If you’re interested in some good analysis of the importance of Barack Obama’s Prague speech framing his non-proliferation goals in terms of a long-term effort to entirely rid the world of nuclear weapons, I would recommend this from Steve Coll in The New Yorker, this editorial from The Economist, this piece by Peter Scoblic in The New Republic. You can also see brief statements from figures ranging from Chuck Hagel and Lawrence Eagelburger to Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu courtesy of the excellent group Global Zero.

Alternatively, you could listen to New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz who snifs that “nuclear weapons have served the world well” which will, of course, continue to be true right up until the day that we have a substantial nuclear exchange.

Life’s been a bit busy, so I accidentally wound up neglecting the fact that in a big speech in Prague, Barack Obama wound up endorsing one of my pet causes—recommitting the United States to the eventual total elimination of nuclear weapons. This was a policy the United States committed ourselves to when we signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, and it was a policy that Ronald Reagan consistently embraced during his presidency, but it’s fallen by the wayside in recent years.

I’ve seen some wiseasses on the right observing that just making this pledge hardly eliminates any nukes. This, however, misses the significance of the pledge to shorter-term non-proliferation goals. Simply put, if the world’s major powers really intend to keep large nuclear arsenals forever then that implies continues proliferation over the long run. The whole bargain of the multilateral non-proliferation regime was that the majority of countries would agree to eschew nuclear weapons in part because the existing nuclear powers were committing themselves to working toward disarmament. Non-proliferation facilitates disarmament, and disarmament facilities non-proliferation.

The hard part, of course, is how to get from here to there. And it really is hard. But it’s actually pretty easy to see what the first steps are. We need to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which Obama supports), we need to follow through on the Obama-Medvedev commitment to steep bilateral nuclear arms reduction (very good progress has already been made), and we need to get China, France, and the U.K. to avoid building-up their stockpiles as the US and Russian arsenals move down toward their level. Getting all the way to global zero would presumably take decades, but making progress toward that goal is one of the very most important things we can do.

This last one probably ensures that talks would fail. But Steven Walt makes a nice catch and observes that Obama’s Turkey speech included a key bit of language that underscores how serious the administration is about reaching a diplomatic accord:

Finally, I was struck by the language he used when addressing Iran’s nuclear program. He said that “the peace of the region will also be advanced if Iran forgoes any nuclear weapons ambitions” (my emphasis), adding that “Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will build a weapon or build a better future for their people.” Was this a subtle hint that the United States might be willing to tolerate Iranian enrichment, provided that we are confident that it was not masking a covert weapons program? Hmmmmm.

Of course there’s still the issue of whether or not the Iranians are interested in diplomacy.

A group of powerful House Democrats—Steny Hoyer, Howard Berman, Ike Skelton, Silvestre Reyes, Henry Waxman, Gary Ackerman, and Robert Wexler—have sent Barack Obama a letter seeking to draw limits around his proposed policy of engagement with Iran. Specifically, they state that Iran “must verifiably suspend its uranium enrichment program within at most a few months of the initiation of the discussions” and calls for a variety of sanctions ot be leveled if Iran fails to do so.

I think the real meat of this is not so much in the call for an expedited time frame, but in the framing of the goal. It’s one thing to demand that Iran verifiably not build a nuclear weapon. It’s another thing to demand that Iran verifiably not engage in uranium enrichment. Iran is not obliged to eschew enrichment under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a number of countries around the world in good non-proliferation standing—Japan, Germany, etc.—are in the position of having demonstrated that kind of know-how. But they’re considered non-nuclear weapons states because they don’t have nuclear weapons. Thus, adopting the more aggressive goal as a red line combined with the more aggressive time frame is basically a way of making it more likely that talks break down.

The perspective reflected in this letter is the ideas that the Israeli government and its proxies in the United States have been pushing for some kind. I appreciate that many members of congress wish to be seen as tough on Iran and as friends to Israel, but I hope members will give deeper consideration to the issues in play here. This approach makes Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon more likely. It also makes more likely an Israeli preventive military attack on Iran that will do more to diplomatically isolate Israel and the United States than it will to deter Iranian acquisition of military nuclear weapons.

With the Obama administration in office, I’m now pretty confident that the United States of America won’t launch a unilateral preventive military attack on Iran. On the other hand, given that, it now seems more likely that Israel might—especially in light of the election results. This is still a terrible idea that will have bad results for Iran, bad results for Israel, bad results for the United States, and probably bad results for other people as well. This CSIS analysis by Anthony Cordesman (via James Fallows) runs through some of the main problems:

Iran’s Nuclear Program

• The more an Israeli threat to the survival of the regime in Iran, the more Iran will be determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
•Increase Iran’s long term resolve to develop a nuclear deterrent program. Could be the beginning rather than the end of such a program. Iran could start an accelerated program in building its own nuclear weapons. It could also covert it’s dispersed facilities into a full weapons development program and be brought online in a very short period of time.

Iran and the IAEA

• Iran would withdraw from the NPT based on the argument that it needs to acquire nuclear weapons to deter any further aggression by Israel and the U.S.

Iranian response against Israel

• Immediate retaliation using its ballistic missiles on Israel. Multiple launches of Shahab-3 including the possibility of CBR warheads against Tel Aviv, Israeli military and civilian centers, and Israeli suspected nuclear weapons sites.
• Using proxy groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas to attack Israel proper with suicide bombings, covert CBR attacks, and rocket attacks from southern Lebanon.

