I am no expert on the posturing associated with high stakes diplomatic negotiations, so maybe there is less to this than meets the eye: Iran Derides Incentive Bid To Resolve Nuclear Dispute But, to someone with a good deal of experience in more conventional negotiations, it seems pretty clear that there is no hope of getting Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program diplomatically. The Europeans are in the riduculous situation of bidding against themselves over and over again and Ahmadinejad is rejecting the offers before they are even made. Not only is he rejecting them, he is mocking them. What makes the Europeans -- or anyone -- think there is any hope for accomplishing anything by offering ever sweeter deals? They ought to quit. The more they offer, the more adamant and contemptuous Ahmadinejad becomes; the sweeter the deal becomes, the more joy Ahmadinejad takes in belittling it. With considerable jusitifcation, he senses weakness and is willing, even eager, to exploit it. He does so, of course, becuase he sees nothing but upsides for him.
What we have to recognize is that, for Ahmadinejad and Iran, this debate is no longer about uranium enrichment. It is about pride, and "honor;" about standing up to the West; about proving that neither Ahmadinejad nor Iran can be pressured, cowed, bribed or bought.
Basic negotiation theory tells you that a party will agree to a settlement proposal only when the outcome of agreement is percieved to be better in terms of what the party values than the probability-weighted average of the outcomes of no agreement. Given that what Ahmadinejad values is prestige of resisting the West, a survey of the possible outcomes of "no agreement" makes it pretty clear why Ahmadinejad has no interest in reaching agreement:
Outcome 1: The EU and the US secure a security council resolution imposing sanctions. Russia and China may well agree to this much, but the threat of sanctions alone holds no fear for Ahmadinejad. Indeed, he may well welcome sanctions. Given that this is fundamentally a test of wills for Iran, sanctions, even if authorized, will have about as much affect on Iran as the Blitz did upon England. If anything, sanctions will serve only to buttress Iranian's sense of pride, harden their resolve and increase their resentment of the US and the West. This, in turn will only serve to make Iran more dangerous.
Outcome 2: The US and EU seek a security resolution authorizing use of force but this resolution is vetoed by Russia or China. From Ahmadinejad's perspective, this outcome is even better than outcome 1 above. Not only does it limit UN-authorized actions to sanctions, the defeat of the force resolution provides Ahmadinejad with an additional propaganda victory.
Outcome 3: The security council passes a resolution authorizing the use of force. This might begin to give Ahmadinejad pause. But his calculus is (a) China and Russia won't let this happen and (b) even if they do, Europe won't move without the US and he US is in no position to actually use force given its exisiting commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Morover, Ahmadinejad propbably figures (with considerable justification) he can forestall any actual of force for years, maybe even decades, by playing the sort of cat-and-mouse games that Hussein played so successfully throughout the 90s. Finally, the threat of force -- so long as it remains just that -- will serve to further solidify the siege mentality of the Iranian people and thereby increase Ahmadinejad's own internal political power. His refusal to be cowed by that threat will also increase his standing throughout the Muslim world, with the people if not their leaders. The threat of force, in short, holds no fear.
Outcome 4: With or without UN authorization, the US, perhaps with NATO support, actually does use force. Ahmadinejad's calcualtion on this outcome is that, if force is used, it is will almost certainly to be limited to bombing. But bombing holds no greater fear for Ahmadinejad than sanctions. In his mind, and in the mind of his people and the rest of the muslim world, stand-off bombing is the act of a coward, of a person who lacks the courage to actually confront his enemy face to face. Moreover, Ahmadinejad proably believes, rightly or wrongly, that he has the capability, with the oil weapon, Iran's influence in Iraq, and his contact with terrorist organizations world-wide, to inflict as much dmage on the US and the West as they can inflict on him though bombing.
Outcome 5: The US, with or without European support, actually invades. This is probably the one outcome that Ahmadinejad actually fears, since it would likely mean the end of him and his government. Yet, he probably considers this possibility to be vanishingly remote given the exisiting commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US electorate's weariness of war, and the ambiquity of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program. In addition, he probably believes that even if the US were willing and able to invade, Russia and/or China would act to raise the stakes for such an invasion to unacceptable levels. Finally, even under the best if circumstances, any actual invasion is probably years off, giving him time to "do the little soft-shoe" in an effort to head it off.
