How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Given i am unsure that i really have a readership out there, i suspect this will go completely unread. I wrote the below piece mostly based on things that i have heard around about using the nuclear option on Iran, and intended it as a somewhat lighthearted explanation. I did offer it somewhere, but they had problems with it. So here it is. As reassurance that i am not completely hawkish, i do not subscribe to all that i have put here. I have also not bothered to hyperlink it (indolence mostly). Enjoy!

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Last week's New Yorker article by self-proclaimed alternative post-9/11 historian Seymour Hersh seems to say that we have gone in a full circle and returned to the panicked Cold War years of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Yet this time there is a key difference, we are the only side to actually have nuclear weapons to protect ourselves from apocalyptic zealots, so can we therefore conclude that it is time to stop worrying and love the bomb?

During the Cold War years the two sides essentially built themselves into a stalemate. The U.S. won because it was able to throw more dollars at its defense industry and as a result was able to outspend the apparently not-so-mighty Soviet Empire.

Nowadays we have two very different sized powers facing off against each other. On the one hand, we have the mighty American empire, with a military expenditure circling the $518.1 billion mark, and on the other we have Iran, a nation slightly larger than Alaska with a military expenditure of $4.3 billion. Similar to the Cold War, the two sides are ideologically opposed, though during the Cold War the two ideologies were diametrically opposed (capitalism vs. communism), while today both Iran and the United States have functioning constitutions (of sorts) and demagogic leaders burning with a messianic fervor. Here, the ideological divide is painted by some as a religious one with Ahmadinejad having no qualms about attacking enemies on religious grounds, while President Bush instead practices policies that may lack overt trappings of Christianity, but is often pointed out as an underlying theme.

While some of President Ahmadinejad's rhetoric against Israel is undoubtedly politicking aimed at a local audience and to curry him favor amongst the global Muslim umma, few can doubt that President Ahmadinejad is serious when he talks of annihilating Israel and Jews in general, and specifically of punishing the United States.

On top of these very public proclamations about the Zionist/American menace, President Ahmadinejad subscribes to a particularly vitriolic brand of apocalyptic Islam: one that is eagerly awaiting the return of the Twelfth Imam who will bring with him the end of the world. One of President Ahmadinejad's first acts in office was to hand over $17 million in government funds to the shrine from where believers expect the Twelfth Imam to emerge from.

Such public rhetoric can lead one to question the sagacity of letting such a leader ever get his hands on a nuclear devise; yet there are in fact there are a number of valid reasons why Iran can feel justified in wanting a nuclear bomb. They have hostile Israel nearby armed with nukes, and to their East they border a nuclear Pakistan, a nation best known for exporting fundamentalists, being ruled by a military dictator, and being in the middle of a low level conflict with its nuclear neighbor India. Then, of course, there is the hegemonic American menace brandishing its massive conventional and nuclear arsenal.

The flip side to this is that if Iran was to go nuclear, this would spark a regional arms race, pushing Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia into a position of great unease that they would translate into pursuing their own nuclear program.

So with these doomsday scenarios in mind, and the current stalled state of negotiations with Iran, is it necessarily a good idea to completely remove certain military options from the table?

Thus far it does not seem that the vague threat that the Americans have brandished at Iran has actually had an effect. The Iranians continue to march towards the bomb, increasingly turning the issue into a nationalistic rallying point without any hint that they actually plan on hesitating before they reach their goal.

One reason for this is that they do not feel that the West and the United States has the guts to actually step up and use the military option. It is through this spectrum that one should read the stories about American planning for a military option against Iran – the Iranians do not actually feel threatened; and realistically speaking they will not feel threatened unless they really believe that there is a real military option that the United States would be able to act upon. It is a basic lesson of diplomacy that you do not bluff people with something unless you can really back it up with the goods.

Given the fact that we are constantly reminded of how hard it would be for any conventional military option to actually affect the Iranian nuclear program, then is it not maybe a sensible idea to keep the idea of bunker busting nukes on the table? These would not be the same bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but would be more constrained nuclear weapons. A parallel in scope could be drawn with depleted uranium shells that conventional U.S. forces have already used in the region.

Would an American strike of this scope win the U.S. any friends in the region? Absolutely not. It would most certainly not have the effect of inspiring the Iranian people to stand up and overthrow their government as the Neoconservatives would have you believe. It would make the U.S. incredibly unpopular in the Islamic world, and would likely win no friends or allies anywhere else. But is this any different or any improvement on the current situation?

A major strike could stop, or at least considerably delay, an Iranian bomb. A genuine and credible threat could have the effect of making the Iranians actually come back to the negotiating table. For evidence of this, there is always the possibility that the current elevated threat level is what is responsible for the Iranians agreeing to current bilateral discussions with the United States on Iraq.

There is an argument that the Russians and the Chinese could end up having a stabilizing effect, but their involvement thus far with North Korea has not stopped that nation going nuclear.

The only alternative to a hard military strike is that the Iranian people decide that they have had enough of their leaders and topple them (or vote in new ones – something that is often overlooked is that Iran has got a pretty democratic constitution when examined closely, and their parliament represents an accurate reflection of the ethnic and religious make up of the nation) of their own accord. The U.S. can try to help foster such a revolt, but must do so in a way that leaves no American fingerprints – any such evidence would wreck the credibility of the nascent movement.

This does not paint a pretty picture, but makes one wonder about how keen we should be to take any military option off the table. Just like in the Cold War, a nuclear bomb could be the trump card that keeps the enemy in check. And once again, we return to MAD, a blissful state where we stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.