Sanctions of mass destruction v. admitting our choice on the Iranian bomb

ARTICLE: “Behind the Urgent Nuclear Diplomacy: A Sense That Iranians Will Get the Bomb; ‘Sooner or later, it’s going to happen,’ says one senior American official,” by David E. Sanger, New York Times, 6 February 2006, p. A10.

ARTICLE: “Invoking Islam’s Heritage, Iranians Chafe at ‘Oppression’ by the West: From cartoons to the nuclear impasse, a sense of victimization,” by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 6 February 2006, p. A10.

ARTICLE: “Iran Keeps Door Open to Talks, Oversight of Its Nuclear Program,” by David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, 6 February 2006, p. A4.

OP-ED: “3 Myths About the Iran Conflict,” by Mel Levine, Alex Turkeltaub and Alex Gorbansky, Washington Post, 7 February 2006, p. A21.

OP-ED: “The Promise of Liberty: The ballot is not infallible, but it has broken the Arab pact with tyranny,” by Fouad Ajami, Wall Street Journal, 7 February 2006, p. A26.

ARTICLE: “U.S. Firms See Nuclear Pact as Door to India: Critics Fear Easing Rules Would Weaken Nonproliferation Agreement,” by Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 7 February 2006, p. A4.

In my Feb 2005 Esquire piece, I basically said that Iran was getting the bomb no matter what, so the real question was, What are we going to get in return?

To many, that came off as “giving Iran the bomb!” Yes, as if we can decide such things at will. Did we “give” Pakistan, or India, or Israel, or North Korea the bomb? Or did they all just make the decision and we had to live with the consequences because we weren’t willing or able to stop that movement?

Same thing is happening with Iran, and the Bush Administration is coming to that realization. As one official put it, “Look, the Pakistanis and the North Koreans got there, and they didn’t have Iran’s money or the engineering expertise. Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. Our job is to make sure it’s later.”

That’s it? That’s our job? That’s our strategy? Our vision?

Here’s the key point: “Iran’s leaders have already noted that four other countries that the United States said should never become nuclear powers—Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea—have all made the leap and are now, with the exception of North Korea, largely accepted as members of the nuclear club.”

So the real issue remains: How to make Iran an acceptable member of the club?

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. John McCain seems ready to bomb today, which pretty much cancels him out in my mind as the next president of the United States because it reminds me, yet again, that his specialty is letting his anger rule his judgment, a skill set he puts on display with dubious regularity.

Meanwhile, Iran keeps almost shutting the door but then always leaving just open enough to signal that it’s looking not so much for a way out, but a way in. Iran wants its security guaranteed, in much the same way Pakistan’s is guaranteed, despite being the home for Osama bin Laden. Unbelievable? Letting some government that obviously allows terrorism and terrorists to flourish within its borders have nukes? Even after it’s sold them recklessly? How can America abide by this? Where are John McCain’s bombs for Pakistan?

Hmm. Probably shouldn’t get him started.

Nixon will go to Tehran, because when he does, we’ll get what we want.

Sanctions are not the answer and never will be. All they do is deprive the weak and marginal in the targeted society while further empowering the entrenched elite and often enriching them beyond all reason. Think of all the success we had with sanctions in Iraq, and then wonder why we’d ever go down that pathway again.

Ah, but what mess do we get ourselves into when we encourage democracy in the region?

Here I turn to the always intelligent Ajami:

It was not historical naivete that had given birth to the Bush administration’s campaign for democracy in Arab lands. In truth, it was cruel necessity, for the campaign was born of the terrors of 9/11. America had made a bargain with Arab autocracies, and the bargain had failed. It was young men reared in schools and prisons in the very shadow of these Arab autocracies who came America’s way on 9/11. We had been told that it was either the autocracies or the furies of terror. We were awakened to the terrible recognition that the autocracies and the terror were twins, that the rulers in Arab lands were sly men who disguised the furies of their people onto foreign lands and peoples.

This had been the truth that President Bush underscored in his landmark speech to the National Endowment for Democracy on Nov. 6, 2003, proclaiming this prudent Wilsonianism in Arab lands: “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place for stagnation, resentment and violence for export.” Nothing in Palestine, nothing that has thus far played out in Iraq, and scant little of what happened in other Arab lands, negates the truth at the heart of this push for democratic reform. The “realists” tell us that this is all doomed, that the laws of gravity in the region will prevail, that autocracy, deeply ingrained in the Arab-Muslim lands, is sure to carry the day. Modern liberalism has joined this smug realism, and driven by an animus toward the American leader waging this campaign for liberty, now assert the built-in authoritarianism of Arab society.

My only addition to this brilliant analysis is to say that Bush’s definitions of freedom and liberty need to be based first and foremost in economics. Yes to all progress in politics, but democracy without development is a recipe for long-term failure.

But points taken: this Big Banger’s faith is somewhat restored by the growing realization within the Bush administration that the military option is simply not there on Iran.

Comments

[Mark in Texas]

Ah, Dr.Barnett, the Iranians think that because they have become major oil suppliers to China and because our ground forces are so busy doing Sys Admin stuff in Iraq that we are checkmated and you agree with them.

Come on, Tom, can we use that marvelous new way of seeing the world that you have introduced to us in your books? Instead of planning for a war with China over Taiwan, lets cooperate with the Chinese so that we both get what we want.

At the same moment that our Navy and Air Force combat planes are erasing the Iranian military from existence and American tanks are rolling over the border from Iraq, dozens of US Air Force transport planes can be lifting off from Chinese air fields transporting several divisions of Chinese infantry "peacekeepers" to Iran. The Chinese have lots of experience keeping the peace in their own country and will be even less inhibited keeping the peace in Iran.