In short, from Ahmadinejad's prespective the probability weighted downsides of non-agreement are almost non-existant while the benefits of non-agreement are huge. Indeed, so long as he believes he can avoid an actual invasion, non-agreement is what he wants most of all, since it vindicates Iran's honor, demonstrates that Iran cannot be cowed or bought, solidifies Iranian nationalism, distracts Iranians from their other problems (much as 9/11 distracted us), and increases his and Iran's status in the muslim world.
Given this situation, the West's best option at this point is to to disengage; to simply stop trying to negotiate with Iran on this issue. Even if nothing else ensued, the sudden cessation of talks would likely give Ahmadinejad considerable pause precisely becuase it would be so unexpected. In addition, disengagement would, at a stroke, deprive Ahmadinejad of the principal benefit of the current standoff: no longer would he be able to portray himself as fighting Western desires to keep Iran backward. He would, almost immediately, be deprived of the ability to portray himself as being involved in a glorious struggle to defend Iranian "honor," since there would no longer be a struggle. With the cessation of immediate threats, the Iranain people and the muslim world will go back to worrying about other things. Ahmadinejad will pass from page 1 to page 15 in the world's press. One can only imagine his disappointment.
But, in addition to disengagement, we should make him (and commit ourselves to keeping) the following promise: "OK. You claim that your only goal is the peaceful use of nuclear power. We are skeptical, but we are going to give you the benefit of the doubt. But know this: we consider you undeterrable and we are not going to let you have a nuclear weapon. So, we will be watching (as only we can), and if we ever find out that you are making highly enriched uranium or plutonium, materials that have no use other than to make weapons -- indeed, if we ever become convinced that you are likely to be doing this -- there will be no further negotiations, diplomacy or warnings. We will take you and your entire government down, without announcement or preamble, at a time and in a manner or our choosing, and we will do this in Iran as quickly and as surely and as easily as we did in it in Iraq and Afghanistan. However [and here's he key part], in contrast to Iraq and Afghanistan, we will not stay to rebuild your country. Once you and your cohorts are dead or captured and your nuclear capabilties destroyed, we will leave and let your people sort things out for themsleves. "
The combined effect of these two elements is four-fold. First, it at once deprives Ahmadinejad of his principle advantage in the current stalemate and at the same time imposes on him the risk of his worst fear. No longer will he be able to claim that this is a struggle between the big bad West and the poor but proud Iranians. We are telling him: go ahead; do what you say you are going to. If that is all you do, we will stay out of it. At the same time, we are telling him that if he does go beyond peaceful uses of nuclear power, his life and the life of his government will be very much at risk. This fundamenatlly alters the whole negotiation framework.
Second, this approach provides Ahmadinejad with an honorable way out. After all, he can foreswear atomic weapons and yet claim that he has achieved all he ever wanted: a peaceful atomic energy program. It also gives him an incentive to make his nuclear program tansparent, since convincing us that he is not seeking to develop weapons is his only insurance policy against invasion.
Third, this aproach raises the stakes conisderably for the Iranian people. After Iraq and Afghanistan, there can be little doubt in anyone's mind that we can make good on the threat to take down Iraq's government and armed forces. Our problems have all been with nation building, not state destruction. Yet the promise to leave once we have done that raises the stakes considerably, since the prospects of the anarchy that would follow from the destructiuon of the exisiting government are so obvious and frightful as to give all but the most ardent jihadist pause.
Finally, this approach gives us time to get out of Iraq. The Iranian bomb is years away. Over that period, our involvemet in Iraq will decline precipitously. The more we disengage from Iraq, the more credible our threat to the Iranian government becomes.
The idea of taking a government down and then just leaving is a hard one for Americans to swallow. We believe we can fix things, make them better. And the human suffering that would flow from this is mind-boggling. But it seems to me to be the only real alternative. We can't fix things unless the people involved want our help. Absent that, all we can do is protect ourselves and our allies. That's not nothing, and it is something we can, clearly, do.
Man, I am turning into the neocon's neocon.
Thoughts, criticisms, whatever welcome.
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5 comments:
Interesting.
