-
U.S. POLICY
Will China Surpass the U.S.?
-
NEOCONSERVATIVES
Why The Neocon Strategy Was A Failure
-
ISRAEL
How Powerful Is the Israel Lobby?
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Sunday, December 27, 2009 - 5:26 PM
Share
When I started blogging last January, one of my first posts
warned against believing that Obama’s election and the evident bankruptcy of
the neoconservative approach to foreign policy had ended the prospect of a war
with Iran. If you didn’t
believe me then, the incoherent, war-mongering op-ed by Alan Kuperman in last
Thursday’s New York Times should
encourage you to reconsider.
As Jim Lobe points out on his own blog, the fact that the Times
accepted this piece in the first place is
not an apolitical act, and it may herald a tilting of the public debate in
a way designed to legitimate a subsequent U.S. attack.
Several features of Kuperman’s essay are worthy of note. The first is the timing: Why did the Times choose to run an unusually long (1,500-word) op-ed advocating war on the very eve of Christmas, a holiday normally associated with themes of peace, understanding, and harmony? It was also published on the last day when many people were likely to be paying much attention to mainstream news sources, which meant that prominent rebuttals would not appear or be read for several days. And that meant Kuperman’s piece could hang out there a bit longer.
The second puzzle is the dearth of new information or arguments in Kuperman’s piece. He hasn’t been to Teheran and come back with new testimony; the piece contains no scoop of leaked information or a novel piece of analysis, and as Marc Lynch points out in a compelling takedown here on his FP blog, Kuperman’s arguments in favor of war merely rehearse the same sort mixture of paranoia and over-confidence that was used to buffalo the country into attacking Iraq.
In particular, Kuperman assumes that a decision not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities will yield a series of Very Bad Results (though at least he doesn’t claim that Iran would immediately bomb Tel Aviv), yet he also assumes that our launching an attack won’t have any serious consequences. To take but one example, he discounts the possibility of Iranian retalation in Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan by suggesting that Iran is already causing trouble there, conveniently ignoring the possibility that they might do a lot more if sufficiently provoked.
A third feature of Kuperman’s piece is the absence of any clear link between his proposed course of action and the U.S. national interest. He takes for granted that Iran will get nuclear weapons unless someone bombs them, and that if they do, this will have grave consequences for the United States. But even if we assume that Iran eventually gets a few bombs -- which is still far from certain -- thereby joining the ranks of Israel, Pakistan, and India, it is not clear why this event poses a sufficiently grave threat to the United States as to justify a preventive war.
Could Iran use a nuclear weapon against us, or against close U.S. allies? Only if they wanted to experience devastating retaliation. Could Iran use it to blackmail the United States or even countries like Israel or Saudi Arabia? No, the threat would not be credible because carrying it out would be suicidal. Could they give a bomb to terrorist? In theory, yes, but what leaders would run serious risks and spend billions of rials to obtain a deterrent and then blithely hand it to some third party, who might use it in a way that would trigger massive retaliation on Iran by the United States or others?
Remember that the USSR had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and was governed by ruthless men, and they never tried to blackmail us, our allies, or various non-nuclear adversaries either. Mao Zedong was equally indifferent to human life and made a number of bellicose statements about nuclear war, but getting the bomb in 1964 didn’t make China either more aggressive or more influential. Proliferation hawks have been offering doom-and-gloom forecasts nearly every time a new nuclear weapons state emerged; fortunately, virtually all of their pessimistic predictions have proven to be erroneous.
Like most advocates of preventive war, in short, Kuperman has conjured up implausible nightmare scenarios in order to justify attacking a country that has not attacked us and shows no signs of wanting to do so. And he has somehow convinced himself bombing Iran will leave us better off, even though he concedes that it can't prevent Iran from getting a weapon if it really wants one. Gee, I wonder if bombing them will make the U.S. more popular there, or decrease Iran’s desire to have a deterrent that works?
