Arms and influence

Bluster, methinks

Armchair Generalist wonders if Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's mush-mouthed mumblings about "drastic measures" if Iran does not remove the Farsi word for nuclear from its vocabulary is just bluster, or something worse. I vote for bluster, in large part because of Olmert's own political problems.

Olmert is under pressure to resign, most immediately because of a corruption scandal, but also because of lingering anger over the failed 2006 mini-war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Back then, Israeli reservists had assembled a petition demanding Olmert's resignation, a sign of how low Olmert's national security credentials had dropped. Olmert's posture as being strong on defense took another beating earlier this year, with the publication of a report highly critical of how Olmert and top IDF commanders misconceived and mismanaged the Lebanon war. At that point, a majority of Israelis polled said that Olmert should resign.

Fortunately for Olmert, he can count on other people's stupidity to buttress his own. First, as the Generalist point out, there are Israel's friends:

SecState Condi Rice talks about extending America's nuclear deterrence "shield" over Israel as a warning to Iran (or any other adversarial nation) not to consider using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against that country. It's not necessary for two reasons. First, the Cold War is over. No one's impressed by the paper tiger of threatened nuclear immolation. Second, Israel's leadership is scary enough with its 150 nuclear devices - they really don't need our "assistance" other than the $2-3 billion we give them, despite their continued disruptive behavior.

Even better, there are the obliging enemies of Israel, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmenidijad, who may have made fewer threatening statements in the direction of Israel, but hasn't exactly shut up completely. So, the verbal exchanges between Tel Aviv and Tehran continue.

Therefore, there's every reason to think that Olmert is more than willing to turn up the volume about Iranian threats to drown out the clamor about his deeply troubled prime ministership. It's unclear how successful this effort will be, however. Not even the White House is happy with Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's statement that an Israeli strike on Iran was "unavoidable." Israelis are fimmediately worried about events in Gaza more than Iranian nuclear plans (whatever they really are). In other words, Olmert can't count on everyone's stupidity, all the time.

 

Alone again, naturally

Perhaps the most important feature of the new sanctions against Iran is their solitary nature. Once again, the Bush Administration takes an aggressive, confrontational stance without anyone standing side-by-side with the United States.

Under the circumstances, you'd expect someone--the Europeans, the UN, even some Middle Eastern countries--to be joining the United States in putting more pressure on the Iranian regime. Other nations are within more immediate range of any Iranian missiles; suitcase bombs are more easily smuggled into Greece or Saudi Arabia than the United States.

It's equally surprising to see the Administration willing to stand alone, if President Bush believes that there's any hope that sanctions might work. Unilateral economic punishment makes it harder for some financial institutions to do business with Iran. Other banks will undoubtedly replace them. Many Iranian assets may be ensnared for a while, but unless the Iranian regime was foolish enough to put all its money in Wells Fargo accounts, it's hardly a fatal blow.

These sanctions do have one immediate political effect: they give Khamenei, Ahmenidijad, and their ilk the opportunity to take the tired but effective anti-American rhetoric for yet another ride. That's especially easy to do, given that the United States is the only country implementing these sanctions. In the short term, at least, these sanctions help them more than hurt anyone in Iran who deserves the moniker "enemy of the United States." Average Iranians are sick of Ahmenidijad, whom many consider a clown, and Khamenei, who is the face of the Iran of 1980s, a time Iranians are eager to leave behind. Why then is the Administration, yet again, giving the Khameneis and Ahmenidijads new political capital?

The attempt to separate sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force sounds, in theory, like the sort of distinction one should make. After all, the target for any potential economic hardship is not the Iranian public, but their execrable leaders. Unfortunately, the reality of economic sanctions is, as we know from past experience with Iraq, a lot messier.

Diplomats may have learned how to avoid the mistakes of the Iraqi sanctions, but that doesn't mean new techniques will be surgically precise. After all, the Revolutionary Guard is involved in many enterprises in Iraq, which in tun employ or serve a lot of people.

But maybe these sanctions aren't serious, so we don't have to dissect them carefully. Perhaps they're the result of an Administration who is frustrated with Iran, to the point where people close to the President feel that they have to support some action.

However, this is exactly the wrong time to be underscoring the isolation of the United States. Over 30 years ago, our allies stood on the sidelines as the United States struggled to extricate itself from "America's War" in Southeast Asia. While the US lost prestige and influence because of the Vietnam War, it slowly regained it. Other issues of joint concern, such as the Soviet threat and trouble in the Middle East, quickly occupied the US and its allies. Most of the bridges burned were rebuilt.

Today, we have another "America's War" in Iraq. In contrast, rather than build bridges, the Bush Administration continues to show how its ready to plunge into dangerous waters with little idea how to reach the other side.

More importantly, in the 1970s, the US only lost credibility because of the Vietnam misadventure. There were no great economic stakes, and none of the regional powers in Southeast Asia on the cusp of gaining nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, Iran is wholly unlike North Vietnam in those regards.

What exactly is the Iran strategy?

The Yorkshire Ranter puts the matter succinctly, with a minimum of ranting:

So, yes - Mottaki is quite right. Enough for the description of things as they are, though; what about things as they should be? Daniel Levy, writing in Ha'aretz, is sensible. He points out that the US and Israeli strategy towards Iran is hopelessly confused; the aim is left open between regime change and nonproliferation. The chief motivation for investing in nuclear technology is to prevent regime change, but no-one is willing to offer the regime security in return for nonproliferation; so why would they stop proliferatin'? And if they don't stop, where is your regime change then?

We faced a similar problem during the Cold War, on a much larger scale. We hated Soviet totalitarianism, and we were scared to death of nuclear war. Therefore, even the most bellicose Cold Warriors, such as John Foster Dulles, backed off the idea of "regime change" in Eastern Europe until the Soviet empire collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and stupidity. Better to have a sane, stable, albeit evil regime in Moscow than a bunch of frightened apparatchiks convinced that the apocalyptic confrontation between communism and capitalism was about to occur.