I see three big problems with your plan:
1. It's too long (Most people won't read past the first paragraph and air-time's too expensive to take the time to explain it to them.)
2. It's too long (Patience is not an American virture. You have about a year from the time you're elected to fix everything that's wrong with the world.)
3. It's too long (Back down as a form of action? Not in MY America!!! We're tough, we fight, even if he does want to draw us in to a fight we can't win, let's give him a fight!!!)
Other than that, I like it. (Does that make me a Neocon?? Even if I don't advocating staying long enough to take their oil, then pull out?)
There's an interesting nugget in there that we touched on a day or two ago in another conversation...knock out the naughty government, then leave. I've been thinking a lot about that approach. To start, there's where we are today: The "Pottery Barn" approach. We break it, we by it. Certainly feels like the moral high-ground; we can't abandon these people now, can we?
No. We can't. Or so I would have answered every time until a day or two ago. Now I'm not so sure, at least for the sake of discussion. The enemy obviously plays by different rules than we do. Suicide? No problem. Civilians in the way? No problem. Can we ever win when we play by different rules? Now that the game has changed, we need to change. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate our sentimental side. If hitting and leaving would make us safer, would we do it?
Part of me thinks that we pretty much fight every war against a signle-digit minority of any country. Those in powerful and their relatively small group of croneys generally push their agenda while the rest of the country's along for the ride. Is it fair to take it out on everyone? At the same, we're approaching the point where one person, with the right weapon, could take out an entire city. If it was right to fight an entire country when it took every man they had to fight, is it wrong to do so now that it only takes one? Tough call. Very tough.
I think my favorite part of your proposal is the overall theme of, "OK, you want to do the right thing, we'll give you a chance. But as soon as you step out of line we destroy you." It's not kind, but surely it's better than the back and forth and back and forth then kind of invade and kind of try to put things back together then leave because we don't have the patience to put your country back together approach we're using now. We can't physically babysit every nation on earth and we can't physically rebuild a single nation on earth, but we could probably destroy at least a few dozen. But it wouldn't take a dozen, would it?Just one or two to set the example.
Oh, this is a slippery slide isn't it? But does the shift in our enemy's approach warrant this shift in ours? I'm starting to wonder. A few well-armed lunatics could destroy much of our world... is harsh treatment of a few rogue nations a small price to pay?
Very slippery.
Thoughts?
I plead guilty as charged to the first point at least. Brevity has never been my forte. Sorry.
As to the second, I disagree. One of the advantages of this approach is that it is so quick: we stop talking, make a promise, and if the promise is not enough, we go in and take them down in 3-6 months and then leave. The only trick would be to make and maintain a commitment to follow through on the promise over time. This, though, is a function of government and is not greatly impacted by public opinion.
As to the third, well, yes, disengaging from Iran now will be politically difficult given that the administration has now dubbed Iran as America's biggest national security challenge. But the saving grace is that Bush has refused to get directly engaged with Iran, so, in terms of direct talks, there is nothing to stop. It's the Europeans that have to give up. Moroever, the promise I propose to make to Iran would be no secret. To the contrary, to be effective both internationally and domestically, it has to be very, very public. No one, least of all the "let's bomb 'em into the stone age" crowd, will see this as backing down. The opposition will come from the left, from those who believe that we should not go to war unless attacked and that when we do go to war we have the moral obligation to rebuild the country we have defeated. (Have you ever read "The Mouse That Roared?" It's about a small country whose economy is so depressed that they decide that the best hope is to lose a war to the US so that the US will rebuild their country).
But the Left will have relatively little to sink their teeth into, since, for the time being at least, we would be doing nothing but watching.
Yes, if you agree with this, you are a neocon. The fact that you don't want their oil does not prove otherwise. Neocons don't want to hold onto a country to get its oil. They know that the oil producing countries -- Iran in particular -- need to sell their oil as much as we need to buy it. Sure, there may be short-term, politically motivated disruptions, but they will not last.