Lastly, let’s be completely clear about what Kuperman is advocating. No matter how careful and discriminating the attack might be, an aerial assault on Iran will kill a substantial number of Iranians, including innocent civilians (and possibly some who are in fact opponents of the current regime). In short, he thinks it is perfectly OK for the U.S. government to kill innocent civilians in another country, in order to prevent that country from having access to the full nuclear fuel cycle (to which Iran is entitled, under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty). When respected intellectuals can say things like this in the pages of major newspapers, do we really have to wonder why the United States is so disliked in many parts of the world, and especially those areas that have been feeling the sharp end of the American spear in recent years?
The good news is that Kuperman’s piece has generated some valuable push-back in the blogosphere: in addition to the piece already cited, see the smart rebuttals from Helena Cobban, FP's Dan Drezner, Richard Silverstein, and Matt Duss. But I fear this battle is just getting underway, and I’ve lost confidence in President Obama’s ability to stand up to a relentless drip-drip-drip of hawkish advocacy, especially once it gets mainstreamed by publications like the Times and begins to take on the aura of inside-the-Beltway “conventional wisdom.”
Given the American media’s lamentable performance in the run-up to the Iraq war, now’s the time to start keeping score. Keep track of who the Times publishes on the op-ed page (the Wash Post and Wall Street Journal are mostly hopeless already), and also what they report. Pay attention to which think tanks, lobbies, and pundits are beating the war drums, and remind yourself what positions they took on the decision to topple Saddam. Remain alert for signs that officials within the administration are starting to advocate for "kinetic action" (or other euphemisms). And while you’re doing all that, ask yourself the ageless question: cui bono?
Mario Tama/Getty Images
You're right but for the wrong reasons
You're either deliberately downplaying the externalities from an Iranian nuke or you're daft; either way, it's not a realist assessment. An Iranian nuke would have serious consequences for our influence over the regime, both in terms of oil prices and for providing an umbrella for the number one state sponsor of Islamic terror worldwide. It will also likely have negative consequences for our relations with a number of countries; for example, it may complete Turkey's exit from our orbit, it may be seen in Europe as our abdicating our implicit defense agreement (thereby, further weakening our currency, among other negative consequences), and force the Arabs to get their own nukes, starting a race that would could double the number of states with nuclear weapons.
But, even taking all those, when we look realistically at the externalities from attacking Iran, these seem, on balance, far worse. Even beyond their ability to attack our troops and bases in the region, they could destroy the Saudi oilfields, pushing oil to $400/b; our already weakened economy would crumble. And which side do you think the Russians or Chinese would take in such a conflict? And, above all, we cannot afford to have Iran activate its terror cells; Iranian terror cells are the major leagues of terror, and if we're going to take a law enforcement approach to terror, then this will be wholly inadequate to dealing with such a threat, as the attempted Christmas plane bombing shows, we can't even stop a Muslim fanatic on a watchlist who boards a plane with a bomb.
I can't really understand your reasoning, therefore if you would clarify the following points I would be grateful.
1. To start you state that if Iran gains nuclear weapons it will "have serious consequences for our influence over the regime". The only influence we have is the damage we can do to them through strikes. While a nuclear weapon might remove that from our options the politics of the past ten years or so meant that this wasn't on the table anyway. It doesn't seem to me that a nuclear Iran would be any different from a nuclear India or China during the 1960s.
I find it incredibly unlikely that nuclear weapons would really change the oil market beyond a short term shift. The market would probably drop a bit but Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the U.S are more likely to influence prices than nuclear weapons. Also in that statement you assert that it provide "an umbrella for the number one state sponsor of Islamic terror worldwide". An umbrella in the nuclear sense is when a nation extends its military (nuclear and conventional) to protect other nations or regions from attack with the threat of a counterattack. You can't put an umbrella over yourself, another state has to do it for you.
2. Next you state that it would "complete Turkey's exit from our orbit, it may be seen in Europe as our abdicating our implicit defense agreement (thereby, further weakening our currency, among other negative consequences), and force the Arabs to get their own nukes". To start Turkey probably does not base its alliances on nuclear weapons any more than any other nation. If Turkey does decide to move in an oriental direction that probably will be more due to diplomacy, economics, and an opportunity to be a more powerful power broker in Eastern politics than because a nation gains nuclear weapons. Additionally Turkey is part of NATO, and until it decides otherwise will still remain partly in the West. In Europe most of the likely targets of a nuclear attack by Iran already have their own nuclear weapons and are more than capable of massive retaliation. It would also have nothing to do with our currency, which is dependent on our economy's wellbeing and not on another nation's nuclear weapons.