However, the Bush Administration isn't exactly trying to reach a detente with the mullahcracy, unless there's some very sub rosa diplomacy happening behind the scenes. So what exactly is the strategy here?

The Ranter also points out, as other national security bloggers have, that the United States hasn't deployed enough firepower to the Persian Gulf to make even a minimally credible military threat. So what's the point of the saber-rattling, exactly, if the scabbard is empty? Do top Administration officials think that the Iranian government isn't paying attention? Do they want the public confrontation to help cement the regime in place?

MERLIN was no wizard

"Outing" a CIA agent is definitely bad, arguably treasonous. But let's not forget how dangerously goofy Operation MERLIN was. The flawed nuclear plans the CIA passed to the Iranian government weren't flawed enough: the Russian scientist who posed as the source of the plans took a few minutes to correct them before tossing them over the transom into the Iranian consulate.

Treaties and obligations

Before the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration already felt unduly constrained by treaties and international law. Fancying themselves 21st-century Bismarcks, the members of Bush's team with real clout were eager to pursue a kind of vulgar Realpolitik. For them, it wasn't even worth pretending to have respect for the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Geneva Conventions, or other constraints on the full, muscular sovereignty of the world's only superpower. The 9/11 attacks only deepened this antipathy.

Now, the White House is feeling the backlash from this approach. In Iraq, the "coalition of the willing" proved far less enduring than, say, the NATO campaign in Afghanistan. The backlash is also undermining the Administration's Iran policies.

Case in point: several Central Asian countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and and Turkmenistan, are now defending Iran's nuclear program. While no diplomatic pronouncement from Turkmenistan is likely to stop a US military strike against Iran, the unwillingness to base American forces, or grant overflight permission, is a kink in any serious military campaign against Iran:

No Caspian Sea country should let its territory be used by other countries "for aggressive or military operations against another Caspian state," said Putin, who is attending a meeting in Tehran of the leaders of the five countries that border the inland sea.

The leaders jointly made a similar statement, signaling the opposition of Iran's neighbors to any military action by the United States or its allies.

Imagine now an alternate history in which the United States had used the 9/11 attacks not to dismantle its treaty obligations, but to strengthen them; in which it did not go out of its way to insult the UN, but tried to make it easier for the UN to respond to threats like the Iranian nuclear program. This announcement might never have happened, or it may have stopped at expressing sympathy for Iran. ("You're on your own" would have been the obvious subtext, in that case.)

Now, having said that, I'll tell you that I don't get dewy-eyed over international law. I've known people whose earnestness about the UN and international law has blinded them to the realities of international politics. These true believers (you meet quite a few of them in academia, by the way) didn't notice that, at some point, they crossed the border from pragmatism into idealism. Now, they argue for policies that make perfect sense in a world that does not exist.

My favorite example of this sort  of true believer: the presentation I attended around 1990, in which the speaker argued that the reason why the Israelis had a nuclear weapons program was the US government's lack of enthusiasm for the Test Ban Treaty. Huh? I thought the reason the Israelis wanted nuclear weapons had something to do with the Arab-Israeli wars, not the bad example the United States might be setting.

Still, treaties and obligations have a constructive purpose. Your allies can always bail out of a collective endeavor, such as the first Iraq war, but only at a much higher political cost. Military agreements, such as NATO, give the allies a great deal of experience working with one another, and also increase the understanding about their respective security concerns. And so on.

On the same day that the Central Asian countries made their announcement, our European allies--the Administration's foils before the 2003 invasion of Iraq--are still debating how to deal with Iran. Even though any Iranian nuclear weapon will have a far easier time reaching Berlin or Paris than New York or Washington, the Europeans don't see the threat quite the same way as the Bush Administration does:

Britain and France, which initiated the call for joint European action, back tough new multilateral sanctions outside the U.N. Security Council. But other countries, notably Italy and Austria, want significantly less serious steps. Germany fell somewhere in between, said European and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate is not public.

The US government can't even get the Europeans to back any sanctions on Iran's meddling in Iraq:

But there are already cracks across the Atlantic. While the United States is considering a package of actions that will effectively punish Iran for its intervention in Iraq as well as for its suspected nuclear program, the Europeans do not want to "confuse" the two issues, said a well-placed European official familiar with the debate.

Bush administration officials, for example, want to designate Iran's elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism under a presidential executive order. But in European eyes, the Quds Force is linked mainly to arming, training and funding militant factions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. "We want to keep our eyes on the nuclear file," said a second European official.

It's easy to understand the Europeans' position. While the sanctions might have merit, they also might bolster the US case for military action. In other words, they don't want 2007 to be a repeat of 2003.

Our wannabe Bismarcks should study the Iron Chancellor a bit more carefully. True, Bismarck did say, "All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence." He also said, "Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war." Another quotable quote has special relevance for the Bush Administration's problems rallying support: "When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."

A bold new idea?

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who read the news of a new covert action program against Iran and thought, "Hmmm, what happened to the one we should already have?"

Well, it's something

It's a happy day when you wake up in the morning, the sun is shining, the coffee tastes good, and a possible discussion between the US Secretary of State and the Iranian Foreign Minister is considered to be unremarkable. The forum is yet another Middle East summit, in which the appearance of diplomacy is more important than what actually gets accomplished. (However, these forums always provide a mechanism for private discussions, beyond what the representatives are saying in public.)

We can only hope that Condoleeza Rice has more to discuss with Iran's government than just Iraq--or even just Iraq and Iran's nuclear program. Any discussion that focuses purely on one or both of these issues omits other Iranian interests, such as its energy projects with India, Russia, and other countries. In other words, while security issues top the list, compartmentalizing them removes what little leverage the US government has with Iran. In that case, private diplomacy will look much like public diplomacy at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, a statement of positions.

