Dealing With Iran III

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.

Why Can't We Be Friends II

A propos of this post from yesterday, there was an interesting article in the NYT Magazine today on the The Perils of Soft Power. It makes somewhat the same point I was trying to make in the previous post, except that it talks not about the Arab world but about Europe:

In recent years, a number of American thinkers, led by Joseph S. Nye Jr. of Harvard, have argued that the United States should rely more on what he calls its "soft power" -- the contagious appeal of its ideas, its culture and its way of life -- and so rely less on the "hard power" of its stealth bombers and aircraft carriers. There is one problem with this argument: soft power does not necessarily increase the world's love for America. It is still power, and it can still make enemies.

. . .

In the affairs of nations, too much hard power ends up breeding not submission but resistance. Likewise, great soft power does not bend hearts; it twists minds in resentment and rage. And the target of Europe's cultural guardians is not just America, the Great Seductress. It is also all those "little people," [who] . . . [b]y yielding to America-the-beguiling, . . . commit[] cultural treason -- and worse: they ignore[] the stern verdict of their own priesthood. So America's soft power is not only seductive but also subversive.

. . . .

Europe, mourning the loss of its centuries-old supremacy, either resorts to insulation (by quotas and "cultural exception" clauses) or seeks solace in the disparagement of American culture as vulgar, inauthentic or stolen. If we could consult Dr. Freud, he would take a deep drag on his cigar and pontificate about inferiority feelings being compensated by hauteur and denigration.

Two points:

First, there is an undertone of resentment in the Times piece that is every bit as tempting a target for Freudian analysis as is the European "compensation" to which that resentment is directed. The Euorpean inferiority is that of the Ancien Regime fallen on hard times. The American inferiority is that of the nouveau riche not getting the respect it thinks it deserves. The root of the resentments are the same: injured pride.

Second, as Billy Bob points out, it is easy to exaggerate the importance of these sorts of mewlings. Billy Bob is "not so sure" about my claim that "they hate our way of life." Depending on to whom "they" are, this is a point well taken. The Arab world and Europe are every bit as diverse as the United States in their attitudes, and just as it would be a mistake for an Iranian to think Pat Robertson speaks for America, it is a mistake to think that those excoriating America speak for their countires. In this regard we would do well to develop a little bit thicker skin.

But to me, Iran is different in one all important regard. Just as there are in Europe, there are "cultural guardians" in many countries -- perhaps every country -- for whom "America [is] the Great Seductress," who consider the millions of "little people" who yield to "America-the-beguiling" as "cultural traitors," and who resent most of all that these little people are "ignor[ing] the stern verdict of their own priesthood." In almost every case, probably even in Iran, these "cultural guardians" are no more representative of their countries than Pat Robertson is of ours. But in Iran, these cultural guardians are in power. They control the government. And it is this fact that makes Iran a unique threat. Think of the threat the United States would pose under Pat Robertson or worse yet, Fred Phelps

I do not for a minute believe that all or even most Iranians or Iraqis or Arabs hate they way we live or what we believe in. Quite to the contrary, I think many, perhaps most, would like nothing better than to walk in our shoes. But the Ahmadinejads and Zarqawis and bin Ladens are not among those. Those people truly do hate us and everything we stand for and they hate us all the more becuase our way of life is so alluring to their own people. It is this fact -- and I think it is a fact -- that to me makes the idea of controlling their nuclear aspirations through rapproachment so chimerical. Our choices really are between deterrence and preventative war. Which brings me back to this.

Dealing With Iran

Triggered by this post, I received the following e-mail from one of my sons (edited slightly):

Dad -

I am confused on your April 21st entry on the Iran nuclear weapon situation. What do you mean by deterrence? . . . Are you talking about containing Iran by convincing it that we could obliterate it in retaliation? Or is it that we would cut off economic, diplomatic or human relations in general? Overall, at this point, what threat could possibly be big enough to deter a country that just does not care what the rest of the world does or thinks? Moreover, why should they care so much when our president completely ignores Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attempts at trying to solve the problem? I understand that what he said in his letter might not be "proposals for resolving the confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambition," but the fact that our government completely snubbed Ahmadinejad's probably serious attempts to solve a global problem in the way he sees best, seems to me to be another weapon in the global "Arrogant American" arsenal. And really, when we have a situation like the Iranian nuclear crisis that seems to be at the unsolvable point, having people think that we are intent on building relationships and working collaboratively with respect and a bit of humility, would be key. I am not talking about fostering "relativism run amok" I just want us to at least respect what the man has to say and not throw it out.

So I guess I have two questions: what do you mean by deterrence, and what do you think of Ahmadinejad's letter?

Jon

On the deterrence question, you have it right. I am talking about convincing Iran that if they ever used a nuclear weapon -- or provided one to others to use -- against us or an ally of ours, we would take them down as surely a night follows day. That's not necessarily to say that we would nuke them in return. We might be able to do what we need to do in that regard with more conventional forces. But, deterrence is premised on convincing the other side that any use of nuclear weapons would be suicide.