The only part I can agree with you on is that it might lead to the Arab states seeking their own nuclear weapons which, while very grim, probably would not double the number of states with nuclear weapons. Currently there are nine states that are either declared nuclear powers or are well known to have nuclear weapons. Given the complexity of a nuclear program, the high costs, and the politics of it I would say that only Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt could be expected to develop their own weapons in response.
3. On response I am still puzzled. I think that when you say "they could destroy the Saudi oilfields, pushing oil to $400/b; our already weakened economy would crumble." you mean by conventional weapons. It certainly would make no sense for Iran to launch nuclear weapons so close to its own borders. I am not certain of how high the cost of barrels of oil would climb in such an event (though I am willing to guess that the number $400 was picked at random), but there is also absolutely nothing to stop the U.S and Saudi Arabia from doing the same to Iran (which is more dependent on oil sales than Saudi Arabia). Also our economy does not depend totally on oil to survive. We certainly managed during the time when OPEC decided to put an embargo on the U.S and there is a reserve in place.
4. In event of war you argue "And which side do you think the Russians or Chinese would take in such a conflict?". That is mystifying to say the least. Neither China nor Russia have anything to gain from such a war and even less to gain by getting involved in it. If you mean that China and Russia would back Iran in a war of words that makes more sense, but the context you put it in suggests that you are speaking of warfare. China and the U.S are economically intertwined and China's armies have not fought a war since 1979. Russia's armies have more recent experience but they are still not considered the equal of the West (as Georgia showed), and in event of war NATO would be obligated by treaty to fight on the side of the U.S.
5. Lastly, on terrorism you stated "And, above all, we cannot afford to have Iran activate its terror cells; Iranian terror cells are the major leagues of terror, and if we're going to take a law enforcement approach to terror, then this will be wholly inadequate to dealing with such a threat". What terror cells? Do you mean Iranian intelligence agents? Iran is understood to back Lebanese, Iraqi, and Palestinian terrorists. Iran might increase support to them in a war but I've never heard of anything to suggest that Iran has it's own terrorist organization. At the moment Al Quaeda is considered to be one of the best groups, and I find it unlikely that a Sunni terrorist group would do anything besides sit back and wait for a repeat of Iraq to occur for them. Also how else do you suggest dealing with terrorist groups if not by police action? I note that the FBI somehow has a history of destroying terrorist groups, while the Marines do not.
Please clarify the above points, and soon.
Ho hum, didn't get any further than the fourth line wherein the frothing re "number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism". Don't you think it's time to come up with something new? If we look at cause and effect, "Islamic terrorism" seems to have really gained momentum in step with Israel's activities in Palestine and the US' overt activities in Iraq and Afganistan. Or is the Israel lobby like the US medical system, endlessly focused on the symptoms and not the cause?
forgive the reach for primitive charm - but you're an idiot Walt. If one believes that Iran having the bomb is a very bad thing, that the potential scenarios that germinate from this evil seed are disquieting to say the least, and therefore one concludes that an American military intervention, bad as that would definitely be, is still quite possibly better than the alternative, then it makes complete sense to contemplate and plan for an American military intervention. I'm not saying a military interdiction is the right move, I'm saying it's positively stupid, profoundly obtuse, not to have, or in your sad case, not to even want it on the table. That you liberals are so dumbstruck by your own siren song of a new age, a new enlightenment, that apparently the idiot child Obama is the perfect embodiment of, that you are so bemused by absurd sentiments that you can't seem to grasp the simple practicality of leaving an American military option on the table is startling - you people should be kept as far away from actual power as possible! It is not at all far fetched - NOT AT ALL FAR FETCHED I say - that ten years from now we'll be looking back at decisions made here and saying 'ya know, we should have bombed Iran's nuke sites - what a shit load of grief we would have saved ourselves'.
i think"""idiots for war""" need to head over to one right now( there's a few american ones to choose from), instead of trying to get another one going while you're still here in internet land.... it would be a blessing if all the "idiots for war' practiced what they preach... if you can bring cheney, rumsfield and bush with you while you're at it, great!!!!