[If the name Sharm al-Sheikh sounds familiar, the resort is the location of terrorist attacks in 2005, and an ugly incident in 1985, when an Egyptian soldier killed several Israeli tourists.]

A hostage here, a hostage there...

This analysis of Iran's strategy in holding British soldiers hostage is a bit misconceived:

What should truly worry Washington is that if this plan is successful, US soldiers are likely to be next in line for capture by Iran – and a manipulation of American public opinion just before the 2008 elections which would damage a Republican candidate supporting Bush’s stance would be perfect timing.

This is a plan that is already becoming more popular inside Iranian military circles, especially those belonging to the ultra-conservative Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). After the capture of four of the group’s operatives by US forces in northern Iraq, many IRGC members are eagerly waiting to settle scores with the US.

It is all too possible that the capture of the British soldiers can be seen as a trial run.

[You can practically here the creepy incidental music: Dunh-dunh-daaaaaaaah!]

We don't know exactly what happened in this incident, so it's a bit early to jump to conclusions. Iran's  normal MO is to encourage its allies, such as Hezbollah, to take Western hostages, rather than engage in that dirty business directly. The capture of the British troops is a notable break in that pattern, which makes one wonder about what's really happening here.

There are a lot of possible scenarios, many involving chance more than calculation. If factions in the Iranian regime do have a devious plan, I suspect it has more to do with convincing the chief American ally in the Iraq war, Great Britain, to withdraw earlier rather than later.

The skeptical eye

Just when you thought it was safe to trust National Intelligence Estimates again, ArmsControlWonk dissects the problems with recent NIEs about Iran's nuclear program. Fortunately, the more skeptical view arrives at a happier conclusion:

Recent public statements suggest that a new forthcoming NIE on Iran’s nuclear program will not significantly alter this estimate.  This is not to say that Iran is not making progress toward mastering enrichment, but merely that time remains for diplomacy.

In a similar vein, the Wonkster also takes a second look at the Tarhuna "weapons facility." In the 1990s, US officials warned that it was probably a Libyan chemical weapons facility. Er, um, wrong. There may have been good reasons to be suspicious, but US intelligence professionals seem to have lacked the hard evidence about Tarhuna that they had about its "sister" facility at Rabta.

I think we're turning Japanese

IN THE NEWS
As the Bush Administration tries to turn the national security bureaucracy and public opinion increasingly against Iran, the natural question is, How serious is the risk of war? With the American position in Iraq continuing to disintegrate, how could any sane person in the US government contemplate expanding the war? With memories of the mendacious PR campaign to invade Iraq, followed by the horribly botched occupation, still fresh, who would listen to the same pitchmen making the same pitch about Iran?

I’m sure that many people hope these questions are rhetorical. American military over-extension, which is doing grievous damage to the US Army and Marines, should be reason enough to take an attack on Iran off the table. (Since there’s little chance that air and sea power alone could eliminate the Iranian nuclear program, or change the Iranian government’s policies, ground attack must be considered as part of any campaign.)

Unfortunately, expanding the war into Iran is not inconceivable. If you think that rational human beings, given these circumstances, could only conclude one way, think again.

In August 1945, the Pacific War was in its final stages. The Imperial Japanese Navy had been smashed to bits, incapable even of assembling its few remaining ships into a fleet. Counterattacks had devolved into suicidal assaults against American ships, planes, or soldiers. The nation had a fraction of the oil needed to continue the war effort. Women and old men were being armed with sharpened wooden spears and drilled to defend the Japanese home islands. American bombers had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and American firebombing attacks had inflicted even greater death and destruction.

Still, the same factions that had driven Japan into conflict with China, the USSR, Britain, and most disastrously, the United States, believed that Japan should continue to fight on. Four years earlier, these same generals and admirals had argued that the only way to solve the deadlock in China was a surprise attack on the United States. By 1945, victory may not be in their grasp, but these leaders believed that preserving national honor was more important than preventing continued, pointless losses. (Of course, having conflated themselves with the national interest, protecting their own careers was, by extension, protecting the nation.)

Had the Emperor not made an uncharacteristically direct, firm, and unambiguous decision to unconditionally surrender, Japan would have fought on. Earlier, the Emperor worried that the militarists might remove him in a coup, if he had made just such a decision. Now, he risked his throne, and possibly even his life, in ordering Japan to end the war.

Emperor Hirohito’s recorded announcement was recorded within the Imperial palace on August 14, to be played on the radio to the nation the following day. A junior officer, Major Kenji Hatanaka, learned of the decision and tried to stop it. Leading his unit of the Imperial Guard, he broke into the palace (a capital offense), searched the grounds for the recordings. Hatanaka threatened Chamberlain Yoshihiro Tokugawa and other members of the Imperial household, and it’s unclear what would have happened if he had confronted the Emperor. Fortunately, Hatanaka never found the recordings, even when he burst into a radio station that was to play the announcement. When the commander of the Imperial Guard, General Giishi Tanaka, learned of the attempted coup and regained control, Hatanaka committed suicide.

Before you object to the comparison, let’s get the obvious dissimilarities out of the way. No, the United States in 2007 is not exactly like Japan in 1945. For example, the US military is obedient to civilian authorities; officers in the Imperial Japanese Army regularly ignored orders from Tokyo, starting and running wars on their own. As awful as American policies on torture and renditioning have been, they do not match the pain and death inflicted by the Japanese military during the Pacific War.

However, if you look at Japan then, and the United States now, you might see some familiar faces. A determined faction of aggrieved nationalists, having gambled the nation’s fortunes on high-risk ventures (the invasion of China or Iraq), now see the expansion of the war as the only way out of the current deadlock. Rather than question the whole enterprise, or the way it is being fought—in other words, to accept criticism—these men would rather find a “solution” through the elimination of foreign support for their enemies (Chinese guerrillas or Iraqi insurgents).