The question you ask about this -- "what threat could possibly be big enough to deter a country that just does not care what the rest of the world does or thinks?" -- is exactly the one that makes the prospect of Iran getting a nuclear capability so scary. For deterrence to work requires a rational actor on the other side, and there is room for doubt that the Iranian leadership is rational. How can one be certain that devotees of suicide bombings would not be willing to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of their own citizens in the cause of jihad? These people simply do not think the way we do. For them, death in the service of their religion is glorious. How can such people be deterred?

And, maybe that is your point. We can't prevent them from getting a bomb diplomatically, a preventative war is unthinkable and probably won't work anyway, and we can't deter them once they get it, so what's the solution? Shouldn't we try rapprochement? After all, one doesn't nuke one's friends, so maybe the way to deal with an Iranian bomb is to make Iran our friend.

Which, of course, leads into the second question you ask: "What do you think of Ahmadinejad's letter?" Can't it be seen as a "serious attempt to solve a global problem in the way he sees best?" Shouldn't we do more than just blow him off? In the words of the 1975 song: "Why can't we be friends?"

Well, I think there are a couple reasons. One, at least, is that they don't want us to be their friend. I think there is considerable truth to the oft-expressed notion that the mullahs and the Ahmadinejads that currently run Iran NEED a "Great Satan," in much the same way that Bush NEEDS the "war on terror." It is the great bogeyman that allows them to maintain and enhance their powers, to keep an otherwise restive populace in line. If I am right about this, efforts to become friends with Iran would end up making the appeasement analogy valid: even if we did everything Ahmadinejad's letter asks, if would not be enough. Nothing would ever be enough.

Then, there are the more concrete issues. Ahmadinejad's letter makes clear that the price of friendship with Iran, even if it were possible, would be pretty high. To take but one example, we would need, first and foremost, not just to abandon Israel, but to assist in its destruction as a state. I often wish that Israel had never happened. But, it is too late for that now. And I, for one, am not willing to countenance the destruction of Israel in order to become friends with Iran.

But it all goes, I think, a lot deeper than this. Consider the closing paragraphs of Ahmadinejad's letter:

Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems.

We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point -- that is the Almighty God. Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is: "Do you not want to join them?"

Mr. President,

Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.

Here, finally, is the real Ahmadinejad. It is not really our foreign policy he hates. His beef is with who we are, how we live, what we believe. It is not our policies or actions he hates, it is our culture and civilization. We are, to him (and his ilk), the "Great Tempter," luring people into a corrupt, degraded, depraved, licentious and immoral lifestyle. What they resent most of all is the relentless allure western civilization holds for their own people. He (they) will not be satisfied until we too reject the "failed" teachings of liberalism (read freedom) and accept that only "faith in God and the teachings of the prophets" will allow people to "conquer their problems." Keep in mind that the "God" in which he insists we have faith and the "teachings of the prophets" to which he enjoins us to adhere and not the same "God" and "teachings" in which Christians and Jews currently believe. We would, of course, need to recognize that the Koran and Islam represent the "final truth." But to me, that is not actually the worst part. The worst part is the overtly theocratic manifesto. The flavor of the religion is not what is important to me. What is important to me is the rejection of liberalism. I am not willing to try to come to an accommodation with someone whose core goal is to get us to discard everything I believe in.

My sense: These guys are really and truly dangerous. I would no more give them a nuke than I would give one to Pat Robertson. The great scourge of our time is "true belief." True belief coupled with nukes is a very, very scary proposition.

All of this is not to say that we should not pursue rapprochement. I think the Bush administration refusal to have direct talks with Iran is silly. But as we try to work our way through this issue, we have to recognize that these guys are unlike anything we have ever had to deal with before. And we have to recognize that Ahmadinejad's letter is a lie: it is not our policies or our actions he despises. It is us.

The WSJ Calls For War -- Almost

Concluding that "the idea that Iran is still a decade away from a bomb . . . now looks like wishful thinking," and that "[t]he Iranian bomb will thus be a crisis for this Administration, not the next, The Wall Street Journal editorial page today stopped just short of calling for military intervention in Iran:

The task now for the President is to begin speaking publicly about why a nuclear Iran is, as he calls it, "unacceptable." Far from preparing for war with Iran, the Administration has barely begun to confront the tough choices at hand. The reasons for this reluctance are easy to appreciate: The future of democratic Iraq is far from assured; Mr. Bush's approval ratings are in the tank and his political capital is depleted; and the military options against Iran have their own limitations and risks. But Mr. Bush remains President for 33 more months, with a Constitutional responsibility to ensure our safety. And there is no more clear and present danger than Iran's nuclear programs.

I don't know if Iran's nuclear programs do pose the sort of clear and present danger that the WSJ supposes they do. I tend to agree with the WSJ that the prospects of stopping them diplomaticallyare close to nil, but I go back and forth on the question of which is worse: trying to stop them by force or accepting the inevitable and trying to contain a nuclear Iran via deterrence.

The analogy to the "appeasment" of Hitler is widely touted, but wrong. So far at least, Iran has not laid claims to any of its neighbors. And, if it did, that would be the appropriate point for NATO and the other Great Powers to forcefully intervene, much as it did in the First Gulf War. I guess the biggest threat is to Israel, but since Iran and Israel share no common border, that threat consists largely of the threat to lob nuclear tipped missles into Israel. Again, this is a threat that can probably be dealt with by deterrence, although I can see why the Israelis would not be all that sanguine about that approach.