"Is it fair to take it out on everyone?" There's your non-neocon remnant speaking. There will be lots and lots of innocent victims if we did what I'm suggesting, but there are lots and lots of innocent victims under what you so aptly call "the Pottery Barn approach" as well. It's an open question which approach will produce more innocent victims. More broadly, the civiliam population suffers in any war. Think of the Germans in WWII. Not all of them --perhaps not even most of them --supported Hitler, but it was vital to us to get rid of Hitler and there just was no way to do so without "collateral damage" to those who might well have been innocent. The same is, I think, true of a nuclear armed Iran. It is vital to us that we prevent that from happening, and if neither diplomacy nor deterrence will achieve that end, we are faced with a stark choice indeed.
I am nowhere near as comfortable as I may seem with what I am suggesting here. It part, my hope is that the threat will be enough. By foreswearing any responsibility for rebuilding the country, we not only keep ourselves out of a situation we have proved we can't handle, we also significantly enhance the threat and thereby increase the likelihood that deterreance alone will work. But, to make the threat credible -- and to thereby give deterrence a chance to work -- the other side has to be believe that we will do what we say. It worked for 60 years with the Russians. Maybe, just maybe, it would work with Iran as well.
But that threat will cease to be credible at all once Iran gets nukes. Which is, of course, why we need to stop that from happening, even if it means another preventative war.
The thing that makes me most nervous about all of this is the risk -- ala Iraq -- of being wrong in our conclusions as to what Iran is doing. How will we ever be sure that Iran has crossed the line between peaceful nuclear power and atomic weapons? That uncertainty plays a role in the threat, since it makes us more unpredictable and gives Iran an incentive to be more transparent: after all, the downsides of our being wrong will fall most heavily on Iran. But it is hard to imagine the damage that would be done to us if we once again went to war on an assumed capability that turns out not to have existed.
I am convinced that letting Iran have nules would be a horrible mistake. We do not need another North Korea, especially one located in what is perhaps the most strategically important part of the world right now. What I am struggling to find is a way to keep that from happening. The foregoing is all I have been able to come up with.
Anyone else have any ideas?
Not presumptuous at all, Rob. You hit it right on the head.
I agree with both of you... we need a new approach to new dickheads, but right now the US doesn't have the stomach for it.
In the short time I've been over here (I'm convincing myself two months is short...) I've started taking smaller bites of big pictures. Small bites seem to be more palatable here than big issues (less likely for billy bob's big mouth to get his butt in trouble), and part of it is that I feel like I can make more progress on the smaller thoughts.
Here's where I'm going with this... As I mentioned before, I've been thinking about how an individual's level of involvement in the implementation of a policy or plan shapes their opinion of it. This applies to the Bushies I used to clash with at college as I told them that they had to join the military before I'd listen to them tell me the war was a good idea to my boss here who, as a self-proclaimed "idea person" who's not so good at follow-through, comes up with daily project ideas while I sit in the office until 10 each night as he leaves for his 6:00 softball or horseshoe game. (Longest sentence I've ever written, I think. Go me.)
Please forgive my rambles...parentheticals has been my only intellectual release of late. There were three of us at Shelby who used to bounce ideas off each other, but now we're all on three different FOBs.
Where I'm going, once again... Looking to the future, we'll certainly fall somewhere between "Pottery Barn" and "blow 'em up and leave." Where we fall on that continuum, I believe, will be a function of how directly most Americans are affected by whatever evil we are responding to. 9/11 was horrible, but it was New York City and DC. Surely Ohio, Iowa, and Minnesota are still safe, right? What if a terrorist hits Des Moines or even Eddyville? And, by my rough calculation, about 600,000 Americans have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's what, about 2.5% of the population? 1 in 40 Americans? Pretty easy for the other 39 to vote for sensitivity and kindness (I mean no offense...I was, and in large part still am, part of the 39.) A much smaller minority still has paid the ultimate price, but what would most be willing to pay? Would they all enlist their first-born? Pay $5/gallon? Give up satellite TV? I have a feeling even the latter would pretty drastically affect public opinion. Heck, even once the whole, "we can afford a $150 million/day war AND tax cuts!" myth falls out of fashion I think we'll reevaluate our touchy-feely policies. OK, done rambling on that topic.
Bill - some of the specifics you bring up, like how we know when they've tripped the wire and it's time to make good on our threats, were also on my mind as I wrote. The devil's in the details. One of those details, it seems, would be the role of the rest of the world. How often will we go it alone? Can global cooperation yield the same safety as kicking some major butt?