These sorts of men go farther than history should allow if they are propelled by larger, transcendental concerns. In the 1930s and 1940s, many Japanese felt that their government, led by the divine person of the Emperor, should assert its role as a great power. Since 2001, a faction of unilateralists, supported by Christian fundamentalists who believe in a God-sanctioned mission for the United States, have used the 9/11 attacks as the starting point for an effort to re-shape the region of the world most troublesome for US power.

As the failures mount, the transcendental ingredients of this political brew immunize leaders from their own mistakes. Setbacks become a test of faith, not a rebuttal of the original strategy. Normal rules of conduct, such as the Geneva Conventions, become intolerable restraints. Internal dissent becomes a treasonous attack on national will. To hell with what the rest of the world thinks, as long as the government can continue the pattern of lies and apologies, for as long as it keeps foreign leaders stammering in frustration. The worse things get, the more faith has to outshine everything else—diplomacy, democracy, treaties, international law, even mundane tactical questions—for fear that Providence will turn its face away permanently. As nations, Japan in 1945 and the United States in 2007 are very different. As wars, Japan’s conflict in the Pacific is not the same as the US occupation of Iraq. However, many of the stock characters in these two dramas are the same. When these familiar members of the dramatis personae start talking about new enemies, we should take what they say very seriously. They certainly do.

The laptop of death

IN THE NEWS
To paraphrase our Dear Leader, I don't know if it would be worse if the "laptop of death" turns out to be bogus, or if it turns out to be real.

OK, it's not too hard to figure out. If it's bogus, the US government looks like a band of consummate idiots.

The real problem

IN THE NEWS
What's the real problem in Iraq? The mounting sectarian violence? The failure to pursue a classic enclave strategy? The weaknesses of the Iraqi military and police?

If you ask Vice President Cheney, the real problem in Iraq is Iran. That's the conclusion of Seymour Hersh's latest article in The New Yorker, at least.

As misguided as this thesis may be, the rebuttals may be equally off-base. Iranian support for SCIRI, the Sadrists, and other Shi'ite factions is a serious problem. Iranian financing helps these organizations deliver money and protection that the Iraqi government cannot provide. (Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon represents a similar threat.) While no Shi'ite militia, or even a coalition of Shi'ites, is poised to seize control of all of Iraq, Iran is helping sustain the insurgency. For a relatively small investment, the Iranian government can create a great deal of trouble for the Iraqi and American governments.

At this point, the discussion might easily devolve into a relatively pointless discussion of how hard it would be to invade Iraq. Not only is that sort of invasion politically and militarily implausible, it would neither end the Iraqi insurgency. At best, attacking Iran would have a neglible effect on the conflict among Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds; at worst, it would inspire even greater outrage and desperation among many Iraqi Shi'ites.

Americans committed the same strategic error in South Vietnam, but with greater justification. Many observers and participants, from General William Westmoreland to Colonel Harry Summers, argued that the "real problem" in South Vietnam was North Vietnam. NVA formations attacking across the DMZ, or infiltrating South Vietnam from Cambodia or Laos, disrupted efforts to defeat the Viet Cong. American and South Vietnamese efforts to win hearts and minds became moot when NVA units moved into a village. The solution, therefore, was to eliminate the North Vietnamese military threat. For many, such as Summers, the NVA was always going to be a problem, as long as US ground forces were kept out of North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Of course, US leaders were worried that an invasion of North Vietnam would turn a regional war into a superpower conflict, if the Chinese or Soviets rushed to North Vietnam's defense. However, even if the United States had succeeded in knocking North Vietnam out of the war, National Liberation Front guerrillas might still have continued their war against the South Vietnamese government. The NLF would have faced a drastic reduction in material and manpower support, and they would not have benefited from the political mayhem that NVA operations in the South sustained. That's not the same as saying that the NLF would have been defeated. In fact, the NLF's dependence on North Vietnam led to the Tet Offensive, a crushing defeat from which the insurgency never truly recovered.

Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents has neither the scale nor the significance of the Democratic Republic of vietnam's support for the NLF. Nevertheless, it's still worth trying to remove Iran as a factor in Iraq's internal war. Other options than invasion--for example, a mixture of interdiction and inducements--definitely exist. Let's just be clear how much, or little, of a difference these steps might make--particularly as the sectarian violence within Iraq worsens.

Déjà vu all over again

IN THE NEWS
The US government is arguing that the nuclear threat from a Middle Eastern country is greater than the the International Atomic Energy Agency would say. OK, the part of the US government in question is the House Intelligence Committee, not the White House, and the country is Iran, not Iraq.

The nuclear threat this time around is a lot more serious than it was with Iraq. However, the important question is, why is any part of the US government getting into another noisy, public argument with the IAEA? As Steven Taylor at Poliblogger said today:

While I am hardly going to say that UN is perfect, I will say this: despite all the criticism that was levelled at al Baradei and the UN WMD inspectors in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, we have to face facts, the UN guys were right about the Iraq’s WMD capabilities and the administration and their allies were wrong. Indeed, fantastically wrong.

Strenghtening the mullahs

IN THE NEWS
We can argue whether the 2003 Iranian offer to put everything on the negotiation table with the United States was just a ploy to entangle American officials in pointless dialogue, or a genuine offer. We can speculate whether the Iranian government would have abandoned its nuclear program, or refrained from making mischief in post-invasion Iraq, if these hypothetical negotiations had occurred. However, what's not controversial is the following conclusion, buried at the bottom of the Washington Post article:

The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," Parsi said.

Postscript: Here's what Stygius says about the same topic.

