Also Irans
Justin Logan offers initial responses to the initial reactions to the Fox article I discussed yesterday. Especially relevant excerpt:
Neither Ted nor I thinks that bombing Iran would be a good idea if the deal fails, but if you put that into the piece, you immediately limit your readership. The people who I’d like most to come around to our position on negotiations are the people who would support military action in the absence of negotiations.
I understand the impulse here and it may be better than nothing, so long as not every Iran war skeptic adopts this tack. Because it does concede “we should fight Iran if ‘diplomacy’ doesn’t work,” which is not worth conceding, especially given that the Bush Administration views diplomacy as something to keep people entertained while priming its musket. A wise man – oh it was me – wrote (regarding Iraq) back in December 2001 that:
. . . the idea is likely to get the inspectors in, then claim that Saddam is not cooperating with the inspection regime, building the complaints into a casus belli.
which is, you know, exactly what happened. Bush Administration “diplomacy” is a sham. My nightmare is that down the line some subordinate clown to the head clown intones that “Even the Cato Institute’s most respected foreign policy scholars agreed that if diplomacy failed the US needed to resort to military force.” It will be a lie, and it will horrify the authors, but it’s a plausible scenario.
I should stress that Justin has been excellent on the Iran issue specifically and Cato has been excellent on national security policy generally. It’s just that one needs to recognize whom one is dealing with.
Lastly Julian Sanchez has one puzzling complaint and one very good question. The complaint is, essentially, that a “grand bargain” rewards Iran for its nuke program and provides a perverse incentive to other countries to start their own, if only to cash them in for grand bargains of their own. As to the former, well, yeah. it’s a reward of sorts. Iran gets things it wants in exchange for playing ball on nukes. In itself this is a problem only if you’ve internalized the Busybody Right’s conviction that any mutual accomodation with an adversary constitutes your defeat. It doesn’t.
Regarding the generalized perverse incentive issue, I think it cuts in two directions. I doubt the nukeward direction compares to the magnitude of the existing perverse incentive, which is that you had better get yourself nukes fast if you don’t want the US knocking your regime over. This is the lesson Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il have been co-teaching America’s real, potential and imagined adversaries. Willingness to strike win-win nonproliferation deals with potential adversaries is the only way to mitigate the existing perverse incentive.
See also, Justin’s response item to Julian.
Comment by Nell —
April 26, 2006 @ 7:53 am
if you put that into the piece, you immediately limit your readership
Symptom of a fatal D.C. disease: the desperate desire not to be cast beyond the pale of ”serious, responsible discussion”.
By this I mean nothing personal about the authors. It’s a structural problem for lobbyists, think tanks, pundits, Congressional staff, and bureaucrats, and journalists who work in Washington for any length of time.
Comment by Doug T —
April 26, 2006 @ 7:54 am
Might the disaster of our Iraq occupation actually help to remove the nuke incentive for various countries? Assuming that it actually teaches US leaders and the electorate the limitations of military power, it could greatly reduce the perceived threat to other countries of the US invading and occupying them at some later date.
I’m not sure how much this really matters, though. There are plenty of other very good regional reasons for most countries to attempt to get nukes. Even if the US was their bestest buddy in the world, Iran would still get tremendous benefit from nukes since it would secure them against Iraq, help them dominate the region, and give them some leverage in any issues relating to Israel.
India and Pakistan did get nukes to avoid US invasion. They got nukes to protect against each other. And so on.
Comment by Lemuel Pitkin —
April 26, 2006 @ 10:37 am
This is the key point about the Iranian nuclear program, and needs to be repeated over and over and over, in the hopes it will eventually sink in.
[Post-preview edit: why don’t comments here accept the b and i tags you can use everywhere else?]
Comment by Julian Sanchez —
April 26, 2006 @ 2:54 pm
”As to the former, well, yeah. it’s a reward of sorts.”
Hmm, I didn’t think that was any part of my point–if it seemed to be, I take it back: I don’t care about that aspect, except insofar as it creates the incentive effect. But fully in accord on the point about the much stronger perverse incentive created by our policy of knocking over regimes that seem on their way to nukes.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
April 26, 2006 @ 6:59 pm
Concur. Putting the best possible face on things, I think it’s safe to argue our bona fides regarding our willingness to take our regimes we don’t like. Now it’s time to convince the rest of the world that there are really good reasons to work with us by making some good win-win deals. I think we have a hell of a lot more to gain by cutting a deal with Iran that pulls them into the international community than by playing chicken with them and risking forcing them into building some nukes just to prove they’re willing to stand up to us. There’s a time for tough talk and there’s a time to cut deals; this is the time to cut deals.
Comment by Kurtz —
April 28, 2006 @ 4:27 pm
”Kill them all. The horror. The horror.”