Ezra Klein: Fingerpointing

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January 15, 2006

Fingerpointing

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

I'm not exactly sure what could have been done differently, but like Neil, it seems to me that if an unstable anti-American regime in the Middle East develops nuclear weapons on your watch, perhaps because you were too busy trying to gin up an excuse to invade Iraq, you ought to shoulder some of the blame. How to make that happen from a PR standpoint isn't exactly clear to me.

Presumably, the proper response would have been to focus on Iran in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and to offer a reasonable set of sticks (sanctions, air strikes) and carrots (oil & gas pipelines, trade) to Iran in exchange for open inspections at nuclear facilities, some type of political reform, and a crackdown on its funding of terrorism. Hopefully, stopping Iran from developing The Bomb would be enough to get Saudi Arabia to go along with it.

January 15, 2006 in Foreign Policy | Permalink

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Comments

Granted, to a point. But I would appreciate it if you could speculate on:

1. What the President should have done (especially considering the complete failure of diplomacy in the last week), and

2. How he would have sold it to the pacifist community, and

3. Why we can no longer do it now.

Posted by: Mastiff | Jan 15, 2006 7:26:38 PM

Eh, screw it. What I mean is that from the moment that Iran's program first hit the news in the 90's, I knew that the only way that it would ever be stopped was through force. Subsequent events proved me right, as the Euros sent their finest diplomats who promptly got the runaround from Iran in the most transparent manner possible.

I argue that military action is much easier now than it would have been before Iraq. We now have military bases right up on their border; some speculate that Israel is planning on using the bases to get their F-15s back home, which would have been impossible without such bases.

"Open inspections at nuclear facilities, some type of political reform, and a crackdown on its funding of terrorism" are a non-starter. That's essentially a violation of sovereignty, which we can only impose once we have violated their sovereignty in fact. You have a much greater belief in the mullah's desire to escape conflict then I do.

Google "ahmadinejad Twelfth Imam" and see what you come up with. This man is incredibly dangerous.

Posted by: Mastiff | Jan 15, 2006 7:36:16 PM

It's strange that you whine that my carrots & sticks in exchange for policy changes from Iran are a violation of her sovereignty, then suggest that the proper course of action is military. You'll notice that one of my sticks is military as well. When military action is on the table, questions of sovereignty don't seem to me to be applicable.

Going back in time, question (2) is moot. I think that the President could have mustered public support for military action against Iran quite easily. The President didn't need to sell anything to the "pacifist community", whatever the heck that's supposed to be, as is evidenced by his apathy towards the "pacifist community" in the run-up to the Iraq war, and the fact that the public overwhelmingly supported the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

That leaves questions (1) and (3), to be answered by someone (me) who is in no sense a Middle East expert. Immediately post-9/11 the thing I was stunned by the most was that the government of Iran -- which was, I think at the time, slightly more moderate/reformist than the current regime -- even extended sympathies to the US. We need to remember that at the time we had tremendous moral authority and soft power to go get countries to Do The Right Thing. So I think what you would have seen is an invasion of Afghanistan, followed by some amount of jawboning with the three or four states in Central Asia where the population and/or political figures is/are most anti-American; in order, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. You would need to back this jawboning up with some action, so when/if the Pakistan government doesn't pursue bin Laden with sufficient vigor, you just go from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Yes, Pakistan has The Bomb, but they're not going to use it in their own backyard and destroy their own people. Especially since if they use it they would face nuclear counterstrikes and a certain invasion & occupation.

In the specific case of Iran, we would have had a much easier time in early 2002 convincing the Russian and Chinese governments to continue the embargo against Iran and threaten UN-authorized air strikes. After all, China wants to keep buying Boeing planes, and Russia wants to keep selling us oil; they'd probably be happy to keep Iranian oil off the global (non-US) market for a few more years. Russia probably isn't too keen on having a nuclear power at their doorstep, so that leaves only China to remain subject to intense lobbying, and I'm sure the other four permanent Security Council members could put together an arrangement that would make keep China happy. This is the best solution I can come up with, and it appears to me to be somewhere between "marginally better" and "a good bit better" than the President Bush's De Facto "let Iran become the Middle East power broker" strategy.

All of this is complicated by the fact that many experts believe "nothing short of a land invasion and occupation will stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons". I tend to think that rolling bombing runs would do the trick; I can't imagine the populace or the army would really want to put up with that sort of thing for a long period of time. But again, I'm too far from the security situation to know what would really work and what wouldn't.

The basic unknowns here are how crazy the Iranian president really is, how stable the country's nuclear Command & Control system would be, and how the country's security apparatus would respond in the face of a legitimate threat of land invasion.

Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Jan 15, 2006 8:52:56 PM

... if an unstable anti-American regime in the Middle East develops nuclear weapons on your watch, perhaps because you were too busy trying to gin up an excuse to invade Iraq, you ought to shoulder some of the blame.

There's the standard (and required) "BLAME BUSH" chorus. But earlier in this post, in fact the very first sentence, Mr. Beaudrot admits "I'm not exactly sure what could have been done differently..."

What a game....what a overtly partisan GAME.

Posted by: Fred Jones | Jan 16, 2006 9:34:28 AM

Here's what The Preznit said in one of the debates;
A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror, and that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country.

Maybe to make the game more fun, we could post more remarks like this from the chimperor. He really liked to say for awhile that his Iraq adventure was going to be great for all of Iraq's neighbors, frightening the opposition into submission and bringing on "democracy". When some changes began to bubble up in Lebanon, the wingnut sphere crowed that the theory was all but proven. Iran is another story of course, one that chimperor could not have been more wrong about. I got some other preznit quotes handy, but someone else should go next.

Posted by: sprocket | Jan 16, 2006 1:55:12 PM

Who is the Presnit? Is it only applied to Republicans? Was Clinton a "Presnit" as well?

Presnit Clinton?

Posted by: Fred Jones | Jan 16, 2006 2:38:49 PM

I'm not "whining" about violations of sovereignty. I have remarkably little concern for another nation's sovereignty, except insofar as violating it will cause a reaction.

I'm just saying that Iran would never allow its sovereignty to be violated unless and until its government is crushed.

Posted by: Mastiff | Jan 17, 2006 11:18:17 PM

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