The Iranian freeze

IN THE NEWS
One of the many sad things about the Iranian nuclear program is what it means for the Iranians themselves. Going nuclear helps a government stay in power, no matter how odious it may be. Political upheaval directed against a regime with its finger on the nuclear button is, needless to say, a scary situation that most interested parties would like to avoid. In other words, the internal opposition to the Iranian theocracy now faces a harder time getting support from abroad, on top of some hesitation among some of potential allies within Iran.

The man without shame

IN THE NEWS
This just in: the sun is bright, Ashlee Simpson lip-syncs, and Iran is a sponsor of terrorism. Thanks, Donald Rumsfeld, for that last clarification!

On a more serious note, this latest news item demonstrates, yet again, how Rumsfeld's heart must be a shame-free zone. The United States invaded Iraq because, among other reasons, of the threadbare claim that the Ba'athist regime in Baghdad was a major sponsor of terrorist groups. Meanwhile, anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of modern terrorism scratched their heads, wondering why the United States wasn't focusing on Iran, not Iraq, if it wanted to go after a real sponsor of groups like Hizbollah. But here we are, and Iran's capability to support terrorist groups willing to strike at US targets has improved, in no small part because of the number of Americans bivouaced in Iraq.

The United States and its allies need to deal with Iran. However, Rumsfeld only stands in the way of that effort. As long as he continues to head the Department of Defense, morale in the military will be low, the State and Defense Departments will be at each other's throats, and many potential US allies will be unwilling to embrace any US-led campaign against Iran. The problem is worse than having a Secretary of Defense with no shame--it's having the disgust with him actively impair US foreign policy.

The diplomatic dunk tank

IN THE NEWS
If you set up a dunk tank at a school fair, whom do you want sitting in the dunking chair? To attract people willing to put down a dollar for a few tosses at the target, you want someone whom everyone else wants to see dumped into the water. Every school has its candidates: the vice principal who takes the job of maintaining order a bit too seriously; the coach who tears into his players for every minor mistake; the science teacher who grades harder than anyone else in the school. It's a socially safe moment, when the target agrees to be ridiculed, and the people trying to dunk them pretend that it's all in good fun, no real animus there.

The United States has maneuvered itself into a diplomatic dunk tank. The bellicose posturing, the pokes at the UN and reluctant allies, the celebration of unilateralism, the blatant hypocrisy of many of its policies (for example, the attempts to stay out of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, while proclaiming the importance of universal morality in foreign policy), its borderline-millenarian rhetoric, and most of all, the invasion of Iraq, have all put the United States in the same mental frame that the unloved vice-principal occupies. Sure, he says he's slamming kids against lockers for their own good, and the good of the school. But how could anyone tell the difference between a genuine desire to maintain order and the simple enjoyment of intimidation?

But then the school fair arrives, and the vice-principal is forced, for the good of the school, to mount the steps of the dunk tank. So, too, has the United States willingly mounted the steps of its own humiliation, at the hands of a real enemy, Iran.

The Iranians have clearly been enjoying themselves, much like the school bully relishes the chance to see the vice-principal plummet face-first into a tub of water. The Iranian leadership, most notably President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have cleverly maintained a daily presence in the headlines. The Iranian government's goals are clear: keep the United States off-balance; maintain the diplomatic initiative; keep everyone worried about what the mullahcracy might do next. Unlike Islamist terrorists, who (all post-9/11, free-floating anxiety to the contrary) have little incentive to acquire nuclear weapons, the Iranian government has every reason to build a nuclear arsenal. Humiliating the United States is not only a bonus, it's a measure of success. The threat of a nuclear arsenal, even before the Iran actually acquires one, gives the Iranian leadership enormous leverage. The scales of raw power still tip far in the direction of the United States.

However, the risks and uncertainties of any American-Iranian war give everyone pause—including the usually belligerent Bush Administration, which has agreed to direct talks with Iran. Since the Administration clearly did not want to be cornered into these talks, the Iranian government took the opportunity, yet again, to humiliate the United States. Rather than agreeing to the talks, which Ahmadinejad had urged early in the war of words, he is now being coy. Maybe the Iranian government will agree to talks, but only if the US government proves its seriousness…

The current stand-off with Iraq is not the first time that the Bush Administration has maneuvered itself into humiliating circumstances. The confrontation with North Korea, the third member of the infamous "axis of evil," has not squelched any chance for a nuclear weapons program. (Click here for an analysis of how the United States may have overplayed its hand, making it easier for the North Koreans to wiggle out of a real disarmament proposal.) However, the North Korean regime got the Bush Administration to agree to negotiations, broke down some of the barriers to trade with the outside world, and convinced many South Koreans that their heavily-armed neighbor to the north was less of a threat to regional stability than the United States. China also took advantage of the diplomatic stalemate to position itself as the broker between North Korea and its adversaries.

Similarly, the Syrian government heard threatening noises from the United States, including the accusation that it was hiding the WMDs that UN inspectors and the US Army could not find in Iraq. However, the United States really has not visited pain and suffering on Syria, even though the bulk of US combat forces are deployed in Iraq or nearby. In fact, the parties responsible for Syria's most recent calamity were not members of the Bush Administration, but crowds of angry Lebanese.

The Bush Administration's pattern of bellicose rhetoric, followed by inaction and capitulation, has many sources, not least of which is the ineptitude of the Administration's efforts at coercive diplomacy. The biggest factor, however, is the Iraqi occupation, which ties down US military assets, bleeds the United States economically, and gives adversaries like Iran and North Korea the limits of American power.

The day after the school fair, life returns to normal. The vice-principal is back on the beat, charging into smoke-filled bathrooms, raiding student lockers, and looming behind stragglers on their way to class. The momentary humiliation of the drunk tank is past, even though many students, and perhaps a few faculty members, still have a few delicious memories. Unfortunately, the humiliation of the United States will continue tomorrow, and the day after that, and the days after that. And the Iranians are far more dangerous than a few high school hooligans.