The Iranian oil fields will keep pumping, the Chinese economy will keep growing, the Iranian nuclear program will be removed to Oak Ridge and Iran becomes another Tibet.

Sounds like a win-win for everybody except the Iranian people, but I guess we just lost patience waiting for them to get rid of the mullahs. Maybe it will serve as a good object lesson for other oppressed people who's leaders have nuclear ambitions. Maybe it will also serve as a good lesson to other oppressive leaders that they should follow the example of Muamar Khadafi rather than the bunch running Iran.

[evolvedreason]

"But points taken: this Big Banger’s faith is somewhat restored by the growing realization within the Bush administration that the military option is simply not there on Iran."

You forgot to mention that the Big Banger Faith to contain Iran is not an option specifically because of the Big Banger Faith that was Iraq. If I am not mistaken weren't you one of the more vocal members of the Big Banger Faith on Iraq.

Now I will admit that I am not an expert in the area of Big Banger Faith. So if you are arguing that the Big Banger Faith on Iraq is a true faith and that the Big Banger Faith on Iran is a false faith then I am not prepared to speak to this religious question.

I do find it interesting that those who failed to see the consequence of the strategic blunder in Iraq are now willing to allow Iran to have the bomb - WOW.

[corvid]

quote: "Maybe it will serve as a good object lesson for other oppressed people who's leaders have nuclear ambitions."

mark in texas, unless youre making a sarcastic point, i think it's important to point out that the iranians have a freely elected executive, and the chinese have "peacekeepers" designed and trained to specifically to inhibit development of democracy.

Tanks, f-22's, predators, and a mix of US and chinese infantry, pounding ground in the whats currently a relatively stable and prosperous iran? thoroughly antagonizing shiites region wide? seems to me that would make the current iraqi insurgency look like a walk in the park!

[TM Lutas]

Iran's decrepit economy can't keep the gas flowing to Turkey. Is Turkey willing to come under Russian energy domination? Or is it going to demand what this regime can't deliver, an oil and gas sector that knows its business and doesn't have to bow to every corrupt mullah who wants to put a nephew on payroll?

Is Iraq's Ali Sistani going to cede Shia leadership to heretical Khomeinism? Or is he going to raise the banner of a Shia faith that is pure and unsullied by the need to directly govern from the mosques and the gargantuan corruption that has resulted from that direct rule?

We shouldn't make the mistake to merely assume that we're the only one with "hard kill" motivations and capabilities. The US going for the soft-kill doesn't mean that Iran isn't going to be going down hard.

Iran's currently got only one real friend, Russia. Russia needs Iran to be reliably loathesome so that the Central Asian republics don't just ship all their energy south through Iran, allowing massively increased exports and very short pipeline routes. This would endanger Russia's "pipeline politics" foreign policy and liberate the EU from the tentacles of Gasprom.

The PRC will deal with whoever is in power in Tehran. They have no understanding and no great like for Shia fanatics.

The EU does not wish to empower the US but has no great love for the current regime in Iran. They are highly unlikely to step in to support the current regime.

This leaves only the US. Why not just quietly play a supporting role for the indigenous/regional players who are willing to engineer the hard kill? What would wrestling with Russia over Iran for the next decade or three win us that a sane revolutionary council (with elections in 2008) this summer wouldn't?

[Sean Meade]

Mark: good to see you over here after meeting you on the old discussion board. i was wondering if you'd show up

the Chinese are our friends (the title of Tom's last Esquire article), but it's not in their best interest to cooperate with us on Iran. better for them to balance us (the US), the EU, Russia, and India around Iran. we'd have a lot more to gain than China from the takedown you imagine. North Korea, on the other hand, could be a win-win for everyone (as Tom constantly argues), though our poor showing in Iraq-building and the political realities probably preclude such a partnership anytime soon. plus, what corvid said.

'evolvedreason': extended sarcasm does not become you. i think Tom has already said words to the effect that working a big bang in Iran was never a good posibility. Iraq was the best choice. yes, we got the occupation wrong (as he always says), but we're learning (cf latest Esquire article) and lots of good things have come from it.

in fact, Tom is on the record for having supported the war in Iraq knowing we'd screw up the occupation.

if you're going to talk smack to Tom over here on his own weblog, please get your facts straight.

[Mark in Texas]

Thanks for the kind words.

I think that the Chinese have a lot to gain if we invade Iran, something that is beyond their capability, and then after securing the oil infrastructure and removing the nuclear weapons program hand the country over to the Chinese to occupy, which is beyond our capability. After the handover, all the American troops leave Iran. I assume that the Chinese will require that all the international media and NGOs leave the country as well so that they can do their peacekeeping in private.

I am not talking about some UN sponsored peace keeping mission where the Chinese get to have their people shot at for the next few years while trying to rebuild Iran. I am proposing that we give Iran to China to do with as they please. If they decide that they want to try to build a model utopia next door to Iraq to demonstrate the superiority of the Chinese political and economic system, that would be nice. If they decide to exterminate the Iranians and repopulate the country with Chinese, that is not quite as nice, but it would suit our purposes of having Iran stop exporting terrorists and discouraging nuclear proliferation equally well. All we are looking for is for trouble to stop coming out of Iran. The Iranians don't seem to be able to make that happen. I am pretty sure that the Chinese can.

What the Chinese would gain would be control over enough oil to ensure their continued economic expansion for the next decade or so. There is also Iran's share of the Caspian oil that will be coming on line soon. Chinese economic expansion is absolutely required to maintain order in China. If the Chinese are able to pump all the oil they need without having to pay for it, their economy is somewhat insulated from the ups and downs of the oil marketplace.

I think that is lots more valuable to China than anything we could ever propose to do with them about North Korea.

Dr.Barnett's contention is that there is no military option in Iran. My contention is that there is.