As we're forced to change our approach to one that will inevitably demand more patience, couldn't another patient practice also gain a seat in the debate? Yes, I'm talking about oh-so-taboo diplomacy. Not necessarily diplomacy toward the Irans of the world, but diplomacy and patience with our "allies." Even if they don't send troops, there's surely value in obtaining their blessing before our bombers take off. That's a big can of worms, but the thought crossed my mind.
One last thought for the morning... I haven't read "The Mouse that Roared," but the premise sounds interesting. Is it worth the read, or just an expansion of that idea?
Thanks for the conversation, Bill and Rob...much needed here. Even the friends I have here aren't so interested in these discussions. In the military, it seems, not only can we not suggest that our current mission may not be completely righteous, but we can't even bring up discussion where that possibility sits in one of the corners.
My fondest wish achieved: a coversation, and a good one, unhindered by time and distance. Billy bob and I are 8 hours apart; billy bob and Rob are very nearly on the opposite sides of the globe from each other. Yet we are all talking in (more or less) real time. For all its problems, its a great time to be alive.
OK. Enough enthusing.
First off, as I mentioned at the close of my comment, I am nowhere near as comfortable with what I have suggested here as it might seem. And, my discomfort has its roots in the very things you guys point out as problems. But, for all its faults, I can't shake the idea that it is the only staretgy that makes sense. I have come to believe (1) that a preventative war is preferable to a nuclear armed Iran; (2) that if both diplomacy and deterrence fail in that reagrd, an invasion is the only thing that will work (i.e. bombing is cruel, endless and pointless whereas an invasion is simply cruel); and (3) efforts to rebuild the country would not only be futile but would actually tend to make things worse. The "take 'em down a leave" strategy is, I recognize, realpolitik at its worst, but I can think of nothing else that both protects what I believe to a findamental national interests yet is realistic in terms of both the capabilities of limitations on our national power.
As to the timing/patience point you both make: I am trying to articulate what our policies should be, not what they will be. You may be right that Bush won't have the patience to make this -- or any other strategy except immediate attack -- work. But that is largely beside the point, or, at least, beside my point. Eevn on a more practical level, though, I think Bush has been chastened. I cannot concieve of him mounting an invasion of Iran any time soon. The most he is going to be able to do is bomb. And, I actually don't think even that is all that likely. My sense is that, absent some shift in strategy, Iran is much more likely to turn out like North Korea than it is Iraq.
As to the ruthlessness point, I am not so sure. Our official Cold War policy toward Russia was Mutual Assured Destruction, appropriately acronymed MAD. It's hard to imagine a more ruthless policy, yet for over 50 years and 7 or 8 Adminsitrations (both Republican and Democratic) we were able to both achieve domestic consensus on that policy and convince our adversary that we would, in fact, follow through on that threat if X happened. What I am trying to write here is another Kennan-esque "long telegram:" to articulate a grand strategy that will allow us to effectively deal with the far more diffuse and asymetrical threats we face today, particularly in the Middle East.
Moreover, I think you may both be "projecting" your own personal reluctance to be ruthless (a reluctance that, for billy bob at least, appears to be fading fast but is not yet entirely gone) onto the electorate as a whole. My sense is that the electorate is pretty damn ruthless. As just one example, we have a House of Representatives (not just some fringe set of "bomb-'em now and ask questions later" whackos, but the House of Representaives, 'fer crying out loud) that is not just talking about but that actually has passed a law that would make felons out of 13,000,000 US residents, plus all of their employers plus anyone else who helps them. That is pretty damn ruthless and it is a reflection of the sentiments of a huge portion of the electorate. As another example, go read the Krauthammer speech linked and discussed here ("Scary Stories 4/3/06)Krauthammer and his friends speak, today, for a lot of Americans. The problem with the American electorate is not a lack of ruthlessness but a lack of staying power. They/We are perfectly willing to go knock heads all over the globe, but when the job turns from fighting to peacekeeping or nation-building, we lose interest pretty fast.