The basic dynamics in the passages I’ve highlighted are very poorly understood in the American press and political system, and seem even worse understood in Israel. But there’s really no reason to think that unilateral airstrikes will do anything to the delay the point at which Iran has a nuclear weapon. Bombs will destroy facilities, but facilities can be rebuilt. And funding levels for programs can be altered. The political calculus about NPT participation can be altered. The calculus about the desirability of weaponizing nuclear material as opposed to just creating it can be altered. And a unilateral attack will alter all of those things in an unfavorable direction.

Rep Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) is going to be Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. This is one of the most important spots in the department (John Bolton’s old job) and one of the most important issues in the world, albeit not an issue that gets a lot of play on the blogs. And Tauscher has solid progressive views on the issue. You can read a bit about Tauscher and nuclear proliferation here at Arms Control Wonk or watch this video here of her working away at the problem.

At the same time on economic policy issues, Tauscher has often been a good deal less progressive than one would hop to see from the very safe CA-10 congressional district. So there’s a good chance that this move will end up making everyone happy.

Sounds about right to me. There are a lot of issues we can (and should) be talking to Iranian officials about that are fairly low-level. We have not-so-different interests in Iraq and Afghanistan and there are lots of discussions that can be had at various levels about those things. But the Iranian nuclear program involves very deep questions about the strategic orientations of the United States and Iran. Only Khamenei can make those decisions.

Apparently, the British have one view on the merits of engaging with Iran before the election and the French have a different view. The Americans, meanwhile, disagree with themselves about this. On one level, this is a sort of minor thing to be disagreeing about relative to the big strategic picture. But on another level, it’s hard to get very far with Iran until you make a decision.

Another issue is that I don’t think western governments have had discussions amongst themselves about what to do if diplomacy can’t be made to work. It’s clear if you speak to people outside government that many analysts think a nuclear Iran is something we could live with. But nobody wants any high-level policymakers in any of the key countries to say that, lest it fatally undermine the bargaining posture. One result of that, however, is that there’s no real talk about how you respond if you give it your best shot with the Iranians and they just turn out to really want a nuclear weapon.

That’s a pretty said claim if you ask me. Yes, it’s true that George W. Bush was correct to say that terrorists armed with nuclear weapons would be dangerous. But this is like congratulating him for knowing how to tie his shoes. Nobody disputes this point. The novel idea Bush brought to the table about this subject was his decision to prevent al-Qaeda from getting a nuclear weapon by invading a country that had neither a nuclear weapons program nor operational ties to al-Qaeda. This is like saying that whatever you think of Herbert Hoover’s economic policies, at least he correctly ascertained that a return to prosperity would be desirable.

Brookings came out with a big report on Middle East strategy that contains an awful lot of conventional wisdom, much of it even correct conventional wisdom. And also this bad idea explained by CAP’s Peter Juul at the Wonk Room:

In a recent Brookings Institution report on Middle East strategy for the new administration, editors Richard Haass and Martin Indyk propose extending a nuclear guarantee to Israel in order to buy that country’s acquiescence for a lengthy period of engagement with Iran to bring Tehran’s nuclear program under international control. Along with Haass and Indyk, Bruce Reidel and Gary Samore, authors of the report’s chapter on non-proliferation, posit that Israel cannot abide by a nuclear Iran despite having adequate deterrent forces. Setting aside this debatable assumption about Israel’s own internal foreign and nuclear policy debate, there is little rational reason to believe that a U.S. nuclear guarantee would prove more reassuring to Israel than its own nuclear deterrent.

The United States has extended nuclear deterrent guarantees to other states — most notably NATO members and Japan — but these commitments existed in most cases to discourage allies from developing their own nuclear weapons programs. This is hardly the case with Israel, which it has its own highly developed, if undeclared, nuclear weapons program. A United States nuclear deterrent guarantee to Israel would be irrelevant to Israel’s overall strategic situation, and would likely have negative political repercussions for the United States in the region.

Read Peter’s post for more on this. I’d like to add two branching points. One is that this is a weird nukes-only subset of the idea you hear floated now and again for Israel to be admitted to NATO, or for the US to extend a general bilateral security agreement to Israel. The problem with both of these ideas is that Israel doesn’t have internationally recognized borders. In particular, not only does Israel have an ongoing military occupation of Palestinian-inhabited territories, but it claims sovereignty over areas in-and-around Jerusalem that are not recognized as Israeli by either the United States of America or any other country. You can’t extend explicit security guarantees to a country in that situation.

Somewhat similarly, I don’t see how you could possibly reach an explicit agreement on nuclear military cooperation with a country that that’s not in the Non-Proliferation Treaty specifically because it wants a secret, prohibited nuclear military program. Certainly taking that step as part of an effort to secure international pressure to get Iran to abide by the spirit of its NPT commitments would be . . . strange. In general, offering Israel carrots in order to allow us to hold diplomatic talks with Iran is a weird idea. If talk with Iran serve our interests, they should be engaged in. If Brookings Middle East scholars feel they need domestic political cover to propose talks with Iran, then that’s an interesting development, but probably shouldn’t guide our nuclear posture.

Put in a different context, though, all this works perfectly well. Extending explicit security guarantees to Israel — both nuclear and non-nuclear — could and should be on the table as part of a package that would lead to things like peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors and Israel deciding to join the global non-proliferation regime. In general, a longstanding ally and democracy is exactly the sort of country to which we would offer explicit security guarantees. And offering Israel carrots to encourage them to take steps — peace with its neighbors and the establishment of a Palestinain state — that would improve America’s political position in the region is exactly the sort of thing diplomatic bargaining is all about.