We have time for some soft-kill

ARTICLE: Agency warns against attack on Iran, By George Jahn, Associated Press, June 15, 2007

Note the estimates on timelines here and tell me we don't have time to execute some soft-kill penetration in the meantime.

What we pursue now as a strategy gets us an isolated, pissed-off, nuclear Iran down the road with big friends in rising powers Russia, India and China.

Comments

[dipaolom]

I certainly don't disagree with the premise that the soft-kill is preferable and, I suppose, actually possible. But the system works becasue rule-sets are enforced. When does the responsible act of maintaining perspective and a big-picture view get overshadowed by the irresponsibility of refusing to enforce rule-sets?

[Anonymous]

dipaolom: it's like with China: you 'corrupt' with dollars, get the economy and middle class going. once you get them hooked, they will need to sync up and enforce their own rule sets, like Tom wrote the other week in 'China learns from scandals'. once they get hooked, we can lean on them a little, but only with the lever of 'this is going to cost you money...'

trying to enforce rule sets without economic connectivity is awfully hard, like N Korea. we don't want to go that route if we don't have to, and we don't with Iran.