Very interesting: Walt and now a number of other obviously intelligent commentators have weighed in on Kuperman's piece and yet ... all seem to have just unconsciously accepted Kuperman's entirely unstated and unexamined premise that indeed Iran wants a nuke and has a program to get one.
Just utterly assumed by Kuperman, leading everyone else to start more where he'd prefer, such as just where exactly we should start bombing and how many tons of we should start with and etc. and so forth.
Notice also how Kuperman is using the word "proliferation": Not in terms of the spread of nuke weapons, but merely the spread of a mastery of the fuel cycle. Not saying this is smart or dumb or anything, but at the very least it's an odd use, especially given that as I understand it every country has the absolute right to obtain such mastery if it wants.
Moreover, kinda funny that even though Iran clearly does not have nukes, and the latest U.S. Intell I think is that it stopped working on them years and years ago, nevertheless this supposed anti-proliferation advocate seems more interested in Iran than in other countries that already *do* have nukes. So how come he's not hammering on the idea that maybe de-nuking those already with them may well do more to de-nuke Iran than anything else?
Cui bono indeed.
Notice also another example of Kuperman's odd logic: Per him the deal Obama and the world profferred to Iran was bad bad bad. It would have *fostered* proliferation, K says, giving Iran much more enriched uranium than it could make itself:
"In sum, the proposal would not have averted proliferation in the short run, because that risk always was low, but instead would have fostered it in the long run...."
Okay, so Iran has now spurned that deal, right? Meaning, by K's own words, that we are back in the "short run"/little risk of proliferation era, right? Happy days, right? Kuperman should be happy, right? Iran back with its poor uranium only.
But no, oddly enough, no: Kuperman *still* wants bombing. For Kuperman, it seems, all roads lead to bombing.
And then of course it simply *must* be done by the U.S. What big difference this would make for someone who is really just interested in non-proliferation isn't really explained, but for Kuperman it simply must be the U.S. For three stated reasons. Not one of which so far as I see even considers whether it is in the U.S. interest to be doing such bombing. Not one.
Yet again, just one more thing we're all supposed to just assume as true I guess. One piled on top of another, and another, and another....
The Neocon Campaign for World War IV
Stephen Walt wrote:
Given the American media’s lamentable performance in the run-up to the Iraq war, now’s the time to start keeping score. Keep track of who the Times publishes on the op-ed page (the Wash Post and Wall Street Journal are mostly hopeless already), and also what they report. Pay attention to which think tanks, lobbies, and pundits are beating the war drums, and remind yourself what positions they took on the decision to topple Saddam. Remain alert for signs that officials within the administration are starting to advocate for "kinetic action" (or other euphemisms). And while you’re doing all that, ask yourself the ageless question: cui bono?
The same cast of neoconservative and neoliberal true believers and zealots who engineered the Iraq War are agitating for a war against Iran, and for a larger global war against "the Arab/Muslim world" (Thomas Friedman's phrase) in general (World War IV, the Clash of Civilizations, the Long War, etc.). Most of these individuals, organizations, media outlets, think tanks and policy centers seem to be components of the Israel lobby. Who benefits? Likud and Eretz Yisrael ideologues (and their Christian Zionist allies, who are seeking to instigate as much global chaos as possible, in quest of Armageddon).
What is truly mind-boggling is that this lobby has not suffered the slightest negative consequences for its role in promoting a multi-trillion foreign policy disaster in Iraq -- a war which greatly benefited Iran, China and Russia, and which didn't even provide any notable benefits for American oil companies.
Indeed: pay very close attention to the affiliations, backgrounds and agenda of contributors to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal who continue to agitate for a war against Iran. Keep track of each and every one, profile them and crunch the numbers to get a handle on what is going on.
