I sent Tom that Netanyahu interview last night. He responds with a blog including it.
Losing all perspective on Iran, but now getting more realistic on what Israel is capable of
By Thomas P.M. Barnett on News Analysis
We're are being barraged with apocalyptic arguments on Iran, with heavyweight Bernard Lewis suggesting Ahmadinejad has the capacity/will to start/wage cataclysmic wars (week after next, no less) and former Israeli PM Netanyahu likening Ahmadinejad to Hitler, Israel to Czechoslovakia, and Palestinians to Sudetenland Germans.
So we're being sold some very powerful historical analogies, but ones with limited historical shelf dates, as in, who still remembers and do they still make sense?
There is legitimate fear of Iran with nukes, but it's interesting that all the historical analogies being offered are pre-nuclear. And they're being offered as firm proof of Iran's reputed undeterrability, irrationality, religious-based craziness--a topic I have repeatedly addressed in this blog.
But somehow, throughout the nuclear age, culture after culture (no matter the religious background or the historical "certainty" of their ideologies) have taken up nukes without succumbing to irrationality, national martyrdom, or uncontrolled escalation--even Strangelovian America.
As for Iran's record on supporting transnational terrorism, evidence of irrationality or extreme carelessness just isn't found. Much like the Sovs, they try exactly what they know they can get away with, without triggering unacceptable blowback in return. I'm talking the choice of targets, the frequency, the venues, the proxies, and the methods. Iran's tolerance for blowback strikes me as unremarkable, even in its war with Iraq (coming nowhere near a coolly rational Stalin, for example).
But screw all that historical evidence and focus on the rhetoric! I mean, look how that approach has often worked in the past with our analysis of the Sovs! Basically, we mirror-image and overreact, overspend, and over-constrain ourselves.
Ah! But Hitler with nukes!
Why stop there? Why not Genghis Khan? Neanderthal man?
Hitler would have been an obvious tipping point: armed with one age's mindset and the succeeding era's technology. But the world learns from nukes over time, and Iran has lived in that world, despite the time-traveling nature of their religious fundamentalism.
But you know what? Religious beliefs are all time transporters--not just for Ahmadinejad, but you, me, Jews, Muslims, Christians--everyone with faith. They ground us in the past. For some people, such faith can blind WRT present realities, but here's the safety valve: such people don't rise to national power in anything other than birthright successions, and even there, the usual megalomania based on hereditary "fate" typically vastly outweighs the usual weaknesses engendered by such queer in-breeding (one thinks of Kim Jong Il, for example--maybe Prince Charles), much less any blinding faith..
When one contemplates Ahmadinejad, I see a Newt Gingrich/Richard Nixon-like manipulator of public sentiments and belief, or pseudo-ideologues who'd go straight or bent depending on what brings them power faster. All such types have far more in common with one another than with you or I--much less those so disconnected by fundamentalist faith that--true to their faith--they truly withdraw from life and power. The underlying truth with all of these people is that the desire to gain power is superceded only by the desire to retain it. Deny them the latter, and Gotterdammerung is certainly possible (Does Hitler nuke it out if he's going down and he's not going to win anyway? Sure. Does he nuke if he can without suffering a response in kind? Definitely. But does he nuke knowing it all ends for him as a result of an equal response from his enemy? No, he doesn't. He keeps playing the game.).
Extrapolating national suicidal use of nukes from individual suicide bombers has no basis in history--Iran's or the West's. Scale matters. I, the great leader, will use any number of such individual sacrifices, but not the whole shebang. I didn't spend my life to achieve such power simply to end my nation's existence.
Think about it: Persia the nation predates Israel by several hundred years. Measuring national coherence over time, and controlling for recent trauma (e.g. Holocaust, Iran-Iraq war), I'd be far more willing to bet on Israel's suicide by nukes than Iran's.
And therein lies my real fears with Israel's (and its unblinking supporters') now frantic prostlelyzing on the Hitler/irrationality charge..
Why?
It takes a lot to whip Americans into enough of a frenzy to wage war, but when we do, we typically are willing--throughout history--to go all the way, plus stay around for decades, as we've done in numerous global locations, to preserve the resulting peace.
No one else does that.
And if you're Israel, right now learning just how hard it is to stop simple Katyushas flying out of Lebanon from surprisingly well-disciplined and organized Hezbollah militia troops, then scale up your sense of what it takes to do the equivalent with nukes and Iran--a country with a far more serious military, significant strategic depth, and a population of 70 m (three times-plus Iraq).
As the brave noises about Israel "simply doing what it's gotta do with Iran on its own" fading with each day that Lebanon looks more quagmire-like, watch the hyperbole on Iran skyrocket as Israel and its unblinking suppporters try to make its strategic fear become our own (Lewis's last op-ed was a cartoonishly bad attempt at this).
There is no need to fall into this trap.
I'm no more willing to risk this era's globalization on Israel's fear-driven calls for U.S. pre-emption on Iran (and all that would both cost us immediately and potentially over time in a possibly bifurcated--or worse--global security environment) than I would do similarly for Taiwan's fears vis-a-vis China.
Israel's potential losses do not justify that, given our certain ability to wipe Iran off the face of the earth before it could finish the job--a trigger I know I would personally pull without blinking as president, and so I cannot imagine anyone achieving that office who's not similarly certain in his or her response.
The reality is that Iran gets the bomb, and that this reality will force a comprehensive security regime to emerge for the Middle East as a whole.
Scary journey? Sure. But a necessary and inevitable one, and also one not so onerous or so dangerous that obviating it is worth x-thousand American soldiers' lives in the meantime--much less the overarching dangers to the global security environment from a potentially withdrawn America.
Iran will get much in this transaction, but so will Israel ultimately--not what it wants now but what it needs eventually. Meanwhile, the U.S. will get what it desperately needs as well: relief from our lasting role as regional cop, and the ability to shift subsequently to a far more needy continent--Africa.
American grand strategy isn't limited to zero-deductible life insurance policies for Taiwan, or Israel, or really anybody--even Americans. It's about getting the world we want over the long haul at an accetable cost-benefit ratio--a rational, self-preserving, and logically selfish notion that Israel and its unblinking supporters seem to be losing their grip on right now, under the stress of this war.
We need to remember who we are and what we respresent and what we're responsible for and what we want in a future worth creating. There is no reason to unthinkingly assume that our strategic interests re: Iran are identical to Israel's. |