Still, there is the core problem here, and it is a problem that underlies any deabte about preventative war. Why must we -- or any nation -- wait until a threat becomes clear and present before doing anything about it? That question has a bad rep right now becuase it was the theory that underlay the Iraq war. But the thing that made the Iraq war such a terrible mistake was not the principle of "prevention" but the fact that Saddam did not in fact have any WMDs and was not, therefore, even a theoretical threat. Would we be so opposed to the Iraq war if we had found the WMDs? I don't think so. The problem, then, is not that the Iraq war was wrong in principle; rather it was wrong becuase, as it turned out, it was unnecessary.

So, I ask myself: can we afford to let a nut case like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have nuclear weapons? More precisely, are we sufficiently committed to preventing that to accept the consequences of bombing Iran? Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out some of those consequences in an April 23 Op-Ed piece in the LA Times . Those consquences are real and potentially awful. But are they more or less awful that an nuclear armed Iran? Frankly, I just don't know.

This much seems clear to me, though. We would have had a far better chance of containing this threat either diplomatically or militarily if we had not gotten ourselves mired down in Iraq.

A Peaceful Call to Arms - New York Times

I can't decide if this Op-Ed piece in today's NY Time is serious or not: A Peaceful Call to Arms:

THE American public needs to be prepared for what is shaping up to be a clash of colossal proportions between the West and Iran.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt masterfully prepared Americans before the United States entered World War II by initiating a peacetime draft under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.

Now, President Bush and Congress should reinstitute selective service under a lottery without any deferments.

Huh?

What makes me wonder whether this is a joke is this:

President Bush has the perfect credentials overseas to execute this move, and little political capital at home to lose at this stage. Polls confirm that a wide majority of people in many countries view him and the United States as the major threat to global peace. Why let them down on this count? Go with the flow.

But the rest of it is so damn earnest that one has to think that the guy just might be serious.

To say that I think this is nuts would be an understatement.

The War Next Time

What to say about last Sunday's reports, in the New Yorker and Washigton Post, that the Bush administration is planning for a military intervnetion -- primarily by bombing (including nukes) -- in Iran?

The administration has repeatedly characterized these reports as "wild speculation" (see this, for instance), but just as repeatedly refused to take the military option "off the table." Sure, they say, contingency planning is going on, but "for now" the US is committed to diplomacy:

"We hear in Washington, you know, 'prevention means force,'" Bush told students and faculty at Johns Hopkins University. "It doesn't mean force, necessarily. In this case, it means diplomacy."

Bush joined aides in playing down prospects for military action against Iran, saying, "I read the articles in the newspapers this weekend. It was just wild speculation."

But he asserted: "We do not want the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge about how to make a nuclear weapon."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated earlier that military force remains an option while insisting the priority was for reaching a diplomatic solution.

That is what makes this all so maddening. No one would ask Bush to explictly take the military option off the table. And, of course the military is developing plans for that contingency. Who could object to that? But given their ideology (see this) and their history, you can't help but wonder whether, way down deep, the Washington national security apparatchiks wouldn't really prefer to "bomb 'em back into the stone age." Consider this, attributed to a former high-level intelligence official paraphrasing Rumsfled:

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone," the former high-level intelligence official told me. "Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.

Would they really do it? I don't know. I certainly hope not. But, if they do do it, there will be no effort to first build support within the American people like there was in the run-up to the Iraq war. The attack will come, if at all, out of the blue. Why? Because the public is no more likely to be persuaded to support another foreign war than passengers on a plane are likely to persuaded to sit quietly by and let men with box cutters hijack their plane.

Moreover, since deploying ground troops is not something that can be done without some level of political support (and since we plainly do not have enough anyway), the attack, if it comes, will be much more like Clinton's cruise missle attacks on Afghanistan and Somalia or Reagan's bombing of Libya than like the invasion of Afghnaistan or Iraq. And, except for one horrible possibility, it will do as little to accomplish Bush's goals as the London Blitz did to accomplish Hilter's.

The "one horrible possibility" is nukes, and it is Bush's lack of other options that makes this so scary. Bush and his cabal have a near messianic conviction that the "war against terrorism"can be won by force of arms if only Western leaders had the guts to use it. They also believe, I suspect, that no subsequent administration, Republican or Democratic, can be counted on "do what it takes." Thus,they believe, if Iran can string this issue along for another two years, the battle will be lost for all time, and we will no more be able to keep Iran from going nuclear than we were able to prevent North Korea from doing so. Yet, they also understand that the only military option open to them is bombing and that conventional bombing alone will do the trick, if at all, only if it is sustained and repeated over a long time. The temptation, then, is going to be to use nukes, since that is the only option that has even the potential for putting an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions in the time they have left.

I think, in the end, that even Bush will shy away from nukes. But even if you aren't Paul Krugman, you have to wonder. True believers are always scary, but never more so when they have control over essentially unconstrained military power.