Respected intellectuals and major newspapers
This striking phrase gave me pause:
"When respected intellectuals can say things like this in the pages of major newspapers ..."
especially in juxtaposition with the evaluation of "the incoherent, war-mongering op-ed by Alan Kuperman"
Perhaps to be simultaneously a respected intellectual and the writer of incoherent war-mongering op-ed's is not a contradiction among academics.
That the NYT would print a war-mongering op-ed should surprise no one who watched the front page stories by Judith Miller sourced by the White House, and then cited by the White House as justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq back in the halycon days prior to February 2003.
This is simply business (attempting to sway domestic opinion in support of perpetual war) and politics (foreign policy) as usual. The evident bankrupt approach of the neo-conservative's foreign policy is being perpetuated by the equally bankrupt approach of Obama and his advisers.
Thanks, Steve, for noting my own critique of Kuperman's horrid op ed. In my post I note at least 2 previous equally noxious & similar op eds on this very subject. One by the inimitable Benny Morris and another by the Reagan era neocon, Ed Luttwak. So yes, the op ed pages (edited I believe by David Shipler, which shocks me considering the excellent book he wrote about Israel a few decades ago).
But what's interesting is that the actual news reporting fr the Middle East for the Times is quite sharp. Michael Slackman, Robert Worth and Nabila Fathi really know what they're doing & tell it like it is. I feel in good hands w. them. The problem of course is the mandarins back in NYC sitting in their board rooms and plotting the decline of Iran w. the help of the Kupermans of the world.
The relentless covert and overt campaign to destabilize Iran proceeds, with Tehran's "nuclear ambitions" being the prime attention-getter. It may soon be considered an absurdity as well as an insult to the powers-that-be in Tel Aviv, Washington, Paris, London and Berlin to question if Tehran possesses nuclear weapons. Everybody will just have to accept the proffered premise of an Iranian nuclear weapons program as a fact. It is the basis of Kuperman's bilge. So far, however, I am unaware that the sixteen U.S. spy agencies have changed their collective judgement of December 2007 on the matter. Their conclusion was that Tehran abandoned work on an atomic bomb years ago, if indeed it ever existed.
Those reprobates who were highly suspicious about the 2002 Cheney/Bush White House campaign to convince Mr. and Mrs. America that the boogeyman of the moment, our former ally Saddam Hussein, was concealing WMD and developing nuclear weapons have reason to be suspicious of the Obama/Emanuel White House today. After years of crippling and comprehensive economic sanctions on Iraq under three U.S. Presidents, including an embargo of basic human necessities, the whole idea of Iraq posing some kind of a threat in 2002 sounded not just outlandish but obscene. In retrospect, it was also criminal, but no one was impeached or indicted for it. Yet this same "threat" scenario--again orchestrated by Tel Aviv through its many fronts and acolytes, and carried out by the bipartisan Washington establishment--is in the works targeting Iran, with Peace Prize Obama and Hillary "the obliterator" leading the charge. Are there no limits to what the American people will swallow as true, if it is given an official veneer by dubious public officials and the lapdog, establishment media?
Although the Russians and Chinese remain "in denial" and unconvinced that Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons, nevertheless they have gone on record of late, saying that they might vote for additional economic sanctions in the UN Security Council anyway. Why? No doubt, purely for business reasons, to humor Washington and to maintain a good economic relationship with the U.S. and the EU. It's a tradeoff. Moscow and Beijing see the writing on the wall. The actual reality of Iran is of little consequence, when measured against what Tel Aviv wants to see happen to Iran. The latter is controlling. The outline of this agenda has been transmitted to Washington, Paris, London and Berlin. The drumbeat for war is accelerating, as evidenced by professor Kuperman's instigative piece in the New York Times. Congruencies to what transpired during the run-up to "shock and awe" and the subsequent trillion dollar fool's errand in Iraq are striking, with the added kicker this time around, that Paris and Berlin, thanks to Sarkozy and Merkel, are fully on board with the fraud.
Germanicus
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
Read More
Jan/Feb 2012
-
Cover Story
-
Feature
-
Inbox
(10)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE