have been candidates and certainly do enough to create a valid cassus belli but Iraq was uniquely blessed by being in the heart of three other troublemakers (Syria, Iran, KSA) and also officially in an existing state of war with the US.
I think that the PRC has been burned out and disabled in religious analysis ever since the Cultural Revolution. Men of no faith have always been flummoxed by men of faith since forever. Without evidence to the contrary that the CCP has this kind of functionality in its politburo, I'll stay worried.