Denial

IN THE NEWS
Robert at Lawyers, Guns, and Money posted this excellent analysis of the likely Iranian strategy, were there a war between the United States and Iran. Certainly, the Iranian government is likely to fall back on the strategy that was effective in the 1980s: sea denial.

The Iranians seem to be gaming a guerilla at sea approach, focusing on small boat attacks against US warships and neutral shipping. It's pretty unlikely that these could do much damage to a US Navy warship, but they could make life uncomfortable for some of the big tankers. It's unlikely that Iranian attacks could sink one of the supertankers, but they might threaten enough damage to close off, at least temporarily, oil transit by sea in the Gulf.

This is exactly what the Iranians did during the Reagan Administration: keep a credible threat to the supertankers moving through the Persian Gulf. The US Navy might wipe the Iranian navy from the map, and as long as a few light craft survive, the fragile flow of oil through the Gulf would still be at risk.

There's more to high oil prices than this threat, but it weighs heavily on the commodities market. Oil prices stay high, as long as uncertainty is the defining feature of Middle Eastern politics. The Iranian government's demonstrated ability to seize the political and military initiative from the West is generating a great deal of discomfort and uncertainty about Persian Gulf oil supplies. (Of course, the Iraqi insurgency plays its part, too.) Last time, the Iranians were foolish enough to force a confrontation with the US Navy. This time, they might have learned their lesson, keeping a "fleet in being" as yet another trump card to play in their confrontational diplomacy with the West.

Lost initiative

IN THE NEWS
Nadezha provides this excellent summary of the swirl of tense diplomacy around Iran's nuclear program. The punchline seems to be, The Iranians continue to hold the diplomatic initiative. Plus, the Iranian government seem to be able to effectively exploit the not-too-subtly-disguised rift between Russia, the self-styled leader of the League of Disgruntled Nations, and the West.

What we leave behind, part II

IN THE NEWS
A major reason why I wrote the previous post is the United States' obvious mental disengagement from Iraq. Everyone is sick of Iraq, including (if you believe this account) the private interests that have most profited from it. Even if the United States ultimately admits that it failed in Iraq, it matters enormously how it disengages from that country.

KBR may not have to worry about its long-term relationship with the US government being jeopardized; the US government does have to worry about its relationship with other allies that it is supporting through the sort of "reconstruction" (civil affairs, call it what you will) projects that KBR implemented. KBR is not as concerned about future contracts for big oil infrastructure projects as the US government should be concerned about how a dismal outcome in Iraq might affect world oil prices.

Iraq has already had an indirect effect on the cost of oil: since the United States clearly cannot do much about Iran's nuclear program, the uncertainty about the future of the Middle East this creates has helped push oil prices back to record highs. Iran's daily announcements of new reasons to be worried about the future of the Middle East deepens the perception that the United States is mired in Iraq to the point of helplessness.

To deal with Iran, the United States must pull free of Iraq. Abandoning Iraq in a hurry risks a worse outcome for Iraq specifically and the region generally. It's time to choose--and this time, the discussion with American voters and allies needs to be more open and constructive than it was going into Iraq.

The end of battle?

IN THE NEWS
An article in last month's Armed Forces Journal made an argument that I haven't heard for a while: the irrelevance of battle in modern strategy. While that sounds like the sort of musty subject that only military academics at the Army War College or Sandhurst might care about, it's actually a thesis that, if correct, should change everyone's expectations and measures of the utility of war.

The early forms of this thesis have been around for quite a while. Clausewitz, for example, made it clear that the standard concept of battle—two armies locked in a death struggle, waiting for the moment to deliver the decisive blow that would subdue the enemy militarily—could easily be irrelevant. Having lived through the Napoleonic Wars, he had plenty of examples where the victors of battles still lost the war. In 1812, the Grande Armée smashed the Russian Army in a series of dramatic battles (including Borodino, a major part of Tolstoy's War and Peace), occupied Moscow, and later evacuated Russia with a fraction of its original strength. In Spain, French generals came to grief chasing mobile British columns and elusive guerrillas. Napoleon, for all his self-publicity about being the master of the battlefield (a claim certainly supported by victories like Austerlitz), could not transform tactical and operational success into theater and grand strategic victories. Years later, Clausewitz would be writing On War with Napoleon clearly in mind. Battlefield victory, Clausewitz pointed out, doesn't necessarily translate into the political outcome you desire.

However, Clausewitz still believed that battles could manufacture political results, even though he was careful to warn his audience that one does not always flow from the other. John Keegan, a modern military historian and theorist, argued in The Face of Battle that battle itself might have become obsolete. After surveying famous battles like Agincourt and the Somme, Keegan concludes that various technological, strategic, and historical changes have made the notion of a decisive battle an illusion. Writing in the later years of the Cold War, Keegan pointed out that traditional "battle" depends on avoiding military scenarios that risk nuclear escalation. Assuming you overcome that hurdle, the enemy has to agree to meet you on the field of battle, an increasingly rare situation in an age when people have mastered "the war of the flea." The increased cost of war, and its disruptive effects on an increasingly interdependent international system, makes a sustained military effort that much harder.

Keegan was not arguing that war was futile. Instead, what the Armed Forces Journal article described as "the Austerlitz moment"—the dramatic battle that decides a conflict—is increasingly rare. Although Keegan didn't phrase it in quite this way, he in effect argued that the operational level of strategy, the critical middle layer between the tactical and theater levels, has fundamentally changed, changing its focus from battle to smaller, steadier clashes.