Given this, my sense is that there is actually a significant portion of the electorate, perhaps even a majority, that would applaud what I am proposing as an approrpiate "middle road:" We are not going to do anything right now becuase the threat is not imminent enough, but you and your government are toast if we ever conclude that the threat of you getting nukes has beome imminent. And, by the way, you bear the risk of us being wrong and we are not going to stick around to pick up the piecese becuase we have proved to ourselves that we just can't do that in a Muslim country." By committing to leave when the decapitation is complete, we make this threat more credible, since our fear of getting bogged down in another nation-building exercise is what Iran is probably relying on as a basis for assuming we won't follow through. The only remaining doubt they might have is whether we are sufficiently ruthless to really do that. But, the one benefit of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that it makes the gamble that we are not ruthless enough more than a bit risky.
My goal in all of this is to avoid having to make good on the threat. What I am trying to outline is a strategy of deterrence; a strategy that has some hope of convincing Ahmadinejad that he really does not want to run the risk of developing nukes. However, we have to actually be ready and willing to follow through on the threat, if the detrreance doesn't work. For, the alternaitve is to accept a nuclear armed Iran, which to me seems worse than carrying out the threat. That, really is the big question that underlies all of this: how bad would a nuclear armed Iran be?
Billy bob: I have spent most of the day (off and on) trying to figure out how to respond to your complaint that the burdens of war ought to be shared more broadly since it is pretty easy for people to advocate military action when they themsleves are not the ones that will be shot at, separated from their families, etc. That's true, of course; it is easy. But I think there is also something wrong with this train of thought that is very hard to articulate. First, though, let me edit your numbers a bit, becuase the inequality is even worse that you suggest. 600,000 is actually only ~0.2% of the population rather than the ~2% you suppose. So, those who bear no direct burden for the uses to which we put our armed services are actually more like 399-in-400 rather than 39-in-40. Each of these men and women have spouses and parents, sisters, brothers, and friends, and in many cases children who bear a significant personal burden as well. Even so, the percentage of people who are directly impacted by a decision to go to war and the strategies we pursue during that war are considerably fewer -- perhaps an order of magnitude fewer -- than the number of people who normally make a difference in a Presedential election.
But here's the thing that bothers me. For the armed service to be useful as an instrument of national policy, we (both the people and their leaders) must objectify them. If we could not separate the armed services from the individual people who comprise them, we would never be able to use them anywhere; which, of course, would make having them pretty much pointless. The key is for the many (people and leaders alike)to be careful in deciding when, where and for what purposes we send our armed forces into harm's way; to keep in mind that the decisions of whether and how to fight are serious ones that will mean sending real people to real hardship and suffering -- and for some at least to real death and deformity. We will not always act wisely in this regard, and at those times, people like you have every right to be resentful, even bitter. But I don't think we can forebear from sending our armed forces into harm's way becuase the burdens will fall only on the few. Nor do I think the few can or should resent the many simply becuase they are not sharing those burdens. Hope that doesn't sound too harsh.
The Mouse That Roared. It's a moderately funny book. But the only thing that makes it memorable is the concept, which you already know.
To be continued, I hope.
Bill
It's Sunday and I didn't get to sleep in, so I'll take small bites today. :)
I completely agree with you Bill, it is pretty amazing that we can have this discussion across so much distance and so many time zones. Thanks for giving us the venue.
My small bite for the day... I think I need to clarify my stance on involving more of America in our military actions. I don't think we should force everyone, or anyone into the military. (Quality control is hard enough with an all-volunteer force.) I agree, to a point, with your discussion of our need to keep the military as an objective aspect of our society. Where I have difficulty with this is the administration's sanitizing of all things related to the human and financial cost of the war. A while back there was a photo leaked of flag draped caskets in an Air Force plane. As I recall, there was quite a stir about the photo, but I think it's important that we see these images. We don't need the bloody bodies and carnage, but we do need to make sure everyone is aware of the human cost of war.
Right now America-at-large is artificially insulated from the costs (primarily financial costs) of the war, and with this I take great issue. The math doesn't work out on what we're doing (expensive war coupled with tax cuts), yet our government isn't willing to explain this to voters. A rising death-toll is one thing, but rising taxes seem to be even more taboo.
OK, I'm feeling far from articulate this morning, so I'm going to leave it at that. Hope the weekend's treating you all well!
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