Saddam Hussein learned this lesson in the hardest possible fashion. The 1990 invasion of Kuwait was supposed to be the decisive stroke that, by putting Iraqi teeth on the Persian Gulf oil artery, elevated Iraq's position in the Middle East and the world. Instead, his invasion locked Iraqi forces into static defenses, waiting for the US-led coalition to evict him from Kuwait, cripple his army, and force Iraq into a humiliating regimen of international inspections, economic sanctions, and effective loss of control over major portions of its territory (particularly in the north).

Before you conclude that Operation DESERT STORM, a successful battle, disproves Keegan's point, think again. DESERT STORM occurred in a golden moment between the end of the Cold War and the emergence of whatever new international order there was to come. The USSR had collapsed, and its Russian core was economically and politically crippled. No nuclear-armed rival was in a position to oppose a Western military build-up in Saudi Arabia. In fact, most countries had good reason to side with the United States: by threatening the Persian Gulf oil supply, Hussein antagonized the world, not just Iraq's immediate neighbors.

Hussein learned the value of avoiding a direct confrontation. When the invasion of Kuwait inspired anger, not acquiescence, in the United States, Hussein began planning for future conflicts. The inspections, no-fly zones, sanctions, and intelligence operations against the Ba'athist regime gave Hussein a better picture of how the US government operates than he had before DESERT STORM. These experiences gave Hussein an appreciation of the value of bluff, delay, and obfuscation, the cornerstones of his new strategy. If the Americans attacked again, some Iraqi forces would put up a fight, but the rest—particularly the fedayeen units—would go into hiding. Thus was one major part of the current Iraqi insurgency born. While Hussein may be in prison, his fate is by no means decided. Who knows what might happen to him, were the new Iraqi regime to collapse?

Meanwhile, the Iranian theocracy has continued its decades-long campaign of indirect conflict with the United States. The latest crisis, in which Iran is testing its ability to play nuclear brinksmanship, is merely the latest in a series of attacks on the American political, economic, and military flanks. While the seizure of American hostages shortly after the Iranian Revolution might have been as much improvisation as deliberate strategy, other stratagems—Iranian support for the Hezbollah, the Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf shipping in the 1980s, and Iran's nuclear program—have been far more deliberate. Iran is not looking for an "Austerlitz moment," even in a confrontation over its nuclear ambitions. Instead, it continues to antagonize the United States, waiting for American leaders to make a crucial mistake, or simply give up some of its position in the Middle East out of sheer exhaustion. Nuclear weapons don't change the game Iran has been playing for nearly thirty years; they simply increase the odds of success.

For American military planners looking for an "Austerlitz moment," the People's Republic of China may be the last opponent that might reasonably grant that opportunity. However, China is just as experienced with this kind of indirect strategy, and far more skilled at it than the Iranians. Even the recent Chinese naval build-up, a development not widely reported in the Western press beyond a few military journals, is not aiming towards a decisive battle with American forces. To use classic Mahanesque naval terminology, China is more likely to seek "sea denial" than "sea control." If the United States and the PRC got into a shooting war over Taiwan or some other objective, the Chinese navy is practically doomed to lose any naval battle. The important question, however, is how many losses Chinese ships, submarines, and aircraft can inflict on the US Navy before they are defeated—particularly if Chinese forces avoid any major engagements. The Chinese naval expansion raises the possibility of unacceptable American losses in any such war: how many aircraft carriers would have to be sunk before US officials felt the political costs of rescuing Taiwan were too high? How many ships and aircraft could the United States lose in the western Pacific before it felt its overall ability to project naval and air power worldwide strained to unacceptable levels?

In short, wherever Americans look, they see a military landscape that is poor ground for future D-Days, Yorktowns, or Gettysburgs. While military power is hardly obsolete, it is now used to engineer different results than decisive battles. When intimidation fails to produce results, armed conflict is the next logical step in dealing with problems like Al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan, or Iran's threat to build and use nuclear weapons. However, contemporary military action at the crucial operational level of strategy is not about the preparation, conduct, and aftermath of a decisive battle. Operational strategy is, instead, the plane of sustained, smaller-scale actions that cascade towards a political outcome.

Perhaps, then, we should do away altogether with the phrase, "the Battle of," when describing recent history. For example, there was no "Battle of Baghdad" in 2003, or "Battle of Fallujah" in 2004. Major mobilizations of US military power do not necessarily lead to decisive results. In fact, the Iraqi invasion led to the exact opposite of what the Bush Administration intended: rather than resolving the problems of the Middle East in a daring masterstroke, the modern equivalent of Napoleon's march on Austria in 1805, the invasion made the Middle East even more problematic. Worse, the United States is now more deeply entangled in the barbed wire of Middle Eastern politics than it was before. In the 1990s, the important American foreign policy question was how best to use the United States' newfound position as the world's remaining superpower. A decade later, the important question is how a local election in Najaf or Karballah might determine the future exercise of US military power. There may be no better illustration of how the traditional concept of "battle" has become a mirage, luring the likes of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush into dangerous military expeditions.

He's not serious, is he?

IN THE NEWS
Richard Nixon once took the theories of nuclear brinskmanship to their logical extreme, the "madman theory." During the Cold War, only a lunatic would threaten to use nuclear weapons; therefore, Nixon concluded, if you did a convincing impression of a lunatic, you could rattle the nuclear saber whenever you needed. At the time, Nixon was thinking of applying the "madman theory" to North Vietnam, whose representatives in Paris had effectively stalled negotiations over the future of the two Vietnams. Nixon put US forces on a secret nuclear alert that he hoped would frighten the Soviets, North Vietnam's superpower patron, into pressuring Ho Chi Minh to make a deal before the crazy American president did something everyone would regret.

Nixon's madman theory is back--maybe. Is George Bush crazy enough to bomb Iran? Or is he a sane man trying to pull off a tremendous bluff?

With the US military dangerously overstretched, the Iraq War threatening to escalate into open conflict among sectarian groups, and Bush's domestic support at record lows, you might conclude that he'd have to be crazy to threaten Iran. More significantly, his Pentagon briefers, if they're doing their jobs at all, have told him how improbable complete victory from the air would be. The Iranian nuclear program is broken into many pieces, scattered across the country, and hidden in many difficult-to-reach, well-defended locations. The probability of completely eliminating every blueprint, every bomb component, every piece of fissionable material, and every nuclear scientist is practically nil. Leaving aside the practical and political barriers, the only military options with any chance of success are (1) invasion, and (2) nuclear attack. Both are highly unlikely...Aren't they?

Bush is performing the usual rhetorical dance that all Presidents make in confrontations like these. Say that all options are on the table, and step closer towards conflict. Wave your hands in the air and claim anyone who thinks you're planning for a war is being hysterical. Turn around and begin quiet preparations for air strikes. Face your enemy, smile, and say, "Of course, the onus is on you to stop me from attacking you."

Had Bush not announced a policy of preemptive warfare, and then executed it against Iraq, the world might not be as nervous as it is now. If Bush had demonstrated any willingness to admit the strains that the Iraq War has placed on the US military, more people might conclude that he understands the practical barriers to invasion that exist. Had Bush made steps towards reviving traditional American multilateralism in crisis management, we might feel that the odds of him saying, "Screw it, we'll use tactical nuclear weapons if we have to," would be a lot lower.

If Bush is serious, the US military and Congress face a defining moment. If tactical nuclear weapons are being prepared, quite a few generals and admirals are now deciding whether to resign, rather than carry out orders that are clearly not in the US national interest. If not-so-subtle nuclear elements of the Bush Administration's threats turn out to be a bluff, but more conventional attacks are not, the same military chiefs still face a situation that they cannot support. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress have to decide when they'll stop rubber-stamping every foreign policy decision the Administration makes. The Democrats in the House and Senate have to stop waiting for the Republicans in the legislative and executive branches to suffer a collective meltdown. (The Democrats' strategy resembles the Bush Administration's own misguided faith in mass uprisings that will save the day, without anyone having to do strenuous political work.)

Much of this discussion may be distorted by the word "crazy," which people often use to describe others with whom they don't agree. Nixon may have overstated things a bit when he concluded that only a madman would ever threaten to use nuclear weapons. If that had been the case, a generation of madmen worked in the Defense Department, crafting the doctrine of nuclear brinksmanship that more Presidents than just Nixon applied. You just have to follow a cold logic to its conclusion, without regard to many of the risks. Of course, this Administration has trivialized dangers before, and just proved to be wrong.

Ferguson flubs future firestorm

IN THE NEWS
Niall Ferguson's "what if" opinion piece on a future Iranian nuclear attack is astounding for its stupidity. If, to take his line of argument, a future historian were to look back on the Iranian nuclear program, they would not reach the following conclusion:

But the President was advised by his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to opt instead for diplomacy. Not just European opinion but American opinion was strongly opposed to an attack on Iran. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 had been discredited by the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein had supposedly possessed and by the failure of the US-led coalition to quell a bloody insurgency.

Americans did not want to increase their military commitments overseas; they wanted to reduce them. Europeans did not want to hear that Iran was about to build its own WMD. Even if Ahmad-inejad had broadcast a nuclear test live on CNN, liberals would have said it was a CIA con-trick.

There are no signs that Americans take real nuclear threats any less seriously than they did before 2003. They are likely to be a lot more skeptical about claims of nefarious nuclear weapons programs, but you can hardly look at Iran's determined march toward getting its own nuclear arsenal without believing the warnings. After all, they're coming from the Iranians, the IAEA, and fairly experienced nuclear proliferation experts in Europe and the United States. There are few reasons left to doubt the sincerity of the Iranians' nuclear ambitions, where there were real reasons to doubt whether the Ba'ath regime in Iraq actually had a nuclear program at all.

What Ferguson leaves out in his vulgar Churchillian picture of modern-day appeasers is, of course, the feasibility of taking any military action against Iran's nuclear program. Where Ferguson would like you to believe the fantasy of "bases in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan," the reality of the mess in these two countries is obvious for anyone with a television, Internet connection, or newspaper to see. American military resources can barely stabilize the situation in these two countries without taking on yet another war against Iran, a much tougher foe than the supine Iraqi military of 2003. (Click here for a breakdown of the current Iranian military.)

Even if we won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow, attacking Iran would not be a cakewalk. Surgical strikes that identify and destroy Iranian nuclear testing and manufacturing facilities are just as fanciful as Ferguson's safe bases in Iraq. The Iranian nuclear program is too dispersed for the air strike option to have anything but a marginal chance of success--leaving aside the question of how easy or hard it would be for Iran to reconstruct the program all over again. Otherwise, the United States would have to find enough willing allies to invade Iran, which would require a very large coalition effort to have any chance of success.  While there are many reasons for that last conclusion, terrain alone is a significant factor. Most of Iraq was a flat, table-like expanse across which ground forces could maneuver freely. Iran has far more mountains to cross, not to mention swamps, salt deserts, and other difficult terrain dotting the military landscape. While the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan showed that military analysts can overstate the difficulty of mountainous terrain, it's worth remembering three points: (1) the Taliban was much weaker than the Iranian military; (2) the US-led coalition that invaded Afghanistan was much stronger than anything the US could assemble against Iran today; and (3) US military forces are much less available than they were before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

We also lack any other kind of leverage with Iran. What could the United States offer the mullahs? Even if we had rewards for good behavior to offer, the Administration has already boxed itself in with its "axis of evil" rhetoric, making it harder to sell to the US public any detente with Iran in exchange for an end to the Iranian nuclear program. If Iran ever uses a nuclear weapon against the United States, its allies, or its interests, we'll have that lack of leverage, including effective military options to blame.